Transcript
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
AMERICAN CRIME
Second Edition
Volume I
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
AMERICAN CRIME
Second Edition
Volume I
Carl Sifakis
The Encyclopedia of American Crime, Second Edition
Copyright © 2001, 1982 by Carl Sifakis
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
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For information contact:
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sifakis, Carl.
The Encyclopedia of American Crime / by Carl Sifakis.—2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8160-4633-6 (Volume 1)
ISBN 0-8160-4634-4 (Volume 2)
ISBN 0-8160-4040-0 (set)
1. Crime—United States—Encyclopedias. I. Title.
HV6789.S54 2000
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For Maria Balluff
VOLUME I
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ix
INTRODUCTION
xi
ENTRIES A–J
1
VOLUME II
ENTRIES K–Z
477
PHOTO CREDITS
971
BIBLIOGRAPHY
972
INDEX
975
Acknowledgments
Special thanks concerning this book must be given to Ed
Knappman, who thought of the idea and made it work; to
Howie Langer, who thought of me; to Joe Reilly; to James
Chambers. And of course to my wife, Maria-Luise, whose
encouragement, researching, editing and constant checking of
facts often passed what should have been the limits of
endurance.
ix
Introduction
Contents
lined with splendid mansions, where George Washington resided at the corner of Franklin Square after his
inauguration as president of the United States and
where, a few doors away, John Hancock lived.
Together they strolled amid the street’s fragrant cherry
trees and spoke of the American Dream. Yet within a
few short decades Cherry Street had degenerated into
an area jammed with miserable tenements and inhabitants steeped in poverty, vice and criminality. Cherry
Street became the domain of the early Irish street gangs,
and no honest citizen dared venture where Washington
had once casually ambled.
Crime soon developed into an “organized” activity,
as gangs found allies and protectors among the aspiring
politicians of the day. The politicians realized that
properly used, the gangs could win and maintain power
for them by intimidating voters at election time. The
gangs continued to work with political machines for
about 100 years until approximately the start of World
War I.
By that time reform movements had taken root in
most big cities, and politicians realized that the great
street gangs—such as New York’s 1,500-member primarily Jewish Eastman gang and the equal numbered
Italian Five Points Gang under Paul Kelly—had turned
into a liability. No longer could the gangs rob and kill
(often to order according to detailed price lists) and
expect Tammany or its equivalent in other cities to protect them. With their members subject to frequent
arrest and imprisonment, the great gangs started to disintegrate.
What saved the gangs from a complete collapse was
a unique development in American history, Prohibition.
The Noble Experiment began shortly after the close of
World War I, and suddenly, the disintegrating criminal
gangs were revived. The attempt to legislate morality
was doomed to failure, and in a sad by-product of this
ill-advised attempt, the seeds of organized crime were
sown. Where once the criminals had been popular just
The history of crime in America is quite simply the history of America. When criminals began arriving in the
New World, America, unlike the nations of Europe,
had virtually no social structure, customs or institutions of its own. As America grew into a nation, criminals adapted themselves to the emerging institutions,
flourished with them, worked within them, corrupted
them and, some might even say, were corrupted by
them. Criminality started immediately with the arrival
of the first white men. If the Viking sagas are given credence, there were eight murders on Day One of the
white man’s appearance in North America.
New York City became a symbol of urban crime
well before the end of the 18th century. Although there
are earlier commentaries on crime in the city, an observation by New York printer-journalist John Holt in
1762 is especially illustrative. Holt wrote of “such various attempts to rob, and so many Robberies actually
committed, having of late been very frequent within the
Circuits of this City, both Day and Night; it is become
hazardous for any person to walk in the latter.”
Holt’s words sound much like a New York newspaper editorial in the 1980s demanding something be
done to solve the crime problem. What becomes apparent to any serious student of crime in America is the
myth of “the good old days.” In Philadelphia in the
18th century, newspapers spoke in awe of the most
fearful of all criminals, “those nocturnal Sons of Violence.” And even in the good old days, the best of
neighborhoods quickly went to hell. This was true of
Cherry Street, that wondrous New York thoroughfare
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with the politicians, they now became accepted by the
public as a whole; the bootleggers were the public’s saviors, supplying them with forbidden drink. Al Capone,
the bootleg king of Chicago, was cheered at baseball
games while Herbert Hoover, the president of the
United States, was booed.
More important, the revenues of bootlegging
provided the gangsters with wealth they never had
accumulated before. No longer could the politicians
buy them; now they could and would buy the politicians. In Chicago, Capone would boast about how he
owned the police. In New York a young Frank Costello
would tell his superior, Lucky Luciano, that the mob
owned the police commissioner. Society nurtured the
new underworld criminals of the 1920s and then
bewailed the relatively insignificant “public enemies”
of the 1930s, reflecting a total misunderstanding of the
era’s crime problem. That misunderstanding continues
to the present day.
Not only do we fail to see the genuine menace of
crime but we panic over illusions, particularly the
specter of a rising crime wave in the 1970s and 1980s.
We demand that something be done about crime, that
dangerous criminals be put away, ignoring the old lesson that prisons do not reform criminals but make
them into worse criminals. Undoubtedly, one reason for
this change in attitude is racial bias. Today’s prison
populations in general have darker skins. Crime is currently personified by a rowdy black youth in sneakers.
In our prejudice we see the root problems of crime as
an ethnic matter. And in a sense, it is, since crime
springs from ghettos and ghettos tend to be inhabited
by ethnic minorities. When the Irish were the first people jammed into the ghettos of American cities, they
were responsible for the bulk of the crime wave. After
the Jews and Italians arrived, they became the nation’s
leading gangsters. When in history has not most of the
crime in America (except for white-collar crime) sprung
from the ghettos?
Any crime reporter is familiar with the attitude that
has been described as the “Irish cop morality”: “Why
are these people like animals? Why don’t they pull
themselves out of the slime the way we did?” Certainly
the Irish did, but it took them about a century. Many
second- and third-generation Jews do not even know of
their heritage of criminality in America, making it one
of the nation’s best-kept secrets. According to an ethnic
self-delusion, spoken not without a measure of pride,
among Jews, those among them who became criminals
remained in the background, letting others carry out
the violence. This myth is clearly contradicted in the
persons of such brutal thugs and killers as Monk Eastman, Crazy Butch, Johnny Spanish, Little Kishky, Ike
the Blood, Kid Jigger, Kid Dahl, Big Jack Zelig, Gyp the
Blood, Lefty Louis, Whitey Lewis, Yoske Nigger,
Charley the Cripple, Johnny Levinsky and Dopey
Benny; and in a succeeding era by Kid Dropper, Little
Augie, Legs Diamond, Dutch Schultz, Waxey Gordon,
Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Pretty Amberg, Louis
Lepke, Gurrah Shapiro, Abe Reles, Pittsburgh Phil
Strauss and Buggsy Goldstein. Many drew their first
blood as juvenile muggers, preying on citizens alarmed
about the crime wave in their time and insisting things
were better in the good old days. (The identities of
some Jewish gangsters are lost because they adopted
Irish-sounding names. Even the celebrated Monk Eastman, born Edward Osterman, often called himself
Edward Delaney, and the notorious turn-of-the-century
Italian gang leader Paolo Vaccarelli was likewise better
know as Paul Kelly. It was part of the prejudice of the
day that even these criminals thought that to be gangsters, they had to have good Irish names.)
Throughout the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, the public
became aware that crime was increasing enormously.
Crime experts thought otherwise, but no matter, the
public knew crime had gone up compared to the good
old days. Actually this was not accurate, but the perception was firmly rooted and its causes were not difficult to find.
One reason is that in the past several decades the
public became better informed. The average person
today probably watches an hour to an hour and a half
of news on television each day, far more than was ever
spent reading newspapers in the pre-video period.
Crime news is driven home much more forcefully, and
in vivid color. This is not to say that the public would
be better off uninformed. Television played a similar
role during the Vietnam War, subjecting viewers night
after night to the horrors of that tragic conflict. As a
result, TV was more instrumental in ending the nation’s
involvement in Vietnam than were the numerous antiwar demonstrations.
Today, television sickens viewers with crime. There
is something antiseptic about a three-paragraph news
story of a killing. But it is quite different to show a
murdered corpse being carried off, with close-ups of
bloodstains on a floor or sidewalk. In the good old
days, people rarely saw anything like this, so crime
now must indeed be worse.
This public misconception naturally carries over to
the political arena, with politicians seeking to outdo
each other by promising to “get tough with criminals.”
They talk of taking violent criminals off the streets and
locking them up at the same time courts are ordering
prison populations reduced because of overcrowding.
In the era of a government determined to spend less,
various politicians are calling for new prisons. Yet
while it costs a minimum of $20,000 a year to house a
xii
Introduction
convict in an existing facility, the per prisoner cost of
providing new accommodations is $70,000 to
$100,000. The politicians of course realize what they
propose will never be done on the scale that would be
necessary to take care of the overflow, but the idea represents a “quick fix” for the public’s worry.
To focus on the criminal justice system, which has
proven incapable of stopping crime in the past, inhibits
any serious discussion of the problem. For years, the
Federal Drug Enforcement Administration made
numerous arrests of major drug dealers in the United
States and abroad, and handed out long prison terms.
Still, the country is flooded with heroin and cocaine,
and their impact on the crime rate is staggering. An
addict often requires $200 a day to support his habit.
How can he get it except by stealing, and assaulting victims in the process? Researchers at Temple University
found recently that 243 heroin users in Baltimore had
committed more than half a million crimes over an 11year period, an annual average of 200 per criminal.
Sooner or later, rather than emphasizing the “lock ’em
up and throw away the key” attitude, it will become
necessary to begin a serious dialogue about other solutions, such as heroin maintenance programs for
addicts. Until an effective method of dealing with the
drug problem is implemented, addicts will go on committing vast numbers of crimes.
A genuine effort will have to be made to come up
with proper standards of probation, parole and sentencing of criminals. New York district attorney Robert
M. Morgenthau notes that the law metes out the harshest sentences to second- and third-time offenders, many
of whom are by that time in their late twenties—an age
when a criminal’s illegal activity generally starts to
diminish. “From the standpoint of fairness, that’s
the fairest way to do it,” Morgenthau stresses. “But
actually he’s less of a danger to society than the guy
who’s 22 or 23 years old, more active and has fewer
convictions.”
It is not the purpose of this book to attempt to solve
the crime problem, but it is important to try to note
some of the fallacies of many of the remedies suggested.
President Ronald Reagan’s labeling of crime as an
“American epidemic” requiring a sweeping overhaul of
federal criminal laws to “redress the imbalance
between the rights of the accused and the rights of the
innocent” particularly missed the point, while raising
serious constitutional questions. Reagan proposed new
drug-trafficking crackdowns and bail-tightening procedures and endorsed legislative proposals that would
permit judges to order convicted criminals to make
restitution to their victims. This last point requires serious study, not only from the viewpoint of the victim
but from that of the accused, since it offers new oppor-
tunities for frame-ups by giving a victim a financial
motivation for making a positive identification of a suspect, a matter few proponents have yet addressed.
Police claim that their hands are tied because no
matter how many arrests they make, the courts continue to put criminals back on the street. But is this not
an attempt to draw attention from the fact that the
police make an arrest in only one crime out of five?
Furthermore, this 20 percent ratio is bloated with
arrests for “easy” crimes, those of murder, aggravated
assault and rape, in which the identity of the perpetrator is often readily established.
In the 1990s a sea change concerning crime occurred
as the rate of virtually all types of crimes started to
decline, and the public has begun to feel better about
the situation. Naturally law enforcement officials
throughout the country claim that the decline is due to
their work, but the more logical assumption is that it in
large measure reflects a previous falling birth rate.
Experts on such matters say the situation will change in
due course and crime will rise as a growing crop of
teenagers, important contributors to the crime rate,
comes of age.
Still, Americans are satisfied that things are better
now, although they remain exercised about the murder
rate, which is perceived as more grisly than ever. This
more than anything else continues to fuel popularity for
capital punishment. Indeed a certain type of murder has
come to the fore as one of the major crime problems of
the new millennium—that of the serial killer.
When the first edition of this book appeared in the
early 1980s, the term serial killer had hardly come into
vogue, and it was more common to speak of mass murderers. There is no doubt that serial killings have
exploded in recent years. Today and for some years
now the FBI estimated that of the 5,000 or so killers
not apprehended each year, some 3,500 could be the
work of serial killers who are not caught. Many crime
writers tended to regard such estimates as wildly exaggerated, but as more and more serial killers are apprehended and tied to five, 10, 20 or more slayings, there
is much more of a readiness to acknowledge the FBI
experts know what they are talking about.
In a way, confirmation of this comes in a study of
what is occurring in death houses around the country
as condemned men are cleared and released. As of
August 1999 there have been 566 executions, while 82
others condemned to die, including some only hours or
days from that fate, were discovered to be not guilty.
Frequently the condemned had been acting as stand-ins
for serial killers or rapists.
This may speak volumes about the efficiency of the
justice system to find the guilty rather than imprisoning
the innocent, while the real criminal remains free.
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The Encyclopedia of American Crime
Much of the saving of lives, a growing number of
voices now say, cannot be simply ascribed to the position of capital punishment proponents that “this proves
the system works” but rather that some of the innocent
are freed despite a system that inherently is incapable of
being consistently right. In some cases now, in some
states, vocal capital punishment proponents have actually joined opponents of the death penalty to propose a
moratorium on executions while the matter is studied
further. Illinois, where there had been 12 executions
and an equal number of wrongful convictions requiring
release of condemned men, stands out as a glaring
example.
What is clear is that these two issues, a more comprehensive study of the problem of serial killers and the
use of DNA and other methods to prevent permanent
miscarriages of justice, will be hot-button items in coming years.
Along with these will come an increased interest in
crime. In such a climate the need for a more systematized study of the history of crime in America should
be apparent.
It is not an easy field for historical study. Facts about
crime are more obscure than in most other subject
fields, and although I have endeavored to weed out
misrepresentation and inaccuracies, I probably have
not been completely successful. Some crime myths have
become so imbedded in our culture that it is probably
too late at this date to separate fact from fiction. It may
be a hopeless struggle to try to prove that John
Dillinger never used a wooden gun to break out of jail.
Some of the most respected reference sources to this
day inaccurately report that Al Capone was born in
Naples, when in fact his birthplace was Brooklyn, New
York City.
Criminals not only lie about their deeds but about
their lives as well. Efforts to obtain merely birth and
death dates of criminals are often frustrating. They give
different birthplaces and dates at different times, perhaps in an attempt to assume another identity or to
cloud the truth because of deportation concerns. The
result is confusion. Deaths are not always reported.
Criminals, certainly more so than old soldiers, seem to
just fade away.
Police have been known to misrepresent facts, and
when convenient, the great historians of crime, news
reporters, have also stretched the truth, sometimes
entertainingly so. The pressure in the newspaper profession for a daily “fresh angle” undoubtedly has led
some reporters to embellish their facts. Paul Schoenstein, one of New York’s leading newspaper editors,
once said his favorite reporters were those who came
back with a news story in which at least addresses didn’t turn out to be in the middle of the Hudson River.
Reporters have gained reputations, or at least some
journalistic rewards, by knowing how to cater to the
public’s appetite for sensationalism. The vehicle for
their fame has been the “piped” newspaper crime story,
the origin of the term deriving from the location of
New York police headquarters near Chinatown, where
people could journey to dreamland puffing on an
opium pipe.
Some of the most fanciful stories have been produced on out-of-town assignments, which provide
police reporters with their greatest joy: the chance to
escape police headquarters and their city rooms. There
is a convenient division of labor on such jobs whereby
only one reporter covers the news sources while the rest
play cards. At a given moment, all the reporters get the
same facts and call their offices at the same time so that
no one gets a lead on the rest. Even more important,
expense accounts cover lavish living and allow for
padding of such imaginary items as hip boots to traipse
around with the police in swampy areas.
According to a story that is often told at the Columbia University School of Journalism, in the days when
New York City had a dozen-odd newspapers, police
reporters were sent to New Jersey to cover a particularly important murder. After several weeks, the investigation began petering out, and the city editors started
making rumbles about the reporters returning home.
Faced with the loss of their journalistic vacation, the
reporters came up with a ruse. One of them obtained
an old rusted gun that could not be traced, and they
buried it in the backyard of a suspect. Naturally, the
police were tipped off and there was a new break in the
story, which kept the reporters in New Jersey for
another week until it was determined that the gun was
not linked to the case.
It is capers like these that cloud the history of crime
and make the serious student’s task all the harder.
Crime is sensational enough, bizarre enough, certainly
important enough and sometimes even entertaining
enough to require no more than, as Sgt. Joe Friday used
to say on TV’s long-running Dragnet series, “just the
facts, ma’am.”
A work attempting to cover the full gamut of
crime in America is of necessity highly selective. With
a mere 2,000 entries how does one cover just murder,
with up to 20,000 known cases a year? Only those
killings that in some way have become “classics” can
be recorded here. Although more words were written
about the Hall-Mills murders than any other criminal
case up to that time, it remains, in essence, a singularly common crime: the murder of a married man
and his paramour while on a tryst. A sensational trial
and a not-guilty verdict have given it a special niche
in America’s criminal history. The Snyder-Gray case
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Introduction
also lives in our memories even though it is another
rather ordinary murder: a married woman and her
lover dispatching the lady’s husband, a crime
repeated perhaps hundreds of times a year. Still, we
remember Snyder-Gray not for what they were—
especially Judd Gray, a particularly weak man with
little inclination for killing—but for what we the public made of them. In the 1920s the murder they committed was labeled one of the great crimes of the
century, a phrase found with monotonous regularity
in tabloid headlines.
I’ve also paid particular attention to recording
“firsts” in this work. Along with the Vikings’ early
depredations is included the case of John Billington,
who was convicted of the first murder in the Plymouth
colony. Also covered in these volumes are murders of a
particularly bizarre nature or those with some important symbolic or historical relevance.
Other murder cases are included because they were
trail-blazers in such fields as establishment of insanity
pleas or, on a slightly more exotic level, set precedents
involving murders by sleepwalkers or victims of hypnotists. The mass murderers of America are also here,
including such wholesale practitioners of death as H.
H. Holmes, Johann Hoch, Albert Fish, Earle Nelson,
Howard Unruh, Charles Starkweather, Carl Panzram,
Edmund Kemper, Richard Speck, Charles Whitman,
Dean Corll, Joseph Gacy, Albert DeSalvo (the Boston
Strangler) and many others.
In the Old West, it is striking to note how little separated the lawmen from the bandit; indeed many readily
and frequently passed from one role to the other. I
describe men like Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok,
warts and all, often finding little but warts. Such other
folk heroes as the James Brothers and Billy the Kid,
examined objectively, lose the redeeming qualities often
attributed to them.
Any detailed study of the public enemies of the
1930s shows most to be overglamorized, with the possible exception of John Dillinger and one or two others.
In the process of deglamorizing them, I inevitably
deglamorized those who built the myths around them
while they ignored and indeed denied the existence and
growth of an organized crime syndicate. Fame in the
field of crime is fickle, sticking to some and deserting
others. Today, Baron Lamm, a giant among bank robbers, is little remembered, although his influence on
Dillinger, who never met him, was enormous.
Even among genuine heroes, fame can be short lived.
Few Americans today know the name of Ed Morrell,
possibly the most tortured and, later, the most
respected convict in the nation’s penal history. When he
was eventually pardoned, a prison warden wept for joy
with him. Excuses are made for Jesse James, and the
railroads that he plundered are cast as villains,
although James was certainly a cold-blooded murderer.
At the same time, the California Outlaws, led by such
men as Morrell, Chris Evans and the Sontag brothers,
are described in superficial histories as cutthroats while
the true villain of the day, the Southern Pacific Railroad, escapes censure.
I’ve also included important prosecutors and defense
attorneys, not all Darrows perhaps but many colorful,
brilliant and, in some cases, devious. In examining
these practitioners of the law as well as judges and
police officers, the inequities in America’s judicial history become apparent.
But moral judgments aside, the events and people—
the killers, thieves, madams, whores, crooked and honest lawmen and judges, political bosses, syndicate
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The Encyclopedia of American Crime
gangsters and even victims—in the annals of crime are worth studying because they are, perhaps much more than
we wish to admit, reflections of ourselves and the society we have created.
xvi
A
Abbandando, Frank “the Dasher” (1910–1942)
Murder, Inc. killer
Dasher in the fair name of baseball, arguing: “Ballplayers don’t kill people. In all my experience I cannot think
of a single baseball player who ever killed anybody—at
least so viciously as in this case.”
The athletic assassin went to the electric chair on
February 19, 1942.
See also: MURDER, INC.; ABE RELES.
One of Murder, Inc.’s most prolific killers, Frank “the
Dasher” Abbandando got his nickname, according to
one version, on one of his early hits. He pointed his gun
at a huge waterfront character and pulled the trigger,
but the weapon didn’t fire. Abbandando then made a
mad dash to get away, with his intended victim lumbering after him. According to the story, Abbandando ran
around a building so fast that he actually came up
behind the man. This time he got him with three slugs
in the back. Even if this story is legend, it is matter of
fact that during the 1930s, Abbandando did a remarkable job of littering the streets of Brooklyn with
corpses. No accurate statistics on his kills were ever
kept, but he was known to have been involved in probably 50 or so. When he wasn’t knocking off mob victims, the Dasher spent his free time raping young girls
in the Brownsville and Ocean Hill sections of Brooklyn.
In one case he “squared up” with a girl’s family by tossing them $25, “or otherwise I buy you all tombstones.”
When finally brought to justice as a result of the testimony of informer Abe Reles and several other gang
members who turned into stoolies, Abbandando was
probably the most unrepentant of the hired killers in
court. At one stage in the Dasher’s trial, the judge
ordered a court officer to stand between himself and
Abbandando on the witness stand after the defendant
threatened to kill him right in his own court. Still, the
Dasher’s lawyer tried to cast him in the best possible
light, pointing out he had indeed been a star at second
base for the Elmira team—the Elmira Reformatory
team that was. In his summation he pleaded for the
Abbott, Burton W. (1928–1957)
murderer
The defendant in one of California’s most sensational
kidnap-murder trials, 29-year-old Burton W. Abbott
was the object of an even more sensational execution,
which offered grim proof of the finality of the death
sentence.
On April 28, 1955 14-year-old Stephanie Bryan disappeared in Berkeley, Calif. after walking a classmate
home. Thirteen days after the hunt for the girl began,
the police found one of Stephanie’s schoolbooks in a
field outside of town. On the evening of July 15, Georgia Abbott was rummaging in the basement of her
home when she found a purse and identification card
bearing the name of the missing girl. She rushed
upstairs and blurted out news of her find to her husband, Burton, and a dinner guest. Police were summoned and a careful search of the premises revealed a
number of Stephanie’s schoolbooks, her brassiere and
her glasses. Neither Burton nor Georgia Abbott could
explain the presence of the girl’s possessions, but
Abbott pointed out that his garage had served as a
polling place in May and that anyone of scores of people might have used the opportunity to hide the items
on his property.
1
ABILENE, Kansas
attacked the home of Lewis Tappan, a leading antislaver. Tappan escaped but most of the furniture in his
house was heaved into the street, doused with oil and
set on fire. As the mob ripped pictures from the wall,
one rioter suddenly stopped another from throwing a
painting on the bonfire. “It’s Washington! For God’s
sake, don’t burn Washington!” The mob took up the
chant, and the painting was held aloft by a group of
thugs who respectfully escorted it to the veranda of a
house not under attack, where it was fervently guarded
during the rest of the riot.
The worst of the year’s violence took place three
days later, when the leaders of the anti-abolitionist
gangs declared they would destroy any house in the
Five Points area that didn’t put a candle in the window
in denunciation of abolition. By evening, candles flickered from almost every window, but still a dozen buildings were set ablaze and looted. The rioters attacked St.
Phillip’s Negro Church on Center Street and completely
gutted it. A house next door to the church and three
across the street were also destroyed. As smoke spread
throughout the district, the gangsters turned their
frenzy on houses of prostitution, and the occupants of
five of them were dragged outside and forced to watch
their homes and belongings burned. The women were
stripped, passed out to the gang and horribly mistreated. Blacks were pulled from their homes or hiding
places and tortured, and an Englishman had both eyes
gouged out and his ears cut off.
When troops arrived on the scene a little after one
o’clock in the morning, the mob fled. The following
night rioters gutted a church on Spring Street whose
pastor had supported the antislavery movement, and
then barricaded the streets, vowing to battle the soldiers to the death. But when the troops moved on the
barricades, the mob turned and ran. For a time thereafter, the riots against abolitionists ceased, resuming in
the 1850s.
While the police remained suspicious, they had no
other evidence to link Abbott to the girl’s disappearance. The Abbotts owned a weekend cabin in the Trinity Mountains, some 300 miles away, and on a hunch,
investigators visited the area. Dogs led them to a shallow grave that contained the badly decomposed body
of Stephanie Bryan. She had been bludgeoned to death
and her panties tied around her neck. Abbott was
arrested and charged with kidnapping and murder.
While the case against Abbott was circumstantially
strong, the prosecution had difficulty establishing a
direct link between the suspect and the victim. However, scientific examination showed that hairs and
fibers found in Abbott’s car matched those from the
girl’s head and clothing. Still, there were enough doubts
in the case to cause the jury to deliberate for seven days
before finding Abbott guilty. He was sentenced to die in
the gas chamber. Insisting on his innocence, Abbott
filed appeal after appeal, but each was turned down.
He was, however, granted several stays—some only
hours before his scheduled execution—to launch yet
another appeal.
On March 14, 1957 Abbott’s last appeal failed and
he was taken to the gas chamber at San Quentin. At
11:15 A.M. the tiny gas pellets were exploded beneath
Abbott’s chair. Just then the telephone “hot line” from
Gov. Goodwin Knight’s office buzzed Warden Harry
Teets. “Hold the execution,” a governor’s assistant
ordered. Warden Teets explained it was too late—the
gas had been released. Gov. Knight had ordered a stay
for one hour, for a reason never officially explained. It
didn’t matter. At 11:25 Abbott was dead.
Since then the Abbott case has often been cited by
forces opposing capital punishment, not because of the
merits of his claim of innocence, but as stark evidence
that once the state takes away a person’s life, it cannot
restore that life.
Abilene, Kansas
See SHAME OF ABILENE.
abortion as a crime stopper
controversial theory
As crime continued to drop in the 1990s—and somewhat earlier in some localities—political and law
enforcement officials were quick to claim the lion’s
share of the credit. However, in 1999 a new theory
advanced by two highly regarded academics offered a
new explanation that would account for as much as
half of the drop. It was a firestorm theory that had the
distinction of being attacked by all sides of one of the
most divisive issues in late 20th-century America—that
of abortion.
The thesis advanced by Dr. John J. Donohue 3d of
Stanford Law and Dr. Steven D. Levitt of the University of Chicago was that much of the falling crime
abolitionist riots
Riots against abolitionists were common in the
pre–Civil War North, but in New York City such commotions were often engineered by the gangsters of the
Bowery and the Five Points in order to provide opportunities for general looting and mischief.
Several minor episodes occurred in 1833, followed
by numerous bloody riots the subsequent year. On July
7, 1834 anti-abolitionist mobs attacked a chapel on
Chatham Street and the Bowery Theater. Finally routed
by the police, the rioters stormed down Rose Street,
then a fashionable thoroughfare of mansions, and
2
ABRAMS, Big Mike
rates of the 1990s could be attributed to the sharp
increase in abortions after the Supreme Court’s Roe v.
Wade decision of 1973. Unsurprisingly, the two
researchers were accused of everything from promoting eugenics to outright recommending abortion as a
means to reduce crime. When the findings were first
reported in the Chicago Tribune in August 1999 they
resulted in fiery tirades in op-ed columns and radio
talk shows. The criticisms came from both sides in the
abortion debate.
Joseph Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life
Action League, denounced the study as “so fraught
with stupidity that I hardly know where to start refuting it,” adding, “Naturally if you kill off a million and
a half people a year, a few criminals will be in that
number. So will doctors, philosophers, musicians and
artists.”
From a different source, the same response was
offered. Columnist Carl Rowan wrote, “I’ve seen a lot
of far-fetched and dangerous ideas passed off as ‘social
research,’ but none more shallow and potentially malicious than the claim that the drop in crime in the
United States can be attributed to legalized abortions.”
Some observers noted that Donohue and Levitt had
accomplish the near-impossible of simultaneously infuriating the right and left. Some academics noted that
the pair seemed to have discerned an effect but doubted
their findings that half the crime reduction came from
abortion practices. The debate about the decline was
sure to be subjected to academic scrutiny, and the
specifics of the pair’s findings closely reviewed.
One such finding was that such disparate states as
New York, Washington, Alaska and Hawaii were
among the first to legalize abortion, and they were the
first to experience a decrease in crime. Similarly, the
states that legalized abortions in 1969 or 1970 had a
cumulative decrease in crime from 1982 to 1997 that
was greater than for the rest of the nation. The decline
in violent crime was greater by 34.4 percent and in
property crime by 35.3 percent. The fall in murders
was 16.2 percent greater. In addition, states with the
highest abortion rates had larger declines in crime than
states with low abortion rates.
Donohue and Levitt concluded that abortion has
occurred selectively, decreasing the number of individuals most likely to be at risk of committing future
crimes. Fitting that category, the researchers said, were
the potential offspring of mothers who were teenagers,
unmarried or black, all of whom have higher rates of
abortion. Children born to mothers in these groups are
statistically at higher risk to turn to crime as adults.
The researchers estimated the economic benefit of
abortion to society in reducing crime at perhaps “on
the order of $30 billion annually.”
In response to criticism, Dr. Levitt said: “There’s
nothing in our paper that either indirectly or directly
suggests that we condone denying anyone the right to
have children if they want to have children. We’ve been
accused of having a eugenic agenda and it just is not an
accurate appraisal of what we’re doing at all. If anything, what our paper says is that when you remove a
government prohibition against a woman choosing, the
woman makes choices that lead to better outcomes for
her children.”
It was obvious that in future debates neither side on
the abortion issue would touch it with, as one observer
put it, “a 10-foot pole.” However, should the
researchers’ claims win peer support, it was considered
possible that in time they would gain sub-rosa support
from elements in the political community.
Abrams, Big Mike (?–1898)
murderer
While the Chinese of New York’s Chinatown have
fought many savage tong wars among themselves,
through the years they have tried to avoid violent conflicts with whites. The opposite was not the case, however. White killers were familiar denizens of the
Chinatown alleys, always ready to eliminate any man’s
enemy for a shockingly reasonable price. The most
notorious of this ilk was Big Mike Abrams, who
roamed the area performing beatings and killings for
pay. When work was slow, Abrams would take to street
muggings, which, besides earning his keep, further
enhanced his reputation.
Big Mike sometimes operated opium-smoking dens
on Pell Street and in Coney Island and in his later years
settled for a small percentage from such establishments,
while contributing nothing to their operation. The fact
that a man was a client of one of these dens, however,
did not afford him protection in the event Big Mike was
offered cash to slug or kill him. Big Mike’s most celebrated murders were the knife decapitations of three
Chinese before the horrified eyes of onlookers on Pell
Street.
Even the dread hatchet men of the tongs feared Big
Mike, but finally one of them, Sassy Sam of the Hip
Sing Tong, got drunk on rose wine and rice brandy and
attacked the awesome killer. Big Mike happened to be
unarmed at the time and fled down Pell Street, with
Sassy Sam in hot pursuit waving a long ceremonial
sword.
Big Mike lost considerable stature after that display
of vulnerability. While he did regain a measure of
respect by removing the head of Ling Tchen, one of the
chiefs of the Hip Sing Tong, the unthinkable—the elimination of Big Mike—began to be considered. Within a
month of the death of Ling Tchen, police found Big
3
ABU-JAMAL, Mumia
Mike dead in bed, his room filled with gas. The windows and door to his room had been sealed from the
outside and a line of thin hose from a gas jet in the hall
had been stuffed in the keyhole of Big Mike’s door.
The Hip Sings were generally credited with killing
Big Mike, but the tong never acknowledged the deed,
apparently fearful of retribution from other white
gangsters.
Abu-Jamal, Mumia
torch. Following that treatment he was further dissected, and then pictures were taken of his corpse (he
had died, according to the coroner’s report, not of his
wounds but of shock) and distributed in mob centers as
a warning of what was in store for a thief.
Accardo’s personal fairness, by underworld standards, was of the same sort that inspired so much loyalty in many of Capone’s adherents. Noted for his pool
playing, Accardo was once victimized in a $1,000 bet
by a pool hustler who had wedged up the table and
then adjusted his technique accordingly to beat the
crime chief. When the hustler was exposed, Accardo
blamed only himself. “Let the bum go,” he said. “He
cheated me fair and square.” Accardo’s behavior in
such matters won him a great amount of affection.
But Accardo also proved most resourceful in dealing
with the drug problem, which much of the national
syndicate and the Mafia had ruled out of bounds. Some
families disobeyed the rule but others enforced it rigorously, killing any who disobeyed or cutting them off
from legal and support aid if they were caught.
Accardo’s solution was to ban all narcotics dealings,
but he also ordered that all those involved in dope be
given $200 a week out of family funds to help make up
their losses.
This “taking care of everybody” approach helped to
pacify the Chicago mob; by comparison, gangland
murders became much more common in New York,
with its five greedy Mafia families. This record of peace
may well have been shattered by the 1975 murder of
Sam Giancana, but a number of underworld sources
insist Accardo was not behind the murder. According to
them, the Giancana killing was “a CIA operation all
the way,” designed to prevent him from speaking about
the agency’s use of the underworld in a Castro assassination plot.
By the late 1970s Accardo, a multimillionaire, was
in semiretirement, living the good life as he traveled
from Florida to the West Coast to Chicago looking
after his enormous legitimate investments. According to
the FBI, the mob’s operational authority in Chicago
had shifted to Joe Aiuppa, an Accardo gunman buddy
from the old days. After that, Joe Batters returned to
approve further new leaderships when Aiuppa went to
prison. Accardo died in 1992, never having spent a
night in jail.
See also: SAM “MOMO” GIANCANA.
See CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.
Accardo, Anthony Joseph (1906–1992) Chicago mob
leader
Today, it may be somewhat hard to believe that someone like “Joe Batters,” who, as a young tough, gained
his sobriquet for his proficiency with a baseball bat and
who served as one of Al Capone’s bodyguards, could
become the boss of the Chicago mob and be described
by his syndicate supporters as having “more brains
before breakfast than Al Capone had all day.”
Accardo’s rise in the Chicago underworld was rapid.
When Capone first went to jail for a brief stay in 1929
and named Jake Guzik in charge of administration and
Frank Nitti in charge of operations, Accardo was
installed as the head of “enforcement.” Under him were
such brutal characters as Machine Gun Jack McGurn,
Tough Tony Capezio, Screwy John Moore, Sam “Golf
Bag” Hunt, Red Forsyth and Jimmy Belcastro, the King
of the Bombers. Accardo continued to grow in stature
in the gang, and when Nitti committed suicide in 1943
rather than go to prison, he became the acknowledged
head of the Chicago mob.
At various stages in the 1950s and 1960s, Accardo
reportedly had his powers wrested away by Sam
“Momo” Giancana, but it is unclear how much
Accardo gave up under force and how much he relinquished willingly.
Accardo was always reputed as a leader who
believed in iron-clad obedience in the lower ranks but a
sharing of power at the top. Under his rule the level of
violence in the Chicago underworld dropped to near
zero, especially compared to the old Capone days.
However, enforcement against alleged informers and
those who tried to steal from the syndicate remained
strict and awesome. Such was the fate in 1961 of one
William “Action” Jackson, a collector for the mob who
had developed “sticky” fingers. Action got particularly
brutal treatment, ending up stripped naked and hanging by his chained feet from a meat hook in the basement of a Cicero gambling joint. He was beaten on the
lower body and genitals with a baseball bat, carved up
with a razor and had his eyes burned out with a blow-
accident faking
insurance swindle
Over the years faking accidents to swindle insurance
companies has developed into a thriving business.
There is no way to gauge accurately the extent of this
crime since insurance industry figures are themselves
4
ADAMS, Albert
suspect; many observers claim that the companies have
a vested interest in minimizing the extent of fraud to
deter other attempts and to defend their rate structures.
Some calculations of accident frauds place the figure
between $20 million and $100 million a year, with
most estimates falling in the upper range. It was estimated that one insurance gang in Birmingham, Ala.
cleared several million dollars over a seven-year period.
Such insurance rings sometimes buy duplicates of legitimate X rays from doctors and then use them to bolster
phony claims of industrial, auto and personal injuries.
One of the most incredible operations of this kind
worked out of Kirksville, Mo. The swindle involved
doctors, lawyers, osteopaths, nurses, insurance agents,
a county sheriff, farmers and businessmen. Sixty-six of
them were eventually convicted and sentenced. The
racket was run by a crooked insurance agent. He
favored realism in staging his phony claims; claimants
had their wrists broken with crank handles and their
fingers smashed with hammers. An osteopath would be
called in to compound such injuries by manipulating
the bones of the hand and giving injections designed to
cause infections. In some cases miscalculations resulted
in amputations, but these only increased the size of the
award. The men, women and children who willingly
pose as the accident victims in such plots are often of
limited intelligence, but they are also usually poor and
the pool of these volunteer victims increases dramatically during periods of high unemployment.
Faked pedestrian accidents have long been a mainstay of the racket. Sometimes both the victim and the
driver are in collusion, but most fakers prefer to utilize
an honest driver who can stand up to rigorous investigation because he really is innocent. “Floppers” and
“divers” are used when the motorist is not a willing
partner in the swindle. A flopper is a person who is
adept at feigning being hit by a car going around a corner. Perpetrators insist this is not as hard to do as it
would appear. The flopper simply stands in the street
and starts crossing as the car makes its turn. Under
such circumstances the car is moving relatively slowly,
and the flopper bounces off the front fender and flips
his body backward to the ground. As the crowd starts
to gather, the flopper moan and groans. The premium
flopper is one who has an old fracture, preferably a
skull fracture since the break will show up in an X ray
no matter how old it is. The flopper is naturally
schooled in the art of faking serious injury. Just before
the accident he will bite his lip open and dab some of
the blood into his ear.
“Divers” are considered finer artists than floppers
because their act seems more convincing. They work at
night so that witnesses can’t really see what is happening. As a car approaches, the diver runs into the street
and in a crouching position slams the car door with his
hand as hard as he can. The resulting loud noise
quickly attracts onlookers as the diver lies on the
ground, doing the same moaning and groaning act as
the flopper.
One of the most bizarre accident swindles involved a
father of identical twins. One child was normal but the
other quite retarded. Rather than put the unfortunate
child into an institution, the father decided to use him
as a prop for a swindle scheme. He would take his normal child into stores and when no one was looking,
he’d knock something off a shelf and have the child
start screaming as though he had been hit on the head.
The father would then create a scene and storm out of
the store. Later, he would file suit against the store,
charging the accident had permanently damaged his
child’s brain. As proof, he would produce the retarded
twin. Settlements were hastily arranged since no company dared take such a case to a jury. The racket
worked a number of times until an investigator making
a routine check visited the family’s home while the parents were out and saw the normal child playing in the
backyard.
Adams, Albert J. (1844–1907)
numbers king
A famous and colorful New York City gambler, known
as the Policy King, Al Adams was the boss of the most
extensive numbers game operation in the city.
Dishonesty has been the keynote of policy games
from the time they started in England during the 1700s
to the present, but Adams gave them a new wrinkle,
not only bilking the public but also swindling other
numbers operators in order to take over their businesses.
Adams came to New York from his native Rhode
Island in the early 1870s and first worked as a railroad
brakeman, a job he found much too taxing. He soon
became a runner in a policy game operated by
Zachariah Simmons. Duly impressed by Adams’ penchant for deviousness, the older man took him in as a
partner. Adams developed many ways to rig the game
to reduce the winners’ payoff. After Simmons died,
Adams took over his operation and eventually became
the boss of the New York policy racket. At the time,
there were scores of independent operators. It was common practice for independent policy men to “lay off”
numbers that had been bet too heavily for comfort.
They would simply shift part of the action to another
operator who had light play on the number, thus
spreading the risk. When these operators tried to lay off
a heavily played number with Adams, he would note
the number and claim he already had too much action
on it. He would then lay off the same number around
5
ADLER, Polly
the city, even if he actually had little or no action on it.
Thus, a number of operators would become vulnerable
to that number. Adams’ next move was to fix the
results so the heavily played number came out, hitting
the owners of many policy shops with devastating
losses. To make their payoffs, the operators had to seek
loans from Adams, who exacted a partnership as the
price of a loan, ultimately kicking the operators out
entirely. Some policy operators he simply refused to
help, forcing them to make their payoffs (many to
Adams’ undercover bettors) by dipping into the cash
reserved for bribes to politicians and the police. Losing
their protection, they were immediately shut down, and
Adams simply moved in.
In time, it was estimated that Adams ran between
1,000 and 1,100 policy shops in the city. Over the
years his payments to the Tweed Ring totaled in the
millions. Even after Tweed fell and reformers came in,
Adams was able to operate with the connivance of the
police. It was not until 1901 that law enforcement
authorities were forced to take action against his
nefarious operations, raiding his headquarters. Adams
was sent to Sing Sing, where he served more than a
year.
When he came out, Adams found that he no longer
controlled the New York policy game. The battle for
control of the business was turning exceedingly violent,
and Adams, who had always operated with bribes and
trickery, neither needed nor wanted to be involved in
wars to the death. He lived out the next few years in
luxury in the Ansonia Hotel and amassed a great fortune through land speculation. However, he was
estranged from his family, who was ashamed of his past
criminality and blamed him for their inability to lead
normal, respectable lives. On October 1, 1907 Adams
committed suicide in his apartment.
See also: NUMBERS RACKET.
$20 fee, she was disillusioned. Luciano might stuff an
extra $5 in her bra at the conclusion of a session, but
that was all. As he later recalled: “I didn’t want to do
nothin’ different. What do you think I was gonna do—
spoil it for everybody?”
Polly almost always used the real names of her
clients when introducing them to her girls; the clients
did not object, knowing that their secret was safe with
Polly. When Dutch Schultz was on the run from the law
in 1933 because of an income tax evasion charge
drawn by a young federal prosecutor named Thomas E.
Dewey, there were 50,000 wanted posters on him. The
gang chief nevertheless continued his regular two or
three visits a week to Polly’s place and was never
betrayed.
Despite some memorable police raids, Polly generally operated with little interference out of lavish apartments in Manhattan’s fashionable East 50s and 60s.
Long laudatory descriptions of the decor in her opulent
“homes” appeared in various publications. One establishment at Madison Avenue and East 55th Street was
Adler, Polly (1900–1962) New York madam
Often called the last of the great madams, Polly Adler
achieved such a measure of esteem that in the 1930s
and 1940s she was regarded as one of New York City’s
most illustrious “official greeters.” As she said in her
memoirs, “I could boast a clientele culled not only from
Who’s Who and the Social Register, but from Burke’s
Peerage and the Almanach de Gotha.” Her clients, of
course, were not limited to high society; they included
politicians, police, writers and gangsters. Among the
latter were Dutch Schultz, Frank Costello and Lucky
Luciano. The first two were regarded by Polly and her
girls as lavish spenders. Luciano was not. If a girl sent
by Polly to Luciano’s suite in the Waldorf Towers
thought she would do much better than the standard
The flamboyant Polly Adler managed to appear dowdyish
whenever hauled into court on vice charges, a far cry
from the way she paraded with her girls through the
Broadway nightclubs.
6
ADORNO, George
described as having a living room done up in “Louis
XVI,” a taproom in a military motif colored in red,
white and blue, and a dining room that suggested the
interior of a seashell. All the baths and “workrooms”
were finished in peach and apple green. Free food was
always offered and the bar did a thriving business.
Many men dropped in just for refreshments and a stimulating chat with the loquacious madam.
Polly became a celebrity in her own right. Interviewed by the press, she commented on various past
and present events. Her opinion on Prohibition: “They
might as well have been trying to dry up the Atlantic
with a post-office blotter.” Offer the people what they
want, she said, and they will buy it. It was a philosophy
that served her as well in her field as it did the bootleggers in their area. Madam Adler routinely made the
gossip columns and was a regular at nightclub openings, where she would create a sensation marching in
with a bevy of her most beautiful girls. She later
recalled: “The clubs were a display window for the
girls. I’d make a newspaper column or two, the latest
Polly Adler gag would start the rounds and, no matter
where we happened to go, some of the club patrons
would follow after us and end the evening at the
house.”
Polly Adler retired from the business in 1944.
Encouraged by a number of writer friends, including
Robert Benchley, she pursued a writing career after taking a number of college courses, and by the time of her
death in 1962, she had become something of a literary
light. In her later years Adler, an acknowledged expert
on matters sexual, was a dinner companion of Dr.
Alfred Kinsey.
the hierarchy of organized crime because he was loyal
and never overambitious. He became a trusted member
of the board of the national syndicate, settling disputes
between various criminal factions and issuing murder
contracts, among other duties. Abe Reles, the informer
in the Murder, Inc. case, once told authorities, “Cross
Joey Adonis and you cross the national combination.”
When Luciano went to prison, he left Adonis in nominal charge of the combination’s affairs, but he added,
“Cooperate with Meyer.” Meyer was Meyer Lansky,
who became the chief officer in the combination. Adonis proved smart enough to know how to take orders.
Following the end of Prohibition, Adonis extended
his domain to include not only the waterfront and gambling rackets in Manhattan but those in Brooklyn and
New Jersey as well. He also masterminded a number of
jewel thefts, an avocation that amused his big-time confederates. It seemed like a dangerous enterprise but it
made Adonis happy. Despite a long career in crime, he
did not go to jail until 1951, when, after the Kefauver
Committee hearings, he pleaded guilty in New Jersey to
violation of the state’s gambling laws and received a
two-year sentence. In 1956, Adonis, facing federal perjury charges, accepted a deportation order, after his
true birthplace had been discovered. Thereafter, he
lived out his days lavishly in Milan, Italy, still maintaining ties with the underworld in America and occasionally meeting with Luciano, who resided—also in
exile—in Naples.
See also: BROADWAY MOB, MEYER LANSKY, LUCKY
LUCIANO.
Adorno, George (1959– ) youthful murderer
The case history of George Adorno is frequently cited
as an example of the breakdown of the criminal justice
system in the prosecution of juvenile crime. Adorno
first ran afoul of the legal system at the age of four,
when he set his sister on fire. After 16 subsequent
arrests for theft, Adorno—age 15—was charged with
triple murder, which he confessed to before a New York
City district attorney in the presence of his sister. The
sister had been summoned because Adorno’s mother, an
immigrant from Puerto Rico, did not speak any English. A juvenile court judge threw out the confession,
however, because the mother had not been present.
With the murder charge dropped, the judge found
Adorno guilty of a lesser offense of robbery, ordered his
confinement for three years and, as required by law,
had his complete criminal record, including the three
murder charges, sealed.
After serving half his sentence, Adorno was released.
Nineteen days later, he shot to death Steven Robinson,
a black law student who drove a cab to finance his edu-
Adonis, Joe (1902–1972) syndicate gangster
A member of the governing board of the national crime
syndicate from its inception in the early 1930s, Joe
Adonis, or simply Joey A., remained a power until he
was deported in 1956. While Adonis always insisted
that he was born in this country, he was, in fact, born
in Montemarano, Italy, on November 22, 1902.
Joseph Doto entered the country illegally and adopted
the name Adonis to pay tribute to what he regarded to
be his handsome looks. After joining a New York street
gang, Adonis formed a teenage friendship with the
future big names in American crime—Albert Anastasia,
Vito Genovese and Lucky Luciano. By the mid-1920s
Adonis was the head of the Broadway Mob, which controlled the flow of bootleg liquor in mid-Manhattan,
the richest market in the country. While he was the
operating head of the mob, he may not have been the
real brains, since his partners included Luciano and
Frank Costello. However, Adonis continued to rise in
7
ADULTERY
point out in Modern Criminal Justice, “Society is not
often plagued by daring, rebellious old people.”
Some of the statistics are shocking indeed. Children
under the age of 15 commit more total crimes than do
adults over 25. About one-third of all violent crimes are
the work of the under-18 group. The under-25 group
commits about four out of five robberies, burglaries,
larceny thefts and car thefts; three out of every five
forcible rapes; and about half of all murders, non-negligent manslaughters and aggravated assaults. Thus, it is
fair to speak of what one observer has called a “tidal
wave of young criminality.” It is impossible to judge
whether this represents a break with the past or just
reflects age-old patterns, since there are no reliable statistics for the 19th century—much less earlier times—to
match with those of the present-day Uniform Crime
Reports. But it might be pointed out that while organized crime today is largely an over-25 activity, in the
19th century this violent business was largely controlled by the young. The Daybreak Boys, a brutal New
York gang, were composed of mostly 20-year-old and
younger criminals. Certainly today’s school violence
must go far to equal that of the Walsh School feud in
Chicago from 1881 to 1905.
Much of the “crime wave” that supposedly enveloped the United States from the 1960s onward was
little more than a logical development of the age-crime
relationship. Irresponsible statements by politicians and
law enforcement officials tended to confirm public fear
of a new crime wave. The simple fact is that as a result
of the postwar baby boom, the under-25 age group
grew far faster than the rest of the population and, as
always, the increasing number of youngsters committed
an increasing number of crimes. Recent crime statistics
have shown a decline in crime rates.
Further complicating the use of age-crime statistics
are other factors that strongly affect them. For instance,
the high crime rate produced by under-15 and under-25
black youths is in part influenced by urbanization. All
studies show that the violent crime rate for young
blacks who have moved from the South to large urban
cities in the North and Midwest is far higher than that
for young blacks on a nationwide basis.
Clearly, a study of the relationship between age and
crime is necessary as a method for understanding the
problem but it hardly provides an answer to it.
See also: DAYBREAK BOYS, JUVENILE DELINQUENCY,
WALSH SCHOOL FEUD.
cation. When Justice Burton Roberts sentenced him to
15 years to life for the Robinson murder, he commented: “Nothing ever happened to Adorno. He plays
the courts like a concert player plays the piano. Is there
ever a time when a red light goes on and you say, ‘We
have to control this person’? So, at age sixteen, he
finally gets a three-year sentence and he is out in eighteen months.” Under Justice Roberts’ sentence, the
maximum permitted by the youth’s plea of guilty,
Adorno became eligible for parole after eight and a half
years.
See also: JUVENILE DELINQUENCY.
adultery
One of the most unenforced laws in the country is that
concerning the crime of adultery, which, with certain
variations in state laws, may be described as sexual
intercourse by a married person with someone other
than his wife or her husband. In some states adultery is
committed only when the married person is the
woman.
New York penal law defines the crime as “the sexual
intercourse of two persons, either of whom is married
to a third person. The offense is deemed a misdemeanor
and is punishable by imprisonment in a penitentiary or
county jail, for not more than six months or by a fine of
not more than two hundred and fifty dollars, or by
both.” A few states, among them South Dakota, Oklahoma and Vermont, allow for a five-year prison term;
in several others, small fines (as low as $10 in Maryland) are the limit of punishment. Such penalties caused
Judge Morris Ploscowe to wonder “why legislatures
have bothered to include adultery in their penal system
if the enjoyment of extramarital intercourse may at
most result in a small fine.”
The law is, of course, generally incapable of controlling voluntary sexual behavior. According to Dr. Alfred
Kinsey, strict enforcement of sex statutes would result
in the jailing of 95 percent of the population.
age and crime
Crime, especially violent crime, is for the young in
body, not just the young in heart. Perhaps as many as
three out of every four street crimes are committed by
persons under the age of 25. This phenomenon is
hardly a new one; the average western outlaw was
shockingly young. Billy the Kid, who was reputed to
have killed several men by the time of his 21st birthday,
was more the rule than the exception. A criminal act
does require a good amount of daring, vigor and rebelliousness, and as Peter W. Lewis and Jack Wright, Jr.
Ah Hoon (?–1909) murder victim
The tong wars of New York’s Chinatown were fought
with more than guns, hatchets and snickersnee. They
were also fought with insult, loss of face and wit. In the
8
AIELLO, Joseph
MURDER OFFENDERS BY AGE AND SEX, 1998
1
2
Male
Sex
Female
Age
Total
Unknown
Total
Percent distribution1
16,019
100.0
10,505
65.6
1,241
7.7
4,273
26.7
Under 182
Under 222
18 and over2
1,169
3,965
9,545
1,069
3,675
8,438
100
289
1,105
—
1
2
Infant (under 1)
1 to 4
5 to 8
9 to 12
13 to 16
17 to 19
20 to 24
25 to 29
30 to 34
35 to 39
40 to 44
45 to 49
50 to 54
55 to 59
60 to 64
65 to 69
70 to 74
75 and over
Unknown
—
1
4
17
594
2,009
2,685
1,627
1,101
890
678
423
260
165
90
58
38
74
5,305
—
1
2
14
530
1,872
2,477
1,425
946
736
561
351
222
137
79
51
35
68
998
—
—
2
3
64
137
207
202
155
154
117
72
37
28
11
7
3
6
36
—
—
—
—
—
—
1
—
—
—
—
—
1
—
—
—
—
—
4,271
Because of rounding, percentages may not add to total.
Does not include unknown ages.
Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation
The On Leongs started celebrating this new loss of
face by the Hip Sings, who sulked as the On Leongs
paraded through Chinatown. When Ah Hoon’s door
was unlocked the next morning, his shocked guards
found him dead, shot through the head. Subsequent
investigation revealed a member of the Hip Sings had
been lowered on a chair by a rope from the roof and
had shot the comic using a gun equipped with a
silencer. Now, the Hip Sings paraded through Chinatown. Ah Hoon’s killer was never found.
See also: BLOODY ANGLE, BOW KUM, MOCK DUCK,
TONG WARS.
1909–10 war between the Hip Sings and the On
Leongs, some of the most telling blows were struck by
the celebrated comic Ah Hoon, who was a member of
the On Leongs. Ah Hoon used his performances at the
venerable old Chinese Theater on Doyers Street to savage the Hip Sings. Finally, the Hip Sings could take no
more insults to their honor and passed the death sentence on the comic. They announced publicly that Ah
Hoon would be assassinated on December 30. The On
Leongs vowed he would not be. And even the white
man got into the act. A police sergeant and two patrolmen appeared on stage with Ah Hoon on December
30. The performance went off without a hitch, and
immediately after, Ah Hoon was escorted back to his
boarding house on Chatham Square. He was locked in
his room and several On Leongs took up guard duty
outside the door. Ah Hoon was safe. The only window
in his room faced a blank wall across a court.
Aiello, Joseph (1891–1930) Chicago mobster
Joseph Aiello and his brothers, Dominick, Antonio and
Andrew, were enemies of Al Capone in the struggle for
control of organized crime in Chicago. Aiello tried to
have Capone killed in somewhat novel ways, e.g.,
9
ALCATRAZ of the Rockies
attempting to bribe a restaurant chef $10,000 to put
prussic acid in Capone’s soup and, on another occasion, offering a reward of $50,000 for Big Al’s head.
These efforts called for extraordinary vengeance on
Capone’s part, and he ordered his enemy killed “real
good.” On October 23, 1930 Aiello was gunned down
on North Kolmar Avenue, struck by 59 bullets, weighing altogether well over a pound.
See also: LOUIS “LITTLE NEW YORK” CAMPAGNA.
Alcatraz of the Rockies
Kaczynski, and World Trade bombing mastermind
Ramzi Ahmed Yousef. They are held at Super Max not
for behavior problems but because authorities say they
would very likely face violence in less secure prisons.
Another consideration is that Super Max offers far less
opportunities for escape.
Primarily, however, Super Max was set up to house
the “worst of the worst” among the 100,000 inmates in
the federal prison system. Among the Super Max
inmates about 35 percent have committed murder in
prison, 85 percent have committed assaults in prison
and 41 percent have made attempts to escape.
After three years some prisoners who are not transferred out are offered the opportunity of spending more
time out of their cells. Among them, there is said to be a
strong hatred of Super Max. As one inmate told a New
York Times reporter: “Prolonged isolation is the worst
punishment you can put on a human being. The common denominator among prisoners is rage, pent-up
rage, frustration.” It was reported that many prisoners
stay in their cells and refuse to come out for recreation.
They turn jumpy and become enraged when having to
deal with people.
There is an occasional prisoner who can be
described as adapting to Super Max—or, in prisoner
parlance, “beating the system.” One would be Charles
Harrelson, the father of actor Woody Harrelson, who is
serving two consecutive life sentences for murdering a
federal judge in the 1970s. His son is trying to obtain a
new trial for him. The elder Harrelson finds Super Max
somewhat attuned to his interests. He notes that his
previous prison did not have a shower in the room but
did have a lot of noise. “Peace and quiet here is paramount for people like me who like to write. But for
people who can’t read and write it must be pure hell.
He told the New York Times, “They designed this place
for sensory deprivation. It’s an Orwellian experience.”
The Super Max administration claims that the
prison has found “no evidence to show that people are
deteriorating.” Lawyers of inmates see it differently.
Lawrence Feitell, who represents Luis Felipe, the leader
of the Latin Kings gang in New York, says his client
“has retreated into himself, that is where the destruction of his personality is taking place. He has deteriorated to the extent where he prefers to stay in his cell.
He takes no recreation.”
The real test of how much psychological damage is
caused to prisoners probably has to be judged over a
longer span of time. It has been noted that by the time
Alcatraz was closed in 1963 it was estimated by some
that as many as 60 percent of the prisoners were “stir
crazy,” or insane. And despite its fearful reputation,
Alcatraz had eliminated many of its truly restrictive
measures, so that today Super Max can be regarded as
top maximum-security prison
It is the prison confinement convicts fear most—the
maximum-security institution called the Alcatraz of the
Rockies and, by federal prisoners themselves, “Super
Max.” That last sobriquet is not complimentary but
rather born of something between fear and terror.
Imprisoned Mafia chief John Gotti was confined to
Marion Penitentiary, in Illinois, for a life sentence in
1992 because Super Max was not yet completed. At the
time, Marion held the top spot as the most feared
prison in the country and indeed was cited as being
inhumane by Amnesty International. Marion—like
Super Max—operates under a quota system calling for
the transfer out of lifers to less harsh institutions after
they have served 30 months and demonstrate the ability
to be subject to discipline. Under that regulation Gotti
was eligible for transfer in 1995, but he was kept in
Marion. It was well known that his lawyers did not
press the issue of his long confinement for fear it would
prolong the situation or possibly cause his transfer to
what was now the still harsher Super Max.
Located in Florence, Colo., it holds fewer than 400
prisoners and has almost one prison employee per
inmate. The plan of the Federal Bureau of Prisons is to
modify the behavior of violent prisoners by what can
only be described as entombing them in isolation cells
for up to 23 hours a day. Unlike other prisons, Super
Max is silent. There is an empty fluorescent-lit hallway. There are no shouts and screams across cellblocks, or convicts banging on bars, or even the sound
of a radio.
Movements in the prison are restricted by 1,400
electronically controlled gates and viewed by 168
television monitors. It costs about $50,000 a year to
incarcerate a prisoner in Super Max—about two and
one-half times the $20,000 average cost elsewhere. And
Super Max boasts a hefty pricetag at $60 million.
The prisoners in Super Max fall into two basic
groups. The smaller one is the so-called bomber wing,
in which some of the nation’s most notorious offenders,
i.e., bomber terrorists, are kept under “multiple locks
and keys.” Included in this group are Oklahoma City
bomber Timothy J. McVeigh, Unabomber Theodore J.
10
ALCATRAZ prison
far more fearful than Alcatraz. While authorities downplay the possibility of personality deterioration under
the Super Max regimen, the concept of release to a less
restrictive prison (leaving aside the matter of how complete the practice is) is itself a recognition that the
prison is not exactly conducive to prisoner well-being.
Prison authorities may be said to be marching to an
entirely different drummer, basing the worth of the system on the claim that by concentrating highly violent
prisoners in Super Max, there has been a resultant drop
in prison violence across the federal prison system.
See also: MARION PENITENTIARY.
either in the cell house or the mess hall. A single whispered word could bring a guard’s gas stick down on a
prisoner. But the punishment could be worse; he might
instead be marched off to “the hole” to be kept on a
diet of bread and water for however long it pleased the
warden and the guards.
A convict was locked up in his Alcatraz cell 14 hours
a day, every day without exception. Lockup was at
5:30, lights out was at 9:30 and morning inspection at
6:30. There was no trustee system, and thus no way a
convict could win special privileges. While good behavior won no favors, bad behavior was punished with
water hosing, gas stick beatings, special handcuffs that
tightened with every movement, a strait jacket that left
a man numb with cramps for hours, the hole, a breadand-water diet and, worst of all, the loss of “good
time,” by which all federal prisoners could have 10
days deducted from their sentence for every 30 days
with no infractions. But this harsh treatment proved
too much for the prisoners and too difficult for the
guards to enforce, even with an incredible ratio of one
guard for every three prisoners. Within four years the
rule of silence started to be modified, and some other
regulations were eased.
Incredibly, despite the prison’s security and physical
isolation, there were numerous attempts to escape from
Alcatraz, but none was successful. In 1937 two convicts, Ralph Roe and Teddy Cole, got out of the workshop area during a heavy fog, climbed a Cyclone fence
10 feet high and then jumped from a bluff 30 feet into
the water. They were never seen again, but there is little
doubt they were washed to sea. The tide ran very fast
that day, and the nearest land was a mile and a quarter
away through 40° water. The fact that the two men,
habitual criminals, were never arrested again makes it
almost certain that they died. Probably the closest anyone came to a successful escape occurred during a 1946
rebellion plotted by a bank robber named Bernie Coy.
During the 48 hours of the rebellion, five men died and
15 more were wounded, many seriously, before battletrained marines stormed ashore and put an end to the
affair. Escape attempts proved particularly vicious on
Alcatraz because convicts with so little hope of release
or quarter were much more likely to kill guards during
a break.
Many more prisoners sought to escape the prison by
suicide, and several succeeded. Those who failed faced
long stays in the hole after being released from the
prison hospital. Others escaped the reality of Alcatraz
by going insane. According to some estimates, at least
60 percent of the inmates were insane. It remains a
moot point whether Al Capone, who arrived there in
1934 from the Atlanta Penitentiary, where he had been
serving an 11-year sentence for tax evasion, won parole
Alcatraz prison
In 1868 the U.S. War Department established a prison
for hostiles and deserters on a stark little island in San
Francisco harbor. The Indians called it “Alka-taz”—the
lonely “Island of the Pelicans.”
By the 1930s Alcatraz had outlived its usefulness to
the War Department, but it filled a new need for the
Department of Justice, which wanted a “superprison to
hold supercriminals,” because there just seemed no way
to contain them securely in the rest of the nation’s federal penitentiaries. The new federal prison on Alcatraz
opened on January 1, 1934 under the wardenship of
James A. Johnston. Although the warden had previously earned a reputation as a “penal reformer,” he
would rule “the Rock” with an iron hand.
Hardened criminals were shipped in large batches
from other prisons, the schedules of the trains carrying
them kept top secret. The first batch, the so-called
Atlanta Boys Convoy, excited the public’s imagination,
conjuring up wild stories of huge gangster armies plotting to attack the convoy with guns, bombs,
flamethrowers and even airplanes in order to free
scores of deadly criminals. But the first mass prisoner
transfer and those following it went off without a single
hitch; by the end of the year, the prison, now called
America’s Devil’s Island, housed more than 250 of the
most dangerous federal prisoners in the country. The
city of San Francisco, which had fought the establishment of a superprison on Alcatraz, now found it had a
prime tourist attraction; picture postcards of Alcatraz
by the millions—invariably inscribed, “Having wonderful time—wish you were here”—were mailed from
the city.
The prisoners, however, wished they were almost
anywhere else. Johnston followed the principle of
“maximum security and minimum privileges.” There
were rules, rules, rules, which made Alcatraz into a living but silent hell. A rule of silence, which had to be
abandoned after a few years as unworkable, meant the
prisoners were not allowed to speak to one another
11
ALCATRAZ prison rebellion
U.S. Coast Guard aerial photo of Alcatraz furthers its “superprison” image. In truth, it proved to be a crumbling,
inefficient institution.
a place to confine prisoners deemed to be deserving of
harsher treatment.
By the time “the Rock” was finally phased out as a
federal prison in 1963, it was a crumbling mess and
prisoners could easily dig away at its walls with a dull
spoon.
See also: ALCATRAZ PRISON REBELLION, ALCATRAZ
PUSH-UPS, ATLANTA BOYS CONVOY, RUFUS “WHITEY”
FRANKLIN, JAMES A. JOHNSTON, JAMES LUCAS, RULE OF
SILENCE, ROBERT STROUD.
in 1939 because of the advanced state of his syphilitic
condition or because he too had gone stir crazy like so
many others.
Alcatraz in the 1930s housed not only the truly
notorious and dangerous prisoners but also many put
there for vindictive reasons, such as Robert Stroud, the
Birdman of Alcatraz, who, along with Rufus “Whitey”
Franklin, was one of the most ill-treated prisoners in
the federal penal system. The inmate roster included the
tough gangsters who truly belonged, like Doc Barker,
and those who did not, like Machine Gun Kelly, who
had never even fired his weapon at anyone. There were
also such nontroublesome convicts as former public
enemy Alvin “Creepy” Karpis.
Over the years there were many calls for the closing
of Alcatraz. Some did so in the name of economy, since
it cost twice as much to house a prisoner on Alcatraz
than in any other federal prison. Sen. William Langer
even charged the government could board inmates “in
the Waldorf Astoria cheaper.”
By the 1950s Alcatraz had lost its reputation as an
escape-proof prison and had become known simply as
Alcatraz Prison Rebellion
The 1946 Alcatraz Prison Rebellion was a misnomer. It
was nothing more or less than a cunning prison escape
plot by six men based on the release of the other prisoners in order to confuse and distract the authorities.
The attempted breakout, which was foiled after 48
hours, was bloody: five men died and 15 others were
wounded, many seriously. To quell the so-called rebellion, trained sharpshooters were flown in from other
prisons and battle-trained U.S. marines stormed ashore
under the command of Gen. Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stil12
ALCATRAZ prison rebellion
well and Frank Merill, of the famous World War II
Marauders.
The mastermind of the plot was one of the least
likely of convicts, 46-year-old Bernie Coy, who still had
another 16 years to serve for bank robbery. The warden
and guards regarded Coy as little more than a Kentucky hillbilly bandit. Coy, however, had spotted a critical weakness in the Alcatraz security system; as a
cellhouse orderly, he saw that he could overpower the
tier guard, release a few confederates and work his way
up to a gun gallery, a floor-to-ceiling cage of bars
behind which was housed the one man with weapons in
the entire building. The only time this armed guard
stepped out of the cage was to inspect D Block, the
dreaded isolation section. On May 2, according to a
detailed plan, Coy was waiting for the guard when he
left the cage and overcame him in a fierce hand-to-hand
battle. Inside the gun gallery there was an ample supply
of weapons and ammunition.
From here on, Coy’s plan was simple. He and his
confederates captured all nine guards in the building
and placed them in two cells. They then released most
of the other convicts but barred the doors so that they
could not follow them. Under cover of the resulting
confusion, the escapers intended to use hostages to get
across the prison yard, seize the prison launch and
speed across the bay before an alarm could be sounded.
On the mainland, cars would be waiting for them,
thanks to the connections of Joseph Paul “Dutch” Cretzer, one of Coy’s accomplices. Besides Cretzer, a bank
robber, murderer and former Public Enemy No. 4,
Coy’s accomplices included Sam Shockley, a mental
defective and close friend of Cretzer; Marvin Hubbard,
a gangling Alabama gunman and close friend of Coy;
Miran Edgar “Buddy” Thompson, a robber, murderer
and jailbreak artist who previously had escaped from
eight prisons; and Clarence Carnes, a 19-year-old
Choctaw Indian serving 99 years for kidnapping a
farmer across a state line after escaping from a prison
where he was doing time for murder.
The plot failed because a prison guard—against
orders—had failed to return one corridor key to its
place on a keyboard. The escapers then jammed the
lock trying to force it open with other keys. Soon, the
convicts’ timetable ran out and the prison launch left.
Coy, accompanied by Hubbard, left Cretzer in charge
of the hostages, ordering that none of them be killed,
and went off to communicate with Warden James A.
Johnston over the prison phone system. Coy had come
up with a desperate alternative plan to use the guard
hostages to get into the staff living compound, where
the guards’ families, including 30 young girls, lived.
With these hostages, Coy was sure the authorities
would have to let him and his confederates off the
island.
Back with the hostages, Cretzer knew better. He
realized that as soon as the convicts headed in the direction of the family area, the guards on the walls would
cut loose, killing the escapers and the guard hostages as
well. There was no way the guards would let their families be taken. Besides, Cretzer wanted to kill all the
guards. He had not told Coy that he had already killed
a guard in a gunfight and that the prison authorities
had the body. Cretzer had nothing to lose. Moreover,
the deranged Shockley and the cunning Thompson kept
goading Cretzer to kill all the guards. Thompson realized that if all nine were dead, there would be nobody
alive who could name him as one of the escapers. Only
Carnes, obedient to Coy and Hubbard, was opposed.
Suddenly, Cretzer exploded in a murderous fury. He
fired shot after shot into the two cells holding the
guards. All went down. Then he ordered Carnes to go
inside to make sure all were dead. Carnes went in at
gunpoint and saw most of the guards were alive, but he
reported that all were dead. Actually, only one was
dead; of the remaining eight, five were gravely
wounded and three had escaped injury completely,
though they feigned death.
When Coy returned from talking with Warden Johnston, who had stalled for time, he discovered Cretzer’s
mass shooting. Without the guard hostages, Coy knew
there could be no escape. Furious over how their carefully laid plans had been destroyed, Coy and Hubbard
stalked Cretzer, who in turn hunted them. Meanwhile,
news of the mass break attempt and wild rumors
spread throughout San Francisco. Thousands lined the
waterfront to watch as 80 marines stormed ashore in
full battle dress and guard sharpshooters slipped into
the prison. They found the hostages, including one
already dead, and brought them out. The seriously
wounded five had compresses pressed over their
wounds. Some unknown convict had treated them,
undoubtedly saving the lives of at least three or four,
and then slipped away, never to be identified.
More guard sharpshooters were sent in. Holes were
cut in the roof of the building and grenades heaved
inside, forcing most prisoners back to their own cell
blocks, among them Thompson, Carnes and Shockley.
But the remaining trio, Cretzer, Coy and Hubbard,
evaded the grenade blasts by moving into the darkened
utility corridors, concrete trenches below the cell blocks
where plumbing and electric wires were buried. Even
gas grenades dropped through the ventilator shafts
could not dislodge them or stop them from firing at the
guards stalking them.
The trio of convicts did not find one another until
almost the end. By then Cretzer had been wounded by
13
ALCATRAZ push-ups
was gone, he could get all the loose tobacco he
wanted from free dispensers to roll his own. Thus, in
Alcatraz cigarettes lost the currency value and bribing
power they enjoyed in other institutions. As a result,
the curious practice of paying debts, such as those
incurred in gambling games, with so many push-ups
developed. This allowed the prisoners to have some
action and offered something of an antidote for their
overfeeding.
See also: ALCATRAZ PRISON.
bomb shrapnel and Coy by gunfire. According to Clark
Howard’s Six Against the Rock (1977), the most definitive study of the escape, it was Cretzer—not the
guards—who killed Coy, jumping out of the shadows
and shooting him in the neck, shoulders and face. Cretzer tried to kill Hubbard as well but raced off as guards
closed in. Hubbard dragged Coy off into a dark tunnel
and remained with him until he died. In the meantime
Cretzer was cornered by guards, who finally killed him
with grenades and gunfire, 41 hours after the great
escape attempt had started. Several hours later, four
guards caught up with Hubbard. He died in a barrage
of fire, taking one rifle slug in the left eye and another
in the left temple.
The investigation that followed the great escape
attempt focused on the brutal conditions in the prison.
It was found that one prisoner, Whitey Franklin, who
had attempted an escape back in 1938 with two others
and had received an added life sentence for killing a
guard, had spent every day since his conviction, more
than seven years, in the hole.
It was almost an anticlimax when the three survivors
of the ill-fated plot were brought to trial. Carnes got
life to go along with his 99 years, and on December 3,
1948 Thompson and the obviously insane Shockley
became the first two men to die in San Quentin’s new
gas chamber.
See also: BERNARD COY, JOSEPH PAUL “DUTCH” CRETZER, RUFUS “WHITEY” FRANKLIN, JAMES A. JOHNSTON, SAM
RICHARD SHOCKLEY, MIRAN EDGAR “BUDDY” THOMPSON.
Alcatraz push-ups
alcohol
Drinking, drunkenness and alcoholism are significant
factors contributing to crime in the United States. Each
year there are about 3 million arrests for drunkenness
and drunk driving and for vagrancy, disorderly conduct
and other activities that usually involve drunkenness.
These so-called direct alcoholism arrests may well
account for 30 to 40 percent of all arrests made. Many
far more serious crimes are also committed “under the
influence,” ranging from personal assault to armed
robbery and murder. There are no reliable statistics
measuring the exact correlation between drinking and
homicide, but any veteran police officer knows that a
great many domestic quarrels and “in the home murders,” the leading category of homicides, are preceded
by heavy drinking by one or more of the participants.
A 1974 study divided 3,510 men between the ages of
20 and 30 into drinking and nondrinking categories.
The men were asked if they had committed a number of
crimes, including car theft, breaking and entering,
shoplifting, face-to-face stealing and armed robbery.
Among the nondrinkers 16 percent had engaged in
shoplifting and 5 percent admitted to breaking and
entering. The incidence of all the other types of crime
was statistically nonexistent. Among the drinkers in the
study, the number of law breakers increased as the survey moved from light or moderate drinkers to heavy
users of alcohol.
In the heaviest drinkers category, 18 percent
reported engaging in breaking and entering, 56 percent
in shoplifting, 9 percent in car theft, 5 percent in stealing and 2 percent in armed robbery.
In a 1974 nationwide study of 191,400 inmates at
state correctional facilities, 43 percent said they had
been drinking at the time they committed the crime of
which they were convicted. About half of these
described their drinking as heavy.
Criminologists have long debated whether these and
other studies demonstrate whether a person who is
under the influence of alcohol will violate laws that he
would not violate if he were not intoxicated. No definite conclusions are possible, but there is considerable
prison “currency”
While Alcatraz had the deserved reputation of being
America’s toughest federal prison, there were a couple
of seemingly odd exceptions to the rugged regimen
that produced one of the strangest and most unique
practices in American penology. Alcatraz became
known as the best prison for “eats and smokes.” Federal regulations called for a minimum of 2,000 calories per prisoner per day, but on Alcatraz the average
was kept between 3,100 and 3,600 daily calories.
When Mrs. Homer Cummings, the wife of the attorney general, visited “the Rock” in the mid-1930s, she
was served the standard convict dinner—soup, beefaroni, beans, cabbage, onions, chili pods, hot biscuits,
ice cream, iced tea and coffee—and exclaimed: “Why,
this is more than we eat at home!” It was estimated
that the average convict gained 15 to 20 pounds during his stay in the prison, and some put on 40 pounds
or more.
Along with this rather lavish menu, Alcatraz had a
bountiful smoking program. Each prisoner was issued
three packs of cigarettes a week, and when that supply
14
ALDERMEN’S Wars
met no serious challenge until 1916, when Anthony
D’Andrea mounted a bid against James Bowler, junior
alderman from the 19th and a Powers henchman.
D’Andrea was less than a pillar of civic virtue himself,
although he was a prominent leader in many Italian fraternal societies and a labor union official. The Chicago
Tribune reported: “Anthony Andrea is the same Antonio D’Andrea, unfrocked priest, linguist, and former
power in the old ‘red light’ district, who in 1903 was
released from the penitentiary after serving 13 months
on a counterfeit charge. D’Andrea’s name has also been
connected with a gang of Italian forgers and bank
thieves who operated at one time all over the country.”
The killings commenced in February 1916. Frank
Lombardi, a Powers ward heeler, was shot dead in a
saloon. D’Andrea lost his election battle that year, as
well as another one in 1919 and a final one in 1921, a
direct race against Powers. During all that time, corpses
of supporters on both sides filled the streets, and a
number of bombings took place, including one set off
on the front porch of Powers’ home. The Powers forces
retaliated with the bombing of a D’Andrea rally,
severely injuring five persons. There were subsequent
bombings of D’Andrea’s headquarters and the home of
one of his lieutenants.
One day in March 1921, Paul Labriola, a Powers
man who was a court bailiff, walked to work with
some apprehension because his name had been listed on
the Dead Man’s Tree, a poplar on Loomis Street on
which both factions had taken to posting the names of
slated victims, a grim form of psychological warfare. At
Halsted and Congress, Labriola passed four D’Andrea
gunmen; as he started across the intersection, he was
cut down by a volley of shots. One of the four gunmen
walked over to their victim, straddled his body and
pumped three more revolver shots into him. Later that
day the same four gunmen killed cigar store owner
Harry Raimondi, a former D’Andrea man who had
switched sides. While the killings and bombings continued, Alderman Bowler declared:
evidence indicating that a drinker will behave in a
“class” manner. Thus, among the middle class and
advancing up the socioeconomic ladder, there is generally little economic basis for the commission of crime,
especially violent crime, and the tendency is for drunkenness to result in such behavior as singing, telling
dirty stories and crying. On the other hand, in the
ghettos and among the lower socioeconomic classes,
the economic basis for crime increases, and there is a
far greater tendency to turn from “happy drunkenness” to the starting of fights and the violation of criminal laws.
Further reading: Fundamentals of Criminal Investigation by Charles O’Hara.
Alderisio, Felix “Milwaukee Phil” (1922–1971) hit
man
Regarded by many as the top hit man of the Chicago
mob, Felix “Milwaukee Phil” Alderisio was popularly
given credit for designing the “hitmobile,” a car especially geared for committing murder with the least possible interference. Among what may be called its
optional features were switches that would turn out the
car’s front or rear lights to confuse police tails. Another
innovation was a secret compartment in a backrest that
not only held murder weapons but contained clamps to
anchor down handguns, shotguns or rifles for more
steady shooting while the vehicle was in motion.
Although the Chicago police insisted that Milwaukee
Phil was the executioner in well over a dozen gangland
hits, no murder charge against him was ever proven.
He was, however, finally convicted of extortion and
died in prison in 1971.
Aldermen’s Wars
Chicago political killings
Even for Chicago, a city noted for its gangland killings
and battles, the so-called Aldermen’s Wars, between
1916 and 1921, stand out for sheer savagery. In all, 30
men died in the continuous five-year battle fought for
control of the 19th, or “Bloody,” Ward, which encompassed the city’s Little Italy. The political forces that
controlled the 19th were entitled to the huge payoffs
coming out of Little Italy for various criminal enterprises. With the coming of Prohibition, the production
of moonshine alcohol became the area’s “cottage industry” and an important source of illicit alcohol for the
entire city.
The 19th had been controlled by Johnny “de Pow”
Powers, an incorrigible saloonkeeper, protector of criminals and graft-taking alderman from the 1890s on.
Despite the transition of much of the area from Irish to
Italian, Powers was able to maintain his control and
Conditions in the 19th Ward are terrible. Gunmen are
patrolling the streets. I have received threats that I was
to be “bumped off” or kidnapped. Alderman Powers’
house is guarded day and night. Our men have been
met, threatened and slugged. Gunmen and cutthroats
have been imported from New York and Buffalo for
this campaign of intimidation. Owners of halls have
been threatened with death or the destruction of their
buildings if they rent their places to us. It is worse than
the Middle Ages.
The killings continued after D’Andrea’s third election defeat, despite his announcement that he was
15
ALLEN, Bill
inevitable. Chief Doyle mounted the wagon and
assured the crowd that the Negro was really dead.
They hooted and yelled, shouting that the police were
concealing the man and encouraging each other to
break in the windows of the station.”
The police chief then came up with a way of placating the mob. Allen’s body was stripped, laid out on a
mattress and put on view through a barred window
where it could be seen at the side of the station. A line
was formed, and “the crowd passed in eager procession, and were satisfied by a simple glance at the dull,
cold face. All afternoon that line moved steadily along,
and the officers were busily occupied in keeping it in
order. The crowd increased rather than diminished, and
until darkness settled down, they were still gazing at
the dead murderer. After dark a flaring gas jet at the
head of the body brought it out in strong relief, and all
night long the line of curious people filed by for a
glimpse of the dead.” It was 48 hours before Allen’s
body could be taken off display.
through with 19th Ward politics. In April 1921 a man
named Abraham Wolfson who lived in the apartment
across the hall from D’Andrea got a threatening letter that read in part: “You are to move in 15 days. We
are going to blow up the building and kill the whole
D’Andrea family. He killed others and we are going to
do the same thing. We mean business. You better move
and save many lives.”
Wolfson showed the note to D’Andrea and then
moved out. This gave D’Andrea’s enemies what they
wanted, an empty apartment from which to watch him.
On May 11, just after his bodyguard had driven off,
D’Andrea was gunned down as he was about to enter
his building.
D’Andrea was the wars’ 28th victim. There were to
be two more, Andrew Orlando and Joseph Sinacola,
D’Andrea’s Sicilian “blood brother,” both of whom had
sworn to avenge their boss’ death. Orlando was killed
in July and Sinacola in August.
There was only one prosecution for any of the 30
murders committed during the Aldermen’s Wars, that
of Bloody Angelo Genna for the street corner slaying of
Paul Labriola. But nothing much came of it. The
numerous witnesses to the murder belatedly realized
they hadn’t seen a thing.
See also: DEAD MAN’S TREE.
Allen, Bill (?–1882)
Allen, John (c. 1830–?)
“Wickedest Man in New York”
One of the most notorious dives in New York City
during the 1850s and 1860s—on a par with such later
infamous resorts as the Haymarket, Paresis Hall and
McGuirk’s Suicide Hall—was John Allen’s Dance
House at 304 Water Street. Allen himself became
widely known as “the Wickedest Man in New York,”
a sobriquet pinned on him first by Oliver Dyer in
Packard’s Monthly. What brought down the wrath of
Dyer and other crusading journalists was not simply
the vulgarity and depravity of Allen’s establishment
but his personal background. Allen came from a pious
upper New York State family; three of his brothers
were ministers, two Presbyterian preachers and the
other a Baptist. He himself had initially pursued a
similar ministerial career but soon deserted the Union
Theological Seminary for the pleasures and profits of
the flesh.
With his new wife, John Allen opened a dance
hall–brothel on Water Street, stocking it with 20 prostitutes famed for wearing bells on their ankles and little
else. In 10 years of operation, the Allens banked more
than $100,000, placing them among the richest vice
operators in the city.
Despite his desertion of the cloth, Allen never
entirely shed his religious training. While he was a
drunk, procurer and thief and was suspected of having
committed more than one murder, Allen insisted on
providing his lurid establishment with an aura of holiness. All the cubicles in which his ladies entertained
customers were furnished with a Bible and other religious tracts. Regular clients were often rewarded with
murderer
A Chicago black man named Bill Allen had the distinction of being hunted by the largest “posse” in
American history. On November 30, 1882 Allen
killed one black and wounded another, and later that
evening he murdered Patrolman Clarence E. Wright,
who tried to arrest him. Three days after the incident
Allen was located in the basement of a house by
Patrolman Patrick Mulvihill, but the fugitive shot
Mulvihill through a window and fled. Soon, 200
policemen were scouring the black district of Chicago
for Allen. By mid-afternoon, according to a contemporary account, “Upwards of 10,000 people armed
with all sorts of weapons from pocket pistols and
pitchforks to rifles, were assisting the police in the
hunt.” At 3:30 that afternoon, Sgt. John Wheeler
found Allen in the backyard of a house on West Kinzie
Street and killed him in a gunfight. Allen’s body was
taken in a patrol wagon to the Desplaines police station, and somehow the rumor started that he had been
arrested rather than killed. A lynch mob of thousands
quickly formed, and when a few officers tried to break
up the crowd, they were threatened. “The crowd,”
one report of the event said, “became frenzied and
threatened to tear down the station. Threats and
promises were all in vain, and a serious riot seemed
16
ALLEN massacre
tion and even taking up the cloth, but another placed
“the Wickedest Man in New York” practicing his
tawdry business in a different city under an assumed
name. None of these stories has ever been confirmed.
gifts of the New Testament. Before the dance hall
opened for business at 1 P.M., Allen would gather his
flock of musicians, harlots, bouncers and barkeeps
and read passages out of the Scriptures. Hymn singing
was a ritual; the favorite of Allen’s hookers was
“There Is Rest for the Weary,” apparently because it
held out a more serene existence for the ladies in the
life hereafter.
Allen, Lizzie (1840–1896) Chicago madam
Next to the fabulous Carrie Watson, Lizzie Allen was
Chicago’s most successful madam during the 19th century. A native of Milwaukee, she came to Chicago in
1858, at the age of 18, with the clear intention of
becoming a madam. She went to work at Mother Herrick’s Prairie Queen and, unlike most of the other girls,
did not squander her earnings on men. After a stint at
another leading brothel, the Senate, Allen opened a
house on Wells Street staffed by three prostitutes.
Despite the modest nature of the enterprise, she prospered there. Like most other brothel owners, Lizzie was
burned out in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, but she
is credited with being the first back in business. She
recruited a large staff of unemployed harlots and put
them to work in a new house on Congress Street while
the carpenters were still working to complete it. With
that jump on the competition, Allen accumulated a
large fortune and soon became one of the most important madams in the city. In 1878 she formed a relationship with a “solid man,” the colorful Christopher
Columbus Crabb, and with him as her lover and financial adviser, she flourished still more. In fact, Lizzie
Allen was regarded by one local tabloid as “the finest
looking woman in Chicago.”
In 1888 Allen and Crabb built a 24-room mansion
on Lake View Avenue to use as a plush brothel, but
police interference doomed the enterprise. They then
built an imposing double house at 2131 South Dearborn, which they named the House of Mirrors. Costing
$125,000, it was one of the most impressive brothels of
its day. (The house was destined to even greater fame
under the Everleigh sisters, who took it over in 1900
and made it the most celebrated bawdy house in America.) Lizzie Allen operated the mansion until 1896,
when, in poor health, she retired, leasing the property
to Effie Hankins. She signed over all her real estate to
Crabb and named him the sole beneficiary in her will.
The estate was estimated to be worth between
$300,000 and $1 million. When Lizzie Allen died on
September 2, 1896, she was buried in Rosehill Cemetery. Her tombstone was inscribed, “Perpetual Ease.”
See also: CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS CRABB, EVERLEIGH
SISTERS, PRAIRIE QUEEN.
There is rest for the weary,
There is rest for you.
On the other side of Jordan,
In the sweet fields of Eden,
Where the Tree of Life is blooming,
There is rest for you.
Eventually, when a group of uptown clergymen took
over Allen’s resort for prayer meetings, it looked as if
the religious aspect of the dance hall had gotten out of
hand. Allen had apparently embraced religion entirely,
and a lot of uptown devout began attending these
meetings to bear witness to the reformation of sinners—especially John Allen. Alas, exposés in several
newspapers turned up the sad intelligence that Allen,
rather than undergoing a religious rebirth, had actually
leased out his establishment to the ministers for $350 a
month and seemingly provided some newly reformed
sinners for 25¢ or 50¢ a head.
In time, the revivalist movement faded and Allen
attempted to return his resort to its former infamy, only
to find the criminal element no longer had faith in him,
figuring anyone so religiously inclined might be
untrustworthy. The last public record of Allen was his
arrest, along with his wife and some of his prostitutes,
for robbing a seaman. Shortly thereafter, the dance hall
closed.
Allen’s fate is obscured by contradictory legends.
One had him finally undergoing a complete reforma-
John Allen rented out his dance hall–bordello for prayer
meetings and obligingly provided sinners at 25¢ or 50¢ a
head.
Allen massacre
courtroom shoot-out
The bloodiest confrontation ever to take place in an
17
ALLISON, Clay
thick, it was impossible to aim, and therefore, if anyone
was killed, it was purely an accident.
After serving 13 years, Sidna Allen received a pardon
in 1926 from Gov. (later Sen.) Harry F. Byrd.
In his memoirs, Sidna insisted the shootings had all
been unpremeditated and were originally intended as a
bluff to free Floyd Allen. He also claimed the clan had
been the object of political persecution in the country
for some time. After Sidna’s release the Allen clan
argued that his pardon indicated the state had admitted
they had been framed.
American courtroom occurred on March 14, 1912
at the Carroll Country Courthouse in Hillsville, Va.
The Allen clan of the Blue Ridge Mountain area
believed in its own code of behavior built around making moonshine, shooting revenuers and—certainly—
paying no taxes. One day in 1911 a peace officer
arrested a member of the clan for moonshining. Floyd
Allen, the uncle of the accused, knocked the officer
down and helped his nephew to escape. Uncle Floyd
subsequently was charged with assault. It was an
unheard-of event—nobody had every dared arrest
Floyd Allen before.
The Allen clan immediately began informing citizens
throughout the county that Floyd Allen was innocent
and had better be found so. It soon became evident that
no one in the county was about to find Allen guilty of
anything, and the state came up with the legally questionable ploy of importing jurors from elsewhere in
Virginia. Floyd Allen was readily found guilty by the
imported jurors. At 9 A.M. on March 14, the court
convened for sentencing. As Judge Thornton L. Massie
started speaking, some 17 Allen men entered the courtroom and stationed themselves at strategic positions.
The judge finished his speech and sentenced Floyd
Allen to one year. Floyd then addressed the court.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I ain’t goin’.”
With that statement, Floyd Allen pulled out two guns
and started shooting: where and at whom varies with
each account. Most say that Floyd shot and killed Judge
Massie. But some credit his brother Sidna with that
killing. In any event, 17 Allens started shooting; some
only shot at the ceiling or into the floor and most of the
shooting was done by Floyd, Sidna and Floyd’s son
Claude. In less than 60 seconds at least 75 shots were
fired and six people killed—the judge, the sheriff, the
commonwealth attorney, a spectator, a juror and a
woman witness, ironically for the defense. Eight others
were wounded. Among the Allens only Floyd was
wounded and he was able to hobble off to a nearby hotel,
where he was later taken into custody. This too must have
surprised the Allens, who obviously thought their show of
force would be enough to allow Floyd to walk from the
courtroom. Sidna Allen was so nonchalant about the
entire matter that when he ran out of ammunition, he
went across the street to buy more in a hardware store. It
was closed because the owner was in court.
Virginia authorities moved in rapidly to suppress the
Allens once and for all. Floyd and his son Claude were
sentenced to death for murder and electrocuted on
March 28, 1913. Sidna got 15 years. All the other
Allens got lesser sentences; some had insisted they had
fired in the air or at the floor, trying deliberately not to
kill anyone but merely create panic. A few came up
with a novel defense: because the gunsmoke was so
Allison, Clay (1840–1887)
gunfighter
One of the most notorious of the western gunfighters,
Clay Allison was not an outlaw in the ordinary sense of
the word. He called himself a “shootist,” apparently in
an attempt to indicate he was a professional, like an
artist or a dentist. Allison lived on the fringe of the law
and according to a personal code governed more by his
own belief in honor than by the strictures of the law.
Invariably, this meant he killed men “that deserved
killin’.” In a morbid sense, he may have contributed
some of the most entertaining—to observers rather
than to victims—shootings in western lore.
One of his more famous duels was with a gunman
named Chunk Colbert in 1874. The pair sat eyeball
to eyeball in a New Mexico Territory eatery, staring
each other down and stirring their coffee with the
muzzles of their six-guns. Soon each reholstered his
piece and continued to eat. Colbert made the first
move to draw but Allison shot him dead just above
the right eye. On another occasion Allison led a
lynching party against a man named Kennedy who
was suspected of killing his own young daughter.
Some bones were found on the Kennedy ranch, but
there was no definite determination that the bones
were human. The matter was still in dispute after the
lynching, but that didn’t stop Allison from cutting off
the dead man’s head, impaling it on a pike and riding
29 miles to Cimarron, Kan. to his favorite watering
hole, Henry Lambert’s saloon.
Allison could best be described as a part-time
maniac, since between his vicious killings he was generally a well-mannered rancher. There might have been
some excuse for his behavior, however. He had joined
the Confederate Army in his native Tennessee but was
discharged after sustaining a blow on his skull, which
was said to have made him intermittently epileptic and
at other times maniacal. After the Civil War, he
punched cattle and finally set up the first of his several
ranches.
What troubled other men about Allison was his
unpredictability. In 1875, although a rancher, he sided
18
ALLISON, Dorothy
Contemporary drawing depicts Clay Allison’s famous shoot-out with another notorious gunman, Chunk Colbert.
Pecos, Tex. to bring back to his ranch. When a sack of
grain fell from the moving wagon, he tried to grab it
and toppled to the ground. A wagon wheel rolled over
his neck, breaking it and killing him.
It was a bizarre ending to a violent life for a man
credited, by various counts, with the deaths of 15 to 21
men. A Kansas newspaper had a difficult time trying to
evaluate the life of Clay Allison and whether he was “in
truth a villain or a gentleman.” That was “a question
that many never settled to their own satisfaction. Certain it is that many of his stern deeds were for the right
as he understood that right to be.”
See also: CHUNK COLBERT.
with the homesteaders in their battles, clearly out of a
sense of fair play, an attitude that enraged other ranchers and stock associations. At the same time Allison
was a bitter racist, and in New Mexico he killed a number of Mexican “outlaws.” Few, however, even considered challenging him for any of his deeds.
Allison continued to devise duels that bordered on
lunacy. He once indulged in a fast-draw contest with a
gunman named Mace Bowman. After Bowman continually outdrew him, Allison suggested they pull off their
boots, strip down to their underwear and take turns shooting at each other’s bare feet to see who danced best under
fire. Remarkably, the confrontation ended without bloodshed after several hours, each man giving in to exhaustion.
When he got into yet another dispute, Allison
arranged to do battle naked in a grave in which each
adversary would be armed with a Bowie knife. Both
agreed to purchase a tombstone and the winner would
see to it that the stone of the loser was suitably
engraved. While waiting for the delivery of the tombstone, Allison picked up a wagonload of supplies from
Allison, Dorothy (1925–1999) crime-solving psychic
Among the various psychics who have made the popular press in recent years, one American psychic, a
housewife from Nutley, N.J., ranked above all others as
having some apparent crime-solving ability. Dorothy
Allison’s visions of peaceful landscapes containing
19
ALLMAN, John
unfound bodies have turned out to be, as Newsweek
labeled them, “close approximations of grisly reality.”
In the past dozen years or so, Mrs. Allison had been
consulted by police in well over 100 cases and, by her
own count, had helped solve 13 killings and find more
than 50 missing persons. Many police departments
expressed wholehearted, if befuddled, gratitude. “Seeing is believing,” said Anthony Tortora, head of the
missing persons division of the Bergen County, N.J.
sheriff’s office. “Dorothy Allison took us to within 50
yards of where the body was found. She’s quite a gal.”
Some of Mrs. Allison’s “finds” have been accident
victims and others have been the victims of foul play. In
September 1977 two of her finds turned up in different
states just one day apart. She pinpointed a swamp area
in New Jersey where 17-year-old Ronald Stica would
be found and was able to tell police prior to the discovery of the body that he had been stabbed to death. The
day before, the body of 14-year-old Susan Jacobson,
missing two years, had turned up inside an oil drum in
an abandoned boat yard in Staten Island, N.Y. Mrs.
Allison had described the corpse site—although she had
never been to Staten Island—as a swampy area, with
“twin church steeples and two bridges—but one not for
cars” nearby. She said she also saw the letters M A R
standing alone. All the elements were there, including
the letters M A R painted in red on a nearby large rock.
Perhaps Mrs. Allison’s most amazing case was one
that began at about 6:30 P.M. on Thursday, July 22,
1976, when Deborah Sue Kline left her job as a hospital
aide, got in her car and started for her home in Waynesboro, Pa. She never got there. Months of police investigations proved fruitless. Jane Kline, the girl’s mother,
finally contacted Mrs. Allison, who agreed to come to
Pennsylvania. Quite naturally, the first thing the mother
asked was if her daughter was still alive. By the end of
the day, Mrs. Allison told her the answer: Debbie was
dead. Mrs. Allison put on Debbie’s graduation ring “to
help me feel her presence.” She toured the area with
police, reporters and a friend of the Klines.
After a while, she was able to reconstruct the crime.
She saw Debbie driving home from the hospital and
two cars, a yellow one and a black one, forcing her off
the road. According to a local newspaper account: “She
was taken from her car in one of the other cars to a
place where she was molested. She was taken to
another place where she was killed with a knife wound.
I saw [at the death site] yellow signs, a dump, burnt
houses and a swimming pool. I could see her skeleton.
It was not underground. The word ‘line’ or ‘lion’ came
to me.”
On January 26, 1977, three days after Dorothy Allison had returned home, police located the body of Debbie Kline. It was not buried and was in an area where
junk was dumped. There were no “burnt houses” but
the spot was just off the Fannettsburg–Burnt Cabins
Road. In the area were yellow traffic signs warning
motorists of steep grades on the road. Near the body
was a discarded plastic swimming pool. There was no
“lion” but there was a “line”—150 feet away was the
line between Huntington and Franklin Counties. And
Debbie had been stabbed to death.
Then the police confronted a suspect, in jail at the
time on another rape charge. His name was Richard
Lee Dodson. Dodson broke down and led them to
where the body had been found. He and another man,
Ronald Henninger, were charged with the crime. Ken
Peiffer, a reporter for the Record Herald, said: “She
told me, among other clues later proven accurate, the
first names of the two men involved, Richard and
Ronald. She even told me that one of the men had a
middle name of Lee or Leroy.”
The police of Washington Township, who were in
charge of the case, made Dorothy Allison an honorary
member of the police department. The citation given to
her reads in part, “Dorothy Allison, through psychic
powers, provided clues which contributed to the solving of the crime.”
Of course, not all of Dorothy Allison’s efforts had
been triumphs. She was the first psychic called in by
Randolph Hearst after daughter Patty disappeared in
Berkeley, Calif. Mrs. Allison turned up little of value
while on the West Coast. Still, Hearst did not scoff.
“Dorothy couldn’t locate Patty,” he said, “but she is
honest and reputable. I wouldn’t laugh at it.” Allison
died December 1, 1999.
Allman, John (?–1877) the cavalryman killer
The prototypical western cavalryman bad guy, according to a Hollywood historian, “Bad John Allman did as
much to make John Ford a great movie director as did
John Wayne.” The point may have been stretched, but
John Allman was just about the worst killer the U.S.
Army contributed to the West.
A native of Tennessee, Allman was a violent character throughout his army career. There is some speculation that Allman was not his original name, that he had
served elsewhere in uniform under another identity or
two until it became wise to change it.
There is no record of exactly how many men Allman
killed—“not countin’ injuns,” as they said in the cavalry. In any case, his last spree substantially reduced the
population of the Arizona Territory. In the summer of
1877 Allman got into an argument during a poker
game in the cavalry barracks at Prescott, Ariz. When
the pistol smoke cleared, Allman and the pot were gone
and two army sergeants were dead. A posse soon
20
ALTA, Utah
started out after Bad John and got close to him, close
enough for two of its members, Billy Epps and Dave
Groat, to be killed by him. Still on the run, Allman was
recognized, or at least thought he had been recognized,
by two woodcutters, and he promptly shot them dead.
Late in August, about two weeks after he had killed the
woodcutters, Allman, tired, hungry and broke, rode
into Yuma. When he rode out, a bartender named
Vince Dundee was dead, and Allman had the contents
of the till and as many bottles of whiskey as a man
could tote. In Williams, Ariz. Deputy Sheriff Ed
Roberts spotted Allman in a saloon, but Bad John’s gun
was quicker; on his way out, the cavalryman killer
stepped right over the dying lawman.
Sheriff Ullman of Coconino County turned over the
job of apprehending Allman to a bizarre group of
bounty hunters referred to by the press as Outlaw
Exterminators, Inc. The Exterminators consisted of five
bounty hunters who specialized in going after “dead or
alive” quarries and bringing them in dead rather than
alive. However, Allman was a hard man to run to
ground. Low on bullets, he killed a sheepherder named
Tom Dowling for his gun and ammunition. Next he
kidnapped a 13-year-old white girl named Ida Phengle
and a 12-year-old Hopi girl and raped them both. Allman eventually freed his two young captives but soon
found himself pursued by various lawmen, the Exterminators and a Hopi war party. In the end, it was Clay
Calhoun, one of the Exterminators, who located Allman among some deserted Indian cliff dwellings on
October 11, 1877. According to Calhoun, whose version of what happened was the only one reported, he
brought down Allman in a stirring gun fight. This dramatic scenario is hard to credit since Allman had been
shot four times, in the mouth, chest, stomach and
groin, all in a nice neat line. Any of those shots would
have grounded Allman, making the alignment of
wounds most unusual for a shoot-out. Some speculated
that Allman had more likely been shot while asleep. But
speculation aside, the important thing was that Bad
John Allman’s bloody reign of terror was over, and the
particulars of how it happened didn’t trouble many
people in Arizona.
See also: OUTLAW EXTERMINATORS, INC.
Almodovar, Louisa
When Louisa’s body was found on November 2,
1942, the police were certain the murder had been
committed either by a park marauder or by the
woman’s husband. Terry Almodovar insisted that at the
time of the murder, fixed at between 9 and 10 o’clock
the night before, he was at a dance hall several blocks
away. No less than 22 girls backed him up, saying he
was there the whole time. The truth was that he had
slipped away long enough to kill his wife, whom he had
secretly offered to meet in the park. Her death was
desirable because he had been offered marriage by a
very wealthy widow.
Almodovar didn’t realize the trouble he was in
when the police took his suit and gave it to Dr.
Alexander O. Gettler of the Medical Examiner’s
Office. Dr. Gettler made a spectrogram of the dirt
from Terry’s trousers and another of the dirt from
where the body was found. The elements of both were
exactly the same. Still, Almodovar insisted he hadn’t
been in Central Park the night of the murder or at any
time within the previous two years. But Dr. Gettler
also found some grass spikelets in the suspect’s cuffs;
these were identified as Panicum dicoth milleflorium,
and they matched perfectly with similar grass spikelets
found at the murder scene. Almodovar insisted they
must have been picked up somewhere else—perhaps in
Tremont Park in the Bronx, where he’d been recently.
At this point Joseph J. Copeland, a professor of
botany at City College of New York, took over. This
particular kind of grass, Panicum dicoth, was
extremely rare in the New York area. It grew in three
areas in Westchester County, two in Long Island—but
only one in New York City: a small section of a hill in
Central Park, and not even on the other side of the
same hill where the murder had been committed. Confronted with the evidence, Almodovar suddenly
remembered he’d gone through Central Park just a
couple of months before, in September. Copeland,
however, knew that Panicum dicoth is a late bloomer.
Most of the spikelets found in Almodovar’s cuffs
couldn’t have gotten there before October 10 and
probably not before October 15. But they most certainly could have got there on November 1.
The science of botany sent Terry Almodovar to the
electric chair on March 9, 1943.
(1919–1942) murder victim
Alta, Utah
Terry Almodovar had the misfortune of strangling his
estranged wife to death on a certain hill in Central Park
in New York City, thereby achieving unlikely fame in
botany texts. If he had done it almost anywhere else in
the park, in fact on the other side of the same hill, he
might not have gone to the electric chair.
lawless mining town
For a time, Alta, Utah Territory sported a sign that
read, “WELCOME TO THE MEANEST LITTLE
TOWN IN THE WEST.” The small silver-mining town
in the foothills of Utah’s Rustler Mountains lived up to
its motto. In its heyday during the 1870s, Alta had 26
21
ALTERIE, Louis “Two Gun”
saloons and a cemetery touted as the largest in any
town of that size.
While avalanches claimed the lives of many miners,
the largest contingent of corpses buried in the Alta
cemetery were the more than 100 victims of gun battles. In 1873 a stranger dressed in black came to town
and announced he had the power to resurrect all of the
town’s dead gunmen. The miners, a superstitious lot,
speculated that such a development would only lead to
a lot of bullets flying about in vengeance shoot-outs
and opted for the status quo. They raised $2,500 in a
community collection as a gift for the “resurrection
man” contingent on his leaving Alta permanently.
By the early 1900s Alta was a ghost town, its ore
mined out, but today it thrives in a new reincarnation
as a popular ski resort.
Earl “Little Hymie” Weiss, successor to O’Banion as
head of the mob, ordered Alterie to cool off, stating
that because of his rantings political and police pressure
was being put on the gang’s operations on the North
Side. Alterie nodded grandly with a big wink and
stayed quiet for about a week. Then he swaggered into
a Loop nightclub frequented by reporters and gangsters
and, brandishing his two pistols, boasted loudly: “All
12 bullets in these rods have Capone’s initials carved on
their noses. And if I don’t get him, Bugs, Hymie or
Schemer will.”
For Weiss, who was trying to keep peace with
Capone until the right time to strike, Alterie’s blustering was just too much. He ordered Bugs Moran to
“move” Alterie. Moran went to the cowboy gangster
and growled: “You’re getting us in bad. You run off at
the mouth too much.”
Alterie recognized an invitation to leave town when
he heard one and returned to his ranch in Colorado,
ending his participation in the Chicago gang wars.
When he finally came back to Chicago on a visit in
1935, the O’Banion gang had been wiped out except
for Moran, and he was no longer a power. Apparently,
just for old time’s sake, somebody shot Alterie to death.
See also: ANIMAL LYNCHING, GEORGE “BUGS” MORAN,
SAMUEL J. “NAILS” MORTON, CHARLES DION “DEANIE”
O’BANION.
Alterie, Louis “Two Gun” (1892–1935) gangster
The Dion O’Banion gang that dominated Chicago’s
North Side during the early years of Prohibition was
particularly noted for its zaniness (it once “rubbed out”
a horse for killing one of its members in a riding
mishap), but even for this bunch, Louis “Two Gun”
Alterie was wacky. Alterie, whose real name was
Leland Verain, owned a ranch in Colorado but came
east to join up with O’Banion’s gambling and bootlegging operations. He wore two pistols, one on each hip,
Wild West–style, and always boasted of his perfect
marksmanship with either his left or right hand, often
shooting out the lights in saloons to prove his point.
It was Alterie, it was said, who insisted that revenge
was required after a leading member of the gang, Nails
Morton, had been thrown by a horse in Lincoln Park
and kicked to death. He led the gang to the riding stable, and there they kidnapped the horse, took it to the
scene of Morton’s demise and shot it to death. Alterie
was so incensed by the “murder” of his comrade that
he first punched the hapless horse in the snout before
turning his gun on it.
When Dion O’Banion was assassinated by Capone
gunmen, Two Gun Alterie went wild. In a tearful performance at the funeral, Alterie raged to reporters: “I
have no idea who killed Deanie, but I would die smiling
if only I had a chance to meet the guys who did, any
time, any place they mention and I would get at least
two or three of them before they got me. If I knew who
killed Deanie, I’d shoot it out with the gang of killers
before the sun rose in the morning.” Asked where the
duel should be fought, he suggested Chicago’s busiest
corner, Madison and State Streets, at noon. Mayor
William E. Dever was enraged when he heard of
Alterie’s words. “Are we still abiding by the code of the
Dark Ages?” he demanded.
Altgeld, John P.
(1847–1902) Illinois governor
John P. Altgeld, elected governor of Illinois in 1892,
was the main player in the final act of the 1886 Haymarket affair, in which a dynamite bomb killed seven
policemen and two civilians and wounded 130 others.
Altgeld, a wealthy owner of business property,
announced he would hear arguments for pardoning
three anarchists who had been sentenced to long prison
terms for their alleged part in the affair; but no one
expected him to free them because it would be an act of
political suicide. Four other anarchists had already
been hung as a result of Haymarket, and another had
committed suicide in his cell.
In June 1893 Altgeld issued a long analysis of the
Haymarket trial, attacking the trial judge, Joseph E.
Gary, for ruling the prosecution did not have to identify
the bomb-thrower or even prove that the actual murderer had been influenced by the anarchist beliefs of the
defendants. “In all the centuries during which government has been maintained among men and crime has
been punished, no judge in a civilized country has ever
laid down such a rule before.” Altgeld also referred to
the judge’s obvious bias in constantly attacking the
defendants before the jury. He then issued full pardons
22
AMATUNA, Samuzzo “Samoots”
for Samuel Fielden, Michael Schwab and Oscar Neebe,
declaring them and the five dead men innocent.
While Altgeld was hailed by labor spokesmen, most
newspapers condemned him bitterly. The New York
World caricatured him as an acolyte worshiping the
bomb-wielding, black-robed figure of an anarchist. The
Chicago Tribune denounced Altgeld, who was German,
as “not merely an alien by birth, but an alien by temperament and sympathies. He has apparently not a
drop of pure American blood in his veins. He does not
reason like an American, nor feel like one.” The governor was also hanged in effigy.
Altgeld ignored such criticisms, being content he was
“merely doing right,” but his act turned out to be political suicide. In 1896 he ran for the U.S. Senate but was
defeated. Clarence Darrow later tried to set him up in
practice as an associate, but Altgeld, no longer rich,
was a tired man, and he died in obscurity six years
later. His memory was neglected until Vachel Lindsay
placed a poem, “The Eagle That Is Forgotten,” on his
grave; it read in part:
number of train robberies and other holdups. The
entire Alvord-Stiles gang was captured after a train robbery near Cochise in September 1899, but they escaped
from jail and went back in business. Alvord and Stiles
were caught again in 1903 but once more broke free.
After that, Alvord tried to fake their deaths, even sending coffins allegedly carrying their remains to Tombstone. The trick failed, and the law kept hunting for the
two outlaw chiefs. Finally, the Arizona Rangers swept
into Mexico in 1904 and cornered Alvord at Nigger
Head Gap. Alvord was wounded and brought back to
Arizona. This time he spent two years in prison. Thereafter, Alvord’s record becomes murky. He was spotted,
according to various stories, all over Latin America and
even in Jamaica. When a canal worker in Panama died
in 1910, he was said to be Alvord, but the identification
was not conclusive.
See also: BILLIE STILES.
Where is that boy, that Heaven-born Bryan,
That Homer Bryan, who sang from the West?
Gone to join the shadows with Altgeld the eagle,
Where the kings and the slaves and the troubadours rest. . . .
One of Chicago’s most colorful and brutal gangsters
during the 1920s, Samuzzo “Samoots” Amatuna for a
time held a power base from which he challenged Al
Capone’s control of crime in the city. In the end, however, Samoots was more remembered for the changes
his death brought about in the practices of Chicagoarea barber shops.
A professional fiddler and a fop, Samoots was one of
the first to conceal a weapon in an instrument case,
using this technique with three confederates in the
attempted murder of a musicians’ union business agent.
The proud possessor of 200 monogrammed silk shirts,
he once took off in pursuit of the driver of a Chinese
laundry delivery wagon after one of his shirts was
returned scorched. Samoots pulled his gun to shoot the
frightened driver, but at the last moment he was overcome by a spark of humanity and shot the driver’s
horse instead.
Samoots became the chief bodyguard for the notorious Terrible Gennas, who controlled much of the city’s
homemade bootleg racket. As they were wiped out or
scattered one by one, Samoots moved up in power and
in 1925 he seized control of the Unione Siciliana. This
group had been a lawful fraternal organization up to
the turn of the century, but from then on, it became
more and more a front for the criminal operations of
Mafia forces. Chicago had the largest number of
branches of the Unione, whose 40,000 members represented a potent force as well as an organization to be
looted through various rackets, such as manipulation
of pension funds. For years the Unione was under the
control of Mike Merlo, who knew how to keep peace
Amatuna, Samuzzo “Samoots” (1898–1925)
Chicago gangster and murderer
See also: CLARENCE DARROW, HAYMARKET AFFAIR.
Alvord, Burt (1866–1910?) lawman and outlaw
A notorious law officer turned bad, Burt Alvord seems
to have enjoyed long simultaneous careers as a lawman
and bandit. The son of a roving justice of the peace,
Alvord was a youth in Tombstone during the time of
the vaunted gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Although
only 15, he was astute enough to spot one of the
underlying motives for the battle—control of the
county sheriff’s office, with the special duty of collecting taxes, which might or might not be turned over to
the treasury.
When the celebrated lawman John Slaughter was
elected sheriff of Cochise County in 1886, Alvord, who
was 20 at the time, became his chief deputy and began
building a solid reputation as an enforcer of the law,
tracking down numerous rustlers and other thieves.
There is little doubt, however, that during the same
period he was also an outlaw. In time, Slaughter, an
honest man, became disenchanted with his deputy. Yet
when the sheriff retired from his post in 1890, no
crimes had been pinned on Alvord. In the mid-1890s
Alvord switched from wearing a badge to rustling cattle
in Mexico. But by 1899 he was a constable in Willcox,
Arizona Territory despite some murders under his belt.
Here Alvord teamed up with Billie Stiles to pull off a
23
AMBERG, Louis “Pretty”
way that they strangled themselves, was immortalized
by Damon Runyon in several stories in which Pretty
Amberg was featured in a thinly fictionalized form.
Pretty, so named because of his ugliness, was
brought to America from Russia by his fruit peddler
parents. By the age of 10 he was terrorizing his home
territory of Brownsville in Brooklyn, New York City,
an area that bowed only to genuine toughness and
meanness. Young Pretty developed a unique fruitselling technique: he would kick on a door until the resident opened up and then shove handfuls of fruit and
vegetables forward and snarl, “Buy.” People bought.
By the time he was 20, Pretty was the terror of
Brownsville. He was now so ugly that a representative
from Ringling Brothers offered him a job with the circus as the missing link. It is the mark of Pretty’s intellect
or sense of humor that he often bragged about the offer.
However, Pretty didn’t accept the job because of his
involvement in the loansharking business with his
brother. Unlike the banks of Brownsville, the Ambergs
turned no one down for a loan, but at 20 percent interest a week. Pretty would watch his brother count out
the amount of the loan and growl, “I will kill you if you
don’t pay us back on time.”
The Amberg brothers soon became so successful in
loansharking that they shifted their operations to
around Borough Hall in downtown Brooklyn. The
brothers did not desert Brownsville, however. Pretty
stalked Pitkin Avenue; for amusement he would walk
into a cafeteria and spit in someone’s soup. If the diner
protested, Pretty would spill the whole bowl in his lap.
Even Buggsy Goldstein, shortly to become a prize killer
in the fledgling Murder, Inc., once took the soup treatment in silence. Famous Murder, Inc. informer Abe
Reles later said, “The word was that Pretty was nutty.”
Pretty Amberg’s continuing ties with Brownsville
were not based solely on sentiment. He took control of
all bootlegging in the area, and speakeasies took
Pretty’s booze or none at all, a business practice Pretty
established with a few bombings and frequent use of a
lead pipe.
Soon, Pretty was wallowing in money, and he
became a lavish-spending, if rather grotesque, figure in
New York’s night life. Waiters fawned over him
because he never tipped less than $100. He was a regular at the Central Park Casino, where in time he became
a nodding acquaintance of the city’s playboy mayor,
James J. Walker. It was Runyon who reported that
when the mayor first saw Pretty, he vowed to stay off
booze.
Pretty expanded his rackets to include laundry services for Brooklyn businesses. His rates were rather
high, but his sales approach was particularly forceful. It
was at this time that laundry bags stuffed with corpses
among the various criminal combines, but after his
death in 1924 the Unione presidency became a hot seat.
Bloody Angelo Genna took over as president, only to
be murdered in May 1925.
Al Capone, who was not a Sicilian and thus not eligible for membership, wanted to place his consigliere,
Tony Lombardo, in the office but decided to wait for an
election. In the meantime Samoots walked into the
Unione’s offices with two armed confederates, Abe
“Bummy” Goldstein and Eddie Zion, and declared
himself elected. Capone was furious at the effrontery,
but he soon had more reason to hate Samoots as the
latter moved to open a chink in Capone’s booze and
other operations.
However, Samoots had other enemies such as the
O’Banion Irish gang, which was still in power on the
North Side even after the death of its leader. On
November 13, 1925 Samoots, planning to go to the
opera with his fiancée, Rose Pecorara, dropped into a
Cicero barbershop for a shave. He was reclining in a
barber’s chair with a towel over his face when two
assassins, believed to be Jim Doherty and Schemer
Drucci of the O’Banions, marched in. One of the gunmen fired four shots but, remarkably, missed Samoots
with every shot. The frightened target bolted from the
barber’s chair and tried to dodge four bullets from
the second gunman. Each of these shots hit home, and
the assassins strode out, leaving their victim near death.
Rushed to a hospital, Samoots asked to marry his
fiancée from his hospital bed but died before the ceremony started.
Within a few weeks Samoots’ aides, Goldstein and
Zion, were also killed, and the way was open for
Capone’s man, Lombardo, to take over the Unione.
After Samoots’ death, which was the second recent
Chicago barbershop assassination, it became common
practice for barbers dealing with a gangster clientele
never to cover their faces with a towel and to position
the chair so that it always faced the entrance. This local
custom did not spread to New York, where some two
decades later Albert Anastasia was gunned down under
similar circumstances.
Amberg, Louis “Pretty” (1898–1935) racketeer and
murderer
From the late 1920s until his own violent demise in
1935, Louis “Pretty” Amberg was New York’s bestknown killer, having dispatched more than 100 victims.
Thanks to cunning and dumb luck, however, he was
never so much as saddled with a stiff fine for any of his
or his brother Joe’s murders, although his achievements
were common knowledge. His technique of stuffing
victims into laundry bags, alive but trussed up in such a
24
AMERICAN Protective League
started littering Brooklyn streets. One victim was identified as a loanshark debtor of the Ambergs who owed
a grand total of $80. Pretty was arrested for that one,
but he just laughed: “I tip more than that. Why’d I kill
a bum for a lousy 80 bucks?” In fact, it was Pretty’s
philosophy to kill men who were indebted to him for
small amounts so that their loss of life would not cause
him to have to write off a major capital investment. It
also made an excellent object lesson for more substantial debtors. And while the police knew the particulars,
they could not prove them in court and Pretty went
free.
By the early 1930s Pretty was considered among the
most successful racketeers in the city, one who could
withstand any inroads by other kingpins, such as Dutch
Schultz and Legs Diamond. Once, Schultz told him,
“Pretty, I think I’m going to come in as your partner in
Brooklyn.”
“Arthur,” Pretty was quoted as replying, “why don’t
you put a gun in your mouth and see how many times
you can pull the trigger.”
Pretty was famous for such pithy comments.
Another big racketeer, Owney Madden, mentioned to
Pretty one day that he’d never visited Brownsville in his
life and thought he would come out some time and “let
you show me the sights.” Pretty was carving up a steak
at the moment. “Tell you what, Owney,” he said matterof-factly while continuing his meal, “if I ever see you in
Brownsville. I’ll cut your heart out on the spot.” He
was even more direct with Legs Diamond, whom he
buddied around with. “We’ll be pals, Jack,” Pretty told
Diamond, “but if you ever set foot in Brownsville, I’ll
kill you and your girlfriend and your missus and your
whole damn family.”
With the end of Prohibition, however, such threats
proved insufficient. Dutch Schultz, without his former
bootleg rackets, was down to only a multimillion dollar
numbers racket centered in Harlem, and he kept casting
greedy glances over at Brooklyn and the Amberg loanshark operations around Borough Hall. Pretty had by
now firmly established himself in the laundry business,
but loansharking remained his principal source of
funds. He was therefore hardly overjoyed in 1935 when
Schultz ensconced his top lieutenants, Frank Dolak and
Benny Holinsky, in a new loan office just a block away
from the Amberg enterprise. When Pretty stormed into
the place, the pair glared back at him defiantly. “We
ain’t afraid of you,” Holinsky said, and Dolak echoed,
“That’s right, we ain’t afraid of you.” The statements
qualified as famous last words because 24 hours later
their bodies, riddled with bullets, were found on a
Brooklyn street.
The Ambergs and the Schultz forces faced off for
total war. The first to go was Joey Amberg, who was
ambushed by Schultz’s gunmen. In October 1935 both
Amberg and Schultz died. Some historians have insisted
that each man was responsible for the other’s death.
According to this theory Amberg had paid professional
killers $25,000 down to kill Schultz and promised them
$25,000 more upon completion of the job. In the
meantime, however, the fire department, responding to
an alarm, found a blazing automobile on a Brooklyn
street. In the back seat of the car was the body of a man
roasted beyond all recognition, with wire wrapped
around his neck, arms and legs. It took a few days for a
positive identification: it was Pretty Amberg. But by the
time the identification was made, a couple of killers
had gunned down Dutch Schultz in a Newark chop
house.
Despite the war, it is not certain that Amberg was
killed by Schultz. A more convincing theory attributed
Pretty’s passing to a gang of armed robbers he had
joined and offended by insisting on taking virtually all
the loot for himself. Another view held that both
Amberg and Schultz were “put to sleep” by the increasingly dominant national crime syndicate bossed by
Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky.
But whoever was to blame, Pretty Amberg was dead,
and as a Brooklyn Eagle reporter observed, “There was
joy in Brownsville.”
Ameer Ben Ali
See “OLD SHAKESPEARE.”
American Protective League
vigilantes
With the possible exception of the Sons of Liberty,
formed during the American Revolution, the World
War I American Protective League (APL) was probably
this country’s most abusive and lawless patriotic vigilante groups. The league was the brainchild of A. M.
Briggs, a Chicago advertising executive, who in March
1917 wrote Bureau of Investigation chief A. Bruce
Bielaski to suggest the formation of a volunteer group
of patriotic Americans who would aid the bureau in its
national defense duties. Not the most perceptive of officials, Bielaski enthusiastically approved the idea, and
divisions of the APL were established in every large city
in the country, soon achieving a membership of
250,000.
APL members paid their own expenses and sported
badges that read, “American Protective League, Secret
Service Division.” The words secret service were
removed following the protest of the secretary of the
treasury, but Attorney General Thomas W. Gregory
defended the league and its patriotic purpose despite
the fact that the organization exhibited the worst
25
AMERICAN Tragedy, An
attributes of a vigilante movement, had a callous disregard of civil rights and even committed lynchings.
In 1917 in Butte, Mont., armed masked men, generally believed to have been league members, invaded the
boardinghouse room of Frank Little, a member of the
general executive board of the Industrial Workers of
the World (IWW), dragged him out into the night and
hanged him from a railroad trestle for what was
regarded as his unpatriotic beliefs and actions. The Little hanging did not receive particularly bad press. While
the New York Times called the lynching “deplorable
and detestable,” it also noted that “IWW agitators are
in effect, and perhaps in fact, agents of Germany. The
Federal government should make short work of these
treasonable conspirators against the United States.” A
western newspaper declared Butte had “disgraced itself
like a gentleman.” And on the floor of the House of
Representatives, a congressman wondered if those who
gave no allegiance to this nation “have any right to
‘squeal’ when citizens of this country hang one of them
occasionally?”
President Woodrow Wilson felt it necessary to warn
of “the great danger of citizens taking the law into
their own hands,” but he did nothing to force Gregory
and Bielaski to repudiate the APL. The league continued to make illegal arrests and searches, and its members continually gave the impression they were federal
officers. Labor leaders attacked the APL, citing
instances of it being used by employers to intimidate
strikers. When veteran members of the Bureau of
Investigation scoffed at these “voluntary detectives,”
they were warned that such “slurs” could result in
their dismissal.
In August and September of 1918 the league, cooperating with the Bureau of Investigation, the army and
local draft boards, launched a great war against “slackers” and deserters, men who failed to answer the call to
service after registering for the draft. Small roundup
experiments using local police and APL members
proved successful in Pittsburgh, Boston and Chicago.
Early in September a three-day roundup was staged in
New York City. Newspapers ran notices reminding all
men between 21 and 31 that they were required to
carry their draft cards on their person and that all others should carry proof of their age. No warning, however, was given of an impending roundup. At 7 A.M. on
September 3, 1918, a task force of 1,350 soldiers,
1,000 sailors, several hundred policemen and 2,000
APL members struck. During the next three days
50,000 men were hustled out of theaters and restaurants, plucked off street corners and from trolley cars
and seized in railway stations and poolhalls. Workers
were stopped by bayonet-wielding soldiers as they left
work. All were jammed into bull pens for interrogation,
left for hours without food and refused the right to
make telephone calls to establish their innocence.
Frightened wives of out-of-town visitors reported their
husbands as kidnapped.
The seizures in general and those by the APL in particular were sharply criticized. The New York World
condemned “this monstrous invasion of human rights.”
In the Senate, Sen. Hiram Johnson of California said
that “to humiliate 40,000 citizens, to shove them with
bayonets, to subject them to prison and summary military force, merely because they are ‘suspects,’ is a spectacle never before presented in the Republic.”
The weight of public opinion turned against the APL
following the roundups, which resulted in the estimated
induction of 1,500 men into the service. President Wilson demanded a report from Attorney General Gregory, who informed the president that he took full and
complete responsibility for the raids and that they
would continue, although he did deplore the use of
extralegal methods. Wilson seemed incapable of moving against Gregory and the APL, but in November
1918 the war ended, eliminating the need for confrontation.
The American Protective League formally dissolved
on February 1, 1919.
American Tragedy, An
See CHESTER GILLETTE.
Anastasia, Albert (1903–1957) syndicate gang leader and
murderer
The Lord High Executioner of Murder, Inc., Albert
Anastasia rose to the top levels of the national crime
syndicate and remained there until he himself was murdered in a hit as efficient as any of the countless ones he
carried out or planned.
Immediately upon his arrival in the United States in
1920, Anastasia and his brother, Tough Tony Anastasio, became active on the crime-ridden Brooklyn docks
and gained a position of power in the longshoremen’s
union. He demonstrated a penchant for murder at the
snap of a finger, an attitude that was not altered even
after he spent 18 months in the Sing Sing death house
during the early 1920s for killing another longshoreman. He was freed when, at a new trial, the four most
important witnesses against him could not be located, a
situation that proved permanent.
For Anastasia the solution to any problem was
homicide. So it was hardly surprising that he and
Louis “Lepke” Buchalter were installed as the executive heads of the enforcement arm of Murder, Inc. The
victim toll of Murder, Inc. has been estimated as low
as 63 and as high as 400 or 500. Unlike Lepke and
26
ANASTASIA,Albert
Albert Anastasia, Lord High Executioner of Murder, Inc., was gunned down in a Manhattan hotel barbershop with all the
efficiency he himself exhibited in numerous killings.
many other members of the operation, Anastasia
escaped punishment. In a “perfect case” against him,
the main prosecution witness—again—vanished. This
disappearance of witnesses was a regular occurrence
in the Anastasia story, as were killings to advance his
career. When in 1951 Anastasia aspired to higher
things, he took over the Mangano family, one of New
York’s five crime families, by murdering Phil
Mangano and making Vincent Mangano a permanent
missing person.
Anastasia became known as the Mad Hatter because
his killings were so promiscuous. He had always been a
devoted follower of others, mainly Lucky Luciano and
Frank Costello. His devotion to Luciano was legendary.
In 1930, when Luciano decided to take over crime in
America by destroying the two old-line Mafia factions
headed by Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria and Sal-
vatore Maranzano, he outlined his plan to Anastasia
because he knew the Mad Hatter would kill for him.
Anastasia promptly grabbed Luciano in a bear hug and
kissed him on both cheeks. He said: “Charlie, I been
waiting for this day for at least eight years. You’re
gonna be on top if I have to kill everybody for you.
With you there, that’s the only way we can have any
peace and make the real money.”
Anastasia’s killer instincts could be contained as long
as Luciano and Costello were around to control him,
but Luciano was deported in 1946 and a few years later
Costello became bogged down by continuous harassment from the authorities. Now in charge of his own
crime family, Anastasia really turned kill-crazy. In 1952
he even had a young Brooklyn salesman named Arnold
Schuster killed after watching Schuster bragging on
television about how he had recognized bank robber
27
ANASTASIA, Anthony “Tough Tony”
Willie Sutton and brought about his capture. “I can’t
stand squealers!” Anastasia screamed and then ordered
his men, “Hit that guy!”
The Schuster killing violated a principal rule of the
underworld: we only kill each other. Outsiders—prosecutors, reporters, the general public—were not to be
killed unless the very life of the organization was
threatened. That clearly was not the case in the Schuster murder. The rest of the underworld, even Anastasia’s friends Luciano (now in Italy) and Costello, were
horrified, but they dared not move on him because they
needed him as a buffer against a new force within the
crime structure. Vito Genovese, long number two under
Luciano, was making a grab for greater power. Between
him and that goal stood Anastasia, a man who had
hated him for years. Secretly, Genovese brought to his
banner Anastasia’s underboss, Carlo Gambino, a fraillooking mobster with unbridled ambition of his own,
who in turn recruited Joe Profaci and his Brooklyn
crime family.
Before Genovese could move against Anastasia, he
needed more support, and he could not move without
the tacit agreement of Meyer Lansky, the highestranking Jewish member of the national syndicate.
Normally, Lansky would not have supported Genovese under any circumstances; their ethnic bitterness
was one of the underworld’s longest-standing feuds.
But Anastasia had recently given Lansky reason to
hate him even more. In 1957 Lansky was in full control of gambling in Cuba through his close personal
and financial arrangements with that country’s dictator, Fulgencio Batista. As was his style of always
enhancing his own base within the underworld, Lansky gave a piece of the action to Miami crime boss
Santo Trafficante and a number of other ItalianAmerican mobsters. When Anastasia learned of Lansky’s largesse, he started to put pressure on him for a
huge cut.
Under these circumstances Lansky, who previously
had preferred to let Genovese and Anastasia bleed each
other to death, okayed the elimination of the latter.
Early on the morning of October 25, 1957 Anastasia entered the barbershop of the Park Sheraton Hotel
in New York City and sat down for a quick haircut,
shutting his eyes. Anastasia’s bodyguard took his car to
an underground garage and then conveniently went off
for a little stroll. Moments after Anastasia sat down in
the barber’s chair, two men entered the shop with
scarves over their faces. Arthur Grasso, the shop owner,
was standing at the entrance by the cash register. He
was told, “Keep your mouth shut if you don’t want
your head blown off.” The two men moved to Anastasia’s chair and shoved the barber aside. If Anastasia’s
eye had been open, he would have seen them in the mirror. Suddenly, both guns roared.
Anastasia leaped out of the chair with the first volley
and weaved on his feet. Then he saw his attackers and
lunged at them—in the mirror. He took several more
shots, one in the back of the head, and collapsed dead
on the floor.
Officially, the Anastasia killing remains unsolved,
although it is known that Joe Profaci gave the contract
for the killing to the three homicidal Gallo brothers
from Brooklyn.
The double-dealing continued after the Anastasia
murder, with Gambino breaking off from Genovese
and making his peace with Luciano, Costello and Lansky. A desperate Genovese called an underworld summit meeting at Apalachin, N.Y. to justify the
elimination of Anastasia, who, he said, had become so
murder-crazed that he had imperiled the entire organization. That meeting ended in disaster following a state
police raid, and six months after that, Genovese was
arrested on a narcotics rap, one which much of the
underworld regarded as a setup. The inside word was
that the setup was arranged by Gambino, Luciano,
Costello and Lansky. At any rate, Genovese was effectively removed from the scene.
See also: ANTHONY “TOUGH TONY” ANASTASIO;
APALACHIN CONFERENCE; FRANK COSTELLO; THOMAS
E. DEWEY; CARLO GAMBINO; VITO GENOVESE; CHARLES
“LUCKY” LUCIANO; MURDER, INC.; S.S. NORMANDIE;
FRANK SCALICE; ARNOLD SCHUSTER; FREDERICK J. TENUTO.
Anastasio, Anthony “Tough Tony” (1906–1963)
waterfront racketeer
From the 1930s until his death from natural causes in
1963, Tough Tony Anastasio ruled the New York
waterfront with an iron hand as a vice president of the
International Longshoremen’s Association and head of
Local 1814. Much of his real authority derived from
the power and reputation of his murderous brother,
Albert Anastasia. While Tony kept the original spelling
of his last name, he never hesitated to point out he was
Albert’s brother in order to enhance his own position.
Ever loyal to Albert, Tony once cornered a reporter
from the New York World–Telegram and Sun and
asked: “How come you keep writing all those bad
things about my brother Albert? He ain’t killed nobody
in your family . . . yet.”
Because would-be rivals knew Tough Tony had the
full weight of the mob behind him, they never seriously challenged him. As a result, Tony’s word was
law. During World War II he could order, with Lucky
Luciano’s approval, the sabotaging of the French luxury liner SS Normandie to panic federal authorities
28
ANDREWS Committee
Sporting Gazette among others, made up the Andrews
publication list.
into seeking underworld assistance to help protect the
New York waterfront. It was apparently in return for
this “good work” that Luciano was transferred from
Dannemora to a far less restrictive prison and, after
the war, was pardoned by Gov. Thomas E. Dewey.
Following Luciano’s release Tony had an army of
longshoremen on a Brooklyn pier to keep away
reporters and others while the top gangland figures
gathered to bid Luciano farewell on the day he was
being deported to Italy.
See also: CHARLES “LUCKY” LUCIANO, SS S.
Lottie Maynard should not be so fresh with other girls’
lovers, or she will hear something to her disadvantage.
Ada Huntley is now happy—she has a new lover—Miss
Fresh from Pittsburgh.
Lizzie Allen has put on her fall coat of veneer and varnish, and she is now the finest looking woman in
Chicago.
Eva Hawkins is on one of her drunks again.
anatomy and crime
The idea that criminals differ from noncriminals in certain anatomical traits was first expounded by an Italian
named Cesare Lombroso, often considered to be the
father of criminology. According to Lombroso, such differences turned up in various parts of the body, with
criminals typically possessing such features as a long
lower jaw, a flattened nose, a scanty beard and an asymmetrical cranium. He did not claim that these stigmata or
anomalies themselves caused crime, but rather that they
pointed to personalities predisposed to criminal patterns
of behavior. Above all, Lombroso insisted that deviations
in the shape of the cranium were the most critical.
Over the years Lombroso’s views fell into disrepute,
but in the 1930s an American anthropologist, E. A.
Hooton, attempted to resurrect the Lombrosian theory.
He measured thousands of prisoners and a few nonprisoners and found what he considered to be deviations
between the two groups. From these studies he concluded, in his Crime and the Man (1939), that “the primary cause of crime is biological inferiority.” However,
other studies failed to find significant differences in
physical traits between criminals and noncriminals and
the Lombrosian revival gained little support.
Further reading: “Physical Factors in Criminal
Behavior” by W. Norwood East in the Journal of Clinical Psychopathy 8 (1946): 7–36.
The true identity of gutter journalist Shang Andrews
was never definitely established.
Andrews, Shang (c. late 19th century) publisher
Andrews Committee
Miss Kit Thompson of 483 South Clark had better let
up on taking other girls’ men in her room and buying
booze for them.
Lulu Lee, the little streetwalker, has gone into a house
to endeavor and reform herself, but we think it will
prove a failure.
Lizzie Moss has got sober.
What has become of Bad Millie?
May Willard, why don’t you take a rumble to yourself
and not be trying to put on so much style around the St.
Marks Hotel, for very near all of the boys are on to
you; and when you register, please leave the word
“New York” out, for we know it’s from the Bridewell
you are.
We are happy to inform the public that the old-timer,
Frankie Warner, has left the city.
Mary McCarthy has gone to the insane asylum.
During the 1870s and 1880s a sporting character named
Shang Andrews launched a series of publications that
chronicled the doings of Chicago’s prostitutes.
The Walter Winchell–style tidbits were read as
avidly by ladies of the evening as the Chicago Tribune’s social pages were by matrons of prominence.
Portraying the ravages of the profession, they are, no
doubt, of sociological value today. The following quotations are taken from the Chicago Street Gazette,
which like Sporting Life, Chicago Life and Chicago
police corruption inquiry
During the 1890s a spate of investigations around the
country revealed that most large cities—Atlanta,
Kansas City, Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, San
Francisco and Philadelphia—had just as much police
corruption as had been found in New York City by the
Lexow Committee. Of all the panels set up to hold
investigations, the Andrews Committee, which examined the Philadelphia police, had one real distinction: it
proved that a city consistently under Republican Party
rule could have just as corrupt a police force as any
29
ANIMAL criminals
winged larceny. The woman, taking a nap after lunch,
was awakened by a low noise. She saw a bird flying
around the room as though looking for something. It
swooped down and picked up a diamond ring lying on
a table. When the bird flew out the window, the
woman jumped up and got to the window in time to
see the bird flying into a neighboring flat. She told her
story to the police, and although dubious, they raided
the apartment. Their doubts were allayed when they
found a fortune in jewelry. The lady bird-lover tearfully
admitted all. She had spent arduous years training her
bird because magpies, although notorious thieves, can
seldom be taught to bring what they steal to a specific
spot. Usually they drop their loot in any place that
strikes their fancy.
Then there was the case of the chimp cat-burglar.
For months in 1952 householders in a New York City
neighborhood were being plagued by a series of odd
burglaries. In some instances the victims lived in apartments 15 stories up and there seemed to be no means of
entry other than a window. One day the son of a city
detective happened to see a small figure round a
rooftop corner. At first he thought it was a child, but
when he looked around the corner, he saw an ape. The
boy watched the animal climb through the open skylight of a shop. When it emerged within a matter of seconds, it was carrying a sack; around its neck, packed
nearly full. The boy followed the chimp and saw it disappear into a run-down house on another street. He
ran home and told his father. Shortly thereafter, the
owner of the long-armed, light-fingered animal stood
before a judge and told a strange story.
While abroad he had bought a chimpanzee for his
children. Chimps are probably the brightest of animals
next to humans and his was one of the smartest, he said.
He named the chimp Socrates. But then his fortunes
took a sudden dive, and it became difficult to provide
for his family’s needs. One day Socrates went foraging
by himself. When he returned, he was munching on a
piece of bread and carrying a bagful of pastries. Realizing what had happened, the owner decided to exploit
the chimp’s latent talents. Socrates was a quick learner,
and his master designed a special sack he could use to
carry the swag in. Before long, Socrates had the family
back in the chips again. The upshot of the case was jail
for the chimp owner and a zoo for Socrates.
See also: ANIMAL LYNCHING.
Further reading: The Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals by E. R. Evans.
under Democratic Party rule, including that of Tammany Hall.
At the urging of the Citizens’ Municipal Association
of Philadelphia, a bipartisan reform group, the committee was set up in 1895 by the Pennsylvania Senate with
Sen. William H. Andrews of Crawford County as its
chairman. In a devastating report issued in May 1897,
the committee accused the police of being no more than
political agents of various Republican Party factions.
Police officers labored hard to see to it that the voters
voted right, or not at all. Ballots containing the
“wrong” votes were discarded by the hundreds. In
some cases policemen got into the booths with voters to
make sure they cast their ballots “according to the
rules.”
In exchange for these and other services rendered to
politicians, well-connected officers were exempt from
even the threat of departmental discipline and therefore could freely engage in brutality and harassment of
citizens as well as offer protection to gambling and
prostitution interests. The Andrews Committee’s findings were never seriously challenged, but very little
came of them. The city’s public safety director, while
admitting the police force’s entanglement with city politics, promised only to deal with the problem in the
future. It proved to be an unkept promise. General
Smedley D. Butler, appointed public safety director in
1923, found that many, if not most, of Philadelphia’s
patrolmen were pocketing $150 to $200 a month in
payoffs.
See also: LEXOW COMMITTEE.
animal criminals
The history of crime and justice in America is replete
with examples of dumb animals being charged and
often punished for alleged illegal acts. Perhaps the most
famous episode occurred in Erwin, Tenn. in 1916,
when a circus elephant named Mary was charged with
murder after running amok and killing a man. The
dumb beast was hanged from a railroad derrick before
a cheering crowd of 5,000 persons. Whether Mary
deserved capital punishment might be legally debated
on the grounds that she did not know right from
wrong, but there are numerous cases of animals being
trained to follow a life of crime.
In Chicago in 1953, a resourceful bird fancier
trained her pet magpie to enter rooms in a nearby hotel
and bring back any bright object it found. The heavy
jewelry losses were driving the house detectives crazy,
but they were unable to turn up any leads. If it were not
for the fact that one day the magpie entered the room
of a woman guest who was a particularly light sleeper,
the bird fancier and her pet might still be at their
animal lynching
The lynching of animals—cats, dogs, horses, cows, bulls
etc.—has a long and brutal history in the United States,
30
ANSELMI and Scalise
country. Moe first worked in the circulation department of the Chicago Tribune and later switched his
allegiance to Hearst’s new papers in town, the American and the Examiner, serving as circulation manager
of the latter from 1904 to 1906. The roster of Moe’s
sluggers read like a future public enemies list. A typical
Annenberg hireling was Frank McErlane. Former
Chicago newspaperman George Murray later wrote of
the Annenberg-McErlane alliance: “McErlane went on
to become the most vicious killer of his time. Moe
Annenberg went on to become father of the ambassador to the Court of St. James.”
Moving up in the Hearst organization, Annenberg
became one of the highest-paid circulation men in the
country. His arrangement with Hearst gave him the
right to engage in private business dealings on the side,
which included his incursion into the racing information field, on both a legal and an illegal basis. In 1922
he bought the Daily Racing Form, and by 1926 his various enterprises had become so vast that he quit Hearst
and struck out on his own. In a matter of a few years,
he had gathered in his domain the New York Morning
Telegraph, Radio Guide, Screen Guide and the NationWide News Service. He also took over the century-old
Philadelphia Inquirer and through it became a power in
Republican Party politics. According to Annenberg,
because these activities occurred during a Democratic
era, they got him in trouble with the law. Others said
that Nation-Wide News Service gave him his great legal
problems, as well as huge profits. The service received
its information from telegraph and telephone wires
hooked into 29 race tracks and from those tracks into
223 cities in 39 states, where thousands of poolrooms
and bookie joints operated in violation of local laws.
Annenberg became the fifth largest customer of American Telephone and Telegraph, exceeded only by the
three press associations and RCA.
The flow of money simply gushed in, becoming so
large that, as the New York Times reported, “it apparently did not seem worth while to give the government
its share.” In 1939 Moe and his only son, Walter, were
indicted. Walter pleaded not guilty and Moe attacked
the charges against him as politically motivated. But
finally, in what some observers called great paternal
devotion, Moe declared: “It’s the best gamble. I’ll take
the rap.” Moe was in his sixties, and his lawyers were
hopeful that his guilty plea would lead to the dropping
of charges against his son. The gamble paid off. Moe
Annenberg drew a three-year prison term and made a
$9.5 million settlement with the government.
Nation-Wide News folded up and Moe Annenberg
was succeeded as the country’s racing information czar
by James M. Ragen, who founded Continental Press
Service. Walter Annenberg remained a great publishing
but on September 13, 1916 an all-time low in man’s
inhumanity to beast was reached when Mary, a circus
elephant that had killed three men, was hanged from a
railroad derrick in Erwin, Tenn. The first attempt to
lynch the animal ended after two hours when the derrick’s steel cable broke and Mary came crashing down
to earth. The second try was successful, and much to
the satisfaction of 5,000 spectators, the dumb beast
paid the human price demanded for its crimes.
It was not uncommon in the West to kill horses or
cattle deemed to have been responsible for the loss of
human life. And even the Chicago underworld got into
the act. When the celebrated Nails Morton was thrown
by a riding horse and killed in Lincoln Park in 1924, his
buddies in Dion O’Banion’s gang abducted the animal
from its stable at gunpoint and took it to the spot
where Nails had been killed. There the poor creature
was executed, as each of the gangsters solemnly shot it
in the head.
During the last century more restraint was shown
toward a steer over which an argument regarding its
ownership had arisen. Shooting broke out and when
the smoke cleared, six men were dead or dying. Because
the incident was such a tragedy, it was felt that something other than death was required. The animal was
branded with the word MURDER and allowed to live
on as grim reminder of the awful occurrence.
See also: LOUIS “TWO GUN” ALTERIE, SAMUEL J.
“NAILS” MORTON.
Annenberg, Moses L. (1878–1942) gambling information
czar
Moe Annenberg rose from Chicago’s South Side slums
to become, for a time, the possessor of the largest individual income of any person in the nation. Using methods not everyone considered legal, he was able to
capitalize on two American traits, the desire to read
newspapers and the eagerness to bet. However, like Al
Capone, he ended up in prison for income tax evasion.
For the year 1932 the government said Annenberg
owed $313,000; he had paid $308. For 1936 Annenberg owed an estimated $1,692,000; he had paid
$475,000. Together with interest and penalties his
unpaid taxes totaled $9.5 million. And just as was true
with Capone, Annenberg’s income tax problems were
merely a logical consequence of his other activities.
Annenberg, who had cut his teeth in the early
Chicago circulation wars, was, in the words of William Randolph Hearst, a “circulation genius.” That
“genius” meant selling newspapers with an army of
sluggers, overturning the competition’s delivery trucks,
burning their newspapers and roughing up dealers who
sold papers under the impression that it was a free
31
ANSELMI and Scalise
Anselmi and Scalise were definitely two of three killers
involved in the 1924 assassination of Dion O’Banion,
the leading Irish gangster of the era, in which the
usually careful gang leader was caught off guard in a
handshake just before the funeral of a leading Italian
underworld figure.
Some of their other killings were legendary. One victim held his hands in prayer and begged to be spared.
They shot off his hands before putting a bullet in his
brain. Anselmi and Scalise probably sprayed more
pedestrian-mobbed streets than any other pair of killhappy gunners. They gunned down gangland rivals and
police officers with equal ferocity. Once, in the company of several other killers, they noticed that their
bullet-filled victim lying on a street managed to raise
his head. Chagrined that he was not dead, the two
rushed back across the street and, before dozens of witnesses, finished the job.
The only time Anselmi and Scalise wavered in obeying the orders of the Gennas was when they were told
to kill Al Capone, for they realized their ultimate
reward for such an act would be their own deaths.
Instead, they informed Capone of the Gennas’ plan
and became Capone men while ostensibly still working
for the Gennas. When it finally came time for Capone
to erase the Gennas, Anselmi and Scalise “set up” one
of the brothers and took an active part in killing
another.
Capone now welcomed the pair openly into his
organization, making them two of his most important
bodyguards and gunners. When the mob boss offered
to make peace with Hymie Weiss and the rest of the
O’Banion gang, his terms proved entirely acceptable.
Weiss made only one stipulation: Anselmi and Scalise
had to be turned over to the gang for killing Dion
O’Banion. Capone rejected the deal, declaring, “I
wouldn’t do that to a yellow dog.”
Several legal attempts were made to get Anselmi
and Scalise. They were once charged with the killing
of two police detectives, but after three trials, involving a great number of threats against witnesses and
jurors, they went free, remarkably, on the ground that
they had merely been resisting unwarranted police
aggression.
In 1929 they were arrested for taking part in the
infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, but by the time
their trial date arrived, they too had been murdered.
How they died is no secret. Capone staged a party in
honor of the pair and Joseph “Hop Toad” Giunta,
whom he had recently installed as president of Unione
Siciliana. At the height of the banquet, Capone stopped
the festivities, accused the trio of plotting to murder
him and, after having them tied up, beat all three to
death with a heavy Indian club. They may well have
power and society figure and went on to become
ambassador to England under President Richard
Nixon.
See also: JAMES M. RAGEN.
Further reading: My Last Million Readers by Emile
Gauvreau.
Anselmi and Scalise
gangsters
It is impossible to record the criminal activities of
Albert Anselmi without also discussing those of John
Scalise, the worst pair of killers during the bloody
1920s. Anselmi and Scalise grew up together, played
together, worked together, killed together and, fittingly,
were slaughtered together. The two resembled that
other inseparable pair Mutt and Jeff; Anselmi was short
and bulky, Scalise tall and thin. It was this duo who
brought to the Chicago underworld the old Sicilian custom of rubbing bullets with garlic; if the shots failed to
kill, the resulting gangrene allegedly would. Anselmi
and Scalise’s medical knowledge was somewhat faulty,
although the same could not be said about their homicidal prowess, which was proficient even by Chicago
standards.
While in their twenties, Anselmi and Scalise were
forced to flee their native Marsala because of a murder
charge. The pair turned up in Chicago during the early
1920s and went to work for the Terrible Gennas, a
family of killers who had established themselves as the
leading bootleggers in the Midwest. Since the Gennas
also hailed from Marsala, they welcomed the two to
their bosom, having a constant need for reliable torpedoes. Anselmi and Scalise were single-minded of purpose: they planned to make a million dollars each,
which they felt would give them enough to fix the case
against them in Sicily and allow them to return as rich
men. Their killing services came high, but they were
extremely efficient. For one killing the Gennas
rewarded each of the pair with $10,000 and a $3,000
diamond ring. Scalise, the more romantic of the two,
sent his ring to his sweetheart in Sicily. Anselmi reportedly sold his to a jeweler at the point of a gun for
$4,000.
Anselmi and Scalise introduced a degree of doubledealing unknown even in the Chicago underworld.
True innovators, they introduced the “handshake hit,”
whereby the short, fat Anselmi would shake hands with
the unsuspecting victim and lock his right hand in a
tight grip. With the victim’s gun hand incapacitated, the
taller Scalise would quickly step forward and shoot him
in the head. The shorter Anselmi always did the holding because he had a grip of iron and Scalise did the
shooting because his height enabled him to get in a
head shot regardless of how tall the victim was.
32
APACHE Kid
that period spoke fearsomely of traveling in “Apache
Gang” country.
The “Apache dancers,” depicting the ways of the
brutal French underworld, also derived their name
from popular 19th-century misconceptions of the generally peaceful Apache.
been conspiring against Capone, but it is just as possible that Capone decided to kill the trio because he
feared they were getting too important. Anselmi and
Scalise had been appointed as bodyguards for Giunta in
his new rule, but Scalise had quickly relegated Giunta
to the background and had taken direct charge of the
organization’s affairs. He was heard to brag, “I am the
most powerful man in Chicago.” And Anselmi chimed
in, “We the big shot now.”
It was a fitting collective singular. Anselmi and
Scalise, who had so often killed together, died together.
See also: ALPHONSE “SCARFACE AL” CAPONE, GENNA
BROTHERS, ANTONIO “THE SCOURGE” LOMBARDO,
CHARLES DION “DEANIE” O’BANION, ST. VALENTINE’S DAY
MASSACRE.
Apache Indian job
Anti-Horse Thief Association
A vigilante organization, the Anti-Horse Thief Association was formed at Fort Scott during 1859 to battle
the marauders plaguing the border states. After the
Civil War these outlaw elements, using sprawling,
poorly policed Indian Territory as their base, swept
into Kansas and other states to run off herds of horses
and cattle. Because of the strength of the outlaws, few
lawmen would pursue them further than Marion
County in Kansas, and the work fell to the Anti-Horse
Thief Associations that proliferated in Kansas and
other states. They generally dispensed instant justice
on the trail when they caught the rustlers. As the West
was tamed and the incidence of horse thievery
dropped, the organization stayed on as a social group.
Well into the 20th century it was common for a chapter to announce somberly at an annual meeting that
no horse thieves had been apprehended during the
previous 12 months, a record worthy of a great celebration.
See also: HORSE STEALING.
Apache gangs
gangland bombing
Using bombs as a “convincer” has long been a practice
of the underworld. Today, organized crime makes great
use of firebombs, particularly for what is known in the
underworld as an Apache Indian job: when a building
is so thoroughly burned that little remains standing
other than a chimney and a few smoking timbers, as in
the case of Indian burnings of settlers’ cabins.
Such firebombings have been common in recent
years in New York City to convince, for example,
restaurateurs to pay tribute to the little-known but
lucrative parsley racket. Restaurants that don’t serve
parsley with every meal, and indeed with a number of
mixed drinks, can look forward to an Apache raid.
Apache Indian jobs have reappeared in the West
recently. In 1980 the Montana State Crime Control
Commission reported that a New York “parsley king”
was involved in restaurant firebombings in that state.
See also: PARSLEY RACKET.
Apache Kid (1867–?) rapist, robber, murderer
The Apache Kid conducted the worst one-man reign of
terror the Arizona Territory and perhaps the entire
West ever saw. Until age 20 the Apache Kid adapted
well to the white man’s world, becoming a sergeant of
scouts at the San Carlos Agency under Al Sieber, Arizona’s famed Indian fighter. When his father was murdered, tribal law required the young Indian to avenge
the crime, and under that law, it would be a legal execution. Although Sieber warned him that such revenge
would be illegal under the white man’s law, the Apache
Kid slipped away with a few followers, located his
quarry near a creek and stabbed him to death. The
young Indian then surrendered to Sieber, but becoming
fearful of his treatment in a hostile white court, he
escaped with his followers. After two years on the run,
the Apache Kid returned to face a court-martial. He
was convicted but won a pardon from President
Grover Cleveland. Incensed by this action, the local
Indian haters promptly indicted the Kid and several of
his band on charges of having killed a whiskey drummer who was trying to sell “fire water” to their people.
The Apache Kid was found guilty and given seven
years in prison, a remarkably short sentence that indi-
mythical Indian outlaw bands
Without doubt one of the most fertile subjects for foreigners’ misconceptions of conditions in America has
always been crime. This has been true not merely
because of purple reporting by several popular writers
but also because of the inaccurate opinions of many
experts. Typical was the work of Dr. Edmond Locord,
one of the great criminologists of France in the early
part of this century. Writing in the preface of a book on
crime in 1925, Locard discussed crime in various parts
of the world; of America he said: “In Texas and California even today one meets roving bands of redskins
who live by extortion, pillage, and rapine. They are the
Apaches.” Thus, foreigners visiting the United States in
33
APALACHIN Conference
Originally a sergeant of scouts, the Apache Kid (center) later went on an orgy of robbery, rape, kidnapping and murder,
becoming the most-hunted Indian outlaw in the Arizona Territory.
two young Indians trying to steal his horse. Clark shot
the woman and badly wounded the man, who fled.
Clark, whose partner, Billy Diehl, had been killed by
the Apache Kid five years earlier, was sure he recognized him. He was equally positive that he had gotten
in a killing shot and that the Apache Kid had crawled
in some hole to die. Clark’s story was plausible, but it
was more likely that the Apache Kid realized the tale
of his fate gave him the perfect opportunity to fade
away. There seems little doubt that he took an Indian
woman, went into the Sierra Madre in Mexico and
raised a family. He was recognized and spoken to by a
number of reliable witnesses well into the 20th century.
Further reading: Lone War Trail of Apache Kid by
Earle F. Forrest and Edwin B. Hill.
cated the case against him was either weak or that the
crime itself was considered by many to be justified. On
November 1, 1889 the Apache Kid was being escorted
to the prison at Yuma when he overwhelmed his two
guards, Sheriff Glen Reynolds and Deputy Bill
Holmes, killed them and made his escape. From then
on, the Apache Kid became the scourge of the state,
leaving a bloody trail of robbery, rape and murder. He
struck blindly, victimizing Indians as well as whites.
He took many Indian women, and when he tired of
them, he cut their throats. Prospectors were robbed
and murdered in their mountain cabins; lonely ranches
were attacked and their inhabitants killed. It was
impossible to get an accurate count of the number of
white girls he kidnapped, raped and killed because he
was blamed whenever a lone Indian committed a
crime, but there was no doubt that most such victims
were his. Even a $5,000 bounty on his head failed to
stop him, although several whites and Indians alike
tried and died in the effort.
The terror ended abruptly in 1894. One night Ed
Clark, a prospector and former chief of Wallapai
Scouts, awakened at his camp north of Tucson to see
Apalachin Conference
underworld convention
A much-publicized fiasco, the great underworld conference held at Apalachin, N.Y. on November 14, 1957
was in its own way as important for its impact on crime
in America as the famous Atlantic City crime meeting
34
ARBUCKLE, Roscoe “Fatty”
In short, Apalachin seemed likely to produce fireworks and perhaps even open warfare. All of that,
however, could be avoided if the meeting were boycotted or sabotaged. The first alternative was partially
accomplished, the second completely. Unless one holds
to the theory that the crime leaders from Chicago,
Detroit and San Francisco had escaped during the raid
or were still “on the way,” their absence was noteworthy. Lucky Luciano, from his exile in Italy, lobbied
strongly against the meeting with some of these people
(his voice was still powerful in those very cities), and he
coached others on their behavior at the conference,
especially Carlo Gambino. Frank Costello also begged
off on the grounds that he was constantly being tailed
by the authorities. As treasurer for the syndicate, Meyer
Lansky was supposed to show but developed, he said, a
sore throat that kept him in Florida.
All these absences pointed up the lack of unanimity
facing Genovese. And then came the fiasco of the
raid—nothing so degrading had ever happened in the
underworld’s history. Vito Genovese, it was concluded,
had led the crime bosses to disaster. The extent of the
fury against Genovese was pointed up in a tapped telephone conversation later between Sam Giancana, then
head of the Chicago syndicate, and Steve Magaddino,
his Buffalo, N.Y. counterpart:
in 1929. However, while Atlantic City was famous for
what it did, Apalachin’s chief significance was what it
did not do, namely propel Vito Genovese into the number one spot in the syndicate hierarchy. More accurately, the Apalachin meeting destroyed Genovese, and
in hindsight, it is impossible not to regard the events as
brilliantly stage-managed.
The bare-bones history of the conference is rather
clear cut. It came three weeks after the barbershop
assassination of Albert Anastasia, which was arranged
by Genovese as part of his plan to become “boss of
bosses” both in New York and the nation. Genovese
called the conference among other reasons, to justify
Anastasia’s death and relieve the heat he was getting for
the attempt on Frank Costello’s life a few months earlier. Most of all, he wanted his position as the syndicate’s top man affirmed. But that was against the
wishes of other powerful forces.
As it happened, the meeting at the 58-acre estate of
mobster Joseph Barbara, Sr. never got off the ground.
Before real discussions started, a raid by state police
sent the participants scurrying. It was a ludicrous scene:
immaculately tailored crime bosses, mostly in their
fifties or older and no longer fleet of foot, climbed out
windows or bolted through back doors and went racing
through woods, burrs and undergrowth in a frantic
attempt to escape. How many did is not known, but 58
were caught. The arrest roster bore the names of men
whom various law enforcement agencies had tried to
corner for years: Genovese, Trafficante, Profaci, Magliocco, Bonanno, Scalish, DeSimone, Riela, Magaddino,
Gambino, Miranda, Catena, Ida, Zito, Civello, Colletti,
Ormento, Galante. Of the 58, 50 had been arrested
some time in their lives; 35 had convictions and 23 had
served prison sentences. Eighteen had been involved in
murder case investigations; 15 had been arrested for
narcotics violations, 30 for gambling, 23 for illegal use
of firearms. Newspapers wondered if anyone still
thought the Mafia didn’t exist.
The public assumption was that the Apalachin meeting was intended as the forum for presenting Genovese
with his crown, and much was made of the fact that a
total of $300,000 was found on the arrested crime
bosses. This, the theory went, was “envelope money”
to be given to Genovese. There was considerable reason
to dispute that view, however. Few of the participants
ever went about with anything less than a fat “roll,”
and it was known that Carlo Gambino was ready to
announce he brought no money for Genovese. Gambino had cooperated with Genovese in the Anastasia
assassination in order to take over the latter’s crime
family, but he had no intention of gaining Genovese as
an overboss.
Magaddino: “It never would’ve happened in your
place.”
Giancana: “You’re fuckin’ right it wouldn’t. This is the
safest territory in the world for a big meet. . . . We
got three towns just outside of Chicago with the police
chiefs in our pocket. We got this territory locked up
tight.”
Magaddino’s comments were less than gracious considering it was he who had suggested to Genovese that
the meeting be held at Apalachin. Host Barbara was a
lieutenant in Magaddino’s crime family. If Genovese
had the feeling he had been set up, there was considerable justification. How much so he did not realize until
he and a number of his aides were indicted for narcotics
conspiracy six months later. The chief testimony
against Genovese was provided by a two-bit heroin
pusher named Nelson Cantellops. That an unimportant
Puerto Rican street operator could have the goods on a
big man like Genovese did not seem logical, but the
government gleefully used his testimony to convict the
crime boss.
Shortly before he died, Lucky Luciano revealed the
secret behind the Cantellops testimony. He said Cantellops had in the past worked for Chicago’s Sam Giancana and for Meyer Lansky, both of whom had missed
35
ARGOS Lectionary
the Apalachin conclave. The pusher had received a
$100,000 payoff from Luciano, Gambion, Lansky and
Costello. For his $25,000, Costello had insisted that
among those convicted had to be Vincente “the Chin”
Gigante, the triggerman in the Genovese-inspired
attempt on his life.
Apalachin had indeed been the first nail in Genovese’s coffin. The coup de grace followed in 1959,
when he was sentenced to prison for 15 years. He
would die there in 1969.
See also: JOSEPH BARBARA, SR.; VITO GENOVESE.
For 20 minutes no sound was heard from the bedroom and the others in the party simply passed knowing glances. Suddenly, there were hysterical screams
and Virginia cried, “I’m dying, he’s killing me, I’m
dying!”
Arbuckle then walked out of the room wearing Virginia’s hat and giggling. “Go in and get her dressed and
take her back to her hotel. She makes too much noise.”
When the others looked into the bedroom, they saw
Virginia’s nude, bloody body lying among her ripped
clothes. “He hurt me. Roscoe hurt me,” she cried. “I’m
dying, I’m dying. Roscoe did it.”
Arbuckle was unimpressed by Virginia’s ravings.
“She’s acting it up,” he said. “She’s always been a
lousy actress.” He warned those present he would
throw her out the 12th-story window unless she
stopped moaning. Several other women carried Virginia down the hall to another room. Three days later
she died.
The three trials of Fatty Arbuckle for felony rape
and murder were legal curiosities. At first, courtroom
descriptions of what Arbuckle had done were considered so shocking that they were passed back and forth
in writing. The official version that Virginia’s bladder
had been ruptured when the fat man had forced intercourse on her was hardly the complete story. Finally, a
witness testified that after the incident Arbuckle had
laughingly told others at the party that he had
jammed a large jagged piece of ice into her vagina.
Later, there was talk about a champagne bottle as
well.
The first two trials ended in hung juries, voting 10
to two for acquittal and then 10 to two for conviction.
The third trial resulted in a not-guilty verdict, after the
jury had deliberated only six minutes. In addition to
setting the comedian free, the panel added: “Acquittal
is not enough for Roscoe Arbuckle. We feel a great
injustice has been done him and there was not the
slightest proof to connect him in any way with the
commission of any crime.” The jurors then stuck
around to have their pictures taken with the grateful
comic.
While the air was filled with charges that witnesses
and jury members had been bribed, the studios set up
plans to relaunch Arbuckle’s film career. However, it
soon became apparent that although a California court
had cleared him, the rest of the country did not feel the
same way. Theater owners reported that the comedian’s
unreleased movies would play to empty houses, and his
films were junked. Arbuckle spent the next 10 years
knocking around in vaudeville and playing second-rate
cabarets. He was allowed to direct some minor films
under the name of William Goodrich, while he
implored the studios to give him another chance.
Arbuckle, Roscoe “Fatty” (1887–1933) accused
murderer
Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was at the peak of his career
as a comedian, regarded second only to Chaplin, when
he was arrested in 1921 for the rape-killing of a delicate young actress named Virginia Rappe, which came
to be regarded as Hollywood’s worst scandal. The
three trials that followed laid bare facts about
Arbuckle’s private life. What had been amusing on
screen for an almost 300-pound buffoon assumed sinister aspects off screen. Somehow the knowledge that
Arbuckle had the back seat of his $25,000 Rolls Royce
equipped with a built-in toilet came across as more
animalistic than humorous when associated with an
alleged rapist-murderer.
The facts in the death of 25-year-old Virginia Rappe
have never been entirely clear, the picture having been
muddled by Hollywood movie studios anxious to protect their investment in a hot comic property. Bribes
were paid and witnesses disappeared or changed their
stories. But what is clear is that Arbuckle, straight from
working on three films without a day off, headed for a
session of relaxation in San Francisco with a party of
friends, among them Virginia Rappe, who had recently
moved up to starring roles on the basis of her delicate
beauty rather than any acting ability. Her pretty face at
the moment graced the sheet music of “Let Me Call
You Sweetheart.”
According to some accounts, Virginia thoroughly
disliked Arbuckle but kept his company because she felt
the fat comedian could aid her career, a common
enough belief among aspiring starlets. The young
actress was present at a wild party—some later
described it as an orgy—that took place in Fatty’s St.
Francis Hotel suite on September 5, 1921. During the
revelry Fatty seized Virginia and hustled her into the
bedroom, with the actress showing some or no resistance, according to the conflicting testimony of the witnesses. But what happened next was not disputed.
36
ARLINGTON, Josie
Finally, in 1933 Warner Brothers signed him to do
some two-reelers. He finished the first one in New York
on June 29. “This is the happiest day of my life,” he
said. The next morning he was found dead in his hotel
room bed of a heart attack.
Argos Lectionary rare manuscript
One of the most-valued Greek manuscripts possessed
by an American university is the University of
Chicago’s Argos Lectionary, a book of parchment
leaves containing excerpts from the Bible arranged for
church services. The book was purchased by the school
in 1930 from the manager of an underworld-controlled
nightclub, who had phoned and offered to sell “a Bible
with an odd history.”
The nightclub manager, however, had something else
in mind when he referred to its “odd history.” Prohibitionera gunmen had placed their hands on the Bible when
they swore their oath of allegiance to Al Capone. The
university’s experts recognized it as a ninth or 10thcentury work—and a masterpiece of singular scholarly
import.
Arizona Rangers
Formed much later than the Texas Rangers, the Arizona Rangers were organized in 1901 to assist local
officials in maintaining law and order. Headed by Capt.
Burton C. Mossman, the 12- to 14-man force achieved
a noteworthy record. While aimed at stopping outlaws
and rustlers in general, the Arizona Rangers probably
would not have been formed had it not been for the
depredations of a vicious outlaw and murderer named
Augustine Chacon, a 30-notch gunman. The Rangers
got their man and many more before being disbanded
in 1910, probably in recognition of the fact that the use
of such a force was justified only in an era of widespread lawlessness. By doing so, the Arizona Rangers
avoided the later criticism of the Texas Rangers as an
organization that had outlived its usefulness. Such early
groups as the Arizona Rangers and the New Mexico
Rangers set the precedent for the present state police
organizations.
See also: BURT ALVORD, BURTON C. MOSSMAN.
Arkansas Tom
One of Madam Arlington’s ads in the Blue Book,
Book, a turn-ofthe-century guide to whoring in New Orleans, heralds the
ultimate in brothel furnishings and decor.
rifles, but as in the Hatfield-McCoy feud, many of the
killings were done with a stiletto-type dagger known as
an Arkansas toothpick, the hillbillies’ favorite for a
“silent job.”
Arlington, Josie (1864–1919)
See ROY DAUGHERTY.
Arkansas toothpick
madam
Mary Deubler, better known professionally as Josie
Arlington, was perhaps New Orleans’ most famous
madam. She was certainly regarded as the classiest
and her house, the Arlington, gained a reputation as
the gaudiest and grandest of bordellos. Her achievement was somewhat remarkable, however, considering her early years in the trade. For nine years,
starting at the age of 17, she worked in various brothels on Customhouse Street and Basin Street under the
name of Josie Alton. She never stayed long in one
place because of her proclivity for brawling with the
murder weapon
The popular concept of backwoods feuding and killing
is of mountain boys blasting away at each other with
their trusty shotguns. True, they all carried shotguns or
37
ARNOLD, Keith
other girls. In 1886 she engaged in a fierce fight with
another prostitute, Beulah Ripley. Josie lost much of
her hair, while Beulah staggered from the battle minus
her lower lip and half an ear. In 1888 Josie opened her
own place at No. 172 Customhouse Street, a house
known for having the most quarrelsome residents on
the street. The profits enabled Josie to support her
lover, Philip Lobrano, who lived in the house, and several members of her family. Lobrano was quite outspoken about relatives living off the income of his
women like “a flock of vultures.” In 1890, during a
fierce brawl in the house involving Josie and all her
girls, Lobrano shot and killed Josie’s brother, Peter
Deubler. New Orleans being New Orleans, Lobrano
was acquitted by the courts.
Changing her name to Lobrano d’Arlington, Josie
turned over a new leaf. She kicked out her lover, dismissed all her battling prostitutes and announced that
henceforth she would fill her establishment with the
most gracious of foreign ladies who would entertain
only gentlemen of refinement and impeccable taste.
The Mascot, a tabloid that reported the doings of the
red-light district, trumpeted: “Society is graced by the
presence of a bona-fide baroness, direct from the Court
at St. Petersburg. The baroness is at present residing
incog. at the Chateau Lobrano d’Arlington, and is
known as La Belle Stewart.” The baroness was soon
exposed as being a hoochy-koochy dancer and circus
specialist who had graced the Midway at the Chicago
World’s Fair. Many of Josie Arlington’s other imports
also proved to be imposters. Despite this, her lavish
brothel thrived and when Storyville, a quasi-legal redlight district, was established, Josie opened the Arlington, which was just about the most discriminating in
Storyville. Over the next decade Josie Arlington
amassed a considerable fortune, which allowed her to
buy a mansion in the most fashionable part of New
Orleans.
Josie also started to get religion, sending a niece to
be educated in a convent. While still in her early forties,
she bought a plot in Metarie Cemetery and erected an
$8,000 tomb of red marble, with two large flambeaux
on top and a crosscut in the back. There was a copper
door and carved on it, in bas-relief, was the figure of a
kneeling woman, her arms filled with flowers.
Josie leased out the Arlington in 1909 and retired
from the business. She died in 1914, at the age of 50, by
then Storyville’s most-storied madam. Even in death,
Josie entertained, in a fashion, the citizenry of New
Orleans. The city installed a red traffic light on the
street by Metairie Cemetery, and during the night its
red glow cast on the two flambeaux gave the illusion of
a red light shining over the renowned madam’s tomb.
Crowds gathered each night to enjoy the spectacle, and
nightly sightseeing tours all paused at the cemetery for
the show. The city eventually replaced the red light with
a white one, making the traffic light one of the most
confusing ever installed. In 1924 Josie’s niece had the
madam’s bones transferred to a receiving vault and the
gaudy tomb was sold.
See also: STORYVILLE.
Arnold, Keith
See GERALD CRAFT.
Arnold, Stephen (c. 1770–?) murderer
Men and women suffering from varying degrees of
lunacy have committed murders, and depending on the
prevailing mores of their societies, they have received
varying punishments. Stephen Arnold, in an event
marked by high drama, was one of the first in America
to win leniency due to insanity. As a thirtyish schoolteacher in Cooperstown, N.Y., he was a perfectionist
who would fly into a mad rage whenever a pupil made
a spelling error. When in 1805 his six-year-old niece,
Betsy Van Amburgh, misspelled gig, Arnold lost all
control of himself, seized a club and beat her to death.
Then comprehending what he had done, he fled Cooperstown for Pittsburgh, Pa., where he took up a new
identity. Caught later that year, he was returned to
Cooperstown to be tried for murder. Since his lawyer
could not dispute the obvious facts of the crime, Arnold
was convicted in short order and sentenced to be
hanged.
Arnold’s execution day was a banner event in Cooperstown, with thousands from the surrounding area
converging on the town for the big show. According to
a contemporary account, marching bands, a company
of artillery and a full battalion of infantry led Arnold to
the gallows. Flowers and bunting decorated the caissons and even the gallows. While Arnold stood with the
noose around his neck, a minister launched into an
hour-long sermon on the sins of men letting their tempers race unchecked. Much of the admonishments were
quotations from Arnold himself. Now, with the obligatory matters taken care of, the hangman stepped forward—the crowd tensed . . . suddenly the sheriff
moved to the condemned man and ceremoniously flung
the noose from Arnold’s neck. Before the stunned
onlookers, the sheriff then read a reprieve for Arnold
that he had received from the governor earlier in the
morning. The sheriff had let the execution charade continue for three reasons: to show his disagreement with
the chief executive’s act; to force Arnold to experience
the terror of execution for his murderous sin; and not
to disappoint entirely the thousands gathered for the
event. The crowd’s disappointment was great nonethe38
ARSON
Regulations in the average jail permit an arrested
person to send local telephone messages to his or her
relatives, friends, employer and a lawyer. “Messages” is
indeed the right word, since in most places the police
make the calls for you. If the arrested person is well
behaved, the police wink at the rules and let him or her
personally use the phone and even make as many calls
as desired. If the arrestee gets nasty, the police will
make the call, or at least they say they will. Unfortunately, they sometimes will inform the arrestee the line
is busy. The Constitution provides no guarantee that a
telephone can’t be busy.
If charged with a felony or a misdemeanor, the
arrestee is fingerprinted and “mugged.” A person can
refuse to be fingerprinted, but in most places one can’t
get bail without going through the procedure. Four sets
of fingerprints are made: two for the local police files,
one for the state capital and another for the FBI. Four
photographs—“mug shots”—are taken, two front view
and one left and one right profile. If the arrested person
is later found innocent or the charges are dropped, he
or she has the right to demand the return of the prints.
Some officers make a point of not doing this, instead
offering a phony set of prints. In some states a court
order is needed to get back such prints. It’s often wise
to have a lawyer get a court order even where it is not
required; few officers will play games when a court
order is involved.
After the arrested person has been booked, printed
and mugged, he or she is brought into court for
arraignment. Usually, the police are required to bring
an arrested person before a judge within 24 hours, but
in some areas the rule isn’t rigidly enforced. Over a
weekend an arrestee can often spend three nights
locked up, and there are numerous cases of persons
being held two or three weeks before arraignment. At
times, court arraignment is used only in felony cases. In
any case, the formal charge is made at arraignment,
and at the same time, or possibly at a later hearing, the
arrested person pleads either guilty or innocent. A magistrate then hears the police case and decides whether
it’s strong enough to hold the arrested person for the
grand jury. If not, the magistrate will dismiss the
charge.
The grand jury hearing a case does not necessarily
call the defendant before it. It may simply hear the
police side and decide that a crime has been committed
and that the defendant could have committed it. The
grand jury is a body of 12 to 23 citizens, with the average number around 19. For a verdict, 12 jury members
must agree. If the grand jury decides there is enough
evidence to bring a defendant to trial, it issues a “true
bill,” or indictment. After that, the defendant is permitted to alter his or her plea, and the judge will set new
less, and there was some speculation that the sheriff
had acted as he did only so that the local merchants
and tavern keepers could still profit from what would
prove to be a nonevent. Amidst all the bickering on that
point, the concept of temporary insanity and the pros
and cons of it were lost on most of the crowd. Arnold
was later pardoned for the same reason.
arrest, citizen’s
A private citizen has just as much right to arrest a lawbreaker as does a police officer, but these so-called citizen’s arrests are actually rife with legal danger to the
person making them. A private citizen can arrest
another for a crime that is committed or attempted in
his or her presence. In addition, a private citizen can
arrest a person who has committed a felony even
though it was not perpetrated in the arresting citizen’s
presence. The arresting citizen must inform the person
of the arrest and, without undue delay, take him or her
before a magistrate or hand him or her over to a police
officer. Everything will then have been handled properly—provided the person arrested is later found guilty.
If he or she is acquitted or the charges are dropped, the
citizen making the arrest can be sued for false arrest,
not an uncommon occurrence. As a result, most legal
authorities strongly counsel against a citizen’s arrest
except under the most certain of circumstances.
arrest procedures
Arrest is the taking or detainment of a person by legal
authority, preferably by an officer of the law acting
with a warrant, a written order signed by a magistrate
stating the reason for the arrest. An officer can also
make an arrest without a warrant if the crime is a misdemeanor, or lesser offense, committed in his presence
or a felony, or major offense, that he may not have witnessed but has reasonable cause to believe the person
being arrested has committed.
As soon as the arrested person arrives at the station
house, he or she is booked. Booking is the entry of the
charge into what is called the “arrest book,” more popularly known as the police blotter. At this point, the
defendant officially learns the exact charge against him,
but in practice, the average person often is so frightened he doesn’t grasp the exact words or the desk officer mumbles in such a manner that the accused can’t
make out the officer’s words.
Next comes an “order for admittance and property
receipt.” The arrested person empties his pockets;
everything is itemized and put in an envelope. As a rule,
wristwatches may be kept.
39
ASHBY, James
bail, either larger or smaller, depending on what is
deemed appropriate.
For a misdemeanor the arrestee or may not be
arraigned in court the next day. In many cities, at the
time of booking, the desk officer will order the arrested
person to be in court on a given date, possibly two or
three weeks later. By agreement with the courts, the
police are empowered to collect bail in misdemeanor
cases according to fixed rates and allow the defendant’s
release. Bail is solely for the purpose of guaranteeing
that the accused will appear at his or her trial. If the
defendant can’t raise bail, for either a felony or a misdemeanor charge, it’s back to jail, possibly for a long
stay until the case comes to court.
See also: BAIL.
to set a fire,” she declared when caught, “nothing
I can do stops me.”
Few arsonists start fires with any desire to kill people.
They know it will happen sooner or later, but the
thought doesn’t stop them from committing their crimes.
Recent history’s worst proven case of arson was the
Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus fire in
1944 in Hartford, Conn., in which 168 men, women and
children perished. Eventually, a 15-year-old circus
roustabout was found to have set the fire. He was caught
some six years later after he set another big blaze in East
St. Louis. The pyromaniac couldn’t really explain why he
had started the circus fire; all that could be established
was that he had felt picked on by his bosses and that he
had had a lifelong preoccupation with fire.
By and large, pyromaniacs can be said to share one or
more of four common characteristics: (1) a resentment of
authority; (2) the urge for destruction; (3) an inability to
show resentment directly; and (4) extremely poor sexual
adjustment. One of the leading authorities on the subject, Dr. Nolan D. C. Lewis, has observed: “The pyromaniac can give no rational motive for his incendiary acts.
Even though he is aware that he may cause property
damage worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps
even be responsible for the deaths of innocent women
and children, he feels he must set fires. I know of cases
where such people have rushed into police stations
shouting, ‘Stop me before I set another fire!’”
There is considerable evidence to indicate that compulsive arsonists can be cured. In their landmark study,
Pathological Firesetting, Drs. Nolan Lewis and Helen
Yarnell traced 1,071 convicted pyromaniacs. Only 138
of the pyromaniacs had received psychiatric treatment
specifically designed to solve their problem. Of these,
Lewis and Yarnell concluded, not one was still setting
fires.
arson
If any crime in America can be described as out of control, it is arson. At the end of the 1990s, arson was
responsible for killing 700 persons and injuring thousands more each year. The cost to insurance companies
was more than $2 billion. From 1970 to 1996 the number of fires due to arson jumped from 120,000 to
500,000. A Senate investigations subcommittee
warned, “Long thought by the public to be a sporadic
act of greed, arson has evolved into a way of life in
many metropolitan areas.” The committee said landlords and other building owners who saw property values dropping often overinsured their properties and
then arranged to have them burned down by professional firebugs or ghetto gangs in order to obtain quick
insurance windfalls.
Pyromania, the act of a compulsive fire-setter, may
not have increased as fast as arson for money, but it too
is growing. In fact, insurance arsonists are at times the
inspiration for pyromaniacs.
Pyromania is a difficult illness to diagnose and one
that shows few social patterns.
Ashby, James (c. 1830) riverboat gambler
While the Mississippi was noted for many colorful
riverboat gamblers, none was more amazing than old
James Ashby, a grizzled sharper skilled at suckering
others who superficially seemed much more polished.
Ashby would work with a young confederate, pretending to be father and son returning home after selling off some stock at market. The bumpkin-appearing
“son” looked like a perfect victim, easily inveigled into
trying his luck at cards, and Ashby pretended to be a
fiddle-playing old man teetering on the brink of senility.
While the son was gambling, Ashby guzzled white
lightning and played snatches of tunes on his fiddle,
bemoaning that he no longer remembered how the
complete version went. His son proved less dimwitted
• The Chicago area had a rash of fires set in 27 different buildings. It turned out to be the work of
one of the community’s most respected physicians, a dedicated doctor who still made house
calls.
• When a large building on the campus of the University of Michigan was set afire, a respected faculty member was apprehended for the crime.
• A Georgia orphanage burned to the ground, and
the arsonist turned out to be a society matron
who had worked hard to raise money for its construction in the first place. “When I get the urge
40
ASHLEY, John
than he looked, winning hand after hand in defiance of
all the odds. “Not for a long time,” one historian of the
river wrote, “did the gamblers learn that the tunes were
signals.” Whereupon Ashby retired from Mississippi
activities, having grown wealthy by outsharping the
sharpers.
were just too lazy to do any advance planning. When
Ashley robbed a bank, often the extent of his casing the
job was to check the bank’s hours to make sure it
would be open when he got there. Once when the Ashley mob hit a bank in Stuart, Fla. without bothering to
bring along a getaway car, they had an excellent reason:
no member of the gang at the time knew how to drive!
Ashley figured there’d be someone in the bank who had
a car parked outside. Which was exactly how things
worked out.
Ashley did get caught a couple of times: following
one bank robbery, a member of his own gang accidentally shot him in the eye while firing at pursuers. Ashley
was captured as he staggered around on the edge of a
swamp, clutching his eye and half-crazed with pain.
After that, he wore a glass eye.
Instead of being tried for the bank robbery, Ashley
was shipped to Miami to stand trial for the murder of a
Seminole Indian subchief. There was no hard evidence
against Ashley, and he was almost certainly innocent of
the murder. The crackers of the swamp knew what was
behind it all: the land sellers wanted someone convicted
of the killing because they didn’t want any Indian trouble scaring away buyers. So why not pin it on John
Ashley?
The Ashley gang was incensed and determined to
free its leader. Ashley’s brother Bob actually made his
way into the jailhouse and killed a guard, but he was
forced to flee before reaching his brother’s cell and was
killed shortly thereafter in a fight with police. The frustrated gang then sent an “ultimatum” to the city of
Miami that brought the Ashleys nationwide fame.
Addressed to the local sheriff, its exact words were
Ashley, John (1895–1924) Everglades gangster
Still regarded as a folk hero in the Florida Everglades,
John Ashley headed an unlikely band of criminals who,
from 1915 to 1924, robbed a total of 40 banks and
stole close to a million dollars. Small-town bankers
lived in dread of the sight of the Ashley gang bouncing
into town in a Model T and out again with the loot,
often waving a gin bottle at the citizens as they went.
They were also expert hijackers. Rumrunners, not a
spineless sort, blanched when Ashley and his crew
mounted one of their transports. A state official called
Ashley the worst menace to Florida since the war with
the Seminoles. The newspapers likened him to Jesse
James, and there was indeed a resemblance save that
James never flaunted the law quite as openly as John
Ashley.
Once the Ashley gang pulled a job, they would separate and head for the Everglades, where no man alive
could track John Ashley, a “cracker” who could move
through the swamps with the assurance of an urban
pedestrian on well-marked city streets. The story was
often told of the time a posse of 12 men went after Ashley when he was alone in the swamp. They failed to
catch him but ended up racing out of the swamp panicstricken, two of them wounded. They suddenly had
realized that Ashley was tracking them instead of the
other way around.
It was exploits of this sort that made Ashley a hero
to a great many crackers who inhabited the pine and
palmetto backwoods of Florida. He became a symbol
of their resentment toward an encroaching civilization,
and a popular belief was that Ashley killed only when
he was forced to, lived a life of crime only because he
was forced into it. And besides, he sure stuck it to all
those the crackers detested—the townies, the revenuers,
the police, even them big-city rumrunners importing
that foreign stuff and taking away white lightnin’ markets. In that last endeavor, the Ashley gang did what the
U.S. Coast Guard had failed to do. They virtually
halted rumrunning between Bimini, a little spit of sand
in the Bahamas, and much of Florida’s east coast. The
smugglers lost so much liquor to the Ashley gang that
they transferred their activities elsewhere.
Perhaps what made the gang so engaging was the
fact they did their work so haphazardly; in fact, they
Dear Sir,
We were in your city at the time one of gang Bob Ashley was brutely shot to death by your officers and now
your town can expect to feel the results of it any hor,
and if John Ashley is not fairly delt with and given a
fair trial and turned loose simply for the life of a Goddamn Seminole Indian we expect to shoot up the hole
God-damn town regardless to what the results might
be. we expect to make our appearance at a early date.
The Ashley Gang
It is doubtful the course of Miami justice bent
because of this threat, but among the crackers there
was a knowing nod of the heads when the murder
charge against Ashley was nol-prossed. However, Ashley was convicted of bank robbery and sentenced to 17
years in prison. In a short time, he escaped and
returned to take command of his gang.
41
ASSASSINATION
In 1924 Ashley, tired of bank jobs and the like,
pulled one of the most fabulous crimes of the century,
though it is little remembered today because the loot
turned out to be disappointingly small. During this
period of Prohibition most of the rumrunners drew
their supplies from the West End Settlement in the
Bimini Islands. Ashley decided that instead of going
through all the trouble involved in waylaying the rumrunners, it would be a lot less tiring to go to West End
and rob whatever money the rumrunners brought
there. John and his crew hit the island late one afternoon and within two hours cleaned out all the money
the liquor suppliers had on hand. It was the first time in
more than 100 years that an American pirate had
raided a British crown colony, but Ashley wasn’t particularly interested in the distinction. What bothered him
was that his master coup had netted a mere $8,000.
Just hours before the gang hit the island, an express
boat carrying $250,000 in cash had left for Nassau.
Ashley went back to bank robbing, but the end was
near. The police now had a stoolpigeon within the
gang. His identity has never been established with certainty, but it is widely believed to have been Clarence
Middleton, a drug addict member of the gang. The
police got a tip in February 1924 that Ashley’s father,
who’d recently jumped bail on a moonshining charge,
was holed up not far from the Ashley home, and that
John Ashley was going to visit him.
The hideout was attacked, and Old Man Ashley was
killed and a few others wounded. John Ashley, however, escaped. The same source then informed the police
that the gang was heading for Jacksonville. A roadblock with a chain and some lanterns was set up at the
Sebastian Bridge. It was dark when the Ashley gang’s
car pulled up. All four men in it—Ashley, Hanford
Mobley, Ray Lynn and Clarence Middleton—got out to
inspect what they thought was a construction job. A
score of gun muzzles were leveled on them. They
started to raise their hands.
What happened next is a mystery. The official version is that Ashley made a move for his gun. Twenty
law officers fired, and four of the most-wanted men in
Florida died. According to another version, told by the
crackers, Ashley and the others were handcuffed and
then shot to death. This story claims that when their
bodies were brought to the funeral parlor, all the dead
men’s wrists bore the marks of handcuffs.
of-work painter, stepped out from behind a pillar and
fired two pistols at Jackson, both of which misfired.
Lawrence was judged deranged and committed to an
insane asylum, although Jackson remained convinced
the would-be assassin’s act had been part of a Whig
conspiracy to kill him.
The next attack on a U.S. president was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth in
1865. Besides Booth, who was killed by pursuing
troops, four others—Lewis Paine, George Atzerodt,
David Herold and Mrs. Mary Surratt—were hanged
and several others sent to prison. What followed can
best be summarized by a phrase from James McKinley’s
Assassination in America, “After Lincoln, the deluge.”
While Andrew Johnson was president, 13 political
officeholders were shot at and 12 of them killed. During Ulysses S. Grant’s two terms, from 1869 to 1877,
there were 20 attacks, resulting in 11 deaths.
FPO
FIG. #9
TO BE
PICKED-UP
FROM
PREVIOUS ED.
In what many experts regard as the greatest crime photo
ever taken, New York mayor William J. Gaynor is shown
seconds after he was shot by a disgruntled city employee
in 1910 aboard an ocean liner as he prepared to sail for
Europe. Gaynor survived. When Charles Chapin, city editor
of the Evening World
World,, saw the picture he exclaimed,
“Look, what a wonderful thing! Blood all over him—and
exclusive too!”
assassination
Political assassination came late upon the American
scene. The first assassination attempt against a U.S.
president occurred in 1835 as Andrew Jackson was
strolling out of the Capitol. Richard Lawrence, an out42
ASTOR Place Riots
1968: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was gunned down
in Memphis, Tenn. on April 4 by James Earl Ray, who
was convicted of the shooting and sentenced to 99
years in prison.
1968: Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was fatally shot in Los
Angeles on June 5 by Sirhan Sirhan, who was subsequently convicted of the murder and sentenced to life
imprisonment.
1972: Gov. George Wallace of Alabama was shot
and permanently paralyzed in Laurel, Md. on May 15
by Arthur H. Bremer. Bremer was sentenced to 53 years
in prison.
1975: An adherent of Charles Manson, Lynette Alice
“Squeaky” Fromme, pointed a gun at President Gerald
Ford in Sacramento, Calif. on September 5, but she
was immediately seized by a Secret Service agent.
Fromme received a sentence of life imprisonment.
1975: In the second attempt on President Ford’s life
in 17 days, Sara Jane Moore fired a revolver at him
in San Francisco, Calif. on September 22, but an onlooker shoved the gun off target. Moore was sentenced
to life in prison.
1981: President Ronald Reagan was shot in the left
lung on March 30 by 25-year-old John W. Hinckley,
Jr., who fired a total of six shots at the president as he
left a Washington, D.C. hotel. Reagan’s press secretary,
a Secret Service guard and a city policeman were also
severely wounded. Reagan recovered.
Assassinations became a part of American political
life from the late 19th century on. Some important
assassinations and attempts included the following:
1881: President James A. Garfield was shot in Washington, D.C. on March 13 by a disappointed office
seeker, Charles Julius Gaiteau. Garfield died on September 29 and Gaiteau was hanged in June 1882.
1901: President William McKinley was shot in Buffalo, N.Y. on September 6 by Leon Czolgosz. McKinley died on September 14 and Czolgosz was executed
the following month.
1910: New York mayor William J. Gaynor was shot
and badly wounded by James J. Gallagher, a disgruntled city employee, but the mayor recovered.
1912: Former President Theodore Roosevelt was
shot in Milwaukee by a demented man named John N.
Shrank, but Roosevelt was saved when the passage of
the bullet was slowed by a folded 50-page speech and
the spectacle case in his pocket. The bullet nevertheless,
penetrated the former president’s chest in too dangerous a position ever to be removed. Shrank was confined
in mental institutions until his death in 1943.
1933: President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt was
shot at in Miami, Fla. on February 15 by Joseph Zangara. The shot missed Roosevelt and instead hit and
fatally wounded Chicago mayor Anton J. Cermak.
Some historians insist Zangara never intended to shoot
Roosevelt (despite his own claims to that effect) but
had been hired by elements of the Capone mob to get
rid of Cermak. The mayor himself clung to that belief
on his deathbed. Zangara died in the electric chair in
March 1933.
1935: Sen. Huey P. Long of Louisiana was shot and
killed by Dr. Carl Austin Weiss, who in turn was cut
down by Long’s bodyguards.
1950: On November 1 two Puerto Rican nationalists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, attempted to
storm Blair House to assassinate President Harry
S Truman. They never reached Truman but killed
a guard, Leslie Coffelt. Torresola was also killed and
Collazo wounded. Collazo was sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1979 President Carter granted him
clemency and he returned to Puerto Rico.
1963: President John F. Kennedy was shot to death
in Dallas, Tex. by Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald was
later assassinated by Jack Ruby while in police custody.
1965: Malcolm X was shotgunned to death in New
York City on February 21 by three assassins as he
addressed his Organization of Afro-American Unity.
Thomas “15X” Johnson and Norman “3X” Butler,
both reputed Black Muslim enforcers, and Talmadge
Hayer were all convicted of murder and given life
imprisonment.
assault and battery
Assault and battery are two distinct crimes and the distinction is most valuable in the prosecution of criminals. Assault involves the threat or the attempt to use
force or violence on another, but its commission does
not require the actual use of force. Battery constitutes
the actual use of force.
Legally, the distinction is most important, for without it, a holdup man who does not actually manhandle
or touch his victim would not be guilty of any crime
other than, say, robbery or attempted robbery. Thus,
the mere waving of a fist in a person’s face constitutes
assault, and the employment of that fist raises the crime
to assault and battery.
Astor Place Riots
One of the worst riots in New York City’s history
started on May 10, 1849, ostensibly as an outgrowth
of a rather silly theatrical feud between the English
tragedian William Charles Macready and the American
actor Edwin Forrest. Actually, the riots were fomented
by a notorious political rogue, Capt. Isaiah Rynders,
who capitalized on the poor’s general class hatred and
43
ATLANTA Boys Convoy
anti-British feeling to regain a measure of public power
following the unexpected defeat of his Democratic
Party in 1848.
Macready had been chosen instead of Forrest to perform in Macbeth at the Astor Place Opera House.
When the English actor appeared on stage, he was met
by a mob who had gathered in response to a fiery tirade
by Capt. Rynders and one of his chief lieutenants,
Edward Z. C. Judson, better known as Ned Buntline.
Rynders’ thugs broke up the performance by hurling
rotten eggs, pennies and even chairs onto the stage.
Others threw pieces of paper filled with gunpowder in
the chandeliers. Macready was driven from the stage
but no one was injured. The noted actor was induced
by the righteous element, led by Washington Irving and
other prominent citizens to try once more on May 10,
but Rynders was again prepared.
Offering free drinks, passes and rabble-rousing
handbills, Rynders produced a crowd of 10,000 to
15,000. Twenty of Rynders’ thugs entered the theater
with orders to kidnap the hated foreigner right off
the stage. However, the police foiled the plot and
locked them all up in the basement, where they unsuccessfully tried to burn down the building. Meanwhile,
the mob outside was running wild. They bombarded
the barricaded windows of the theater with cobblestones gathered from a nearby sewer excavation and
ripped down street lamps to use as clubs, plunging the
area into darkness.
The police managed to evacuate the building and got
Macready out wearing a disguise, but they couldn’t
contain the rioting. When Edward Judson was arrested,
the mob turned even more violent. Officers were stoned
to their knees, and the Seventh Regiment was called
into action. Even the cavalrymen were knocked off
their horses, and the infantry fell back on the sidewalk
on the east side of the opera house. When the crowd
tried to seize their muskets, the soldiers were ordered to
fire, and several volleys tore into the rioters, who fell by
the dozens. Twenty-three persons were killed, and the
injury list on both sides totaled more than 120.
The mobs returned the following night determined
to wreck and burn the opera house, but they were driven off by reinforced troops and artillery, which had
been set up to sweep Broadway and the Bowery. For
several days thereafter, crowds gathered in front of the
New York Hotel, where Macready had been staying,
calling on him to come out and be hanged. However,
the actor had rushed to New Rochelle on May 10 and
gone on by train to Boston, where he sailed for England, never to return to America.
For his part in fomenting the trouble, Edward Judson was fined $250 and sentenced to a year in the
penitentiary. Rynders also was tried for inciting to
riot. At the farcical trial, prosecution witnesses
retraced the genesis of the plot back to Rynder’s
Empire Club, where the original plotting had been
done, but they could not recall anything involving him
directly. The jury acquitted Rynders in two hours and
10 minutes.
See also: EDWARD Z. C. JUDSON.
Atlanta Boys Convoy
mass shipment of convicts
On January 1, 1934 the former military prison on
Alcatraz island in San Francisco Bay officially became a
federal penitentiary. In the months that followed, this
“super cage to hold super criminals” began drawing the
worst inmates from other federal prisons, the troublemakers and those most likely to attempt an escape.
It was decided to ship these dangerous convicts en
masse in convoy form from each prison. The first of
these, called the Atlanta Boys Convoy, caused an
immense amount of excitement throughout the country.
On August 14, 1934, 53 tough convicts were taken
from their cells in Atlanta Penitentiary, chained hand
and foot and loaded into a train composed of special
steel coaches with barred windows and wire-meshed
doors. This came in a year when the hysteria over gangsters had reached its zenith. Once the plan to move “the
Atlanta boys” became public, there were wild rumors
of huge underworld armies mobilizing armored cars,
flamethrowers, machine guns and even aircraft to free
the convicts.
The government took measures that were appropriate for a military operation in hostile territory. The
prisoners were chained to their chairs and refused toilet
privileges other than on a carefully planned schedule.
While the train’s route was unannounced, the mysterious closings of certain stations along the way led to
public speculation.
At Alcatraz, Warden James A. Johnston was kept
constantly informed of the train’s progress. He had
stayed up the entire night of the 13th tracking the projected route on a large map. When the train neared
Oakland, it was shifted away from the city’s busy terminal and switched to a little-used railway yard at
Tiburon. The cars were run straight onto a ferry barge
and escorted to the Rock by the Coast Guard. The prisoners were in terrible shape, having been chained in
close quarters where they could hardly move and certainly couldn’t sleep. All were caked in grime and
sweat, and most suffered swollen feet from the irons
and could hardly walk.
Their bitter journey was over, but their ordeal in the
most restrictive federal prison in history was just beginning. When all were finally locked in their cells. Warden Johnston wired Attorney General Homer
44
ATLANTA children murders
Emphasizing the FBI’s belief that they had their man,
agents made a very public search of the two-bedroom
apartment Jewell shared with his mother, taking out
box after box of material they found there, including
scores of videotapes. Despite this busy-bee activity, the
FBI did not charge Jewell with any crime, but he was
left twisting in the wind by the agency, which did not
dismiss him as a suspect. Eventually Jewell’s mother
wrote in protest to President Bill Clinton, pointing out
her son “is a prisoner in my home.”
Attorneys hired by Jewell now went on the offensive,
demanding that the government either charge the security guard or that he be given an apology. The most picturesque quote came from one of Jewell’s lawyers who
raged, “These jerks need to get up off their butts and
tell the truth.” It took another two months, until October 26, before the Department of Justice officially
declared that Jewell was no longer a suspect in the case.
It could not be regarded as one of the FBI’s most shining hours.
In early 1997 a suburban Atlanta abortion clinic was
bombed, and the following month a gay and lesbian
bar was similarly hit, so similarly in fact that investigators believed it was the work of the same terrorist. And
they had indications that the suspect in the first two
cases and probably the Centennial Park bombing was
Eric Robert Rudolph. Rudolph was a suspect in other
cases as well, but, an adept survivalist, he vanished
somewhere in the wilds of the southeastern states. At
present the Centennial Park bombing remains in the
unsolved files.
Cummings, “FIFTY THREE CRATES OF FURNITURE FROM ATLANTA RECEIVED IN GOOD
CONDITION—INSTALLED—NO BREAKAGE.”
See also: ALCATRAZ PRISON.
Atlanta Centennial Park bombing
wrong suspect
case of the
Early in the morning hours of July 27, 1996, television
cameras swayed during Olympic Games interviews,
and a loud report sounded. It was an explosion. It was
a deafening blast that flooded out the rock music in the
park. Shrapnel and debris rained down on dancers and
onlookers. Bodies were riddled as more than 100 persons were hit. Luckily, only one person, Alice
Hawthorne, a 43-year-old African-American businesswoman, was fatally wounded. Another 111 persons
were treated at local hospitals or at the scene but all
recovered. A second death claimed as a result of the
explosion was that of Turkish TV cameraman Melih
Uzanyol, who suffered a fatal heart attack while
attempting to videotape the bombing scene.
The death toll would have been much higher had
not a private security firm guard, Richard Jewell,
spotted a suspicious looking knapsack and, with
other guards, hustled numerous people from the area
before the pipebomb in the knapsack exploded. Jewell’s alert action was credited with probably saving
scores of lives. Television interviewers flocked to the
hero guard who said, “I just happened to be at the
right place at the right time, and doing the job I was
trained to do.”
Jewell’s day in the sun did not last long. Investigators
soon zeroed in on a chief suspect—Richard Jewell.
The president of Piedmont College in Demorest, Ga.,
informed authorities that Jewell had previously been
employed there as a campus security guard but had
been fired for “infractions,” such as once on his own
flagging down motorists to give them sobriety tests.
Before that Jewell had been a deputy for the Habersham County sheriff’s department where following a
reprimand for his behavior, he was reduced in rank to
jail guard. Since that time he had worked in security
guard positions at Piedmont and for other security
companies, including the Olympic post he held at the
time of the explosion.
It soon became clear that the FBI was determined to
nail Jewell for the terrorist bombing (although FBI
agents apparently made it appear to Jewell they considered him an ally in the hunt for the culprit). The open
speculation fostered by the authorities’ actions was that
Jewell had himself planted the bomb, then spotted it so
that he could then be credited with saving many innocent lives.
Atlanta children murders
Over a period of 24 months, from mid-1979 to mid1981, a total of 29 young blacks, most of whom were
considerably under the age of 20, disappeared in
Atlanta, Ga. Twenty-eight of them were found dead.
The string of murders terrified the city and galvanized
the rest of the country into outpourings of support
and sympathy. The main national effort came in the
form of green ribbons, “symbolizing life,” which
appeared on millions of lapels everywhere, worn by
blacks and whites. Even shopping bag ladies in New
York City were seen wearing the ribbons as well as
green-lettered buttons proclaiming “SAVE THE
CHILDREN.”
Vice President George Bush journeyed to Atlanta to
demonstrate an extraordinary degree of national concern. President Ronald Reagan announced the authorization of a $1.5 million grant to aid the investigation,
and huge rewards were offered for information leading
to the capture of the killer or killers. Celebrities, such as
Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr., contributed
45
ATLANTIC City Conference
loud splash in the water. According to the police, when
asked if he had thrown anything into the river, Williams
said he had dumped some garbage. However, he subsequently insisted, “I told them I had dropped nothing in
the river.” Two days later, the body of 27-year-old
Nathaniel Cater floated to shore about a mile downstream from the bridge, within 500 yards of where the
body of 21-year-old Jimmy Ray Payne had been found
the month before.
On June 21 Williams was arrested and charged with
murdering Cater. An Atlanta grand jury indicted him
on July 17 for both the Payne and Cater slayings.
Clearly, the authorities acted as though several of the
killings had been solved. In August, Williams pleaded
not guilty to the charges.
By September, when the new school year started,
there had been no further unaccountable murders of
young blacks. Teachers reported that unlike the previous year there was hardly any talk among the pupils
about the unsolved murders. A 12-year-old boy, Owen
Malone, was quoted as saying: “It seems like it’s over.
Last year we talked a lot about the case; we got safety
tips. The students were afraid of getting snatched.” But
this year, he observed, “It was all right.”
On February 27, 1982 Williams was convicted of
the two murders and sentenced to life imprisonment.
money to pay for investigations and aid to the families
of the victims, and thousands of letters containing
checks, dollar bills and even coins streamed into
Atlanta.
The official manhunt was marked by bickering
between local and federal investigators. FBI director
William H. Webster riled local feelings when he
announced that four of the cases, apparently unrelated
to the others, had been solved. The next day a bureau
agent in Macon, Ga. said the four children had been
killed by their parents. This brought an angry outcry
from the public, demanding to know why no arrest
had been made. None was made, Atlanta mayor Maynard Jackson said, because there was not enough evidence to justify an arrest. He complained the FBI head
had undermined the public’s confidence in the investigation.
A large proportion of the deaths were so similar they
indicated the likelihood that many of the victims had
died by the same hand or hands. Nineteen of the 28
were believed to have died from strangulation or other
forms of asphyxiation. Nine were found in rivers, nude
or almost nude. More than a dozen had traces of similar fibers, from a blanket or carpet, on their bodies.
Evidence of dog hairs was found on a number of the
bodies.
Numerous suspects, some found thousands of miles
from Atlanta, were quizzed, but without success.
Finally, on June 3, 1981 23-year-old Wayne B.
Williams was standing in an Atlanta phone booth when
FBI agents appeared and “insisted,” according to
Williams, that he come downtown for questioning.
Word of his interrogation spread quickly through
Atlanta, and for the first time many felt the hunt for the
mass killer might be over. However, after being held for
12 hours, Williams, who had worked as a TV cameraman and part-time talent scout and booking agent, was
released. Publicly, officials said there was insufficient
evidence to hold him, but privately they implied he was
still a definite suspect.
It appears that Williams was picked up because
investigators feared he might destroy suspected criminal evidence. During his interrogation Williams submitted to three lie detector tests, which, he later said he
was told, indicated “all my answers were deceptive.”
The findings, Williams explained to the press, might
have been caused by his nervousness. Following his
release, authorities obtained a warrant to search
Williams’ home and confiscated a yellow blanket and a
purple robe and collected samples of dog hairs and
fibers from a bedspread and carpet.
Williams had first come to police attention on May
22. Around 3 A.M. officers staking out a bridge across
the Chattahoochee River stopped his car after hearing a
Atlantic City Conference
underworld convention
Perhaps the most important criminal conference of the
American underworld was held during three days in
May 1929 in Atlantic City, N.J. Its deliberations were
certainly more important than even the famous conference called in Havana by the deported Lucky Luciano
in 1946 or those scheduled for the ill-fated conference
in Apalachin, N.Y. in 1957.
The meeting was hosted by the boss of Atlantic City,
Nucky Johnson, who was able to guarantee no police
interference. For three days the overlords of American
crime discussed their future plans in the Hotel President’s
conference rooms and various hospitality suites, which
Johnson kept stocked with whiskey, food and hostesses.
Chicago’s Al Capone and his “brain,” Greasy
Thumb Guzik, attended the conference. Other delegates included King Solomon of Boston, Nig Rosen and
Boo-Boo Hoff of Philadelphia, Moe Dalitz and Chuck
Polizzi of Cleveland, Abe Bernstein of Detroit’s Purple
Gang, John Lazia (representing Tom Pendergast) of
Kansas City and Longy Zwillman of New Jersey. The
biggest contingent represented New York and included
Johnny Torrio, Luciano, Frank Costello, Joe Adonis,
Louis Lepke, Dutch Schultz, gambler Frank Erickson,
Meyer Lansky, Vince Mangano, Frank Scalise and
Albert Anastasia. Notably absent and uninvited were
46
ATTICA prison riot
the two New York Mafia leaders then engaged in a
bloody battle to decide who would be the so-called
boss of bosses—Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria and
Salvatore Maranzano. Both were what Luciano and
others among the new crop of Italian gangsters referred
to contemptuously as “Mustache Petes,” men who
failed to understand the need to work with non-Italian
crime leaders.
At the convention, plans were laid for criminal
activity following the end of Prohibition, and it was
decided that the gangs would emphasize getting into
the legitimate end of the bootlegging business by
acquiring distilleries, breweries and import franchises.
“After all,” Luciano said, “who knew more about the
liquor business than us?” It was also determined that
gambling would become a major enterprise. The country was sliced up into exclusive franchises for both
purposes. Groundwork for deals with Moses Annenberg, who controlled the dissemination of horse racing
news, was laid. Labor and protection rackets were also
plotted. One thing everyone agreed upon was that all
these activities would be apportioned peacefully. The
earlier success of the Seven Group on peacefully
resolving the bootlegging wars was held up as a model
for the future.
It was further agreed that gang violence had to be
cooled down. Capone was lectured on the pointless
folly of incidents such as the bloody St. Valentine’s Day
Massacre, which produced far too much publicity and
heat for comfort. Under pressure from the other gang
leaders, Capone even agreed to submit to arrest and a
short jail term for some minor offense in order to
reduce the heat. All the participants concurred that the
next logical step would be the establishment of a
national crime syndicate; in fact, the meeting ended on
this harmonious note. The call for reduced violence was
meant seriously, but all understood that the LucianoLansky group would have to use considerable force to
wrest control from the old Mafia dons. At this task
they did not fail.
While the Atlantic City Conference was earthshaking in its effect on the development of American crime
syndicates, historians have always been impressed or
amused by how casual some of the deliberations were.
Many took place on the beach, with the top mobsters
in America walking barefoot through the water, their
pants legs rolled up, somberly dividing an empire and
deciding who was to live and who was to die.
See also: SEVEN GROUP.
Facility, 40 miles east of Buffalo, N.Y., in September
1971 was certainly one of the most tragic and most
controversial. The riot was finally smashed by a massive assault of 1,500 heavily armed sheriff’s deputies,
state troopers and prison guards during which 28 prisoners and nine guards being held hostage were killed.
State officials claimed that the guards had had their
throats cut by the convicts and that one of them had
been emasculated.
The riot began on September 9, when about 1,000
prisoners among the inmate population of 2,254
seized a portion of the prison compound, in the
process taking more than 30 guards and civilian
workers captive. The convicts presented a series of
demands, including higher wages and greater political
and religious freedom. In addition, they demanded
total amnesty and no reprisals for the riot. Negotiations took place between the inmates and Russell G.
Oswald, the state commissioner of corrections. Most
of the deliberations were handled through the liaison
of an “observers committee,” consisting of representatives of government, several newspapers, the radical
Young Lords and Black Muslims, and other social and
professional groups.
Oswald accepted most of the prisoners’ demands but
refused to fire Attica superintendent Vincent Mancusi
and rejected total amnesty. Gov. Nelson Rockefeller
also refused the amnesty demand and rejected the
requests of the observers committee that he come to
Attica and personally join in the negotiations.
Early on the morning of September 13, Oswald read
an ultimatum that listed his concessions and demanded
the release of the hostages. The prisoners answered by
displaying a number of the hostages with knives held to
their throats. The bloody but successful assault followed. During the 24 hours after the assault, state officials made much of the convicts’ violence and the
sadistic murders of the hostages during the attack.
Then came the official autopsies, which showed that
none of the dead hostages had had their throats cut and
none had been mutilated. All had been shot. In further
contradiction of the state version, it was found that the
prisoners had been in possession of no guns. All the
hostages apparently had been killed in the crossfire of
the police attackers.
Angered state officials summoned other medical
examiners to check the findings of the Monroe County
medical examiner, Dr. John F. Edland, who reported
state troopers had stood over him while he performed
the autopsies, evidently to guard against any cover-up
of the supposed throat-slashing evidence. Commissioner Oswald, who previously had told reporters that
“atrocities were committed on the hostages,” could not
believe Dr. Edland’s findings. According to one newspa-
Attica prison riot
If not the most violent prison riot in American penal
history, the uprising at the Attica State Correctional
47
ATTICA prison riot
Photo shows police and correction officers attempting to reestablish security at Attica, while dead and wounded
inmates lie on the catwalks. Some of the wounded did not receive medical treatment for four hours.
per, “He suggested that some sinister force—conceivably—motivated Dr. Edland to heap blame and shame
on the authorities who decided to storm the prison.”
The other medical examiners called in were also subjected to close observation but concurred in Dr.
Edland’s findings.
After long public hearings a congressional subcommittee issued a report in June 1973 that criticized the
methods used by prison officials and the police and
condemned the brutality and inadequate medical treatment given wounded convicts after the attack. Previously, a nine-member citizens fact-finding committee,
chaired by Robert B. McKay, dean of New York University Law School, had filed a final report that condemned Rockefeller’s failure to go to Attica as well as
the chaotic nature of the attack. The committee
declared the riot was a spontaneous uprising stemming
from legitimate grievances.
The autopsies’ findings, as well as the later reports,
stunned the small village where the prison stood and
most of the guards lived. Hatred toward the prisoners
shifted to angry disbelief and in many cases to vitriolic
accusations that the authorities had recklessly risked
lives by ordering the retaking of the prison.
Several indictments followed, and on December 30,
1976 Gov. Hugh L. Carey pardoned seven former
Attica inmates and commuted the sentence of an eighth
in a move to “close the book” on the bloody uprising.
He also declared that no disciplinary action would be
taken against 20 law officers who had participated in
the attack.
The closing of the book was not complete, however. In 1977 the first of a series of lawsuits was filed
on behalf of a number of guards who were taken
hostage and relatives of hostages who were killed.
They contended law enforcement officials used excessive force in retaking the prison and asked $20 million
in damages. The trial was delayed a full year after
appellate courts ruled the state had to produce the
“debriefing” statements the guards and troopers made
shortly after the riot. Another delay, possibly for a
year or more, was indicated when appeals were filed
48
AVERILL, James
auto theft
on behalf of 19 guards and troopers who had been
cited for contempt by the trial judge after they took
the Fifth Amendment on questions concerning the
retaking of the prison.
Eventually these claims were settled, but dragging
on were the claims of inmates that they had been horribly abused not only in the retaking of the prison but
in the aftermath. The inmates contended that what
followed was an orgy of reprisals carried out by
prison guards and law enforcement officers, many of
the charges later being substantiated. Prisoners were
forced to crawl naked over broken glass, and one
inmate had a screwdriver shoved repeatedly into his
rectum. Possibly the worst abused inmate was Frank
B. Smith, who was assaulted, burned and subjected to
threats of castration and death. In 2000, Smith, then
66 and working in Queens, N.Y. as a paralegal dedicated to prisoners’ rights cases, proclaimed victory in
the fight to win a settlement for suffering endured by
the prisoners.
While the offered settlement figure of $8 million for
the prisoners and $4 million for their lawyers was well
below what the ex-prisoners had sought, it seemed certain to win approval by the prisoners who otherwise
would see the case dragged out for many more years.
By 2000 an estimated 400 of the inmates were already
dead, but about 400 others were to share in the awards
to be determined on an individual basis by a federal
judge. While the awards were expected to vary widely,
they would average out to $20,000 per individual.
Most of the prisoners were believed to feel that more
important than the money award was the fact that the
settlement held the government accountable for its
actions.
While the settlement proposal was subject to appeals
in some cases, it remained obvious that the name Attica
and the attending stain would last in the public’s conscience for years to come.
Aurora, Nevada
The cost of the stolen car racket in America is now
put at more than $4 billion a year, and that figure
only includes direct monetary loss, excluding the
higher insurance premiums all automobile owners
must pay. A motor vehicle is stolen every 25 seconds,
and the annual total is now over 1 million, double the
total in 1967. Generally, cars are stolen for the salvage
value of their parts rather than for direct resale. An
automobile that could resell for $10,000 can be taken
apart and its component parts sold for almost twice
that amount.
While it is true that most auto thefts are perpetrated
by teenage joyriders and the large majority of stolen
cars are recovered—although often with considerable
damage done to them—the recovery rate for professionally stolen cars is close to zero. It is not unusual for
a ring of auto thieves to steal and dispose of as many as
2,000 vehicles a year. Some cars are stolen to order;
e.g., a ring furnishes autos on specific order from a
dealer for immediate delivery to customers. At no time
does any of the hot cars have to grace the dealer’s lot.
Most professional car theft rings have sufficient artistry
to alter motor numbers in a manner that will deceive
every test but fluoroscope analysis.
Probably the most prolific auto thief was Gabriel
“Bla Bla” Vigorito, who masterminded a highly efficient organization in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. Bla Bla
—so named because of his incessant boasting about his
family—did a land office business in hot cars, shipping
more than $250,000 worth to Norway alone in the
1930s. He also transported altered stolen vehicles to
Russia and Persia and shipped a special order to a warlord general in Sinkiang Province, China.
Standard operating procedure for car thieves is the
salvage racket. Auto graveyards and body shops are
searched for wrecks of late-model cars already written
off by insurance companies. The thieves buy the wrecks
for a pittance, but more important, they buy a good
and legal title. Then they steal duplicate models of each
wreck, install the salvaged serial plate, restamp the
motors to coincide with the salvage documents and
attach salvaged license plates. The stolen car now has a
complete new identity.
While the resale of stolen cars can be profitable, the
“chop shop” racket has really come of age, as criminals
have learned that on a nationwide black market the
sale of parts from completely dismantled stolen cars
can be even more lucrative. Once a stolen car has been
reduced to its parts, no identification is possible. Just as
important is the fact that the gang’s operations can
undergo a much greater division of labor, so that various members of the outfit do not even know each other.
For instance, a spotter merely locates a likely candidate
lawless mining town
As far as gold-mining towns went, Aurora, Nev. may
not have been much more violent than others, but
because accurate records were kept in Aurora, statistics
offer considerable evidence on how wild the West really
was. Founded in 1860, Aurora’s heyday lasted only
four years and then the gold seams ran out, but in that
time, it managed to bury exactly 65 persons in its
graveyard. Half were described as the victims of gunshot, and the rest expired of such afflictions as knife
wounds, mining mishaps and “accidents.” Aurora
lasted another 90 years as a ghost town; the last of its
buildings were vandalized in the 1950s.
49
AVERILL, James
for a theft and then disappears from the scene. The
actual heister then shows up to drive the car away to a
drop, and another driver sees that the vehicle reaches
the chop house. The choppers do their job without ever
coming into contact with the sellers, who move the
parts back into commerce.
If identification numbers were put on all body components, a responsibility auto manufacturers have
resisted, chop shop operators would find life much
more difficult. Cynical car thieves claim that
automakers have a vested interest in the stolen car
racket’s continued existence since it puts hundreds of
thousands of motorists back in the market well ahead
of schedule.
See also: DYER ACT.
Averill, James (?–1889) lynch victim
Jim Averill, whose lynching along with Cattle Kate
Watson helped foment Wyoming’s Johnson County
50
B
War of the 1890s, may or may not have had a shady
past when he took advantage of the Homestead Act
and settled on the banks of the Sweetwater. There are
conflicting reports about his background, but in that
respect, he differed little from many of the homesteaders seeking a new start in life. There was even a report
that he had attended or been a graduate of Cornell University, or some similar institution of learning. But it
was evident that Averill was an articulate man, and he
soon became the spokesman of the homesteaders in the
Sweetwater Valley. He wrote blistering letters to the
Casper Daily Mail in which he condemned the power
of the cattle barons. When Averill became a leader in a
futile fight to stop passage of the Maverick Bill, under
which all unbranded cattle were made the property of
the Stockmen’s Association, it was clear the big cattlemen had to silence him. They did so by lynching Averill
and an enterprising prostitute friend of his, Cattle Kate,
who had set up a one-girl brothel in a cabin near his.
The story the stockmen planted was that Cattle Kate
was a big-time bandit queen and Averill her top aide
and that the two of them were running a massive
rustling operation. The twin lynching proved to be only
the opening move in an effort to clear the range of
homesteaders, or “rustlers,” and led to the Johnson
County War.
See also: CATTLE KATE, JOHNSON COUNTY WAR.
a town in western New Mexico, was constantly being terrorized by cowboys from the Slaughter spread. Among
other things the cowhands castrated a Mexican for a
prank and then used another man for target practice when
he tried to intervene. These stories were told to Baca by his
brother-in-law, who was deputy sheriff of Frisco.
Enraged, Baca put on his brother-in-law’s badge and
on November 30, 1884 headed for Frisco. He found
the town living in terror and being constantly shot up
by cowboys. When one of them shot Baca’s hat off, the
self-appointed deputy promptly arrested him. The next
day 80 cowboys descended on Frisco to get the “dirty
little Mex.” Baca placed all the women and children in
the church and prepared to meet his attackers in an
ancient adobe hut. The gunplay started at 9 A.M. and
continued for 36 hours, during which time an estimated
4,000 bullets were poured into the shack. The plucky
Baca killed four of his assailants, wounded eight others
and came through the battle unscathed. When two regular lawmen appeared, the remaining cowboys retreated
and Baca was placed under arrest. Baca was tried twice
in connection with the great shoot-out, but even in the
Anglo courts, he was found innocent. A hero to his people, Baca was later elected sheriff of Socorro County
and enjoyed a political career of 50 years.
badger game
sex swindle
The badger game is an ancient con, worked in many
variations in every land. The standard modus operandi
is simple: man picks up woman; woman takes him to a
room; woman’s “husband” comes in suddenly, confronts lovers and demands satisfaction. He gets it in the
form of the frightened lover’s money.
Baca, Elfego (1865–1945) gunfighter and lawman
In his native New Mexico Territory, Baca, at 19, was the
chief participant and main target of one of the truly memorable gun battles of the frontier West. At the time, Frisco,
51
BADMAN from Bodie
Badman from Bodie
Perhaps the greatest organizer of the badger game
was a notorious 19th-century New York City gangster
named Shang Draper, who was also an accomplished
bank robber. In the 1870s Draper operated a saloon on
Sixth Avenue at 29th Street. From it he directed the
activities of 30 women and girls in a combined badger
and panel game operation headquartered at a house in
the vicinity of Prince and Wooster Streets.
In the panel game, a thief would sneak into the room
while the woman and her male friend were occupied in
bed and steal the man’s money and valuables from his
discarded clothing. The sneak thief would gain entry to
the room through a hidden panel in the wall out of
sight from the bed.
However, if the man appeared really prosperous,
Draper preferred working the badger game, because the
stakes were potentially much higher. Draper added a
new wrinkle to the game by using young girls, from age
nine to about 14. Instead of an angry husband breaking
into the room, the young girl’s irate “parents” would
burst in. The “mother” would immediately seize the
child and smash her face, usually her blows would be
hard enough to make the child bleed from the nose or
mouth. While this convincing act was taking place, the
equally angry “father” would shove his fist under the
man’s nose and say, “I’m going to put you in prison for
a hundred years!”
Men victimized by this technique often could be
induced to pay thousands in hush money. Draper himself loved to tell about how he stood in a telegraph
office with a quivering out-of-towner waiting for his
bank to wire him $9,000 so he could pay off a badger
game. It was estimated that Draper’s badger game
conned 100 or more men each month. The police
finally broke up Draper’s racket in the early 1880s, but
the hardy badger game easily survived the demise of his
operation.
Another colorful practitioner was a Philadelphian
known as “Raymond the Cleric,” who found the pose
of a betrayed minister-husband to be more lucrative.
While he prayed in a corner for divine forgiveness for
his errant spouse and her sinful lover, a couple of
“members of his congregation” would appear a bit
more threatening, and the sinner usually demonstrated
his repentance with a hefty contribution.
To this day, the badger game, in its pure form and in
dozens of variations, is one of the country’s most
widely practiced confidence games, although given the
compromising position of the victim, one that rarely
comes to the attention of the police.
See also: PANEL HOUSES.
western bogeyman
During the last three decades of the 19th century, western mothers would scare their mischievous children
into line by invoking the specter of the “Badman from
Bodie,” who had to have a victim every day. Unlike the
more traditional bogeyman, the Badman from Bodie
was rooted in reality. Bodie, Calif. was one of the
West’s most lawless towns reportedly averaging at least
one killing a day for 20 years. Even if that estimation
was somewhat off, threatening nasty children with the
Badman from Bodie was apparently an effective instrument of parental control.
See also: BODIE, CALIFORNIA.
bagman
payoff man
Originally, the word bagman was applied to commercial travelers, or salesmen, in England during the 18th
century. At first, it was used with the same connotation
in America, but the term was gradually applied more to
underworld figures who carried large cases or bags in
which they toted off stolen goods. These fences often
had to pay off the police to operate and carried the
bribe money in their bags. Bagman was soon used to
describe either the man paying a bribe or the one
accepting and subsequently dividing it among all the
parties involved.
For years during the heyday of the Capone mob,
one of the chores of Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik was
to sit nightly in Chicago’s St. Hubert’s Old English
Grill and Chop House and hand over money to district
police captains or the sergeants who collected the graft
for them, as well as the bagmen for various mayors
and their aides. Another famous bagman was Joe
Cooney, better known as Joe the Coon. He dispensed
money within New York City police headquarters for
the emerging Lucky Luciano–Frank Costello–Meyer
Lansky–Joe Adonis crime empire. It was one thing to
distribute payoffs to lower-ranking police officers and
politicians but quite another to bring payoffs directly
into the office of the police commissioner, as Lucky
Luciano was later to reveal. Cooney was chosen for
the job because, as a red-haired freckle-faced Irishman,
it was easy for him to enter the commissioner’s office
each week in a maintenance man’s uniform to hand
over the sum of $10,000 in small bills (later said to
have increased to $20,000 a week during the tenures
of Joseph A. Warren and Grover A. Whalen). Joe the
Coon carried the money in a plain brown bag as
though it were his lunch. To make him even more
inconspicuous, Luciano instructed Joe to change a
lightbulb occasionally.
52
BAILEY, F. Lee
During the Kefauver Committee crime hearings in
1950–51, Frank Bals, named seventh deputy police
commissioner during the reign of Mayor Bill O’Dwyer,
admitted (and subsequently retracted) to the committee
that while his duties and those of his staff of 12 were to
gather intelligence about gambling and corruption in
the police department, he and his men played a far different role. Bals stated that they were actually bagmen
for the New York Police Department, collecting payoffs
from gamblers and doling out the funds throughout
police headquarters.
The most famous bag woman in criminal history
was Virginia Hill, that bedmate of gangsters, who
promptly carried off much of their money to secret
bank accounts in Switzerland.
in almost every station house tipped off bondsmen
whenever there was a bailable arrest, and some even
passed out bondsmen’s business cards. Sometimes,
thanks to a cooperative arresting officer, a bondsman
could get to the station before the officer brought in the
prisoner for booking. In most jurisdictions today, a
bondsman must wait until somebody comes and asks
him to put up a bond. Of course, many bondsmen have
their methods of circumventing the legal obstacles to
soliciting business. They often hire runners to hang
around the courthouse and whisper to relatives of prisoners, “I can see that you get a bond fast.” If the person
bites, the runner guides him to the bondsman. Trying to
prove a bondsman hired a runner is, as authorities have
found, practically impossible.
When a bondsman posts a bond, he gets all the security he can from the defendant. He will take possession
of such things as automobile ownership papers and
bankbooks, requiring the accused to sign an agreement
that no money may be withdrawn from the account
without the bondsman’s signature as well. Call girls
must often put up their jewelry and furs. Bondsmen
have also taken such items as manufacturing dies, bulletproof vests, guns, war souvenirs, pornographic collections, rare comic books, out-of-print books and
toupees. One legendary New York bondsman was said
to specialize in exceptionally hot items including packets of heroin, police pistols and badges, blackmail
material, phony draft cards, stolen license plates and
bogus ration books. The tale is often told that he made
a fortune renting out counterfeiting plates he was holding against a client’s $25,000 bail.
Organized crime has never had any trouble raising
bail; a gang will often use one or more bondsmen to
handle its bail business. Stitch McCarthy, who for years
held the title of Bail Baron of New York, was a close
friend of Jack “Legs” Diamond and did most of the bail
bonding for Diamond and his men. Once, Mad Dog
Coll went gunning for Diamond when Legs was out on
bail, and McCarthy became frightened that Diamond
might skip out to avoid a fatal battle. Magnanimously,
McCarthy insisted Diamond hide out in his home.
Large bonds are meaningless for top crime figures.
On one occasion Johnny Torrio’s devoted mother
paraded into federal district court and calmly peeled off
97 $1,000 bills, four $500 bills and 10 $100 bills to
make a cool $100,000 bail for her mobster son. Torrio
kissed mom on the cheek and they walked out.
A major criticism of the bail system is that the poor
are generally victimized since they usually are unable
to provide enough security to satisfy a bondsman.
One answer to this—although a judge who resorts to
it risks being labeled a low bail jurist—is to limit the
bail to the fee that would normally be paid to a
bail
Bail is a method whereby a person awaiting trial on a
criminal charge is allowed to go free upon the posting
of security sufficient to ensure his or her appearance
in court. Most state constitutions specifically provide for the right to bail in all cases except capital
crimes. Since the majority of persons arrested cannot
come up with sufficient cash to cover a bail bond,
they must patronize a surety company or professional
bondsmen to obtain bail. The legal cost for such a
bond may be 5 or 10 percent of the bail, but many
bondsmen demand and get more. These bondsmen
justify their exorbitant fees by claiming that because
their business involves such a high risk, they would go
broke if they had a half-dozen “skips”—persons who
fail to make an appearance at the appropriate time—
in quick succession.
Exposés of the bail bond racket are common. Criminologists H. E. Barnes and N. K. Teeters state: “Professional bondsmen are usually parties to a questionable,
if not downright corrupt, political system and usually
have no appreciable assets with which to go to bail for
those who must later appear for another hearing. They
offer what is called a straw bond, that is, they present
evidence that collateral exists which is nonexistent or is
insufficient for the purpose.” In one instance a bondsman in New York City offered as security a piece of
property that, according to its street address, would
have been in the middle of the Hudson River. Bondsmen have also been found to use the same property as
security for 15 to 20 defendants concurrently. In cases
where a defendant skipped, a small bribe generally
could get the record of the bond removed and the security returned to the bondsman.
In the old days bondsmen were legally permitted to
solicit business openly and aggressively; in the process,
they put the storied ambulance chaser to shame. Cops
53
BAKER, Cullen M.
bondsman. For the poor the incentive of getting back
the equivalent of the bondsman’s fee is sufficient to
guarantee reappearance. While critics of low bail
protest the system simply returns criminals to the
streets, they seldom concern themselves about the
abuses of high bail. A 43-year-old truck driver in New
York who was held on $75,000 bail for two charges
of murder remained in jail for 14 months. He was
then proved totally innocent. Had he been from a
higher-income group, he would not have been falsely
imprisoned for more than a year.
The worst abuse of high bail is its use by prosecutors
to set a climate for plea bargaining. Legal experts agree
that a defendant kept in jail suffers from depression
about his fate and becomes less resistant to the prosecution’s offer of a lighter sentence, especially when time
served is credited against the term involved.
See also: ARREST PROCEDURES.
angry. No smiling man can properly ask for another
man’s death.”
Bailey is accomplished at what has been long recognized as a defense lawyer’s most important function:
picking the right jurors. In the first Coppolino trial, one
of his notable successes, he asked prospective jurors if
they would be prejudiced because the defendant “may
have stepped out of line” during his marriage. One man
replied, “I step out of line myself occasionally.” When
the courtroom laughter subsided, the man added, “You
look like you might have played around a little yourself.”
“Right there and then,” Bailey later said, “I knew he
was my man, and I grabbed him. For some reason, the
prosecution didn’t challenge. And when the jury went
out, my man dragged his chair to the window and said,
‘I vote not guilty. Call me when the rest of you are
ready to agree with me.’”
However, Bailey does not rely on such lucky happenstance. At many of his trials he posts beside him a hypnotist aide who advises him on juror selection and who
allegedly is able to tell Bailey how a potential female
juror will react to a lawyer based on the way she
crosses her legs when answering questions.
Some observers say that in recent years the glow has
rubbed off Bailey. He reputedly was chosen to defend
Patty Hearst only because the family’s first choice,
Racehorse Haynes, had asked for double the fee Bailey
wanted. But Bailey’s detractors are no doubt motivated,
in large part, by jealousy. His reputation with the public is probably best typified by one prospective juror’s
comment under questioning: “I think the man’s guilty
already. He wouldn’t have the most important lawyer
in the U.S. otherwise.”
See also: ANTHONY H. DESALVO, PATRICIA HEARST.
Bailey, F. Lee (1933– ) defense attorney
Not quite as flamboyant as some other present-day
criminal defense lawyers, such as Richard “Racehorse”
Haynes and Percy Foreman, F. Lee Bailey is nonetheless
recognized as one of the best in the business. Virtually a
specialist on homicide, he has, at least until recent
years, flown from case to case, around the country in
his own private jet, causing courtroom foes and some
of the more staid members of the bar to nickname him
“the Flying Mouth.”
Bailey has proven to be a miracle worker in court:
he freed Dr. Sam Sheppard after he had been convicted of murdering his wife when represented by other
well-regarded attorneys; he won acquittal for army
captain Ernest L. Medina on charges of killing South
Vietnamese civilians at My Lai; and perhaps most
remarkably of all, he prevailed upon the state of Massachusetts to try Albert DeSalvo, the notorious Boston
Strangler, on noncapital charges.
Of course, Bailey has had some notable failures—
because, his supporters say, he refuses to run away
from the really tough cases. Thus, he lost the Patricia
Hearst case and one out of two murder cases against
Dr. Carl Coppolino. In his courtroom oratory Bailey
lacks the bombast typical of some of today’s leading
defense lawyers. He is not given to cheap moralizing
and has been described by Newsweek magazine “as
unsentimental as a cat, and equally predatory.” Bailey
is also cunning. In pre-1972 murder cases—before the
Supreme Court temporarily halted the death penalty—
he went out of his way to get prosecutors to smile amiably during the trial. “To ask for the death penalty
successfully,” he explained, “a prosecutor must be like
an Old Testament figure—deeply serious, righteously
Baker, Cullen M. (1838–1868) outlaw and murderer
A sallow-faced killer, Cullen Baker did most of his
“Civil War fighting” as the head of a Texas gang of
outlaws who called themselves Confederate Irregulars
in the years immediately after Appomattox. The band
was really little more than a group of farm looters, but
they pacified their fellow Texans by occasionally killing
some Yankee soldiers or upstart “nigger police.”
Baker hadn’t been much of a patriot during the war.
He had been drafted into the Confederate Army in Cass
County, where he had lived since the age of four. Actually, being drafted had its advantages: since he had
killed a man in Arkansas two years earlier, the army
provided a good hiding place for Baker. He soon
deserted, however. After killing two Union soldiers in
Spanish Bluffs, Tex., Baker figured a good place to hide
would be in Lincoln’s army, so he joined the Union
54
BAKKER, Rev. Jim
pirates Baker, Berrouse and LaCroix were hanged in
Philadelphia.
cause. Not long after, he deserted again and joined a
group of Confederate irregulars. After the war Baker
saw no reason to stop his activities. He and his gang of
vicious gunmen terrorized much of Texas, preying
mostly on local farmers. They were still regarded in
some circles as local heroes because they were pursued
by Northern troops and black police, several of whom
they killed in various fights.
Late in 1867, Bill Longley, a young gunfighter on the
run from the law, joined the irregulars. He was to
become the infamous Wild Bill Longley. Young Longley
stayed with Baker about a year, leaving just before
Baker’s death. During that period Baker had developed a
strong liking for a girl named Belle Foster, who did not
return his attention but instead focused her affection on
a crippled schoolteacher named Thomas Orr. In December 1868 Baker kidnapped Orr at gunpoint and hung
him from a tree. Fortunately for Orr, he was found
before he strangled to death. This act set local opinion
against Baker. Trying to hang Orr hardly qualified as an
anti-Yankee act. Orr and a posse of local citizens took
off after Baker, and when they cornered him, Orr was
given the privilege of shooting him full of holes, permanently dissolving Baker’s Confederate Irregulars.
See also: WILLIAM P. LONGLEY.
Baker, Rosetta (1866–1930) murder victim
Few murder trial verdicts were ever based so much on
racial stereotypes as that in the Rosetta Baker case,
although this was one of the few times the decision
went in favor of a member of a minority.
A wealthy San Francisco widow in her sixties, the
woman was found dead by her Chinese houseboy, Liu
Fook. In the course of their investigation, detectives
zeroed in on Liu Fook, who was about the same age as
the victim, as the only logical suspect. Witnesses
revealed that Liu Fook and his “boss missy” had quarreled often, and on the day of the murder, he had
scratches on his face and an injured finger—as though
it had been bitten. In addition to that, a broken heel
and a shirt button found on the floor beside the body
belonged to the houseboy.
In spite of this and still more incriminating evidence,
the jury at Liu Fook’s trial in 1931 acquitted him. Some
of the jurors said they had simply been swayed by the
defense lawyer’s repeated insistence that Liu Fook
could not have been guilty because no Chinese
employed in this country had ever murdered his
employer. Immediately after the trial, Liu Fook took a
fast boat for Hong Kong.
Baker, Joseph (?–1800) pirate and murderer
Pirates who plied their murderous trade along the
American coast around 1800 had one modus operandi
that was particularly insidious as well as effective. Used
by the freelance pirate Joseph Baker, it called for a
sailor to sign aboard a small vessel, subvert a few of the
crew, kill the honest sailors in a mutiny and sail for
pirate waters, where the craft and cargo could be disposed of at a handsome profit.
Little is known of Baker’s early career except that
he was a Canadian whose real name apparently was
Boulanger. For Baker, piracy was definitely profitable
until he tried it on Capt. William Wheland of the
schooner Eliza. Having joined the small crew, Baker,
with the aid of two other sailors named Berrouse and
LaCroix, killed the first mate and wounded Capt.
Wheland. Wheland was allowed to live after promising that he would sail the ship into pirate waters, since
Baker’s seamanship did not extend to the art of navigation. A cunning captive, Wheland awaited the
proper moment and then managed to lock Baker’s
confederates below deck. Seizing an ax, the captain
drove Baker high into the rigging of the ship and
forced him to remain there for 16 days in a deadly
game of cat and mouse. By that time Wheland was
able to bring his vessel into port. On May 9, 1800
Baker Estate
great swindle
One of the most lucrative and enduring swindles in
American history began just after the Civil War with
the establishment of the first of numerous Baker
Estate associations. These associations were joined
and supported by victims conned into believing they
were the rightful heirs to a $300 million fortune in
Philadelphia.
The fortune was entirely imaginary, but one association after another roped in suckers with claims that the
estate was just about settled. Exactly how much money
victims lost to the criminal operators of the fraud is difficult to calculate; the best estimate is that some 40 different Baker Estate associations took at least a
half-million persons for a minimum of $25 million in
“legal expenses” during the peak years of the fraud,
from 1866 to 1936. During that period the estate swindle had very little interference from the law, but finally
in 1936 the federal government launched a vigorous
effort to stamp it out through many arrests and a massive publicity campaign. Since then similar con games
have appeared from time to time, but none has ever
been as successful as the Baker Estate swindle was during its early years.
55
BALL, Joe
Baker’s Confederate Irregulars
priests. I just feel like there was massive fraud here, and
it’s going to have to be punished.”
Once again, Tammy Faye promised to stand by her
man, but she later filed for divorce and planned to
marry a businessman who likewise divorced his wife. In
the meantime, Hahn had appeared on the cover of
Playboy magazine and was paid an estimated $750,000
for a photo display and an interview in which she
informed readers that “I’m not a bimbo.” She later
devoted her talents to hosting a late-night show advising viewers via special 800 numbers how to find
“love.”
After Jim Bakker was freed, he remarried and
devoted himself to activities helping the unfortunate, an
undertaking that won him considerable accolades from
the media.
See CULLEN M.
BAKER.
Bakker, Rev. Jim (1940– ) “Praise the Lord for Suckers”
On a par with the bank and Wall Street scoundrels of
the 1980s, some in televangelist circles were also grabbing headlines as scamsters. At the top of the list was
the Reverend Jim Bakker and his hectic sexual and
Ponzi-like shenanigans. Bakker had built up a television
network, the PTL (for “Praise the Lord,” or “People
That Love”), that reached more than 13 million American households.
It was a sexual dalliance that precipitated Bakker’s
downfall. In December 1980, the youthful-looking
Bakker had met a 21-year-old comely brunet named
Jessica Hahn, a secretary at a Pentecostal church in
Massapequa, N.Y., during a visit to Clearwater, Fla. At
the time, Bakker’s 19-year marriage to his wife, Tammy
Faye, who cohosted his religious television show, was
rough going. Bakker and Hahn had sex, and to hear
Hahn tell it, she suffered great emotional distress as a
result of the encounter. In any event, her pain and suffering were so great that $265,000 was to be paid her
as compensation for her silence.
Bakker’s secret remained safe for a time; the story
was eventually broken in the Charlotte (N.C.)
Observer, a newspaper near the headquarters of the
PTL ministry. In addition to the television show featuring Jim and Tammy Faye, the PTL empire included
Heritage USA, a Christian resort complex and amusement park in Fort Mill, S.C. In the PTL’s peak year,
the ministry took in $129 million, and in the recent
few years, it had garnered $158 million by offering
promises of lifetime vocations—which Bakker could
not provide. Instead, huge sums were diverted to the
couple, which allowed the Bakkers to live in opulence. In March 1987, Bakker was forced to resign
his ministry and later was charged with fraud and
conspiracy. At his trial (with Tammy Faye—by now
regarded as something of an American original—
vowing to stand by her man), a former reservation
supervisor at Heritage USA said that in the last year
of Bakker’s regime at PTL, between 1,300 and 3,700
lifetime contributors had been turned away every
month from lodgings that had been promised but did
not exist.
Bakker was convicted on all 24 counts against him
and sentenced to 45 years in prison and fined
$500,000. He would not be eligible for parole for 10
years. In passing sentence, U.S. district judge Robert
Porter said, “Those of us who do have religion are sick
of being saps for money-grubbing preachers and
Ball, Joe (1892–1938) mass murderer
When it came to ghoulishness, an ex-bootlegger and
tavern owner named Joe Ball, of Elmendorf, Tex., was
exceptional even for a mass murderer.
In the 1930s Ball ran the Sociable Inn, a watering
hole famous for two tourist attractions: the most beautiful waitresses for miles around and the pet alligators
Ball kept in a pond in back of the establishment. The
high point of the day was feeding time for the alligators, which Ball turned into a regular show, often feeding a live stray dog or cat to the slithering reptiles. It
was a performance that could drive even the strongest
men to drink, which made the gators as good for business as the pretty waitresses.
Ball’s waitresses seemed to be a fickle lot, disappearing without a word to any of the customers. Naturally,
they told Ball. Some were getting married, others had
sick mothers, still others left for new jobs. Ball was
never very enlightening. He merely shrugged and said
philosophically, “They come, they go.”
Exactly how many really went was never fully established. Later, police were able to find some of the waitresses alive, but 12 or 14 were never found. Most or all
of the missing women were murdered by Ball so he
would not be hampered in his constant search for a
new romance. Some of them had become pregnant and
demanded that Ball “do the right thing.” His concept
of the right thing was to ax them to death. Then, as
later evidence would show, he often chopped up the
body and fed the incriminating pieces to the alligators.
In 1937 the family of Minnie Mae Gotthardt wrote
the local police complaining they had not heard from
her for a long time. Some officers dropped in to see
Ball. He set up drinks for them and explained that Minnie Mae had left to take another job. A short while
later, the police came around again, wondering what
56
BANANA War
happened to another waitress named Julia Turner. She
left for the same reason, Ball said. That didn’t wash too
well because Julia had not packed any of her belongings. However, when Ball explained Julia had had a
fight with her roommate and left without packing
because he had given her $500 to help out, the law was
placated. Then two more waitresses were listed among
the missing and the Texas Rangers entered the case.
They began compiling a list of Ball’s former waitresses
and found quite a few who could not be accounted for;
their relatives had no idea of where they were.
The investigators were clearly suspicious of Ball but
failed to break him down. However, an old black
handyman and cook who had worked for Ball for years
proved less resistant to the lawmen’s questions and confessed helping his boss kill some of the women and dispose of their bodies. He said he did so because he was
fearful that Ball would kill him if he refused. When the
lawmen showed up at the inn on September 24, 1938
seeking the barrel in which Ball said he kept meat for
feeding the alligators, the tavern owner realized the
game was up. Before the officers could stop him, Ball
rang up a “no sale” on the cash register, pulled out a
revolver and shot himself in the head, dying instantly.
The handyman got two years for being an accessory
after the fact, and the alligators were carted off to the
San Antonio Zoo.
seize control of the major portion of organized crime.
The attack was led by the aging Joseph C. Bonanno, Sr.,
the head of the small but efficient crime family known
by his nickname as the Bananas family.
Joe Bananas’ crime interests extended from New
York to Canada, Arizona and California; however,
as he watched many of the older dons fade away,
he decided to strike out for greater glory and illegal revenues. He launched plans to eliminate in one
swoop such old-time powers as New York’s Tommy
Lucchese and Carlo Gambino, Buffalo’s Steve Magaddino and even Los Angeles’ Frank DeSimone. Bananas
involved in the plot an old ally, Giuseppe Magliocco,
who agreed despite misgivings and ill health. His loyalty to Bananas was unquestioned. Unfortunately for
Bananas, Magliocco passed the hit assignment to an
ambitious younger underboss named Joe Colombo,
who readily accepted but immediately reported to the
other side, seeking a reward. Colombo was rewarded
with the leadership of the late Joe Profaci’s Brooklyn
crime family. But the dons and board members of the
Mafia were still faced with the Joe Bananas problem.
At a moment’s notice he could put 100 gunmen on the
streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan. There might be a
bloodbath of a magnitude unseen since the days of
Capone in the 1920s and the Genovese move for power
in the 1950s.
Bananas and Magliocco were summoned to a peace
meeting by the underworld commission. Bananas contemptuously didn’t show. Magliocco did and begged for
mercy. The syndicate leaders decided to let him live,
swayed by the fact that he obviously lacked the guts to
continue a war and was so ill he would not live long in
any case. He was fined $50,000 and stripped of his
power, which went to Colombo. A few months later, he
died of a heart attack.
Bananas took off for his strongholds out West and
in Canada, ignoring a second order to appear before
the commission. In October 1964 he returned to Manhattan under a grand jury summons. On the night of
October 21, he had dinner with his lawyers. Afterwards as he stepped from a car on Park Avenue, he
was seized by two gunmen, shoved into another car
and taken away. The newspapers assumed Bananas
had been executed.
However, the commission was treating Bananas, an
important don, carefully, apparently realizing his death
would provoke a full-scale war. If Bananas was frightened, he did not show it. He realized he was in a tight
spot and offered a deal. He would retire from the rackets, give up control of his family and move to Arizona.
He proposed that his son, Salvatore “Bill” Bonanno,
take over, but the proposal was rejected out of hand.
The commission members decided Bananas should
ballooning prison drug-smuggling method
Drugs, especially heroin, are valued commodities in
prisons and are brought in usually by a method called
“ballooning.” The drugs are carried into the prison,
usually on visiting days, by “mules,” the wives, other
relatives or girlfriends of prisoners. The balloon
involved is nothing more than the type used at children’s parties.
A few grains of heroin or other substances are put in
a balloon and a female visitor then hides it, positioned
as a tampon would be, in her vagina. Admitted to the
prison visiting room, she enters the women’s bathroom,
removes the balloon and puts it in her mouth. Since visitors are permitted to kiss prisoners at the start of a
visit, the inmate takes the balloon into his own mouth
and regurgitates it back in his cell or simply waits until
the balloon has passed through his system.
The only way to prevent such balloon smuggling
would be to bar any physical contact of any sort
between an inmate and a visitor.
Banana War
battle for control of organized crime
The Banana War of 1964–69 was the most recent significant effort by the head of a leading Mafia family to
57
BANCO
banco
retire and so should his son. They would pick his successor. Bananas could do little but agree.
When Joe Bananas reappeared in May 1966—19
months after his disappearance—the newspapers
treated it as a sort of a second coming, but more important, Bananas, instead of retiring, began expanding his
family activities into Haiti, working tightly with the
Duvalier regime. Meanwhile, the national commission
appointed Gaspar DiGregorio to take over Bananas’
family, a move that split the group. Many loyalists
insisted on sticking with Joe Bananas, and if they could
not have him, then his son, Bill.
With a war threatening, DiGregorio called for a
peace meeting with Bill Bonanno. It was set for a house
on Troutman Street in Brooklyn. When Bill arrived,
several riflemen and shotgunners opened up on him
and his men. The Bananas gang fired back, but in the
dark, everyone’s aim was off and there were no casualties.
DiGregorio’s failure enraged the national commission and he was removed from power and replaced by a
tougher leader, Paul Sciacca. Sciacca couldn’t prevent
the Bananas forces from striking, and several of his
men were wounded in various attacks, with three being
machine-gunned to death in a Queens restaurant. Eventually, five others on either side died.
A heart attack in 1968 finally slowed Joe Bananas,
and he flew off to his home in Tucson, Ariz. He sent
word to his foes that he had decided to retire. But the
commission viewed the message as an old and unbelievable story and they continued the war. On several occasions bombs were planted at the Joe Bananas’ home as
well as the homes of his allies in Arizona. Finally, however, peace was achieved.
The Bananas family kept control of its western interests, but Sciacca, and later Natale Evola, was accepted
as the East Coast boss. The war was over. In 1980 Joe
Bananas, at the age of 75, was convicted of conspiracy
to interfere with a federal grand jury’s investigation of
his two sons’ business operations. By that time Bill
Bonanno was in prison for a parole violation. Joe
Bananas’ dream of power had ended.
It may be that the other Mafia chiefs learned something from the conflict. When another tough mafioso
named Carmine Galante started a violent push for
power in the late 1970s, he was summarily executed,
without ever receiving the opportunity to appear before
the board to explain himself.
See also: JOSEPH COLOMBO, SR.
swindle
A swindle whose name careless writers often misspelled
as bunco, which was later applied to all types of confidence games.
Banco was based on the old English gambling pastime of eight-dice cloth. Sharpsters who introduced it in
America usually converted it into a card game, which
could be manipulated more easily than dice. It was very
prevalent in the western gold fields during the 1850s
until California vigilantes drove out the gamblers using
it to swindle miners. About 1860 banco was introduced
in New York City, where the two greatest practitioners
of the art—George P. Miller, the King of the Banco
Men, and Hungry Joe Lewis—amassed fortunes.
In its card game variation, banco was played on a
layout of 43 spaces—42 were numbered and 13 of
those contained stars. The remaining space was blank.
The 29 unstarred numbers were winning ones, being
worth from $2 up to $5,000, depending on the size of
the bank. Each player received eight cards numbered
from one to six, with the total number in his hand representing the prize. However, if a number with a star
came up, he got no prize but could draw again by
putting up a certain amount of money. The sucker
would generally be allowed to win at first—with no
money actually changing hands—until he was ahead a
few hundred to a few thousand dollars. Then he would
be dealt number 27 which was the so-called conditional
prize, meaning he had to stake a sum equal to the
amount owed him and draw again or lose all his “winnings.” Naturally, he would be dealt a blank or starred
card and thereby lose everything.
The pattern of play just described was automatic
since the entire banco game was a phony, being played
in a “skinning dive” in which all but one of the players
were actually confidence operators. The only person
not in on the scheme was the sucker who had been
steered there.
Miller and Hungry Joe specialized in victimizing
bankers, businessmen and other prominent personages.
Not only did these victims have plenty of money to
lose, they also were likely to be too embarrassed to go
to the police. In 1882, Hungry Joe wormed his way
into an acquaintanceship with Oscar Wilde, then on a
lecture tour of the country. Over several dinners he
boasted of the money he had won at banco and then
steered the writer to a game. The confidence man later
bragged that he had taken Wilde for close to $7,000.
Wilde himself, perhaps in a face-saving exercise, later
insisted he had lost only $1,500 in cash and had taken
care of the rest with a check on which he had stopped
payment once he discovered the play was dishonest.
Banco died out not because of a dearth of potential victims but rather because con men found they could
58
BANK robberies
and even President Benjamin Harrison, whom he
accused of being in sympathy with the stockmen. He
charged that many important men—naming names and
supplying details—were guilty of a long list of crimes
from bribery to genocide.
The book itself had a most violent life from the time
it appeared in the winter of 1893. It was ruthlessly suppressed and its plates were destroyed. Copies of the
book were burned and even the one in the Library of
Congress disappeared. At one point, Mercer was jailed
for a time for sending “obscene matter” through the
mails. Somehow a few copies survived over the years,
and in 1954 the University of Oklahoma Press
reprinted the book. Thanks to that printing, it can be
found today in many libraries. The motion picture
Shane has been described as being “straight out of The
Banditti of the Plains.”
As for Mercer, he wrote other books and pamphlets
but nothing as potent as Banditti. He died in relative
obscurity in 1917.
See also: JOHNSON COUNTY WAR.
bank robberies
The first bank robbery—actually a burglary, since it did
not involve the use of threats or violence—in America
was pulled by an Englishman named Edward Smith
(alias Edward Jones, alias James Smith, alias James
Honeyman). Using duplicate keys obtained by a
method never fully explained, he entered two doors of
the City Bank on Wall Street in New York City on
March 19, 1831 and stole $245,000. Because of his
free spending and tips from informers, Smith was
apprehended quickly and $185,000 of the loot was
recovered. On May 11, 1831 he was sentenced to five
years at hard labor in Sing Sing, which was a rather
light sentence considering the terms handed out later to
other bank thieves. It appears Smith was treated somewhat leniently because his crime was unique and the
authorities were not prepared to deal with it.
In the ensuing years bank robberies became commonplace. Daylight robberies were the mode of the
West, with the first jobs being pulled by the Reno gang,
the Jesse James gang, the Youngers and others. In the
East the more common practice was nighttime burglaries, including safecrackings, of which the leading practitioners were the notorious George Leonidas Leslie,
George Miles Bliss and Mark Shinburn. Bliss and Shinburn led the Bliss Bank Ring, which was especially
noted for bribing the police in New York City with a
percentage of the loot from each job. In the famous
$1.75 million robbery of the Ocean Bank in 1869, the
Bliss gang paid a total of $132,300 in bribes to guarantee a nonsolution to the case.
Title page of The Banditti of the Plains
Plains,, which charged
some of Wyoming’s greatest cattlemen with mass
murder. The book was ruthlessly suppressed and even
the copy at the Library of Congress vanished.
attract more suckers to fixed horse races or stock market swindles.
Banditti of the Plains,The
book
Probably the most explosive book ever to come out of
the West, The Banditti of the Plains by Asa C. Mercer
was a hard-hitting account of the brutal Johnson
County War in 1892 between cattlemen and homesteaders.
Mercer, born in 1839, was a longtime editor, author
and lawmaker on the frontier. In Banditti he placed the
blame for the war on some of the richest and most
powerful cattlemen of Wyoming, various state officials
59
BANK robberies
and almost always lead to the capture of the culprit. A
random sample of recent robberies supports that conclusion.
In the 20th century the daylight robberies of the
Wild West migrated to the East. The first really great
practitioner of the craft, one who stressed meticulous
planning, was Herman K. “Baron” Lamm, an exPrussian army officer who brought discipline and precision to the field. Lamm never robbed a bank
without first drawing up a detailed floor plan of the
institution and running his men through a series of
full rehearsals, sometimes using a complete mock-up
of the bank’s interior. His men were drilled in their
assignments on a minute-by-minute basis, and they
were required to leave a job at a scheduled moment,
regardless of the amount of loot scooped up by then.
Getaways were staged with equal preciseness. A
skilled driver, often a veteran of the car-racing circuit,
followed a chart pasted on the dashboard showing the
escape route marked block by block, with speedometer readings and alternate turns. Lamm tested each
route in various weather conditions. After 13 years of
successful bank robberies without a hitch, Lamm was
killed in a 1930 robbery that went wrong for freak
reasons. In prison, two survivors of his gang were permitted to join a mass escape engineered by what
would become the Dillinger mob on the understanding that they would teach Dillinger the details of
Baron Lamm’s methods.
In the 1930s the bank-robbery business was taken
over by the public enemies, led by the likes of Dillinger,
Creepy Karpis, the Barker brothers and Baby Face Nelson. The FBI’s success in running down these bankrobbing and kidnapping gangs did much to enhance
the public image of that previously unimpressive organization.
Since then, probably the only great bank robber has
been Slick Willie Sutton, famous for his alleged quote
on why he robbed banks: “Because that’s where the
money is.”
Looking at crime statistics, one would conclude that
bank robbery is a much more serious problem today
than in the 1930s. The dollar take, now totaling
between $30 and $40 million annually, far exceeds that
of the 1930s and the number of robberies is up many
times. However, considering inflation, population
expansion, the hugh growth of bank branches in the
suburbs—just off main highways—we can see why the
crime has apparently increased. The professionals, in
fact, have more or less dropped out of the field, leaving
it to amateurs, crackpots and persons seized by little
more than a sudden impulse to raise money. And where
is the money? Still in banks.
Some experts feel that only persons of limited intelligence try to rob banks today because the sophisticated antirobbery devices and other security measures
now in use limit the take to a measly average of $1,500
• In Queens, New York City an unemployed shoe
salesman walked into a bank and handed a teller
a note demanding “all your tens, twenties and
thirties.” When he left, he was followed by a bank
officer as he went by foot to a motel a block away
from the scene of the crime. He was arrested by
police within 15 minutes.
• In Salt Lake City a would-be robber walked up to
a teller and asked her to hand over all the money.
As she was gathering it up, he fainted.
A 19th-century bank burglar’s kit included a gag and slung
shot to use on watchmen, but the more common
procedure was to bribe them.
60
BANKRUPTCY fraud
• In Los Angeles two shotgun-armed robbers made
everyone lie down on the floor of the bank. When
there was nobody left to gather up the money, the
pair hesitated a moment and then fled in panic.
of malodorous liquid hidden in the money wrapper. As
they drove away, a foul odor infested the car, and in
desperation, they abandoned it and ran, still holding
the money. But the money will never be spent—it smells
too bad.
By the 1990s it became apparent that bank robbery
was becoming more and more a juvenile crime, especially considering the huge number of bank robberies
masterminded by two young men, Robert S. Brown,
23, and an accomplice, Donzell L. Thompson. The FBI
linked the two young men, Los Angeles gang members,
to some 175 bank robberies over a four-year period up
to 1992. The pair employed teenage boys and trained
them to carry out the heists. Brown and Thompson
pleaded guilty to a number of counts and were handed
federal prison sentences of 30 and 25 years, respectively. Prosecutors said the total number of bank robberies carried out by Brown was the most in the
nation’s history.
See also: BANK ROBBERIES—BOUNTIES, BLISS BANK RING,
JOHN DILLINGER, EDWARD GREEN, JUG MARKERS, HERMAN
“BARON” LAMM, GEORGE LEONIDAS LESLIE, LITTLE JOKER,
SAFECRACKING, MARK SHINBURN.
The typical bank robber, according to New York
City police and the FBI, is an unemployed man in his
early to mid-twenties, often in need of money for debts
or drugs. In many cases, especially in Manhattan, the
bandit does not show a gun and, indeed, sometimes
does not even have one. He simply passes over a note
demanding the teller’s money or makes a verbal threat.
Most banks instruct tellers to hand over the cash in
such instances, rather than risk a shooting situation.
However, tellers, being human, react in different ways.
One teller became so unnerved that she plopped a
wastebasket over her head as a form of protection. The
shocked bandit charged out of the bank. In another
case a teller by force of habit counted and recounted
the money before handling it over to the patient robber.
An FBI official in Los Angeles has called modern
bank robbers “young and dumb. By dumb I mean not
wise in the ways of the professional holdup man. We’ve
had guys write holdup notes on the back of their own
utility bills. Or run out of a bank so excited they can’t
find their getaway car.”
Another FBI man observed: “Twenty years ago the
bank robber was looked up to by the other inmates in
prison. He was a big shot, and bank robbery was
viewed as the class robbery. Not any more.”
Because of the changing nature of bank robbers, the
FBI in recent years has been reducing its involvement
in such cases. Under criticism that such crimes are trivial, easy to solve and do little other than add to the
agency’s solved total, the agency has been moving
more into the field of organized crime and white-collar
crime. Embezzlers steal three to five times as much as
bank robbers.
Bank officials have objected to the FBI’s withdrawal
from the field, however, not so much because the agency
is needed that often but because they fear general
knowledge of this will simply encourage more attempts.
But the fact is that with new antirobbery devices the
banks can pretty much take care of themselves. One
innovation is a money wrapper that dispenses tear gas.
The teller simply activates the device before handing the
money over. In an Atlanta, Ga. bank a 19-year-old happily stuffed $5,000 in his waistband and raced out the
door. The next moment he collapsed in a coughing, crying fit, ripping at his clothes as he rolled around in the
parking lot. By the time he was captured, the young robber had torn off every stitch of clothing.
Consider also the sad plight of two robbers who
took money that a teller had secretly doused with a vial
bank robberies—bounties
In 1928 a strange invitation to murder was unwittingly
issued by a group dedicated to the prevention of crime.
At the time, Texas was being plagued by a rash of bank
robberies that law enforcement officials were unable to
solve. Finally, the state’s desperate bankers came up
with what was thought to be the perfect deterrent. The
Texas Bankers Association had printed and posted in
every bank in the state a notice that read:
REWARD
$5,000 for Dead Bank Robbers
Not One Cent For Live Ones
In short order, several bank robbers turned up very
dead and rewards were paid out to the local lawmen
who brought in the bodies in what was very much a
throwback to the bounty system of the Old West. The
bankers were happy, and the lawmen were happy. But a
Texas Ranger named Frank Hamer, who was to win
fame later as the stalker and killer of outlaws Bonnie
Parker and Clyde Barrow, was unhappy. Hamer wondered why all the bank robbers had been killed late at
night. He also wondered why local lawmen were making all the kills rather than Texas Rangers or U.S. marshals, both of whom had a fairly good record of
bringing bank robbers to justice.
Hamer dug into the background of a number of
cases and found the “bank robbers” were types such as
61
BANNACK, Montana Territory
then pulled out, blithely ordering the cowed management to go into bankruptcy.
loners, town bums, drifters passing through or young
men who had been drunk earlier in the evening of their
demise. The ranger unearthed evidence that these socalled bank robbers had been framed and murdered by
crooked lawmen who then collected the rewards. It
soon became apparent that there were “murder rings”
at work collecting the rewards. When Hamer went to
law enforcement officials with his findings, he met with
stubborn disbelief. He tried appealing to the Texas
Bankers Association for a withdrawal of the reward
system. Again, he was rebuffed.
Hamer took his findings to the leading newspapers
of the state, including an accusation that the bankers
were “bringing about the execution of men by illegal
means and for money.” The ensuing headlines broke
the scandal wide open and led to a grand jury investigation that handed down indictments against two men
accused of being the leaders of one of the several murder rings. Hamer arrested them and they subsequently
confessed. Only then did the bankers admit their
scheme had caused the death of innocent men; the
terms of the reward offer were changed to require positive proof that a bank robbery had taken place.
Bannack, Montana Territory
gold rush town
The site of the Montana Territory’s first big gold
strike, Bannack was such a violent town in the 1860s
that it became “the town nobody wanted.” Because
territorial borders at the time were imprecise, for a
while Bannack was part of Oregon and then Idaho. In
1864 it finally became part of Montana and was even
the territorial capital for a period. Murder and thievery were common in Bannack since the time the
prospectors panned gold from Grasshopper Creek in
1862. The greatest crook of them all was Henry Plummer, who served both as the local sheriff and the head
of a huge gang called the Innocents, which committed
almost all the crimes in the area. Plummer planned the
gang’s jobs and then, as sheriff, proved singularly ineffective at solving any of the crimes. It took the
dreaded rope of the Montana Vigilantes to clear up
wrongdoing in the area, and they did so by hanging
Plummer—from a scaffold he had built himself for
executing lawbreakers—and a large number of his
Innocents.
After a long spell of noose justice, tranquility prevailed in Bannack. As the gold ran out, the town began
to decay. Today, it is a ghost town with just a few wellpreserved relics, such as the jail Plummer built.
See also: JOHN X. BEIDLER, HENRY PLUMMER, VIGILANTES OF MONTANA.
bankruptcy fraud
In recent years bankruptcy scams have become one of
the most lucrative activities of organized crime.
According to U.S. Justice Department sources, crime
syndicates pull off at least 250 such capers every year,
each one involving at least $250,000 in goods and
materials.
As the racket is generally worked by the New York
Mafia crime families, a new company is set up with a
“front man” who has no criminal record. “Nut
money” of at least $30,000 is deposited in a bank to
establish credit, and the company starts ordering supplies that are quickly paid for in full. However, as the
orders are increased, the payments slow down a bit
until finally a huge order is placed. As soon as these
supplies arrive, they are either sold off at extremely low
rates or transferred to other business outlets. The nut
money is then pulled out of the bank and the operators
simply disappear. All the creditors can find is a bankrupt shell of a company.
Perhaps the classic bankruptcy scam was pulled by
members of the Vito Genovese crime family, who once
took control of a large New York meat wholesale business by advancing the company cash and then insisting
on putting in their own president to safeguard the loan.
After becoming established, the Mafia operators
needed only 10 days to work a $1.3 million swindle.
They bought up huge amounts of poultry and meat on
credit and sold them off at lowered prices. The mob
Barbara, Joseph, Sr. (1905–1959) Apalachin Conference
host
Almost as shadowy as the complete story of the infamous underworld conference at Apalachin, N.Y. in
1957 is the personal history of its host, Joseph Barbara,
Sr., at whose rambling estate the meeting took place.
Barbara, who was to rise to the rank of lieutenant in
the Magaddino crime family in Buffalo, N.Y., came to
the United States from Sicily at the age of 16, and his
first job was apparently that of an underworld enforcer.
He was arrested in a number of murder cases, once
being caught in possession of a submachine gun that
had been used in a gang murder in New York. He was
also arrested for a number of murders in Pennsylvania.
A typical victim was racketeer Sam Wichner, who was
lured to Barbara’s home in 1933 to confer with Barbara, Santo Volpe and Angelo Valente, Wichner’s silent
partners in a bootlegging operation. Police said, but
couldn’t prove, that Barbara strangled Wichner. During
his entire career Barbara was only convicted of one
62
BARKER, Arizona Clark “Kate” or “Ma”
a section of the corpse’s chest because he had a scar in
his own chest. He pulled out two teeth from the upper
jaw to match his own dental characteristics. He punctured the eyeballs to solve the problem of different
color eyes. But all these he regarded as extra precautions, since he planned to blow up his laboratory in
order to really make the corpse unidentifiable. In fact,
he believed the entire building would be destroyed in
the explosion. He soaked the laboratory with several
gallons of benzol which, when detonated, would take
care of the building and the evidence. Schwartz set up a
timing device and left. He couldn’t afford to be seen at
the site of the explosion. But he stayed close enough to
hear the clanging fire trucks approaching as he stepped
into a taxi.
Hiding out in Oakland, Schwartz was shocked to
discover he was wanted for murder. The body, hardly
singed, had been identified. Even three religious pamphlets bearing Barbe’s name had survived the blaze. An
incompetent chemist, Schwartz didn’t realize that benzol fumes rise very slowly. Several more minutes would
have been needed to set off the fire properly. A flop as a
chemist, an anatomist and a murderer, Schwartz did
better in his final endeavor: suicide.
See also: INSURANCE FRAUDS.
crime: the illegal acquisition of 300,000 pounds of
sugar in 1946.
After that, Barbara was ostensibly nothing more
than a beer and soft drink distributor. He himself
insisted he was in poor health and could do nothing
more. In fact, virtually all of the 60-odd participants in
the 1957 underworld meeting claimed they had gone to
Barbara’s home to pay a call because he was a cardiac
patient. It “just happened,” they insisted, that they all
picked the same day for their visit.
Investigators were thwarted in their efforts to question Barbara after the Apalachin raid because of his
insistence that he was too ill to testify. Finally, the State
Investigation Commission sent its own heart specialist
to examine Barbara, and in May 1959 a state supreme
court justice ordered him to appear before the commission. The following month, however, Barbara died of a
heart attack. At the time he was living in a new home in
Endicott. His 58-acre estate in Apalachin had been sold
for use as a tourist attraction.
See also: APALACHIN CONFERENCE.
Barbe, Warren Gilbert (?–1925) murder victim
To his neighbors in Berkeley, Calif., Charles Henry
Schwartz was a remarkable individual. He was a master chemist and during World War I he’d been a spy in
Germany for the Allies. After the war he’d taken an
important post in a German chemical plant, where he
had discovered a process for the manufacture of artificial silk. He smuggled the process into the United States
and set up a hush-hush experimental laboratory, in
which he often worked into the night. It sounded
impressive, but it was all hogwash. Least of all was he a
master chemist. But Schwartz found plenty of people
willing to give him money in exchange for a piece of the
process. When he produced no silk, however, some of
his backers started to grumble and talk of fraud.
In 1925 Schwartz began to take an avid interest in a
different science—human anatomy. He cultivated a
friendship with a traveling evangelist named Warren
Gilbert Barbe. Although the facial features of the two
men were very dissimilar, they were of the same overall
size. Late in July, Barbe disappeared from his usual
haunts, but no one gave it a thought. He most likely got
the “call” and had “gone into the wilderness” to
preach. Meanwhile, Schwartz was very busy in his laboratory. He said he was almost finished with his
process and he worried that some international cartel
might try to stop his work. He took out a $200,000
insurance policy on his life and allowed no one to enter
the laboratory.
In the lab he was very busy altering the dead evangelist into a stand-in corpse for himself. He burned away
Barker, Arizona Clark “Kate” or “Ma”
(1871?–1935) outlaw or mother of outlaws
Kate, or Ma, Barker remains one of the enigmas of
the underworld. Was she the brains, indeed the queen
mother, of one of the most violent gangs of the
1930s, or was she just a dumpy little old lady whom
many of the gangsters of the era considered just plain
“Mom”? One version, which belongs to Hollywood
and the FBI, presents us with an iron mistress who
was feared by her murderous sons as well as numerous other members of the Barker-Karpis gang and
who died, tommy gun in hand, in a fabled shoot-out
with federal agents. A different viewpoint, held by
other members of the underworld, portrays a doting,
worried—although at times ill-tempered—mother
whose sole concern was always the safety of her
brood. Whatever the truth was, the fact is that Ma
Barker was never on any official list of public enemies and indeed was never charged with a crime during her lifetime.
Born to Scotch-Irish parents about 1871 in the
Ozark Mountain area near Springfield, Mo.—the
area that nurtured Jesse and Frank James—she was
saddled with the unlikely name of Arizona, which
friends soon shortened to “Arrie” and she herself
later switched to Kate. One of her greatest experiences in childhood was seeing Jesse James ride by one
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BARKER brothers
day, and she cried with youthful anguish when “that
dirty coward” Bob Ford killed Jesse in 1882. The
year 1892 was doubly bad for Kate: the Dalton gang
was cut down at Coffeyville, Kan., and Kate married
an itinerant farm laborer named George Barker. It
was not a happy marriage. Kate realized that a penniless sharecropper could never be much of an inspiration for the four boys—Herman, Lloyd, Arthur and
Fred—who were born of the union. As the boys grew
up in a series of tar paper shacks, Kate made it clear
to Barker that she would run the family and she
would guide the boys’ upbringing. George Barker
merely shrugged.
Brought up in this impoverished environment, the
boys soon started turning up regularly on police blotters. Ma Barker frequently managed to get her sons
released, sometimes weeping hysterically and at other
times screaming. As late as 1915, Ma was able to get
her eldest, Herman, freed from a highway robbery
charge. In the following years the Barkers turned to
bank robbery. According to later FBI accounts, Ma
planned all the jobs, and the boys and their buddies
executed them. Ma supposedly ran things with iron discipline, making the boys memorize a “getaway chart.”
She herself was said to drive around all the surrounding
roads, checking the times needed on them under all
weather conditions. During the actual commission of a
crime, Ma would once more become the doting mother,
weeping for fear that her sons might be hurt. Ma was
also said to dominate the gang’s personal lives, refusing
to allow the presence of any girlfriends. This, to be
sure, was nonsense. All of the gang’s hideouts were
always awash with whores, and Ma did nothing about
it. Things hardly could have been otherwise, given the
character of her sons and the other top gangsters she
sheltered, such as Al Spencer, Ray Terrill, Earl Thayer,
Frank Nash, Francis Keating, Tommy Holden and
Alvin “Creepy” Karpis. Karpis probably best presented
the underworld version of the real Ma Barker. He
wrote in his memoirs:
Ma Barker was either “a veritable beast of prey,” as J.
Edgar Hoover claimed, or just a dumpy little old mom to
a bunch of gangsters, as the latter said.
In 1927 son Herman was stopped by police near
Wichita, Kan. after a robbery. When one officer leaned
down to look in Herman’s car window, Herman
grabbed the policeman around the neck and fired a
pistol into his head. A cop on the other side of the car
cut loose at Barker, so filling him with bullets that the
gangster turned his weapon on himself and finished
the job. This development, according to J. Edgar
Hoover in a bit of colorful prose, caused Ma to change
“from an animal mother of the she-wolf type to a veritable beast of prey.” Thereafter, according to the FBI
version of events, Ma planed a near-endless string of
bank robberies, the kidnappings of millionaires
William A. Hamm, Jr. and Edward George Bremer and
the murder of her “loving man,” Arthur Dunlop. The
best evidence indicates that Dunlop was murdered by
Ma’s sons and other members of the gang, with total
disregard for Ma’s feelings, because they suspected him
of being a “squealer.” The FBI claim that Ma was the
brain behind the Hamm kidnapping is somewhat tar-
Ma was always somebody in our lives. Love didn’t
enter into it really. She was somebody we looked after
and took with us when we moved from city to city,
hideout to hideout.
It’s no insult to Ma’s memory that she just didn’t
have the brains or know-how to direct us on a robbery.
It wouldn’t have occurred to her to get involved in our
business, and we always made a point of only discussing our scores when Ma wasn’t around. We’d leave
her at home when we were arranging a job, or we’d
send her to a movie. Ma saw a lot of movies.
64
BARNES, Leroy “Nicky”
nished by the fact that the agency first arrested and
caused the wrongful prosecution of Roger Touhy and
his “Terribles” for the offense before discovering its
mistake and correctly pinning the charge on the
Barker-Karpis gang.
By 1935 the gang was being intensively pursued by
the FBI and other law inforcement agencies. On January 16, Ma and her youngest and favorite son, Freddie, were traced to a cottage hideout at Lake Weir,
Fla. A four-hour gun battle ensued, and both Freddie
and Ma were shot to death. The official version had
Ma manning a submachine gun in the battle, but this
is debatable. Freddie was found with 14 bullets in
him, indicating he was obviously in the line of fire.
There is a discrepancy on how many bullets were in
Ma, however. Some accounts said three and others
only one—and that one self-inflicted. Cynics have
charged that the FBI, having killed a dumpy, insignificant middle-aged woman, quickly promoted her into
“Bloody Mama.”
See also: BARKER BROTHERS, ALVIN “CREEPY” KARPIS,
SHOTGUN GEORGE ZIEGLER.
After several brushes with the law on minor—by
Barker family standards—charges, Doc was sentenced
to life imprisonment at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary for the murder of a night watchman during a robbery in 1920. In 1927 Herman Barker took his own life
after being severely wounded in a shoot-out with police
following a robbery. The next severe blow to the Barker
family came when Lloyd Barker was arrested for a
1932 mail robbery and sentenced to 25 years in Leavenworth. This left only Freddie free.
Next to Doc, Freddie was the deadliest of the Barkers. He had a rather loose attitude toward killing.
Once in Monett, Mo., he and another gangster, Bill
Weaver, broke into a garage to steal a car for use in a
job. Freddie got behind the wheel, and Weaver slid the
garage door open to find himself facing a policeman
with gun drawn. Freddie leaned out of the window
and promptly shot the officer dead. He later moralized, “That’s what comes from stealing these goddamn
cars all the time.” Freddie did a considerable amount
of time for that killing, but he was eventually freed
after Ma Barker haunted the parole board, wardens
and governors and reputedly spent a significant
amount of money.
When Freddie rejoined his mother following his
release, he brought with him Alvin “Creepy” Karpis,
who proved to be the most important leader of the
gang. Each had a mutual respect for the other and they
worked well as a team. Ma Barker was equally taken
with Karpis and treated him almost as another son,
perhaps because she now only had Freddie on the
loose. In the meantime, however, Ma also worked on
freeing Doc. Remarkably, Doc won a banishment pardon from the governor, which meant he could go free
provided he left the state of Oklahoma. J. Edgar
Hoover raged over the pardon and even more over the
treatment afforded Doc’s partner-in-crime, Volney
Davis, who was granted an unbelievable “two-year
leave of absence.”
The Barker-Karpis gang, headed by Creepy, Doc
and Freddie, was now ready for full operation. They
pulled off an unparalleled number of bank robberies
and the like and then moved into the lucrative new
field of kidnapping. Their two major jobs were the
abductions of William A. Hamm, Jr. and Edward
George Bremer, which netted the gang a total of
$300,000 in ransoms. Many have claimed Ma Barker
was the master planner of both crimes, but none of
the facts support this conclusion. Hoover credited the
plan to a member of the Barker-Karpis gang named
Jack Peifer, while according to Karpis, the Bremer job
was the brainchild of Harry Sawyer, a flamboyant
character who ran much of the crime in St. Paul,
Minn. In all, there were about 25 or 26 members of
Barker brothers public enemies
Easily the worst collection of criminal brothers in 20thcentury America were the Barkers, or the “Bloody
Barkers,” as the newspapers not inappropriately called
them. Indeed J. Edgar Hoover called the BarkerKarpis gang “the toughest mob we ever cracked.” This
characterization was close to the truth, whether or not
Ma Barker herself, the so-called Bloody Mama, was
included. There is considerable controversy over
whether Ma Barker was really much of a criminal, but
there is no doubt that her brood of four boys—Herman, born 1894; Lloyd, born 1896; Arthur—or “Doc”
or “Dock”—born 1899; and Fred, born 1902—were a
bloodthirsty lot. Of the four, Doc Barker was probably
the leader, the one who commanded the respect of
other prominent gangsters of the day.
Doc was both fearless and cold blooded and often
killed without provocation or warning. Once when his
brother Freddie and a few others of the gang wanted
another gang member, William J. Harrison, rubbed out,
Doc jumped at the assignment. He took Harrison at
gunpoint to an abandoned barn near Ontarioville, Ill.,
shot him to death and after saturating him and the surrounding area of the barn with gasoline, set fire to the
whole thing. He then wrote a note to several of the
gang members hiding out in Florida: “I took care of
that business for you boys. It was done just as good as
if you had did it yourself. I am just like Standard Oil—
always at your service. Ha, Ha!”
65
BARON of Arizona
This idolatry of Barnes was, in a sense, a celebration
because he was one of the first blacks to come out on
top in the underworld as organized criminal activity
shifted—and is still shifting—from Italians to other
minority groups. Barnes’ rise to power was in large part
due to his alliance with Crazy Joey Gallo, a maverick of
the Mafia who taught Barnes how to organize a drug
empire.
Barnes and Gallo met in New York State’s Greenhaven Prison, where the former was doing time for
narcotics violations and the latter for extortion. Gallo
fed Barnes inside information about the drug world of
Harlem, how it was supplied and how one man could
take control of it. When Gallo was released, it was
agreed that the two would work together. In
exchange, Barnes would supply the Brooklyn gangster
with black “troops” when he needed them. When
Barnes was released, he began importing, with Gallo’s
help, large amounts of heroin directly from Italian
sources. Barnes then set up his own network of “millworkers,” who cut the heroin, and deliverers. This
gave him control of heroin distribution over large
areas in upstate New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania
and even into Canada. Barnes also moved to take over
actual street operation in Harlem. Italians were
replaced by blacks without bloodshed, also apparently due to Gallo muscle.
In the process Nicky Barnes became not just rich
but flamboyantly so, walking around with incredible
bankrolls. During one of his arrests, $130,000 cash
was found in the trunk of his automobile, of which he
had many. Among his possessions were a Mercedes
Benz and a Citroen Maserati, and police department
files were admittedly incomplete in recording his
Cadillacs, Lincoln Continentals and Thunderbirds.
Barnes had several apartments in Manhattan, another
in the fashionable Riverdale area of the Bronx and at
least two in New Jersey. These residences were, of
course, in addition to the working apartments Barnes
maintained for his drug operation. The Times reported
that the operations of a typical Barnes heroin plant
involved more than a dozen young women and two
men. “The . . . women . . . are lined up along the
sides of a huge sheet of plate glass that, propped up on
pieces of furniture, has become a table. The women are
naked, to insure that they will not be tempted to conceal any of the powder they are working over. The
lieutenants, trusted, dressed, do not even look at the
women. Their eyes, like the eyes of the women, are on
the small pyramids of white powder heaped on the
plate glass.” It would take some 16 hours to cut the
heroin. “In those 16 hours, 10 kilos of pure heroin
brought from a wholesaler by a trusted representative
of one of New York City’s major drug dealers for
the Barker-Karpis gang, and Doc and Freddie Barker
were only slightly more equal than the rest. None
regarded Ma Barker as their leader but did feel she
was valuable for renting hideouts and handling payoffs to corrupt officials.
The Hamm and Bremer kidnappings were to prove
the downfall of the Barkers and the rest of the gang,
triggering one of the most persistent manhunts in history, during which the members were picked off one by
one.
On January 8, 1935 Doc Barker was captured by
FBI agents led by the legendary Melvin Purvis, the man
who got Dillinger. The authorities located Doc by shadowing women he was known to have been in contact
with. Eight days later, Freddie Barker was traced to a
cottage at Lake Weir in northern Florida, where he was
hiding with Ma Barker. Both were killed in a four-hour
shoot-out, although there are some reports that Ma
Barker actually shot herself when she saw her favorite
son riddled with bullets.
In January 1939, Doc Barker, long a troublemaker at
Alcatraz, attempted an escape from what was known as
America’s Devil’s Island. He made it into the water
before his skull was smashed and his left leg broken by
guards’ bullets. In the prison hospital he murmured: “I
was a fool to try it. I’m all shot to hell.” He died the
following day, January 14, and was buried in a potter’s
field on the California mainland.
That left Lloyd Barker the last living brother. He
remained in prison until 1947. Two years later, after
returning home from his job at a filling station–snack
shop, he was shot to death by his wife, with whom he
had been feuding.
See also: ARIZONA CLARK “KATE” OR “MA” BARKER,
ALVIN “CREEPY” KARPIS, DR. JOSEPH PATRICK MORAN,
SHOTGUN GEORGE ZIEGLER.
Barnes, Leroy “Nicky” (1933– ) Harlem narcotics
king
Born in Harlem of a poor family, Barnes rose rags-toriches fashion to criminal stardom and what could well
be called the position of the first King of the Black
Mafia.
He was definitely the King of Harlem. As the New
York Times Magazine reported: “Checking in at Shalimar, the Gold Lounge, or Small’s . . . he will be bowed
to, nodded to, but not touched.” The juke always got a
steady play of “Baaad, Baaad Leroy Brown,” which,
say Barnes’ fans, was written for him. “It’s like the
Godfather movie,” according to a New York police
detective who also described Barnes wading through
mobs of admirers “being treated like the goddamn
Pope.”
66
BARROWS, Sydney Biddle
of a fierce pack of brothers, half brothers and brothersin-law from Corleone, Sicily, the Morellos. Over the
next three decades more than 100 barrel murders
were traced to the Morellos, who finally abandoned
the technique because all such murders merely advertised their criminal activities. Even worse, freelance
non-Italian murderers were using the barrel method
to divert suspicion from themselves to Italian gangsters.
See also: MORELLO FAMILY.
$150,000 has become worth about $630,000. For the
dealer, the night’s expenses have run about $170,000,
including the cash fees to the women and their apartment guardians. Thus the dealer has cleared about
$460,000 in profits—all in cash—in an operation that
he financed, sanctioned, and arranged, but in which he
had no physical part.”
While Barnes openly led a lavish life, proving anything against him was not easy. He paid taxes on a
quarter of a million dollars in annual “miscellaneous
income.” Although the IRS insisted he owed much
more, substantiating it would not be easy. Barnes had
always been good at avoiding conviction; he had a
record of 13 arrests but only one had led to a sentence
(an abbreviated one) behind bars. This ability to avoid
the law’s retribution made Barnes something of a cult
figure in Harlem and beyond. “Sure, that’s the reason
the kids loved the guy and wanted to be like him,” a
newsweekly quoted a federal narcotics agent as saying.
“Mr. Untouchable—that’s what they called him—was
rich, but he was smart too, and sassy about it. The bastard loved to make us cops look like idiots.”
Unlike his worshipers, Barnes probably was smart
enough to know he’d eventually fall, and in 1978 he
did, thanks to a federal narcotics strike force. When
brought up for sentencing that year, Barnes rose,
squared his shoulders and smiled faintly when he was
given life imprisonment plus a $125,000 fine. Barnes
appeared to take his fare well, as though, to some
observers, he was taking pride in the pivotal role he had
played in shifting underworld power from Italians to
blacks. The severity of the sentence was fitting. It was
as though his importance was being certified by the
courts and, according to one reporter, “making him a
sort of Muhammed Ali of crime or, even better, the
black man’s Al Capone.”
See also: CRAZY JOE GALLO.
Baron of Arizona
barrel murders
Barrie, Peter Christian “Paddy” (1888–1935) horse
race fixer
Without doubt the most successful horse race fixer in
the United States was Paddy Barrie, a skilled “dyer”
who applied his handiwork to swindle bettors out of
some $6 million from 1926 to 1934.
Barrie’s system was perhaps the simplest ever used
to fix races. He would buy two horses, one with a
very good record and the other a “dog.” Then he
would “repaint” the fast horse to look like the slow
one and enter it in a race under the latter’s name.
Based on the past performance record of the slow
horse, the ringer would generally command odds of
50 to one or even more; because it really outclassed its
opponents, the horse would usually win the race easily. Using stencils, bleaches, special dyes and dental
instruments, Barrie changed the identity of a champion horse, Aknahton, and ran it under three less-distinguished names at four tracks—Havre de Grace,
Agua Caliente, Bowie and Hialeah. The horse made
five killings for a gambling syndicate Barrie was
working with. It was a feat that led the gamblers to
call him “Rembrandt.”
The Pinkerton Detective Agency finally unmasked
Barrie following an investigation that was started after
a leader in the betting syndicate, Nate Raymond, made
a drunken spectacle of himself in Broadway clubs and
was heard bragging about a “bagged race” worked by
an “artist” from England named Paddy. The Pinkertons
queried Scotland Yard and learned that a master dyer
named Paddy Barrie had disappeared from the British
Isles some years previous. An alert went out for Barrie,
but he managed to elude capture for another two years
by doing the same thing to himself that he did to
horses, adopting disguises and changing his name frequently. One day a Pinkerton operative recognized him
at Saratoga race track in New York, and he was bundled off to jail.
Oddly, the laws on horse race gambling and fixing
were rather lax and Barrie appeared to have broken no
law other than having entered the United States illegally. He was deported back to his native Scotland,
See JAMES ADDISON REAVIS.
early Mafia execution style
The “barrel murders” started turning up in America
around 1870. The modus operandi of these killings,
which occurred in several large cities, was always the
same. A victim, invariably an Italian, would be killed—
either shot, strangled or stabbed—and then stuffed into
a barrel, which was then either deposited on a street
corner or empty lot or else shipped by rail to a nonexistent address in another city.
It was the barrel murders that first alerted authorities to the existence of the Mafia. The murder
technique started by coincidence with the arrival
67
BARTER, Rattlesnake Dick
tabloids were thrilled by the appearance of Sydney Biddle Barrows—the “Mayflower Madam.”
For the scandal-minded press, the story harkened
back to the glorious old days of high-paid sex, “little
black books” and erudite madams. Intellectually, the
swooning press declared, Barrows could have held her
own with Polly Adler, the “Madam Elite” of the 1930s
and 1940s. Sydney Barrows, a descendant of two
Mayflower Pilgrims, also added a new dimension in
class: Social Register charm and grace.
Thirty-two-year-old Barrows was indicted in December 1984 in New York City for promoting prostitution
in the guise of a temporary-employment agency,
through which she ran three escort services that actually were expensive call-girl operations. The press was
much impressed that the call girls she trained garnered
as much as $2,000 a night, in her 20-woman, $1 milliona-year business.
When the tabloids uncovered her connection with
the Mayflower (which linked her with Elder William
Brewster, the minister who had played a leading role in
the 1620 Plymouth Rock landing), they quickly dubbed
her the “Mayflower Madam.”
Barrows pleaded guilty in July 1985 to a lesser
charge of fourth-degree promotion of prostitution and
paid a $5,000 fine. The press saw this as a plea-bargain
deal to suppress those eternal little black books. In fact,
under the agreement, the prosecution returned seized
documents that bore information about her clients, said
to include “scores of prominent businessmen.”
Now famous, Barrows appeared on the Donahue
television show unrepentant and complaining that
nobody had gone to jail in the state in the last 100 years
for what she had done. She earned the attention of the
press by writing about her call-girl business: “As I saw
it, this was a sector of the economy that was crying out
for the application of good management skills—not to
mention a little common sense and decency.” She
expressed the opinion that all women are prostitutes
since they withhold favors from their husband when
they are angry. But she assured the eager public that, in
her own life, “I am monogamous and rather old-fashioned.”
Barrows did qualify as a trailblazer in the world’s
oldest profession by employing only well-informed,
articulate women and letting her ladies choose the
nights they wished to work. She even allowed clients to
pay for services after they were rendered, truly a revolutionary practice in the field.
Barrows was a graduate of New York’s Fashion
Institute of Technology and had studied business management and merchandising. After a stint as a fashion
buyer, she got a job through a friend answering the
phone for an escort service. She decided she could do it
where he died less than six month later of a “broken
heart,” according to a sensational British tabloid, due
to constant surveillance aimed at guaranteeing he
would never be able to ring another horse.
Because of Barrie’s depredations, American tracks
adopted such precautions as lip tattoos and other methods of identification to make the ringing in of other
horses almost impossible. However, since foreign
horses have not been so identified they have been used
as ringers in recent years. The disclosure of such fixes
has led to close checks on the identification of foreign
horses.
Barrow, Clyde
See BONNIE AND CLYDE.
Barrows, Sydney Biddle (1952– ) the “Mayflower
Madam”
The 1980s infatuation with the sins of the rich and
famous extended even to the world of prostitution, a
field that was withering not so much due to a rise in
morals but because, as one practitioner put it, “the sexual revolution is killing us. There are just too many
women willing to just give it away.” Thus, the nation’s
Sydney Biddle Barrows, the “Mayflower Madam” who ran
a plush Manhattan bordello, celebrates after getting off
with just a $5,000 fine.
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BASS, Sam
the mountains and thus make pursuit too easy. Rattlesnake Dick’s plan called for him and George Skinner’s brother, Cyrus, to meet the robbers on the
mountain trail with fresh mules. Clever though the
plan was, it left the execution of this phase to Rattlesnake Dick. When George Skinner and his gunmen
reached the rendezvous point, there was not a fresh
mule in sight. It developed that Rattlesnake Dick and
Cy Skinner were already in jail. They had been caught,
drunk, trying to steal some mules.
Under the circumstances all George Skinner could
think to do was bury most of the stolen gold nuggets
and then head off with his crew for some high living
over at Folsom. That’s where Wells Fargo agents
caught up with them. George Skinner was shot dead
while in bed with a screaming prostitute and the rest of
the gang was similarly liquidated. But with them died
the secret of where the stolen gold was buried. Shortly
thereafter, Rattlesnake Dick and Cy Skinner broke jail
by walking out an open door and went looking for the
buried loot. Following an unsuccessful search for it,
the pair returned to the stagecoach-robbing business.
After some of their hold-ups netted the pair less than
better with her own service, one with very special
wrinkles.
Barrows would not even concede that her Mayflower
ancestors necessarily would have censured her activities. “Had they lived in a more enlightened era,” she
opined, “they would have understood that the private
behavior of consenting adults is not the business of the
state.”
When TV host Phil Donahue wondered what Barrows’ grandmother—who died after her granddaughter’s arrest and conviction—had thought about it all,
Barrows answered, “She was not amused.”
Her post-business activities proved most rewarding
for Barrows. Her book soared to the best-seller lists
and was condensed in a top women’s magazine, and she
remained much sought after for lucrative television
appearances.
Barter, Rattlesnake Dick (1834–1859) stagecoach
robber
Few criminal reputations in the Old West were more
enhanced by the Eastern writers whose flowery prose
graced the pages of such 19th-century publications as
New York Weekly, Harper’s Monthly and the torrent of
dime novels and paperbacks than Rattlesnake Dick’s.
The real-life Rattlesnake Dick Barter was more
wooly than wild and, alas, hardly an archbadman of
the West. Barter was, on the whole, quite incompetent.
According to the legend-makers, he was named Rattlesnake Dick because he was so dangerous and devious. No doubt the fact that he was an Englishman
operating outside the American law was enough to
give him a certain romantic aura. However, Rattlesnake Dick was downright prosaic in comparison
with many native American badmen of the period. The
real story behind his name was that he had prospected
for a short time at Rattlesnake Bar in the Northern
Mines area of California. Rattlesnake Dick soon
decided, however, that it was easier to steal gold than
to dig for it. Here the legend-makers were right,
although they failed to note that Rattlesnake Dick had
never made a dime at his digs. In 1856, after some
small-time stage holdups, Barter hit on what was to
prove the most brilliant and, at the same time, most
comic criminal scheme of his career. To give him credit
due, he masterminded the $80,000 robbery of the
Yreka Mine’s mule train and managed to organize a
gang for that purpose. Rattlesnake Dick did not take
part in the actual robbery, which was left to George
Skinner and some others, possibly explaining why that
part of the scheme worked so well. The Yreka Mine
mule train had been regarded as immune from robbers
because the mules would always tire out halfway down
FPO
PICKUP
FROM LAST
PRINTING
Photograph shows outlaw Sam Bass (center), although its
authenticity has been disputed.
69
BASSITY, Jerome
$20, Cy Skinner decided he had had enough of the
criminal genius of Rattlesnake Dick and went his separate way. Barter continued his bush-league hold-ups
until he was shot and killed by a pursuing posse in July
1859. But the legend of Rattlesnake Dick as California’s worst bandit between the eras of Murieta and
Vasquez lives on, enhanced by the fact that today treasure hunters still scour the California hills for Dick’s
buried gold.
outlaw named Seaborn Barnes and shot Sam Bass off
his horse. Another outlaw, Frank Jackson, rode back
through a fusillade of fire to rescue Bass and carry him
out of town.
Bass was found by pursuers the next day; he was
lying under a tree, near death. While he clung to life,
Texas Rangers questioned him about his accomplices
and the location of the loot he was believed to have
buried. Bass would not respond, saying only: “Let me
go. The world is bobbing around.” He died on his 27th
birthday. Some treasure hunters still search for the Bass
loot, although it is more than likely that the dying Bass
told Jackson where to find it. The “Ballad of Sam Bass”
is still a Texas favorite, and the outlaw’s grave at
Round Rock remains an attraction.
See also: FRANK JACKSON, JIM MURPHY.
Bass, Sam (1851–1878) outlaw
Sam Bass was born in Indiana, it was his native home;
At the age of seventeen young Sam began to roam.
Sam first came out to Texas, a cowboy for to be—
A kinder-hearted fellow you seldom ever see.
From “The Ballad of Sam Bass”
Bassity, Jerome (1870?–1929) whoremaster
Kinder-hearted or not, Sam Bass was an outlaw. While
he “came out to Texas, a cowboy for to be,” young
Bass found life dull and soon opted for crime. He and
two other characters, Joel Collins and Jack Davies,
went in for some “easy rustling,” taking on 500 cattle
on consignment, driving them to market in Kansas in
1876 and then neglecting to settle up with the Texas
ranchers who had hired them. With their loot as capital, the trio became pimps and opened a whorehouse in
Deadwood, Dakota Territory, a place described as “the
most degraded den of infamy that ever cursed the
Earth.” With that sort or recommendation, the brothel
did a thriving business. Nonetheless, Bass, Collins and
Davies drank and gambled away their income faster
than their prostitutes could make it, so the trio and
three of their best bordello customers, Bill Heffridge,
Jim Berry and Tom Nixon, formed an outlaw gang and
held up a number of stagecoaches. On September 19,
1877 the gang made a big score, robbing a Union
Pacific train of $60,000.
With a $10,000 stake, Bass returned to Denton
County, Tex. and started a new gang, becoming a folk
hero in the process. While he was not exactly a Robin
Hood, Bass was loose with the money he stole and if
there was one way for a gunman to become popular in
Texas, it was for him to be a free spender. For a time,
Bass proved to be a real will-o’-the-wisp, impossible for
the law to corner and remarkably skillful at extracting
hospitality from Texans who looked upon him with
affection. As the reward money mounted, however,
Bass became a marked man. Finally, one of his own
band, Jim Murphy, whose family often gave Bass refuge
on their ranch, betrayed him by informing the law that
the gang planned a bank robbery in Round Rock.
While Murphy ducked for shelter, ambushers killed an
During the long history of prostitution in San Francisco’s Barbary Coast, Jerome Bassity stands out as perhaps the owner of more brothels than any other single
person in that city. Although he was described by the
press as being a “study in depravity” with an intelligence only slightly higher than that of a chimpanzee,
Bassity was the veritable lord of the red-light district. In
the heyday of the corrupt Ruef machine, especially during the three terms of Mayor Eugene Schmitz from
1901 to 1907, Bassity, whose real name was said to be
Jere McGlane, was far and away the most potent figure
in the San Francisco underworld.
The newspaper singled him out for special condemnation. The San Francisco Bulletin invited its readers
to “look at the low, cunning lights in the small, rapacious, vulture-like eyes; look at that low, dull-comprehending brow; the small sensual mouth; the soft puffy
fingers with the weak thumb, indicating how he seeks
ever his own comfort before others, how his will
works only in fits and starts.” Despite such publicity,
Bassity operated with little or no restraint, from about
the turn of the century until 1916, save for two
years—1907 to 1909—during a reform administration. In 1909 Mayor P. H. McCarthy took office on a
platform designed to “make San Francisco the Paris of
America.” Bassity aided that cause by operating a 100cubicle brothel called the Parisian Mansion. While
McCarthy was in office it was openly acknowledged
that the city was really ruled by a triumvirate: the
mayor, police commissioner and bar owner Harry P.
Flannery, and Bassity.
In addition to his brothels, Bassity owned dance
halls and other dives, including a notorious Market
Street deadfall called the Haymarket that even the
streetwalkers refused to enter. Bassity had an interest in
70
BAYONNE-Abriel gang
the income of at least 200 prostitutes and his own
income was estimated to be around $10,000 a month,
no trifling sum for the period. A dandy dresser and
“diamond ring stud,” Bassity reportedly went to bed
with a diamond ring on each of his big toes. In his own
brothels he claimed and exercised his seigniorial rights
whenever a young girl or virgin arrived, but by and
large, Bassity patronized his competitors’ establishments. His patronage practically amounted to sabotage
since he was generally drunk, always armed and frequently concluded a night of debauchery by shooting
out the lights or seeing how close he could fire shots to
the harlots’ toes. Bassity bragged that he squandered
most of his income on clothes, jewelry and debauchery,
but he predicted the flow of money would never end. In
1916, foreseeing the success of reform efforts to shut
down the Barbary Coast, Bassity retired from the sex
racket and headed for Mexico, where he unsuccessfully
attempted a takeover of the Tijuana race track. He was
later charged but not prosecuted for a swindle in California. When he died in 1929, after what was described
as “California’s most sinful life,” he left an estate of less
than $10,000.
See also: ABRAHAM RUEF.
Bath, Michigan
The explosion brought the townspeople running,
while Andy Kehoe sat and watched the whole horrible
scene from his parked car. Among the rescuers was the
head of the school board, heroically risking his life to
bring injured children out of the tottering wreckage. He
kept at it until Kehoe beckoned him over to his car.
Andy Kehoe still had one more murder card to play. As
the school official placed his foot on the running board
of the car, Kehoe turned a switch and a violent explosion killed the last two victims of the mad bomber of
Bath.
bats
prostitutes
“Batting” remains one of the most common forms of
streetwalking. A bat is a prostitute who works the
streets only at night in sections that are respectable by
day. In Chicago during the 1870s, for example, a
respectable woman could readily traverse such downtown streets as Randolph, Dearborn and East Monroe
during the day and fear no untoward incident. At night,
however, she could well be accosted by men in search of
a harlot. The hookers operated out of “marble front”
business buildings, residing there but remaining undercover until after dark and then venturing forth to entice
still available businessmen.
Bats prefer working respectable streets because the
fees earned are much better than along more vice-ridden
streets. Bats too are generally far nicer looking than their
competitors in the business. Typical bat streets in the
early 1980s to the present in New York are Lexington
Avenue and Madison Avenue from the low 40s to about
48th Street, the so-called prime meat market row.
school bombing
One of the most hideous crimes ever committed in
America was the slaying of 37 schoolchildren in 1927
by Andrew Kehoe, the mad bomber of Bath, Mich.
The background to the case was pieced together by
the police after the fact, because Kehoe himself did not
survive the crime. Kehoe was a farmer, but not a very
successful one, barely scraping by even in boom years.
When the community of Bath decided to build a new
schoolhouse, property owners were assessed a special
levy. Kehoe’s tax bite came to $300. After he paid up,
he no longer could meet his mortgage and faced imminent loss of his house. “It’s that school tax,” he would
tell anyone who would listen. “If it hadn’t been for the
$300 I had to pay, I’d have the money. That school
never should have been built.”
Kehoe feuded with school board officials, accusing
them of squandering the taxpayers’ money. He started
telling people he’d have his revenge for that. Night after
night Kehoe would be seen near the school. It turned
out that he was sneaking in the building and spending
hours planting dynamite in safe hiding places.
At 9:43 A.M. on May 18, 1927, the whole building
shook. The second floor of the north wing rose in the
air and came down, crushing the first floor in an
avalanche of battered wreckage. In all, 37 schoolchildren and one teacher died, and some 43 others were very
seriously injured.
Battaglia, Sam “Teets” (1908–1973) syndicate gangster
Perhaps the craziest and certainly the deadliest of the
four notorious Battaglia brothers who were members
of the Chicago mobs, Sam Battaglia was a graduate of
the notorious juvenile 42 Gang.
A burglar from the age of 16 and later a muscleman
for the mob, he was arrested 25 times, beginning in
1924, on various armed robbery charges and at least
seven homicide charges. A huge barrel of a youth, nicknamed Teets because of his muscular chest, Battaglia
gained his first major notoriety when he was arrested in
the fall of 1930 on a charge of robbing at gunpoint
$15,500 worth of jewelry from the wife of the mayor of
Chicago, Mrs. William Hale Thompson. Adding insult
to injury, Teets appropriated the gun and badge of her
policeman chauffeur. However, a positive identification
could not be made, and Teets went free when he
insisted he was watching a movie at the time of the rob-
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BEACHY, Hill
bery and a half-dozen witnesses insisted they were
watching him watching the movie.
The robbery occurred on November 17, and,
between then and the end of the year, Teets was
involved in one fatal killing and one attempted killing.
In ensuing years he became one of the mob’s most reliable machine gunners and, despite a reputation for
being a bit zany, moved steadily up the syndicate ladder. By the 1950s he was the virtual king of the mob’s
“juice,” or loansharking, rackets and supervised a
number of gambling joints and prostitution rings.
Sam Battaglia, a tough out of Chicago’s Patch district who was always considered stronger on brawn
than brains, became a millionaire and the owner of a
luxury horse-breeding farm and country estate in Kane
County, Ill. In 1967 Battaglia was finally sent away for
15 years on extortion charges, yet he was considered,
pending his release, the likely head of the Chicago mob.
See also: FORTY-TWO GANG.
Bayonne-Abriel gang
Isadore Boyd. Boyd’s testimony was instrumental in
getting the pair convicted and on May 14, 1871,
hanged.
Beachy, Hill
See LLOYD MAGRUDER.
Beadle, William (?–1782) murderer
As a murderer, Wethersfield, Conn.’s William Beadle
achieved lasting local notoriety not only because of the
horrendous nature of his crime but also because of the
way he kept coming back to remind local residents of
what he’d done. It appeared later that William had
planned to wipe out his family—his wife and five children, aged six to 11—for some time. Finally, one night
as they slept, he crept upstairs, struck each in the head
with an ax and then cut their throats. After this bloodletting, Beadle returned to the kitchen downstairs and
sat in a chair at the table. He picked up two pistols,
placed one in each ear and pulled both triggers at the
same time. The victims were all buried in the town
cemetery, but the townspeople had to decide what to do
with Beadle. They determined he should be buried
secretly and a grave was dug in the frozen December
ground down by the river. However, an overflow the
following spring disinterred the body. Beadle was again
buried secretly, but this time a dog dug up the corpse.
Finally, on the third try, the murderer’s body stayed
buried.
New Orleans waterfront killers
A small band of burglars, wharf rats and professional
murderers that terrorized New Orleans in the 1860s,
the Bayonne-Abriel gang made up in viciousness what
they lacked in numbers. According to one story, the
gang once stole a row boat and, after discovering the
boat was missing an oar, went out and killed another
sailor just for his oars. While they occasionally functioned as shanghaiers, their main operation was a
lucrative racket supplying seamen with everything from
women and drugs to murder services. It was such a
murder-for-hire service that eventually eliminated both
leaders, Vincent Bayonne and Pedro Abriel, and led to
the gang’s dissolution.
Early in June 1869 the mate of a Spanish bark
offered Bayonne and Abriel the kingly sum of $6 to kill
a sailor who had earned his enmity. With such a prize
at stake, Bayonne and Abriel decided to handle the job
themselves rather than share it with any of their followers. The pair lured the sailor into a dive for a few drinks
and then all three headed down to the levee “for some
fun.” Fun for the sailor turned out to be getting batted
over the head with a club wielded by Bayonne. When
Bayonne raised his arm to strike the unconscious man
again, Abriel stopped him and said, “Let me finish
him.”
Bayonne refused, and Abriel struck him in assertion
of his rights. The pair struggled fiercely for several minutes until Abriel knocked Bayonne out. By that time the
sailor was stirring. Abriel then stabbed him 17 times
and heaved the body into the river. Abriel and Bayonne
reconciled afterwards but made the mistake of revealing the details of their vicious crime to a man named
Bean, Roy (c. 1825–1902) saloonkeeper and judge
Billing himself as the “law west of the Pecos,” Roy
Bean of Texas was without question the most unusual
and colorful jurist ever to hold court in America. Bean
dispensed justice between poker hands in his salooncourtroom. He would open a proceeding by declaring:
“Hear Ye! Hear Ye! This honorable court’s now in session and if any galoot wants a snort before we start, let
him step up and name his pizen.”
A native of Kentucky, Bean had been a trader, bartender and Confederate guerrilla during the Civil War.
(He organized the Free Rovers in the New Mexico Territory, which local residents soon began calling the Forty
Thieves, an indication of how much of the booty went to
the Confederate cause.) In his late fifties, fat, bewhiskered
and whiskey sodden, Bean ambled into the tent town of
Vinegaroon in 1882 and got himself appointed justice of
the peace, perhaps because he had a copy of the 1879
Revised Statutes of Texas. When the road gangs moved
on from Vinegaroon, Bean went to Langtry, a stopover
point on the Southern Pacific. Here Bean, first by
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BEAUCHAMP, Jereboam O.
Judge Roy Bean dispensed his special brand of Texas justice seated on a beer keg outside his saloon.
grass and heaps of sweet-smellin’ flowers on every hill
and in every dale. Then sultry Summer, with her shimmerin’ heat-waves on the baked horizon. And Fall, with
her yeller harvest moon and the hills growin’ brown
and golden under a sinkin’ sun. And finally Winter,
with its bitin’, whinin’ wind, and all the land will be
mantled with snow. But you won’t be here to see any of
’em; not by a damn sight, because it’s the order of this
court that you be took to the nearest tree and hanged
by the neck till you’re dead, dead, dead, you olivecolored son of a billy goat.
appointment and then by elections held in his saloon, was
to dispense his bizarre justice for 20 years.
Judge Bean had all sorts of profitable lines. He got
$5 a head officiating at inquests, $2 performing marriages and $5 granting divorces. When higher-ups
informed him he did not have the authority to divorce
people, he was unimpressed. “Well, I married ’em, so I
guess I got a right to unmarry ’em if it don’t take.”
When a railroad man with a good record, meaning he
was a regular paying customer at Bean’s saloon, was
hauled in for killing a Chinese laborer, the judge leafed
through his dog-eared legal guide and then released the
prisoner, ruling, “There ain’t a damn line here
nowheres that makes it illegal to kill a Chinaman.”
And when another friend of the judge was charged with
shooting a Mexican, Bean’s finding was that “it served
the deceased right for getting in front of a gun.”
Having himself appeared in other courts on occasion, Bean knew that judges from time to time made
very flowery speeches, and he endeavored to do the
same, adding a flourish or two of his own. Passing sentence on a cattle rustler once, he intoned:
In 1896 a lamentable oversight occurred in Bean’s
reelection campaign. He ended up with more votes than
there were eligible voters, and as a result, the authorities awarded the office to his hated opponent, Jesus P.
Torres. Bean was undaunted by this development and
continued to handle cases that originated on his side of
town. He died in 1902, a victim of his own rum as
much as old age.
See also: BENEDICT’S SENTENCE.
Beauchamp, Jereboam O. (1803–1826) murderer
You have been tried by 12 good men and true, not of
your peers but as high above you as heaven is of hell,
and they have said you are guilty. Time will pass and
seasons will come and go. Spring with its wavin’ green
Few murderers shocked, and yet typified, the genteel
antebellum South more than Jereboam O. Beauchamp.
A brilliant young lawyer from a leading Kentucky fam73
BECK, Dave
ily, Beauchamp created quite a stir in society when he
married Ann Cooke, a somewhat withered belle of 38;
Beauchamp was but 21. Beside the disparity in age,
there were other complications, such as Ann’s wellknown affair with a leading political figure, Col.
Solomon P. Sharp. In 1826 Sharp, a former state attorney general, ran for reelection to the Kentucky House
of Representatives. During the campaign Sharp’s foes
dredged up his old affair with Ann, fully publicizing her
charges at the time that he had seduced and impregnated her.
It was stale gossip, but even at this late date,
Beauchamp decided Ann’s honor had to be avenged. He
challenged Sharp, who had maintained a strict silence
on the matter, to a duel. Sharp refused, and Beauchamp
considered this breach of behavior almost as heinous as
his sexual escapade with a woman who was then
unmarried.
One day early in 1826, Beauchamp donned a red
hood and appeared at the colonel’s door. When Sharp
appeared, Beauchamp stabbed him to death and fled.
However, he had been readily recognized by his garments
and was quickly cast into jail in Frankfort. Ann visited
him daily and proclaimed her eternal gratitude for the
avenging of her honor. After Beauchamp was sentenced
to hang in July, the couple decided to commit suicide
together. Ann smuggled in some poison to the cell, but
they succeeded only in getting themselves a bit sick.
Jereboam’s execution was scheduled for July 7, and
the two were permitted to breakfast together. When
they were alone, they took turns plunging a knife into
each other’s stomach. Beauchamp held Ann in his arms
as she died, but he did not die. Bleeding profusely, he
was dragged from the cell by embarrassed guards, still
clinging to his dead wife. It was decided that his execution would go on even though it was not certain if the
bleeding prisoner would be able to stand on the scaffold.
Thousands of spectators lined the way to the gallows, fully expecting to see the condemned man sitting
on his own coffin in an open cart, as was the custom of
the day. Instead, Beauchamp was bundled in a blanket,
still clutching his wife’s body, and transported in a
closed carriage. Once the crowd was appraised of his
condition and the circumstances surrounding it, it was
appeased. This was truly something different.
Hushed whispers of satisfaction swept through the
crowd when Beauchamp managed to climb the steps of
the gallows. He weaved precariously, while a band
played a favorite selection of the period, “Bonaparte’s
Retreat from Moscow,” as Beauchamp’s last request.
His final words were “Farewell, child of sorrow! For
you I have lived; for you I die!”
Husband and wife were buried in a common grave.
Chiseled in the stone slab was a poem Ann had composed in the death cell:
He heard her tale of matchless woe,
And burning for revenge he rose,
And laid her base seducer low,
And struck dismay to virtue’s foe.
Daughter of virtue! Moist thy tear.
This tomb of love and honor claim;
For thy defense the husband here,
Laid down in youth his life and fame.
Beck, Dave (1894–1993) labor union leader
In the early 1950s David D. Beck was one of the most
powerful and respected labor union leaders in the
United States. He was president of the country’s largest
single union, the 1.4 million member International
Brotherhood of Teamsters. He was a rich man whose
friendship was sought by business executives and
statesmen. He boasted that management almost unanimously hailed him as a cooperative labor leader sympathetic to its problems. He was also greedy on a
monumental scale.
In his younger years Beck was noted as an aggressive
labor leader and an effective bargainer. Founder of the
western Conference of Teamsters, he negotiated contracts that became standards for labor settlements
throughout the rest of the country. When he became
president of the union in 1952, he had seemingly
achieved the pinnacle of success, although he had to
share his union powers in several areas with tough
James R. Hoffa, chairman of the Teamsters Central
States Conference. In fact, Hoffa once boasted: “Dave
Beck? Hell, I was running it while he was playing big
shot. He never knew the score.”
Beck knew the score, however, when it came to milking union funds to become a millionaire. He took loans
from the union treasury, which he never repaid. With
the aid of money from the union, he built for himself an
elegant house in the suburbs of Seattle, featuring an artificial waterfall in the backyard and a basement movie
theater. He sold it to the Teamsters at twice what it cost
to build and then got it back from the union rent-free
for his lifetime use. He put the bite on large companies
for personal “loans” and gained the reputation of being
able to walk off with anything not nailed down.
Beck’s downfall came in a confrontation with the
Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in the
Labor or Management Field, chaired by Sen. John
McClellan of Arkansas with a young Robert F. Kennedy
as chief counsel. The McClellan Committee did much to
expose the greed of a number of union officials who had
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BECKER, Charles
often allied themselves with underworld figures and had
looted union treasuries for personal gain. Many union
officials squirmed under the inquiry, but none more so
than the Teamster leadership. Beck, like others, was to
infer that the committee and especially the chief counsel
were “antilabor,” but he came before the investigation
declaring: “I have nothing to fear. My record is an open
book.” He then proceeded to invoke the Fifth Amendment more than 200 times.
In summing up, the committee declared:
Both Fernandez and Beck were social misfits who
joined several lonely hearts clubs seeking companionship. In addition to companionship, Fernandez sought
money from women he became acquainted with. When
Fernandez and Beck met through the auspices of a club,
they teamed up to make a business of swindling
women. While Fernandez wooed the women, Martha
played the role of his sister. They mulcted scores of
women and simply killed those who proved uncooperative or troublesome. The murders that tripped the pair
up were those of Mrs. Janet Fay, a 60-year-old Albany,
N.Y. widow, and Mrs. Delphine Downing, an attractive
41-year-old widow from Grand Rapids, Mich., and her
20-month-old child.
Mrs. Fay traveled as fast as she could to Valley
Stream, Long Island to meet her husband-to-be (Fernandez) and his sister (Beck) after selling her home in
Albany. Once the pair was sure they had all the
woman’s money, they beat her to death with a hammer
and buried her in the cellar of a rented house. The
killers then traveled to Grand Rapids and similarly
stripped Mrs. Downing of much of her wealth. After
feeding her sleeping pills, Fernandez then shot her to
death. A few days later Martha Beck drowned the
woman’s child in the bathtub. The murderous pair then
buried both corpses under cement in the cellar.
That chore completed the couple went off to a
movie. When they returned, they found the police
inside the Downing home. Suspicious neighbors had
not seen the woman around for a few days and notified the authorities. Since the cement in the cellar had
not yet dried, the bodies were quickly found. The
police also discovered traces of the late Mrs. Fay’s
belongings in the couples’ possession and soon
obtained a confession to the New York murder as well.
Since New York had a death penalty and Michigan did
not, the two were tried for the Fay killing. After a 44day trial, in which the sexual aberrations of Fernandez
and Beck provided a field day for the sensational press,
they were sentenced to death. On March 8, 1951—
their final day of life—Fernandez received a message
from Beck that she still loved him, news he exclaimed,
that made him “want to burst with joy.” Martha Beck
was granted her last request. Before she was executed
in Sing Sing’s electric chair, she had her hair meticulously curled.
The lonely hearts murders led to the tightening of
restrictions on the operations of lonely hearts clubs, but
most lawmakers conceded little safeguards could be
established to protect foolish and romantic people from
being swindled and even killed for love’s sake.
The fall of Dave Beck from a position of eminence in
the labor-union movement is not without sadness.
When named to head this rich and powerful union, he
was given an opportunity to do much good for a great
segment of American working men and women. But
when temptation faced Dave Beck, he could not turn
his back. His thievery in the final analysis became so
petty that the committee must wonder at the penuriousness of the man. What would cause a man in such circumstances to succumb to the temptation of using
union funds to pay for six pairs of knee drawers for
$27.54, or a bow tie for $3.50? In Beck’s case, the
committee must conclude that he was motivated by an
uncontrollable greed.
Exposure of Beck’s greed caused him to leave the
hearings a broken man. He would soon be imprisoned,
although he tried to fend off this fate by refunding huge
sums of money to the Teamsters’ treasury. By May 1,
1957 he had returned some $370,000, but the next day,
with only a few days remaining before the statute of
limitations expired, he was indicted on charges of
income tax evasion.
Jimmy Hoffa replaced him as president on February
20, 1958, and Beck drew a long prison term. When he
came out, he was still worth a considerable amount of
money and had intact his $50,000 lifetime pension
from the union. Beck still owed the government $1.3
million in back taxes, and the Treasury Department
had the right to seize any and all of his assets to satisfy
the claim. However, in 1971 John B. Connolly, secretary of the treasury under President Richard Nixon,
approved a plan for a moratorium on the payment of
the debt. The Teamsters became Nixon’s strongest
booster in the labor movement.
Beck, Martha (1920–1951) Lonely Hearts Killer
Together with Raymond Martinez Fernandez, 280pound Martha Beck became infamous in the 1940s as
one of the Lonely Hearts Killers. Although the pair was
charged with only three murders, they were suspected
of committing 17 others.
Becker, Charles (1869–1915) corrupt policeman and
75
BECKER, Jennie
murderer
investigators, seized him in a scuffle in the station
house.
Eventually, the killers were caught and, in hope of
saving their own necks, talked, implicating Zelig. Zelig,
in turn, realized his best chance to avoid execution also
lay in talking, and he informed on Becker. Allowed free
on bail, Zelig was shot and killed by another gangster.
However, Whitman, who saw the Rosenthal case as a
way of purging police graft and perhaps promoting
himself into the governorship, still presented enough
evidence to have the four killers convicted and sentenced to death and convicted Becker of being the instigator of the killing.
Becker was granted a new trial amid clear indications that Whitman had promised rewards to various
prosecution witnesses in return for their aid in convicting a police officer. Nonetheless, he was found guilty
once again and was sentenced to death. As Becker’s
execution date drew near, his only hope was to obtain
clemency from the governor, but unfortunately for him,
Whitman had since been elected to that office. He
ignored a plea from Becker’s wife, who remained faithful to her husband to the end.
Becker’s friends insisted that he had been “jobbed”
and, whatever his sins, had not masterminded the
Rosenthal murder. After Becker was electrocuted on
July 7, 1915, in what was probably Sing Sing’s clumsiest execution, his wife had attached to the top of
his coffin a silver plate with the following inscription:
In the 1890s novelist Stephen Crane witnessed a tall,
brawny policeman walk up to a prostitute and start
beating her to a pulp when she refused to share the proceeds of her last business transaction. Crane would
write about this brutish patrolman in his novel titled
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, but the real-life officer,
Charles Becker, would go on to commit far worse
offenses. Becker was known as “the crookedest cop
who ever stood behind a shield,” no mean accomplishment in the sordid history of New York City police corruption.
He rose to the rank of lieutenant, became personal
assistant to dapper police commissioner Rhinelander
Waldo, perhaps the most inept holder of that office
before or since, and was in charge of the department’s
special crime squad. In addition to his police function,
Becker was also the protégé of Tammany Hall leader
Tim Sullivan and aspired to succeed him. Becker used
his position to handle all payoffs to the police and
politicians from gamblers, prostitutes and other vice
operators. His special squad as well as outside gangsters were employed to enforce the payoff rules, providing protection to those who paid and retribution to
those who refused.
One gambler who attempted to stand up to Becker
was Herman Rosenthal, who ran a betting joint on
West 45th Street. Fearful that Rosenthal would set a
bad example for other gamblers, Becker kept intensive
pressure on him, but the tactic boomeranged. Rosenthal started telling his troubles to reporter Herbert
Bayard Swope of the New York World and to Charles
S. Whitman, Republican district attorney of Manhattan. Soon, Becker realized his position was threatened.
He turned to his top underworld henchman, Big Jack
Zelig, to take care of Rosenthal before he did any more
talking. At the moment, Zelig was in jail, but Becker
used his influence to free him. Zelig then arranged for
four gunmen—Gyp the Blood, Lefty Louie, Dago Frank
and Whitey Lewis—to handle the hit.
The four botched a few attempts, and the frightened
Rosenthal sent word to Becker and Zelig that he was
finished talking and would leave New York. However,
Rosenthal had already talked too much, and on July
16, 1912 the four killers brought him down in a fusillade of bullets outside the Hotel Metropole on West
43rd Street.
An investigation was ordered, and Commissioner
Waldo put Becker in charge. With amazing nerve,
Becker instructed the police to “lose” the license
number of the murderers’ car and even attempted to
hide an eyewitness to the crime in a police station jail
cell. Through a tipster, District Attorney Whitman
learned of the witness and, with the help of his own
CHARLES BECKER
MURDERED JULY 7, 1915
BY GOVERNOR WHITMAN
The plate was finally removed when the police convinced Mrs. Becker that she could be prosecuted for
criminal libel.
See also: STEPHEN CRANE.
Becker, Jennie (1881–1922) murder victim
Abe Becker was certain he had committed the perfect
crime when he bashed in his wife’s skull, buried her in
a pit and poured corrosive alkali over her body.
Instead, it became a criminal-medical text classic. On
the night of the murder in April 1922, Becker had
taken his wife, Jennie, to a party at a friend’s house in
New York City and played the role of a loving spouse,
stuffing her with canapés, grapes, figs and almonds.
On the way home, he lured Jennie out of the car by
pretending to have motor trouble. He then struck her
over the head with a wrench and carried her dead body
to a prepared grave, where he doused it with alkali. In
76
BEGGING
White eventually reunited the pair with their parents
and, unlike the fate of most “ruined girls,” the Beckett
sisters became famous heroines of the day.
See also: SAM PURDY.
the ensuing months Becker explained his wife’s disappearance by saying she’d run off with another man. He
was not even too concerned when the police found
Jennie’s body, or what they thought was her body, five
months later. Proving it would be another matter. The
alkali had rendered the body unrecognizable.
In desperation, the police turned the corpse over
to the medical examiner’s office. Experts found that
the alkali had not totally destroyed the stomach.
They found the woman had eaten grapes, figs,
almonds and some meat-spread sandwiches—the
very things Becker had lovingly fed his wife at the
party. Becker was undoubtedly frightened now, but
he kept insisting the body was not his wife’s. Figs are
figs, grapes are grapes and almonds are almonds—
some other woman had simply eaten the same type of
food, he contended. Denials proved worthless, however. Laboratory examination of the meat spread
found it matched exactly with the meat spread prepared by the party hostess—according to a private
family recipe. Becker died in the electric chair in
April 1924.
Beckett sisters
Beckwourth, Jim (1800–1866 or 1867) mountaineer and
thief
Trader, scout and all-around frontiersman, Jim Beckwourth was easily the most famous of the black adventurers of the West.
Beckwourth was born in Virginia, the son of Sir Jennings Beckwith (who was descended from minor Irish
aristocrats) and a mulatto slave woman. In 1822 Beckwourth (the spelling he adopted) appeared in Missouri
as a free black man. Two years later, he joined Gen.
William Ashley’s expedition to the Rocky Mountains.
It is difficult to measure Beckwourth’s accomplishments because his own accounts make him easily the
greatest Indian fighter and lover of Indian women of
all time; yet his reputation grew quickly, and migrants
coming West in wagon trains bid high for his services
as a guide through the Sierras. Beckwourth also did a
thriving business supplying these migrants with horses.
To that end, he formed the biggest gang of horse
thieves in California’s history, together with famed
mountain men Old Bill Williams and Pegleg Smith.
The gang’s greatest raid occurred in 1840, when, with
a large band of Indians, they slipped undetected over
Cajon Pass. On May 14 Juan Perez, the administrator
at San Gabriel Mission, reported to the authorities that
every ranch in the valley from San Gabriel to San
Bernardino had been stripped of its horse stock.
Although posses occasionally caught up to the horse
thieves, they were beaten off. Finally, a posse of 75
men under Gov. Jose Antonio Carillo cornered the
gang at Resting Springs. In the ensuing gun battle,
Beckwourth justified the tales of his prowess with a
gun, killing or wounding several members of the posse.
Scores of horses were killed and others so badly
wounded they had to be destroyed, but Beckwourth
and company still got away with more than 1,200
head.
Eventually, Beckwourth turned to ranching, managing to build up his stock with stolen horses until 1855,
when he barely got out of the state ahead of vigilantes
out to hang him. He moved to the Colorado Territory,
scouted again for the army and later took up city life
in Denver as a storekeeper. This activity bored him, and
in 1864 he went back to the wilderness, acting as a
guide for John M. Chivington in the infamous Sand
Creek Massacre. Perhaps unwisely, Beckwourth then
started trading with the Indians again, and in 1866 he
was allegedly poisoned by the Crows while visiting
white slave kidnap victims
During the early 1800s, no kidnapping of young girls
by the infamous Mississippi River procurers excited the
American public as much as that of two teenage sisters,
Rose and Mary Beckett of St. Louis, who were
abducted by the notorious Sam Purdy gang.
It was the custom of these river procurers to buy up
young girls from their impoverished parents and transport them down the Mississippi by flatboat to Natchez,
where they were sold at auction to whoremasters from
various Southern cities. Only when they could not find
enough willing girls available to be “sold down the
river”—hence the origin of the phrase—did the procurers go in for actual kidnapping. Such was the fate of the
Beckett girls, who wound up at Natchez in early 1805
and were sold off after spirited bidding by various bordello keepers and “floating hog pen” operators. The
girls were sold as a set for $400 to the proprietor of a
notorious New Orleans establishment called The
Swamp.
Here the girls were incarcerated, and here they
would have remained had it not been for a reformer
named Carlos White, who had tracked the Purdy gang
from St. Louis and scoured the New Orleans fleshpots
for the Beckett sisters. A man of action, White used
force to rescue the two sisters from The Swamp, shooting one of their guards to death and pistol-whipping
another while the girls climbed out a window and
escaped.
77
BEHAN, John
their village. Other reports have him dying in 1867
near Denver.
See also: THOMAS L. “PEGLEG” SMITH, WILLIAM S.
“OLD BILL” WILLIAMS.
then, a stage-struck little autograph hunter. Almost
immediately, she developed a knack for making a pest
of herself, and people gave her whatever she asked for
just to get rid of her. Soon, she was asking for money.
Her technique worked so well that after a while, she
would accept folding money only. Celebrities quailed at
Rose’s glance. Jack Dempsey once fled his own restaurant when she walked in to put the touch on his customers. In time, Broadway Rose prospered to the
extent that she could refuse donations from nobodies
with the admonition, “Go get yourself a reputation,
jerk, before I’ll take your scratch.”
Probably the most profitable approach used today is
a beggar in a business suit who embarrassedly tells victims he has lost his wallet and needs commuter fare
home. Since home is a far way off, a minimum bite is
$5. While such a routine can be most remunerative, it
probably will never earn the profits attained by a New
York beggar who used to pose as a leper. He was a tall,
gaunt, olive-skinned man who’d haunt shadowy alleys
and emerge only when he saw a prospective sucker
coming along. “Mister . . . I’m a leper. . . . Will you
drop some money on the sidewalk for me? . . . Will
you, please? . . . For a poor leper?” All this time, the
“leper” would keep moving toward his quarry, his
arms outstretched—and many a poor soul was known
to have reacted by dropping his entire wallet and then
racing out of harm’s way.
begging
The practice, or perhaps more correctly the profession,
of begging doubtlessly goes back to prehistoric times. It
appeared in America almost with the first settlers and
continues to the present day. In New York one
resourceful entrepreneur, after years of successful panhandling, opened a school in 1979 to teach the art of
begging. (Lesson One: On the subway, pick out one target, stand before him and whine loudly, “Please!” If
that doesn’t work, get on one knee and continue to
plead until he does give.)
There have been many legendary beggars in American history. One of the most successful during the
1920s was New York City’s “Breadline Charlie,” who
eschewed use of a harness or other equipment to make
him appear crippled or helpless. Instead, he carried in
his pocket small chunks of stale bread, and when in a
crowd, he would drop a piece on the sidewalk. Then he
would “discover” it, let out a scream of ecstasy and
gobble it down as though he hadn’t eaten in days. This
pitiful scene always touched the hearts and purses of
passersby.
An earlier faker, George Gray, had earned, by his
own confession, at least $10,000 a year for many years
around the turn of the century thanks to his incredible
ability to feign an epileptic fit or a heart attack, usually
in front of the residence of a well-to-do Manhattanite.
After one of his many arrests, Gray was taken by police
to Presbyterian Hospital, where doctors pronounced
him “a curiosity of nature in that he possesses the
power of accelerating or retarding his heart action at
will.” A businessman named Jesse L. Strauss gave
police a considerable argument when they tried to roust
Gray as he lay writhing on the sidewalk. Strauss had his
money in hand and was ready to give it to the unfortunate man so that he could seek medical attention. Gray
was wanted as the era’s most professional “fit-thrower”
by police in a dozen Eastern cities.
Robert I. Ingles was an energetic beggar who toured
the country for years on a regular begging beat until his
death in a charity ward in New York during the 1950s.
On his person was found a pass book showing he had
$2,500 in a Manhattan bank. In due course, it was
found he had 42 other savings accounts with a total
value of well over $100,000.
Rose Dym (born Anna Dym), a nightmarishly
homely daughter of a retired Brooklyn pushcart peddler, hit the bright-light district in 1929. She was 17
Behan, John (c. 1840–?) lawman and Wyatt Earp foe
John Behan was sheriff of Cochise County, Ariz. for
only a year from 1881 to 1882, but since that was the
period of the Earp-Clanton feud and such events as the
gunfight at the O.K. Corral, he is accorded much more
attention in western lore than the average crooked sheriff of the day. Behan was a firm enemy of Wyatt Earp,
the bone of contention between them being the sheriff’s
office, which Behan had and Earp wanted. Most sheriffs devoted the bulk of their time to collecting county
taxes, leaving the gunfighting to their deputies. Remuneration for the job was largely a percentage of the tax
collection, which, combined with a reasonable amount
of graft from road-building and other contracts that a
sheriff often controlled, could make such a lawman
wealthy. At the time, the sheriff’s job in Cochise County
was worth $30,000 a year and Behan made $40,000.
In his fight to retain control of the office, Behan represented the cowboy and rustler element, or Democratic Party, while Earp represented the saloonkeeper/
gambler-townie interests, or generally the Republican
forces. It is against this background that events such as
the O.K. Corral shoot-out must be seen. To win the
support of the out-county elements, Behan allied him78
BENDER family
become good citizens now that “they have the opportunity to learn to read.” A few years later, in the Alder
Gulch–Bannack area of lawless Montana, Beidler came
to the fore as the hanging vigilante. His victims
included all the important badmen in the area. Beidler’s
style was casual in most cases: a handy tree limb or corral gate, the noose tightened and a box kicked out from
under the victim’s feet. With the coming of more organized law and order, the need for Beidler’s long rope
ended, and he became a businessman and saloon
keeper, later serving as collector of customs for Idaho
and Montana. He held that post until his death on January 22, 1890 in Helena.
See also: BANNACK, MONTANA TERRITORY; VIGILANTES
OF MONTANA.
self with the Clanton forces and hired some of their
gunmen to help in the collection of taxes. Elimination
of the Clantons would weaken Behan’s hold on his
office. Behan tried to stop the shoot-out at the O.K. but
was contemptuously ignored by the Earps and Doc
Holliday. He could do nothing to prevent the magnificent duel, or callous slaughter, depending on one’s
viewpoint, that followed.
Despite the killing of one Clanton and two McLowery brothers, the Earps failed to wipe out their enemies,
and in the end, they were driven out of Tombstone by a
combination of legal charges and public opinion.
Behan’s triumph was short lived, however. In 1882 he
faced charges of financial irregularities and stepped
down. After leaving office, he was indicted for continuing to collect taxes after his term.
Behan disappeared before the indictment could be
served and nothing was heard about him for a few
years. In 1887 he surfaced as a turnkey at the Yuma
Penitentiary, where he became something of a hero by
helping to quell a prison riot, although in the uproar he
locked the warden in with a bunch of knife-brandishing
convicts. No effort was made to return him to Cochise
County for prosecution. Two years later, Behan came
under another cloud when he was suspected of helping
some convicts escape. For the second time in his life,
Behan found it prudent to fade from the scene.
See also: WYATT EARP, O.K. CORRAL.
Bell, Tom (1825–1856) outlaw doctor
Known as the Outlaw Doc, Tom Bell, whose real name
was Thomas J. Hodges, is believed to have been the
only physician to ride the western bandit trail. On a
criminal job he would carry as many implements as a
doctor would carry on a house visit, in one case totaling up to six revolvers and a like number of knives and,
presumably because of his superior medical knowledge,
a chest protector fashioned from sheet iron.
Born in Rome, Tenn., Bell took part in the Mexican
War. During that period he was trained as a doctor and
emerged as a fully qualified practitioner. Bell followed
the ’49ers to California in search of gold but came up
empty. He supported himself by gambling at cards,
now and then taking time out to treat a gunshot victim.
Exactly how or why he turned to crime is not known,
but in 1855 he was doing time for theft in Angel Island
Prison. There he befriended a vicious criminal named
Bill Gristy, and within a matter of weeks the pair engineered an escape. The two then organized their own
outlaw gang with five other hard cases and began
pulling stage holdups.
On August 12, 1856 Bell and his confederates
attempted to hold up the Camptonville-Marysville
stage, which had $100,000 in gold bullion aboard.
They killed a woman passenger and wounded two men
but were beaten back by the stage’s shotgun guards
who killed two of them. The murder of the woman passenger sparked a huge manhunt for the bandits. There
were legal posses under assorted lawmen and illegal
posses of vigilantes who vowed to reach the killers first
and mete out fast western justice. By the end of September, Gristy had been arrested and, under threat of being
handed over to a lynch mob, had turned stoolpigeon in
his jail cell, identifying Doc Bell as the main culprit.
The official and unofficial posses were quickly back on
the trail in a race to locate Bell first. The sheriff of
Beidler, John X. (1831–1890) Montana vigilante hangman
In the 1860s John Beidler’s “long rope” became the terror of Montana’s badmen, and Beidler became known
as the most zealous vigilante that ever looped a noose.
In one six-week period 26 outlaws were hanged, and
Beidler’s rope did the job in every case.
Beidler, a plump, walrus-faced man, was born in
Montjoy, Pa. of German stock. Even to his friends in
the West, he was known as a rather joyless person.
Some biographers are unsure how much of Beidler’s
appetite for hanging sprang from a respect for law and
order and how much from a morbid pleasure in hanging people. But whatever else was said about Beidler, he
was certainly brave enough in taking credit for his acts.
He never wore a mask, as did so many other vigilantes.
If some of the “boys” ever wanted to get even with
him, they knew where to find him.
Beidler’s first vigilante act took place in Kansas,
where, as the head of a posse, he disabled a gang of
lawbreakers by firing a howitzer loaded with printer’s
type at them. In contradiction to the general description
of his somberness, Beidler said, as the victims painfully
dug the type slugs out of their bodies, that he saw no
need for a necktie party, pointing out they could
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BENEDICT’S Sentence
Stockton came in a close second. He found Doc on
October 4, 1856 dangling from a tree on the Nevada
City road.
Bender family
Cherryvale to see if he could pick up his brother’s trail.
Then John came in with a jug of cider and suggested
the lawyer have a swig before leaving. York refused the
offer and said he wanted to cover some ground before
night fell. If he failed to pick up his brother’s trail, he
announced, he would be coming back.
The next day a neighbor rode past the Bender place
and noted the door was open and the family wagon
nowhere in sight. He went inside and discovered the
Benders had gone, belongings and all. When Col.York
returned to Cherryvale, the trail gone cold, he was
informed of the facts. A group of men went out to the
Bender place. They looked in the cellar and found some
loose dirt there. They dug and discovered the body of
Dr. York.
They started digging around the cabin and found 10
other bodies, all with their skulls crushed. The Benders
had something like a two-day start, but if they were in
their wagon, they still might be caught. A posse of
seven men headed by Col. York started out to scour the
surrounding area in the hopes of finding the fugitive
family. When they came back some weeks later, they
said they had failed to find the Benders. But the posse
members were downright uncommunicative about
where they had been; they didn’t seem to want to talk
about it. Col. York lost interest in hunting for the murderous family and took his brother’s body with him for
reburial.
The news of the Hell Benders spread from coast to
coast. Souvenir hunters descended on Cherryvale and
soon leveled the Bender place to the ground. Nails and
boards said to be from the Benders’ house sold for
high prices in New York and San Francisco. Months
passed, then years, but none of the four Benders
turned up. Of course, there was a rash of false identifications. In 1889 Leroy Dick of Cherryvale traveled
to Michigan and identified Mrs. Almira Griffith and
her daughter, Mrs. Sarah Eliza Davis, as Ma Bender
and Kate. They were returned to Kansas, and out of
13 persons, seven agreed with Dick’s identification.
Proof was then produced that one of the women had
been married in Michigan in 1872, and the case
against the two women was dropped. There were a
number of other false identifications, all of which
proved unreliable.
In 1909 George Downer lay dying in a Chicago suburb. He called for his lawyer, and in his last hour,
Downer told the lawyer and his wife that he had been
a member of the posse that had killed the Benders.
After catching up with them, the posse had butchered
the family so badly they felt they could not reveal the
facts; they therefore buried the Benders in a 20-foot
well and covered them over with dirt. In 1910 a man
named Harker, dying in a New Mexico cow camp,
mass murderers
The Hell Benders, as they came to be called, were the
most murderous family America ever produced. They
robbed as a family, killed as a family and may well have
been slaughtered together as a family. When the Benders moved into Cherryvale in southeastern Kansas
during the early 1870s, no one thought ill of them, and
in fact, most of the young blades around were much
impressed by the beauty of young Kate Bender, whose
age was around 18 or 20.
The family consisted of Old Man William John, aged
about 60, Ma Bender (no Christian name has ever been
ascribed to her), young Kate and her brother, John,
who, while older in years, was certainly less mature
mentally than his sister. He was actually a moron
whose main activity in life appeared to be cackling
insanely.
The family maintained a log cabin outside of town
consisting of one large room divided by a canvas curtain. They served drink and meals to travelers on one
side of the curtain and slept on the other side. At night,
they set up some beds on the public side to put up travelers wishing to stay the night. If they served meals to
someone they knew, the Benders were most hospitable
and sent them cheerfully on their way. However, if the
patron was a lone traveler and looked like he had
money, he never left the Bender cabin alive. Kate would
sit him down on a bench against the canvas curtain and
presumably flirt with him until he was smitten—in the
most literal sense of the word. Either Old Man Bender
or moronic John would be on the other side of the canvas, and when they made out the outline of the man’s
head, they would bash it in with a sledgehammer.
The dead man would be taken down to the cellar
through a trap door and stripped of all money and
valuables. Later, the victim would be buried on the
grounds around the house, and Ma Bender would plant
flowers over the spot.
The Benders’ last victim was a Dr. William H. York
of Fort Scott, Kan. Passing through Cherryvale in
March 1873, he asked for a place where he could eat
and perhaps stay the night and was directed to the Benders’. When he disappeared, his brother, a lawyer
named Col. A. M. York, followed his trail. He traced
Dr. York to Cherryvale and no further. The Benders
told Col. York that his brother had never come to their
place. Kate Bender invited the colonel to sit a while and
she would fix him a cup of tea. She offered him a seat
by the canvas, but York said he wanted to ride on past
80
BENI, Jules
Benedict was an extremely learned man who was
appointed to the Supreme Court of New Mexico by
President Franklin Pierce in 1853. Previously, he had
spent all his adult life in Illinois, where he was a highly
regarded member of the bar and a friend of both Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas. On the New
Mexico bench, Benedict handed down several opinions
that are often cited as examples of fine judicial writing,
but he is unquestionably best remembered for his sentencing in Taos of Jose Maria Martin. Martin had been
convicted of a particularly heinous murder, a verdict
with which Benedict fully concurred. Judge Benedict
addressed the prisoner as follows:
confessed he too had helped kill the Benders. He also
mentioned the 20-foot well—at that time Downer’s
confession had not yet become common knowledge.
Harker said the posse had taken several thousand dollars from the bodies of the Benders, money they
believed to have been stolen from the victims. As late
as 1940 the same story surfaced from another source,
George Stark, who said his late father had made an
identical confession to him but had pledged him to
secrecy until after his death.
Were the confessions true? After the 1909 and 1910
confessions a search was made for the well in the area
identified by Downer and Harker. But the area had
long since been planted with corn. If the Benders were
there, they had been plowed under.
Of all the missing members of the Hell Benders,
William “Old Man” Bender (c. 1813–1884?) is worth
special mention since, if any of the family did survive
the manhunt for them and was not killed, it was the
elder Bender. If that was what happened, Old Man Bender died in 1884, 11 years after he had fled Kansas. In
that year an aged individual who answered to his
description and spoke with a German accent, as Bender
had, was seized in the Montana Territory for a murder
near Salmon, Idaho Territory. The victim’s skull had
been crushed from behind with a blunt instrument. The
method, plus the suspect’s physical appearance and the
fact that he grew sullen when the name Bender was
mentioned, convinced the arresting officers that they
had the much-sought Old Man Bender.
The suspect was clamped in ankle irons and tossed
in the Salmon jail while the authorities back in Kansas
were notified to send someone to make an identification. The next morning the old man was dead. In a desperate effort to escape, he had tried to cut off his foot
and had bled to death. Since there was no ice house in
town, the sheriff’s deputies tried to preserve the body in
a calcifying pool. It didn’t work, and by the time witnesses arrived from Kansas, identification was no
longer possible.
However, since it seemed like a waste to give up such
an attraction as a heinous murderer, the dead man’s
skull, identified as “Bender’s skull,” was put on display
in the Buckthorn Saloon in Salmon, where it remained,
an object of many toasts, until the onset of Prohibition
in 1920. Then it, like the rest of the Benders, disappeared.
Benedict’s Sentence
Jose Maria Martin, stand up. Jose Maria Martin, you
have been indicted, tried and convicted, by a jury of
your countrymen, of the crime of murder, and the
Court is now about to pass upon you the dread sentence of the law. As a usual thing, Jose Maria Martin, it
is a painful duty for the Judge of a court of justice to
pronounce upon a human being the sentence of death.
There is something horrible about it, and the mind of
the Court naturally revolts at the performance of such a
duty. Happily, however, your case is relieved of all such
unpleasant features and the Court takes the positive
pleasure in sentencing you to death!
You are a young man, Jose Maria Martin; apparently of good physical condition and robust health.
Ordinarily, you might have looked forward to many
years of life, and the Court has no doubt you have, and
have expected to die at a green old age; but you are
about to be cut off in consequence of your own act.
Jose Maria Martin, it is now the springtime, in a little
while the grass will be springing up green in these
beautiful valleys, and, on these broad mesas and mountain sides, flowers will be blooming; birds will be
singing their sweet carols, and nature will be pleasant
and men will want to stay; but none of this for you,
Jose Maria Martin; the flowers will not bloom for you,
Jose Maria Martin; the birds will not carol for you, Jose
Maria Martin; when these things come to gladden the
senses of men, you will be occupying a space about six
feet by two beneath the sod, and the green grass and
those beautiful flowers will be growing about your
lowly head.
The sentence of the Court is that you be taken
from this place to the county jail; that you be kept there
safely and securely confined, in the custody of the sheriff, until the day appointed for your execution. (Be very
careful, Mr. Sheriff, that he have no opportunity to
escape and that you have him at the appointed place at
the appointed time); that you be so kept, Jose Maria
Martin until—(Mr. Clerk, on what day of the month
does Friday about two weeks from this time come?
judge’s speech
Probably the most famous judicial speech ever made in
the Old West was the death sentence pronounced by
Judge Kirby Benedict and referred to with solemn awe
as Benedict’s Sentence.
81
BENSON family murders
found Slade or Slade found Beni, the fact was that Slade
captured the Frenchman, tied him to a fence post, and
used him for target practice. Then Slade killed Beni and
cut off his ears as souvenirs. According to most
accounts, Slade used one ear as a watch fob and sold
the other for drinking money.
Today, Julesburg is a quiet little town of about
25,000 persons with very little of the wickedness that
its founders had bequeathed it.
See also: JOSEPH “JACK” SLADE.
“March 22nd, your honor.”) Very well, until Friday,
the 22nd day of March, when you will be taken by the
sheriff from your place of confinement to some safe
and convenient spot within the county (that is in your
discretion, Mr. Sheriff, you are only confined to the limits of this county), and that you there be hanged by the
neck until you are dead, and the Court was about to
add, Jose Maria Martin, ‘May God have mercy on your
soul,’ but the Court will not assume the responsibility
of asking an allwise Providence to do that which a jury
of your peers has refused to do. The Lord couldn’t have
mercy on your soul. However, if you affect any religious belief, or are connected with any religious organization, it might be well for you to send for your priest
or minister, and get from him—well—such consolation
as you can, but the Court advises you to place no
reliance upon anything of that kind! Mr. Sheriff,
remove the prisoner.
Benson family murders
a not-so-ideal son
During the 1980s—the decade of greed—it was
inevitable that scandals and homicides among the rich
and famous received a great deal of attention. The Benson family murders in Florida were a case in point.
Mrs. Margaret Benson, a 58-year-old widow and
heiress to a $10 million tobacco fortune after the death
of her wealthy husband in 1980, moved herself and her
grown children to a life of self-indulgent ease in Naples,
Fla. She supported her children: a married daughter,
Carol Lynn Benson Kendall; her older son, Steven; and
her young adopted son, Scott. Of the boys, Steven—
seemingly the ideal son—was by far the more responsible and dependable and had taken charge of managing
the family’s affairs. Twenty-one-year-old Scott, by contrast, was always a problem, prone to violence and the
use of drugs, snorting cocaine and inhaling nitrous
oxide (laughing gas). Given to expensive clothes and
flashy sports cars, Scott had difficulty living within a
$7,000-a-month allowance. On occasion, he beat his
mother and sister, and once the police had to haul him
away to a drug-treatment center. Still, the members of
the Benson family remained loyal and loving toward
him.
In 1985, Steven bought a $215,000 home complete
with tennis court and swimming pool, which aroused
his mother’s suspicions about how he could afford to
do so. She began to realize he had been skimming
money from a company the family owned. She made
plans to have an audit conducted and hinted at disinheriting Steven. One summer day in 1985, the family
climbed into their Chrevolet Suburban van for a drive
when Steven said he had forgotten something and reentered the Benson mansion. While he was gone, two pipe
bombs sent off in the van. Mrs. Benson, now 63, and
young Scott died instantly, and Carol was badly
injured.
After recovering, Carol told investigators that Steven
had made no effort to aid her after the explosion and
had shown little emotion at the scene. He was eventually charged with murder. At Steven’s trial in 1986,
Carol shocked the court by revealing that Scott Benson
The only footnote to Judge Benedict’s sentence was
that Jose Maria Martin did escape and never paid the
supreme penalty.
See also: ROY BEAN.
Beni, Jules (?–1861) outlaw
An ageless and larcenous Frenchman, Jules Beni operated a trading post near Lodgepole Creek, Colorado
Territory around 1850, where anything went with no
questions asked. An Eastern reporter called it the
“wickedest city on the plains.” It wasn’t much of a city
until a stage station was built next to it and a small settlement sprung up around it. The city became known as
Julesburg in honor of old Beni.
The real joke was putting Beni in charge of the stagecoach station; instantly, the line was plagued by
holdups. Considering that the bandits always seemed to
know which stages carried important money and which
didn’t, it was only a matter of time until Beni came
under suspicion. Beni was dismissed and replaced by
Jack Slade, one of the most notorious killers the West
ever produced. Needless to say, Slade and Beni did not
get along, especially as Beni went about his stagecoach
robbing a little more obviously now. The scene was set
for a showdown, and Jack Slade came out second best.
Beni blasted him with a shotgun and left him for dead,
but miraculously, Slade recovered after the doctors had
given up on him. That was lucky for Beni because the
local citizens had taken him in custody and were getting set to hang him, founder of Julesburg or not. When
Slade pulled through Beni was released after promising
to vacate the area. He did, only to return about a year
later. According to one account—Slade’s—Beni tried to
kill his adversary again. In any event, whether Beni
82
BERKMAN, Alexander
BERGDOLL REPORTED NEAR
BERGDOLL ‘ARRESTED’ AGAIN.
was actually her son and that her mother—actually
Scott’s grandmother—had adopted him.
Steven Benson’s defense was that the pipe bombs had
probably been made by the drug-crazed Scott, who was
seeking to destroy the family. The pipe bombs, the
defense argued, must have gone off sooner than Scott
had anticipated. However, prosecution witnesses contradicted that line of reasoning; one of them testified
that Steven had once declared he had learned how to
make pipe bombs years before. A purchase order for
materials used for such devices was found to bear
Steven’s finger- and palm prints.
While no one had actually seen Steven plant the
bombs, the circumstantial evidence was strong
enough for the jury to quickly bring in a guilty verdict. Steven, then 35, was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment with no parole for at
least 50 years.
CITY . . .
Perhaps the most frantic headline of all appeared in the
New York Times: BERGDOLL’S INITIALS AND
ARROW ON TREE.
Finally tiring of the chase, Bergdoll—who had
slipped in and out of the country at least a half-dozen
times—surrendered on May 27, 1939, sailing into
New York aboard the German liner Bremen. Reports
said he had fled Hitler’s Germany to avoid being
drafted into the army there; however, as an American
citizen, Bergdoll was not subject to German military
service. Bergdoll’s case was debated in Congress and
pressure was put on President Franklin D. Roosevelt to
deny amnesty that had been granted to all other draft
evaders and deserters. Bergdoll was sentenced to a total
of seven years at hard labor. He was released early in
1944. Nineteen years later, suffering mental deterioration, he was confined to a psychiatric hospital in Richmond, Va. He died there on January 27, 1966.
Bergdoll, Grover Cleveland (1893–1966) World War I
draft dodger
No draft dodger in American history was as infamous
as Grover Cleveland Bergdoll, a handsome Philadelphia
millionaire playboy who refused to report to his local
draft board in 1917. Bergdoll was not captured until
January 1920; eventually, he was sentenced to five
years imprisonment. In a bizarre escape, Bergdoll
talked his military escort into allowing him to retrieve a
gold cache of $105,000 he said was hidden in his home,
took them there and then eluded them. Over the next
two decades the federal government spent millions of
dollars trying to recapture him. Private “vigilantes”
tried to kidnap, lynch or murder him. During this time
Bergdoll flitted between America and various hideouts
in Europe, but remarkably, he spent a large portion of
the time hidden in the family mansion in Philadelphia
with his wife and children.
An overview of newspaper headlines perhaps best
illustrates the comic quality of the desperate hunt.
Some read:
Berger, Meyer (1898–1959) reporter
Although totally lacking the flamboyance of such other
great crime reporters as Ike White, Charles MacArthur
and Ben Hecht, Meyer “Mike” Berger was probably
the greatest of his or any other day. He brought a sense
of quiet, self-effacing dignity and a devotion to accuracy for which the field was hardly renowned. All
doors were open to Berger, whether they belonged to
distinguished citizens or secretive mobsters. Whenever
a rampaging horde of crime reporters from the more
than 10 New York City newspapers then in existence
would descend on the home of a well-known citizen
drawn into a criminal investigation, they would shove
Berger to the front and announce: “This is Mr. Meyer
Berger of the New York Times. He would like to ask
some questions.” This same respect for the Times man
was shown in a most unusual way by Arthur (Dutch
Schultz) Flegenheimer after the reporter had covered
one of his many trials. An incensed Schultz sought out
Berger, demanded to know if he had written the story in
which someone was quoted as saying Dutch was a
“pushover for a blonde.” Quaking, Berger admitted he
was. “Pushover for a blonde!” the gangster raged.
“What kind of language is that to use in the New York
Times?”
Berger was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1932
for his stories on Al Capone’s Chicago trial that had
captured the character of America’s most famous gangster far better than the more so-called definitive efforts.
When Abe Reles, the Murder Inc. informer, “went out
the window” of a Coney Island hotel in which he was
SEAS SEARCHED IN BERGDOLL HUNT . . .
BERGDOLL DISGUISED AS WOMAN POSSIBLY
. . . SEARCH FRUITLESS. . . . BANKER COUNSELS PATIENCE IN BERGDOLL CASE: HAS NO
CLUE TO THE FUGITIVE . . . INDIANA MARSHAL SAYS DRAFT DODGER WENT INTO KENTUCKY . . . MAN IN FEMALE GARB TAKEN FOR
BERGDOLL . . . BERGDOLL NEARING MEXICO
. . . SEEK BERGDOLL IN MOHAWK TOWNS
. . . BERGDOLL SUSPECT FREED . . . BERGDOLL CAPTURE HOAX OF SUMMER . . .
ONEONTA PRISONER NOT BERGDOLL . . .
83
BERKMAN, Alexander
being held under police “safekeeping,” Berger climbed
out on the ledge where Reles would have stood—if
indeed he had gone willingly—and told his readers
what Reles saw and heard and what he must have felt.
Berger won a Pulitzer Prize for his brilliant coverage of
the 1949 shooting of 13 persons in Camden, N.J. by an
insane veteran named Howard Unruh. The reporter followed the mad killer’s trail, talking to 50 persons who
had watched segments of Unruh’s movements. The
account, written in two and a half hours and running
4,000 words, was printed in the Times without any editorial changes.
When Berger died nine years later, very few of his
colleagues knew that he had given his prize money to
Unruh’s aged mother.
FPO
FIG #17
TO BE
PICKED-UP
FROM
PREVIOUS ED.
Berkman, Alexander (1870–1936) anarchist and wouldbe assassin
In one of the most tortured assassination attempts ever,
anarchist Alexander Berkman tried but failed to kill a
leading industrialist of the late 19th century.
Few men were more hated by labor and radical
forces in this country than Henry Clay Frick, chairman
and strongman of the Carnegie Steel Co., who was
blamed as much or more for the company’s abysmal
working conditions as his partner, Andrew Carnegie.
During the terrible Homestead Steel Strike of 1892,
Carnegie left for a vacation in Scotland to avoid being
around when the great labor crisis erupted over the
workers’ refusal to accept a reduction in wages.
Carnegie wanted the strike crushed by any means, and
no one was more capable and indeed eager to do so
than Frick. He recruited a private army of 300 Pinkertons and fortified the company’s mills at Homestead,
Pa. Then, under cover of night, he sent the Pinkertons
by barge up the Monongahela River. They opened fire
on the strikers without warning, killing several, including a small boy, and wounding scores of others. The
strikers countered with burning oil, dynamite and
homemade cannon. With his army stymied, Frick
turned to the governor for aid and 8,000 militiamen
were dispatched to the scene.
During the stalemate Frick continued his opposition
to unionization despite a rising anger in the country.
On July 23, 1892 Frick was in his private office with
his chief aide, John Leishman, planning company strategy when a young man posing as an agent for a New
York “employment firm” received permission to enter.
Actually, the man was 21-year-old Alexander Berkman, a fiery anarchist and lover of another famous
anarchist, Emma Goldman. Berkman was outraged at
Frick’s behavior during the strike and resolved to assassinate him as an act of liberation on behalf of his work-
Anarchist Alexander Berkman is shown after his
assassination attempt on steel magnate Henry Clay Frick
during the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892.
ing comrades. He first tried to do so by making a bomb
but failed to produce a workable model. Emma then
went into the streets as a prostitute to raise money in
order to buy a gun. She was picked up by a kindly older
man who guessed her amateur status and sent her home
with $10. With that, Berkman bought the assassination
weapon.
The actual attempt was best described by a contemporary account in Harper’s Weekly:
Mr. Frick had been sitting with his face half turned
from the door, his right leg thrown over the arm of his
chair . . . and almost before he had realized the presence of a third party in the room, the man fired at him.
The aim had been for the brain, but the sudden turning
of the chairman spoiled it, and the bullet ploughed its
way into the left side of his neck. The shock staggered
Mr. Frick. Mr. Leishman jumped up and faced the
assailant. As he did so another shot was fired and a sec-
84
BERTILLON system
ond bullet entered Mr. Frick’s neck, but on the left side.
Again the aim had been bad. Mr. Leishman, who is a
small man, sprang around the desk, and just as the
assailant was firing the third time, he seized his hand
and threw it upward and back. The bullet embedded
itself in the ceiling back of where the man was standing
. . . Mr. Frick recovered almost instantly from the two
shots and ran to the assistance of Leishman, who was
grappling with the would-be assassin . . . The exertion
made the blood spurt from his wounds and it dyed the
clothing of the assailant.
The struggle lasted fully two minutes. Not a
word was spoken by any one, and no cry had been
uttered. The fast-increasing crowd in the street looked
up at it open-mouthed and apparently paralyzed
(Frick’s upper-floor office could be readily seen into
from across the street). There were no calls for the
police and no apparent sign of excitement, only spellbound interest. The three men swayed to and fro in
struggle, getting all the time nearer to the windows.
Once the assailant managed to shake himself loose, but
before he could bring his revolver again into play, Mr.
Leishman knocked his knees from under him, and the
combined weight of himself and Mr. Frick bore the man
to the floor. In the fall, he succeeded in loosening one
hand and with it he drew an old-fashioned dirk-knife
from his pocket and began slashing with it. He held it
in his left hand. Mr. Frick was trying to hold him on
that side. Again and again, the knife plunged into Mr.
Frick until seven distinct wounds had been made, and
then Mr. Frick succeeded in catching and holding the
arm.
At the first sign of the knife the crowd in the
street seemed to recover itself and there were loud calls
of “Police!” “Fire!” The clerks in the main office recovered from their stupefaction, and rushed pell-mell into
the office of their chief. Deputy Sheriff May, who happened to be in the office, was in the lead. He drew a
revolver, and was about to use it, when Mr. Frick cried:
“Don’t shoot! Don’t kill him! The law will punish
him.” The deputy’s hand was seized and held by one of
the clerks, while half a dozen others fell on the prostrate assailant. The police were in the office in a few
minutes and took the man away. Fully two thousand
people had gathered in the street, and there were cries
of “Shoot him! Lynch him!”
deported in the Red Scare roundups, Berkman and
Goldman became the primary spokespersons for American anarchism. They were sent back to their native
Russia, where they were welcomed by the new Soviet
government, but the incompatibility of anarchism and
communism soon forced them both to leave. Berkman
settled first in Sweden, then Germany and finally in
France. He continued his anarchist writing and organized and edited many of Goldman’s work. He did
some translating and ghostwriting for European and
American publishers but needed contributions from
friends and comrades to survive. Both despondent and
ill, he committed suicide in 1936. H. L. Mencken wrote
of Berkman that he was a “transparently honest man .
. . a shrewder and a braver spirit than has been seen in
public among us since the Civil War.”
Berkowitz, David R.
See “SON OF SAM.”
Berman, Otto “Abbadabba” (1889–1935) policy
game fixer
Few rackets have ever produced as much money for
underworld coffers as the numbers game, and although
the profit slice is 40 percent or more, crime bosses have
always searched for ways to give the suckers even less
of a break.
Otto “Abbadabba” Berman was for a time a magician at this, as his nickname indicates. During the
1930s Berman devised a system for rigging the results
of the game so that only a lesser-played number would
win. He worked for Dutch Schultz, the crime czar who
controlled the bulk of the numbers game in New York,
including most of the action in black Harlem. At the
time, the winning number was derived from the betting
statistics at various race tracks. The underworld could
not control the figures at the New York tracks, but during the periods when those courses were closed, the
number was based on the results from tracks that the
underworld had successfully infiltrated, such as New
Orleans’ Fair Grounds, Chicago’s Hawthorne and
Cincinnati’s Coney Island. Berman was able to figure
out how much money to put into the mutual machines
to have a low-played number come out. It was estimated that Abbadabba’s magic added 10 percent to
every million dollars a day the underworld took in.
In 1935 Dutch Schultz was assassinated by vote of
the Luciano-Lansky national crime syndicate, allegedly
because Schultz had announced he intended to kill
Thomas E. Dewey, whose racket-busting activities were
hampering underworld operations. Luciano especially
was concerned about the ramifications of killing a man
of Dewey’s stature. His concern, however, was no
Despite a total of nine wounds, Frick was back at his
desk within a week, but Berkman spent 14 years in
prison before being pardoned in 1906. Like most acts
of terrorism, his attack on Frick had not helped the
intended beneficiaries. In fact, the strikers generally
denounced the act, though many with seemingly little
conviction. From 1906 until 1919, when they were
85
BETHEA, Rainey
contradictory. The real death knell for the system came
when two prisoners lodged in the same penitentiary
were found to have the same Bertillon measurements,
looked alike and even had virtually the same names.
The Will West–William West case was the prime factor
in convincing law authorities to switch to fingerprinting as an identification method.
See also: FINGERPRINTING, “WEST BROTHERS.”
doubt heightened by the opportunity he saw to take
over the Schultz numbers racket. Schultz and three of
his favorite underlings were cut down at the Palace
Chophouse in Newark while having dinner. Unfortunately for the mob, one of those shot with Schultz was
Berman. His loss was to cost the mob literally millions
of dollars a year, for while others tried to imitate the
technique of what Luciano’s aide, Vito Genovese, called
“the Yid adding machine,” few approached even a fraction of his results.
See also: NUMBERS RACKET, DUTCH SCHULTZ.
Berrett-Molway taxi cab case
Bethea, Rainey (1914–1936) last publicly executed man
The last public execution in America was held in 1936.
The victim was a 22-year-old black man named Rainey
Bethea, and his execution at Owensboro, Ky. remains
one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history.
Because Rainey had killed a 70-year-old white
woman, public opinion was at a fever pitch, and the
county sheriff, a woman named Florence Thompson,
decided to stage the execution in an open field so that
thousands of witnesses could be accommodated. By
the night before the execution, Owensboro was
swamped with visitors from all over the country; by
dawn more than 20,000 persons had gathered at the
execution site. Only six blacks were present—virtually
all the local blacks had fled the town during the previous night’s drunken revelry, which was punctuated by
calls for a mass lynching. Each time the hangman
tested the scaffold, it snapped open to the appreciative
cheers of the crowd. Bethea reached the scaffold at
5:12 A.M. and the execution moved briskly, authorities
now fearing the crowd might get out of hand. When
the bolt snapped, a joyous roar swept over the field
and the crowd surged closer. Souvenir hunters almost
immediately attacked the dangling, still-warm body,
stripping off pieces of the condemned man’s clothing
and in some instances trying to carve out chunks of
flesh. Meanwhile, doctors fought their way through
the melee to certify Bethea’s death and then cried out
that his heart was still beating. The spectators groaned
and pulled back, waiting. Bethea was finally pronounced dead at 5:45, and once more the souvenir
hunters charged forward, a great scuffle taking place
for possession of the death hood.
See also: EXECUTIONS, PUBLIC.
murder trial
The murder trial of two men, Clement Molway and
Louis Berrett, both Boston taxi drivers, in February
1934 is memorable for the sobering second thoughts it
caused the jury. Eight undisputed eyewitnesses identified the pair as the men who murdered an employee of
the Paramount Theatre in Lynn, Mass. Just before the
case was to go to the jury, a man convicted with two
others in another robbery-murder confessed to the
crime. Berrett and Molway were freed and won compensation. Newspapers widely reported the deep
impression made on the jurors, who admitted they
would have convicted the innocent men. Typical was
the following comment of the jury foreman, Hosea E.
Bradstreet:
Those witnesses were so positive of their identification
that it was only natural that we should be misled.
While I sat at the trial I somehow hated the thought of
sending those two men to the electric chair; but we
were sworn to perform our duty and we would have
done it—to the best of our ability. . . . This trial has
taught me one thing. Before I was a firm believer in
capital punishment, I’m not now.
Bertillon system criminal identification method
From the mid-1880s through 1904 or 1905 the standard method of criminal identification in the United
States was the system invented in 1883 by Alphonse
Bertillon, a Frenchman. Bertillon concluded there were
12 measurements on an adult that do not change, such
as the length and width of the head, the length of the
left foot, left forearm and left little finger, and so on.
Criminals were photographed and measured according
to this method, and records were compiled on the
assumption that no two people would ever look alike
and have exactly the same measurements. There were
several flaws in the Bertillon system, not the least being
that more than one arresting officer often made entry
of a subject’s “pedigree” and the material would be
Bickford, Maria (1823–1845)
murder victim
The murder of Maria Bickford by Albert Tirrell in
Boston on October 27, 1845 was noteworthy because
the young man was of the Weymouth Tirrells, one of
New England’s wealthiest and most socially prominent
families. However, the case was to become even more
noteworthy since it represented the first effective use of
sleepwalking as a defense.
86
BICYCLE police
The 25-year-old Tirrell was the bane of his family.
Although married, he was notorious for picking up a
whore and going off with her for a week or longer at a
time. In one of the family’s constant efforts to get
Albert to reform, they sent him on the road as a representative for one of the Tirrell businesses, Tirrell’s Triumphant Footwear. Exactly how providing Albert with
such an ideal opportunity for whoring would lead to
his reformation was, at least in retrospect, a mystery. In
New Bedford, Mass., he met 23-year-old Maria Bickford and was soon pursuing his usual desires. But in the
case of this woman, it was a matter of true love; Tirrell
brought Bickford back to Boston, ensconcing her in a
waterfront flat where he could visit her regularly, while
continuing to pretend to his family that he had indeed
become a solid citizen.
However, the Tirrell-Bickford love affair was not a
quiet one. They screamed, fought, got drunk frequently
and eventually were evicted for boisterous behavior.
Tirrell’s conduct became the talk of Boston. The family
could no longer ignore this, and finally, Tirrell’s wife
and brother-in-law brought criminal charges of adultery against him. In the year 1845 in Boston, adultery
was a word spoken only in whispers. Indeed, the act
was punishable by a fine and six months imprisonment.
Even worse, a convicted man would almost certainly
be treated as a pariah, shunned by society. Painfully
aware of this, Tirrell was most contrite when visited in
his cell by the family. “He implored his young wife for
forgiveness,” says an account of the day. The fact that
he was in the process of “drying out” added to the
heart-rending scene. Finally, on October 20 the family,
including Tirrell’s wife and brother-in-law, capitulated.
They withdrew the charges and the prodigal son was
turned loose upon signing a bond promising to “keep
the peace and observe propriety in his behavior.”
Back home for an hour, Tirrell kissed his wife and
said he had to go out “on business.” Like a homing
pigeon, he headed for the house of Joel Lawrence on
Cedar Lane in the Beacon Hill district, where Maria
Bickford had taken up residence. Tirrell brought with
him a demijohn of rum. During the reunion of the
lovers that followed, landlord Lawrence later said that
he thought the house was falling down. Eventually, the
lovers quieted a bit until the following evening. Then
the revelry started again but soon turned into a nasty
quarrel when Tirrell found some letters written to
Maria by a new admirer. Over the next several evenings
the pair’s frolicking was increasingly interrupted by
harsh arguments, a matter compounded when a Miss
Priscilla Moody from down the hall, unaware that Tirrell was around one afternoon, dropped by to ask
Maria to help her out since she had two gentlemen calling on her shortly. When Tirrell erupted in anger, Maria
just laughed and said if she did anything like that, it
would just be “funning.”
The Tirrell-Bickford funning came to an end at 4:30
the morning of October 27. Smoke was seen pouring
out of Maria’s window, and the landlord, who had
been awakened about an hour earlier by another of the
incessant screaming matches between the lovers, broke
in. Someone had deliberately set fire to the room. It was
not Maria. She was lying on the floor, totally nude, her
throat slit almost from ear to ear. When Lawrence
viewed the scene, he shouted out, “Where’s Albert?”
Albert had headed for the Boston docks, he joined a
ship’s crew and sailed away as a common seaman. It
was not until February 27, 1846 that he was apprehended aboard the schooner Cathay in New York and
returned to Boston to face murder charges. There was
little reason to doubt that Tirrell would be convicted.
There were witnesses who saw him leave the Lawrence
house moments before the fire. Those who had seen
him testified that he wore no shirt under his coat—his
bloody shirt had been found in the murder room. An
acquaintance of Tirrell’s, Sam Head, told of how young
Albert had turned up at his home and asked, “Sam—
how came I here?” He stank of rum.
With such a strong case against him, Tirrell was considered as good as convicted. Nevertheless, the Tirrell
family decided to strive mightily to save the errant son,
recoiling in horror from the stigma that would attach
to all if Albert were hanged for murder. The Honorable
Rufus B. Choate was retained to defend Albert. Choate,
then at the height of his oratorial powers, was rightly
considered a courtroom wizard, but everyone was convinced that in this case he was espousing a hopeless
cause. It would take a miracle to save Tirrell. Which
was exactly what Choate came up with.
Choate stunned the court when he conceded that his
client had indeed killed “this unfortunate woman.”
However, the lawyer said, “I will prove that he cannot
be held responsible under the law because he was
asleep at the time.” While the courtroom buzzed with
an argument never heard before in an American court
of law, Choate continued:
I do not mean, of course, that he was asleep in the
usual physical sense. He was mentally asleep. Although
he was capable of physical movement and action, he
had no knowledge or judgment of what he was doing.
His mental and moral faculties were in deepest slumber.
He was a man in somnambulism, acting in a dream.
Gentlemen, I will show that the defendant Tirrell has
been a sleepwalker since early youth, and that while in
a condition of somnambulism that often lasted for
many hours, he performed feats of almost incredible
complexity and dexterity.
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BIDDLE brothers
climb high in the mast and then come down safely, all
the while acting “like a man in his sleep.”
Lawyer Choate then recalled the words of Samuel
Head, who had seen Tirrell shortly after Maria Bickford’s murder. “He seemed like a man coming out of a
stupor. He said, ‘Sam, how came I here?’”
Despite the prosecution’s attempts to knock down
Choate’s unique defense of his client, the jury was duly
impressed. It took less than two hours to bring in a verdict that established a legal milestone. Albert Tirrell
was found not guilty and freed. As time passed, the Tirrell verdict did not sit well with the public, which
clearly felt the family money had gotten him off. A man
who could slit a pretty girl’s throat and—allegedly—not
remember it was, general opinion held, more likely rum
soaked than in a somnambulistic trance. Finally, bowing to public opinion, the family had Albert confined
where he would no longer be a danger, sleeping or
awake.
See also: SLEEPWALKING AND CRIME.
Witness after witness took the stand to tell of Tirrell’s past sleepwalking escapades and accomplishments. His mother said her son had first shown
sleepwalking tendencies at the age of three. He had
been found in the kitchen sound asleep smearing jam
on the walls. He started sleepwalking regularly. Mrs.
Tirrell took to tying his son to his bed, but the boy
showed a slumbrous ability to untie knots he could not
undo when awake. After the lad had been discovered to
have climbed out of his bedroom window and perched
precariously on the porch roof, Mrs. Tirrell, according
to the testimony of a workman, ordered an iron grill
over the window “to keep the tyke from killing himself.”
The family physician reported that at the age of 10,
the sleepwalking boy, barefoot and in only his nightgown, had been found in the late hours of a winter
night just as he completed building a snowman. “The
boy came near dying of pneumonia as a result of that,”
the doctor testified.
According to the evidence presented, Tirrell’s sleepwalking escapades became less frequent in adulthood
but tended to be more dangerous and violent. His wife
Cynthia awoke one night to find him trying to strangle
her. Her desperate screams awakened him, and he
expressed surprise and contrition, begged her forgiveness and then lapsed into a peaceful sleep. A sailor from
the Cathay told of watching the sleeping and starknaked Tirrell cross the ice-covered deck of the vessel,
bicycle police
Late in the 19th century most big-city police departments found they could not adequately patrol their
communities with just police on foot or on horseback.
What they needed was a “motorized” force on bicycle.
Typical was the New York Bicycle Squad formed in
1895 after police commissioner Theodore Roosevelt
angrily declared the traffic of “steam carriages,” the
forerunner of the automobile; huge horse-drawn
trucks; and bicycles had made Eighth Avenue and the
waterfront area unsafe for pedestrians. To regulate traffic in these areas, he assigned bicycles to four officers.
The speed limit for all vehicles was set at eight miles an
hour, and speeders were flagged down by a traffic cop
on a bike who would demand to see the driver’s license.
By 1902 the Bicycle Squad was enlarged to 100 men,
and Commissioner Thomas Andrew could proudly
announce a total of 1,366 arrests that year of “civilian
wheelmen who persisted in risking the lives and limbs
of others by ‘scorching’ along the Central Park drives.”
He added that a great many of these “bicyclistscorchers were also of that despicable breed known as
‘mashers.’”
By 1910 the horseless carriages had ceased being the
mere playthings of the very wealthy and eccentric and
were starting to choke the city streets. The Bicycle
Squad did heroic work trying to contain these automobile “speed demons.” It did not occur to anyone until
1912 to provide the police with automobiles so that
they could give chase to other such vehicles. In that
year the Traffic Division was established. Still, the Bicycle Squad hung on, providing sundry services until
A New York City bicycle cop runs down one of the new
automobile “speed demons” around the turn of the
century.
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BIGAMY
finally being abandoned in 1934. Rather than sell hundreds of bicycles to commercial dealers, the police auctioned them off to city kids, with some of the police
bikes going for a mere 25¢. Of course many police
departments today have on hand a few bicycles for special duty, such as during traffic gridlock.
Biddle brothers
melodrama about the case. It was called The Biddle
Boys and played to capacity houses for many years.
Big Store
major confidence game operation
Prior to 1900, swindles were pretty much “short
cons” in which the victim was cheated for a few dollars, perhaps a few hundred and occasionally a few
thousand. It was difficult to keep the sucker in tow long
enough to make a really big killing. Buck Boatright, an
ingenious gambler and the originator of a little con
game called the smack, solved this problem by devising
the most elaborate and successful confidence racket
ever invented.
Boatright’s plan was to set up a permanent base of
operations, either an office or a store with seemingly
respectable or authentic trimmings as well as many
employees and “customers.” Here the sucker could be
skinned with near-scientific precision. Boatright set up
his operation with the backing of a number of con men
who became his partners. The first requirement was to
establish a protected territory in which police and
politicians would cooperate for either a flat payoff or a
percentage of the take. Boatright’s selection was Webb
City, Mo., where in 1900 he opened what was to
become known as the Big Store.
Boatright’s operation was a fake gambling club, featuring among other things fixed sporting events (generally foot races or fights). So convincing was the
atmosphere in Boatright’s establishment, which soon
spawned a branch in Council Bluffs, Iowa, that a
sucker almost never suspected he was losing his money
in a completely play-act arena where everyone except
the victim was a member of the gang.
After the sucker was roped in by being allowed to
win a few small bets, he then was informed of a big fix
and induced to bet thousands, only to watch as something unforeseen went wrong. In a footrace or fight the
participant the victim was betting on might suddenly
“drop dead,” triggering a false panic since such sporting events were illegal. In other cases the victim would
be kissed off when the two operators who suckered
him in, and who allegedly lost their money with his,
got into an argument that would end with one pulling
a gun and “killing” the other. In this play-acted
“sting” the shot con man would slump to the floor
with blood gushing from his mouth. This would really
be chicken blood secreted in a pouch in the man’s
mouth and bitten open at the right moment. It was an
act well calculated to put the sucker “on the run”
since, while he had intended only to break the law
against illegal betting, he now believed he was an
accessory to murder.
murderers and death-row escapees
Ed and Jack Biddle escaped from the Allegheny
County Jail on January 30, 1902, 16 days before they
were to be executed for the killing of a store owner
and a police detective. When details of the escape
became known, it scandalized Pittsburgh and much of
the rest of the country since the escape was engineered
by 26-year-old Katherine Scoffel, the warden’s wife.
She had come to their death cells a month earlier, as
was her custom, to try to bring religion to doomed
men and had fallen in love with Ed Biddle, eight years
her junior. Mrs. Scoffel supplied the brothers with
guns and hacksaws and led them to freedom through
the warden’s home, which had a private entrance to
the institution. She had drugged her husband so he
would be asleep and made sure their four children
were not home at the time.
Two guards were shot superficially and another was
overpowered during the breakout; when they were
found, the alarm was sounded. The warden, apprised
of the facts, notified the police of the Biddle brothers’
escape and told them to arrest his wife as an accomplice. Then he wrote a letter of resignation, gathered up
his children and left the prison for the last time.
Meanwhile, the three fugitives made it as far as Butler, Pa., switching from the carriage Mrs. Scoffel had
secured for them to a stolen sleigh. They were stopped
by a seven-man roadblock, and in a furious gun battle
26-year-old Jack Biddle was shot dead. Ed Biddle was
hit three times in the lung. As he was dying, Katherine
Scoffel begged him to shoot her. He did so, but while
Biddle died a few hours after being taken into custody,
Mrs. Scoffel survived. When she recovered, she was
tried and sentenced to serve two years in the penitentiary of which she had once been the first lady. Asked
during her trial how a woman of her standing could
love a vicious criminal like Ed Biddle, she said: “I can
forgive anything he’s done. Except one. I can forgive his
killings, his robberies, anything. But I cannot forgive
him for failing to kill me so that I could be with him
forever in death.”
Katherine Scoffel was released from prison in 18
months and lived until 1926, ostracized and in disgrace. Often through the years, she would see an advertisement in a newspaper for a performance of a
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BILER Avenue
Although the big store would seem to be an operation that could fleece only the most gullible, it was carried off with such convincing performances that many
men of business and wealth were easily taken, never for
a moment suspecting a swindle. Perhaps the greatest of
all big store operators was Lou Blonger, a master fixer,
who for four decades made Denver, Colo. the “con
man’s capital of America.”
See also: DOLLAR STORE, SMACK GAME.
Courting exposure, indeed, seems very common
among bigamists. A gray-haired 52-year-old night
watchman was clapped in the county jail in New
Haven, Conn. for having two wives—living a mere
block from each other. He was exposed when a long
distance call for one wife mistakenly went to the other.
One Michigan bigamist got caught when his wife went
by a photographer’s shop and spotted a picture of her
husband and a stunning young bride. A Massachussetts
man’s bigamy was revealed when two of his wives met
in court while both were bringing action against him
for nonsupport.
Harried bigamists often find themselves mired deep
in serious crime before long. The “flying lothario” of
Memphis made the headlines from coast to coast after
it was found he kept one wife in Tennessee and another
in California, commuting back and forth each week by
plane in order to spend weekdays in Memphis and
weekends in Los Angeles. Travel costs murdered him,
and he finally confessed to stealing $19,000 from the
Memphis firm where he worked as a cashier.
Few bigamists are exceptionally attractive. In fact,
some of the country’s most successful bigamists are
bald and fortyish, both in age and waistline. Master
swindler and bigamist Sigmund Engel was only coming into his prime when he was arrested at the age of
73. At the other end of the scale was a 17-year-old
schoolboy who had already walked up the aisle three
times, evidently incapable of saying no to older
women.
Probably the only way to end bigamy would be to
enact a proposal made in recent years by several district
attorneys that a central national office be established to
receive notice of and record every marriage made anywhere in the country. In addition, every person being
married would have to be fingerprinted. Obviously,
while this would effectively stop the bigamists, the proposal’s disregard for American concepts of civil liberties
outweighs its usefulness as a measure to eliminate
bigamy.
bigamy
Few crimes are as welcome to newspaper editors as
bigamy, the act of ceremonially marrying another person when already legally married. Although the typical
state statute exacts up to five years imprisonment for
the offense, few bigamists are ever punished, usually
getting off with a stern lecture provided they make
amends by speedily annulling the illegitimate marriage.
Meanwhile, the newspapers have their human interest
story, especially when, as often happens, the bigamist’s
spouses violently denounce or attack one another.
One such case involved two women who went at
each other in a Chicago courthouse corridor, pulling
hair, gouging and biting. “I’m still in love with him,”
wife number one announced to reporters, after the two
battling women were separated. “I’ll help him all I
can.” Which is how things turned out. Since he was her
husband first, she got him while the second wife got
only an annulment. Triumphantly, in fact, wife number
one paid the $500 fine her errant husband faced for his
misdeeds.
It is not unusual to find a bigamist with six or eight
spouses who still does not end up with a prison sentence, unless he or she is also guilty of stealing his or
her spouses’ money or defrauding them of their fortunes. Few prosecuting attorneys will expend much
energy on bigamy complaints because as many as a
dozen investigators would have to be put on a single
bigamy case full time to clear the tangled web. Another
discouraging factor is that bigamists often have wives
and families in different states. As a result, for every
bigamist finally hauled into court, possibly as many as
a hundred or more go free and undetected.
Many bigamists have bizarre or zany reasons for
committing the crime. Often, they have concocted and
sold their spouses wildly improbable tales to sustain
their deception. This was the case of a Washington
woman who married two Canadian navy seamen,
assuring each that she had a twin sister who had married the other. When it was discovered that both
“twins” had identical cuts on a finger, her double life
was exposed.
Biler Avenue Chicago vice district
From the 1870s until the turn of the century, Pacific
Avenue, nicknamed Biler Avenue, was “one of the most
disreputable streets in the city, built up with hastily
constructed tenements which were occupied by the
most depraved of men and women, black, white and
mixed.” Yet it was still held in particular fondness by
the reigning political powers. Biler Avenue and its side
streets were filled with bordellos of the lowest class and
lowest price in the city. A typical establishment was
Dan Webster’s big groggery and bagnio at Nos.
130–132, which the Chicago Times called an “infernal
90
BILLY the Kid
Deputy Ayers, with three prisoners chained to him,
bedded down in the front room along with Deputy
DuVal, who had Billee in tow. Deputy Wilkerson and
the fifth prisoner slept in the small rear room of the
cabin. About 3 A.M. Billee worked out of one of his
handcuffs and managed to reach DuVal’s revolver. He
fired but in the darkness only succeeded in wounding
DuVall in the head. He then turned the gun on Ayers
before the deputy had a chance to react out of his sleep,
shooting him in the right nipple. Meanwhile Wilkerson
had rolled over into a sitting position in the doorway of
hell hole. There it is that the rottenest, vilest, filthiest
strumpets, black and white, reeking with corruption,
are bundled together, catering indiscriminately to the
lust of all.” What made the activities of the establishment most noteworthy was, as the Times discovered,
that the building was owned by Michael C. Hickey, the
superintendent of police. Because of the stir caused by
the Times exposé, Hickey was hauled before the Police
Board for trial, but he was acquitted of any wrongdoing since there was no way a superintendent of police
could possibly have known about the character of his
tenants. An even more startling revelation was that an
entire block on Harrison Street was the property of
Mayor Carter Harrison.
“Our Carter” the Times said, “owns the entire block
between Clark Street and Pacific Avenue. On the corner
of Clark, and running west to the middle of the block,
stands a hotel. The other half of the block is occupied
by four or five ordinary frame houses. One is used for a
lager-beer saloon, another for a restaurant, still another
for a tobacco store, a fourth as a hotel on a small scale,
and right among these, as snug as a bug, Our Carter
has allowed a number of gay damsels to nestle down,
and they are rather homely ones at that.”
Even that last withering comment was not enough to
keep Carter Harrison from becoming a five-term
mayor. Biler Avenue thus typified Chicago’s tolerance
of political venality, an attitude that was to last for
many decades.
See also: CARTER HARRISON.
Billee, John (?–1890) western murderer
The idea of bringing in a badman dead or alive was an
Old West concept that did not usually apply to deputy
federal marshals. For each prisoner brought back, the
marshal was paid the sum of $2 plus a mileage
allowance of 6¢ per mile going and 10¢ coming back
provided he had his man. Out of this sum, the marshal
had to pay all his own expenses and feed his prisoner.
However, if he lost his prisoner or was forced to kill
him, the lawman lost his fee and mileage allowance!
The system encouraged marshals to try their best to
keep their quarry alive.
A noted case that underscored the point involved
John Billee, who killed a man named W. P. Williams in
April 1888 and buried the corpse in a ravine in the
Kiamichi Mountains. Federal deputies caught up with
Billee in a wide sweep during which they also netted
four other wanted men. On their way back to Fort
Smith, deputies Perry DuVall, Will Ayers and James
Wilkerson stopped with their prisoners to spend the
night at a deserted two-room cabin outside Muskogee,
Okla. in Indian Territory.
Famous “flopped,” i.e., reversed, portrait of Billy the Kid
started the legend that he was left-handed.
91
BILLY the Kid
An enthusiastic Police Gazette artist was so awed by the Kid’s exploits that he awarded him two right hands.
the next room and Billee put a shot into his back. Ayers
then lunged at the outlaw and battled Billee to keep
him from getting off another shot. While this was going
on, Wilkerson leveled his own gun and aimed carefully
at the outlaw, trying to get off an incapacitating, rather
than a fatal, shot, which he did. By keeping Billee alive
long enough for him to meet his doom on the gallows
at Fort Smith on January 16, 1890, the three wounded
deputies were able to collect their fee for the outlaw.
an example of the man by having his feet and neck tied
together. There is no evidence that this punishment had
any lasting effect on Billington, who became the
scourge of the Plymouth colony, starting feuds with a
number of settlers.
One Pilgrim who refused to knuckle under to
Billington’s bullying was John Newcomen, a neighbor,
and the pair became mortal enemies. Finally, one day in
1630 Billington ambushed Newcomen while he was
out in the woods hunting, shooting him dead with a
blunderbuss from behind a rock. Billington was quickly
seized, tried by the Pilgrims and summarily hanged.
Ironically, many Americans today proudly trace their
ancestry back to the Mayflower and Billington, the
American colonies’ first murderer.
Billington, John (?–1630) America’s first murderer
Even before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in
1620, Capt. Miles Standish had already had his fill of
one John Billington aboard the Mayflower. Standish
reprimanded Billington, a foul-mouthed brawler from
the London slums, and eventually was forced to make
92
BINAGGIO, Charles
Billy the Kid (1859–1881) outlaw
With that pledge Billy the Kid became the chief killer
of the Lincoln County War, lining up with McSween.
When the opposing forces besieged the town of Lincoln
for several days, Billy killed numerous enemies.
McSween was murdered during the siege and his death
ended the war, as Chisum saw he lacked the power to
win by himself. Billy the Kid went back to rustling and
organized a gang of gunfighters and cutthroats. He
robbed Chisum’s cattle as well as others’. Eventually,
Gov. Lew Wallace offered an amnesty to all participants in the Lincoln County War, and for a time, Billy
considered accepting it. But he was leery of the “formality” of the trial he would have to face and stayed on
the loose. He permanently lost his chance to go straight
after killing a lawman.
Billy and his gang killed several more men over the
next year or so but suffered their losses as well. Sheriff Pat
Garrett stalked Billy and in one ambush killed Billy’s close
friend Tom O’Folliard, whom he mistook for the Kid. In
December 1880 Charlie Bowdre died in an ambush at
Stinking Springs, New Mexico Territory. Trapped by Garrett and his posse, Billy and several of his confederates
were forced to surrender. Billy was convicted of the murder of Sheriff William Brady and sentenced to hang. Confined in a top-floor room of the Lincoln County
Courthouse, he made a sensational escape, killing
deputies James Bell, whom he liked, and sadistic Bob
Olinger, whom he hated. He shot Olinger down like a
dog in the street outside the courthouse and fled.
Billy was a hero to those who shared his sympathies
in the Lincoln County War and to Mexicans, among
whom he often hid out.
Finally, Garrett located Billy the Kid hiding at old
Fort Sumner. When Billy walked into a darkened room,
Garrett shot him down without giving him a chance to
surrender. He was buried in a common grave with his
two buddies, O’Folliard and Bowdre. The gravestone
bore the inscription “Pals.”
After Billy the Kid died, the legend-makers went to
work. The first book about him appeared three weeks
after his death. Most of his biographers probably had
never been west of New York. Sheriff Garrett contributed a volume, which greatly built up Billy and in
the process, of course, the man who had gotten him.
Serious students of Billy the Kid have been mystified
by his place in the folklore of the country. His crimes
were largely unimaginative and cold blooded. He
lacked the verve and style that marked Jesse James, for
instance, and seldom inspired the loyalty that James
did.
See also: CHARLIE BOWDRE, PATRICK FLOYD GARRETT,
JOE GRANT, LINCOLN COUNTY WAR, TOM O’FOLLIARD,
ROBERT OLINGER, DAVE RUDABAUGH, JOHN TUNSTALL.
There has probably been more written about Billy the
Kid than any other outlaw, which perhaps explains
why so little of his true story can be accurately reconstructed.
Hyperbole has been added to lies until we are left
with a portrait of a young outlaw said to have killed 21
men during his 21 years. The number is an exaggeration. He did not kill a man at the age of 12 for insulting
his mother as is often stated. Probably the first man the
New York–born youngster—whose real name is
believed to have been either William Bonney or Henry
McCarty—killed was a bully named Frank “Windy”
Cahill, who had called him a “pimp and a son of a
bitch.” Billy gunned him down on the spot. He was
arrested but almost immediately escaped from jail. In
fact, he frequently escaped from jails, which probably
helped to give him a romantic air. There was certainly
nothing romantic about his looks. He was small, with
prominent front teeth and a short, fuzzy upper lip,
almost a harelip, which gave him a perpetual smile. He
smiled when he killed and his smile made him look
pathological, which he probably was. One moment he
was good natured and the next he displayed an explosive temper.
Beginning in his early teens, Billy supported himself
by gambling and, when the cards ran wrong, by stealing anything from clothes to cattle. After his mother
died in 1874, Billy was completely on his own. Following the Cahill killing and a few others, according to
some historians, Billy hired out as a cowboy to an English gentleman rancher, John Tunstall. It was a smart
move by Tunstall since Billy had been stealing his stock.
Billy looked upon the Englishman as a father figure,
even though Tunstall was only five or six years older.
Tunstall, on the other hand, said he saw good in Billy
and was determined to make a man out of him. When
the Lincoln County War for much of the New Mexico
Territory backcountry and the Pecos Valley broke out
soon afterwards, Tunstall became a leading figure on
one side. Allied with Alexander McSween and cattle
king John Chisum against the business interests of the
county dominated by Lawrence G. Murphy, James J.
Dolan and James H. Riley, Tunstall turned out to be the
first major casualty, shot down in February 1878 by
gunmen supposedly deputized to arrest him on a
trumped up charge.
Billy saw the killing from a distance but could do
nothing about it. He was deeply affected by Tunstall’s
murder. “He was the only man that ever treated me like
I was free-born and white,” he said. Over Tunstall’s
grave he swore, “I’ll get every son-of-a-bitch who
helped kill John if it’s the last thing I do.”
93
BIOFF, Willie Morris
Binaggio, Charles (1909–1950) political leader and
murder victim
was elected governor, he would give gambling and
other “wide-open” interests free rein in the state. More
than $200,000 flowed in from gangland sources to help
Binaggio’s plans. Forrest Smith was elected governor
and Binaggio claimed credit. But Binaggio found he
could not deliver on his promise to the underworld, a
fact that was now common knowledge. A St. Louis
newspaper broke the story that the understanding he
had with the underworld called for opening up both
Kansas City and St. Louis, but that the St. Louis police
commissioner had blocked every one of his moves.
Binaggio was forced to stall for time on his underworld
agreement. The time expired, and it was obvious that
Binaggio was in deep trouble. The mobs had realized
that their $200,000 was a write-off. All that remained
was the payoff. It was Little Joe for Binaggio and Gargotta.
The murder of Charley Binaggio and his number one
muscleman, Charley Gargotta, on April 6, 1950
shocked Kansas City, Mo., where Binaggio was the
acknowledged political and crime boss. He was found
stretched out in a swivel chair at the First District
Democratic Club, his face blood soaked and four bullets in his head. Garotta lay on the floor nearby, the
same number of slugs in his head. Overlooking the
grisly scene were large portraits of President Harry Truman and Gov. Forest Smith. The bullet wounds in the
heads of both men were arranged in two straight rows,
or “two deuces.” In dice parlance, this is called Little
Joe. It is also the insignia the underworld stamps on
welshers when it wants the world to know that the
murder was done by the mob. Clearly, Binaggio had
welshed on a promise to the national crime syndicate.
Only 41 at the time of his murder, Binaggio was recognized as a political “comer.” He had been born in
Beaumont, Tex. As a youngster he became a drifter and
was arrested twice in Denver for carrying a concealed
weapon and for vagrancy. At age 23 Binaggio landed in
Kansas City and joined the operations of North Side
leader Johnny Lazia, who delivered votes for Democratic boss Tom Pendergast. Lazia’s reward was control of
gambling, vice, liquor and racing wires in the North
Side. Binaggio continued to climb the criminal ladder
even after Lazia’s assassination in 1934. By 1944 he
controlled all the North Side wards.
In 1946 Binaggio made a splash on the national
scene when President Truman ordered a purge of Congressman Roger C. Slaughter for voting against administration bills. Truman called in Jim Pendergast, the late
Tom’s nephew successor, and ordered the nomination
of Enos Axtell. Slaughter lost in the primary, but the
Kansas City Star soon charged wholesale ballot fraud.
During several probes launched on both the national
and state level, a woman election watcher was shot to
death on the porch of her home. Just before state hearings were scheduled to start, the safe at City Hall in
Kansas City was dynamited and fraudulent ballot evidence was destroyed.
Both the ballot frauds and the City Hall bombing
were believed to have been masterminded by Binaggio.
However, he was never indicted and only one minor
hanger-on, “Snags” Klein, went to prison, for a short
term. Thereafter, a power struggle broke out between
Jim Pendergast and Binaggio. The former proved to be
lacking the astuteness of his late uncle, and by 1948 it
was obvious that Kansas City was becoming Binaggio’s
town. However, Binaggio still needed a lot of funds to
beat Pendergast’s entrenched machine, and he spread
the word throughout the underworld that once his man
Bioff, Willie Morris (1900–1955) labor racketeer and
stool pigeon
A noted union racketeer and ex-pimp, Willie Bioff masterminded, with George Browne, the Chicago syndicate’s extortion of an estimated $6.5 million from the
Hollywood movie studios in the 1930s. Bioff was eventually convicted because of the crusading activities of
right-wing columnist Westbrook Pegler, who discovered
Bioff as a “guest of honor” at a lavish Hollywood party
and remembered him as a two-bit panderer during his
own apprenticeship as a Chicago reporter.
Bioff became a pimp no later than the age of 10,
when he began collecting money from other schoolboys for enjoying the favors of his “girls” on a table at
the local poolhall. By his mid-teens Bioff had an entire
string of prostitutes working for him and was a familiar sight in Chicago’s vice-ridden Levee area, wearing
gaudy silk shirts and offering a girl for every purpose.
While Bioff knew the virtue of paying for police protection, some of his activities proved just too much,
and he served jail time for brutalizing his prostitutes.
Yet somehow, as just seemed to happen in Chicago,
Bioff escaped serving one six-month term he was sentenced to.
In the meantime, while maintaining his vice activities, Bioff moved up in the Capone mob as a union
slugger, a job he performed so well that he was promoted steadily up the ladder, eventually being installed
by the mob as president of the International Alliance of
Theatrical Stage Employes and Motion Picture Operators. In this position, Bioff teamed up with George
Browne to terrorize studio executives by threatening to
shut down all moviemaking. The result was enormous
payoffs by the movie moguls to Bioff, Browne and
numerous other members of the Capone syndicate.
94
BISBEE Massacre
It was at this stage that Pegler started digging into
Bioff’s record and publicizing his unsavory past.
Despite charges of Pegler’s antiunionism, Bioff was
forced to serve his old six-month vice sentence,
although while doing his time in the Chicago House of
Correction, he was provided with a private office and a
tub of iced beer renewed each day.
Thanks to Pegler’s efforts Bioff and Browne were
convicted in 1941 of violating antiracketeering laws.
Each of the pair drew a 10-year sentence. It was not a
fate either appreciated, and both testified for the government in the prosecution of many top members of the
syndicate, men like Frank Nitti, Phil D’Andrea, Paul
Ricca, Charlie Gioe, Lou Kaufman and John Roselli.
The defense attacked Bioff’s character and demanded
to know why he had lied to previous grand juries. “I am
just a low, uncouth person,” he replied sadly. “I’m a
low-type sort of man.”
Because of his testimony the top members of the
Chicago syndicate went to prison. The exception was
Nitti who committed suicide instead. As these crime
figures went in, Bioff and Browne went out. Browne
ran and hid. Bioff also traveled, finally settling in
Phoenix, Ariz. under the name of William Nelson.
Bioff’s nature was to court the centers of power, and
in 1952 he and his wife contributed $5,000 to the senatorial campaign of a department store heir named Barry
Goldwater. After the election a warm friendship developed between Arizona’s new senator and Bioff-Nelson.
Just two weeks before Bioff’s untimely demise, Goldwater, an accomplished air force pilot, flew Bioff and
his wife to Las Vegas and back. On November 4,
1955, Bioff went out the kitchen door of his home and
climbed into his small pickup truck. His wife waved to
him. Bioff waved back, then tramped on the starter.
There was a blast and a flash. The truck was demolished, as was Willie Bioff. It was a little late in coming,
but syndicate vengeance had been exacted.
See also: PROCURING.
Bird Cage Theatre
gallery”
FPO
PICKUP
FROM LAST
PRINTING
In the view of many in the Old West, confession did not
cleanse the soul. John Heath was dragged from
Tombstone’s jail and lynched for his part in the Bisbee
Massacre despite the fact that his confession led to the
capture of five other perpetrators.
consequences. In one wild shoot-out 12 men were
reportedly left dead. Care was required in the selection
of the repertoire, since if too evil a villain appeared on
the stage, he might soon be forced to dodge lead from
outraged members of the audience. There is no accurate
record of the numbers of fatalities that occurred in the
Bird Cage, but while it never equaled the fabulous Oriental Saloon as a shooting gallery, it certainly provided
the setting for a good many death scenes on both sides
of the footlights.
See also: TOMBSTONE, ARIZONA TERRITORY.
Tombstone night spot and “shooting
One of the more wicked establishments in Tombstone,
Ariz. during the 1880s was the Bird Cage Theatre. A
performance of H.M.S. Pinafore might grace its stage
while harlots plied their trade in 12 tiny balcony boxes.
An act more in keeping with the place was the appearance of Fatima, who belly-danced to raucous western
acclaim in 1882.
The owners of the theater, Bill and Lottie Hutchinson, made it a rule that the audience had to check their
shooting irons upon entering, but unfortunately, the
regulation was not always obeyed, often with tragic
Birdman of Alcatraz
95
See ROBERT FRANKLIN
BISMARCK Hall
STROUD.
These suspicions were not unfounded. Once jailed
and subjected to some persuasion, Heath admitted
knowing about the robbery plans. It was not clear
whether he was merely in on the planning or had
indeed done most of it, but in any event, Heath was
now “cooperative” and spilled out the names of those
involved: Daniel Kelley, Daniel Dowd, James “Tex”
Howard, William Delaney and Comer Sample. After
some months all five were rounded up, given a speedy
trial and sentenced to hang.
Heath, without whose admissions the others would
not have been apprehended, was extended leniency and
given a life sentence. Arizonians found it difficult to
accept this concept of law and order. western beliefs did
not hold that a man’s soul was made any less black
through confession. On February 22, 1884 an irate
mob of several hundred broke into the Tombstone jail,
and when they were finished, John Heath dangled lifeless from a telegraph pole. In the cemetery at Tombstone, Heath’s marker can still be read. “John Heath,
taken from County Jail and lynched by Bisbee mob in
Tombstone, Feb. 22nd, 1884.”
See also: DANIEL KELLEY.
Bisbee (Arizona) kidnapping
Without doubt, the largest mass kidnapping in American history occurred in 1917 in Bisbee, Ariz., once the
greatest copper boom town in the country. In that year
the Industrial Workers of the World, or Wobblies,
staged a general strike, which, given the economy of the
town, meant primarily a strike against Phelps-Dodge
Copper. What happened next is not in dispute by labor
historians. The company bankrolled an operation by
Sheriff Harry Wheeler that gathered the largest posse in
the West’s history to run the strikers out of town. In a
midnight raid more than 2,000 strikers were rounded
up; some 1,200 of them were jammed into cattle cars
and shipped off across the desert into New Mexico.
This mass abduction broke the strike and started the
Wobblies on a steady decline within the union movement. As for the criminal aspects—the action was
clearly an act of kidnapping—Phelps-Dodge was credited with using its gigantic financial power in Arizona
to ensure that not a single man went to prison for the
outrageous act.
Bismarck Hall
Bisbee Massacre
New York dive
Of all the vicious establishments that abounded in New
York’s Bowery in the post–Civil War period, one that
had a uniquely Old World flavor was Bismarck Hall.
Low physically as well as morally, the Hall had an
annex in a string of cavelike rooms buried under the
sidewalk where ladies employed in the dive could entertain gentlemen. Following an Old World custom, the
operator of the dive supposedly often “bought” his
inmates by paying them a small sum of money binding
them to him for several years. While such an agreement, of course, would have had little standing in
court, its terms were quite well enforced; the girls were
not allowed off the premises unless they left a
“deposit” that guaranteed their return. Bismarck Hall
achieved a measure of renown when Grand Duke
Alexis of Russia, visiting it in the 1870s while slumming, or, as the practice was then known, “elephant
hunting,” recognized a Russian countess who had
fallen on hard times and was working there as a
“waiter girl.” According to the story, he bought the
freedom of this unnamed noblewoman and took her
back to Russia and her former position of grace.
robbery carnage
Probably few robberies exercised the West more than
what became known as the infamous Bisbee Massacre,
which some historians have claimed marked the swing
of the Arizona Territory from anarchy to law and order.
On the evening of December 8, 1883, five masked
men rode into the mining town of Bisbee and dismounted at the store of A. A. Castanda. They wore
long overcoats to cover the rifles they carried. Two of
the men entered the store, which was about to close.
There were six customers still inside and one of them, J.
C. Tappenier, reached for his gun when he saw the
intruders produce their rifles. He went down in a blast
of rifle fire that alerted the whole town. As curious
townsfolk poured into the street to see what was going
on, three lookouts outside the store started shooting to
clear them away. Two men and a woman were killed in
the raking fire, bringing the total death count to four,
with several others wounded, before the five thieves
rode out of town with $3,000 in cash and various
pieces of jewelry.
A sheriff’s posse from Tombstone took off in pursuit
of the bandits, numbering among its ranks a tracker
named John Heath. Some thought Heath did an excellent job of getting the posse to run in circles. Suspicion
also focused on him for a number of other reasons, one
being a report that he had been suspected of heading an
outlaw gang some time earlier in Brewery Gulch.
Black Bart (1830–1917?) stagecoach robber
One of the most colorful, daring and unconventional
bandits of the Old West was Charles E. Bolton, better
known as Black Bart, the poet laureate of outlawry. By
96
BLACK Hand
Black Dahlia (1925–1947) murder victim
the best count, he pulled 27 stagecoach holdups in California from 1874 to 1883. But he prided himself on
never robbing a stagecoach passenger. After each robbery Black Bart would send the coach on its way and
then stroll off on foot, since he greatly disliked horses.
Wearing a duster and a flour-sack mask and carrying an
empty shotgun, he would step out into the road and
shout to the stage driver, “Throw down your box or
die.” Sometimes he would issue orders to his men in the
bushes to open fire if the driver refused. The driver
would see a half-dozen rifles in the shadows and would
do as he was told. Actually, the rifles were never more
than broomstick handles. After each holdup Black Bart
would leave behind bits of doggerel that won him a
reputation as a poet. One typical poem read:
The 1947 case of Elizabeth Short, better known as the
Black Dahlia, is unsolved but still actively pursued,
principally because it has had more “confessions” than
any other case in California history.
In a sense, Elizabeth Short was typical of the young
girls who flooded Los Angeles: she was from a broken
home, with an unhappy lovelife, consumed with a
desire for a Hollywood career. She had, as they said in
Hollywood, a gimmick. She always dressed completely
in black. It was one way to grab attention, but she certainly had others. She understood the meaning of the
casting couch and would go to bed with any man who
had even the most tenuous connection with the studios.
They started calling her the Black Dahlia, and in the
zany world of moviemaking, she might eventually have
gained enough of a reputation to make it despite a lack
of acting ability.
On January 15, 1947 her nude corpse was found
in a garbage-strewn vacant lot in a Los Angeles suburb. She had been badly mutilated and her body had
been crudely cut in half. Deep into the thigh of the 22year-old victim, the killer had carved the initials
“BD,” presumably for Black Dahlia. It took the police
some time to identify the severed corpse as Elizabeth
Short, or the Black Dahlia, but no time at all to make
several arrests. The murder seemed to excite the public and produced a rash of confessions. In fact, the
police were overwhelmed by men and women coming
forward to claim credit for the brutal act. Most of the
confessions were soon discounted because the selfproclaimed murderers demonstrated a lack of knowledge about various aspects of the case. Yet, still more
confessors came forward. One woman walked into a
station house and said “The Black Dahlia stole my
man, so I killed her and cut her up.” A husband
whose wife had deserted him said he was the killer in
the hope that if he made himself notorious and got his
picture in the papers, his wife would return to him.
Another sent the police a letter made out of pasted-up
letters from magazines, offering to meet them and give
them information. He signed the message “Black
Dahlia Avenger.” But he never kept the rendezvous.
Another writer sent a message reading: “Here are
Dahlia’s belongings. Letter to follow.” Enclosed were
Elizabeth Short’s Social Security card and birth certificate and her address book—with one page missing.
Unfortunately, no letter followed. The most promising
confession appeared to be that made by a 29-year-old
army corporal, who talked loudly and convincingly of
knowing her. He appeared quite knowledgeable about
the facts of the case and insisted, “When I get drunk, I
get rough with women.” After an intensive investigation, the police wrote him off as an unbalanced per-
Here I lay me down to sleep
To await the coming morrow
Perhaps success, perhaps defeat
and everlasting sorrow
I’ve labored long and hard for bred [sic]
For honor and for riches
But on my corns too long you’ve tred
You fine-haired Sons of Bitches
Let come what will, I’ll try it on
My condition can’t be worse
And if there’s money in that box
’Tis munny in my purse.
Black Bart, the Po-8.
Black Bart was captured on November 3, 1883,
after a robbery that had netted him $4,800. A rider
came by during the robbery and fired at the outlaw,
forcing him to flee so rapidly he dropped his handkerchief. Detectives traced the laundry mark, F.O.X. 7,
until it led them to a man named Charles E. Bolton in
San Francisco. The San Francisco Bulletin described
him as “a distinguished-looking gentleman who walked
erect as a soldier and carried a gold-knobbed cane.” At
first, Bolton denied being Black Bart but finally confessed. He was sentenced to 10 years in San Quentin
but was released on January 21, 1888, with time off
for good behavior. When a reporter asked him if he
intended to go on writing poetry, Black Bart snapped,
“Young man, didn’t you just hear me say I will commit
no more crimes?” According to the report, which had a
romantic air, Wells Fargo settled an annuity on Black
Bart for his agreement to rob no more stagecoaches.
There is no additional information about him. One
account had him living out his days in Nevada, and
another said he died in 1917 in New York City.
97
BLACK Maria
sonality. As the confessions continued to pour in, all
efforts to keep an accurate count were dropped, and
to this day the Black Dahlia case remains unsolved.
worked behind his counter. His killers were never
caught, although it was suspected that gangsters working for Lupo the Wolf, a Black Hand chieftain in Italian
Harlem, were behind it.
Lupo was regarded as the biggest Black Hander in
New York City, and years later, an infamous Murder
Stable, which he owned on East 107th Street in Manhattan, was discovered to be the burial place for at least
60 victims, many of them individuals who had refused
to pay Black Hand extortion demands. Lupo’s power
sprang from his shrewd use of terror. Strutting around
Italian Harlem, the man exuded cruelty, and it was the
custom for residents, at the very mention of his name,
to cross themselves and extend their fingers in an effort
to ward off his spell.
Within Italian-American society almost anyone
could be a Black Hand victim. While on a triumphal
engagement at the Metropolitan Opera shortly before
World War I, tenor Enrico Caruso got a Black Hand
demand for $2,000, which he paid, regarding an appeal
to the police as useless if not foolhardy. However, his
payment of the money led to a new demand for
$15,000 more. This time the tenor notified the authorities because he realized paying the money would only
lead to further, even greater demands. Under police
direction, Caruso left the money beneath the steps of a
factory as the extortionists had ordered. When two
prominent Italian businessmen tried to retrieve the loot,
they were arrested. Both went to prison in one of the
few successful prosecutions of Black Hand criminals.
Caruso was kept under guard for a number of years
thereafter on the theory that he faced Black Hand retribution, but it never came, because his extortioners were
no more than independent operators who had no connection with a crime family or the nonexistent Society
of the Black Hand.
A New Orleans Black Hander, Paul Di Cristina, considered himself so immune from interference by the law
that he delivered his Black Hand notes in person. His
victims always quaked and paid—all except Pietro
Pepitone, a grocer. He informed Di Cristina’s strongarm men that he would not pay. So the boss came
around personally to collect. When Di Cristina alighted
from his wagon in front of the grocer’s store, Pepitone
picked up a shotgun, stepped out on the sidewalk and
blasted the Black Hander to death.
It has been estimated that at least 80 different Black
Hand gangs operated in Chicago, totally unrelated to
one another except that their messages to their victims
were always the same, “Pay or Die.”
Virtually all the Black Hand gangs were wiped out
or disappeared around 1920. The leaders of the Cardinelli Black Handers were executed in Chicago; the
DiGiovanni mob leaders were convicted in Kansas City,
Black Hand extortion racket
“The Society of the Black Hand” was one of the sillier
journalistic hoaxes of its time. Contrary to what newspapers of the era published, there was no such Society
of the Black Hand, but that was undoubtedly of little
comfort to Black Hand victims.
Recalcitrant victims of this extortion racket were
shot, poisoned, dynamited or maimed; more pliant targets willingly turned over their funds after receiving a
demand for money usually outlined at the bottom with
a hand that had been dipped in black ink, a menacing
sight sure to produce an icy feeling around a victim’s
heart. Actually, there once had been a Society of the
Black Hand—not in New York, not in Italy, not even in
Sicily, but in Spain. It originated in the days of the
Inquisition, when like such genuine Italian secret societies as the Camorra and Mafia, it was organized as a
force for good, trying to fight the oppression of its day.
In later centuries the Mafia and the Camorra turned
into criminal bodies, while the Society of the Black
Hand in Spain simply withered away. But for New
York City newspapermen, La Mano Nera, or the Black
Hand, had a nice ring to it; it was easy to remember
and lurid. Thus was reborn the Black Hand. Reporters
and some detectives wasted their time trying to trace
suspects’ family trees to tie them to some Black Hand
Society. In reality, the Black Hand was simply an extortion racket practiced in the Little Italy sections of
numerous American cities. The senders would threaten
the recipient or his family and would warn that they
would kill or maim a family member as a starter. Usually, the letter was signed with some sort of ominous
symbol, such as a skull and crossbones or knives,
hatchets or sabers dripping blood. Once the newspapers publicized the symbol of a black hand, that symbol
became standard.
Certainly, Black Handers, many of whom were
Mafia and Camorra gangsters, often killed if they did
not receive their payoff, although more often they
might at first catch a victim’s child and cut off a finger
as a convincer. A typical victim of a Black Hand operation was a wealthy Brooklyn butcher named Gaetano
Costa, who in 1905 got a Black Hand letter that read:
“You have more money than we have. We know of
your wealth and that you are alone in this country. We
want $1,000, which you are to put in a loaf of bread
and hand to a man who comes in to buy meat and pulls
out a red handkerchief.” Costa, unlike his neighbors,
refused to pay and was shot dead one morning as he
98
BLACKBEARD
Lupo the Wolf got 30 years in New York, albeit for
counterfeiting rather than Black Hand crimes. Some
observers of the crime scene have attributed the decline
of the Black Hand racket to the rise of the big-money
rackets under the scourge of Prohibition; there was so
much more money available in bootlegging, rumrunning and hijacking that the extortionists couldn’t be
bothered anymore with what was by comparison a
penny-ante racket. However, that was hardly the whole
answer. The fact was that Prohibition brought the Italian immigrants into close contact with the feared police
for the first time. Most Little Italy sections around the
country turned alcohol making into a “cottage industry,” with its attendant odors, smoke and fumes. That
meant the neighborhood policeman had to be paid off.
And when you paid off a man, you had the right to ask
him for a favor, such as taking care of this Black Hander who was bothering you.
See also: ENRICO CARUSO, DEATH CORNER, LUPO THE
WOLF, SHOTGUN MAN, WHITE HAND SOCIETY.
Black Maria
The throwing of the series appears to have been
thought of initially by Chicago first baseman Charles
Arnold “Chick” Gandil, who passed the word to
Boston gamblers that he could line up several teammates for a lucrative killing. The other players involved
were Eddie Cicotte and Claude Williams, star pitchers
who between them had won 52 games during the season; left fielder Shoeless Joe Jackson; center fielder
Oscar Felsch; third baseman George “Buck” Weaver;
shortstop Charles “Swede” Risbergand; and utility
infielder Fred McMullin. The gamblers first approached
were Joseph “Sport” Sullivan of Boston and William
“Sleepy Bill” Burns of New York. Because they felt they
needed more capital to finance a gigantic killing, they
approached the country’s leading gambler, Arnold “the
Brain” Rothstein. It is debatable whether or not Rothstein entered the plot or turned them down and then
simply went ahead and bet at least $60,000 on Cincinnati (and collected $270,000) because he knew the fix
was in and saw no need to pay out any bribe money
himself. In any event, the main operator behind the fix
became Abe Attell, the ex-featherweight boxing champion. A caller to Attell’s hotel suite in Cincinnati later
told of seeing money stacked on every horizontal surface in the room, on tables, dresser tops and chair seats,
after the Reds won the first game.
In the first two games Cicotte’s invincible “shine
ball” failed him, and he was knocked out in the fourth
inning; Williams was uncharacteristically wild and lost
4–2. By the end of the second game, rumors of the fix
were rampant, and the Reds were big favorites to take
the series. It was impossible to find a professional
bookmaker who would bet on Chicago, that action
being played strictly by amateur bettors. It took a yearlong grand jury investigation to crack the case, with
confessions coming from Jackson, Cicotte and
Williams. Comiskey was forced to fire all the players
except Gandil, who had already “retired.”
Testimony showed that most of the players had gotten $5,000 for their parts in the fix, while Gandil had
kept $35,000 for himself. How many hundreds of
thousands the gamblers made was never really determined. When several of the players left the grand jury
room, a group of small boys awaited them. One said to
Shoeless Joe Jackson: “It ain’t true, is it, Joe?”
“Yes, boys,” the outfielder replied, “I’m afraid it is.”
The conversation has come down in folklore as the
boy wailing plaintively, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.”
Another bit of folklore is that the baseball establishment excised this cancer as quickly as possible. In fact,
the baseball magnates provided legal aid to the players,
and indeed, the jury acquitted them and carried some
of the defendants out of the courtroom on their shoulders. However, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis,
police van
The Black Maria (pronounced Ma-rye-ah) police van
originated in Boston, Mass. In 1847 a newspaper
informed its readers that a “new Black Maria” had
been put into service. There is no record of Black
Marias necessarily being painted black; the origin of
the term most likely referred to a huge black woman,
Maria Lee, who ran a lodging house for sailors during
the period. Since the woman was generally called Black
Maria and her establishment was among the most
unruly in the city, it was assumed that a police van
loaded with boisterous offenders was coming from
Black Maria’s.
Black Sox Scandal
baseball betting coup
Before 1919 the fixing of baseball games for betting
purposes was by no means unheard of. But in that year
it went too far; the “unthinkable” happened: a World
Series was fixed by eight star players for the Chicago
White Sox who managed to lose the series to the underdog Cincinnati Redlegs five games to three (the series
that year was being played in an experimental ninegame set).
All the details of what was to be called the Black Sox
Scandal were never fully exposed, primarily because
there was an attempted cover-up by the baseball establishment, in general, and White Sox owner Charles A.
Comiskey, in particular. The offending players were not
even suspended until there were only three games left to
play in the following season, when confessions by three
players to the grand jury forced Comiskey to act.
99
BLACKMAIL
An old print depicts the bloody end of Blackbeard the Pirate.
rally looking fierce and wild, made him altogether such
a figure that imagination cannot form an idea of a fury
from hell to look more frightful.
appointed commissioner to oversee the integrity of “the
Game,” was not satisfied. He never let any of the players don a Comiskey uniform again.
See also: ARNOLD ROTHSTEIN.
Not much is known about Blackbeard’s early life.
He was generally believed to have been born in Bristol, England, although some claimed he was from
Jamaica or the Carolinas and “of very creditable parents.” Blackbeard himself boasted his parents were
even bigger rascals than he, keeping a grogshop and
specializing in giving sailors knockout drops and then
shanghaiing them. In any event, Blackbeard went to
sea at a young age and served on English privateers
during Queen Anne’s War (1702–13), eventually gathering a group of cutthroats on a ship of his own.
When peace came, Blackbeard turned pirate and came
to command five ships and crews totaling 400 to 500.
By 1716 Blackbeard enjoyed the protection of Gov.
Charles Eden of Carolina, who thereafter shared in a
portion of the booty taken. Blackbeard preyed on
shipping all along the American coast line from New
Blackbeard (?–1718) pirate
No pirate in American history enjoys quite as ferocious
a reputation as Edward Teach (or Thack or Thatch) of
the 14 wives and the pigtailed beard. A contemporary
pirate historian, Capt. Charles Johnson, offered the following description:
This beard was black, which he suffered to grow of an
extravagant length, as to breadth, it came up to his
eyes. He was accustomed to twist it with ribbons, in
small tails . . . and turn them about his ears. In time of
action he wore a sling over his shoulders, with three
brace of pistols hanging in holsters like bandoliers, and
stuck slow-burning lighted matches under his hat,
which, appearing on each side of his face, his eyes natu-
100
BLISS Bank Ring
vate detectives in the city. Since even a small agency will
get eight or 10 blackmail cases a year, it is evident that
police statistics on the crime are meaningless, with perhaps only one in 20 or 50 cases reported. Furthermore,
there is no way of measuring how many other victims
are too frightened even to enlist the service of a private
agency and instead pay off.
Most blackmail cases are based on modern versions of
the badger game and involve the sexual misadventures of
the victim, complete with pictures. The second largest category is probably homosexual cases, and many of the
remainder relate to business shenanigans. A classic example of the latter involved a Brooklyn businessman who
faked company expenses to beat the Internal Revenue
Service on his income. Unfortunately for him, the businessman let his secretary help with the doctoring, and
shortly afterward, the secretary decided she would work
only from 11:30 A.M. until 3:00 P.M., with two hours or
so for lunch. She doubled her own salary, the balance
being off the books. Ironically, the secretary ran afoul of
the tax men, and the blackmail case came to light.
Many blackmailers are freelancers such as a brother
and sister team who blackmailed a university professor
in Massachusetts for $21,000 by claiming that he had
fathered the woman’s son or a prostitute who milked
the son of a former governor for $40,000. However,
there have been a number of organized blackmail rings.
The most successful of these was the Forcier-Gaffney
gang, which extracted at least $2 million from wealthy
homosexuals over a period of 15 years. The ring was
smashed when one victim finally had the courage to go
to the police. Organized crime often uses blackmail in
its bankruptcy scams, first getting something on a businessman and using it as a wedge to become his “partner.” At the petty end of professional blackmailers was
a Midwestern ring that concentrated on housewives
who shopped in supermarkets. They spied on the
women until they spotted one slipping small items into
her purse or coat pocket. Outside the store they would
confront her under the guise of being police detectives.
They would settle for all the money the woman had on
her plus, of course, the groceries.
Blackmail is a crime with a long history. According to
the Greek historian Xenophon, blackmailing was so pervasive some 2,300 years ago that many prominent and
wealthy citizens of Athens went into exile to escape the
exactions of its perpetrators. He also tells us of another
victim who subsequently lost all his money in a commercial venture and thus, happily, no longer was compelled
to live in fear of the blackmailers. Even today that is
probably the most foolproof protection.
England down to the West Indies. In one of his more
daring raids, he once blockaded the port of
Charleston, S.C., finally accepting a ransom in drugs
and medications.
Under a pardon granted by Gov. Eden, Blackbeard
became a familiar figure in what is now North Carolina. At the time he had 13 wives, scattered around
various ports. In Bath, N.C. he took bride number
14, a blond-haired girl just turned 15. The marriage
barely outlasted the honeymoon when Blackbeard
brought a number of his ruffians along for a visit at
his new in-laws’ plantation. His young wife finally
fled and hid with friends. Despite the pirates’ lavish
spending, the people of Bath soon were disenchanted
with Blackbeard, finding that he and his crew made
free with their houses and women and demanded all
kinds of requisitions from them. Despairing because
of the pirate’s close ties to the royal governor, several
Carolinians appealed to Gov. Alexander Spotswood
of Virginia for help. Spotswood could not interfere
in another colony but resolved to do something
about Blackbeard at sea, since the pirate was notorious for attacking Virginian shipping. Spotswood
commissioned a young lieutenant named Robert
Maynard to conduct a hunt. Maynard finally located
the pirate at anchor near Ocracoke Island, off North
Carolina. On November 21, 1718 Blackbeard was
killed in a fierce battle in which he took five bullets
and 25 cutlass wounds before a seaman struck him
from behind and sliced his head off. When Maynard
sailed back to Virginia, Blackbeard’s bloody head
was hung by the hair from the bowsprit of his ship
for all to see.
Stories of Blackbeard’s buried treasure have tantalized fortune hunters for 250 years. Legend places some
of his many hoards in such locations as Ocracoke
Island; the Isles of Shoals off New Hampshire; Plum
Point, N.C.; under the Blackbeard Tree on the island of
New Providence in the Bahamas; Ossabaw Island, Ga.;
under a walnut in Burlington, N.J.; and the island of
Trinidad. None has ever been found.
See also: MAJOR STEDE BONNET, PIRACY.
blackmail
Blackmail, the extortion of money from a victim by
threats of public disclosure, censure or exposure to
ridicule, is not a frequent crime, if judged by the numbers reported to the police. In one year the New York
district attorney reported only four cases had reached
his office. However, during that same period three of
the larger detective agencies in the city handled more
than 50 cases, none of which had been reported to the
authorities—and at the time, there were also 300 pri101
BLOODY Angle
Bliss Bank Ring
criminal-police alliance
Crime’s golden age in America started with the end of
the Civil War, as thousands of wastrels and rogues
schooled in the rough-and-tumble of wartime criminality came home determined never to work for a living
again. While great gangs had existed in the cities long
before the war, the crime specialist emerged during the
postwar period. Mobs formed to practice one particular brand of crime, and among the most highly
rewarded were the bank burglar gangs. Since the great
street gangs had often allied themselves with political
protectors and carried out many chores for them, such
as winning elections through voter intimidation, it was
only logical that the new crime mobs would work with
the authorities.
The Bliss Bank Ring, bossed by two leading thieves,
George Miles Bliss and Mark Shinburn, was probably
the biggest bank mob to appreciate the virtue of working with the law. It was common practice for the Bliss
gang to pay off the police with about 10 percent of the
loot, somewhat less if the score was exceptionally large.
“If we spoil them with too much money,” Shinburn
said, “they won’t be hungry for more.”
They hardly needed to worry. The appetite of the
police seemed insatiable, and they often squabbled about
their individual shares. Capt. John Young, chief of the
Detective Bureau of the New York Police Department,
finally quit in disgust rather than share the $17,500 cut
given him by the Bliss forces for one robbery. The extent
of the gang’s involvement in police bribery was perhaps
best exhibited after Young’s departure. Bliss lobbied
openly for Detective Jim Irving to be put in charge of the
bureau, personally stating his case to Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall. The friction over bribes within the bureau
was such, he warned, that some disgruntled member
might go to reform-minded Samuel Tilden with the facts.
“Put Detective Jim Irving at the head of the Detective
Bureau,” Bliss told Tweed, “and you’ll switch the whole
business to safety. If not, I can’t say what will happen.”
Tweed saw the merits in Bliss’ argument, and Irving
was given the post, whereupon the bank ring entered its
most prosperous period. With the cooperation of the
police, the ring pulled off the famous $2.75 million raid
on the Ocean Bank located at Fulton and Greenwich
Streets, in 1869. The breakdown of bribes paid to
police was revealed later by confessions:
James Irving, head of Detective Bureau
$17,000
John McCord, detective
$17,000
George Radford, detective
$17,000
James Kelso, detective
$17,000
Philip Farley, detective
$17,000
John Jordan, captain of the Sixth Precinct
and later superintendent of police
$17,000
George Elder, detective
$17,000
Inspector Johnson
$1,800
One other detective
$1,000
Frank Houghtaling, clerk of
Jefferson Market Police Court
John Browne
$10,000
$500
Total
$132,000
For this sum of money the police not only did not
harrass the Bliss gang but also performed yeoman service in trying to pin the job on the George Leonidas
Leslie gang, an outfit notorious for being niggardly in
the payment of bribes.
The Bliss Ring survived even the fall of Boss Tweed
in 1873, but when Thomas F. Byrnes became head of
the Detective Bureau in 1880 and outlawed the alliance
between the police and the bank burglars, the gang fell
apart. Many members were arrested, and Bliss himself
was captured and sentenced to prison for the robbery
of a Vermont bank. Penniless when released, he spent
his final years writing exposés of crime. Only Shinburn
survived the ring’s demise, fleeing to Europe, where for
years he lived the life of a count, having bought the title
with the proceeds of some of his crimes.
See also: MARK SHINBURN.
Bloody Angle
New York murder site
During the great tong wars fought in the early 20th
century in New York’s Chinatown, the area became an
armed camp. Mott Street became the stronghold of the
On Leong Tong, while Pell Street belonged to the Hip
Sing Tong. Doyers Street was a sort of no-man’s-land
with a certain sharp turn that journalists labeled the
Bloody Angle. The police later estimated that more men
were murdered there than at any other spot in New
York City and most likely the entire United States. Only
the foolhardy ventured past it after dark. The Bloody
Angle was ideal for an ambush, with too abrupt a turn
for a pedestrian to see ahead. Armed with a snickersnee, or hatchet, sharpened to a razor’s edge, a boo
how doy, or hatchet man, could strike before the victim
had time to cry out, lay the weapon across his throat
and flee through an arcade to safety.
See also: AH HOON, BOW KUM, MOCK DUCK, SNICKERSNEE, TONG WARS.
102
BLOOMINGDALE-Morgan Affair
Bloody Tubs
places
criminal gang
One of the most vicious gangs in Baltimore, Md. during
the mid-1800s, the Bloody Tubs sold their electioninfluencing services to the highest political bidder. They
earned their name from their habit of dunking political
opponents in the slaughterhouse tubs. Like another
vicious gang of criminals, the Bloody Inks, whose turf
extended from Baltimore to Philadelphia, they so terrified voters with their brutal methods that many persons
were afraid to come to the polls.
The heyday of both the Bloody Tubs and the Bloody
Inks ran from 1857 to 1870. By the end of this period,
their crimes were so outrageous that even the most callous politicians could no longer offer them protection
or make use of their services. Stripped of their political
protection, the Bloody Tubs fell to the mercy of police
“head smashers” and retired from the field.
Bloomingdale-Morgan affair
This sex scandal caused considerable dismay in the
Reagan White House and concluded later in a savaqe
murder that was judged to be unconnected to it. The
scandal erupted when a beautiful playgirl-model filed a
$10 million palimony suit in 1982. Thirty-year-old
Vicki Morgan filed the claim against multimillionaire
Alfred Bloomingdale and later against his estate, charging she had long been “kept” by him for sexual perversions and sadomasochistic orgies. Bloomingdale was
the scion of the Bloomingdale’s department store family
and a longtime friend of Ronald Reagan. His wife,
Betsy, was a particularly close friend of the president’s
wife, Nancy.
The affair had started in 1970 when Morgan was 17
and Bloomingdale was 53. Bloomingdale had spotted
Morgan on Sunset Boulevard and followed her into a
restaurant and struck up a conversation with her. He
insisted on having her phone number before he would
leave. Morgan later said, “He was so persistent, I had
lunch with him.”
Lunch was not what the encounter was all about,
and within a week of “wooing,” Morgan was mired
into Bloomingdale’s bizarre world of leather and
chains, with Bloomingdale as a demanding dungeon
master. Vicki stripped naked along with as many as
three other women so that Bloomingdale could whip
them and have them engage in an endless number of
sexual “games.”
The end result: Vicki “found herself falling in love”
with Bloomingdale. If love was not enough, there was
the matter of compensation. Bloomingdale paid Morgan’s rent, provided her with spending money to the
tune of a trifling—for him—$18,000 a month and got
her launched on a movie career that never amounted to
much. This went on for 12 years.
For all his weird activities Bloomingdale still had
time to do his thing on the social circuit. He extended
his fame and fortune by developing the Diners Club
credit card. For a time he was also a Hollywood agent
and producer and was a big booster of actor Ronald
Reagan’s career in state and, later, national politics.
After Reagan became president, Bloomingdale, as a
member of Reagan’s “kitchen cabinet” of political
advisers, harbored hopes of becoming ambassador to
France. However, he got no such appointment, and it
was said later by some observers, this was because the
public image–conscious president was obviously aware
of his pal’s swinging lifestyle. A year later, Bloomingdale became a member of Reagan’s Foreign Intelligence
Advisory Board, composed of “trustworthy and distinguished citizens outside the government” who reviewed
the operations of U.S. intelligence and counterintelligence agencies.
perversion in high
Vicki Morgan’s long-running love affair with
multimillionaire Alfred Bloomingdale bared perversions in
high political and social circles.
103
BLUE-sky laws
stressed that others had had reasons to murder Morgan
because of her claims of depraved sex with government
officials. The jury rejected such theories and convicted
Pancoast. He was sentenced to 26 years to life in
prison.
In December 1984, a jury finally ordered the Bloomingdale estate to pay $200,000 to Morgan’s estate, on
the grounds that Bloomingdale had promised in a letter
in February 1982 to pay $240,000 for Morgan to
spend time with him in the hospital during his terminal
illness. Morgan had received $40,000 before these
funds also had been cut off. Under the law, the money
went to her 15-year-old son, who had been fathered
during an affair Morgan conducted during a brief
breakup with Bloomingdale early on in their relationship.
Early in 1982, the 66-year-old Bloomingdale was
diagnosed with throat cancer and hospitalized. It was
during this period that his wife discovered he had been
providing Morgan an $18,000 monthly allowance.
Furious, Mrs. Betsy Bloomingdale had the payments
stopped. Morgan countered by filing a $5 million palimony suit, claiming she was Bloomingdale’s confidante, business partner and traveling companion.
Shortly after, she raised the ante another $5 million for
Betsy having cut off her $18,000 stipend.
Before the case came to court, Bloomingdale died,
on August 20, 1982. The following month, a court
threw out most of the $10 million claim, declaring the
relationship had been no more than a “wealthy, older
paramour and a young, well-paid mistress.” The judge
permitted to stand Morgan’s claim that she had a written contract guaranteeing her a $10,000 payment each
month as a partner in Bloomingdale’s business interests.
While litigation against the Bloomingdale estate continued, the depressed and angry Morgan moved into a
North Hollywood condominium, which she eventually
shared with an old friend, Marvin Pancoast, a homosexual with major psychological problems of his own.
The condominium became the site of frequent drug and
drinking bouts. Arguments between the two over
money, mainly that Pancoast could not come up with
his share of the expenses, became tense.
On July 7, 1983 Pancoast used a baseball bat to
beat Morgan to death. He notified the police and confessed to the crime, but later recanted.
Meanwhile, the embarrassing political fallout continued when an attorney practicing criminal law
announced he had been asked to represent Pancoast at
this trial and said he had videotapes showing Bloomingdale and Morgan in group and sadomasochistic sex
with a number of top government officials. The lawyer
said one person so involved “would definitely embarrass the president, just like Mr. Bloomingdale did.”
Shortly thereafter, he insisted the tapes had been
stolen, and the following day porno publisher Larry
Flynt said he had a deal with the lawyer to pay $1 million for the tapes, but that the lawyer never showed up
to complete the deal. The lawyer later denied having
talked to Flynt. The tape story was considered to be a
hoax and the lawyer was charged with having filed a
false report.
Pancoast pleaded innocent to the murder of Vicki
Morgan by reason of insanity. Records indicated that
over the previous 13 years, he had been diagnosed as
masochistic, manic-depressive and psychotic-depressive.
It turned out he had once even confessed to the Sharon
Tate and related murders, which actually were committed by the Charles Manson family. Besides trying to discredit Pancoast’s previous confession, the defense also
blue-sky laws
In 1911 the state of Kansas passed the first law to protect the public from the marketing of deceitful stock or
shares in worthless, often imaginary enterprises. The
“blue-sky” nickname was given to them by a state legislator who demanded that the rules placed on investment concerns “should be as far reaching as the blue
sky.” The Kansas law and those enacted by other states
were vigorously challenged by investment and banking
interests until the Supreme Court upheld them in a
1917 ruling. The High Court bolstered the nickname
by denouncing fraudulent investment schemes “which
have no more basis than so many feet of ‘blue sky.’”
Bodie, California
lawless gold-mining camp
Gold placers were first discovered in Bodie in 1859, but
since the town was isolated on the eastern slope of the
Sierra Nevada, it didn’t boom until 1870, when rich
veins started showing up. The population quickly
mushroomed to some 15,000, drawn by what would
eventually prove to be some $100 million worth of ore
over the next two decades. With fortunes to be made
and stolen overnight, Bodie became perhaps the most
lawless, corrupt and vice-ridden town in the West.
Three breweries working 24 hours a day, were needed
to service some 35 saloons. There were also some 60
bordellos in action on a 24-hour basis, home, according
of one historian’s account, to no less than 1,800 prostitutes. With a total population of only 15,500, it was
clear what the remaining 13,200 were doing when they
weren’t drinking, digging or killing each other. Violent
deaths in such an atmosphere were understandably frequent, and in fact, it was said that Bodie always had “a
man for breakfast.” Men were killed for their gold in
arguments over who paid for the last beer, for being
104
BOLLES, Don
agreed to let investigators tape his phone conversations as he carried out his stock deals. Numerous
heads rolled as a result, and Drexel Burnham Lambert, one of the giant financial institutions on Wall
Street, plunged to near collapse, turning into a shell of
its former self.
In a plea bargain Boesky got off with a three-year
sentence, saying he was “deeply ashamed” of his past
actions. Many observers thought he had paid a very
tiny price for the ruined financial fortunes of so many
shareholders. Even his $100 million penalty—the
largest of its type in history—left him a most wealthy
man. When he left prison, Boesky did, however, face a
host of legal actions undertaken by ex-partners and victimized shareholders.
See also: DENNIS LEVINE.
line-jumpers at brothels and, now and then, in disputes
about the facts of some previous killing. When one
entire Sunday passed without a fatality, folks in Bodie
spoke with pride of the “Christian spirit” that had
overtaken the town.
Bodie did not live long enough to be tamed. After
1880 the gold finds became less lucrative and by the
turn of the century much of the town was empty and
forlorn. Some slight mining activity continued up to
World War II, but most of the town’s well-preserved
but unused wooden structures were burned in a fire in
1932. Today Bodie is nothing more than a ghost town
with a bloody past.
See also: BADMAN FROM BODIE.
Boesky, Ivan (1937– ) “Ivan the Terrible” of stock deals
Until the mid-1980s Ivan Boesky was regarded as the
most controversial high-rolling stock speculator on
Wall Street. Few such operators were more feared than
“Ivan the Terrible,” as he was called. Boesky gambled
tens of millions on risky securities deals. Later, when
the secrets of his methods were uncovered, he was
regarded as one of the biggest crooks in the financial
world.
The son of a Russian immigrant in Detroit, Boesky
was graduated from law school in 1962 and moved to
New York four years later. He did stints in an investment firm and then a brokerage house, and then was
attracted to the wild world of risk arbitrage—risking
huge sums buying and selling stocks of companies that
appeared to be likely to merge or be taken over by
other firms.
Boesky launched his own arbitrage firm with
$700,000 in capital, and 11 years later had a financial
empire worth some $2 billion. He lived with his wife
and four children in a 10-bedroom mansion on a 200acre estate in suburban Westchester County and maintained a lavish river-view apartment in Manhattan.
Corporations competed to get him on their boards, and
he gave huge sums to charities while making increasing
profits on his stock dealings.
Unfortunately, Boesky didn’t do this on the up-andup. He sought out insider tips and paid generously for
such illegal information. In May 1986, Dennis Levine,
one of Boesky’s key illegal sources and a wheelerdealer in his own right, was trapped by government
investigators and started to “sing.” The man he gave
to the government was Boesky, and Boesky in November of that year made an agreement to pay $100 million in penalties for violating securities laws. To cut
his potential prison time, Boesky started to outwarble
Levine and turned in his fellow lawbreakers. He even
Bolber-Petrillo murder ring
The Bolber-Petrillo murder ring, which reaped a fortune from insurance killings in the Italian community
of Philadelphia during the 1930s, is an excellent example of why murder statistics are not to be trusted. The
ring disposed of an estimated 30 to 50 victims before
police suspicions over just one or two brought about
the killers’ downfall. From a statistical viewpoint, the
case is often cited as an indication that the generally
accepted figure of 20,000 murder victims a year may be
greatly understated and that a truer figure would be
20,000 known homicides a year and 20,000 undiscovered ones.
Neither Dr. Morris Bolber nor his two cousins, Paul
and Herman Petrillo, were much interested in such a
statistical overview, being content to rake in a goodly
income from the occupation of murder during the
Depression, a period when most forms of business were
hardly rewarding.
The original murder scheme was hatched by Dr. Bolber and Paul Petrillo in 1932, when they decided to
have Petrillo seduce Mrs. Anthony Giscobbe, the wife
of one of the doctor’s patients. The woman had often
complained to Dr. Bolber of her husband’s infidelities.
When she fell in love with Petrillo, she also rather
enthusiastically agreed to a plan to kill her husband for
the $10,000 insurance on his life. Since the errant Mr.
Giscobbe often staggered home dead drunk, it was a
relatively simple matter to undress him and leave him
all night by an open window in the dead of winter.
Eventually, the husband succumbed to pneumonia, and
the grieving widow and Dr. Bolber each netted $5,000.
Perhaps the only sad development for the widow was
that immediately upon completion of this financial
transaction, Paul Petrillo lost all amorous interest in
105
BOLTON, Charles E.
Bolles, Don (1929–1976) murder victim
her. The slick-haired Petrillo had moved on to conquer
new lonely wives, all of whom had husbands not long
for this world.
Since the plotters found that few Italian husbands
carried much, if any, insurance, they decided to add a
new wrinkle to the operation by recruiting Petrillo’s
cousin, Herman Petrillo, an actor of some accomplishment with church groups, to impersonate the husbands
and apply for insurance. Naturally, the wives were
required to screen their husbands’ mail and weed out
all insurance correspondence. After a few premium
payments were made, the husbands were efficiently dispatched. A roofer named Lorenzo was heaved off an
eight-story building by the Petrillos in an on-the-job
accident that doubled the payment on his life. To make
the death more convincing, the Petrillos gave the roofer
some French postcards before shoving him off the roof,
making it rather obvious that the victim had been distracted by them when he misstepped.
After a dozen or so murders, the plotters recruited a
valuable new accomplice, Carino Favato, a faith healer
known as the Witch in her own bailiwick. The Witch
had murdered three of her own husbands and apparently been consulted by female clients who wished to be
rid of their spouses. The Witch poisoned them for a
price. However, when Dr. Bolber pointed out that she
had erred grievously by not adding the insurance wrinkle to the operation, the Witch was duly impressed,
readily agreed to a liaison and was able to supply the
names of quite a few potential victims.
The ring went busily about committing murder, most
often by poison or by Dr. Bolber’s favorite method,
“natural means,” a canvas bag filled with sand that,
when artfully applied, caused a fatal cerebral hemorrhage without any telltale marks. By 1937 the ring’s
death toll may easily have approached 50, at least 30 of
which were rather well documented later on.
A recently released convict in need of money called
on Herman Petrillo with a scheme by which they could
both make money. Herman was not impressed, mainly
because he already had a very good thing going. “Dig
up somebody we can murder for some insurance and
you can make some dough with us,” he told the exconvict earnestly. The ex-con was frightened of murder
and informed the police. The ring’s members were
rounded up, and with unseemly eagerness, each agreed
to inform on all the others in the hope of gaining
leniency. Although some wives went to prison, others
were permitted to turn state’s evidence. Dr. Bolber and
the Witch were sentenced to life imprisonment and the
Petrillos were executed.
Don Bolles, award-winning investigative reporter for
the Arizona Republic, was fatally wounded when a
bomb exploded in his car on June 2, 1976. He died 11
days later after having lost both legs and his right arm
in the explosion. At the time of the explosion, Bolles
told eyewitnesses and paramedics that he “was working on a Mafia story.” He also said “John Adamson
did it” and mentioned “Emprise,” a Buffalo, N.Y.
sports conglomerate that had been linked to organized
crime and operated dog racing tracks in Arizona.
Adamson was a 32-year-old professional racing dog
owner.
In December, Adamson confessed a murder-for-hire
plot, implicating Max Dunlap, a wealthy Phoenix
contractor, and James Robison, a Phoenix plumber.
Adamson signed a statement alleging that Dunlap had
hired him for $10,000 to kill Bolles because his writings had irritated Kemper Marley, Sr., a 74-year-old
rancher and wholesale liquor distributor and one of
the richest men in the state. Adamson also claimed
Dunlap wanted the reporter killed before Bolles made
a scheduled trip to San Diego the following month.
The significance of the trip was never established.
According to Adamson, he invited Bolles to a Phoenix
hotel and then placed a bomb under his car. His statement further declared that Robison detonated the
explosive charge from several hundred feet away by
use of a radio transmitter.
After Bolles’ death, a group of journalists called
Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. came to the
state and wrote about corruption and other criminal
matters. Meanwhile, Adamson was allowed to plead
guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to
20 years and two months. Dunlap and Robison were
convicted in 1977 of first-degree murder, mainly on
Adamson’s testimony, and were sentenced to death. In
February 1980 the convictions of the two men, still
professing their innocence, were overturned by the
Arizona Supreme Court because the trial judge had
not permitted the defense to question Adamson about
his criminal activities unrelated to the murder.
The state announced plans to retry the pair but in
June 1980 asked for dismissal of the charges “without”
prejudice because Adamson had refused to testify
against them. Adamson indicated he wished a better
deal for himself. He was retried alone and found guilty.
The state announced plans to push for the death sentence and then allow Adamson to serve a life term if he
would once more agree to testify. Many observers felt,
however, the Bolles murder case would never be
brought to a satisfactory conclusion.
Don Bolles remains the only American reporter
believed to have been killed by what is considered
106
BONNIE and Clyde
hand, did, having read hundreds of pirate stories and
decided that was one of the things a bloody pirate
should do.
The information on Bonnet’s life is sketchy and not
necessarily trustworthy. He was supposedly a man of
good family and education who had fought in Queen
Anne’s War until it ended in 1713, when he retired in
middle age to an estate he had bought on the island of
Barbados. For no apparent reason, he decided to turn
pirate. One historian of the period assures us he “was
driven to it by a nagging wife.” In any event, Bonnet
went about becoming a buccaneer in a most unpiratical
fashion: he bought and outfitted a vessel with his own
money.
Shortly thereafter, he formed an alliance with Blackbeard, a valuable ally since he was under the protection
of Carolina governor Charles Eden. Blackbeard’s interest in Bonnet seemed limited to the latter’s possession of
a vessel that was worth adding to his fleet. Blackbeard
insisted on bringing Bonnet aboard his own vessel,
Queen Anne’s Revenge, as number two in charge of all
pirate activities. It apparently took Bonnet some time to
figure out that Blackbeard had simply appropriated his
ship and put one of his own men in charge.
Eventually, Bonnet got another vessel and started a
one-man crime wave of the sea, looting ships from New
England to the Spanish Main. Like Blackbeard, Bonnet
maintained control of his crew through threats and violence. Bonnet’s crew required merciless discipline, perhaps because the men had little respect for their
captain’s seamanship. Once when Blackbeard cheated
Bonnet out of his share of booty and set sail, Bonnet
started out for what is now North Carolina in pursuit
but instead wound up in Bermuda.
When Blackbeard was killed on November 21,
1718, Bonnet became a most-hunted buccaneer along
the Atlantic Coast. He lasted only until the following
December 18, when he was hanged in Charleston.
Bonnet had been easily captured after running his ship
aground.
See also: BLACKBEARD, PIRACY.
“organized crime.” Chicago Tribune reporter Jake Lingle suffered the same fate in 1930, but his death was
not due to his endeavors as a journalist but rather to his
own criminal involvement in the rackets.
Bolton, Charles E.
SEE BLACK BART.
bombings (aerial)
See BOOTLEGGING.
Bonanno, Joseph C.
See BANANA WAR.
Bonnet, Jeanne (1841–1876) gangster
Also known as the Little Frog Catcher, Jeanne Bonnet
was a bizarre character who founded one of California’s strangest criminal gangs, composed only of
women. Jeanne got her nickname from the way she
made an honest living—catching frogs in the marshes
of San Mateo County. She had other unusual habits,
including wearing men’s clothing and regularly visiting
the leading bagnios of the Barbary Coast. Whether her
interests were truly or solely sexual became a cloudy
issue in view of later events. She formed a gang of
women recruited from the brothels, from which they all
fled on a single night. A dozen of them joined her, holing up in a shack on the San Francisco waterfront south
of Market Street. They lived by robbing, stickups,
shoplifting and other forms of thievery, swearing off
prostitution completely and having nothing to do with
men, except, of course, as victims. The gang crumbled
in less than a year, however, when Jeanne Bonnet was
found shot to death with a bullet through her heart.
The police concluded she had been murdered by one or
more of the pimps whose ladies she had taken, thus
ending an early, if criminal, experiment in women’s liberation.
Bonnet, Major Stede (c. 1670–1718) the Gentleman
Pirate
Aside from Blackbeard, Major Stede Bonnet, the socalled Gentleman Pirate, was probably the worst
scourge in American coastal waters during the early
1700s, the halcyon years of piracy. Blackbeard’s reputation for violence was largely exaggerated, while Bonnet
was, in fact, more of a bloodthirsty killer than a gentleman. In pirate legend, it is Blackbeard who made victims walk the plank and then laughed hideously as the
poor souls struggled in the water and finally submerged. Actually, it was never proven that Blackbeard
made anyone walk the plank. Bonnet, on the other
Bonney, William H.
Bonnie and Clyde
See BILLY THE KID.
public enemies
As professional thieves, Bonnie and Clyde—Bonnie
Parker and Clyde Barrow—never qualified as public
enemies. Most of their thefts were of the minor-league
variety: grocery stores, filling stations, luncheonettes
and a few small-town banks. Their greatest haul was
no more than $3,500. But they were brutal, killing at
107
BONNIE and Clyde
In January 1930 Clyde met 90-pound, golden-haired
19-year-old Bonnie Parker, who was “sort of married”
to a convict, Roy Thornton, serving 99 years for murder. Bonnie described herself in that period as “bored
crapless.” They started living together, and Clyde tried
to support them by playing the saxophone. It was a
futile effort and he quickly reverted to robbery. It wasn’t long before Dallas lawmen arrested Clyde for a burglary in Waco: he had left his fingerprints behind. The
judge sentenced him to two years.
Buck Barrow escaped from prison, and he and his
wife, Blanche, joined up with Bonnie. On a visit soon
afterwards, Bonnie passed a narrow-handle .38 Colt
through the jail bars to Clyde. After he made his break,
Bonnie stayed put for a while to keep the law occupied.
The law caught up with Clyde in Ohio.
This time Barrow was sent to the prison farm at
Eastham, Tex., one of the most brutal institutions in the
state. Clyde endured many tortures there and became a
far more hardened criminal and a confirmed homosexual. He served 20 months, gaining a pardon after his
mother tearfully pleaded his cause with Gov. Ross Sterling. Clyde Barrow said he would never see the inside of
a prison again. “I’ll die first,” he said, and he was right.
Following Clyde’s release, Bonnie teamed up with
him on various robberies, but after a confrontation
with the police, they became separated and Bonnie was
caught. She served three months for the robbery of a
car the couple had seized trying to escape. Clyde went
on committing robberies and killed his first two lawmen in Atoka, Okla.
When Bonnie rejoined him, they fell in with a gunman
named Ray Hamilton, an incorrigible young thief and
killer who in many ways was a more spectacular criminal than Clyde. His relationship with Bonnie and Clyde,
however, was more meaningful than just the addition of
greater firepower on their holdups. Hamilton regularly
slept with Bonnie and at times with Clyde as well. It was,
by all accounts, a well-adjusted triangle, at least for brief
periods. Eventually, the sexual pressures probably
became too much for the three, and Hamilton broke
away. Both Bonnie and Clyde apparently needed a more
submissive love partner; Hamilton was just too tough to
give them their way. After leaving them the last time, he
pulled off a long string of crimes and several jailbreaks
before finally dying in the electric chair in 1935.
While Bonnie and Clyde’s robberies continued to be
on the minor side, their escapades were often extremely
violent. They stuck up a butcher, and when the man
came at Clyde with a cleaver, Clyde avoided the blow
and emptied his gun into him. In November 1932 the
pair held up a filling station and kidnapped the attendant, William Daniel Jones. After learning who his captors were, Jones joined up with them and replaced Ray
least 13 persons and escaping police ambushes with
incredible pluck.
In a sense, Clyde Barrow was cut from a heroic
mold, unlike many other gangsters of the 1930s, such
as Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd and even John
Dillinger. When trapped, he never abandoned his
woman, often fighting his way back to her and leading
her to safety. It was an odd relationship: a homosexual
and a near nymphomaniac.
Born in extreme poverty in Texas in 1909, Clyde followed his older brother into crime, first stealing turkeys
and then graduating to cars. The pair committed several robberies in the Dallas area. Finally, after holding
up a gas station in Denton, Tex., they were forced to
make a 90-mile-an-hour run from the police with Clyde
behind the wheel. Buck was shot during the chase, and
when Clyde wrecked the car in a ditch, he left Buck for
the law, fearing his brother would bleed to death otherwise. Buck got five years.
Bonnie and Clyde are snapped in a playful mood. Gag
photos such as these did much to capture the public’s
attention.
108
BOORN brothers
Hamilton in their affections. He later described his
experience as “18 months of hell.”
Meanwhile, Buck Barrow had been in and out of jail
again, this time pardoned by the new governor, Mrs.
Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, who had granted pardons to
some 2,000 felons during an earlier term. With Buck
and Blanche in tow, the gang now numbered five and
was ready for the big time. Brandishing newly obtained
machine guns, they held up a loan company office in
Kansas City. They had been identified, and their exploits
made front-page news from coast to coast, which
pleased Bonnie no end. She deluged newspapers with
samples of her “poetry.” Editors eagerly printed her
poem “The Story of Suicide Sal.” They also printed pictures of her smoking a cigar and brandishing a machine
gun. Bonnie said these were “horsing around” pictures
and resented the light in which the newspapers had put
them. During their getaways the gang often kidnapped
lawmen, one of whom was chief of police Percy Boyd.
When they let him go, Bonnie told Boyd: “Tell the public I don’t smoke cigars. It’s the bunk.”
They fought their way out of a trap in Joplin, Mo.,
killing two officers, but it was apparent that the gang
could not continue to escape capture or death. In July
1933 the gang was hiding out in the deserted fair
grounds in Dexter, Iowa when a posse closed in. Buck
Barrow was fatally wounded and Blanche captured.
Bonnie and Jones were also wounded, but Clyde got
both of them away.
In the next few months, Bonnie and Clyde killed
four more lawmen. During this period Jones took the
first opportunity to desert them. When picked up in
late 1933, he told of his incredible career of crime and
suffering with the pair and begged to be sent to prison,
where he would be safe from Bonnie and Clyde. The
law obliged.
Bonnie knew the end was near. She mailed newspapers “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde,” which concluded:
From heartbreaks some people have suffered,
From weariness some people have died,
But take it all and all,
Our troubles are small,
Till we get like Bonnie and Clyde.
Some day they will go down together,
And they will bury them side by side.
To a few it means grief,
To the law it’s relief
But it’s death to Bonnie and Clyde.
The pair stayed on the run until May 23, 1934,
when they attempted to hook up with Henry Methvin,
a convict they had freed once while busting out Ray
Hamilton in a daring prison raid. With the law closing
in on all sides, they felt Methvin was the only one left
outside of family whom they could trust. But Methvin
sold them out, informing the law about a roadside rendezvous he was to have with them. In exchange, he was
not prosecuted for charges pending against him in
Louisiana and Texas.
A trap was set up at Gibland, La., near the Texas
border, under the command of Capt. Frank Hamer of
the Texas Highway Patrol, an ex–Texas Ranger who
for the past three and a half months had been assigned
exclusively to tracking down Bonnie and Clyde. Hamer
and five other lawmen waited at an embankment
armed with a Browning automatic rifle, three automatic shotguns and two rifles.
Bonnie and Clyde drove up to the rendezvous site.
Clyde was driving in his socks; Bonnie was munching
on a sandwich. They had in their car a shotgun, a
revolver, 11 pistols, three Browning automatic rifles
and 2,000 rounds of ammunition.
There is some argument about whether they were
given a chance to surrender or even knew they had run
into a trap. The lawmen opened fire and the pair died
instantly. They dug 25 bullets out of Clyde and 23 out
of Bonnie.
See also: FRANK HAMER, RAY HAMILTON.
The road gets dimmer and dimmer,
Sometimes you can hardly see,
Still it’s fight man to man,
And do all you can,
For they know they can never be free.
Boodle Gang
early New York hijackers
It may well be that the American crime of hijacking was
originated by an 1850s New York street gang known as
the Boodle Gang. These toughs raided food provision
wagons that passed through their area on the lower
West Side. When the wagons started detouring around
the Boodle Gang’s territory, they descended on the Centre (later changed to Center) Market and became the
most efficient of the butcher cart mobs. About a dozen
thugs would ride up to a large butcher shop and charge
inside. Seizing a whole carcass of beef, they would fling
If they try to act like citizens,
And rent them a nice little flat,
About the third night they are invited to fight,
By a submachine-gun rat-tat-tat.
They don’t think they are too tough or desperate,
They know the law always wins,
They have been shot at before
But they do not ignore
That death is the wages of sin.
109
BOOT camps
it on their cart and then whip their horses at breakneck
speed down the street. The gang’s activities did not
meet with disfavor in their neighborhood since immediately after a raid a number of stores would offer meats
at bargain prices.
In the 1860s the Boodlers perfected their methods
and invaded the financial district to rob messengers
of their money and securities, a haul more rewarding
than meat carcasses. In January 1866 two gang members knocked down a messenger, grabbed his satchel
and escaped on a speeding butcher’s cart with
$14,000 in cash. As they fled, the gang stopped all
pursuit by clogging up Beekman Street with three
other carts.
The technique was a perfect model for the hijackers
of the following century. The police were not particularly successful at rounding up the Boodlers, but the
gang eventually disappeared because it could not withstand the depredations of other area gangs, especially
the Potashes, who sought to reserve the best criminal
activities and territories for themselves.
him that he had been murdered and was willing to
name names and places. His murderers, the spirit
announced, were Stephen and Jesse Boorn, his brothersin-law and Amos’ own nephews. The murder place was
the Boorn farm and “I’m buried there under the stump
of a tree.”
By October the brothers had been tried, convicted
and sentenced to death. Naturally, the state of Vermont
had more evidence than just Uncle Amos’ dream.
Buried in the earth inside the Boorn barn had been
found a large knife, a penknife and a button. The
knives were identified by Mrs. Colvin as the property
of her husband. Then there were the bones found by a
dog digging at the base of a stump on the farm. The
first announcement was that they “might have been
human.” Two doctors later said they belonged to an
animal, but they had to admit that two toenails found
among the bones had “the appearance of belonging to
a human foot.” Then Jesse, in shackles for three
months, made a confession and his brother Stephen followed some weeks later. According to Stephen’s written
admission, they had murdered Colvin after a fierce
argument, buried him, dug up his bones some years
later and “throwed them in the river.”
At their trial both brothers repudiated their confessions, insisting they had made them simply as a bid for
clemency when they saw how inflamed public opinion
against them was. Their mother, Mrs. Barney Boorn,
was excommunicated from the Baptist church. The
state legislature was then petitioned for a commutation
of the sentences to life imprisonment. The petition was
granted Jesse but denied his brother, who was slated to
hang January 28, 1820.
One of the Boorns’ attorneys attempted a final gamble; he decided to advertise for Russell Colvin. An
advertisement thus appeared in the Rutland Herald
under the headline “MURDER”:
book whippings
During colonial days books that were deemed offensive
were also considered “criminal” in themselves and
therefore subject to criminal punishment in addition to
being burned. In a typical Massachusetts case, a book
was sentenced “to be publicly whipt with 40 stripes,
save one, and then burnt.” In 1754 the hangman was
assigned to perform that same task on a pamphlet that
criticized the court. The public punishment was carried
out in the middle of Boston’s King Street.
Boorn brothers
wrong men convicted of murder
The case of the Boorn brothers has been cited countless
times by those warning against the perils of both capital punishment and false confessions.
In 1819 the village of Manchester in Vermont was
rocked by a murder trial, described at the time as being
“attended by such multitudes” that it had to be held in
the Congregational church since the court house was
“by a very great deal too small.” Seven years earlier,
during the War of 1812, a man named Russell Colvin
had disappeared from his home after 18 years of a presumably happy marriage that produced a string of
numerous and presumably happy children. Folks
thought it odd at the time but did nothing about it until
old Amos Boorn had a dream in 1819 that was to
become most famous. Old Amos was the uncle of
Colvin’s wife. Three times on a single night in May,
Colvin appeared in the old man’s dream and informed
Printers of newspapers throughout the United States
are desired to publish that Stephen Boorn, of Manchester, in Vermont, is sentenced to be executed for the
murder of Russell Colvin, who has been absent about
seven years. Any person who can give information of
said Colvin, may save the life of an innocent by making
immediate communication.
There followed a short description of the supposed
victim. Among the newspapers that picked up the item
was the New York Post, and it was read aloud one
night in a New York hotel to James Whelpley, a former
Manchester resident, who began telling stories about
the village idiot Colvin. Within earshot of Whelpley
was Taber Chadwick. Chadwick realized that his
brother-in-law, William Polhemus, who owned a farm
110
BOOTLEGGING
in Dover, N.J., had working for him a weak-minded
man who called himself Russell Colvin. In late December 1819 Colvin was returned to Manchester. There he
confronted Stephen Boorn, whose legs were still fettered in irons.
Colvin looked at the fetters and asked, “What’s them
for?”
“Because they say I killed you,” Stephen said.
“You never did,” Russell said in all seriousness.
“Jesse threw a shoe at me once, but it didn’t hurt me
any.”
The case was reopened and the Boorns were cleared.
In 1820 the brothers petitioned the legislature for compensation for their false conviction and close call with
the hangman. Their request was turned down. It was
pointed out that both brothers had made false confessions, no matter how desperate their situation, which
had helped to convict them.
boot camps
Besides the high recidivist rates, the juvenile boot
camps were plagued by scandals of routine and brutal
beatings of inmates by guards. In Maryland, Gov. Parris N. Glendening and Lt. Gov. Townsend suspended
the state’s camps and fired the top five juvenile justice
officials. Soured by similar results, officials in Colorado, North Dakota and Arizona dropped their programs, and others scaled back their efforts amid
predictions that they too would fold eventually. In
Georgia a Justice Department investigation concluded
the state’s “paramilitary boot camp model is not only
ineffective, but harmful.”
A number of experts regarded the boot camp experiments as nothing more than cynical political maneuvers. Dr. David M. Altschuler of the Institute for Policy
Studies at Johns Hopkins University described them as
“just another knee-jerk reaction, a way to get tough
with juveniles that resonated with the public and
became a political answer.” And Gerald Wells, a senior
associate at the Koch Institute, stated, “People thought
boot camps shaped up a lot of servicemen during three
wars. But just because you place someone in a highly
structured environment with discipline, does not mean
once they get home, and out of that, they will be model
citizens.”
Perhaps the major problem with boot camps was
the budget issue. Get-tough ideas resonate with the
public, but when it came to the extra expense involved
in follow-up, the money was not there. Besides with a
drop in the juvenile crime rate since 1994, along with
the country’s overall drop in the juvenile population, it
became even harder to interest voters to pay for individualized rehabilitation.
As a result the 27,000 young people who were sent
to boot camps each year were largely sent to prison
instead. Gerald Wells warned that as bad as boot camps
proved to be, “once you start incarcerating kids, you
have lost. But unfortunately, that is where we seem
headed.”
A solution whose time came and went
In 1995 it was looked upon as the most promising
idea in the battle against serious juvenile crime.
Dubbed the Leadership Challenge, it began in Maryland and called for boot camp programs for teenage
criminals. Boot camps had existed before, but this
was an ambitious extension of the idea under the
aegis of Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend of
Maryland, who previously had been a former assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration
where she had studied the boot camp idea and determined it represented “a cost-effective intermediate
punishment.”
It was thought that military-style discipline would
improve juvenile rehabilitation programs. Several
other states quickly followed the Maryland program.
The results were pathetic, as determined by a national
study of such state boot camps that revealed a shockingly high recidivism rate, ranging from 64 to 75 percent.
If asked, the men who ran genuine boot camps could
have predicted that the juvenile programs would not
work. “The key reason we are successful,” noted Sgt.
Maj. Ford Kinsley, who supervised drill instructors at
the Marine Corps’ recruitment base at Parris Island,
S.C., “is that we have a clientele down here that chose
to be here on their own. They are not here because a
judge said you should go here. Our population comes
with a lot more positive attitudes.” He explained that
when “a kid graduates from Parris Island, he is just
beginning a four- or five-year enlistment in the Marine
Corps. It is not like they spend 11 months here and we
just throw them out onto the streets.”
Boot Hill
Almost all Americans believe that every gunslinging
western community had its Boot Hill, where all the
victims of lead poisoning were buried. The fact is that
the “Boot Hill industry” is a 20th-century development. There really was only one Boot Hill and that
was at Dodge City. The name referred to a slight rise
used as a temporary burial spot and alluded to the
custom of burying a corpse there with his boots curled
up and placed under his head as a sort of permanent
pillow. In due course, Dodge’s Prairie Grove Cemetery
was completed, and in 1879 the 25 or so inhabitants
111
BOOTLEGGING
The U.S. Coast Guard stopped thousands of boats attempting to bring in bootleg liquor. Despite many shoot-outs and
arrests most rumrunners easily reached the shore.
of Boot Hill were transferred to the new burial
grounds.
Most communities didn’t know they were supposed
to have a Boot Hill until they read modern western
novels and saw movies about the Wild West and
became aware of the demands of the tourist industry.
Along with newly christened Boot Hills came such
graveyard graffiti as “Died of lead poisoning” and, for
a cattle rustler, “Too many irons in the fire.” One of
the superattractions of the West is the 20th-century
Boot Hill in Tombstone, Ariz., where visitors are welcomed to the burial sites of Tom and Frank McLowery
and Billie Clanton, who all died in the famous gunfight
at the O.K. Corral. With a certain pride it is claimed
that among the graveyard’s residents are Dan Dowd,
Red Sample, Tex Howard, Bill DeLaney and Dan
Kelly, all of whom were “hanged legally,” an accomplishment of sorts. In one of the more exploitative
events at Tombstone, one promoter tried to sell squareinch plots of Boot Hill cemetery but was squelched by
the city council.
See also: LESTER MOORE.
Booth, John Wilkes
ASSASSINATION.
112
See ABRAHAM LINCOLN—
BORDEN, Lizzie
lons of alcohol in seven years. Their total business in
bootlegging was put in excess of $50 million.
With the repeal of Prohibition, bootlegging did not
simply fade away. Bootleggers have always operated
and probably always will. By not paying alcohol taxes
the bootlegger is able to put out a more reasonably
priced product of “mountain dew,” or “white lightning.” In 1958 the government seized 15,000 stills,
although by the 1970s the figure stood at about only 10
percent of that figure. It is difficult, however, to dismiss
bootlegging and moonshining as playful larks; hundreds of tipplers of bootlegged alcohol die each year
from poisoning.
One of the more frightful instances occurred in
Atlanta, Ga. in October 1951, when a bootlegger used
54 gallons of methyl alcohol to mix up a large batch of
moonshine. The liquor was sold all over Atlanta, some
to an Auburn Avenue nightclub. One Sunday night a
man named Eliza Foster walked into the club and
downed a shot. A half hour later he dropped dead. He
was the first to go. A little while after that, two more
went. A man died in his car, a bottle of this same batch
on the seat beside him. Another casualty, a little old
lady, died in her rocking chair, a bottle of the bad liquor
lying spilled at her feet. In all, 13 people died that day,
and hundreds of others, feeling miserable and some
already blind or writhing on stretchers, jammed into
Grady Memorial Hospital. Tortured, frightened people
fell to their knees in prayer, expecting to die, and by
Monday night 14 more had passed away, raising the
total to 27. By the end of the week, there were 35
dead—three were children. The figure finally reached
42. There was no reliable estimate of the number of
people who went blind. Altogether, however, at least
500 persons were seriously affected. After the mass poisonings the sale of legal whiskey went up 51.2 percent
in Atlanta. But the tragedy in that city was not an
unusual event. Just two weeks later eight persons in
Revere, Mass. died from another batch of poisoned
liquor.
There are no accurate national figures on how many
deaths are caused each year by poisoned moonshine,
but the number of deaths plus those permanently
blinded or paralyzed is certainly in the hundreds.
Moonshining operations and stills are turned up not
only in the backwoods but in the big cities as well. In
virtually all these cases a frightening disrespect for
human life is exhibited. Producers seeking to cut costs
often dilute their moonshine with rubbing alcohol.
Some shortcut artists even add lye to the whiskey to
give it a sting, and even more callous individuals mix in
ether and fuel oil.
Some experts calculate that as much as 20 percent of all alcohol consumed in this country is illicit
bootlegging
Bootlegging was and is a major pastime in America.
Because it remains an illegal enterprise, however, no
reliable figures on its scope have ever been established.
The term bootlegging derives from the custom of
the early Indian traders who carried a bottle of liquor
in their boot since such traffic with the red man was
either illegal or frowned upon. Hence, a bootlegger
came to mean a person engaged in illegal liquor deliveries. Naturally, bootleggers thrived most during Prohibition, from January 16, 1920 until repeal of the
18th Amendment on December 3, 1933. The best
guess was that during the Prohibition period Americans annually consumed at least 100 million gallons of
bootleg liquor.
Great profits were derived from bootlegging during
Prohibition. In the larger cities powerful bootlegging
gangs arose to meet demand and to fight bloody wars
for control of the huge income. Much of the liquor was
smuggled across the border from Canada or Mexico or
brought in by boat. Many of the gangs found it necessary to produce their own alcohol to assure themselves
of a steady supply and established illegal distilleries and
breweries, activities that would be impossible without
political and police cooperation.
Prohibition made possible the rise of the “Chicago
gangster” and the domination of that city and the
entire Midwest by the Capone gang, but only after the
gang had eliminated many tough competitors, such as
the Dion O’Banion mob and the Bloody Gennas. It has
been estimated that more than 1,000 men died as a
result of the bootleg wars in Chicago alone.
In Williamson County, Ill. another bloody war was
fought, perhaps even more constant and murderously
inventive than those in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia
or New York. It was also the scene of an incredible
American first. On November 12, 1926 the farmhouse
belonging to a prominent family of bootleggers was
subjected to an aerial bombing by a rival bootlegging
family. Three projectiles were dropped, but since all
failed to explode, no damage occurred and there were
no complaints and no arrests. Still, it was the first and
only time real bombs were dropped from a plane in
the United States in a genuine effort to destroy human
life.
Many of the great American fortunes derived from
bootlegging activities, as leading businesses, like the
criminals themselves, could not resist the lure of huge
revenues. In 1930 a federal grand jury uncovered the
largest liquor ring of the era. Thirty-one corporations
and 158 individuals were cited in Chicago, New York,
Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, Philadelphia, St. Paul,
Minneapolis, Los Angeles and North Bergen, N.J. and
charged with the diversion of more than 7 million gal113
BORDENMANIA
The verdict in the case of Lizzie Borden, perhaps this
country’s most enduring cause célèbre, was not guilty.
The jury had needed only an hour to arrive at it.
Lizzie made one statement to the press expressing
her elation but then refused to say any more, even
though reporters parked in front of the Borden home
for weeks and weeks, searching for more morsels to
feed their hungry readers. Lizzie enjoyed a considerable
public sympathy during her ordeal and through her
acquittal, but over the years public opinion seemed to
turn, with more and more people regarding her as
guilty. After a time she was considered guilty, as the
popular rhyme went, of the charge that she “gave her
mother forty whacks.”
Lizzie and Emma inherited their parents’ $500,000
estate, but they soon sold the house and moved into a
lavish mansion in Fall River. Lizzie returned to her
charitable works. Although she demanded anonymity,
it is believed she financed several college educations.
In 1905 Emma moved out of the mansion after an
argument. She too had lived under a cloud, and there
was even speculation that she was the killer. At the time
of the murder, Emma had been staying overnight with
friends, but some authorities on the Borden case
insisted she could have returned home, committed the
crimes and returned to her friends’ unseen.
The sisters never spoke again. When Lizzie died in
1927, she left nothing to Emma. Aside from some
bequests to servants, she willed the bulk of her estate,
$30,000 in cash and large holdings in stocks, to the
Animal Rescue Leagues of Fall River and Washington,
D.C. She was buried in the family plot beside her
mother, father and stepmother.
moonshine, basing their estimates on the government’s open admission that it finds no more than onethird to one-half of all illegal stills, a figure that others
believe high.
See also: HAMS, PROHIBITION, RUM ROW.
Borden, Lizzie (1860–1927) accused murderess
A well-respected, religious spinster of 32, Lizzie Borden
of Fall River, Mass. became without doubt America’s
most celebrated accused female murderer, charged with
the 1892 killing of her father, Andrew, and her stepmother, Abby.
On August 3 of that year, Mr. and Mrs. Borden
were both taken ill with severe stomach pains. Lizzie
had bought some prussic acid just a short time before,
but no connection was ever developed.
Between 9 and 9:30 on August 4, a hot, sweltering
morning, someone entered a second-story bedroom of
the Borden house and axed Abby Borden to death,
bashing her skull 19 times. At the time, Lizzie’s sister
Emma was away from home, and the only ones known
to be in the house besides the victim were Lizzie and
Bridget Sullivan, the Irish maid. If either of them was
the murderer, they certainly concealed it from the other
for the next hour to 90 minutes, each going about their
business without indicating any knowledge of the body
in the bedroom. At about 10:30 Andrew Borden
returned home from his business activities. He lay
down on a sofa in the downstairs sitting room to take a
nap, and the murderer crept up on him and hit him 10
times with an ax, killing him.
The police charged Lizzie Borden with committing
the crimes, strictly on circumstantial evidence, not all of
it very strong. For one thing, although the walls of both
murder rooms were splashed with blood, no blood was
found on Lizzie or her clothes. There was a theory that
Lizzie had stripped naked to do the deeds and then had
put her clothes back on, but that certainly would have
involved a great risk of her being seen by the maid. The
authorities claimed but never really proved that Lizzie
had burned a dress in the kitchen stove a few days after
the murders.
After being held in jail for nearly a year, Lizzie was
subjected to a 13-day trial, with the entire nation hanging on every word. Rather than play down the gruesome nature of the murders, her defense attorney
stressed this aspect. He then pointed to the prim, very
feminine, charity-minded Lizzie and said: “To find her
guilty, you must believe she is a fiend. Gentlemen, does
she look it?”
Bordenmania
impact of Lizzie Borden case
No murder case in American history caused more public
repercussions than that involving Lizzie Borden, the 32year-old spinster who was tried and acquitted of killing
her father and stepmother with an ax in their home in
Fall River, Mass. in 1892. The case was the subject of an
endless number of books, magazine articles and newspaper accounts. Edmund Pearson explained the public’s
fascination with the case may have resulted from its very
“purity.” The murders, and Lizzie’s guilt or innocence,
were uncomplicated by such sins as ambition, robbery,
greed, lust or other usual homicidal motives. Innocent
or guilty, Lizzie became an American hero.
The verse and doggerel on the case varied from the
anonymous children’s jump rope rhyme:
Lizzie Borden took an ax
And gave her mother forty whacks;
When she saw what she had done,
114
BOWDRE, Charlie
Gov. Calvin Coolidge to act, but he had refused. When
rioting broke out, the mayor called out Boston contingents of the militia, established order and broke the
strike. Then Gov. Coolidge ordered the commissioner to
take charge of the police once more and called out the
entire Massachusetts militia. With the police union
defeated, AFL head Samuel Gompers tried to win back
the jobs of the strikers, who had all been fired. Coolidge
responded with a statement that made him famous, won
him the vice-presidential nomination in 1920 and paved
the way for his subsequent succession to the presidency.
“There is no right to strike against the public safety by
anybody, anywhere, any time,” Coolidge said.
She gave her father forty-one.
to A. L. Bixby’s almost endearing:
There’s no evidence of guilt,
Lizzie Borden,
That should make your spirit wilt,
Lizzie Borden;
Many do not think that you,
Chopped your father’s head in two,
It’s so hard a thing to do,
Lizzie Borden.
The New York Times informed its readers that controversy over Lizzie Borden’s innocence or guilt was
directly responsible for 1,900 divorces. Such was the
grip of “Bordenmania” on the entire nation.
Borne, Henry
Boston Strangler
See DUTCH HENRY.
See ALBERT H. DESALVO.
Botkin, Cordelia (1854–1910) poisoner
A poisoner convicted in one of the most sensational trials of the 1890s, Cordelia Botkin may well have been,
as the Sunday supplement writers later referred to her,
the original Red Hot Mama. Certainly her triangle love
affair earned her a reputation as a truly wanton woman
as well as a murderess.
A stocky, fleshy woman living in San Francisco, she
nonetheless seemed to have all the charms necessary to
lure a successful journalist named John Presley Dunning away from his wife and child for a life of gambling and whoring. In 1896 Dunning’s wife had had
enough and returned to her parents in Dover, Del.
While that should have pleased Botkin, she still feared
Dunning’s wife might someday lure him back, and she
deluged Mrs. Dunning with anonymous threatening
letters, advising her against trying to rejoin her husband.
In 1898 Dunning got an assignment covering the
Spanish-American War, and Botkin grew more certain
he would not return to her. Her depression gave way to
murderous thoughts. She went out and bought a box of
chocolates, a lace handkerchief and two ounces of
arsenic. She spent several hours inserting arsenic into
each piece of candy. She enclosed the handkerchief and
a note that read “With love to yourself and baby—Mrs.
C.” and tied up the whole package with pink ribbons.
The next day she mailed the “gift” to Mrs. Mary Dunning in Delaware.
When the box arrived, Mrs. Dunning puzzled over
the identity of the “Mrs. C.” who had sent the candy.
She thought of several people it might have been. But
having a sweet tooth, she didn’t hesitate long before
polishing off the box. Her sister, Mrs. Joshua Deane,
joined in. Twenty-four hours later both women were
dead. The deaths did not help Botkin’s lovelife, how-
Boston, Patience (1713–1735) first woman hanged in
Maine
In Puritan New England, Patience Boston was often
cited from the pulpit as proof of how one sin begets
another. She was first caught lying, then swearing, then
being drunk, then stealing and finally committing murder. In 1735 Boston killed eight-year-old Benjamin Trot
of Falmouth by picking him up and throwing him
down a well to drown after he had accidentally
tramped on her toe. There was only a minimum of
debate about sparing her life because she was a woman,
a fact certainly outweighed by her heinous past record
as a liar, curser, drunk and petty thief. She was hanged
in York on July 24, 1735, the first woman to suffer
that fate in what is now Maine.
Boston police strike
On September 9, 1919 a union of policemen in Boston
went on strike; 1,117 out of 1,544 patrolmen walked
off their jobs after the police commissioner refused to
recognize their right to join the American Federation of
Labor (AFL). Under an unusual law, the police commissioner was appointed by the governor of the state
rather than the mayor of the city and thus had much
more freedom. Although Mayor Andrew J. Peters and a
citizens committee made compromise proposals on pay
and working conditions to head off the strike, the
police commissioner rejected them. The resulting strike
left Boston virtually unprotected and riots, robberies
and lootings followed.
Before the strike began, Mayor Peters and James J.
Storrow, the head of the citizens committee, had urged
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BOWERS, J. Milton
ever, because the box of candy was eventually traced
back to her in San Francisco.
After a lurid trial that satisfied even the most avid
readers of the sensational press, she was found guilty of
murder on December 31, 1898 and sentenced to life
imprisonment. She died in San Quentin in 1910.
bounties
See
BANK
ROBBERIES—BOUNTIES;
Four Brothers. These groups were already at odds on
such matters as the control of gambling in various parts
of New York’s Chinatown. As the dispute appeared
beyond settlement, the On Leongs murdered Bow Kum
on April 15, 1909, and the first of Chinatown’s great
tong wars broke out.
One typical killing spree took place in the venerable
Chinese Theater on Doyers Street on New Year’s night
during a supposed truce in the fighting that had been
arranged for the biggest Chinese celebration of the year.
The performance went along smoothly until a celebrant
in the audience suddenly tossed a bunch of lighted firecrackers into the air. This caused a brief commotion
before things quieted down. As the audience filed out at
the end of the performance, five men remained in their
seats. They all had bullets in their heads. The banging
of the firecrackers had drowned out the cracks of the
revolvers of five Hip Sings behind five On Leongs.
Police estimates of casualties during the war were
put at about 350 before the tongs came to a peace settlement in late 1910 and the war over Little Sweet
Flower ended.
See also: AH HOON, BLOODY ANGLE, MOCK DUCK,
TONG WARS.
JOHN
BILLEE; OUTLAW EXTERMINATORS, INC.
bounty jumping
Civil War racket
During the Civil War enterprising individuals and organized gangs reaped a fortune collecting bounties for
enlisting in the Union Army and then immediately
deserting. The cycle would then be repeated, generally
in another congressional district or state, for amounts
that varied from $100 to as much as $1,000.
One specialist in this racket was caught after 32
enlistments and desertions, a record that drew him a
four-year prison term. A notorious Chicago underworld character named Mike McDonald operated a
bounty racket on an organized basis, recruiting hoodlums to sign up for service. McDonald collected a commission each time and shuttled the men around to
different areas for repeat tries, keeping track of his
“campaigns” on a large war map with tacks indicating
where each hoodlum was assigned. Profits from this
racket provided McDonald with the capital to set up
several gambling houses after the war.
There are some estimates that perhaps nearly half of
all desertions from the Union Army, which totaled
268,000, were really cases of bounty jumping. While
such figures are most likely too high, considering the
large number of draftee desertions, they are at least
indicative of how widespread the crime was.
See also: MICHAEL CASSIUS “MIKE” MCDONALD.
Bowdre, Charlie (c. 1853–1880) accomplice of Billy the
Kid
Charlie Bowdre’s grave is among the most visited in the
country, but only because he shares it in common with
Billy the Kid. They, together with another of the Kid’s
sidekicks, Tom O’Folliard, lie in Old Fort Sumner,
N.M. under a stone marker bearing the inscription
“Pals.”
Bowdre, somewhat older than the Kid, seems to
have always been fascinated by him. A cowboy drifter,
he settled in New Mexico Territory in the late 1870s
and married a pretty Mexican girl named Manuela. He
apparently wanted to retire from the wild life, but with
the outbreak of the Lincoln County War, he took up his
guns on behalf of the Tunstall-McSween group and
joined forces with Billy the Kid. By the time the war
ended, Bowdre was convinced that Billy was the
smartest and toughest man ever to ride a horse. When
the Kid said they were going into the cattle-rustling
trade, Bowdre went along without question. But his
blind faith in Billy came to an abrupt halt on December
21, 1880, when a posse headed by Pat Garrett cornered
the Kid’s gang in a deserted farmhouse at Stinking
Springs. In the gunfight that ensued Billy shoved Bowdre, who had been hit five times, through the door of
the house, saying: “They have murdered you, Charlie,
but you can get revenge. Kill some of the sons of
bitches before you go.” Bowdre lived only long enough
Bow Kum (1889–1909) murder victim
Bow Kum, meaning “Little Sweet Flower,” was a beautiful slave girl of 15 when she was illegally brought into
the United States by a wealthy San Francisco Chinese,
Low Hee, who had paid a Canton slave merchant the
unheard of sum of $3,000 for her. The American
authorities found out about Bow Kum some three years
later and despite Low Hee’s valid bill of sale, placed her
in a home. Bow Kum was finally released when she
married another man, Tchin Len, who took her to New
York. A dispute broke out between Low Hee and Tchin
Len on the matter of compensation and soon involved
three groups: the On Leong Tong, an alliance of the
Hip Sing Tong and a fraternal organization called the
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BOYLE, W.A.“Tony”
to pick up another couple of bullets; lunge forward
mumbling, “I wish . . . I wish”; and die. A short
while later, Billy the Kid surrendered to Garrett. The
gunfight at Stinking Springs perhaps gives the inscription “Pals” an ironic twist.
See also: BILLY THE KID, PATRICK FLOYD GARRETT, LINCOLN COUNTY WAR.
four years. He eventually married a fourth time, and
when he died in 1904 at the age of 61, the murder of
Cecelia Bowers was still being carried in police files as
“unsolved.”
Bowery Boys
early New York gang
One of the toughest gangs in New York during the
early 1800s was the famed Bowery Boys, who, as
native Americans, did battle with the dreaded Irish
gangs, especially the Dead Rabbits and their satellites.
On occasion, they also fought the police.
Unlike the other great gangs, the Bowery Boys
were not loafers and bums—except on Sundays and
holidays. Nor were they criminals, except once in a
while, until the Civil War. The average Bowery Boy
was a burly ruffian who worked as a butcher or
apprentice mechanic or perhaps a bouncer in a Bowery saloon or dance cellar. Almost always, he was a
volunteer fireman, an avocation that gave the Bowery
Boys important political pull since the firemen were
strong allies of Tammany Hall and thus had important influence on the running of city government. The
Bowery Boys were especially valuable allies on election day when their rough activities often determined
voting results.
The Bowery Boys’ hatred of Irish gangs and of foreigners in general was implacable, and they campaigned strongly for those candidates who ran against
naturalization laws and favored their repeal so that
Irish voters could be stripped of their citizenship. The
Bowery Boys worked on behalf of such candidates with
blackjacks in hand and voted early and often themselves in every election.
The Bowery Boys’ greatest fight was a two-day
battle on July 4 and 5, 1857, when allied with forces
of the anti-Irish Native American Party, they withstood an invasion of the Bowery by the Dead Rabbits
and the Plug Uglies and other gangs from the Five
Points area. With more than 1,000 combatants taking part, the police lacked sufficient manpower or
backbone to stop the fighting throughout the first
day and much of the second. Officially, eight gang
members died and another 100 were injured, but it
was known that both sides dragged off a considerable number of corpses for secret burials in their own
bailiwicks.
During the Draft Riots the Bowery Boys took part in
much of the criminality loosed on the city. After that,
the gang splintered into various smaller groups, almost
all involved in illegal pursuits.
See also: DEAD RABBITS, DRAFT RIOTS.
Bowers, J. Milton (1843–1904) accused murderer
The Bowers case, involving a handsome young San
Francisco doctor who lost three wives to early deaths,
was one of the 19th century’s most sensational, controversial and protracted. The doctor, J. Milton Bowers,
was convicted of murder and later cleared, although
not to the satisfaction of the police or a substantial portion of the public.
Bowers’ third wife, 29-year-old Cecelia, had been ill
for two months before dying from what appeared to be
an abscess of the liver. Dr. Bowers appeared appropriately grief stricken over the death of his wife of three
years. But an anonymous letter triggered an investigation, and an autopsy was ordered. When the body was
found to contain phosphorus, Bowers was charged
with murder. He was pilloried in the press, and the public seemed obsessed with the fact that Cecelia was the
third of Bowers’ wives to die after a short-lived marriage. In addition, all three had been duly insured.
There were also charges that Bowers was a criminal
abortionist. At Bowers’ trial much damning evidence
was presented by his brother-in-law, Henry Benhayon,
who testified that the doctor had prevented his wife
from receiving outside care during much of her illness.
Bowers was convicted of first-degree murder and incarcerated pending a decision on his appeal for a new trial.
In October 1887 Henry Benhayon was found dead
in a rooming house. Police discovered a bottle of potassium cyanide and three suicide notes. One of the notes,
addressed to the coroner, confessed that Benhayon had
poisoned Mrs. Bowers. While this sensational development appeared to clear Dr. Bowers, the police were not
convinced that the suicide note was genuine or that
Benhayon’s death was a suicide. Tracing purchases of
potassium cyanide, the police located a druggist who
identified one John Dimmig as a purchaser. They then
discovered that Dimmig had visited Bowers in his jail
cell.
Although he denied having bought the poison or
being involved in Benhayon’s death, Dimmig was
charged with murder. The first trial ended in a hung
jury. In the meantime, Dr. Bowers’ motions for a new
trial were rejected. Dimmig was tried again in late
1888 and acquitted. In August 1889 Dr. Bowers was
released from jail, where he had been confined for
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BRADY gang
bowie knife
and identified him. When Boyd was apprehended the
next day, he was sitting in a church pew “with a
hymn book in his hand, and from which he was
singing with apparent composure.” He was hanged
forthwith.
When four decades later Robert Louis Stevenson
created The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,
an enterprising American journalist tried to resurrect
Boyd as the source of Stevenson’s inspiration. This thesis had and has nothing to recommend it other than
increased circulation, since Stevenson was known to
have based his tale of “man’s double being” on Deacon
William Brodie, an 18th-century Scotsman who, while
a respected member of the Edinburgh town council, led
a gang of criminals.
Fashioned either by the famed Jim Bowie or his brother
Rezin P. Bowie, the bowie knife was the West’s most
popular close-combat weapon before being supplanted
by the six-shooter. The Mississippi pirates disemboweled their victims with it; the early river gamblers settled disputes with it; the Texas Rangers carried it as a
sidearm; and the men of the mountains and the West
hunted with it, slaughtered animals with it, cut wood
with it and ate with it.
The knife was baptized in blood by Jim Bowie in the
famous Sandbar Duel fought on the Mississippi near
Natchez in 1827. Jim Bowie, appearing only as a second for one of the participants, joined in a murderous
melee that broke out and killed a second for the rival
party with a 15-inch-blade knife. He butchered his
opponent so efficiently that word of his wicked weapon
spread rapidly. The homemade knife had originally
been fashioned from a large blacksmith’s rasp, but
given its new notoriety, the Bowie brothers sent it to a
Philadelphia cutlery manufacturer who shaped and polished it to their instructions and christened it a bowie
knife.
An authentic bowie knife was anywhere from 15 to
20 inches in overall length with a blade of 9 to 15
inches, sharpened only on one side to the curve of the
tip and then on both sides to the tip. A handguard of
brass allowed the knife wielder to thrust or parry and
slide his hand down over the blade as the situation
required. Weighing 2 pounds or more, it could be used
for brute force or deft lethality.
Once the weapon became popular, more than a
dozen cutlers started producing it, each claiming to
have been the originator. There was, however, no dispute over the knife’s intended use. A Sheffield, England
manufacturer catered to the market perfectly by inscribing on the blade the legend “America Can and Must
be Ruled by Americans.”
See also: SANDBAR DUEL.
Boyle, W. A. “Tony” (1902–1985) labor leader and
murderer
In labor’s worst murder scandal during recent years,
rivaling the disappearance of ex-Teamsters boss Jimmy
Hoffa, United Mine Workers (UMW) president Tony
Boyle was convicted of the 1969 murder of union rival
Joseph Yablonski and Yablonski’s wife and daughter.
On December 31, 1969, seven months after the 59year-old Yablonski, a union rebel, announced he would
oppose Boyle for the UMW leadership, he, his wife,
Margaret, 57, and their daughter Charlotte, 25, were
shot to death while they slept in their Clarksville, Pa.
home.
Boyle, angered by the grass roots opposition to his
reign, ordered Yablonski’s assassination after a heated
board meeting in Washington the previous June. The
plot began to unravel when William Turnblazer, a
lawyer and former UMW District 19 president, admitted his role in the conspiracy. He testified that the order
was given as Boyle, Turnblazer and Albert Pass stood
outside an elevator. At his first trial in 1974 in Media,
Pa. Boyle insisted no such meeting had taken place, but
he was found guilty. Three others pleaded guilty,
including Pass, who was sentenced to three consecutive
life prison terms. Boyle got the same sentence.
Boyle’s conviction was overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court because the presentation of certain
evidence had not been permitted. A retrial in 1978
ended with the same verdict, and the same sentence was
again imposed on Boyle, then 77 and suffering from
heart disease. He died in 1985.
Boyd, Jabez (?–1845) murderer
Eventually to be known as the American Jekyll and
Hyde, Jabez Boyd was always judged to be a highly
religious man in his community, but it appears that he
used his church-going activities to learn when potential
victims would be abroad with sums of money on their
person or in their homes. He would then strike accordingly.
One night in 1845, Boyd waylaid Wesley Patton
in Westchester, Pa. When Patton resisted and possibly
recognized Boyd, the latter clubbed him to death.
Unknown to Boyd, another man witnessed the crime
Brady gang
public enemies
Although they are little remembered now, the Brady
gang were the most sought criminals in the United
States, following the fall of such 1930s gangsters as
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BREAKENRIDGE, William
and diverse small things” from his master, and about
the same time in Plymouth, Katheren Aines, a married
woman, was required to wear a B for bawd “for her
unclean and laciviouse behavior with . . . William
Paule.”
A number of crimes were considered so heinous that
branding was mandatory even for a first offense. Burglary of a dwelling house called for the letter B to be
branded on a culprit’s forehead. A second such offense
required a second branding and whipping. A third
offense called for the death penalty. Counterfeiting was
considered such a danger that the offender was branded
on his right cheek with an F for forger. It was presumed
that such a branding would be proper warning to any
potential victims to beware of their money or supposed
legal records.
With proper application, branding of course produced a permanent scar, but the punishment was considered so awesome that several constables took to
using a light touch or an iron not heated sufficiently to
destroy the tissue.
Officially, the branding iron was last used on
Jonathan Walker, who in 1844 had the letters S.S. (for
slave stealer) burned into the palm of his right hand;
however, the practice of branding continued as an
acceptable form of punishment in the informal miners
courts in the West and in the military, especially during
the Civil War. On October 10, 1863 a Union artillery
brigade held a mass branding of those being drummed
out of the service for deserting their batteries. The
brigade was assembled in the form of a hollow square
facing inward, with a battery forge in the center. A battery blacksmith heated irons, and the letter D was
burned into the convicted men’s left hips. Significantly,
the army had by this time restricted branding to relatively unseen parts of the body. Miners courts, acting in
a lawless environment, were not as lenient. Generally,
these courts believed in only two penalties, hanging and
expulsion from the community. When this later punishment was decreed, the convicted man was often
branded on the forehead, face or hands to give due
warning to other communities of his unsavory character. This extralegal form of punishment disappeared by
the 1880s and 1890s.
See also: JONATHAN WALKER.
Further reading: Crime and Punishment in Early
Massachusetts by Edwin Powers.
Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, Bonnie
and Clyde, and the Barker-Karpis mob. By eradicating
the Brady gang, the FBI disarmed the critics of its
methods. Before that, J. Edgar Hoover had been
attacked on the floor of the U.S. Senate as being a personal coward, the FBI had been criticized for killing
John Dillinger without giving him a “chance”; and
when Hoover made his famed foray to New Orleans to
arrest Alvin Karpis personally, the newspapers gleefully reported that none of the host of FBI agents making the arrest had thought of bringing along a pair of
handcuffs.
The Brady gang began in Indiana during the early
1930s, when three former lonewolves—Al Brady,
Clarence Shaffer and James Dalhover—teamed up to
terrorize the Midwest. While the other public enemies
fell one by one, Brady and his two friends left a trail
of holdups of banks and other establishments during
which they killed two clerks and three police officers.
They had been captured once but had escaped jail and
by the end of 1937 were the most hunted men in the
country. Feeling the “heat,” the trio moved into virgin
territory in Maine. In October 1937 they entered a
sporting goods store in Bangor and asked for two
revolvers of a certain make. The clerk waiting on
them recognized the three as the Brady gang and said
the weapons would be in stock the following week.
On October 12, 1937 the trio returned and were recognized by an employee, who immediately pulled a
hidden cord that caused a suspended show card to
drop in the store window. At that instant four FBI
men, guns drawn, jumped from hiding places under
the counter and surprised the gangsters, who turned
and charged out the door. They were immediately hit
with a hail of bullets fired by 16 other FBI agents hidden across the street. Brady and Shaffer died instantly;
Dalhover lived long enough to be executed. More
important, the FBI received no criticism for the
ambush of the gang. In part, that was because none of
the gangsters ever exhibited the verve and flair of
John Dillinger. But it was also true that the public
took the Brady gang for what they were, brutal murderers. The days of romanticizing public enemies was
over.
branding
punishment for crime
Branding as a punishment for crimes was never as
widely used in the New World as in Europe, but it was
a standard form of punishment in colonial America. In
the Massachusetts colony the wearing of signs or initials on a person’s outermost garment was in effect a
method of symbolic branding. Thus, in Boston in 1639
Richard Wilson had to wear a T for theft of “money
Bras Coupe (?–1837) slave outlaw
In the 1820s one of the most famous slaves in New
Orleans was Squier, an exceptionally talented Bamboula dancer. His master was Gen. William de Buys,
well known as an indulgent slave owner. The general
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BREMER, Arthur Herman
was all the more indulgent of a famous slave like
Squier. He taught Squier to shoot and let him go hunting alone in the forests and swamps. A big and powerful man, Squier became adept at firing a rifle with
either hand, something that would stand him in good
stead later on. He also became accustomed to the feeling of freedom. So much so, that he ran away. When
he was caught, he escaped again. In 1834 Squier was
shot by a patrol of planters hunting slaves in the
swamps, and his right arm was amputated. As soon as
his wound had healed, Squier ran away again, determined never to be retaken. He organized a gang of
escaped blacks and—what truly terrified New
Orleans—some renegade whites. Now known as Bras
Coupe, the escaped slave led his gang on frequent robbery and murdering raids around the outskirts of New
Orleans. For nearly three years Bras Coupe was the
scourge of New Orleans, a hobgoblin used by mothers
and nurses to frighten their children. The New
Orleans Picayune described him as “a semi-devil and
fiend in human shape” and called his life “one of
crime and depravity.” What frightened the slave owners most, of course, was the fact that Bras Coupe
became a hero to the other blacks. They endowed
Bras Coupe with superhuman powers. In the instant
folklore that sprung up around him, the veritable
superman was fireproof and, having now lost his one
weak arm, invulnerable to wounds. Hunters who tried
to take him in the swamp stood in awe as their bullets
flattened against his chest while he laughed. Sometimes the bullets whizzed off Bras Coupe’s chest and
came flying back at the hunters. When a detachment
of soldiers invaded his lair, they were swallowed up in
a cloud of mist and never seen again. Bras Coupe was
said to paralyze with a mere glance and to nourish
himself on human flesh.
Bras Coupe’s mythic qualities were tarnished on
April 6, 1837, when he was shot by two hunters. But
he escaped and it was assumed, would surely survive
since he knew all the miraculous herbs that could be
found in the swamps. On July 19 of the same year,
the legend came to a tawdry end. A Spanish fisherman, Francisco Garcia, long considered to be in
league with the slave-outlaw, brought Bras Coupe’s
body into New Orleans on a mule-drawn cart. He
said Bras Coupe had fired on him from the shore of
the Bayou St. John. Infuriated, Garcia said he had
come ashore and beat the slave renegade’s brains out
with a club. The weight of evidence, however pointed
to the conclusion that Bras Coupe had been murdered
as he slept in Garcia’s hut. Garcia demanded the
$2,000 reward that had been posted for the outlaw;
but however much the whites had feared the man they
called the Brigand of the Swamp, they had little stom-
ach for the Spaniard’s act. He was given only $250
and told to leave. The body of Bras Coupe was displayed for two days in the Place d’Armes so that several thousand slaves could be brought to view it as an
object lesson.
Breakenridge, William (1846–1931) western lawman
An opponent of the Earps, Deputy Sheriff Billy Breakenridge of Tombstone was a “survivor” of the Tombstone feuds and certainly one of the few lawmen ever to
hire known outlaws to act as his bodyguards.
A native of Wisconsin, Breakenridge served in the
U.S. Cavalry and later made an unsuccessful attempt
at prospecting. In 1880 he was a deputy to Sheriff
John Behan, a law officer often at odds with Wyatt
Earp and accused of being in league with the notorious Clantons and Curly Bill Brocius, the leaders of the
“cowboy element,” which was more or less a synonym for rustlers. Breakenridge’s main duty was the
collection of taxes, an occupation not noted for
longevity in the area around Tombstone. To solve this
problem, Breakenridge approached Curly Bill and
asked him to act as his bodyguard while he made his
rounds in outlaw territory. On the surface, Curly Bill’s
agreement appeared to be a lark, but it was far more
likely that the outlaw was interested in cementing his
relations with Behan.
In all the violence of the Tombstone feuds, including
the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, Breakenridge,
although not loved by the Earp faction, at least managed to avoid antagonizing the Earps to the point
of provoking a showdown. As a result, and in spite of
the “Behan stain,” Breakenridge continued to hold
down various law enforcement jobs, working as a U.S.
marshal and as a special agent for the Southern Pacific
Railroad. He died in 1931, six years after a much publicized “reconciliation” with Wyatt Earp.
See also: JOHN BEHAN.
Bredell, Baldwin
See COUNTERFEITING.
Bremer, Arthur Herman (1950– ) would-be assassin
On the afternoon of May 15, 1972, George Wallace
was campaigning at a Laurel, Md. shopping center
in his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination. He left the bulletproof podium and was shaking
hands with people when a young blond man called several times, “Hey, George, over here!” Wallace moved
toward that area, and the youth pulled a gun and fired
several shots at Wallace, hitting him four times. In the
ensuing struggle with Wallace’s guards, the assassin
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BRIGGS, Hattie
emptied his weapon, wounding three others, all of
whom recovered. Wallace himself remained paralyzed
afterwards because of a bullet that lodged near the
spinal column.
The would-be assassin was identified—how soon
was to be a matter of some concern later—as Arthur H.
Bremer, a young man in his twenties who had been a
janitor’s assistant and a busboy in Milwaukee, Wis. In
November 1971 Bremer had been charged by Milwaukee police with carrying a concealed weapon, but this
was reduced to a disorderly conduct charge and the gun
confiscated. Shortly thereafter, he went out and bought
two other guns.
On March 1, 1972 Bremer started following the
Wallace campaign trail. During that period he spent
about $5,000, although his total earnings for
1971–72 came to only $1,611. At times, he left the
Wallace trail. On April 7 and 8 he stayed at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, where Hubert
Humphrey was staying. Bremer then traveled to
Ottawa, Canada, where he stayed at the expensive
Lord Elgin. He also checked into a number of motor
inns along the Wallace campaign route. Where he got
the money for the bills has remained a mystery, especially since it was established that he had not received
any money from his parents.
As is customary in such cases, Bremer was initially
reported to be a “loner,” but that does not appear
to have been very accurate. He had quite a few
friends in Milwaukee, including Dennis Cassini,
an individual officials never got to question. He was
found dead of a heroin overdose, his body locked in
the trunk of his own automobile. Although this was
reported to the FBI, there is no indication that
its director, L. Patrick Gray, ordered any inquiry into
the matter. Other odd facts or circumstances developed. Bremer had been seen in Ludington, Mich. in
the company of a man described as having a “New
Joisey brogue.” Roger Gordon, who was a former
member of the Secret Army Organization (SAO), a
right-wing intelligence organization, said the man
was Anthony Ulasewicz, a White House operative
later to win fame in the Watergate scandal. Gordon
later left the country.
There were prominent reports that White House
aide Charles W. Colson ordered E. Howard Hunt (two
more Watergate personalities) to break into Bremer’s
apartment and plant Black Panther Party and Angela
Davis literature. More explosive than that charge was
the allegation that the order was given within one hour
of the attempt to kill Wallace.
Commenting on these details in an interview with
Barbara Walters, Wallace said: “So I just wondered, if
that were the case, how did anyone know where he
lived within an hour after I was shot?”
A practical political result of the attempted assassination of Wallace was to force him out of the 1972
race, in which he was expected to run as a third-party
candidate. A week before the election, voters were
polled on how they would have voted had Wallace run.
The results were Nixon, 44 percent; McGovern, 41 percent; Wallace, 15 percent. Such a result, because of how
the vote broke down, would likely have thrown the
election into the House of Representatives, where Wallace would have had considerable influence. With Wallace out of the race, virtually all his supporters went to
President Nixon.
Arthur Bremer has steadfastly refused to state why
he shot Wallace. He was sentenced to 63 years, over
objections by his attorneys that he was unbalanced. He
has been described as a loner in the Maryland State
Penitentiary, working in the print shop.
“Bremer does not give interviews,” Warden George
Collins said in 1979. “In fact, he won’t even see his
mother. She came in all the way from Milwaukee at
Christmas, and he talked to her for about five minutes
and went on back down inside. He just doesn’t want to
be bothered. He just doesn’t want any hassle.” The
warden did add Bremer was “a very good inmate, so
far as obeying institution rules is concerned.”
Brennan, Molly (?1853–1875) murder victim
A dance hall girl at the Lady Gay gambling saloon in
Sweetwater, Tex., Molly Brennan participated in a love
triangle that provided western folklore and Hollywood
with one of the most oft-used clichés ever.
A character named Melvin King, who was a sergeant
with the 4th Cavalry when he wasn’t beating up or
shooting up folks, was romantically inclined toward
Molly. Once while on leave, King rode up to Kansas to
visit friends, which put him far out of sight and out of
mind for Molly, who then took an interest in a civilian
scout for the army named Bat Masterson. Returning
from his leave, King was already in a foul mood, having
come out second best in a dispute with Wyatt Earp, and
he was spoiling for a fight. When he heard about
Molly’s fickleness, he rode hell-for-leather toward
Sweetwater. King stormed into the Lady Gay to find
Molly and Bat on the dance floor. Masterson barely
had time to unclinch from Molly as King drew his gun.
At the same time King fired, Molly threw her body in
front of Masterson and took the bullet in her stomach.
King’s second shot shattered Masterson’s pelvis, but as
Bat was falling, he drew his .45 and shot King dead.
Molly Brennan died shortly afterward as a result of her
wound.
121
BRINK’S robbery
was all in their care and feeding. But his recipe for the
latter was something he would share with no one, other
than to say they got prime feed only.
There was good reason for Briggen to guard his
secret. The truth was a grisly story. He hired homeless
men as his helpers, recruiting them on a customary trip
to the Embarcadero section of San Francisco. A downand-outer would jump at the chance for a good job
with room and board, and Briggen could keep him several weeks if not months before the man would demand
his back pay. Then Briggen would kill him, chop up the
body and feed it to his prize swine. In his twisted mind,
Briggen had become convinced it was this diet of
human flesh that made his swine prize winners. He was
finally exposed in early 1902, when his newest hired
hand, a youth named Steve Korad, who had arrived
very enthusiastic about finding work, looked around
his room and found two severed human fingers from a
previous victim that Briggen had carelessly dropped
behind the bed. Korad raced off in the night and notified the law. When authorities dug up Briggen’s ranch,
their search turned up the bones of at least a dozen victims, but they were sure they had not found them all.
The pigpen itself yielded up several bones, including
one dead man’s skull.
Briggen was convicted in August 1902 and sentenced
to life. He died in San Quentin shortly thereafter.
An unkind chronicler said that out of respect for
Molly, Bat Masterson avoided all romantic entanglements for a month. Considering the condition of Masterson’s pelvis, this was almost certainly both untrue
and ungracious. It became the custom at the Lady Gay
for the men to toast the memory of Molly Brennan, and
her sacrifice went on to be reenacted in scores of Hollywood shoot-’em-ups.
briefcase agents
early FBI men
During the early years of the FBI, agents were not permitted, under ordinary circumstances, to carry a gun
or make an arrest, other than those an average citizen
could make. If they needed to arrest someone, they
were required to seek local assistance. Such restrictions on federal agents made sense in terms of preventing the rise of a national police force, but in
actual practice they led the underworld to regard the
FBI as an impotent force. FBI men became known as
“briefcase agents,” because that was about the only
equipment they could carry. The requirement that the
FBI seek local assistance in making arrests proved to
be a serious drawback because of the widespread corruption among many local police departments. By the
time agents arrived to arrest a suspect, he often had
already fled the scene thanks to the local police
“pipeline.” The FBI was forced to select carefully
among the various jurisdictions before attempting an
arrest.
While the rise of the public enemies brought about
some demands for unshackling the briefcase agents,
two crimes in particular led to federal passage of a
package of crime laws by 1934 that widened the scope
of the FBI and gave its agents the right to carry firearms
and make arrests. These were the Lindbergh baby kidnapping and the Kansas City Massacre.
Briggs, Hattie (c. 1880–1890s) madam
In vice-ridden Chicago during the 1880s and 1890s, the
most famous madams were Carrie Watson and Lizzie
Allen, but a black madam (“as ugly as anyone could
imagine,” according to one contemporary account)
named Hattie Briggs enjoyed almost equal notoriety,
being the subject of a never-ending string of newspaper
articles.
Six feet tall and weighing about 225 pounds, Hattie
cut an arresting figure in the long scarlet coat she
always wore. She ran two brothels, one on Clark Street
and another on Custom House Place, where her girls
were available for 25¢. However, rare indeed was the
customer who got out of either of these dens without
being robbed. Scorning such slow-moving, indirect robbery methods as the sliding panels used in some other
establishments, Hattie’s technique was quick and most
direct. She would simply seize a customer and slam him
up against a wall a few times, strip him of his money
and toss him out into the street. Although Hattie was
raided several times a week, she got off with minor
fines; few victimized customers cared to appear in court
to testify against her.
Briggen, Joseph (c. 1850–1903) mass murderer
One of this country’s most awesome mass murderers,
Joseph Briggen committed his crimes for many years on
a small ranch in a remote California valley.
Briggen barely made a living on his Sierra Morena
Ranch. Certainly he was never prosperous enough to
keep more than one hired hand at a time. In fact, were
it not for his prime Berkshire swine, for which he
almost invariably won the coveted blue ribbon at the
state fair in Sacramento, Briggen’s ranching would
probably have been considered a total loss.
At state fair time, however, he was in his glory, his
prize swine attracting top dollar. When he was asked
about how he raised them, Briggen would say the secret
122
BROADWAY Mob
A diagram shows the route taken by the bandits in the Great Brink’s Robbery in 1950, which netted them $2.7 million in
cash, checks and securities.
While the newspapers constantly wrote exposés of
her activities, it took the police some 10 years to drive
her from the city; some cynical newsmen saw this as
proof of police corruption. Indeed, Hattie’s downfall
resulted more from her insulting the police than from
her breaking the law. In the early 1890s Hattie took a
young black thief and gambler, William Smith, as a
lover. She set him up in the saloon business and dressed
him gaudily in patent-leather shoes with white spats,
lavender pants, white vest, yellow shirt, bright blue
coat and, of course, a silk hat. She adorned him with
diamond pins and rings. Smith soon became very “big
for his britches” and bragged that Hattie intended to
make him the “biggest black boy in Chicago.” Indeed,
Hattie announced that she was making so much money
she intended to buy up all the brothels and saloons in
the city’s vice centers for Smith, elect him mayor and
abolish the police force.
This may have been the insult the police could not
abide because a force of 20 patrolmen raided Smith’s
main saloon and, following a desperate battle,
arrested the great man and 22 of his henchmen. After
Smith’s liquor license was revoked, the still-smarting
police turned their rage on Hattie Briggs, arresting her
10 to 20 times a day with blanket warrants. After lasting about half a month, Hattie finally hired a moving
van and shipped off her girls and their bedding to a
new place in suburban Lemont. According to later
reports, Hattie moved south to a place where the law
was said to be more considerate of hard-working
madams.
See also: PANEL HOUSE.
Brink’s robbery
The Great Brink’s Robbery of 1950 was two years in
the making. For 24 months, 11 middle-aged Bostonians, seven of them heretofore no more than petty
thieves, worked on the robbery of the Brink’s North
Terminal Garage. They entered the garage at night and
walked about in their stocking feet, measuring distances, locating doors, determining which way they
opened, all beneath unsuspecting guards. On one occasion they removed the locks from the doors, fitted keys
to them and then replaced the locks. They even went
so far as to break into a burglar alarm company in
order to make a closer study of the alarm system used
by Brink’s. In December 1949 they ran through a com123
BROCIUS, William B.“Curly Bill”
plete dress rehearsal. Finally, they decided they were
ready.
On the appointed day, January 17, 1950, the bandits entered the garage dressed in simulated Brink’s uniforms, rubber Halloween masks, and crepe-soled shoes
or rubber overshoes. They made their way to the counting room and relieved five very surprised employees of
$2.7 million in cash, checks and securities. The cash
alone came to $1,218,211. In less than 15 minutes they
were gone.
The plan had been to keep a low profile for six years
until the statute of limitations ran out, but one of the
bandits, Joseph “Specs” O’Keefe, felt he had been
gypped out of his fair share. He demanded another
$63,000. The others refused but then started worrying
he would turn informer. A professional hit man, Elmer
“Trigger” Burke, was assigned to shut O’Keefe up permanently. Burke chased O’Keefe through the streets of
Boston in a wild nighttime shoot-out, firing at him with
a machine gun. O’Keefe was wounded in the arm and
chest but escaped, although Burke was sure he had finished him off. The hit man was seized by police before
he could correct his error.
O’Keefe took offense at the effort to kill him and
eventually started talking to the law; by then the FBI
had spent $25 million investigating the caper. As a
result of O’Keefe’s talking to the police, eight of the
plotters were convicted and given life sentences.
In 1980 an $18 million movie titled The Brink’s Job
was released. It was played partly for laughs. On hand
for the showing in Boston were two of the three surviving members of the original bandit group. Both had
served 14 years for the crime before being released.
“I’m glad they made something light out of it,” said
72-year-old Thomas “Sandy” Richardson. “Yeah, people need a few laughs these days.”
Seventy-year-old Adolph “Jazz” Maffie wasn’t completely sold. “I thought it was all right. But only thing is
that it wasn’t that much fun. That was hard work, that
kind of job.”
“Yeah,” Sandy said.
See also: ELMER “TRIGGER” BURKE.
lished that Bristol Bill had escaped from the British
penal colony in Sydney, Australia; his true identity had
not been known there either.
In New York, Bristol Bill teamed up with another
ex-Sidney prisoner, James Stuart, better known as English Jim, who had served 12 years down under. It was
later estimated that the pair robbed more banks in the
area from New York to Boston than any other criminals of their era.
By the late 1840s, after several close brushes with
pursuing detectives, they decided to pursue their calling
in the relative safety of Vermont. Within a matter of
several weeks during the fall of 1849, they robbed six
banks, floated a huge quantity of counterfeit money
and swindled a number of businessmen. However, the
small-town police of Vermont proved sharper than
their big-city brethren and captured Bristol Bill. English
Jim escaped, fleeing to California, where he became one
of that state’s top criminals before being captured and
hanged by vigilantes. Bristol Bill was sent to prison for
14 years. His later life proved as enigmatic as his earlier
history, and his true identity was never learned on this
side of the Atlantic.
Broadway Mob
rumrunners
One of the most important components that eventually were merged into the national crime syndicate
was the Broadway Mob of the 1920s. Officially run by
Joe Adonis (his real name was Joseph Doto but he went
under the name “Adonis” because he was proud of his
looks), the Broadway gang boasted a board of directors
that included such future big shots as Frank Costello
and Lucky Luciano. It totally controlled the flow of
bootleg liquor in the great center of Manhattan.
Luciano brought in the Bug and Meyer Mob, run
by Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel, to provide protection for the gang’s convoys. Adonis and Costello soon
decided that it made more sense and was cheaper to
bring Lansky and Siegel in as partners. This new
interethnic Broadway Mob soon dominated bootlegging in New York, supplying good whiskey to all the
top speakeasies, including Jack White’s, Jack and
Charlie’s “21” Club, the Silver Slipper, Sherman
Billingsley’s Stork Club and others. While not all the
whiskey was “right off the boat” as claimed, even the
liquor produced in Waxey Gordon’s Philadelphia distilleries was far better than the local rotgut. The
Broadway Mob invested in some of the best speakeasies and thus had a special interest in keeping the
liquor supplies of good quality. It was through the
workings of the Broadway Mob that the syndicate’s
top mobsters came to own some of Manhattan’s most
Bristol Bill (c. 1840) bank robber and counterfeiter
Perhaps one of the most mysterious criminals in American history was the notorious Bristol Bill, who operated
during the 1840s in New York and Boston. His true
identity was never known to police in this country,
although the London police know exactly who he was.
They refused to reveal it, however, because Bill’s influential father, a member of the British Parliament, did
not want the family name dishonored. It was estab124
BROWN, Sam
respective bands met at Iron Springs, a waterhole in
the Whetstone Mountains. Earp told Brocius he was
taking him in, and Curly Bill said he had a warrant
for Earp. The latter ended this legal impasse by blowing Brocius to pieces with a double blast from his
shotgun.
See also: JOSEPH ISAAC “IKE” CLANTON, NEWMAN H.
“OLD MAN” CLANTON, WYATT EARP.
valuable real estate, a situation unchanged even to the
present day.
See also: JOE ADONIS.
Brocius, William B. “Curly Bill” (1857–1882)
western outlaw
A brutal outlaw whose real name was William B. Graham, Curly Bill Brocius, or Brocious, was the most
important gunfighter in the Clanton gang and, as such
was frequently at odds in Tombstone with the Earps.
Curly Bill was probably the one Clanton man Earp
feared most, and it was said the Earps provoked the
famous or infamous gunfight at the O.K. Corral
because Brocius was not around.
When Old Man Clanton died, Curly Bill became the
de facto leader of the gang, having far more ability,
brains and guts than Ike Clanton. He would have been
a more imposing outlaw except for a lack of ambition.
Curly Bill preferred commiting crimes that required little effort on his part. He was quite content to capture a
Mexican muleteer in the hills, take all his money and
torture him to death.
Brocius killed Marshal Fred White on the streets of
Tombstone in a confrontation with that lawman and
his deputy, Virgil Earp. It was a matter of dispute
whether Curly Bill killed the marshal with a cunning
maneuver of his six-gun as he was handing it over to
White or whether White caused his own death by seizing the gun by the barrel. Virgil Earp said it was murder; a jury decided on accidental death.
In July 1881 two Clanton gunmen, Bill Leonard
and Harry Head, were killed trying to hold up the
store of William and Isaac Haslett in Hauchita, New
Mexico Territory. The brothers were hailed as heroes,
but they didn’t have much time to enjoy their fame
before Curly Bill and Johnny Ringo rode into town
and shot them both dead. Later that same month Brocius led his men on a particularly vicious murder
spree, ambushing a Mexican trail herd in the San Luis
Pass and killing 14 vaqueros. Actually, six of the victims fell in the first volley and the rest surrendered,
only to be tortured to death before their cattle were
driven off.
After the O.K. Corral gunfight, Curly Bill took part
in an assassination attempt on Virgil Earp and the
successful ambush of Morgan Earp, both for handsome pay provided by Ike Clanton. After those
killings and a couple of stagecoach robberies, Brocius,
in one of the frequent ironies of law enforcement in
Tombstone, was sent off to the hills armed with a
warrant for the arrest of Wyatt Earp that had been
issued by Earp’s foe Sheriff John Behan. Earp was in
the hills at the same time looking for Brocius. Their
broken homes and crime
For years the broken home, one altered by divorce,
desertion or death, has been considered a major cause
of delinquency and subsequent criminal behavior by
children. Overall, various studies have indicated that
40 percent of juvenile delinquents, give or take 10 percent or so, come from broken homes, which is at least
double the percentage of children from broken homes
in the general population. Among male delinquents in
cases closed by the Los Angeles Probation Department,
58 percent of those institutionalized came from broken
homes.
However, it has become apparent on the basis of
several studies that the judicial process tends to select
children from broken homes for institutionalization,
adding an important distortion to the figures. More
recent studies have concluded that the impact of a
broken home may not be very significant on white
males, although some researchers insist there is an
important impact on white females and on blacks
compared to whites in general. But even in these cases,
the differences may be more apparent than real, as is
suggested in a 1972 Florida study by Roland J.
Chilton and Gerald E. Markle. It found that the socalled differences in delinquency rates between white
boys and girls are primarily in the areas of ungovernability, truancy and running away from home and that
statistical differences between the sexes virtually disappear for behavior that would be considered a crime
if committed by an adult.
Among black children distinctions between the seriousness of the offense tend to disappear, suggesting that
for black youths the home situation may be less significant as a cause of major misconduct, which is considerably higher among blacks than among whites. The
Florida study found that in low-income families, white
or black, the seriousness of the offense was not determined by the family situation, suggesting that the family’s overall economic condition rather than its
composition is more relevant to the development of
delinquency.
125
BROWN, William
Brooks, William L. “Buffalo Bill” (?1832–1874)
lawman and horse thief
they could be brought to trial, they were lynched the
night of July 29, 1874. Brooks’ motive, it became
apparent, was to cripple the rival company and win
back the mail contract for his former employer. All in
all, it was an ignoble end for the man who just two
years before had been known as the toughest gun in
Dodge City.
There are those who say that William Brooks could
have been the greatest and most efficient lawman the
West had ever seen before he himself went bad.
The life of Brooks, called Buffalo Bill because his
prowess as a buffalo hunter nearly equaled that of
William F. Cody, is steeped in controversy. Little is
known about his early life, although he was apparently
born in Ohio. Brooks’ story really begins in the late
1860s, when he was reputed to have killed several men
in gunfights. After a stint as a stage driver, he became
marshal of Newton, Kan. in 1872, reportedly at the age
of 40. The town wanted a “mature man” for the job
and Brooks seemed to fit the bill. Yet some biographers
insist he was in his twenties at the time. Brooks’ sixguns made quite an impression in Newton, and he was
soon offered the chance to clean up Dodge City. In his
first month on the job there, Brooks was involved in
some 15 gunfights, killing or wounding numerous
“hard cases.” One of the men he killed had four brothers, who then came gunning for Brooks; with just four
shots—according to the legend—Brooks dispatched
them all.
In any event, Brooks had gone far in taming Dodge
and had he continued, Wyatt Earp would never have
gotten the opportunity to achieve his later fame there.
However, power seemed to have corrupted Brooks.
He killed a few men he ought not have, one for
merely being his rival for the affections of a dance
hall girl. Brooks then backed down in a shoot-out
with a tough character named Kirk Jordan and left
Dodge. Some say it was this loss of face that turned
Brooks bad and led him to engage in many illegal
enterprises. According to one popular story, Brooks
made a try for the marshal’s job in Butte, Mont., but
his reputation and an opponent named Morgan Earp
defeated him. The legend says Brooks’ defeat rankled
him to the point that he went gunning for Morgan
Earp and was killed in a classic gunfight at high
noon, with the two men firing at once and one dropping in the dust. That would have been a far more
glorious ending for Buffalo Bill Brooks than what
actually happened.
The facts are that no such duel ever took place—
Brooks’ time ran out long before the alleged fight. In
early 1874 he returned to his old employer, the Southwestern Stage Co., as a driver. A few months later, the
company lost its mail contract to a competitor, and
Brooks was out of a job. Late in June 1874 a number
of mules and horses belonging to the competing company were stolen. About a month after that, Brooks
and two others were arrested for the thefts. Before
Brown, Hendry (?1850–1884) lawman and outlaw
Several men in the history of the West have made a
transition from outlaw to lawman or vice versa, but
Hendry Brown seemed to flit back and forth so much it
was difficult to say which one he was at any particular
time.
Brown was first heard of when he was operating in
Texas as an illegal whiskey peddler. He said then that
he had been a lawman in the panhandle, which may or
may not have been true. What is true is that later on he
did some posse duty with the McSween forces during
the Lincoln County War in New Mexico, which might
have qualified him as a lawman except that he spent a
good deal of this time riding with Billy the Kid.
After the Lincoln County War cooled, Brown split
from Billy the Kid, deciding that the outlaw life offered
little promise of longevity. He drifted over to Tascosa,
Tex., where he magically ended up as town constable.
But that activity soon bored Brown, and he hit the outlaw trail, working his way up to Kansas. After a while,
Brown figured that the lawman game was, all in all, a
better bet, and using his credentials as a constable in
Texas, he became a deputy marshal at Caldwell. He
killed a couple of men in the line of duty and soon
picked up the marshal’s star. He was holding that job
when in 1884 fickleness overtook him again. With
three confederates he plotted out a bank robbery at
Medicine Lodge in April of that year. It was a bloody
affair, with Brown gunning down the bank president
and another member of the gang killing a teller. The
four bandits fled but they never made it back to cover
in Caldwell. A hard-riding and fast-shooting posse cornered them and took them back to the local jail. They
never survived the night—a large mob overwhelmed
the guards and hanged all four from the same tree.
Brown, Sam (?–1861) Virginia City killer
Vicious even by the standards of the frontier, Sam
Brown was said to have killed some 13 men in the
streets and barrooms of Virginia City, Nev. The stocky
red-bearded killer always carried a huge bowie knife
slung from his gun belt. Proficient with the use of both
knife and revolver, Brown killed without provocation.
There is no record of him ever challenging a man as
126
BUCHALTER, Louis “Lepke”
Only when they opened the restaurant coolers did
they discover the terrible truth. Seven bodies were
stacked in the coolers: the entire workforce of five
employees and the two owners of the franchise operation. All had been methodically slaughtered. Clearly
it was one of the most gruesome robberies ever committed, and also one of the most baffling, since the
perpetrators obviously were intent on leaving no witnesses.
In the O. J. Simpson case a few years later much was
made—successfully—by the defense in the criminal case
that much of the evidence had been contaminated by
inept investigators. However, the Simpson case could
be held up as towering efficiency compared to the
Brown investigation. Local authorities were determined
to produce quick charges, and an innocent former
employee was held and grilled for a considerable waste
of time while some insisted the trail was allowed to
grow cold.
In Homicide: 100 Years of Murder in America, Gini
Graham Scott, Ph.D., reflected the opinion of a number
of experts in declaring: “There must have been telltale
evidence left behind, but whatever it might have been
was smudged over or trampled by the eager but inexperienced police. . . . By the time a task force of experienced officers from other communities took charge, it
was too late to solve the murders.”
well armed as himself, and he never invited anyone to
do fair battle. He killed only when he knew he was in
no danger himself. One of his more revolting crimes
took place in a C Street saloon in 1861. A pleasant
young miner named McKenzie accidentally bumped his
elbow at the bar. Brown turned to see who had
offended him and spotted McKenzie, a man Brown
knew had not been around long enough to make any
close friends who would stand up for him. Seizing the
youth by the throat, Brown, according to a contemporary account, “ran a knife into his victim, and then
turned it around, completely cutting the heart out, then
wiped his bloody knife and lay down on a billiard table
and went to sleep.”
Finally, Brown picked the wrong would-be victim,
a farmer named Vansickle. On July 6, 1861, Brown’s
birthday, the killer boasted between whiskeys that he
would “have a man for supper.” He decided on Vansickle, who quickly made off for his farm, with Brown
in bloodthirsty pursuit. By the time Brown reached
the farmhouse, Vansickle had just enough time to
dash inside and grab a shotgun. When the farmer
came back to his doorway with the weapon, Brown,
not relishing such resistance, climbed back on his
horse and rode off to town. However, Vansickle was
not prepared to let the matter rest. He decided he’d
have to kill Brown to prevent him from trying again.
As Brown dismounted in front of a saloon, Vansickle
rode up. A contemporary account states, “Upon seeing his pursuer, mortal terror seized upon the ruffian;
abject, unutterable fear sealed his lips; a spasmodic,
agonizing yell of despair forced itself from his mouth.
. . .” Vansickle leveled his shotgun and blasted his
tormentor with both barrels. An inquest the next day
found that Vansickle “had shown good sense, and,
instead of deserving punishment, he should be
rewarded for having thus rid the community of this
brutal and cowardly villain.”
Brown, William
Brown’s Hole
See ALEXANDER WILLIAM HOLMES.
Brown’s Chicken mass murders
investigation
western outlaw refuge
Brown’s Hole was one of the great western outlaw
hideouts, lying some 250 miles southwest of Hole in
the Wall. Accessible only by little-known roads that
wound through deserts and over mountains, it lay at
the junction of what is now eastern Utah, western Colorado and southern Wyoming. Brown’s Hole, rather
than Hole in the Wall, was Butch Cassidy’s favorite
hideout. It was here that the scattered elements of Cassidy’s Wild Bunch knew they could always renew contact. What Butch liked best about it was that “the tax
collector doesn’t come around too often.”
classic botched
Brownsville affair
mass punishment
One of America’s most callous miscarriages of justice
occurred in 1906 after an unidentified group of men
shot up stores and homes around Fort Brown in
Brownsville, Tex., where three companies of black soldiers were stationed. The shootings happened around
midnight on August 13 and resulted in the death of a
local resident and the severe wounding of a policeman.
Despite the fact that the incident had taken place in the
dark, a number of witnesses said the shooting had been
done by soldiers, and the following morning some car-
One of 1990s most horrific cases of mass murder, it
remained unsolved and has been cited by some crime
experts as one of the worst fumbled investigations ever
conducted by police. On January 8, 1993 workers of
the day shift of Brown’s Chicken & Pasta Restaurant in
what was called the sleepy Chicago suburb of Palatine
arrived and were mystified to find the entire overnight
crew had mysteriously disappeared.
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BUCHALTER, Louis “Lepke”
tridges of U.S. Army specifications were found outside
the fort. The company commanders instituted an
immediate inspection of all the soldiers’ rifles but concluded none had been fired, and an inventory check
indicated that none of the fort’s cartridges were missing.
Several grand jury and military inquiries failed to pin
the blame on any specific individuals. On October 4
President Theodore Roosevelt ordered an ultimatum be
read to the troops, who had since been transferred to
Fort Reno, warning that all would be ordered discharged “without honor” unless they handed over the
guilty parties. When all continued to maintain their
innocence, the entire group of 167 enlisted men were
accused of a “conspiracy of silence” and discharged
“without honor.” None were afforded any opportunity
to confront their accusers and none were ever proved
guilty of being involved in the crime. The Senate Committee on Military Affairs later held hearings that were
critical of the president’s actions, and a military court
of inquiry in 1909 announced that 14 of the soldiers
would be allowed to reenlist, but the reasoning behind
this decision was not revealed. The record of the discharges stood for 66 years until September 22, 1972,
when secretary of the army Robert F. Froehlke issued a
directive changing them from “without honor” to
“honorable.”
Buccieri, Fiore “Fifi” (1904–1973) syndicate killer
A top enforcer for the Chicago syndicate, Fiore “Fifi”
Buccieri was considered to be mob leader Sam Giancana’s personal hit man. No complete record of Fifi’s
kills have been recorded, although federal agents who
had bugged a house in Florida being used to plan a
murder heard Buccieri reminisce about a number of
killings. Among other principles he espoused was that
ammunition for shotguns used in an assassination
should be “fresh.” Fifi was particularly lighthearted
about the gruesome demise of William “Action” Jackson, a 300-pound collector for the mob’s loansharking
operation who was suspected of holding out some of
the money and of being an informant for federal
authorities. Jackson was hung from a meat hook,
stripped and shot in the knee. Then, Buccieri recalled,
the boys decided “to have a little bit of fun.” Jackson
was worked over with ice picks, baseball bats and a
blow torch. Fifi got hold of an electric cattle prod and
jammed it up Jackson’s rectum. The fat victim lived
for two days, but even at that, Fifi was “sorry the big
slob died so soon.” Buccieri took photographs of the
mutilated corpse and passed them around as
reminders to other mobsters not to stray from mob
rule.
The manhunt for Louis “Lepke” Buchalter was among the
most intensive ever, one that ended only when other
leaders of organized crime betrayed him.
Fifi was a graduate of Chicago’s worst juvenile gang,
the 42ers. He was a hulking, gravel-voiced punk who
attracted younger kids by his dapper dress and his
affection of wearing wide-brimmed hats similar to
those worn by movie gangsters. He attached himself to
another up-and-coming 42er, Sam Giancana, who eventually rose to the top position in the Chicago outfit. Fifi
became Giancana’s personal executioner and his loyal
ally during the power struggles for mob leadership.
The law never made Buccieri crack. During one federal probe investigators tried to elicit mob information
by questioning Fifi about his brother Frank, also
involved in mob affairs. They even questioned Fifi
about the fact that his brother had a girlfriend who had
been a Playboy bunny and a centerfold nude in Playboy
magazine and that he had given her a horse as a pre128
BUCHANAN, Dr. Robert
sent. Fifi’s answer, which became a classic in underworld circles was, “I take the Fifth on the horse and the
broad.”
Fifi died of cancer in 1973, and Giancana was assassinated two years later. There was speculation at the
time that the mob—if the Giancana killing was a mob
caper and not a CIA operation, as the underworld has
insisted—would never have dared move against Giancana while Fifi Buccieri was alive.
the need for an enforcement branch within its framework. Lepke was put in charge of it, with Albert Anastasia as second in command. The choice of Anastasia
was obvious; he was a madman whose philosophy
could be summed up in three words—kill, kill, kill. And
the election of Lepke over him was equally logical.
Lepke was the greatest exponent of violence in the
rackets; an associate once noted, “Lep loves to hurt
people.” Under Lepke and Anastasia the enforcement
branch, later dubbed Murder, Inc. by the newspapers,
carried out hundreds of hits for the syndicate.
Lepke courted trouble with the law, living lavishly and
relishing the spotlight. Thomas Dewey, then an ambitious special prosecutor, zeroed in on him once he had
convicted Luciano. And while Dewey went after him for
bakery extortion, the federal government stalked him for
restraint-of-trade violations. Then the federal Narcotics
Bureau began gathering proof that Lepke was the head
of a narcotics-smuggling operation that was involved in
massive bribing of U.S. customs agents. Free on bail,
Lepke decided to go into hiding. While a nationwide
manhunt was organized to catch him, he continued to
control his union rackets from various Brooklyn hideouts, where he was being hidden by Anastasia.
The continued manhunt, however, put extraordinary pressure on the entire syndicate and hamstrung
their operations. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia turned
the screw even tighter by ordering his police commissioner, Lewis Valentine, to go to war on “hoodlums.”
The problem got so bad that it was brought to the
attention of Luciano, then confined at Dannemora
Prison but still the top voice in the organization.
Luciano agreed that Lepke had to give himself up, but
there was a problem: Lepke realized Dewey could
convict him of enough charges to keep him in prison
for life. Therefore, Luciano decided that Lepke would
have to be fooled into surrendering. He arranged for
an emissary Lepke trusted, Moe “Dimples” Wolensky,
to carry a message that a deal had been worked out
with J. Edgar Hoover whereby if he surrendered
directly to the FBI chief, he would be tried on the federal narcotics charge only and not handed over to
Dewey.
Lepke bought the story and surrendered on a Manhattan street to gossip columnist Walter Winchell and
Hoover. As soon as he entered their car and Hoover
spoke to him, Lepke realized he had been doublecrossed. Lepke was convicted on federal charges of narcotics conspiracy and sentenced to 14 years at
Leavenworth but was then turned over to Dewey who
succeeded in getting another conviction that resulted in
a 39-year-to-life sentence.
Unfortunately for Lepke, while he was behind bars,
the story of Murder, Inc. broke, mainly because of
Buchalter, Louis “Lepke” (1897–1944) syndicate
leader and murderer
The only national crime czar and kingpin of the rackets
ever to go to the electric chair, Louis “Lepke” Buchalter
graduated from sneak thievery during his youth on
New York’s Lower East Side to become one of the
founders of the national crime syndicate. Through control of the tailors and cutters unions, Lepke milked millions from the New York garment industry. Part of
Lepke’s power sprung from his control of Murder, Inc.,
the Brooklyn “troop” of specialist killers who serviced
the syndicate. Thus, Thomas E. Dewey referred to
Lepke as “the worst industrial racketeer in America,”
and J. Edgar Hoover called him “the most dangerous
criminal in the United States.”
In the early 1920s, while most gangsters were
attracted by the huge fortunes to be made in booze,
Lepke chose a different route to underworld fame and
wealth. He and another thug, Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro,
linked up with the era’s top labor racketeer, “Little
Augie” Orgen, to offer strike-breaking services to garment industry employers. Little Augie was shot dead in
1927, but Lepke and Shapiro prospered, especially
after refining their operations so that they could serve
both sides, assuming the added duties of union organizers and eventually taking control of union locals.
The union racketeers extended their operations to
control the bakery drivers’ union and levied a penny
“tax” per loaf on bakers to guarantee their products
got to market fresh. To greater or lesser degrees, Lepke
moved into other industries, especially in league with
Tommy Lucchese, a mobster with close ties to Lucky
Luciano. Their extortion rackets expanded to tough on
such businesses as handbags, shoes, millinery, poultry,
cleaning and dyeing, leather, restaurants and others
until it was estimated legitimate businesses were paying
Lepke up to $10 million a year just so they could operate without trouble.
The Lucchese connection gave Lepke an “in” with
the budding crime syndicate being formed by Luciano,
Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, Joe Adonis, Dutch
Schultz and others. The new organization recognized
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BUCK gang
information supplied by squealer, Abe Reles, one of the
group’s leading killers. Lepke was tied in as the leader
of the killer troop and was specifically linked to the
1936 murder of a Brooklyn candy store owner named
Joe Rosen, a former trucker in the garment district who
had been forced out of business by Lepke. Instead of
bearing his loss in silence, Rosen began making noise
about going to the district attorney’s office. Lepke
handed out a contract on Rosen to two of his chief
aides, Mendy Weiss and Louis Capone, and to Pittsburgh Phil Strauss. Rosen ended up with 17 bullets in
his corpse.
Even though Reles was killed in a mysterious fall
from a window in a hotel where he was being kept
under police guard, authorities had more than
enough evidence to convict Lepke, Weiss and Capone
(Strauss had already been sentenced to death for
another murder). Through various appeals, Lepke
staved off execution until March 1944. Shortly
before his death the newspapers were filled with speculation that Lepke was talking about corrupt political and labor officials he had had dealings with and
that if he really “opened up” he could blow the roof
off the country, among other things delivering what
one newspaper called “a prominent labor leader,
powerful in national politics, as a man who had
inspired several crimes.” In thinly disguised sidebar
stories, that labor leader was readily identifiable as
Sidney Hillman, then an intimate advi-ser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Lepke himself was
quoted as saying: “If I would talk, a lot of big people
would get hurt. When I say big, I mean big. The
names would surprise you.”The New York Mirror
reported, “It is said Lepke offered material to Governor Dewey that would make him an unbeatable presidential candidate.”
On the afternoon of the execution, Lepke released
his version of the facts. He had his wife read a statement that he had dictated: “I am anxious to have it
clearly understood that I did not offer to talk and give
information in exchange for any promise of commutation of my death sentence. I did not ask for that! . . .
The one and only thing I have asked for is to have a
commission appointed to examine the facts. If that
examination does not show that I am not guilty, I am
willing to go to the chair, regardless of what information I have given or can give.”
Clearly Lepke had given some information, but it
had not been enough, and now he was eager to inform
the syndicate he was not going to talk about crime matters. If he did, he realized, no member of his family
would be spared.
On March 4, 1944 Lepke silently followed Capone
and Weiss to the chair.
See also:
INC.; JACOB
THOMAS E. DEWEY; JEWISH MAFIA; MURDER,
“LITTLE
AUGIE” ORGEN; JACOB
“GURRAH”
SHAPIRO; WALTER WINCHELL.
Buchanan, Dr. Robert (?1855–1895) murderer
Dr. Robert Buchanan, one of New York’s most famous
19th-century killers, was a vain murderer who modeled his crime on a similar one committed by a young
medical student, Carlyle Harris, for which the latter
went to the chair. Dr. Buchanan, possessing higher scientific knowledge than that of a mere medical student,
improved on Harris’ method but also went to the
chair.
Buchanan’s background is a bit murky. He had lied
about his age and education so that he could practice
medicine in Canada without a license. When he got
caught, he went to Chicago for a couple of years and
then returned to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he married the daughter of a wealthy manufacturer.
Buchanan talked his in-laws into sending him to Edinburgh, Scotland to complete his medical education.
When he returned, he and his wife moved to New
York, where he set up a modest practice in Greenwich
Village.
By 1890 when he divorced his wife and sent her
back to Nova Scotia, Buchanan had developed a taste
for the seamier side of life and had formed an attachment with big, fat, ugly Annie Sutherland, who lived in
the Village but ran a call house in Newark. Annie had
one very redeeming quality: she had $50,000 in the
bank. When he proposed marriage, Annie Sutherland
jumped at the chance. For her, marrying a doctor meant
respectability. For Dr. Buchanan, the marriage meant
$50,000.
About that time the Carlyle Harris case was coming
to trial. Harris, a medical student had secretly married
a young girl named Helen Potts. After tiring of her, he
disposed of Helen by poisoning her with morphine. He
had been caught because a doctor noticed her pupils
were pin points, the universal sign of morphine poisoning.
One evening Buchanan was drinking in Macomber’s,
a Village watering hole. He slammed a fist on the bar
and said: “And I tell you Carlyle Harris was a fool! If
Harris had known anything about medicine, he could
have gotten away with it easily.”
“How, Doc?” a drinking companion asked.
“Never mind,” said Buchanan. “We of the profession cannot have laymen mindful of such information.”
Buchanan would say no more, but he was in fact to
put his opinion to the test. In 1892 he announced he
was going to Edinburgh by himself, but four days
before he was scheduled to leave, he canceled the trip
130
BUCKMINSTER, Fred
the pupils dilate or enlarge. If Harris had used some
atropine when he gave his wife the morphine, his wife’s
eyes would have ended up looking normal, and no one
would have suspected.”
White ran his story, and Dr. Buchanan was indicted.
An autopsy showed that his wife had in fact been killed
by morphine poisoning. At his trial the prosecution
went so far as to kill a cat in the courtroom with morphine and then administer atropine to show how the
pin pointing could be prevented.
On July 1, 1895 Dr. Buchanan went to the electric
chair as a result of drunken remarks he never remembered making.
See also: ISAAC DEFOREST “IKE” WHITE.
because his wife had taken sick. Buchanan promptly
called in not one but two other physicians to treat
her. Both of them were with her when she died.
Clearly, the doctors had no reason to view the
woman’s death as anything other than apoplexy, the
result of a cerebral hemorrhage; their patient did not
appear to have been poisoned since her pupils were
not contracted. Apoplexy and morphine poisoning
produced similar symptoms except for that one basic
difference: in apoplexy there is no change in the pupils
of the eyes, but in morphine poisoning the pupils
greatly contract.
Some of Mrs. Buchanan’s friends, from her brothel
in Newark, were sure the doctor had not only married
her for her money but had also killed her for it.
Although the police wouldn’t listen to such shady characters maligning an apparently respectable medical
man, Ike White, a star reporter for the New York
World who had a reputation for breaking cases, did listen. He had worked on the Carlyle Harris case and was
intrigued by the story of a doctor who had married a
madam.
White asked the physicians who had attended Mrs.
Buchanan about her symptoms and raised the possibility of morphine poisoning; he was told that the
woman’s pupils had definitely not contracted. An a
verage investigator or reporter might have given up
right there, but White kept checking. He discovered
that a mere three months after Mrs. Buchanan’s death,
the doctor had announced he was going to Edinburgh.
Instead, he went back to Nova Scotia and remarried his
first wife. The major difference in the doctor’s present
marital condition was that he was $50,000 better off.
There was a story here, and White knew it.
He also knew that in the 1890s, before the psychiatric couch came into vogue, the average man imparted
his deepest secrets to either his priest or his bartender.
He also knew that Dr. Buchanan was not a churchgoer.
This theory is what finally led the reporter to
Macomber’s. He talked with Old Man Macomber
about a number of things, including sports, current
events, murders—especially the Carlyle Harris case—
and people in the neighborhood who had died, such as
Mrs. Buchanan. Finally, the matter of Dr. Buchanan’s
statement about Harris’ stupidity was raised.
“Now how could Harris not have been found out?”
White said derisively.
The bartender leaned forward. “The doc told me,”
he said. “One night he said he wouldn’t tell anybody
how it could be done, but by closing time he was so
plastered he whispered to me that if I’d set up one for
him, he’d tell just me. I did and he said, ‘If you’ve ever
been to the eye doctor, and he’s put drops in your eyes,
chances are the eye drops were atropine, which makes
Buck gang
Indian murderers
The Rufus Buck gang, five semiliterate, half-black, halfCreek Indians, lasted only two weeks in the old Indian
territory of Arkansas-Oklahoma. While their crimes
were shocking, they are best remembered by the enemies they made.
Rufus Buck and his four confederates—Lewis
Davis, Sam Sampson, Maoma July and Luckey
Davis—were all under the age of 20 when they started
their depredations on July 28, 1895. A deputy marshal made the mistake of looking at them suspiciously
and died in a hail of rifle fire. Over the next 13 days
they carried out a series of holdups of stores and
ranches around Fort Smith and committed several
rapes, in one case threatening to drown a woman’s
babies unless she submitted. They held up a drummer,
or salesman, named Callahan and gave him a “sporting chance” to escape if he could outrun their fire. He
did, and in frustration, the gang turned their guns on
Callahan’s young black helper, killing him without the
same sporting offer.
Not only whites but Creek Indians as well were
incensed by the gang’s actions. On August 10 the five
were trapped in a grove outside of Muskogee where
they were dividing some loot. The posse that tracked
them down was composed of lawmen and a company
of Creek Light Horse (Indian police).
They were brought to trial before Hanging Judge
Parker, although the Creeks sorely wanted to try the
gang and mete out Indian justice. None of the gang or
their five appointed lawyers had much to say. One
attorney’s total summation was, “May it please the
court and the gentlemen of the jury, you have heard the
evidence. I have nothing to say.” The jury rendered its
verdict without even sitting down in the jury room, and
the five were duly hanged on July 1, 1896.
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BUFFALINO, Russell A.
professional. He victimized dishonest bankers, seeking
out those who had been accused of cheating customers.
He would pose as a depositor with some stocks that he
would leave for safekeeping and then would permit
himself to be “swindled” out of them after the banker
was fed false information that the stock had suddenly
ballooned in value.
As Buckminster once put it, “When I see a crook, I
see nothing but dollar signs.”
Buckminster’s greatest swindle of other swindlers
was a racket he worked with Kid Dimes, a leading
gimmick man who fixed roulette wheels for crooked
gambling houses. Buckminster was probably the
first man to “fix” a fixed roulette wheel. In 1918 the
Kid was busy rigging a wheel for the King George
Club, a crooked gambling joint in Chicago’s Loop
area populated by con men who steered suckers there
nightly.
The wheel Kid Dimes constructed allowed the
croupier to let the ball stop in any of three numbers he
desired, giving him complete control in picking red or
black, odd or even or the winning set of numbers. On
Buckminster’s instructions, Kid Dimes added another
button at the customer’s end of the table that would
cancel out the croupier’s choice and magnetize the ball
into the number 8 slot.
Outfitting himself in a 10-gallon hat, Buckminster
posed as a Texan looking for some gambling action and
soon was steered into the King George. With a con man
at each elbow, he began playing the wheel. Despite their
egging and his swagger about being a Texas oilman, he
made only small bets. The house let him win a few
while the con men kept working on him to set up a
killing. Finally, Fred rose to the bait. He plunked down
a roll of $10,000 on a bet covering numbers 7 through
12. The odds against Fred winning were 5-to-1. But of
course there was no danger of that. Then just before the
croupier rolled his roll, Fred tossed a fat $1,000 bill on
number 8 “for good luck.”
As the wheel spun, the croupier hit the secret button
that guaranteed the ball would stop in a safe number in
the 30s. At the same time, Fred pushed his button, canceling out the croupier’s action. The little ball came to
rest on number 8.
A loud cry went up in the place. Nobody had seen a
hit like that. Five-to-1 on the combination bet and 35to-1 on the number bet paid a total profit of $85,000.
The croupier was stunned. A hurried conference was
held, but Buckminster was relaxed. With so many suckers in the place, the house could do nothing but pay off.
Others pounded on his back, congratulating him. Fred
announced he hadn’t had enough and continued to play
further until he lost back $5,000. In the process, he also
removed the secret button from under the table. Then
After the execution a picture of Rufus Buck’s mother
was found in his cell. On the back of it he had written
this poem:
MY dreAM—
i,dremP’T, i, wAs, in, HeAven,
Among, THe Angels, FAir:
i,d, neAr, seen, none, so HAndsome,
THAT TWine, in goLden, HAir:
THeY, Looked, so, neAT,
And; sAng, so, sweeT
And, PLAY,d, THe, THe, goLden, HArp,
i, wAs, ABouT, To, Pick, An, Angel ouT,
And, TAke, Her, To, mY HeaRT:
BuT, THe, momenT, i, BegAn, To, PLea,
i,THougHT, oF, You, mY, Love,
THere, Was, none, i,d seen, so, BeAuTiFuLL,
On, eArTH, or, HeAven, ABove.
gooDl By, My Dear, Wife . . anD MoTHer
All. so. My sisTers.
RUFUS, BUCK
Youse. Truley
We are told by one of Hanging Judge Parker’s more
maudlin biographers that the poem “brought tears to
Parker’s dimming eyes.”
See also: ISAAC C. “HANGING JUDGE” PARKER.
Buckminster, Fred (1863–1943) con man
One of the most fabled of American con men, Fred
Buckminster started on the “bunco trail” while still a
teenager. He was to be a swindler the rest of his life,
completing his last prison term at the age of 75. In an
era of hard money, he stole a minimum of $3 million.
He worked for 20 years with another fabulous
fraud, Artist Yellow Kid Weil, together developing and
pulling off some of the most famous con games of all
time. They worked variations of the “fixed” prize fight
and horse race swindles, utilizing a “big store,” or
phony betting shop, to trim the suckers. Everyone in
the establishment other than the victim was a fake, betting and collecting on phony races. On some occasions
Buckminster and Weil would turn things around and
swindle a genuine betting parlor; one of them would
get the results of a race at the western Union office
while the other placed a bet before the hotel bookie
joint received the results. They swindled “Palmer
House” Ryan, operator of the Stockade, a horse-betting
establishment in the woods outside Chicago, by having
a railroad engineer toot out the winner in code as his
train passed the Stockade.
Buckminster discovered early in his career that the
easiest person to cheat was another thief, amateur or
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BULETTE, Julia
murder of Hoffa. Later he drew a long sentence for
murder and was regarded as the oldest top mafioso
behind bars.
he walked out, promising the con men to return the
next evening. Naturally, he did not come back.
The gambling house owners were furious and sent
for Kid Dimes to explain what went wrong. Kid Dimes
was a picture of innocence as he inspected the table. He
emerged from under the table holding a dead battery.
Shaking his head in disdain, he said: “Why don’t you
people change batteries at least once a week to be safe?
At a dime a throw you ought to even be able to afford
to change batteries every night.”
Over the next decade, whenever things cooled down,
Buckminster and Kid Dimes worked that racket on several gambling houses. Buckminster once estimated it
netted close to $750,000.
Despite his successes, Buckminster spent a great
many of his adult years in prison. He was acutely aware
of how greatly the odds favored the police over the
crook. “A copper can make a thousand mistakes but a
crook only one to get put away,” he said sadly when he
got out of prison the last time. At the age of 76, Buckminster retired from the rackets. In 1941 he did a series
of memoirs for a detective magazine. He raised one of
the checks given him for the use of his byline from
$100 to $1,000 and cashed it. The publishing house
took it philosophically and did not prosecute. Sending a
dying old man back to prison made little sense, and it
did seem a little late for Buckminster to alter his ways.
See also: JOSEPH “YELLOW KID” WEIL.
Buffalo Blacks murders
racist homicides
In the 1980s a rash of murders of blacks by one man
led to the commencement of explosive racial panic
and retribution, which may have been curbed only by
the solution of the crimes. Known as the “Buffalo
Blacks murders,” the deadly spree spread far beyond
that upstate New York city, sometimes as far as to
Georgia, and produced an atmosphere of bigotry
and animosity in areas considered relatively free of
such feelings. Eventually one man acknowledged
responsibility for 13 deaths, with others unsolved but
still perhaps connected with his rampage—or
inspired by it.
The killings started when a 14-year-old AfricanAmerican youth was shot outside a Buffalo supermarket by a white man. The next day a 32-year-old man
was also shot to death in a fast-food restaurant in a
Buffalo suburb. There was another killing that night,
and then a fourth victim fell in nearby Niagara Falls.
All had been shot with a .22-caliber weapon, and the
crimes were headlined as the work of the “.22-caliber
killer.”
Panic seized the black community, which complained about nonexistent police protection in their
areas. White motorists were pelted by blacks, a cross
was burned in Buffalo and fears grew that some paramilitary racist groups were behind the violence.
The killings resumed on October 8 when the body
of a 71-year-old black cabbie was found in the trunk of
his car, his heart ripped out. The next day another
black taxi driver was found by the Niagara River. His
heart was also ripped out.
On October 10 there was another frightening
occurrence. A white stranger appeared at the bedside of
a black patient recuperating from an illness in a Buffalo
hospital. He snarled, “I hate niggers.” The stranger
started to strangle the patient but was frightened off by
the appearance of a nurse. The patient’s description of
his assailant seemed to match those given by eyewitnesses in the .22-caliber killings.
There were no more attacks in the Buffalo area.
Then, on December 22, a series of knife slashings by
a white man of five blacks and one Hispanic occurred
in a brief period in New York City. Two survived the
onslaughts, but four of the victims died. The press
dubbed the attacker the “Midtown Slasher.” While
the police hunt was on in New York City, a 31-yearold black man was stabbed to death in Buffalo on
December 29. The next day the same fate befell a
Buffalino, Russell A. (1903– ) mob leader
Although labeled by the McClellan Committee as “one
of the most ruthless and powerful leaders of the Mafia
in the United States,” Russell A. Buffalino has remained
a prime example of the shadowy crime kingpin about
whom much is suspected but little proved. Centering his
activities around Pittstown Pa., Buffalino was long considered the Mafia “family boss” of organized crime in
much of that state. His activities reportedly also
extended into upstate New York and New Jersey, where
he was described as an active participant in labor racketeering and a behind-the-scenes power in Teamsters’
affairs. It is known that the government has long
regarded Buffalino as the prime suspect in ordering the
“disappearance” of ex-Teamster head Jimmy Hoffa. He
also reputedly was involved in peddling drugs and fencing stolen jewelry. Although he had a record of arrests
dating back to 1927 on such charges as receiving stolen
goods, petty larceny and conspiracy to obstruct justice,
he was not convicted of a serious offense until 1977,
when he was sentenced to four years for extortion after
threatening a man who owed $25,000 to a jeweler. The
evidence against Buffalino was uncovered as part of the
federal government’s efforts to link him to the possible
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BULETTE, Julia
Bug and Meyer Mob
black victim in Rochester. Over the next two days
there were three more attacks on blacks, but they survived.
By January 6 authorities declared that the stabbings
were “probably linked” to the .22-caliber killings. The
police now had a theory but no suspect. That changed
on January 20 when white private Joseph Christopher
was charged with the slashing of a black GI at Fort
Benning, Georgia. Christopher was from Buffalo and a
search of his former residence turned up .22-caliber
ammunition, a gun barrel and two sawed-off rifle
stocks. Investigators established that he had joined the
army in November, after the Buffalo shootings, and
was on leave from December 19 to January 4 and that
he arrived in New York by bus on December 20 just
before the slashings started.
In May Christopher, who was hospitalized with selfinflicted wounds, bragged to a nurse that he had been
involved in the September shootings. He was charged
with four of the shooting deaths, and in New York he
was indicted in one of the slashing murders and a nonfatal attack.
Christopher waived a jury trial in Buffalo and went
to trial before a judge. In December 1981 he was
found to be mentally incompetent to stand trial, but
that decision was later reversed and he was convicted
of three counts of first-degree murder and sentenced
to 60 years in prison. That finding was also reversed
on grounds the judge had improperly barred testimony indicating mental incompetence. However,
three months later a Manhattan jury rejected Christopher’s claim of insanity, and the terrors of the .22-caliber killings and the Midtown slashings reached their
legal conclusion.
buffaloing
early Lansky gang
Started in 1921 by Meyer Lansky, who was the brains,
and Bugsy Siegel, who provided the muscle, the Bug
and Meyer Mob was the forerunner of Murder, Inc.
Lansky and Siegel had been inseparable buddies
since childhood in New York City. Together they
formed a stolen car combine, in time supplying cars to
various gangs. As their gang of tough Jewish hoods
grew, Lansky began renting out drivers for the cars and
then hit men who might be needed. They also took on
the job of protecting bootleg gangs’ booze convoys,
occasionally hijacking shipments for another gang. The
Bug and Meyer Mob’s rates were high, and in time
some bootleggers figured out it would be cheaper simply to bring them into the operation and give them a
slice of the take.
Lucky Luciano, thanks to a friendship with Lansky
that was to last his lifetime, made good use of the mob.
The Bug and Meyer forces protected Luciano from
assassination until he was ready to move against the
“Mustache Petes” of the old Mafia forces. As the head
of a group of Jewish gunmen posing as police detectives, Siegel assassinated Salvatore Maranzano, thereby
making Luciano the number one Italian gangster in the
country. After that, the need for the Bug and Meyer
Mob ended, and all its members moved on to lucrative
positions with the newly established Luciano-Lansky
crime syndicate.
Years later when Lansky attempted to gain refuge
from U.S. law in Israel, he tried to paint the Bug and
Meyer Mob as just a collection of poor Jewish boys he
had organized to protect other Jews from the vicious
Irish gangs of the period. This revisionist version of history has little evidence to support it. The Bug and
Meyer Mob was a group of killers, the first of organized crime’s Murder, Inc. troops, and many of its
“graduates” played godfatherly roles when the Brooklyn version of that organization was established in the
1930s under Lepke and Anastasia.
See also: MEYER LANSKY, BENJAMIN “BUGSY” SIEGEL.
method of police brutality in the old West
Described several times in western lore as “the gentle
art of bending a revolver barrel around a lawbreaker’s
skull,” buffaloing was a common treatment given cowboys by vicious “townie” lawmen. Two confirmed
practitioners of the method were Wild Bill Hickok and
Wyatt Earp. This technique was rarely anything other
than pure brutality, since the victim was generally in
custody and disarmed when the “head creasing” took
place. The term evidently derived from the contemptuous attitude many lawmen had toward cowboys,
regarding them as so dimwitted that they were as easy
targets for a slugging as a buffalo was for a hunter’s
gun. Earp carried the practice to such excess that one
Texas cattleman put a $1,000 bounty on his head
because of his treatment of the rancher’s cowboys.
See also: GEORGE HOYT.
bugging
See WIRETAPPING AND BUGGING.
Bulette, Julia (1832–1867) madam and murder victim
Julia Bulette was the reigning madam of Virginia City,
Nev. during the town’s wide-open mining days, and her
murder in 1867 became a cause célèbre of the time. In a
larger sense, it marked the beginning of the taming of
the West.
It is hard to separate fact from legend when talking
about Julia. In later years it was believed that she was
buried in a solid silver coffin, that a parlor car on the
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Virginia and Truckee Railroad was named in her honor,
that she was enormously rich and that she charged as
much as $1,000 a night for her company. Probably only
the last two items were really true.
This beauty of Creole origin turned up in Virginia
City in 1859, when it was no more than a town of
clapboard houses and tents inhabited by 6,000 miners
and a handful of women. Julia immediately set up
business as a prostitute, starting to entertain men as
soon as a floor was laid for her cabin, while other
grateful miners went about putting up the walls and
roof. Julia’s enterprise flourished and within a year
she employed six other girls to handle business. She
opened a parlor house that became the town’s center
of elegance, one that offered French cuisine and wines
and had fresh flowers brought in daily from the West
Coast by Wells Fargo. Julia was made an honorary
member of the Virginia City Fire Co., the only woman
so honored, and on the Fourth of July, she led the
parade through town, riding a fire truck adorned with
roses.
Much beloved by miners, mine owners and railroad
tycoons, Julia was frequently pictured as the prostitute
with the Golden Heart. Her praises were often sung by
a young reporter for the Territorial Enterprise who had
just adopted the pen name of Mark Twain. During the
Civil War she was one of the biggest contributors to
fund-raisers for the Sanitation Fund, the Red Cross of
its day. When a fever epidemic hit the area, Julia turned
her pleasure palace into a hospital and pawned much of
her jewelry and furs to raise money to care for and feed
the sick. After the sickness passed, the establishment
returned to its fabled bagnio status.
During her early years in town, Julia always sat in
the orchestra of the local theater surrounded by a
swarm of admirers, but with the arrival of more virtuous ladies and gentlemen in Virginia City, she was
forced to sit in a box on the side, curtained off from
their cold stares. Civilization was coming to the West,
and Julia’s days as queen of Virginia City society were
clearly coming to an end.
On January 20, 1867 Julia was found strangled in
her bed, most of her valuables gone. She had been murdered by either a thief or a client.
The miners of Virginia City were outraged.
Quickly, suspect after suspect, 12 in all, were arrested,
questioned and finally released after proving their
innocence. Had one been judged guilty in those angry
days just following murder, a lynching would have
resulted, despite the attitudes of the more righteous
elements.
Unable to bring the culprit to justice, the men of Virginia City gave Julia Bulette the biggest funeral the
town had ever seen. All mines, mills and stores were
shut down and draped in black bunting. Led by the fire
company and the Metropolitan Brass Band, the cortege
paraded through town with hundreds of weeping men
in the line of march. We are told that the respectable
women of the town shuttered their windows for fear of
seeing their own husbands in the procession. After
Julia’s body was laid in the ground, the band marched
back to town, playing the rollicking “The Girl I Left
Behind Me.”
Several months after the murder, the culprit, John
Millain, described in the local press as a “trail louse,”
was captured following an attempt to rob and kill
another madam. Many of Julia’s jewels and other prize
possessions were found on him. Despite his claims that
others were responsible for the murder, Millain was
convicted after a quick trial.
The community attitude toward Millain was probably best reflected in the district attorney’s summation to
the jury:
Although this community has, in times past, seen blood
run like water, yet in most cases there was some cause
brought forward in justification of the deed, some pretext. But on the morning of the 20th of January last,
this community, so hardened by previous deeds of
blood, was struck dumb with horror by a deed which
carried dread to the heart of everyone—a deed more
fiendish, more horrible than ever before perpetrated on
this side of the snowy Sierra. Julia Bulette was found
lying dead in her bed, foully murdered, and stiff and
cold in her clotted gore. True, she was a woman of easy
virtue. Yet hundreds in this city have had cause to bless
her name for her many acts of kindness and charity. So
much worse the crime. That woman probably had
more real, warm friends in this community than any
other; yet there was found at last a human being so
fiendish and base as to crawl to her bedside in the dead
hour of the night, and with violent hands, beat and
strangle her to death—not for revenge, but in order to
plunder her of these very articles of clothing and jewelry we see before us. What inhuman, unparalled barbarity!
That philosophy reflected the thinking of virtually
the entire male population of Virginia City, but not that
of some of the women. During his confinement in jail,
many of the good ladies of the area virtually lionized
Millain, bringing him delicacies to fortify his spirits. A
woman’s committee went so far as to circulate a petition for commutation of his sentence. The Territorial
Enterprise was incensed by the effort, commenting:
“We believe that the man will be hung. If he is not, we
do not know where a fit subject for hanging is to be
found.”
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three Bummers and arrest them on some minor charge,
and since the outlaws knew they would be released
shortly, they offered no resistance, right up to the
moment when a noose was suddenly slipped around
their necks. After a few such multiple hangings, the
Bummers who hadn’t been hung fled and law and order
came to Auraria.
Bunch, Eugene “Captain Gerald” (?1850–1889)
train robber
A former schoolteacher who decided there was more
money in robbing trains, Eugene Bunch became the
notorious Captain Gerald, scourge of the railroads of
Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi during the 1880s.
He staged his first robbery in 1888, when he climbed
aboard a Southern Express train outside New Orleans
and quietly informed the express car guard that he
would blow his brains out if he didn’t open the safe.
Departing with $10,000 in currency and bonds, he told
the guard to inform the railroad line that Captain Gerald would be back. Wanted posters described this Captain Gerald as “soft-spoken.” After he gained notoriety
and a certain popularity with a few more robberies,
Bunch was described by the newspapers as being
“handsome and daring.”
Bunch moved on to Texas, where he became a society darling and extremely popular with the ladies. He
passed himself off as a Captain Bunch, a former newspaper editor from Virginia, and he spent an honest six
months running a local newspaper. Bunch also had a
torrid affair with the daughter of a former governor of
Texas. When the train-robbing urge hit him again,
Bunch ended up in Mississippi and the girl followed
him, dutifully awaiting his return from each holdup. By
now, however, Pinkerton detectives were closing in on
Captain Gerald and had even connected him with Captain Bunch.
In 1889 Bunch ceased his lone wolf operations and
recruited five gunfighters to form a gang. One was captured and betrayed the gang’s hiding place on a small
island in a Mississippi swamp. Bunch and two of his
gang were ambushed while they were eating. His two
confederates were shot before they could even rise from
the table. Attempting to make a run for it, Bunch was
shot dead in a spirited gun battle. The revelations about
Captain Bunch, needless to say, sent shock waves
through Texas society.
Ted Bundy struck a “Dracula” pose as the judge left the
courtroom following a jury recommendation that Bundy
be sentenced to die in the electric chair.
After Millain was sentenced to be hanged on April
24, 1868, so many people wished to attend the event
that it had to be shifted to a great natural ampitheater one mile to the north of the city. On that day all
the mines on the Comstock shut down once again; it
was the second major holiday Julia Bulette had provided.
Bummers
western gang
The Bummers were an organized band of outlaws who
robbed, raped and terrorized Auraria, Colorado Territory from about 1855 to 1860, much as the Plummer
gang did a few years later in Bannack, Montana Territory.
In 1860 the Bummers were wiped out by a vigilante
committee of just 10 townsmen in alliance with the
local sheriff, who made no pretense about observing
legal niceties. The sheriff whose name went unrecorded
by the chroniclers of the day, would approach two or
Bundy, Ted (1947–1989) the charming human monster
The standard description of the average serial killer is
that he has, especially in the eyes of neighbors, the
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behavior patterns of a “creep.” In some atypical
instances, however, the serial killer comes across differently. Ted Bundy certainly belongs to this “different”
class. As one journalist noted: “The moment he stepped
into the courtroom in Utah . . . those who saw him for
the first time agreed with those who had known him
for all of his twenty-eight years. There must have been
some terrible mistake.”
It was no mistake, as Robert Keppel, an expert who
worked on serial killer investigations, noted: “Bundy
[later] said he had a Ph.D. in serial killing. He taught
us that a serial killer can appear to be absolutely normal, the guy next door. It’s very simple. He liked to
kill.”
Ted Bundy was to leave a scar on the American psyche from 1974 to 1989, when he was finally executed
in Florida. His first batch of kills, eight of them, started
in 1974, as young women disappeared from Seattle
streets. They had been lured into a beige Volkswagen
by a presentable young man named Ted. A police computer search turned up nearly 3,000 owners of lightcolored Volkswagens in Seattle, and Bundy’s name
cropped up among them. But while many were questioned and checked on, Bundy was not. Why should he
have been? He was of impeccable character, with
numerous good points:
Colorado became convinced Bundy had murdered
Caryn Campbell, a nurse who had been vacationing in
Aspen almost a year earlier. Campbell had been missing for five weeks before her body turned up in a
snowbank. She had been raped, bludgeoned to death,
and then ravaged almost beyond recognition by wild
animals.
Bundy was extradited to Colorado but was never to
stand trial for the Campbell murder. Instead he escaped
twice. The first break occurred when Bundy was alone
in a room in the county courthouse in Aspen. He
jumped from a second-story window and disappeared,
not to be recaptured until a week later. Although Bundy
was charged with a vile crime, his exploit made him a
folk hero in some quarters, a perverse public reaction
expressed on future occasions. Six months later, still
awaiting trial, Bundy outwitted his jailers again, this
time wiggling through a lighting panel in the ceiling of
his cell. The opening was only 18 inches wide, and in
order to make good his escape, Bundy had managed to
lose 35 pounds.
While authorities pressed their search for the fugitive, Bundy made his way across the country to Tallahassee, Fla. Using a phony name and stolen cars and
credit cards, he moved into a rooming house on the
outskirts of Florida State University. The lodging was
just four blocks from the Chi Omega sorority house.
Less than two weeks after arriving in Florida, Bundy
invaded the sorority house. He was dressed in black
and carried a heavy wooden club. Two co-eds were to
die in the house. They were found to have been gnawed
badly, but unlike Campbell, they bore bite marks not
from wild animals but from their wild human attacker.
Particularly gnawed up was Lisa Levy, who bore teeth
marks on one of her breasts and on her buttocks. She
had been beaten, bitten, and strangled in her bed.
Another sorority member, Margaret Bowman, met the
same grisly fate. The bite marks, investigators realized,
were appalling evidence of the killer’s psychotic fervor
at the moment of the kills.
Levy and Bowman were not the only victims in the
Chi Omega house that night. Another co-ed was also
attacked and beaten unconscious, but she recovered.
Meanwhile, Bundy moved on like a wraith in the night,
and six blocks farther on, a young actress was beaten
and raped in her bed. She also survived but could offer
no description of her attacker.
During the ensuing investigation, several residents in
Bundy’s rooming house were suspected of the killings,
although Bundy was not. Evidently, he was considered
a cut above the rest. At the time, the fact that Bundy
had very crooked teeth went unnoticed.
Three weeks after the sorority house invasion,
Bundy stole a white van and drove to Jacksonville,
• He had worked as a counselor at a crisis clinic.
• He had become an assistant director of the Seattle
Crime Prevention Advisory Commission.
• He had written a rape prevention pamphlet for
women.
• He had gotten a letter of commendation from the
governor of Washington for once capturing a
purse snatcher in a shopping mall.
Bundy was very active in the Republican Party and
won the title of Mr. Up-and-Coming Republican. A former state party chairman who knew Bundy well and
recruited him as his assistant said: “If you can’t trust
someone like Ted Bundy, you can’t trust anyone—your
parents, your wife, anyone.”
Presumably, Seattle lost a fine resource when Bundy
left the area and moved on to Salt Lake City and
became a Mormon. The killings followed him.
Bundy’s first arrest came in October 1975 when a
19-year-old woman identified him in a police lineup as
the man who had tried to handcuff her and pull her
into his car one night in Murray, Utah. Bundy had
been picked up for a traffic violation, and when handcuffs were found in the car, police thought back to the
attempted kidnapping of the young woman. Bundy
was convicted in the case and given a one- to 15-year
prison sentence. While the case was pending, police in
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where he attempted to abduct a 14-year-old girl. He
was forced to drive off when the girl’s brother
appeared. The brother and sister were quick enough to
make a note of the van’s license plate.
Three days later, 12-year-old Kimberly Leach disappeared from her Lake City junior high school in the
middle of the day. Her corpse was not found for two
months. When it was discovered, Kimberly was
described as having been the victim of “homicidal violence to the neck region.”
By now, police in Washington State, Utah, Colorado
and Florida were coming to grasp that a single killer
was responsible for at least 18 murders in their jurisdictions. Bundy had been the prime suspect in the
Campbell murder in Colorado, and he was now being
sought for many others as well. He moved on to Pensacola, driving yet another stolen VW and unaware
that the FBI had just listed him on its Ten Most
Wanted list. The car Bundy was driving was recognized by police as a stolen vehicle, and he was seized
when he tried to flee on foot. At first, the police did
not know whom they had caught, as Bundy gave a
false name. But they did know that he was involved
somehow in other cases: They found the plates from
the van in which the 14-year-old Jacksonville girl had
nearly been abducted.
Thirty-six hours after Bundy’s arrest, he was identified. The authorities had hit the jackpot.
Florida law officials charged Bundy with the murders of Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman. An impression made of Bundy’s teeth showed that his crooked
bite marks matched perfectly those found on Lisa
Levy’s buttocks.
Bundy pleaded not guilty to the Chi Omega murders
and once again was perversely celebrated by those with
a twisted and maudlin viewpoint when, as an ex–law
student, he conducted part of his own defense. It took
the jury just seven hours to find Bundy guilty on a variety of counts. The teeth bite evidence was the most
damning, but in addition, a hair in the panty hose mask
worn during the attack on the actress the same night as
the sorority house killings was found to be indistinguishable from Bundy’s.
When asked if he had anything to say before sentencing, Bundy, with tears in his eyes, declared: “I find
it somewhat absurd to ask for mercy for something I
did not do. The sentence is not a sentence of me. It’s a
sentence of someone who is not standing here today.”
Bundy’s mother was quoted as saying, “There will be
appeal after appeal after appeal.”
Even the judge exhibited a certain sympathy for
Bundy when passing the death sentence, saying: “Take
care of yourself, young man. I say that to you sincerely.
It’s a tragedy to this court to see such a total waste of
humanity. You’d have made a good lawyer. I bear you
no animosity, believe me. But you went the wrong way,
partner. Take care of yourself.” On a radio talk show
one commentator wondered if the judge would have
been pleased to have Bundy give his daughter driving
lessons.
A year later, Bundy was convicted of the murder of
Kimberly Leach, whose body had been found halfburied near a state park. The van he was driving at the
time contained leaves and soil matching samples near
the burial site. Also, bloodstains in the van matched the
blood type of the murdered girl.
There were a number of appeals put forward by
Bundy. In the process, he accumulated a large body of
supporters, including a number of lawyers and journalists who had followed the trials.
The string ran out at last for Bundy in 1989. In a
final interview, Bundy confessed to 28 additional murders. On the night of his electrocution, there were 100
newspeople circulating the crowd outside the prison. It
was one of a few cases where those favoring execution
far outnumbered those opposed. Signs raised in celebration bore messages such as “Buckle up, Bundy, it’s
the law” and “roast in peace.”
Buntline, Ned
See EDWARD Z. C. JUDSON.
Burdell, Dr. Harvey (1811–1857) murder victim
The murder of Dr. Harvey Burdell was New York’s
most sensational case during the 1850s, marked by too
many suspects and too many motives, and ending with
the public paying P. T. Barnum a fortune to view a baby
whose claim to fame was not having been fathered by
the late dentist Burdell.
In 1857 Dr. Burdell, at the age of 46, was no pillar of
righteousness in the community. When the police
relayed news of Burdell’s murder to his own brother,
Theo, the man declared, “I am not surprised, for he
was a dirty”—here even the more sensational of the
city’s press concealed the words— “... .. . ..... !”
As the police pressed their investigation, they found
that no one seemed to have a good word to say about
the departed wealthy dentist. He was described as a sly
scoundrel, an accomplished thief, a slick cheat, a
welsher, a cheap swindler, a liar “whose word was not
worth a cough,” a man who quarreled with everyone
including his patients. One redoubtable Irishman even
insisted Burdell had been a secret agent in the pay of
the British government. And why not? Anything was
possible when speaking of a man who could woo a girl,
go to the church to marry her, pull her father aside and
say the wedding was off unless he was paid $20,000,
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BURKE, Elmer “Trigger”
Mrs. Cunningham became a prime suspect when she
suddenly laid claim to a widow’s portion of Burdell’s
estate, stating she had married him secretly a short time
before his murder. She even produced a rather senile
minister to attest to the marriage. Yes, the minister said,
he had married the woman to a Harvey Burdell. But he
wasn’t at all sure if this Burdell fellow resembled the
deceased. In fact, the minister allowed that the groom
looked a little like roomer Eckel.
The coroner decided there wasn’t all that strong a
case against any of the three alone, so he ruled all three
were involved in the murder and should be charged.
The prosecutor in the case was A. Oakley Hall, a district attorney who was later to become the most rapacious and, according to some, the most dishonest
district attorney in the history of New York City,
known as O. K. Haul. But at this stage of the game,
Hall was merely out to make a name for himself so he
could pave the way for his future misdeeds.
Mrs. Cunningham was to be tried first, under Hall’s
plan, and her supposed confederates later. One reason
for this was that doctors had found Burdell had been
stabbed by a left-handed person—and Mrs. Cunningham, or Mrs. Burdell, was left-handed. But aside from
that detail and motive and opportunity, there was little
direct evidence linking the woman with the crime.
All the while the district attorney was presenting
his case, the defendant sat in a chair demurely knitting little blue and pink things. Finally, Hall had had
enough and he protested this bizarre behavior. Emma’s
lawyer, Henry L. Clinton, a descendant of a former
vice-president of the United States, defended his client’s
action. Mrs. Burdell—as he insisted on calling her—
was pregnant and would soon be giving birth to the
deceased’s child.
In the end, that as much as anything caused the
jury to bring in a not-guilty verdict. With the woman
free, the prosecution gave up efforts to convict the
two men. The men quickly disappeared, but Mrs.
Cunningham-Burdell stayed much in evidence, pressing her claim to the Burdell fortune. Now that she was
with child, she stood to inherit virtually the entire
estate. Her pregnancy, however, had an odd quality to
it. She seemed to grow bigger, but she would not permit her doctor to examine her. She was, she said, of
the old, old school, and no male hands would ever
touch her body.
Finally, the doctor decided he was being used and
went to the district attorney to say he suspected the
woman was stuffing her dress with cushions. The
authorities put a watch on her and soon found she was
dickering to buy a new-born baby. She offered a young
unmarried girl about to give birth $1,000 if she would
slip her baby right over to the Burdell home. The girl
and indeed call the wedding off if no agreement in principle was reached.
Dr. Burdell was paid back in full by his murderer; he
died in painful and lingering fashion. He had been
stabbed 12 times, and sometime during that ritual, in
between or afterward, the murderer or murderess
paused to strangle him for good measure. He was
found in the master bedroom of his Bond Street home
by a young boy who came each morning to make a fire
in the fireplace. The boy had trouble pushing open the
door to the bedroom, and the obstruction turned out to
be Burdell’s body. The place was spattered with blood.
There were three other people living in the Burdell
mansion. One was a comely widow, Mrs. Emma Cunningham, who, on a sublet deal with the dentist, rented
out rooms to boarders. She was about the most distressed person the police found. When informed of the
crime, she shrugged and said, “Well those things happen.”
A bachelor businessman, John J. Eckel, who rented a
room in the house, was not quite as heartbroken. In
fact, a contemporary historian insisted he danced a jig
when he learned of Burdell’s passing. The other tenant
was George Snodgrass, who was the son of a Presbyterian minister, a shy and effeminate-looking youth, broke
into a big smile when told about the murder and supposedly went out to celebrate, got drunk and tried to
attack a hulking longshoreman. Snodgrass was to
become a prime suspect after the police found various
female undergarments, which he evidently liked to
wear, secreted in his rooms. This struck the lawmen as
somehow highly significant in a murder investigation.
But there were other major suspects. Dr. Burdell was
known to owe a bundle to Honest John Burke, the
crookedest gambler in town. Honest John took the loss
of his money quite well when informed of his patsy’s
death. As a matter of fact, he ordered drinks set up for
everyone in his favorite tavern, including the officers
who brought him the tidings. A rich old Connecticut
Yankee, Spawl, now living in New York, had much the
same reaction as Honest John, although he didn’t spend
any money to exhibit his joy. Dr. Burdell had also pursued his daughter, Miss Lucy Spawl, until Spawl sent
him away. Burdell had become so incensed that he beat
up the old man.
Unfortunately for the police, Honest John, Spawl
and several other suspects all had alibis for the time of
the murder. This left authorities with the three persons
living in the Burdell mansion, Cunningham, Eckel and
Snodgrass. And in fact, since the house was shut tight
from the inside and the fireplace boy had his own key
to get in, the murder certainly appeared to be an inside
job. If it hadn’t been, then how had the killer entered
and left?
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BURKE, William
took the money, and as soon as her baby was born, it
was sent over to the alleged Mrs. Burdell, who planned
to inform her doctor that a little event had happened
during the night. But the police were watching and
stormed into the bedroom of the bogus mother-to-be
and arrested her.
Many people thought that since Mrs. Cunningham
wasn’t pregnant, it somehow meant she had indeed
murdered Burdell. But the fact was she had been
acquitted of that charge. Fraud charges were brought
against her but they were later dropped. The Burdell
case was to remain unsolved, although for many years
the press continued to present various theories. The
Police Gazette came out with an exclusive that the
murderer was a man named Lewis, who had just been
executed in New Jersey for another murder. Lewis had
told the Gazette that he had done the job by mistake,
meaning to kill another Burdell.
Whoever did kill Dr. Burdell, now firmly established as New York’s favorite murder victim, never
paid for his sins, but at least the guilty party did not
gain financially from his or her crime. The only one to
make out well moneywise was the bogus Burdell baby.
Her mother, already $1,000 ahead on the deal, rented
her out for $25 a week to P. T. Barnum, who displayed the tot at his museum for all the eager New
Yorkers wishing to see what a baby impostor looked
like.
man named George Goll for the job but released him
for insufficient evidence. Via the grapevine, Burke
informed Goll that he did not believe the accusation
against him. When he got out of prison, he found Goll
on a Manhattan street and put two bullets into the
back of his head.
Burke also committed a number of other murders
mostly on paid assignments but occasionally gratis. He
apparently killed Edward “Poochy” Walsh on July 23,
1952 out of nothing more than personal pique. He
entered a bar where Poochy was holding forth, stuck a
revolver in his face and blew his victim away with three
slugs. “Don’t call me Trigger no more,” he said. “Call
me Killer.”
For the rest of Trigger Burke’s days before his arrest,
he was a wanted man, but he remained readily available to the underworld for hit duty. In June 1954 Burke
was assigned to eradicate Joseph “Specs” O’Keefe,
reputedly a wayward member of the gang that had
pulled the $2.7 million Brinks robbery and believed to
be about ready to provide the police with details and
names of those involved. It was one of the few jobs
Burke messed up. In a wild machine-gun spree through
the streets of Boston, Burke loosed blast after blast at
the fleeing O’Keefe but managed only to wound him.
O’Keefe survived and identified his attacker. Trigger
Burke became the most hunted outlaw of the era for all
of 24 hours.
Contrary to expectations, Burke did not leave
Boston; he apparently had more assignments. The next
day another hoodlum, George O’Brien, was found
fatally wounded just three miles from the scene of the
Burke-O’Keefe shooting spree. And that evening a
Boston detective arrested Burke “on suspicion.” Burke
looked at him and said, “You’ve made a better pinch
than you think, copper.”
Burke was clapped in the 104-year-old Suffolk
County Prison on Charles Street and remained there
until he was able to escape three months later with the
help of two gunmen who broke into the prison
through a carriage shed and two unused emergency
doors.
Burke’s escape electrified the nation, but his freedom
was short lived. A year later, he was captured by the
FBI in Charleston, S.C. while waiting for a bus. He was
unarmed and offered no resistance. Burke’s attorneys
resisted efforts to extradite him to New York for the
Walsh killing, insisting he go instead to Massachusetts
to face charges of carrying a machine gun and breaking
out of jail. New York won out. On January 9, 1958
Burke went to the electric chair, after a last meal of a
giant steak followed by a half-dozen cigars. He spent
his remaining hours going over 144 newspaper clip-
Burke, Elmer “Trigger” (1917–1958) hit man
In the 1950s the most reliable hit man used by the
underworld was Elmer “Trigger” Burke, who often
said there were only two things in this world that he
loved—money and machine guns. In trouble as a youth,
he was advised by his older hoodlum brother, Charlie,
to join the army in order to avoid being sent to prison
for the robbery of a New York City grocery. Fighting in
Europe during World War II, he distinguished himself,
earning his nickname of Trigger by storming a German
machine-gun nest and killing eight enemy soldiers.
When his lieutenant reached the scene, he found Burke
still blazing away and told him to stop because “those
bastards are dead.”
“You’re goddamn right they are,” Burke replied,
slinging his weapon.
When Burke returned to his native Hell’s Kitchen in
New York City, he again moved in mob circles and
through his brother’s good offices became a freelance
killer for a number of gangs. These killings he handled
with precision, but he proved less adept at committing
his own robberies. He was sentenced to two years at
Sing Sing for a liquor store holdup. While Burke was in
prison, his brother was murdered. The police nabbed a
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BURNS, William J.
at Trenton. Heading Burns’ defense was Clarence Darrow, and the hearing soon turned into a trial of Georgia’s penal system. Described in chilling detail was the
“sweat box,” a barrel with iron staves on top, in which
“insolent” prisoners were kept, often with near-fatal
results. It was revealed that prison cages built for 18
men actually housed 34 convicts. Bolstered with
endorsements by several other governors, Gov. Moore
rejected the extradition request. Burns was a free man
inside New Jersey. Still Georgia did not cease its efforts
to recapture its most publicized fugitive. In 1941, Gov.
Eugene Talmadge tried again to win custody of Burns,
citing improvements made in the penal system. These
claims were countered by penal reformers who said the
changes were in name only, not in fact.
In 1945, Gov. Ellis Arnall finally ended the chain
gang system and invited Burns to return to Georgia. He
did, and Arnall immediately commuted his sentence to
time served. A free man at last, Burns returned to his
New Jersey home and thereafter continued to lend support to penal reform movements until his death 10
years later.
See also: CHAIN GANGS.
pings of his exploits. Burke advised the warden to preserve them all “for history’s sake.”
See also: BRINK’S ROBBERY.
Burke, William (1870–?) “Philadelphia’s Jean Valjean”
William Burke was one of the most tragic figures in
American criminality, whose fate earned him the title of
Philadelphia’s Jean Valjean. Burke did not, however,
enjoy the final happiness of his fictional counterpart. In
his early years in Boston Burke had a different nickname, the Prince of Flatworkers, which he had earned
by robbing an estimated 300 to 400 houses and apartments in that city. Finally caught, he served seven years
in the Charlestown state prison under another name.
Upon completion of his sentence Burke settled in
Philadelphia, where he lived an honest life and saved up
enough to open a cigar store. He married and in 1911
was elected to the city council on a reform slate. Burke
might have continued his upright life with his past
shrouded in secrecy had not a former fellow convict
from Charlestown recognized him. The man blackmailed Burke to the point that he finally resigned from
office and confessed his criminal record, retiring then to
a bitter obscurity.
Burns, William J. (1858–1932) detective
Few detectives in history have led as checkered a career
as William J. Burns, founder of the detective agency
that bears his name. He was also the “star of the United
States Secret Service” and later the discredited head of
the Bureau of Investigation, forerunner of the present
FBI. Both in government and private work, Burns may
have been the most politicized detective the country has
ever seen. Samuel Gompers, the head of the American
Federation of Labor, regarded him as an enemy of
labor, a frame-up man and faker of evidence. Yet during their head-on clash over the 1910 bombing of the
Los Angeles Times building, it was Gompers who lost
face when the McNamara brothers, two labor officials,
were convicted of the murderous plot. Burns emerged
to great accolades, with the New York Times referring
to him as “the greatest detective certainly, and perhaps
the only really great detective, the only detective of
genius whom the country has produced.”
Similarly the great attorney, Clarence Darrow, who
also tangled with Burns in the McNamara case, came
within an eyelash of being sent to prison on a charge of
jury tampering. But during his career Burns himself
narrowly missed being imprisoned on such charges as
kidnapping and jury tampering, once being lucky to
escape with a mere fine against his agency for keeping
under surveillance the jurors in the trial of oil man
Harry Sinclair. Throughout his career, Burns served the
establishment, or at least those elements within the
Burns, Robert Elliott (1890–1965) chain gang fugitive
Author of I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang,
Robert Elliott Burns, through his book and a subsequent movie about his life, was responsible for the
exposure and eventually the end of the inhumane Georgia chain gang system.
Out of a job as a World War I veteran, Burns,
together with two strangers, burglarized $5.80 from a
grocery store. For this crime he was sentenced to six-to10 years on the chain gang. In June 1922 Burns made a
dramatic escape and was not located until 1930, by
which time he had risen to a high post on a magazine in
Chicago. Burns voluntarily returned to Georgia after
being promised by state officials that he would get a
pardon. Instead, he was returned to the chain gang.
Burns then did what no other prisoner had done—he
escaped the chain gang a second time, assuming a double life in New Jersey. During this period Burns began
writing magazine articles describing his personal story
and exposing chain gang conditions. These articles
were expanded into a book, and in 1932 a movie about
his prison life starring Paul Muni evoked much public
sympathy.
Georgia officials, however, were outraged. Finally
locating Burns later that year, they demanded his extradition. Gov. A. Harry Moore of New Jersey held a special hearing in the Senate Chamber of the State House
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BURR-Hamilton duel
establishment he deemed proper. Generally, this meant
those with a strong antilabor bias and pro–Eastern
Republican leanings.
Few could quarrel with Burns’ early detective career
as a member of the U.S. Secret Service, when he cracked
many important counterfeiting cases, especially the
Bredell-Taylor ring. In 1905 Burns was put in charge of
investigating the great western land fraud, in which
tens of thousands of acres of public lands were illegally
fenced or bought under false representations. Through
Burns’ efforts Oregon senator John H. Mitchell and
Oregon representative John N. Williamson, both Republicans, were convicted and right-wing Republicans never
forgave Burns. Years later, considerable evidence indicated that some of the investigations and prosecutions
were so corrupt and politically tainted that many
regarded them as worse than the charges brought against
those eventually convicted.
In 1906 Burns left government service to conduct an
investigation of corruption in San Francisco, one that
would ultimately wreck the machine and send Boss Abe
Ruef to prison. Later, he cracked the Los Angeles Times
bombing, which many regarded as the greatest bit of
detective work in American history, by tracing bomb
fragments to the McNamara brothers. However, Burns’
stunning accomplishment in the case became somewhat
tarnished when, some say at the instigation of Times
owner Harrison Gray Otis, he attempted to prove the
McNamara’s lawyer, Clarence Darrow, had attempted
to bribe two jurors. The charge was a bit far fetched
considering Darrow was at the time preparing to have
the McNamara brothers plead guilty in order to save
them from execution.
The move failed when Darrow, taking over his own
case in summation, made a speech lasting a day and a
half that has been cited as matching the eloquence of
William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” oration.
“Burns!” Darrow sneered throughout. “Burns with his
pack of hounds. The steel trust with its gold. All
arrayed against me. I stood alone for the poor and
weak. Will it be the gray dim walls of San Quentin? My
life has been all too human, but I have been a friend to
the helpless. I have cried their cause.”
Near the conclusion, Darrow cried: “Oh, you wild
insane members of the steel trust. . . . Oh, you bloodhounds of detectives who do your masters’ evil bidding.
Oh, you district attorneys. You know not what you
do.”
Right then, it was said, Burns knew he was beaten.
The jury came in with a not-guilty verdict after only
one ballot. Another trial for the alleged bribing of the
second juror ended in a hung jury, and the local authorities, Otis and Burns gave up their attempt to jail Darrow.
Despite this defeat, Burns’ detective agency was
flourishing. He had succeeded in wresting the plum of
the profession, the contract with the American Bankers
Association for the protection of its 11,000 member
banks, from the much larger and more powerful
Pinkertons. Burns’ disdain for the Pinkertons was limitless. He regarded his competitors as cowardly, taking
on only “safe” cases and never going against local public opinion. To Burns’ credit, he was willing to buck
public opinion in the case of a young Jewish businessman in Georgia, Leo Frank, who was convicted of raping and murdering a 14-year-old white girl, Mary
Phagan, and sentenced to death. During their investigation Burns and one of his assistants were almost
lynched by a mob. Because of evidence uncovered by
the detectives, Frank’s death sentence was commuted,
but he was later kidnapped from his prison cell and
hanged.
From 1912 through the war years, Burns compiled
an impressive record of uprooting political corruption
in a number of states, leading to indictments of many
lawmakers and political figures. In 1913 he exposed
bribe taking in Canada in the Quebec Legislature.
In 1921 Burns was appointed to a position that
should have been the capstone of his career, head of
the Bureau of Investigation, then an organization
that was inept at best and corruption-ridden at
worst. It cannot be said that Burns improved matters;
in fact, the bureau became overrun with agents urged
on Burns by the very figures who were to become
involved in the Teapot Dome Scandal. About the
only laudable accomplishment of the bureau under
Burns was an effective prosecution of the Ku Klux
Klan, which Burns had come to hate in the aftermath
of the Leo Frank case. However, his famed ability to
detect fraud and graft failed him completely as the
“Ohio Gang” took over during the Harding administration. Burns apparently saw nothing while corrupt
friends of Harding looted the Veteran’s Bureau and
the Alien Property Claims Bureau. The former bloodhound failed to uncover Secretary of the Interior
Albert Fall’s blatant selling off of the Teapot Dome
and Elk Hills government oil reserves to the highest
bribers.
In 1924 Burns resigned in disgrace and was succeeded by a young assistant, J. Edgar Hoover. Burns
remained on the front pages as head of his private
agency; he was accused in 1927 of jury tampering in
the acquittal of oilman Harry Sinclair, charged as one
of the bribers of Secretary of the Interior Fall. Burns
had accepted an assignment from Sinclair to keep the
jurors under surveillance. An angry federal judge ruled
that the jury shadowing was itself a form of jury tampering.
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BUTCHER, Jake
Burns’ angry response, which perhaps all too well
summarized his own career, was, “My men didn’t do
anything for Harry Sinclair that I haven’t done for the
federal government hundreds of times!”
Burns died in April 1932.
See also: LEO FRANK, LAND FRAUDS, LOS ANGELES
TIMES BOMBING, GASTON BULLOCK MEANS, EARL ROGERS.
glamorous and lately lamented outlaw named Sam
Bass. In any event, they went about robbing trains
until they became the subject of ballads, especially
after the brothers made a habit of robbing the same
train at the same spot on a number of occasions. In
February 1888 the Burrows were captured, but Rube
broke jail and escaped. With an accomplice named
Lewis Waldrip, who may have been Leonard Brock,
Rube spent most of the next several months trying to
break Jim Burrow out of his Little Rock, Ark. prison,
but his brother died there from consumption in
December. Forced eastward by his pursuers, Rube
Barrow continued his train-robbing activities in
Florida and Alabama. In 1890 he pulled one of his
lone wolf jobs. As he confidently strode to his horse
to ride off once more into the darkness, a Southern
Express detective took his head off with a shotgun
blast.
Burr-Hamilton duel
The most famous duel in this country’s history was
between Alexander Hamilton and Vice President Aaron
Burr on the banks of the Hudson River at Weehawken,
N.J. on July 11, 1804.
There had been a festering hatred between the two
men since 1801, when Hamilton refused to join in the
conspiracy to keep Thomas Jefferson from the presidency and persuaded a number of key Federalist congressmen to choose Jefferson in the runoff against
Burr, whom Hamilton called “a cold-blooded Catiline.” At the signal, Burr fired, and Hamilton rumbled
forward mortally wounded. Hamilton’s gun had discharged into the air, and many of his supporters
claimed he had deliberately fired high. A coroner’s jury
called for Burr’s arrest, but he fled to the South. After
the duel, Hamilton’s reputation was enhanced, while
Burr became an outcast. A typical poem attacking him
read:
Burton, Mary (?–?) false informer
An 18th-century prostitute and thief named Mary Burton had a more chilling record as an informer than
even the girls involved in the Salem witchcraft hysteria.
Finding herself in prison in 1741, Burton, also known
as Margaret Kelly, sought and won her freedom by
concocting a story about an imaginary “Negro criminal plot” in New York City. Because blacks, slave and
free, comprised a large segment of the population, any
talk of concerted action by them provoked fears on the
part of the whites. Given that climate, the general rule
was that any testimony by a white woman, regardless
of her character or motive, was sufficient to convict a
black. Mary Burton also found that every new accusation she made added to her prestige. As a result, 71
blacks were transported away, 20 were hanged and 14
others were burned at the stake. As was the case in the
Salem executions, the general dignity with which many
of the condemned died finally sparked doubt in the
public’s mind, and Mary Burton’s charges were later
simply ignored.
Oh Burr, oh Burr, what hast thou done,
Thou hast shooted dead great Hamilton!
You hid among a bunch of thistle
And shooted him dead with a great hoss pistol!
Burrow, Rube (1856–1890) train robber and murderer
Reuben Houston Burrow, the leader of the notorious
Burrow gang of the 1880s, developed the same sort of
mystique that Jesse James enjoyed. The balladeers and
legend-makers, for instance, celebrated the time Rube
and brother Jim drove off the miserly banker out to
foreclose on a widow’s mortgage; of course, they also
robbed him for their own gain.
A daring criminal, Rube several times pulled off one
of the most difficult of criminal endeavors: robbing a
train single-handed. Generally, however, he worked
with a gang that included his brother, James, another
pair of brothers, Will and Leonard Brock, and various
other “hard cases.”
The Burrow brothers were born in Alabama and
eventually moved to Texas, where they led rather
tranquil existences as small farmers for about 14
years before suddenly turning to crime, perhaps
because of tales they had heard about a so-called
Burts, Matthew (1878–1925) train robber
A minor member of the notorious Burt Alvord–Billy
Stiles outlaw band, Burts deserves an entry of his own
since, thanks to a cunning strategem by law officers, he
was responsible for the gang’s complete breakup.
Burts was suspected of being one of the robbers
who held up the Southern Pacific train near Cochise,
Arizona Territory on September 9, 1899 but it couldn’t be proved. Constable Grover of Pearce devised
what might be called a reverse undercover operation:
he hired Burts as a deputy. Totally unsuspecting any
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BUTTERWORTH, Mary
ulterior motive, the dim-witted Burts, got rip-roarin’
drunk with Grover and his cronies and slowly spilled
out details of the robbery until he had made what
amounted to a complete confession and had named all
the other robbers. With Alvord and Stiles identified,
the days of their criminal enterprises were numbered.
For being an unwitting informer, Burts was rewarded
with a prison term instead of the rope. He served his
time and then moved on to California, where he
engaged in the cattle business. Despite years of honest
living, Burts still died violently; he was shot dead in
1925 in a grazing rights dispute with a neighboring
rancher.
See also: BURT ALVORD, BILLIE STILES.
Joe Valachi, the celebrated informer, marveled at
Buster’s shooting ability, which was equally masterful with machine guns, pistols or shotguns. Buster
was the main shotgunner in the shooting of two
top Masseria aides: Alfred Mineo and Steve Ferrigno,
cut down in the Bronx on November 5, 1930. After
the hit he and the two other gunmen with him scattered, but a police officer cut him off just a block
from the murder scene. Excitedly, Buster told him there
had been a shooting down the street. The officer raced
that way and Buster the other. Another of Buster’s victims was James Catania, alias Joe Baker, who was
killed on February 3, 1931 as he stood on a street corner talking to his wife. Buster had been loathe to do the
shooting in front of the victim’s wife but couldn’t resist
such an open target. He was proud of the fact that
every shot hit the victim and none the woman.
Buster lived through the Castellammarese War and
the victory of Maranzano, but when Maranzano died
in a 1931 plot that brought Lucky Luciano to real
power, Buster’s days were numbered, probably because
he was not respectful toward the Mafia captains. He
was amused by, rather than in awe of, the structure
and rituals of the Mafia. In September 1931 the nonbeliever was killed in a poolhall on the Lower East
Side and his body toted away for dumping. Just as
Buster’s early history is a mystery, so too is his final
resting place.
See also: JOSEPH VALACHI.
bushwhacker
Originally bushwhacker had no more meaning than
backwoodsman, but the backwoods became the scene
of so much criminal violence, starting with the 18th century depredations of Joseph Hare, Sam Mason and
the Harpe brothers along the Natchez Trace, that every
bushwhacker had to be regarded as a potential
attacker. By the time of the maraudings of Quantrill
and his Raiders during the Civil War, bushwhacker had
already come to mean a backwoods outlaw.
Buster from Chicago (?–1931) hit man
Perhaps the most brutal and efficient hit man the Mafia
ever had was known simply as “Buster from Chicago.”
Because of his prowess at murder, he was imported into
New York by the Maranzano forces to do battle with
the dominant power of Giuseppe “Joe the Boss”
Masseria during the Castellammarese War of 1930–31.
In true Hollywood fashion, no one ever knew Buster’s
real identity, and his appearance belied that of a professional killer. He looked and dressed like a college boy
and carried with him, in the proper Chicago tradition,
a submachine gun in a violin case. How many men he
killed during that war or earlier in Chicago was never
determined, but Buster had a reputation of always succeeding in a hit and doing it with a flair that other
gangsters admired. On an assignment to “take out”
Peter “the Clutching Hand” Morello, Buster found him
and a visitor in Morello’s office. He shot Morello, but
his victim was tough. He got up and danced around the
office trying to avoid further shots. Getting into the
spirit of things, Buster backed off and for a while tried
to wing Morello shooting gallery style before finally
finishing him for good. Then, without a word, Buster
turned to the visitor, one Giuseppe Pariano, who had
stood frozen during the macabre scene, and killed him
also.
Butcher, Jake (1937– ) the $700-million bank man
Of all the high finance scam operators whose depredations came to the fore in what came to be known in
financial circles as the “Greedy 1980s,” Jake Butcher
had the distinction of being the most punished by the
law, ending up with much more prison time than such
offenders as Ivan Boesky, Michael Milken, and Charles
Keating, Jr., among others.
Jacob “Jake” Franklin Butcher was a former Democratic candidate for governor of Tennessee and organizer
of the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville. Considered a
respected figure in Tennessee banking circles, Butcher
defrauded his own banks (he controlled 26 in Tennessee and Kentucky) of millions of dollars so that
many of them failed and went bankrupt. Butcher’s
depredations, which financed his flamboyant lifestyle—
such as the purchase of such “toys” as a 60-foot yacht
for a mere $400,000—ended up costing the Federal
Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) well over $700
million, with Butcher and his wife having personal
debts of more than $200 million.
It was said at the time that by his actions alone,
Butcher had destroyed the deep-held faith that people
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BYRNES, Thomas F.
had put in their banks since the reforms of the 1930s.
The public grasped clearly the threats to their banks
and savings and that they would have to pay for FDIC
losses through their taxes. As a result, there was universal praise for the sentence imposed on Butcher—two
20-year concurrent terms, the maximum allowed.
duced the image onto a blank paper. With several confederates of artistic bent, she filled in the images with
quill pens and then passed them on through a pipeline,
which included a local justice who was above suspicion.
It is impossible to establish any firm money figure on
the scope of the profits realized, but the bills reportedly
caused considerable financial havoc in Rhode Island,
and the operation must have been extensive. The socalled kitchen counterfeiters stayed in existence for
seven years before Mary Butterworth was arrested
along with a half-dozen others. However, while a number of bogus bills were found and the counterfeiter’s
tools located in the woman’s kitchen, no hard evidence
could be produced proving the bills had been there.
Eventually, Butterworth and the others were released
Butterworth, Mary (1686–1775) counterfeiter
One of the first successful counterfeiting rings in America was masterminded by a woman, probably the first
of her sex to practice the art in the New World. In 1716
30-year-old Mary Butterworth started her monumental
fraud right in her own kitchen in the Plymouth colony,
copying the Rhode Island pound “bills of credit.” Using
a hot iron and some starched muslin, she simply repro-
145
C
As head of the Detective Bureau, Byrnes outlawed
such cooperation between crooks and police and set as
his first goal the elimination of bank robberies in the
Wall Street area. He had received more than acclaim
after solving the Manhattan Bank job. Several grateful
bankers had gotten together and “invested” a large sum
of money for him from which he collected the profits.
This was not to be considered a reward because
rewards had to be approved by and shared with police
superiors, not to mention that a certain percentage of
rewards had to be given to the police pension fund.
Byrnes appreciated the sentiments of the bankers and
decided to show his gratitude by ordering all professional criminals to stay out of the Wall Street area. To
enforce this edict, he ordered his men to arrest or at
least blackjack any professional thief found south of
Fulton Street, the demarcation known to criminals as
Byrnes’ Dead Line.
Byrnes further aided the prominent bankers and
stockbrokers by always proving cooperative in hushing
up any personal scandals. If he reduced the incidence of
major crimes in the Wall Street area, Byrnes was also
responsible for a novel treatment of crime elsewhere in
the city. He more or less legalized crime, or more precisely, he kept it within acceptable limits by using some
criminals to oversee or suppress other criminals, giving
each a protected area in which to operate. In return, for
this right, the criminals paid Byrnes far less than the
previous levels of graft but were required to perform
certain other duties on request. For instance, if a prominent person had his pocket picked or was robbed by
foodpads, all Byrnes had to do was ask for the return of
the loot and it was on his desk within 24 hours.
for lack of evidence. She was closely watched for many
years thereafter to prevent any resumption of the counterfeiting. Thus, tranquility was restored to the New
England financial scene.
Byrnes, Thomas F. (1842–1910) New York police
inspector
Although he served briefly as chief of police in New
York City, Thomas F. Byrnes really made his mark
while serving as chief of detectives and chief inspector
of the force in the 1880s and 1890s, during which time
he was easily the most renowned American policeman
of the era. What he lacked in honesty he more than
made up for in flamboyance. It has been said that
Byrnes embodied all that was good and all that was bad
in the 19th-century policeman.
Born in Ireland in 1842, he was brought to New
York as a child. During the Civil War he fought for two
years in the Union Army before joining the police force
in 1863. By 1870 he had moved up to captain, a rank
generally achieved only by playing according to the
accepted rules, which meant collecting bribes and passing along the proper share to police higher-ups and to
the right politicians at Boss Tweed’s Tammany Hall. In
1880 Byrnes became head of the Detective Bureau after
solving the record $3-million robbery of the Manhattan
Bank. He had rounded up most of the loot and several
of the burglars and been applauded by Tammany for
his work, especially since the Leslie mob, which pulled
the job, had neglected to fork over the standard policepolitician cut for such a caper, generally 10 percent of
the take.
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CALICO Jim
Public drunk and prostitute Calamity Jane picked up occasional change in her last years posing for tourists at the
gravesite of her “lover,” Wild Bill Hickok.
Byrnes’ downfall came about in the mid-1890s
because of the opposition of reformer Theodore Roosevelt, at the time a member of the four-man board of
police commissioners, and because of the findings of
the Lexow Committee. Writing to Henry Cabot Lodge,
Roosevelt announced: “I think I shall move against
Byrnes at once. I thoroughly distrust him, and cannot
do any thorough work while he remains. It will be a
hard fight, and I have no idea how it will come out.”
As it was, Byrnes retired about a month later, in June
of 1895. He had had a particularly trying time before
the Lexow Committee, which heard testimony indicating that Byrnes permitted widespread corruption within
the Detective Bureau. His men were notorious for
refusing to undertake robbery investigations unless the
victim first posted a reward. Byrnes was personally
pressed to explain how he had accumulated $350,000
A gullible public regarded such feats as examples of
keen detective work, and overall, Byrnes’ stature was
enhanced. Byrnes appreciated the value of public relations and became a romantic figure in print. He collaborated on a number of books, and one of his own,
Professional Criminals of America became a best-seller.
In his day, Byrnes got as much mileage out of denouncing foreign-born anarchists as did J. Edgar Hoover
upon his discovery of the communist menace.
Byrnes realized that if he catered to a privileged few,
he had carte blanche to do whatever he wished with all
others. In the 1880s he was considered second only to
Inspector Alexander “Clubber” Williams in his devotion to the practice of the third degree. Byrnes was, to
journalist Lincoln Steffens, “Simple, no complication at
all—a man who would buy you or beat you, as you
might choose, but get you he would.”
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CALIFORNIA Outlaws
Calamity Jane (1852–1903) woman “outlaw”
in real estate, $292,000 in his wife’s name. His top
salary had been $5,000 a year and no more than a
quarter of his huge estate could be attributed to the
“gratuities” of the Wall Street crowd.
Despite these embarrassments, Byrnes made a pitch
at staying on as chief of police, assuring Roosevelt and
the other reformers that he could run a department free
of all corruption. His own failings, he said, were due to
being trapped in a foul system. His offer was rejected.
See also: BLISS BANK RING, DEAD LINE, OLD SHAKESPEARE.
cackle-bladder
Few works touching on female criminality in America
and especially in the West fail to include Martha Jane
Cannary, best known as Calamity Jane. However, her
inclusion in such studies is a miscarriage of justice,
since it has been clearly demonstrated that the extent of
her lawless behavior was limited to disorderly conduct,
drunkenness and stints of prostitution, such as her
1875 tour of duty at E. Coffey’s “hog farm” near Fort
Laramie.
Calamity’s “autobiography” is full of shoot-’em-up
exploits and, of course, a torrid love affair with Wild
Bill Hickok. Actually, it is doubtful that Hickok ever
considered this muscular, big-boned girl who dressed
like a man anything other than an occasional member
of his entourage. After Hickok’s death in 1876,
Calamity Jane became a living legend: “the White Devil
of the Yellowstone,” as one dime novel called her. The
last 25 years of her life were spent peddling her autobiography and other books about her for a few pennies,
whoring and appearing in various Wild West shows,
from which she was invariably fired for drunkenness.
In 1900 a newspaper editor found her sick in a brothel
and nursed her back to health. Calamity was dying in a
hotel room in Terry, not far from Deadwood, S. Dak. in
the summer of 1903. On August 2 her eyes fluttered
open and she asked the date. Upon being told, she nodded and said: “It’s the 27th anniversary of Bill’s
[Hickok’s] death. Bury me next to Bill.” They did and
recorded her death on August 2, although she had not
died until August 3. But then the facts never have been
permitted to cloud the Calamity Jane legend.
See also: WILD BILL HICKOK.
con man’s trick
Probably the most efficient method ever devised by
confidence men to “blow the mark off,” i.e., to get rid
of a victim after fleecing him is the use of a “cacklebladder.” The victim is lured into a supposedly sure
thing such as betting on what he is assured to be a fixed
horse race. He is steered to a phony betting parlor
where everyone is an actor playing a role, from the supposed tellers to the bettors winning and losing fortunes.
Naturally, the horse he bets on loses, but before the
mark can remonstrate another supposed loser, who is
actually in on the scheme, turns on the con man playing
the role of the chief conspirator. He screams he has
been ruined, pulls a gun and shoots the con man dead.
There seems no doubt the man is dead as blood literally
gushes from his mouth. Everyone starts to scatter, and
so does the bilked victim. Not only has he lost his
money, but even worse, he’s now involved in a homicide. Sometimes the supposed murderer will flee with
the mark, even conning the sucker into leaving the city
with him. Eventually, of course, the mark decides he is
better off to part company with a man who has committed murder and who could now drag him into
prison as an accessory.
This type of scam is made convincing through the
use of a cackle-bladder, a tiny bag of chicken blood
concealed in the mouth and bitten open at the appropriate moment. The gimmick was also used in the last
century at fixed running races and boxing matches as
well, where the “sure thing” runner or boxer whom the
sucker had bet on seemed to drop dead. Since gambling
on such races or fights was illegal and all the bettors
were therefore liable to imprisonment, everyone,
including the gullible victim, fled when the faking runner or boxer dropped.
While the cackle-bladder is only used on rare occasions in contemporary confidence games, it remains a
favorite with insurance accident fakers, who use the
dramatic spurt of blood to convince witnesses that they
have really been injured.
Calico Jim (?–1897?) shanghai operator
Shanghaiing of men was an old San Francisco custom
and one of its most proficient practitioners, along with
the infamous Shanghai Kelly, was Calico Jim. A
Chilean whose real name was said to be Reuben, Jim
ran a saloon and crimping joint at Battery Point, from
which a great many men were sent on long sea voyages.
During the 1890s the San Francisco police received so
many complaints against Jim that they began paying
him close attention. Evidently not close enough, however, because a policeman sent to arrest him didn’t
come back. Another tried and also never returned. A
total of six police officers went to the saloon and disappeared; all had taken a sea cruise, compliments of Calico Jim. Feeling now that his days in the business were
limited, Jim sold out and returned to his native Chile.
It was many months before the policemen made
their way back to home port. It has been said that they
pooled their money, drew lots and sent one of their
148
CAMPBELL, Bertram
number off to Chile to hunt down Calico Jim. After
many months of hunting, according to the story, the
policeman found Jim on a street corner in Callao, Chile
and shot him six times, one for each officer he had
shanghaied. There is some doubt about the truth of this
account, although it gained a great deal of currency.
For years the police department insisted there was no
record of six officers being shanghaied. But jaded citizens of San Francisco contended they knew a cover-up
when they heard one.
See also: SHANGHAI KELLY.
California Outlaws
states, and from its standpoint, all intervening land had
to be acquired for this purpose, no matter by what
means. If the railroad passed through farmland or the
home of some settler, the property was condemned, and
the helpless owner had to accept the pittance offered
him or get nothing. The railroad imported gunmen
from the East to do battle for it, and any act committed
by the company was considered legal, including such
atrocities as the “slaughter of Mussel Slough,” in which
seven settlers were shot and killed in 1880. The result
was a virtual civil war, as the landowners of the San
Joaquin Valley banded together to fight the “enveloping tentacles of the Octopus engulfing their lands,” as
one historian put it. Undercover agents of the railroad
moved in among the settlers to spy on and single out
troublemakers to be dealt with.
Under their leaders, Chris Evans and the Sontag
brothers, George and John, the California Outlaws
began robbing Southern Pacific trains. They would stop
the trains on lonely stretches and, ignoring the passengers and the U.S. mails, rob only the railroad’s safe in
the express car. The raids went on for years. Railroad
anti-railroad band
Perhaps the nearest thing this country ever saw to the
Robin Hood legend was the California Outlaws, a misnomer for the small ranchers and mountain people of
the San Joaquin Valley who did battle in the latter part
of the 19th century with the Southern Pacific Railroad,
or the “Octopus,” as it was commonly known and
described in the Frank Norris novel of that title. The
railroad was laying its tracks through several western
Often cited as an example of the dangers of faulty eyewitness testimony, Bertram Campbell (left) was identified as a
forger by five bank tellers and sent to prison. Later, Alexander Thiel (right), a professional check passer, was determined
to be the guilty party.
149
CANADA Bill
Campagna was lodged in a cell next to Aiello while a
detective who understood the Sicilian dialect posed as a
prisoner in another cell. He heard Campagna say:
“You’re dead, dear friend, you’re dead. You won’t get
up to the end of the street still walking.”
Aiello was quaking with fear. “Can’t we settle this?”
he pleaded. “Give me fourteen days and I’ll sell my
stores, my house and everything and quit Chicago for
good. Can’t we settle it? Think of my wife and baby.”
Campagna was unmoved. “You dirty rat! You’ve
broken faith with us twice now. You started this. We’ll
finish it.”
It was no idle threat. When Aiello was later found
shot down on the street, 59 slugs, more than a pound
of bullets, were dug out of his body.
At the height of the assassination scare against
Capone, the gang boss made Campagna his main bodyguard. At night, the devoted little killer slept on a cot
just outside Capone’s bedroom door. Anyone going in
would have to climb over Campagna’s body.
In the 1930s and early 1940s, Campagna became a
key figure in the mob’s union rackets and extortion
plots against Hollywood movie studios. Along with six
others, Campagna was convicted of conspiracy to
extort $1 million from studio executives and sentenced
to 10 years. He served one-third of his sentence and
was paroled to a firestorm of protest by Chicago newspapers. In later years Campagna played the role of a
gentleman farmer on an 800-acre spread near Fowler,
Ind. He died of a heart attack aboard a pleasure cruiser
off Miami in 1955.
detectives under the notorious Big Bill Smith and lawmen under U.S. marshal George C. Gard engaged in an
unseemly bounty competition for bringing in, or more
often killing, individual members of the Outlaws. In
time, the Outlaws dwindled down to a band of 24 men,
plus a 25th named Ed Morrell who worked as a spy for
them among the railroad detectives. Morrell, later
immortalized by Jack London in The Star Rover, was
able to save the Outlaws from several traps, but after
he was exposed, the band was destroyed. John Sontag
was killed in a shoot-out with a posse of railroad gunmen. Chris Evans went to prison under a life sentence;
George Sontag died attempting to escape from Folsom
Prison. Ed Morrell, later to become famous as the most
tortured prisoner in the history of American penology,
drew a life term but was pardoned in 1907.
See also: CHRISTOPHER EVANS, ED MORRELL, SONTAG
BROTHERS.
Campagna, Louis “Little New York”
gangster
(1900–1955)
Considered by Al Capone to be his most reliable bodyguard, Louis “Little New York” Campagna was a
stubby little mobster who, thanks more to his steel
nerves than his brainpower, rose to the top echelon of
syndicate crime.
During the Chicago mob’s movie studio extortion
days, Campagna walked into a jail and stiffened a wilting gang member, Willie Bioff, who had announced he
wanted to quit the rackets. In a menacing voice few
could equal, Campagna said, “Whoever quits us, quits
feet first.” Later, after Bioff cracked, sending several
top syndicate men, including Campagna, to prison, Little New York always bemoaned the fact that his associates had vetoed a “feet first” proposal regarding Bioff.
Al Capone had imported Campagna in 1927 from
New York, where he had cut his criminal teeth as a
teenager in the Five Points Gang and been convicted of
bank robbery at 19. Capone dubbed him Little New
York merely to demonstrate his ability to import all the
gunners he needed. Campagna soon demonstrated his
nerve following an unsuccessful plot by the Aiello brothers to assassinate Capone. Shortly thereafter, Joseph
Aiello and one of his gunmen were taken to the Chicago
Detective Bureau lockup. Campagna promptly surrounded the bureau with a dozen gunmen, and he and
two others approached the building, shifting weapons
from holsters to side pockets. A policeman recognized
Campagna and, realizing he was laying siege to the
building, sounded the alarm. A score of detectives rushed
out to seize the trio and hustled them into the building
before their accomplices could come to their aid.
Campbell, Bertram
(1886–1946) wrong man
The case of Bertram Campbell demonstrates as well as
any the near impossibility of achieving adequate compensation for wrongfully convicted individuals.
Before his conviction, Campbell had been a securities salesman and customer’s man for several New York
brokerage houses. In February 1938, New York City
police detectives visited Campbell in his apartment in
Freeport, Long Island and brought him to the city for
questioning. There five bank tellers identified him as a
forger who had recently cashed two checks for $4,160
under the name of George Workmaster. He was convicted of the charge and served three years and four
months of a five-to-10-year sentence in Sing Sing, all
the time maintaining his innocence. Released on parole
late in 1941, Campbell, a sick and broken man, eked
out a rather miserable existence as a bookkeeper. In
early 1945 he happened to read a newspaper story that
the FBI had arrested a forger in Kentucky. The man’s
method of operation brought Campbell up sharply. It
fitted perfectly with the one used in the crimes of which
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CANAL Street
ket Street because the fruits of any vice could be purchased along its cobble-stoned length. The ladies of
Canal Street knew how to get a man’s money, and they
were not averse to slitting his throat if need be. In the
end, the residents of the street usually got every penny a
man had, leaving him without even enough with which
to buy a mug of beer. Canal Street was said to be the
birthplace of the word mugging. When a man had been
so sheared that he didn’t even have the price of a mug
of beer, he would walk outside and waylay a passerby
or “mug” him.
The worst dives on Canal Street were those places on
the East Side whose rear areas extended on wooden pilings over the canal. Unsuspecting canalers and lakers
were hustled there by painted women who charged
exorbitant prices for their services. However, if a man
had money, but was uncooperative about parting with
it, he was fed an overdose of knockout drops. He then
was hauled into a backroom, stripped of all his clothes
and dumped naked down a slicked wooden chute into
the canal with hardly an incriminating splash. Eventually he would turn up floating face down in the murky
water. The police would know no more than that he
had been killed in one of about 100 places and listed
the victim as a “floater.” In one week in 1863 no less
than 14 floaters were fished out of the canal, five on
one morning alone.
Canal Street lived on protection. One time there was
a report, undoubtedly true, that several leading politicians had had a little two-day party in one of the
street’s leading bordellos, which helped explain why no
concerted effort was made to drive out the scarlet
women. For many years about all the politicians would
grant the citizens of Buffalo was a segregation ruling
that denied such ladies the right to go any further
uptown than the liberty pole, which marked the
entrance to Buffalo proper in those days. So long as the
prostitutes remained in the Canal Street area, they were
safe.
In 1870 a young reformer named Grover Cleveland
was elected sheriff of Erie County after making campaign promises to clean up Canal Street. Cleveland
tried to keep his word but was singularly ineffective.
The saloon keepers and brothel owners of the street
paid out so much money to the right political forces in
Buffalo that Cleveland’s campaign was fruitless. If he
made arrests, politically controlled judges immediately
released the prisoners for “lack of evidence.” Cleveland
went on to become president of the United States. He
was once asked what was the greatest disappointment
of his life; he stated that it was not failing to be
reelected president in 1888 but rather being unable to
wipe out the scourge of Canal Street.
he had been convicted. Campbell contacted a lawyer,
who learned that the forger had been brought to New
York for arraignment. The lawyer rounded up the five
bank employees and took them to see the forger,
Alexander D. L. Thiel. Three of them immediately
admitted they had been in error, that Thiel was the
man.
Thiel, now a drug addict, readily confessed. To the
FBI he had been “Mr. X,” who in 40 years had duped
banks the country over for upwards of $600,000. After
months of delay Campbell was pardoned and awarded
$40,000 for earnings lost and $75,000 for disgrace and
humiliation suffered. All in all, it seemed about as satisfactory a conclusion to a sad case as was possible.
However, Campbell’s tribulations were not over. Nassau County officials slapped Campbell with a $4,000
bill for welfare payments made to his wife while he had
been wrongfully imprisoned. Then, just 82 days after
he had won the $115,000, Campbell died of a stroke,
which doctors speculated was the result of the strain of
his years in prison.
See also: ALEXANDER THIEL.
Canada Bill
Canal Street
See WILLIAM “CANADA BILL” JONES.
Buffalo vice center
“For sheer wickedness, vice and crime there is no need
to go any further west than here,” a 19th-century historian said of Canal Street in Buffalo, N.Y. It was quite a
claim to make about a thoroughfare but two blocks
long.
Born with the Erie Canal, Canal Street was set off on
a jutting piece of land, segregated from the rest of Buffalo by 40 feet of murky water. On quiet summer nights
Buffalonians could stroll casually along the canal and
gaze across at the street that never lost its light from
dusk to dawn. They could hear boisterous noises of ribaldry and wonder if at that moment, somewhere on
Canal Street, someone was in the process of being
killed, a likely occurrence on a street that boasted 93
saloons, three combination grocery-saloons and 15
dives known as concert halls. More than half these
establishments had portions of their premises given
over to prostitution, with an estimated 400 practitioners of that art on hand around the clock.
Canal Street grew up with the Erie Canal, which cut
across New York State and linked up the Hudson with
the Great Lakes. The street sucked gold from the
rugged sailors of the Lakes and the lusty canalers and in
return provided a bawdiness unrivaled even in the tenderloin sections of far bigger cities. An early clergyman
thundered from his pulpit that it should be called Mar151
CANDELARIA, Nevada
cut up many others. The law never did get anything on
Emma, however. Her victims couldn’t or wouldn’t talk,
and Canal Street had its own rules: nobody ever told
anything to the law about anybody.
Fittingly, Emma got her just deserts in a knife battle
with a redhead called Deadly Dora. If there was one
thing Dora wouldn’t tolerate, it was another woman
stealing a man from her. She had latched on to a blueeyed Swedish sailor for whom she developed a genuine
affection. Emma tried to cut in and knives flashed. They
fished Emma’s body out of the canal a few days later.
A time came when Buffalonians could thank the girls
of Canal Street for preventing the city from being overrun by prostitutes. It happened during Pan-American
Year, when all Buffalo was in a Mardi Gras spirit in celebration of the turn of the century. Up till then the several hundred prostitutes in and around Canal Street
had the territory to themselves, but with the celebration
hundreds of sinful ladies from New York City headed
for the bonanza town of the North. One day, bag and
baggage, they poured from a train at the Terrace railroad station, directly across from the canal, and
attempted to move in.
The women were all colorfully dressed, and canalers
paused in their labors to give them a cheering welcome.
They circulated among the men with friendly words
that happy days had indeed come to Buffalo. The gay
arrival, however, also had been seen by the women of
Canal Street, and like an army, they swarmed out of the
dives and bordellos to descend on the train station.
Many carried stillettos, clubs, planks or chairs.
It was a battle the likes of which Buffalo had never
seen before. Before it was over, close to 100 ladies were
in various degrees of undress. A dedicated reporter
counted eight females stripped totally raw. Two dozen
girls had to be hospitalized, many with awful knife
slashes across their faces. The paddy wagon made a
total of 32 trips to the Franklin Street Station, hauling
off battling participants. By nightfall the battle was
over, and the New York ladies, no match for the
denizens of Canal Street, jammed back into the station
and took the next train out.
Pan-American Year was the last really big one for
Canal Street. Buffalo was changing. Erie Canal traffic
was dipping, and as the railroads took over more,
fewer and fewer Great Lakes freighters docked. Consequently, fewer sailors and canalers hit Canal Street. The
joints began to shutter. In 1908 a citizens’ movement
increased the pressure on the police to clean up Canal
Street once and for all. Raids increased, and foreign
immigrants began to flood into Canal Street, soon outnumbering the criminal element. In 1915 the name of
the street was changed to Dante Place. In peculiarly
American style, the area became an ordinary slum,
Both before and after Cleveland, Canal Street went
its own murderous way, regarding all type of crime as
hardly worthy of special notice. When Fat Charley Ott,
the proprietor of The Only Theater, a sort of combination concert hall, saloon, dance hall and assignation
hotel, came to a bad end, the street handled it in typical
fashion. Fat Charley had a propensity for padding the
bill of a client who appeared in possession of less than
all his faculties. One sweltering night in the 1890s, he
made the mistake of trying it on a certain bearded laker.
After letting out an angry howl that filled the Only, the
laker reached across the bar, seized Fat Charley by the
hair and with brute force hauled Charley to him. Like
many a lakeman, he carried a Spanish knife, a nasty,
two-edged slicer that was worn up the sleeve, attached
by a leather thong. He whipped it out. Fat Charley
struggled to get loose, but his unhappy patron wasn’t
letting go. At the time, there were some two dozen
other patrons in the Only. They gaped in motionless
horror as the bearded lakeman decapitated Charley Ott
with one swipe.
The murderer strode out of the Only as the other
customers froze. Someone allowed that perhaps the
police should be informed. Others agreed but suggested
that perhaps they should have a drink in memory of the
dear departed. They had one, another and then another.
When in due course the police arrived, the Only was
empty save for the two parts of Fat Charley, a looted
till and scores of empty liquor bottles. And some wag
had even left a sign on the door that read CLOSED ON
ACCOUNT OF ILLNESS.
It was said, not without good reason, that the
females of Canal Street were far more deadly than the
males. There was, for instance, Gallow May Moore, a
blond hellion who could throw her garter stiletto with
unerring accuracy; any man who tried to leave her
without paying the premiums could count on awesome
retribution. Her favorite trick was to pin an unchivalrous gentleman to a wall with a stiletto, empty his
pockets, kiss him goodbye and leaving him dangling as
she went out to live it up on his roll, with enough set
aside for a new knife.
Then there was Frosty Face Emma, described as a
handsome woman much sought after by men. She had,
however, one disconcerting habit. For a time she could
drink liquor as though she had a hollow leg, and a gentleman would wait impatiently for her to enter a more
compliant phase, which unfortunately never happened.
At a certain level of consumption, she turned into a
vicious man-hater. A man’s only hope was that he had
not as yet adjourned with her to a more secluded
atmosphere before she exploded. Otherwise, there was
little chance he would be seen alive again. One historian states Emma assassinated at least seven lovers and
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CAPITAL punishment
homesteaders, who won the sympathy of most of the
nation.
During the period of the Johnson County War, Canton, slender, cold eyed and sinister looking in a long
capelike coat, was described by a companion as a man
who “only thought of guns and killings . . . they
seemed to be on his mind all the time . . . he couldn’t
sleep. He was always jumping up and saying . . . ‘Do
you hear them? . . . Get on your guns.’ But it wasn’t
anything—just the wind or the horses.”
The fact that Canton was able to switch sides with
so few second thoughts can be partially explained by
the gunfighter ethics of the day. However, it was later
proved that he had switched sides more than once.
Canton’s real name was Joseph Horner, the son of a
Virginia doctor who came to Texas after the Civil War.
By his mid-twenties Horner had run up a criminal
record of bank robbery, rustling and assault with intent
to kill. In 1874 he fled Texas after killing a soldier in a
saloon brawl. Between that time and his appearance in
Wyoming, Horner had engaged in a number of illegal
enterprises. After his Wyoming days—there was no
way he could remain there, being generally regarded as
a hired killer—Horner, using the name Canton, became
an undersheriff in Pawnee County, Okla. and then a
deputy U.S. marshal in Alaska. He later returned to the
States and was employed by the Texas Cattle Raisers’
Association. It has been suggested that through this
organization’s good offices a long-missing fugitive
named Joe Horner received a pardon from the governor
of Texas. Perhaps in deference to the feelings of ill-will
back in Wyoming, it was not revealed that Horner was
Canton until he died in 1927.
See also: CATTLE KATE, NATHAN D. CHAMPION, JOHNSON COUNTY WAR, RED SASH GANG.
breeding its own type of vice and crime. But the whores
and whoremasters were gone, and Canal Street, with its
incredible century of murder, mayhem, vice and corruption, was just a memory.
See also: FLOATERS, MUGGING, YORKY OF THE GREAT
LAKES.
Candelaria, Nevada
lawless mining town
Of all the mining camps that sprang up in Nevada in
the 1860s and ’70s, Candelaria deserves special mention because for a quarter of a century it officially had
only seven murders. That was remarkable for a town
that boasted 10 whorehouses running around the clock
and that sold whiskey by the gallon. In fact, fatal shootings were extremely common, and recorders of the
town’s history put the death toll in the several hundreds. More so than any other mining camp where the
law was seldom found, the public relations–minded
authorities of Candelaria were inclined to write off
almost any shooting as a matter of self-defense. Of the
seven killings officially listed as murders, none was ever
solved.
Canton, Frank M. (1849–1927) outlaw, lawman and
vigilante leader
One of the villains or heroes of the Johnson County
War in Wyoming Territory, depending on one’s outlook, Frank M. Canton was proof that an evil man who
was good to the right people could do all right for himself in the Old West.
While his early life was at the time a mystery, Canton turned up in Wyoming in 1880 and became a small
rancher; two years later, he was elected sheriff. As a
lawman, he ran up an impressive record tracking down
rustlers, although some objected that many of the socalled rustlers were in no shape to answer formal
charges after facing Canton’s six-guns. After two terms
Canton found himself voted out of office. He was so
bitter that when approached by Wyoming’s wealthy
stockmen to head up their vigilante war against rustlers
in Johnson County, Canton accepted even though he
knew the real objective of the war was to intimidate the
small ranchers responsible for electing him to office.
These ranchers, actually homesteaders with a few head
of cattle, had incurred the wrath of the absentee cattle
barons of Cheyenne, who were determined to rewrite
the traditional law of the range that a maverick, or
unbranded, steer belonged to the man with the longest
rope. With Maj. Frank Wolcott, Canton led the big cattlemen’s paid vigilantes in numerous attacks and lynchings in Johnson County. They were finally beaten,
however, by a ragtag but straight-shooting army of
capital punishment
When on January 17, 1977 Gary Gilmore was led
before a firing squad and shot to death, the execution
marked the return of capital punishment in the United
States after a 10-year hiatus.
It is often assumed that executions stopped because
of a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, but in fact, executions ceased basically because of a combination of
public disapproval and the growing reluctance of juries
to convict in cases involving mandatory death sentences.
Thus, while there were 152 executions in 1947, the
number dropped to seven by 1965 and to just one in
1967. It was only at this stage that the Supreme Court
agreed to hear arguments in two cases challenging the
basic precepts of capital punishment. Certainly, the
strongest evidence that the High Court follows election
results or public opinion can be seen in its rulings con153
CAPITAL punishment
cerning capital punishment, both pro and con. In 1967
public opinion was overwhelmingly opposed to the
death penalty, and the High Court was eventually to
rule that way. When by 1976 public opinion had shifted
in the opposite direction, the Court veered toward that
view, even while admitting that the primary argument
always made for the death penalty, that it is a deterrent
to murder and other capital crimes, was faulty.
Capital punishment in the American colonies was
patterned after the English system, but the early settlers, with some lamentable exceptions, soon broke
away from the full implementation of the death penalty
for such crimes as witchcraft, blasphemy, fornication,
various “crimes against nature” and “man stealing.”
Murder and thievery, major or petty, remained firm
cause for execution.
In 1834 Pennsylvania banned public executions, and
in 1847 Michigan became the first state to abolish the
death penalty. Other states joined the abolition movement, although the death penalty made a strong comeback during periods of great wars, the Civil War and
the two world wars. By 1971 39 of the 54 U.S. jurisdictions (the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto
Rico, the Virgin Islands and the federal jurisdiction)
carried the death penalty on the books for as many as
eight capital crimes: espionage, treason, murder, rape,
kidnapping, arson, train wrecking and robbery. In most
states the number of offenses for which the penalty was
imposed ranged from one to four.
The principal argument presented by advocates of
capital punishment is that it satisfies society’s need for
retribution and retaliation and serves as a deterrent to
the commission of murder. Moreover, it is the only certain process for the elimination of deviants. The arguments of the abolitionists are many. It is a weapon used
primarily against the blacks and other racial minorities
and the poor (“Rich men never burn” is a death house
saying). As a deterrent, they insist, capital punishment
doesn’t work. In some states the murder rate actually
decreased when the death penalty was abolished. Overall, it appears that the murder rate in states with or
without the death penalty is, over a period of time,
about the same. In states where murders do increase
(both in states with and without capital punishment),
the causes for the increase are apparently due to societal or cultural variations or changes. If a state moves
to a greater heterogeneous mix, the murder rate will go
up, death penalty or no. Abolitionists also argue
against the deterrent theory on the ground that the
crimes it punishes result from irrational impulses, not
cool calculation. As Gary Gilmore commented about
his murder of two young strangers: “Murder is just a
thing of itself, a rage, and rage is not reason, so why
does it matter who? It vents a rage.” Most of the men
who have been on death row insisted they murdered
without any thought of the consequences. Furthermore,
it has been shown that mass murderers move blithely
from states without the death penalty to states with it.
There have even been a number of murders committed because the death penalty exists. According to the
Washington Research Project, an Oklahoma farmer
who had shot to death a total stranger simply explained
to police, “I was tired of living.” In 1961 a convicted
Oklahoma murderer, James French, who had been tried
three times for one homicide, strangled his cellmate in
order to speed his own execution along. In 1938 Robert
West, who had helped build Missouri’s gas chamber,
killed a young girl and, after turning himself in, said his
only motive for murdering the victim was to be able to
die in the gas chamber. When John Spenkelink died in
the electric chair in May 1979, he became the first person executed in Florida in 15 years. A later study of the
six-month period before and after his execution, when
the public controversy about the issue was at its peak,
showed that homicides in the state increased 14 percent.
Opponents of the death penalty also argue for rehabilitation over execution. Probably no prison warden
would deny that murderers are often the most easily
rehabilitated and best-behaved convicts. Additionally,
cases of murder committed by paroled murderers are
most rare, especially when compared with repeaters of
other types of crimes.
It was against this background that in 1972 the
Supreme Court ruled the death penalty as practiced was
unconstitutional, in violation of the Eighth Amendment
ban on cruel and unusual punishment, particularly in
the way judges and juries arbitrarily and infrequently
imposed it. The immediate impact of the Court’s decision was that the death sentence for 648 men and
women then on death row was commuted to life
imprisonment. Almost immediately, supporters of capital punishment launched a counterattack. By 1976 public opinion, upset by sensational murders little different
from those of earlier years, had turned once more in
favor of the death penalty.
A not-unmindful Supreme Court took the hint and
announced in a new ruling the same year that execution
methods in the United States were not inherently “cruel
and unusual” punishment as prohibited by the Constitution. The Court even cited various public opinion
polls indicating that Americans favored capital punishment by a two-to-one margin. However, at the same
time, the Supreme Court agreed there was little proof
the death penalty deters the commission of capital
crimes. Fundamentally, the Court decreed that retribution and punishment alone were sufficient reasons to
impose the death penalty. In other words, the concept
of the state “getting even” for killing by killing had
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become a worthwhile value. Left unanswered by the
Court was how, if society has the right to take a life as
retribution, this could fail to reinforce a murderer in his
firm belief that he has a right to “get even” with his victim. Surveys indicate that 84 percent of all homicides
are motivated by the murderer’s desire to exact retribution for some real or imagined offense committed by
the victim.
The reimposition of the death penalty in the United
States puts this country in the opposite camp from
such western nations, 41 in all, as England, Germany,
Italy, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Israel, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Costa Rica and Ecuador.
Among the United States’ bedfellows are Russia,
China, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Castro’s Cuba, Chile and
Saudi Arabia.
Perhaps remarkably, the Supreme Court has never
regarded execution in itself as “cruel and unusual
punishment” when the possibility of error is considered. Proponents of the death penalty give assurances
that the likelihood of a mistake can be ruled out
because the judicial process in capital cases is
allegedly so much more exact, thus eliminating the
type of error that turns up in so many “wrong man”
cases involving lesser crimes. Of course, innocent men
have been executed. Years afterward, official decrees
of one sort or another have cleared some of the Mollie
Maguires, the Haymarket martyrs, and Sacco and
Vanzetti, but these are causes célèbres. As many legal
authorities have commented, the interest in clearing
the average innocent man after he is executed dwindles to nil. What we are left with is some of the more
bizarre ways innocent persons have been saved from
execution. In 1894 Will Purvis was saved from hanging in Mississippi simply because the knot around his
neck slipped and he dropped unharmed. The execution was postponed because the onlookers became
unruly, some taking it as a sign from the Divine that
Purvis was innocent. In the period before his execution was rescheduled, Purvis escaped from custody
and surrendered only when a new governor agreed to
commute his sentence to life imprisonment. Twentytwo years later, in 1920, Purvis was proven innocent
by a deathbed confession of the real murderer, whose
story was found to check in every detail. For his tribulations, Purvis was awarded $5,000 by the state legislature.
In Florida in 1902 J. B. Brown mounted the scaffold
still protesting his innocence for having murdered one
Harry Wesson. Chagrined officials called off the execution when the sheriff, as required by law, started reading the death warrant and discovered that through a
clerical error it listed as the man to be executed not
Brown but the foreman of the jury that had convicted
him. While officials argued about whether or not to
proceed with the execution, Brown’s ordeal on the scaffold created a nationwide stir, and the governor bowed
to demands that the condemned man’s sentence be
commuted to life. In 1913 a man named J. J. Johnson
confessed on his deathbed that it was he who had killed
Wesson, even revealing where he’d hidden some of the
victim’s personal effects. Brown was pardoned and
awarded compensation of $2,492, to be paid in
monthly $25 installments.
By the turn of the century it was obvious various
jurisdictions were going to have to loosen the purse
strings for damages significantly as scores of condemned men have been cleared after years of appeals
while they were on death row. The state of Illinois in
recent years has been obliged to release six such condemned men out of 12 because it was later determined
they were not guilty. Advances in DNA techniques have
led to the freeing of scores of condemned persons.
Yet at the same time the majority voices within the
criminal justice system continue to campaign for a cutoff of appeals from the death sentence so that justice
can be done for the sake of the victims and their families. Generally these parties propose a five-year limit on
delays of executions. Fairly or not these limitations
have sometimes recently been referred to as “the Bush
brothers program” calling for faster executions. Critics
tend to cite any number of cases in which the final
acquittal process took and takes longer than that to
finally win out. Texas governor George W. Bush and
Florida governor Jeb Bush represented “high execution” states, Texas being first and Florida third.
Of course, such high execution states have records for
wrong man death row inmates. The fact remains, as
Congressman Don Edwards of California has noted,
“Most of the releases from death row over the past
twenty years came only after many years and many
failed appeals. The average length of time between conviction and release was almost seven years.” Some
releases come in unusual ways, even in what has been
described as random ways. Filmmaker Errol Morris
went to Texas to do a documentary on Dr. James Grigson, the controversial and some said notorious “Dr.
Death.” Grigson claimed 100 percent certainty for his
courtroom predictions that a particular defendant would
kill again. One man he made such a prediction about
was Randall Dale Adams. During his work on Dr. Grigson, Morris became interested in the case of Randall
Adams and in his investigation uncovered layers of prosecutorial misconduct in the cases. Morris eventually
obtained a virtual confession to the murder Adams had
been accused of by another person. Morris’s 1988
movie, The Thin Blue Line, did much to free Adams the
following year.
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CAPITAL punishment of children
where he had been taken after a suicide attempt, and fly
him directly to the death chamber rather than stay the
execution. The joke went around that the condemned
man was not to collect $200 for passing Go.
On the other hand Texas officials seemed eager to
help a prisoner with a special request, such as one
inmate whose lawyers failed to have him declared
incompetent for execution when he asked to be put to
death on the night of the full moon. Officials deemed it
a request worth granting.
Perhaps the most controversial execution under
George W. Bush involved that of Karla Faye Tucker,
who was condemned for her role in two killings. It
appeared Tucker had undergone a death row conversion to Christianity. She married the prison chaplain
and was acknowledged to have become a model
inmate. Many Evangelical Christians regarded her conversion as clear proof of the transforming power of
God, and religious leaders like Pat Robertson and Pope
John Paul II called on Gov. Bush to grant clemency. He
did not, despite his own well-known religious awakening in helping him swear off alcohol and right the
course of his own life.
Later after Tucker was executed, Bush was portrayed in a Talk magazine interview as mocking the
woman’s appearance on television with Larry King in
which she asked the governor to spare her. The magazine reported that Bush had imitated her in a whimpering voice. After the article, Bush campaign aides
insisted the magazine reporter had misread his comments, but the magazine stood by the article.
The fact remains what riles the public the most
is indications that condemned men are delaying their
executions by an endless string of appeals. For proexecutions forces the number one case of this type at
the turn of the century was the case of Mumia AbuJamal, a convicted cop killer sentenced to death. AbuJamal’s supporters insist he is not guilty and that he
was convicted because of his political beliefs and the
determination of the police and prosecution to be rid of
him. A black journalist in Philadelphia, Abu-Jamal,
became a political symbol after the murder of a
Philadelphia policeman, Daniel Faulkner, on December
9, 1981.
At age 15, Abu-Jamal was a member of the Black
Panther Party and minister of information for the
Philadelphia chapter. When the party fell apart, AbuJamal turned to broadcasting and by age 25 was one of
the top figures in local radio and interviewed many top
luminaries such as Jesse Jackson. He won a Peabody
award for his coverage of the pope’s visit, was president
of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists and
was called “one to watch” by Philadelphia magazine.
Another Texas “death row alumnus” who exceeded
the five-year rule was Clarence Brandley who was convicted in 1981 for the rape-murder of 16-year-old high
school girl. The police zeroed in on Brandley who was
the only black custodian at the school, the rest being
white. Hair left at the crime scene clearly implicated a
white man, but the prosecution relied heavily instead
on the testimony of two chief witnesses. Later one of
the two key witnesses recanted his statements at the
original trial, saying at a later appeal hearing that the
prosecution and the police had pressured him into
implicating Brandley. The other witness confessed the
crime, and Brandley was released in 1990. Had a fiveyear rule been in effect, Brandley would have been dead
four years before his release.
Another capital case that received much attention in
recent years involved Anthony Porter who was convicted in 1983 of a double murder in Chicago witnessed
by several persons. Porter’s lawyer lost several appeals
but two days before his execution date in 1998 Porter
got a stay because of his limited mental capacity. Porter
was freed in 1999 after journalism professor David Protess assigned students to investigate the prosecution of
the case. A number of the witnesses recanted their testimony, and another man confessed. Porter had exceeded
the five-year rule by 11 years. Professor Protess’ students
also exonerated two other death row inmates. The question was whether this was something the public should
regard as laudable or whether, as the New York Times
noted, “No system that requires college students to provide justice can be called functional.”
Numerous experts have claimed one should not
believe that somehow murder prosecutions are always
more carefully considered because of the implications
of the possible death penalty. Gregory Wilhoit was not
released until six years after his conviction in 1987 in
Oklahoma. He was convicted of murdering his
estranged wife in her sleep. An expert for the prosecution declared that Wilhoit’s teeth matched bite marks
on the victim’s body. On appeal it was ruled that Wilhoit’s lawyer did not challenge that testimony and, as
an appeals court later ruled, the lawyer was “suffering
from alcohol dependence and abuse and brain damage
during his representation of appellant.” At a new trial a
year after the so-called five-year rule would have run
out, 11 experts testified that the bite marks did not
match, and Wilhoit was released.
Despite this, observers agree there was no way a
politician can be too supportive of the death penalty as
well over 70 percent of the public approved of it. And
the rule is the quicker the better. Thus in Texas, aside
from distasteful headlines, there was little outcry from
the public in December 1999 when officials chose to
remove a hospitalized inmate from intensive care,
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CAPONE, Alphonse “Scarface Al”
Black Panther history was waved like a bloody flag:
Had he said, ‘All power to the people?’ Yes, he admitted he had said that. . . . Thus with Judge Sabo’s help,
an award-winning radical journalist with no criminal
record was portrayed as a police assassin lying in wait
since age 15. After Mumia’s conviction, Sabo instructed
the jury: ‘You are not being asked to kill anybody’ by
imposing the death penalty, since the defendant will get
‘appeal after appeal after appeal.’ Such instruction,
grounds for reversal since Caldwell v. Mississippi, was
allowed in Mumia’s case.”
By the time he had been on death row for 13 years,
Abu-Jamal was a cult hero to many and disparaged by
others as the only classic radical-chic cause to survive
into the 1990s. Among those who have rallied to AbuJamal’s cause have been Norman Mailer, Cornell West,
Ed Asner, Whoopi Goldberg, Susan Sarandon, and
Oliver Stone. Others, less likely to be regarded as liberal “bleeding hearts,” such as Stewart Taylor, Jr., of
the National Journal, supported Abu-Jamal’s call for a
new trial, labeling his trial “grotesquely unfair.”
Meanwhile the pros and cons of the case persisted.
The Yale Law Review published one of Abu-Jamal’s
articles. National Public Radio’s All Things Considered
scheduled a series on the condemned man’s commentaries (but then canceled it following objections from
the Fraternal Order of Police). When Abu-Jamal’s
book, Live From Death Row, appeared, it was greeted
with a boycott, and a skywriter circled the Boston
offices of the publisher with a trailer proclaiming “Addison-Wesley Supports Cop Killers.” In the
anti–Abu-Jamal campaign, journalist Bisson reported,
“Officer Faulkner’s widow has gone on TV claiming
that Mumia smiled at her when her husband’s bloody
shirt was shown—even though the record shows that
Mumia wasn’t in the courtroom that day.” (In fact,
during his trial Mumia was kept in a holding cell, reading about his own trial in the newspapers.)
Still, the controversy roared on. In 1999 Evergreen
State College in Washington State featured Abu-Jamal’s
voice at its commencement. Abu-Jamal was heard via
audiotape from death row in Pennsylvania. Naturally,
pro-execution forces were outraged. The battle for a
new trial for Abu-Jamal had become by the turn of the
century a testament to the fact that the battle over capital punishment would not cease any time soon.
See also: DNA EVIDENCE, EXECUTION, METHODS OF.
Further reading: The Death Penalty In America,
edited by Hugo A. Bedau; Capital Punishment, edited
by Thorsten Sellen.
However, Abu-Jamal never compromised on his
beliefs—which led the Philadelphia Inquirer to call him
“an eloquent activist not afraid to raise his voice.” This
led to his undoing, as his positions caused him to lose
jobs at black stations, and he was forced to drive a cab
to support his family. His supporters charged AbuJamal was consistently subjected to police harassment,
including, they said, a cocked finger and a “bang,
bang” from a smirking cop.
Thus the scene was set for the deadly events of 1981.
Officer Faulkner stopped a Volkswagen driven by AbuJamal’s brother and an altercation ensued. The brother
hit the officer, and Faulkner began beating him with a
17-inch flashlight. Abu-Jamal was nearby in his cab
and ran over, armed with a .38. Shots were fired. AbuJamal was hit and Faulkner died. The question was had
Abu-Jamal shot the officer. Several witnesses saw
another shooter flee the scene. Jamal’s weapon, found
nearby was empty save for five shell casings. However,
at the time the bullets could not be tied to Abu-Jamal’s
gun, and incredibly the police failed to smell the gun
barrel to see if it had been fired.
But the police did have an eyewitness, one Robert
Chobert, a cabbie, who said he saw Abu-Jamal “standing over him [Faulkner] and firing shots into him.” The
problem was that Chobert said the shooter had raced
from the scene before being captured, but the police
said the wounded Abu-Jamal had not run at all. Two
other police witnesses also had contradictions in their
testimony. Abu-Jamal’s supporters pointed out Chobert
had reasons to be a good police witness. He was at the
time on probation and was driving that night with a
suspended license.
None of this did the defendant any good since he
was brought to trial before Albert F. Sabo, a judge
labeled by the Philadelphia Inquirer as a “defendant’s
nightmare,” having sentenced more men to death (31
to date, only two of them white) than any other sitting
jurist in the nation. A fellow judge once called Sabo’s
courtroom a “vacation for prosecutors” because of a
bias for convictions. Terry Bisson, writing in New York
Newsday, called the murder trial “a policeman’s
dream.” Denied the right to represent himself, AbuJamal was defended by an attorney since labelled
incompetent but who had actually handled about 20
homicide cases and felt restrained by Abu-Jamal’s
demands for a defense on a political rather than legal
basis.
Abu-Jamal’s supporters have since his conviction
asked for a new trial before an unbiased judge. Attorney Leonard Weinglass filed a motion to have Judge
Sabo removed from the case because, he said, Sabo
could not provide even the “appearance of fairness.” In
Sabo’s courtroom, said journalist Bisson, “Mumia’s
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CAPONE, Alphonse “Scarface Al”
10 years: Indiana
However, as more states have or are coming on line
for the death penalty, it is possible that some alterations
will have to be made in the above listings. Depending
on the states, the procedures are still subject to judicial
appeal and may or may not include any minimum age
standards.
Standards for executions of juveniles in this country
derived from English law. The United Kingdom long
sanctioned the death penalty for teens and preteens for
such varied crimes as murder, rape, theft and picking
pockets, but reports of many such death sentences pronounced was hardly an indication of those carried out.
Richard Streib noted in 1995, “Research at Old Bailey
revealed that although more than one hundred youths
had been sentenced to death from 1801 to 1836, none
had been executed. While some cases do exist, it
appears settled that execution of youths was never at
any time common in England.”
In America the first documented execution of a juvenile took place in Roxbury, Mass., in 1642. Thomas
Graunger went to the scaffold for having sodomized a
cow and a horse. The all-male jury sentenced him
under the Old Testament law described in Leviticus
20:15.
From the 1890s through the 1920s executions of
juveniles numbered from 20 to 27 per decade, 1.6 percent to 2.3 percent of all executions. In the 1930s the
number of juvenile executions rose to 41, in line with
the general pickup in executions during that period.
Naturally as public support for capital punishment
waned, and indeed was outlawed for a number of
years, juvenile executions dropped off. As the recent
public support for both capital punishment for adults
and an equally fervent demand for executions of juveniles grows, it appears likely that more of the young
will face that grim fate. What cannot be disputed is a
report of Amnesty International that noted, “The USA
carries out more executions of juvenile offenders (people sentenced to death for a crime they committed
when they were under the age of 18) than almost any
other country in the world.”
This mug shot of Al Capone was taken in 1929 in
Philadelphia, where he allowed the police to arrest him in
order to “take off some heat” brought on by the St.
Valentine’s Day Massacre.
capital punishment of children
a concept in flux
The school shootings of children by children during the
late 1990s into the new millennium have produced outrage on the part of many elements of the public, and
there is growing demand for harsher punishment of
children—such as life sentences and even the death
penalty. This attitude seems to be eroding the long-held
view that youngsters, of various ages, should be treated
less harshly or that there be minimum age restrictions
to severe punishments.
Several states provide no minimum age for execution
but do require that age be a factor in sentencing.
Among these states are Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado,
Florida, Maryland, Mississippi, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Washington and Wyoming.
Three other states have no minimum age for executions, and age is not a factor in sentencing. They are
Delaware, Oklahoma and South Dakota.
States that include a specific age for executions of
children are as follows:
18 years: California, Connecticut, Illinois, Nebraska,
Ohio, Tennessee
Capone, Alphonse “Scarface Al” (1899–1947) gang
leader
17 years: Georgia, New Hampshire, Texas
Al Capone was a mindless, brutal and obscure Brooklyn hood in his teens, but by the age of 26 he had
become the most powerful crime boss of his day and
could boast that he “owned” Chicago, that city of
gangsters, during the Prohibition years.
At its zenith the Capone mob had probably upward
of 1,000 members, most of them experienced gunmen,
16 years: Montana, Nevada
15 years: Louisiana, Virginia
14 years: Alabama, Idaho, Kentucky, Missouri, New
Jersey, North Carolina, Utah
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CAPONE, Frank
but this represented only a portion of Capone’s overall
empire. Capone often proclaimed, “I own the police,”
and it was true. Few estimates would place less than
half the police on the mob’s payroll in one way
or another. Capone’s hold on the politicians was probably greater. He had “in his pocket” aldermen, state’s
attorneys, mayors, legislators, governors and even congressmen. The Capone organization’s domination of
Chicago and such suburban areas as Cicero, Ill. was
absolute. When Capone wanted a big vote in elections,
he got out the vote; when he wanted to control the election returns, his gangsters intimidated and terrorized
thousands of voters. The politicians he put in power
were expected to act the way the Big Fellow desired.
The mayor of Cicero once took an independent action.
Capone caught him on the steps of City Hall and beat
him to a pulp; a police officer standing nearby had to
look elsewhere to avoid seeing the violence.
Capone was born in Brooklyn in 1899 and attended
school through the sixth grade, when he beat up his
teacher, got beaten by the principal and quit. After that,
he learned his lessons in the streets, especially with the
tough teenage James Street gang, run by an older criminal, Johnny Torrio, as a subsidiary of the notorious
Five Points Gang, to which Capone eventually graduated. Among his closest friends, both in school and in
the gang, was a kid who grew up to become a major
crime boss, Lucky Luciano, and the two remained lifelong friends.
When he was in his late teens, Capone was hired by
Torrio as a bouncer in a saloon-brothel he ran in
Brooklyn. Capone picked up a huge scar on his left
cheek in an altercation with a tough hood named Frank
Galluccio, who slashed him with a knife in a dispute
about a girl. Later, Capone would claim he got the
wound serving with the “Lost Battalion” in France during World War I, but he was never in the army.
In 1920 Torrio, who had relocated in Chicago to
help his uncle, Big Jim Colosimo, the city’s leading
whoremaster, ply his trade, summoned Capone to come
and help him. What Torrio wanted to do was take
advantage of Prohibition and gain control of the booze
racket, an endeavor that promised profits in the millions. But he was being thwarted by Colosimo, who
was so rich and content he saw no need to expand. Torrio soon decided Colosimo would have to be eliminated
so that he could use Big Jim’s organization for his criminal plans. He and Capone plotted Colosimo’s murder
and imported New York talent to do the job.
The Torrio-Capone combine was then on the move,
taking over some mobs that bowed to their threats and
going to war with those that failed to cooperate. Their
biggest coup was the assassination in 1924 of Dion
O’Banion, the head of the largely Irish North Side
Gang, utilizing the talents of Frankie Yale of Brooklyn,
the same man who had rubbed out Colosimo. However, the O’Banion killing resulted in all-out war with
the rest of the North Siders. Torrio was badly shot in an
ambush and hovered near death in a hospital for days.
When he got out in February 1925, he told Capone,
“Al, it’s all yours,” and retired back to Brooklyn with
an estimated $30 million.
It was a sobering experience for the 26-year-old
Capone, who found he now needed to use brains
instead of muscle to run things. He had to become a
top executive, bossing a firm employing more than
1,000 persons with a weekly payroll of over $300,000.
He demonstrated he could do this as well as work with
other ethnic groups, such as the Jews, the Irish, the
Poles and the blacks. Capone appreciated any man provided he was a hustler, crook or killer, and he never discriminated against any of them because of their
religion, race or national origin, being perhaps the
underworld’s first equal opportunity employer.
Capone’s secret of success was to limit his mob’s
activities mainly to rackets that enjoyed strong demand
from the public: liquor, gambling and prostitution.
Give the people what they want and you have to gain a
measure of popularity. Al Capone was cheered when he
went to the ball park. Herbert Hoover was not.
Capone surrounded himself with men in whom he
could place his trust, a quality he in turn inspired in
many of his underlings. He was even smart enough to
hire Galluccio, the thug who had scarred him, as a
bodyguard, an act that demonstrated to the underworld the Big Fellow’s magnanimity. Still, he faced
many assassination attempts, including an effort to poison his soup. In September 1926 the O’Banions sent an
entire convoy of cars loaded with machine-gunners past
Capone’s Cicero hotel headquarters. They poured in
1,000 rounds, but Capone escaped injury.
One by one, Capone had his North Side enemies
eliminated, and he did the same to others who resisted
bending to his will. His most famous killing involved
treachery within his own organization. Hop Toad
Giunta and Capone’s two most competent killers, John
Scalise and Albert Anselmi, were showing signs of planning to go independent. Capone invited them to a banquet in their honor and, at the climax of the evening,
produced an Indian club with which he bashed their
brains in.
By this time, Capone started to look invincible, but
he erred terribly when he ordered the St. Valentine’s
Day Massacre in an effort to kill Bugs Moran, the last
major force among the old O’Banions. Seven men were
machine-gunned to death by Capone hit men masquerading as police officers. Suddenly, the public had
had enough of the savage bootleg wars. Washington
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CAPONE, James
began applying intense pressure, and while he could not
be convicted of murder, Capone was nailed for income
tax evasion and sentenced to the federal prison at
Atlanta for 11 years.
He was transferred to Alcatraz in 1934 and within a
few years his health began to deteriorate. When
released in 1939, he was a helpless paretic, a condition
generally attributed to the ravages of syphillis contracted in his early whorehouse days. Chances are he
had also gone “stir crazy,” a comm on fate among
Alcatraz inmates.
Capone retired to his mansion in Miami Beach, no
longer capable of running the Chicago mob. For several
years he wavered between lucidity and mental inertia.
He died on January 25, 1947.
Al Capone had left an imprint on America and the
rest of the world. Even in the minds of foreigners, he
was the “Chicago gangster” personified. His impact on
Chicago was significant and long lasting. During his
reign Capone ordered the extermination of more than
500 men, and an estimated 1,000 died in his bootleg
wars. The pattern of violence he set and the organization he built did not disappear with either his imprisonment or death. It is still not dead.
See also: ANTHONY JOSEPH ACCARDO; JOSEPH AIELLO;
ALCATRAZ PRISON; LOUIS “TWO GUN” ALTERIE; ANSELMI
AND SCALISE; BOOTLEGGING; LOUIS “LITTLE NEW YORK”
CAMPAGNA; FRANK CAPONE; JAMES CAPONE; RALPH “BOTTLES” CAPONE; CICERO, ILL.; VINCENT “SCHEMER” DRUCCI;
FIVE POINTS GANG; GENNA BROTHERS; GREAT DEPRESSION;
JAKE “GREASY THUMB” GUZIK; HAWTHORNE INN; MIKE “DE
PIKE” HEITLER; HERBERT HOOVER; ALFRED “JAKE” LINGLE;
ANTONIO “THE SCOURGE” LOMBARDO; JAMES LUCAS;
“COUNT” VICTOR LUSTIG; MACHINE GUN JACK MCGURN;
GEORGE “BUGS” MORAN; ELIOT NESS; FRANK NITTI;
CHARLES DION “DEANIE” O’BANION; PINEAPPLE PRIMARY;
PAUL “THE WAITER” RICCA; JOHN TORRIO; ROGER “TERRIBLE” TOUHY; HYMIE WEISS; WHITE HAND GANG; FRANK J.
WILSON; FRANKIE YALE.
Frank’s labors on behalf of his mentor Johnny
Torrio and his brother Al were generally employed in
situations where persuasion had failed and force was
called for. Such was the case in the 1924 city election
in Cicero, Ill., where the Democratic Party had actually dared to mount a serious effort against the Torrio/Capone-backed regime of Joseph Z. Klenha.
What ensued on April 1 was one of the most terrorfilled elections in American history. Frank Capone
showed his great ability as a political campaigner by
leading an assault on election eve against the Democratic candidate for town clerk, William K. Pflaum,
beseiging him in his office, roughing him up and
finally destroying his office. At polling places during
the balloting, a thug would sidle up to a voter waiting in line to cast his or her ballot and inquire as to
the person’s preferences. If the voter gave the wrong
answer, the thug ripped the ballot from the person’s
hand and marked it properly. The thug then waited,
fingering a revolver, until the voter dropped the ballot into the box. Voters who still protested were simply slugged and carried from the polling place to
vote another day. When honest election officials and
poll watchers objected, they too were slugged, kidnapped and held until the voting ended. Three men
were shot dead, and another had his throat cut. A
policeman was blackjacked. Michael Gavin, a Democratic campaign worker, was shot in both legs and
carted off to be held prisoner in the basement of a
mob-owned hotel in Chicago. Eight other balky
Democrats kept him company and ministered to his
wounds.
By late afternoon a group of honest citizens
appealed to the courts for assistance and County Judge
Edmund K. Jarecki swore in 70 Chicago policemen as
deputy sheriffs. Over the next several hours officers
and Capone’s followers fought a series of battles. A
police squad commanded by Detective Sgt. William
Cusick pulled up in front of a polling place near the
Hawthorne works of the Western Electric Co. where
Al and Frank Capone, Charles Fischetti, a cousin, and
Dave Hedlin were “campaigning” with drawn revolvers. In that era unmarked police cars were long limousines no different in appearance from the type
gangsters used, and Al Capone, Fischetti and Hedlin
hesitated at the sight of the vehicle, unsure whether its
occupants were police officers or merely gangsters who
supported the anti-Klenha ticket. Frank Capone exhibited no such inhibitions and immediately opened fire
on an officer at virtually point-blank range. Frank
missed and the officer and another policeman
responded with double blasts from their shotguns,
killing the elder Capone instantly. Al Capone fled the
scene.
Capone, Frank (1895–1924) brother of Al Capone
Had Frank (Salvatore) Capone, Al Capone’s elder
brother, survived until the latter’s climb to the pinnacle
of power, it might well be that he would have been just
as famous—Frank Capone’s killer instincts and savagery exceeded those of his brother. Despite Al’s
acknowledged ruthlessness, he was a man who would
try to deal before he tried to kill. Frank Capone never
exhibited such patience. “You never get no back talk
from no corpse,” he used to say, a sentiment made all
the more ominous by his quiet, almost bankerlike
demeanor.
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CARDIFF Giant
Frank Capone was given the biggest underworld
funeral Chicago had seen up till then, even eclipsing
that of Big Jim Colosimo a few years earlier. His coffin
was silver-plated, satin-lined and surrounded by
$20,000 worth of flowers. The Chicago Tribune called
the affair fitting enough for a “distinguished statesman.” In deference to the sad occasion, every saloon,
gambling joint and whorehouse in Cicero closed down
for two solid hours. But perhaps the crowning tribute
to Frank Capone was the election returns. The entire
Klenha slate was swept back into office by overwhelming margins.
Indian in a saloon brawl but was not prosecuted. It was
in a later melee with other Indians that Hart lost an
eye. Transferred to Idaho, he was charged with yet
another murder, but the case was finally dropped.
Returning to his marshal’s job in Homer, Hart eventually lost his badge when store owners began noticing
steady shrinkage of their stocks. As marshal, Hart was
furnished keys to all business places. He also lost his
position as commander of the American Legion post
when other members finally thought of asking for
proof of his war record. When he couldn’t even prove
he was a veteran, he was expelled. Without income and
evicted from one house for nonpayment of rent, the
Hart family went on relief. It was then that Hart got in
touch with the other Capones. With the help he
received from them and the money he got for telling his
fanciful stories to the newspapers, Hart-Capone was
able to live out the rest of his years in reasonable comfort, although by the time of his death in 1952 he was
totally blind.
Capone, James (1887–1952) brother of Al Capone and
lawman
Referred to by the newspapers as the “white sheep” of
the family, James Capone was not precisely a model citizen—except in comparison. He disappeared from the
Capone family fold in 1905, when he was 18, and considering what later became of the other Capone brothers, it was probably a good thing. Jim Capone did not
surface again until 1940, when—broke, missing an eye
and unable to support a wife and several children—he
wrote to Ralph Capone, still a mighty power in the
Chicago mob. He later visited with Ralph, who thereafter sent him monthly support checks, and with Al,
who was in sickly retirement in Florida. Only then did
Jim’s wife learn for the first time that her husband was
the brother of the notorious Al Capone. The newspapers also soon learned the facts, at least as Jim Capone
told them. According to Jim’s own account, he had
spent most of his years as an enforcer of the law and
was known in Nebraska as Richard James “Two-Gun”
Hart because of his prowess with a gun. The loss of an
eye he falsely attributed to a gunfight with gangsters.
While the newspapers played up this white sheep
story, the real facts were hardly as flattering to TwoGun Hart. Capone-Hart had joined a circus and later
bummed all over the United States and Central America. In 1919 he dropped off a freight in Homer, Neb.
and settled there. He married Kathleen Winch, the
daughter of a grocer, and eventually had four sons.
During this period he told such vivid tales of his war
exploits, although he had never served in the armed
forces, that the awed local American Legion post made
him their commander.
Hart’s popularity was such that he was named the
town’s marshal and after two years became a state sheriff. In 1922 he joined the Indian Service as a special
officer supervising the Omaha and Winnebago tribes to
prevent the sale of liquor to them. Hart earned a reputation for cruelty to the Indians and was eventually
transferred to Sioux City, Iowa, where he killed an
Capone, Ralph “Bottles” (1893–1974) brother of Al
Capone
The most durable of the Capone brothers, Ralph “Bottles” Capone was a loyal aide to his younger brother
Al, and like the mob chieftain, he did a stretch for
income tax evasion. Afterward, he got out, Ralph
rejoined the Capone mob. In 1950 the United Press
stated that “in his own right [Ralph Capone] is now
one of the overlords of the national syndicate which
controls gambling, vice and other rackets.” That statement was somewhat of an exaggeration. Ralph was
always given a position of honor within the group as
well as excellent sources of income, partly to provide
for Big Al’s sickly retirement in Florida after his release
from prison. But Ralph was never on the same level as
the leaders of the national syndicate, such as Lucky
Luciano or Meyer Lansky, or the heads of the Chicago
mob, such as Tony Accardo, Paul Ricca, Jake Guzik
and Sam Giancana.
Part of Ralph’s income through the years came from
his longtime legitimate business: distributing bottled
water in Chicago, an activity that won him the nickname Bottles. Ralph’s investment in bottling plants
stemmed from a plan Al had devised to gain monopoly
control of the soda water and ginger ale used in mixed
drinks.
In the early 1950s Ralph was questioned by the
Kefauver Committee at great length. A short while
later, his son, Ralph, Jr., committed suicide. Young
Ralph had been haunted by the Capone name through
school and a long string of jobs, and he had always
tried to keep his identity secret but without success.
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CARDINELLA, Salvatore “Sam”
The Car Barn Gang ranged far afield in their depredations and would often make an incredible sweep robbing saloons from Manhattan’s 14th Street all the way
up to the Bronx. The Kid would simply walk behind
the bar and tap the till while Big Bill and a dozen or so
stalwarts isolated the bouncers. If a barkeep objected to
the Kid’s action, he would receive a liquor bottle across
his skull from the teenaged gangster. Often the saloon
keepers who got advanced warning of the approach of
the Car Barners, realizing that resistance was foolhardy,
would reduce the amount of cash in the till and hope
the gangsters would be mollified with their take.
Meanwhile, the war between the Car Barners and
the police raged on. Finally, the police strong-arm
squad was sent into the area to clean out the gang.
They clubbed the gangsters unmercifully, but neither
side could get the better of the other as long as Big Bill
and the Kid were in the forefront of the battles. Eventually, however, the pair killed a Bronx liquor dispenser
making a valiant effort to protect his receipts and were
arrested for murder.
Big Bill and the Kid, not yet 21, were executed for
the crime, and by the onset of World War I, the dispirited Car Barners collapsed under persistent police
attacks.
The Capone name was not easily shaken by either the
son or the father. Even in his eighties, Ralph Capone
was still being described as an important member of the
mob.
Car Barn Gang
The Car Barn Gang, the last gang in America to declare
open war on the police, was clearly an organization
born in the wrong era. The Car Barners harkened back
to the post–Civil War days when criminal bands operated in most big cities on the basis of pure terror and
often engaged in pitched battles or vindictive strikes
against the police. Organized in late 1911 in New York
City, the Car Barners recruited mostly the young toughs
who infested the East River docks, fighting, stealing
and rolling drunks. As a gang, they became vicious
gunmen and highwaymen, staging daring daylight robberies and holding up trolley cars with the same Wild
West techniques used in earlier days on stagecoaches.
The first the police knew of the existence of an organized gang was the appearance of placards near the old
car barns around Second Avenue and East 97th Street.
The signs read:
Notice
COPS KEEP OUT!
NO POLICEMAN WILL HEREAFTER
BE ALLOWED IN THIS BLOCK
By Order of
THE CAR BARN GANG.
Cardiff Giant
scientific hoax
The Cardiff Giant, allegedly the fossilized remains of an
authentic giant who in ancient times walked the earth
in the area of what has become New York State, was
one of the most lucrative hoaxes in history.
George Hull, a former cigar maker from Binghampton, N.Y., conceived the plot to create the the giant. In
1868 he obtained a five-ton block of gypsum in Iowa
and had it fashioned into the shape of a huge man by a
stonecutter in Chicago. He then shipped the statue to
the farm of a cousin, William Newell, near Cardiff,
N.Y., where after a year the latter duly “discovered” it.
It is not clear whether the pair had first concocted their
plot as a swindle or if, as he would later state, Hull had
had the giant built to ridicule clergymen who were
always quoting from Genesis about a supersized race—
“There were giants in the earth in those days.”
A Syracuse newspaper headlined the find as “A
Wonderful Discovery,” and the pair pitched a tent and
began exhibiting the giant, charging 5¢ for a view.
News of the find flashed across the country and indeed
around the world. Thousands swarmed to see it and
admission was raised to 50¢ and then to $1. Meanwhile, most experts were convinced the Cardiff Giant
was genuine. Two Yale professors, a paleontologist and
a chemist, agreed it was a true fossil. The director of
the New York State Museum thought the giant was
The police soon learned the Car Barners were most
serious about their edict after a half-dozen officers who
had ventured into the forbidden zone were either
stabbed or had their skulls fractured. Following that,
the police never patrolled the area in groups of less than
four or five, leading to the vaudevillian comic’s famous
joke that the police were insisting on police protection.
The primary captain of the Car Barners was one Big
Bill Lingley, widely renowned as a burglar and desperado. He seldom ventured forth with less than two
revolvers, a blackjack and a slungshot, which he used
to attack a likely citizen or a police officer. Big Bill’s
principal confederate was Freddie Muehfeldt, a youth
who, although from a good family and a background
of considerable Sunday School work, at age 17 had
taken up a wastrel life on the docks. Big Bill determined
to make over Muehfeldt, who became known as the
Kid, in his own image. They became the twin terrors of
the Car Barners’ domain from East 90th Street to 100th
and from Third Avenue to the East River. Almost by
themselves, they were said to make the area as unsafe
for honest folk as the notorious Hell’s Kitchen section.
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CARNIVAL gyps
squad of detectives and hurried to the prison, posting
men at the rear entrances where the bodies were taken
out. A hearse turned into the alley and stopped. The
officers surrounded the vehicle and opened the back
door. Inside were a doctor and a nurse, dressed in
white.
“What does a dead man need with medical attention?” Norton wanted to know, but he got no answer.
The hearse contained a rubber mattress filled with hot
water and heated by pads attached to batteries. At the
head of the bed was an oxygen tank. There was also a
basket jammed with hot-water bottles and a shelf
loaded with syringes and stimulants.
Rushing into the jail, Norton found Cardinella laid
out on a slab and his relatives eagerly signing papers for
possession of the body. Norton bluntly announced that
the body would be held for 24 hours, and though Cardinella’s relatives screamed in anger, they were powerless.
Later, medical men agreed Cardinella’s neck had not
been broken when the trap was sprung: his body had
been too light. Death had resulted from choking. The
doctors said that had sufficient heat been applied to the
body quickly, he might have been revived.
really a statue but indeed most ancient and the “the
most remarkable object yet brought to light in this
country.” Others, including Oliver Wendell Holmes
and Ralph Waldo Emerson, concurred. Still, a few were
doubtful; the president of Cornell University felt the
giant was made of gypsum and thought there were
hints of a sculptor’s chisel. But the crowds, now arriving by special trains, continued to grow, and P. T. Barnum, the great showman, offered $60,000 to lease the
object from Newell for three months. The farmer
refused. Undeterred, Barnum hired a sculptor, Professor
Carl C. F. Otto, to make an exact copy of the giant.
When Hull and Newell brought their giant to New
York in 1871 for exhibit, they discovered Barnum was
already displaying his version in Brooklyn. While they
hauled Barnum into court, newspapermen were tracing
Hull’s activities and uncovered his purchase of gypsum
in Iowa. They located the stonecutter in Chicago, one
Edward Salle, who admitted to carving the giant, aging
it with sand, ink and sulfuric acid, and punching pores
into it with darning needles. Faced with the growing
evidence of fraud, Hull confessed. Barnum now was
able to avoid prosecution by claiming all he had done
was show the hoax of a hoax.
Thanks to their fraud, Hull and Newell netted about
$33,000 after building expenses of $2,200. Barnum,
who continued showing his version for years, made
much more. Today, the Cardiff Giant, Hull’s authentic
fake, is on display at the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.
card trick suicide
inventive way of avoiding execution
William Kogut, San Quentin death row convict #1651,
is seldom remembered today except in the folklore of
the notorious prison he inhabited, but his final exploit
would alter the practices followed in numerous death
rows around the country.
When Kogut entered San Quentin Penitentiary in
1930 sentenced to death by hanging for the lethal stabbing a woman, he openly boasted he would never be
executed, that he would instead die by his own hand.
The sentencing judge did not dismiss the threat but
instead warned authorities to deprive him of all
weapons or tools that would facilitate a suicide
attempt. In San Quentin the guards kept an unusually
close watch on Kogut, whose only diversion was playing solitaire with one of the two decks of cards he was
permitted to keep in his cell.
One Sunday morning not long before his scheduled
execution, the prison was ripped by a terrific explosion.
Guards rushed to death row and discovered Kogut
lying in a pool of blood, his face little more than a blob.
It took the coroner and a group of chemists several
days to figure out how Kogut had managed to kill himself. He had in days previous been playing solitaire—or
so it seemed. Unobserved by guards, he was busily
scraping off all the red spots on the cards—the hearts
and diamonds—with his thumbnail. Then he soaked
that residue in water in his tin cup, producing a wet
Cardinella, Salvatore “Sam” (1880–1921) murderer
One of the most terrifying and obese criminals in
Chicago history and chief of a gang that even the beer
barons of Prohibition were fearful of crossing, Sam
Cardinella was the mastermind of an incredible plot of
self-resuscitation. Known as Il Diavolo, or “the Devil,”
Cardinella was one of the city’s most powerful Black
Handers until police cracked down on that racket,
whereupon he and his gang turned to banditry and violent crime. Il Diavolo’s top triggerman was Nicholas
Viana, better known as the Choir Boy, an accomplished
murderer at the age of 18. The gang committed 20
murders and well over 100 holdups before Cardinella,
Viana and Frank Campione were captured and sentenced to be hanged. But the Cardinella story did not
end there.
In his death cell at the Cook County Jail, Cardinella
went on a hunger strike and lost 40 pounds. Only 11
minutes before Cardinella was slated to die, Lt. John
Norton, who had apprehended him, received a telephone tip that Cardinella’s friends “are going to revive
him after the execution.” Norton quickly gathered a
163
CARPENTER, Richard
pulp. This he poured into a hollow knob from his cot
and then he plugged the knob with a second knob.
Now Kogut had what he wanted—a potential deadly
bomb. The bits of playing cards were made of cellulose
and nitrate, and when mixed with a solvent formed
pyroxylin, an explosive that could be set off by heat.
What he had was a primitive homemade pipe bomb.
On the night of October 9, 1930 Kogut put his
bomb in his tin cup and placed it on the small heater in
his cell. Then he laid his head on the cup and waited for
the inevitable explosion that cheated the hangman.
Kogut’s card suicide trick can never be duplicated in
San Quentin or, in fact, any other death row. Condemned prisoners are still allowed playing cards, but
the decks are routinely collected and checked.
by the electric chair. On a gray morning two days
before Christmas, Carlton swung from the gibbet in the
Tombs courtyard in New York City. After the execution
a newspaper commented, “We are not at all sure that
this hanging was entirely legal but it certainly was justice.”
See also: HOWE AND HUMMEL.
carnival gyps
Probably half the people in this country visit a carnival
or fair of some kind during the course of a year; yet the
so-called games of skill or chance they play are obviously among the most lucrative gyps practiced today.
None of the games played are susceptible to being
beaten, either by skill or chance. All of them are or can
be rigged. The television program 60 Minutes once
devoted an entire segment to the exposure of just one
gyp game, “razzle,” an involved form of gambling in
which the customer can never win.
The “gaff,” or fix, is applied to every game or built
right into it, as is the case with various coin-pitch
games in which a player wins a prize if his coin lands
inside a square or circle without touching a line. In this
game valuable prizes can theoretically be won, but the
house percentage has been mathematically worked out
as 80 percent—compared to a little over 1 percent for
casino dice, 2.5 to 5 percent for roulette and 15 percent
or so for one-armed bandits.
Milk bottle toss is a notorious gaff game, although
the proprietor or a shill, or phony player, will always be
seen winning. The object of the game is to knock six
imitation milk bottles off a podium with three baseballs. Knocking them down is not sufficient—they must
be knocked completely off the table. The key to the gyp
is that three of the six bottles arranged in pyramid form
are lead-weighted at the bottom. When these three are
placed at the bottom row, or base, they will do no more
than fall over even when hit directly, and the player
loses. Yet it’s relatively simple for the operator of the
game to demonstrate how easy it is to win. He throws
the three baseballs and the six bottles topple to the
floor, but his assistant has simply stacked the six bottles
so that three non-lead-weighted bottles are on the bottom row and the weighted ones are on top. A mere
brushing will topple the weighted bottles to the floor.
Even games with a guaranteed prize are gaffed. The
most common variation of this is the “string game,” in
which all prizes are attached to strings that feed into a
crossbar, or collar. The player pulls a tab for one of the
strings on the opposite side of the collar and wins whatever prize pops up. The operator demonstrates the honesty of the game by grabbing all the strings on the other
side of the collar and pulling them so that every prize,
Carlton, Handsome Harry (?–1888) murderer
Handsome, blue-eyed Harry Carlton was a dapper
murderer who had a date with the hangman late in
1888. However, after his sentence had been pronounced, the New York legislature decided that no convicted murderer would be hanged after June 4, 1888
and that from January 1 of the following year on, the
state would use the electric chair for capital punishment. The lawmakers’ intention was that anyone with a
death sentence who was still alive on June 4 would be
executed the next year in the electric chair. But that was
not the way they had written the statute. Instead, the
law was phrased to say that nobody could be hanged
after June 4, 1888 and that “electrocution shall apply
to all convictions punishable by death on or after January 1st.” Carlton’s lawyer was quick to spot the loophole. He demanded that Handsome Harry be freed.
Death happened to be the only punishment on the
books for murder—unless the jury recommended
mercy, which in Handsome Harry’s case it had not. If a
person committed murder, as Harry had, and got no
sympathy from the jury, he or she had to die. However
unintentionally, the language of the new law stated that
persons who committed murder before June 4, 1888
not only could not be hanged but moreover could not
be punished at all.
Handsome Harry became an instant worldwide
cause célèbre and his case shook the very foundation of
law in New York State. If he were let go, it would mean
that for a seven-month period murder was legal in the
state! The dispute was rushed to the Supreme Court. In
a marked departure from the High Court’s traditional
respect for legalisms, it ruled that while the interpretation of the law by Carlton’s attorney might be technically correct, no slipup by the legislature could be
allowed to endanger human lives. Hanging, the
Supreme Court held, remained in force until replaced
164
CASEY, James P.
movies. While he couldn’t skate, he didn’t approve of
the girls going out alone at night. Carpenter always
bought clothes for the girls, although he neglected himself to the point of going around in tatters. In addition,
he always kept his grandfather supplied with three cigars a day. Suddenly, his thin veneer of sanity cracked.
On December 4, 1953 Carpenter stole a car, which
he later wrecked, and held up a grocery for $100. From
that day on, he never returned to his home or saw his
family. He ran up a string of more than 70 heists and
became a cop killer in August 1955, gunning down a
police detective who attempted to arrest him on a
Chicago subway. Once, he was recognized and almost
caught in a downtown movie theater by an off-duty
policeman named Clarence Kerr, who happened to be
there with his wife. When Kerr ordered Carpenter into
the lobby and demanded identification, Carpenter
faked a stumble and came up shooting, hitting Kerr in
the chest and wounding him badly. Kerr was able to fire
one shot off at the fleeing Carpenter, injuring him in the
leg. Before passing out, Kerr gasped to his wife: “It was
Carpenter—Carpenter—I know it was Carpenter.”
The manhunt for Carpenter, pressed by Chicago
police for more than a year, intensified, with the fugitive’s picture splashed across television screens. While
police cars wailed through the streets, Carpenter took
refuge in the house of a truck driver and his family and
threatened to kill them all unless they kept him hidden.
But Carpenter was really not that much of a menace to
his captives. He yearned for a family environment and
ended up trusting the truck driver and his wife too
much. They managed to elude his watch long enough
to get out of the house and call the police. Within minutes 30 police cars surrounded the house. Carpenter
was able to flee through a barrage of bullets and made
it across the roof to another building, where he took
refuge in a room. When police burst in on him, Carpenter tried unsuccessfully to pretend he was the real occupant of the room.
After his arrest, he said: “I’m sorry about one
thing—I didn’t do a single thing to make my mother
and my sisters proud. It was a lousy life I led—but it is
too late now. . . . I’ll go to the chair, but I hope I can
see my mother before I die.”
Carpenter got his wish before dying in the electric
chair on March 16, 1956.
including very valuable ones, jump up to tempt the
public. The trick: the strings attached to the valuable
ones are “dead-enders,” reaching the collar but not
extending to any of the tabs on the other side.
One of the most exotic gaffed games, and a very
popular one at big carnivals because it seemingly can’t
be fixed, is the “mouse game.” The public bets on
which of 60 numbered holes a mouse will enter, and
the prize is quite a good one. A mouse is placed on a
wheel, covered with a tin can and spun around vigorously so that when liberated, it is weaving almost
drunkenly. Then completely unrehearsed, the mouse
heads for the numbered holes. Meanwhile, the operator
of the game has made a quick survey of the board and
judged whether more money is bet on odd or even
numbers. With a foot pedal, he simply closes either the
odd or even holes, thereby greatly increasing the
house’s winnings, especially if the mouse enters an
unplayed number. If the mouse, staggering around the
holes, butts his head against a closed-off hole, it simply
backs off and heads for another opening. This does not
look suspicious to the public because the mouse has
been moving erratically all along. Finally, the creature
enters a hole. Whether or not there is money bet on it,
the house almost always wins much more than it loses.
Carpenter, Richard (1929–1956) murderer
The object of one of the greatest manhunts in American
criminal history, Richard Carpenter was the real-life
villain of Hollywood’s The Desperate Hours, holding a
Chicago family hostage and forcing them to hide him in
a drama reported in headlines around the world after
he was finally caught.
The Sunday supplements still carry stories of Carpenter as a prime example of a “mama’s boy” turned
killer. His probation report showed he was passionately
fond of his mother and would always come to her as a
child, sit on her lap and moan, “Mother, I’m terribly
lonely.”
In 1951 Carpenter had begun to make excursions
into crime. He was finally arrested for pulling a gun on
a taxi driver and robbing him of $8; he got a year in
jail. On her visits to the prison, Carpenter’s mother
brought him cakes and other sweets, which he shared
with nobody. He made no friends among his fellow
prisoners. His cellmates tagged him Mama’s Boy and
savagely never let him forget it. When Carpenter was
released, he vowed never to fool around with crime or
guns again. He became a cabbie, earning about $80 a
week. His streak of puritanism showed through when
he refused any fare to a gambling joint or brothel. He
remained his lone wolf self but occasionally would take
his sisters and a girl cousin to a skating rink or the
Carroll’s orgy
Prohibition offense
What may have been the silliest arrest in the entire era
of Prohibition, but one with tragic personal consequences, was that of Broadway producer Earl Carroll
for an “orgy” held on February 22, 1926 at the Earl
Carroll Theatre after a performance of his Vanities.
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CASH machine rackets
in his presence. He was released after serving four
months.
Carson, Ann (1790–1838) counterfeiter
A strange set of circumstances turned Ann Carson into
one of early America’s most notorious female criminals.
The daughter of a naval officer, she was the lovely and
vivacious wife of Capt. John Carson of the U.S. Army,
who disappeared in 1810 on a mission in the West
against the Indians. Carson was listed as presumed
dead. In 1812 Ann Carson met Lt. Richard Smith, who
was stationed near her home in Philadelphia. After a
short courtship they were married and lived happily
until January 20, 1816, when her first husband arrived
at his home and banged loudly on the door. He told
Smith who he was. Smith, who later insisted he had
been confused, drew a revolver and shot Carson dead.
Within days Smith was brought to trial, and it was
soon evident that everyone assumed he had killed Carson rather than give up his wife.
While the trial was going on, Ann Carson made a
desperate attempt to kidnap the governor of Pennsylvania, Simon Snyder, and hold him as a hostage to gain
her second husband’s release. She failed, and Smith was
convicted and, on February 4, 1816, hanged. Ann Carson lost all respect for law and order and became the
head of a band of hardened criminals. Drawing on her
military background, she organized the gang under
strict regulations that made them most effective. While
they engaged in some violent crimes, Ann Carson’s
gang were most competent at counterfeiting, passing
notes for six years with brilliant efficiency. After they
were finally rounded up, all were given long prison
terms in 1823. Ann Carson died in Philadelphia Prison
in 1838 while working on her memoirs.
Drawing shows James Casey being conveyed through
heckling San Franciscans to be hanged by the vigilance
committee.
With typical Broadway irreverence, Carroll was
honoring the Countess Vera Cathcart, who had just
beaten an Immigration Service effort to prevent her
from remaining in this country on the grounds of
“moral turpitude” because of her sensational divorce
from the earl of Cathcart. Climaxing the party onstage,
a bathtub was filled with champagne and a nude model
climbed in while men eagerly waited to fill their glasses
or at least ogle at the naked beauty. When reports of
the big bash got out, producer Carroll was hauled
before a federal grand jury to explain his unique violation of the Volstead Act. Carroll tried to avoid prosecution by declaring there was no champagne in the
bathtub, merely ginger ale. For this heinous distortion,
he was convicted of perjury, fined $2,000 and sentenced to the federal prison at Atlanta for a year and a
day. Carroll suffered a nervous breakdown on the way
to the penitentiary. Because of his mental state, his fellow prisoners were ordered never to mention bathtubs
Caruso, Enrico (1873–1921) Black Hand extortion victim
Few Italians coming to America around the turn of the
20th century expected to escape the terrors and tribulations they had experienced at the hands of criminals in
their native country. Rich or poor they could expect
threats on their lives—so-called Black Hand threats
that promised death unless they paid money. These
were not the work of any “Black Hand Society” but
extortions performed by the Mafia or other criminals,
and not even the most famous were immune. During a
triumphal engagement at the Metropolitan Opera
shortly before World War I, the great Italian tenor
Enrico Caruso received a Black Hand letter, with the
imprint of a black hand and a dagger, demanding
$2,000. The singer quietly paid, considering an appeal
to the police both useless and foolhardy.
166
CASSIDY, Butch
derer, Charles Cora, were hanged from the windows of
the vigilante headquarters on makeshift gallows.
Casey’s political friends buried him and had
inscribed on his tombstone, “May God Forgive My
Persecutors.” It should also be noted that in the two
months following Casey’s execution, not a single murder occurred in San Francisco, a period of tranquility
never again experienced in that city.
However, when this payment was followed by a new
demand for $15,000, Caruso knew he had no choice
but to go to the police. If he did not, he realized the
criminals would continue to increase their demands
and drain him dry. Caruso had been instructed to leave
the money under the steps of a factory, and after the
police set a trap, he did so. Two prominent Italian businessmen were seized when they tried to retrieve the
loot. The two were convicted of extortion and sent to
prison—one of the few successful prosecutions of Black
Hand criminals. Even so, Caruso was considered to be
in such great danger in case the criminals sought their
usual vengeance on an informer that he was kept under
police and private detective protection, both in this
country and in Europe, for several years.
See also: BLACK HAND.
cash machine rackets
The explosive growth in bank and store cash machines
in recent years has inevitably fostered various criminal
means of exploiting them. While there have been occasional murders resulting from crooks forcing victims to
hand over their personal codes so as to allow them to
extract money from the machines, this is not a frequent
occurrence since banks generally limit the amount of
money that can be withdrawn in any one day from any
one account. As a result nonviolent but ingenious scam
artists represent the more common cash machine
predators.
Not long ago in New York City, a bankcard customer approached a cash machine during evening
hours and found a handwritten sign reading: “Sorry for
the inconvenience. Minimum withdrawal $300.” This
happened to be the maximum withdrawal permitted
from the machine.
The customer wanted much less cash but given the
alternative opted to withdraw $300. He inserted the
card, punched out his code and saw the bills drop into
a withdrawal slot. However, the man soon discovered
he could not raise the slot cover to retrieve his money.
Puzzled for a time, he finally noticed two tiny screws
inserted on either side of the slot cover that effectively
sealed it. The man left the outer bank lobby in search of
a policeman. After going only one block in an unsuccessful search, he returned to find the screws removed
and his $300 gone.
Bankcard machines are designed to thwart theft, but
with every new safety technique, thieves refine their
methods. In this case the bank announced it would
alter the slot cover design, but experts regarded this as
an unsatisfactory solution. The slot covers on some
machines had replaced certain types of money dispensers that dropped the cash through an open slot.
These were plugged by thieves using various wax
sprays and the like. Money could be cleared out by the
thieves at their leisure after a customer attempting to
make a withdrawal left. Most cash machines have a
special telephone connection to the bank machine’s
main office, enabling a customer to call on the spot
Casey, James P. (?–1856) murderer
One of the most famous and infamous victims of the
San Francisco Committee of Vigilance, James Casey
was the editor of the Sunday Times and a member of
the city’s Board of Supervisors during what many
regard as the most politically corrupt decade in San
Francisco’s history. Ruffians, outlaws, thieves and murderers controlled the city in the 1850s and were protected by equally crooked politicians, one of whom was
Casey.
An arch rival of Casey was James King, editor of the
Evening Bulletin, who publicized Casey’s involvement
with corrupt elements and his previous history, which
included serving 18 months in Sing Sing prison for larceny. In 1855 King’s voice was the most virulent in calling for the reestablishment of the 1851 vigilance
committee to clean up the city. On May 14, 1856 King
launched a vigorous attack against Casey and said he
deserved “having his neck stretched.” As King left his
newspaper’s offices later that day, Casey accosted him,
shoved a revolver against his chest and ordered him to
“draw and defend yourself.” Casey then shot and mortally wounded his foe without even giving him a chance
to draw a weapon, which in any case he did not have.
After the shooting Casey was taken into custody. However, fearing the political powers would permit him to
escape justice, the vigilance committee swung into
action. A thousand men enrolled in a special armed
force, and militiamen guarding Casey in jail wired their
resignation to the governor, stacked their arms and
joined the vigilantes. King clung to life for six days
before dying on May 20. He was buried two days later,
with an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 men and women
following his body to the grave. By the time the last of
the throng returned to the city, Casey and another mur-
167
CASTELLAMMARESE War
manding respect as much by being able to exercise
restraint as by his more than competent shooting. He
was a superb planner of crimes and had the gift for
being able to use the best ideas of others, especially Elzy
Lay, who was probably the smartest of the group and
Cassidy’s best and most trusted friend.
The Wild Bunch’s first important train robbery,
after a number of bank jobs and stock thefts, was that
of a Union Pacific train near Wilcox, Wyo. on June 2,
1899. The gang detached the express car and blasted
it open with a dynamite charge, enough to get in but
not to kill a plucky guard inside who was determined
to resist. Throughout his career Cassidy could boast
he had never killed a man, although the same could
not be said for the rest of his gang despite his best
efforts to restrain them. The Wilcox robbery netted
$30,000. The Wild Bunch quickly pulled three more
train robberies, and Cassidy’s fame spread. While
Pinkerton detectives tracked him, the Union Pacific
considered another way of containing Cassidy—offering to buy him off by obtaining a pardon for him and
giving him a job as an express guard at a very high
salary, presumably as a no-show job. Cassidy himself
probably queered that deal by robbing yet another
train just as negotiations through intermediaries were
beginning.
The railroad then sent its own band of gunfighters
after Cassidy and his gang. Equipped with highpowered rifles, these manhunters took up the chase utilizing a high-speed train. A number of the gang were
either killed or arrested, and Cassidy realized it was
only a matter of time until he too would be run into the
ground. In late 1901 Cassidy, accompanied by the Sundance Kid and his lady, the celebrated Etta Place, fled
to New York and the following year headed for South
America. Much has been speculated about the relationship between Etta, Butch and Sundance, but there is little doubt that Etta was basically Sundance’s woman.
Butch once told an acquaintance, “She was the best
housekeeper in the Pampas, but she was a whore at
heart.”
Etta was also the hard-riding partner who joined
with the two men on their many holdups in Argentina.
In between jobs Butch and Sundance flirted with going
straight and became close friends with a young mining
man, Percy Seibert, who in time came to learn their
identities, a secret he kept. Cassidy often spoke
earnestly to Seibert about changing his life, and the
mining man encouraged him. In 1907 Etta Place
returned to the States for reasons of health. Sundance
took her back but rejoined Cassidy in 1908. Forced to
move on because they had been identified, the pair
went to Bolivia, where, according to more or less the
official Pinkerton version, they were killed in 1911 by
when such a caper is suspected. To counter this, crooks
simply put the communication system out of service.
Security experts and police advise bankcard customers to be wary when using cash machines, and to
walk away from any machine that seems to have any
sort of unusual problem. It is recommended that a card
user frequent only a machine that has been observed to
be in good working order from use by a previous customer.
Cassidy, Butch (1866–1937?) outlaw leader
Robert LeRoy Parker, alias Butch Cassidy, is without
doubt the most romantic character to come out of the
outlaw West. He combined the daring of Jesse James
with the free spirit of Bill Doolin and, indeed, his Wild
Bunch had much in common with the latter’s Oklahombres. What is most amazing about Parker’s appeal
is that he never killed anyone, and American hero worship has usually been reserved for more efficient
bloodletters. But Cassidy had other ingratiating qualities. He could prevent Kid Curry from shooting a
resisting railroad express car guard by saying: “Let
him alone, Kid. A man with his nerve deserves not to
be shot.” In 1894, when Cassidy was convicted of
horse stealing and sentenced to two years, he requested
permission to leave his jail cell unescorted for the night
before he was to be transferred to the state prison. “I
give you my word I’ll be back.” Incredibly, permission
was granted and sure enough the next morning Cassidy returned. He never revealed where he went or
whom he visited; he simply turned in his guns and
went off to prison.
Born in 1866 in Utah Territory, young Bob Parker
was raised on his Mormon father’s remote ranch. As a
teenager he came under the influence of an old-time
rustler named Mike Cassidy and rode with him in the
early 1880s in Colorado. Later, he went to work for a
mining outfit in Telluride, Colo., and fell in with bad
company, taking up rustling and pulling small bank
jobs. Strictly speaking, Cassidy’s Wild Bunch was not
formed until his release from prison in 1896, although
his earlier gang, which included the likes of Tom
McCarty and Matt Warner, was cut from the same funloving mold.
In 1896 Cassidy (Parker had by then adopted the
name of his old mentor) turned up in a desperado
haven called Brown’s Hole. There and in Hole in the
Wall, he met many other young criminals who became
part of the loosely-knit Wild Bunch. They included Kid
Curry (Harvey Logan), the Sundance Kid (Harry Longbaugh), Harry Tracy, Matt Warner, Elzy Lay, Deaf
Charley Hanks and Ben Kilpatrick. From the very first,
Cassidy was regarded as the leader of the gang, com168
CASTELLANO, Paul
Bolivian troops after being cornered following a robbery. In a variation of this story the Sundance Kid was
killed but Cassidy escaped and eventually returned to
the United States.
Seibert identified two American bank robbers killed
in Bolivia as Cassidy and Sundance. But his identification was rebutted in a 1975 book—Butch Cassidy, My
Brother—by Butch Cassidy’s sister, Lula Parker Betenson, who insisted her brother came home and lived out
a good life until his death in the 1930s. According to
his sister, Cassidy visited his family on a number of
occasions and rendezvoused many times with his old
buddies Warner and Lay, who had mended their ways.
She said Butch felt that Seibert had willfully misidentified the two bandits just to give him and Sundance
another chance. Overall, the evidence appears that Cassidy did not die in Bolivia, but that he returned around
1910, married and spent some time in the Mexican
Revolution as a mercenary, all under the name of
William Thadeus Phillips. If Cassidy was Phillips, he
died in Spangle, Wash. in 1937.
See also: BROWN’S HOLE, HOLE IN THE WALL, KID
CURRY, BEN KILPATRICK, ELZY LAY, ETTA PLACE, SUNDANCE
KID, MATT WARNER.
rackets were controlled by Salvatore Maranzano, a
tough mafioso in his own right who aspired to the title
of boss of bosses himself. Soon, the war for control of
New York rackets broke out between the two groups.
In the Masseria organization were such rising talents
as Lucky Luciano, Vito Genovese, Frank Costello,
Albert Anastasia, Joe Adonis, Carlo Gambino and
Willie Moretti. Under the Maranzano banner were such
future crime leaders as Joe Profaci, Joe Bonanno,
Tommy Lucchese, Gaetano Gagliano and Joe
Magliocco. However, few of these men owed much
allegiance to their respective bosses, wanting only for
the Castellammarese War, as the struggle was called, to
be brought to a conclusion.
Thus, while Masseria men killed Maranzano supporters and vice versa, a secret underground developed
in the two camps, attracting men who realized that
both leaders would have to be eliminated to achieve the
peace needed to organize crime the way they knew it
should be. The leader in this rebellion was Lucky
Luciano, who developed a strong rapport with his
young counterparts in the Maranzano organization,
especially with Tommy Lucchese, who kept him
informed of all secret developments.
Finally, Luciano planned and carried out the assassination of Joe the Boss in a Coney Island restaurant.
Luciano, then number two in command to Masseria,
simply stepped into the men’s room just before four of
his supporters, Vito Genovese, Joe Adonis, Albert
Anastasia and Bugsy Siegel, loaned to Luciano for the
operation by his closest Jewish confederate, Meyer
Lansky, walked in and gunned down Joe the Boss.
When the police arrived, Joe the Boss was dead, and
Luciano, having emerged from the men’s room, was
unhelpful. The standard report quoted in newspapers
around the country was that Luciano said he had heard
the shooting and “as soon as I finished drying my
hands, I walked out to see what it was all about.” A bit
of journalistic censorship was involved. Luciano’s
actual comment was: “I was in the can taking a leak. I
always take a long leak.”
With Masseria eliminated, Luciano and his cohorts
contacted Maranzano with a peace offering, one that
was accepted with the clear understanding that
Maranzano was now the boss of bosses. However,
Maranzano was smart enough to realize that what had
happened to Masseria would also happen to him
unless he struck first. He therefore planned a series of
assassinations that would eliminate not only Luciano
and his second-in-command, Vito Genovese, but also
many others, including Al Capone in Chicago, Willie
Moretti, Joe Adonis, Frank Costello and Dutch
Schultz, one of Luciano’s non-Italian associates.
According to his battle plan, Maranzano would
Castellammarese War Mafia power struggle
During much of the 1920s the Mafia in New York was
dominated by one man, Giuseppe “Joe the Boss”
Masseria, who could quite logically be considered the
“boss of bosses.” However, Masseria was a crude,
obscene leader who was increasingly hated by the
young, second-generation mafiosi around town. They
resented what they considered his stupidity and insistence on putting personal power and the old Sicilian
virtues of “respect” and “dignity” ahead of the quest
for money. Like other old “Mustache Petes,” Masseria
was violently opposed to working with the powerful,
non-Italian gangs, even though the high profits of such
cooperation were obvious.
What these young rebels objected to even more was
the needless and constant struggle for power within the
Mafia. Under these old-time gang leaders, Mafia gunmen not only fought other ethnic groups but also
warred among themselves, with Sicilians battling
Neapolitans and, even worse, Sicilians battling Sicilians
who had immigrated from other parts of the island or
from other villages.
By 1928 Masseria had become concerned about the
growing power of mafiosi from the west coast Sicilian
town of Castellammare del Golfo. Several of these
Castellammarese rose to power in other American
cities, especially Cleveland and Buffalo, but their main
source of strength lay in Brooklyn, where many of the
169
CASTRATION as punishment
Gambino’s sister. Everyone in all the crime families
expected that the mantle would be passed to Gambino’s
underboss Aniello Dellacroce, a tough, heartless killer
who could prevent incursions into the family’s operations.
Gambino, a master manipulator, knew that if Dellacroce fought for the top spot, Castellano would be
destroyed. It is unclear whether Gambino knew that
Dellacroce was already suffering from cancer (certainly
Dellacroce’s allies probably did not know). What Gambino did know was that killing Dellacroce would solve
nothing. The Young Turks under John Gotti, followers
of Dellacroce, had the power to destroy Castellano, and
Dellacroce was the only man who could keep them in
line. What Gambino had to do was make Dellacroce
Castellano’s life insurance policy. Gambino pulled that
off by offering Dellacroce and his faction total control
of the family’s Manhattan activities as a sort of crime
family within a crime family. It was an offer Dellacroce
could not refuse.
Gambino sought further support for Castellano
through his friendship with Funzi Tieri, who then
headed the Genovese crime family. That group had
been the number one family in the Mafia since the days
of Luciano, Frank Costello and Vito Genovese, but
Gambino had maneuvered his family to the pinnacle of
power without alienating Tieri. Tieri promised Gambino he would not do anything to shake Castellano
from power. He kept his word, but Tieri was a master
criminal, and inevitably the Genovese family reasserted
its top position among the mobs. In a sense Castellano
presided over a decline of the Gambinos.
However, Tieri died in 1981 and lesser, and perhaps
divided, leadership weakened the Genovese family and
allowed the Gambino mobsters to regain rackets and
territories that the Genovese could not maintain. Over
the next few years Castellano actually did start thinking
he was the boss of bosses.
But on December 2, Dellacroce died of the cancer
wracking his body. Apparently Castellano did not realize how vulnerable he now was without the life insurance Gambino had provided him. One of the big
knocks made against Castellano by other mobsters in
the family was that he was weak, hesitant, didn’t go for
the kill when it was required. A smart Mafia boss
would have moved instantly and started killing the
competition. It was as though Castellano thought he
was in some sort of corporate proxy fight. He thought
he could name the none-too-bright Bilotti his underboss and then start breaking up and isolating the Gotti
crew.
John Gotti had a different idea. Even before Dellacroce was buried, he or his representatives were meeting with other Mafia families in New York and
emerge from such a bloodbath as the undisputed crime
boss in America.
However, Luciano and Lansky anticipated Maranzano’s moves, and on September 10, 1931, just hours
before a psychopathic killer named Vincent “Mad
Dog” Coll was to begin the Maranzano purge, four
Jewish gangsters supplied by Lansky walked into
Maranzano’s office in the guise of detectives and shot
and stabbed Maranzano to death.
The Castellammarese War thus ended with the two
contending forces vanquished. The young rebels under
Lucky Luciano took over. While Luciano made use of
such terms as “Cosa Nostra,” or “our thing,” as a sort
of Mafia carryover, the day of the Mafia was really finished. The new crime boss formed lasting alliances with
non-Italian gangsters, and the national crime syndicate,
or “organized crime,” was born, taking control and
continuing to this day.
See also: CHARLES “LUCKY” LUCIANO, SALVATORE
MARANZANO, GIUSEPPE “JOE THE BOSS” MASSERIA, NIGHT
OF THE SICILIAN VESPERS.
Castellano, Paul (1915–1985) murdered “boss of bosses”
Whatever may be said of Paul Castellano, the head of
the Gambino crime family, he must be acknowledged to
have enjoyed “great press.” This was never more obvious than at his death. When Castellano and his driver,
Tommy Bilotti, were hit Mafia style in front of a steakhouse on New York’s East Side on December 16, 1985,
the news made headlines around the country. “Big
Paul” Castellano was hailed as the Mafia’s “boss of
bosses,” and “the most feared don in America.” In fact,
he was not the most feared don in America, although
perhaps the most hated by other mafiosi, and he was
never the so-called boss of bosses. That the 6-foot-2
Castellano actually believed he deserved the dubious
distinction may explain why he was taken out more
easily than any other crime boss.
Despite all the buildup given Castellano, he never
had total control of the Gambino family, but rather
only of what was accorded him by his enemies. Castellano had come to power only through his connection to
the previous and much heralded and respected boss
Carlo Gambino. Gambino was a true power within the
Mafia and rightfully could have been heralded as the
boss of bosses. But like Lucky Luciano decades earlier,
Gambino opted for de facto power rather than an
ephemeral moniker.
A sick man in his last years, Gambino settled on
Castellano to succeed him, although he knew Paul was
not the man for the job on the basis either of right or
ability. What Castellano had going for him was blood;
he was Carlo’s cousin, and in addition the husband of
170
CATANIA curse
castration as punishment
elsewhere, getting approval for what had to be done.
The Gottis were smart enough to offer other mobsters a
“piece of Paul.” It probably wasn’t necessary, considering the contempt in which Castellano was held. All the
mobs had been stunned when they learned that Castellano had allowed his 17-room mansion on Staten
Island to be bugged by the FBI. And when the tapes
were revealed it was learned that Castellano had talked
disparagingly about all of them.
That was bad enough, but Castellano had blabbed
about Mafia business with almost anyone who entered
his home. He told Bilotti things that violated the mob’s
need-to-know code. He even told his maid (and mistress) things she wasn’t to know. More important than
that, it was clear that Castellano was even more of a
menace, since he was under indictment on a number of
racketeering counts. The boys had to worry if the 70year-old Castellano could take prison and the knowledge he’d never enjoy his twilight years as a free man.
Under such circumstances a weak boss like Big Paul
could start talking.
Gotti moved with astonishing speed. Two weeks
after Dellacroce died, Castellano came to Sparks Steak
House on East 46th Street to meet three men and discuss family affairs and no doubt outline his future
plans. At least one of the three men who was already
there knew what was going to happen. As Castellano
and Bilotti stepped out of their Lincoln limousine, neither of them armed, and not even accompanied by a
backup car of armed gunmen for protection, three men
wearing trenchcoats and fur hats approached, pulled
out semiautomatic handguns and shot both men
repeatedly in the face. One of the assassins stopped
long enough to pump a coup de grâce into Castellano’s
head. The gunmen walked rapidly away, one talking
into a walkie-talkie. They got into a waiting dark car
that quickly disappeared.
John Gotti then was driven past the scene to make
sure everything had gone as planned. It most certainly
had, thanks to Castellano’s absolute lack of any semblance of precaution. Apparently he thought as the boss
of bosses he could walk on water. As it was, only his
car blocked his body from ending up in the gutter.
The media promised their audience that the murder
of the so-called boss of bosses was certain to trigger a
family war as the Castellano forces wreaked their
vengeance. There turned out to be no Castellano supporters. The transfer of power went smoothly, proving
that in the Mafia at least, there was nothing like violence to promote peace.
Castration is a much discussed and little-used method
of punishment for criminality. There are no overall
statistics available, and the best that can be determined
is that during the 20th century it has been used several
hundred times in California and less frequently in some
other states. Because of new interpretations of existing
law and malpractice, it is highly unlikely to be used
much in the future, although one occasionally reads a
newspaper item of a prisoner being offered or indeed
suggesting the use of castration as an alternate to a
long prison term. In California in 1975 two convicted
child molesters, Paul de la Haye and Joseph Kenner,
requested they be castrated instead of being given what
was likely to be a life sentence. The sentencing judge
readily agreed, but the operations were canceled when
the urologist retained to perform them was advised by
a group of colleagues at University Hospital in San
Diego that he most likely would be open to a lawsuit
for assault and battery and probably would not be covered by malpractice insurance. The county urological
society gave the doctor the same advice.
Aside from these legal restrictions there is a growing
philosophical opposition to the practice, despite an
occasional flamboyant outburst by an isolated jurist.
The sentiment is probably best summarized by Aryeh
Neier, executive director of the American Civil Liberties
Union, in a book entitled Crime and Punishment: “But
an overriding purpose of the criminal law should be to
prevent citizens from committing physical violence
against each other. It cannot be useful to that end for
the state to set an example of violence against its own
citizens. If prison is more barbarous to the victim, at
least citizens cannot readily mimic the state by holding
other citizens behind bars.”
Of course when castration is tried, the results are not
always what is hoped for. Fifteen years after convicted
rapist Joseph Frank Smith agreed to “chemical castration” as a condition for probation, he pleaded guilty to
new crimes in late 1998. Prior to that Smith had been
celebrated as a “poster man” for the success of chemical castration.
He had been convicted in San Antonio in 1983 for
twice raping the same woman. Smith accepted an offer
to be subjected to impotence-causing injections in
exchange for probation. Smith moved to the Richmond
area in 1984 and appeared on television’s 60 Minutes
and stood as a logical example of how to treat rapists.
According to officials at Johns Hopkins University
Hospital in Baltimore, where he commuted for treatment at the time, it was reported that chemical castration suppressed the sexual appetite of offenders and
made them more susceptible to treatment.
171
CATTLE Kate
At the time of his latest two convictions, Smith, a
45-year-old truck driver, was said by authorities to have
possibly been responsible for as many as 75 additional
sex-related crimes since 1987.
1960s. The police suspected they had catman trouble
after an epidemic of baffling burglaries. There were no
signs of forcible entry, and insurance companies were
balking at paying claims for so many burglary losses.
At first, the heists looked like inside jobs. In three
instances bookkeepers who had the combinations of
rifled safes were fired. It struck the police as odd, however, that three trusted employees should all go bad at
about the same time.
Then one Saturday night, protective agency patrolmen answering an automatic alarm on West 28th Street
came across an intruder on the 14th floor and raced
after him down a corridor. Without hesitation the man
crawled through an open window at the front of the
building, hung from the sill for a moment and, to the
officers’ horror, let go. The guards called for an ambulance and went to the street to help remove the gory
remains. The only trouble was there were no remains—
just a moccasin. When the police arrived a few minutes
later, the only explanation seemed to be that the burglar had fallen 14 stories and walked away. The agency
patrolmen swore they’d seen the man disappear from
the ledge.
The mystery was finally solved when the other moccasin was found on the 13th floor under a heavy pivot
window that swung out from the middle of the frame.
The thief had dropped to this open slanted window
directly below and slid down it like a chute into the
13th floor hallway. While the guards were rushing to
the street, the catman had blithely made his getaway
over the roof.
The next weekend the catman went into action
again. Fifteen Persian lamb coats were stolen from the
same building where he had put on his high-diving act.
Unable to make off with all the loot in one trip, he
stashed 10 of the coats under a water tower on the
roof. The police found the coats and immediately
staked lookouts all around, hoping to nab the thief
when he returned for the rest of the haul. But the catman apparently surveyed the scene from another roof
and spotted the police trap. After several futile nights
the police gave up and returned the coats to the owner.
The very next night, the catman struck and made off
with the same 10 coats.
Months marked by more improbable burglaries
went by before the police got a break. Finally, they
received a tip from the desk clerk at a hotel on 27th
Street that a salesman guest was renting a top-floor
room by the week but occupied it only from Friday
night to Monday morning. The routine made no sense
since salesmen don’t do any business in the garment
area on weekends; moreover, if someone wanted a
room for a fling on the town, he’d be more likely to
rent space nearer the Times Square area. After obtain-
cat burglar
A general public misconception is that a so-called catman, or cat burglar, is an acrobatic daredevil who burglarizes private homes. Very few of these talented
criminals would waste their skills on so pedestrian a
target, even if it was the mansion of a millionaire. The
cat burglar’s habitat is the urban skyscraper, which he
climbs by means of ropes and scaling ladders. His targets are jewelry salesrooms, fur shops and cash-heavy
businesses deemed safe from window-entry burglary
because of their location on high floors.
A catman of extraordinary ability was a character
named Slippery Augie Smith, who plagued businesses
and baffled New York City police in the 1950s and
Rendering of the lynching of Cattle Kate and Jim Averill
appeared in a publication sympathetic with the interests
of the big cattlemen.
172
CENTER Street
ing a search warrant, police entered the hotel room. A
fast check indicated they had found their catman. The
room contained a cache of ropes, ladders and stolen
loot, including those elusive Persian lamb coats.
When Slippery Augie, a 23-year-old ex-sailor,
strolled into the room a few hours later, he found himself under arrest, with no chance to make a fast break
to the window. Realizing he faced a long prison stretch,
Augie talked, not without an air of pride. He said he
got his thrills suspended high above the street. He also
explained how he had been able to make his safecracking robberies look like inside jobs. “Most of these businessmen were so sure nobody could get into their
places except through the door, which was protected by
burglar alarms, they would leave the safe combination
around someplace handy,” he said. “Some pasted them
in the upper left-hand drawer of their desks. Others
filed the figures under S.”
Catania curse
the fact was that Catania had been marked for death
when his father died. It was a Mafia custom that members of a family were supposed to avenge killings of
their kin. Joe the Baker, therefore, was supposed to kill
his father’s assassins. On the other hand, when someone
in the Mafia had cause to eliminate Joe the Baker for
reasons unrelated to his father’s killing, in this case his
hijacking of certain bootleg whiskey trucks, they found
ready allies among the kin of old Joe Catania’s murderers.
Cattle Kate (1862–1889) prostitute and alleged rustler
Ella Watson, known as Cattle Kate, was an enterprising
young prostitute from Kansas who settled in the
Wyoming cow country. With a partner of sorts, Jim
Averill, she did a thriving business in cattle, which was
the coin of the realm for cowboys paying her for services rendered.
It would of course have been highly unusual if the
cowboys limited their payments to cows they held
clear title to. For a time, Cattle Kate was tolerated by
all, including the big stockmen, who understood that
men on the range needed certain diversions and cattle
losses of this sort were merely the price of doing business, that era’s equivalent of cheating on expense
accounts. However, the blizzards of 1888 thinned out
the herds, and the big stockmen felt they could no
longer stand such losses. One July day in 1889 a
wealthy and arrogant cattleman named Albert Bothwell and 10 others decided to do something about the
matter. They kidnapped Cattle Kate from her cabin,
picked up Averill, who had become something of a
spokesman for the small homesteaders fencing off the
wide-open range, and threatened to hang them. It
appears there was no real plan for a lynching but
rather just a desire to frighten the duo. Unfortunately
for them, neither Cattle Kate nor Averill took the
threats seriously, even when nooses were put around
their necks. They were then shoved into space, apparently just to carry the scare tactics a step further. But as
the pair slowly strangled, no one made a move to cut
them down. The lynchings stirred up an outcry from
citizens that Bothwell and his friends had not anticipated, but Bothwell’s fellow stockmen hastily came up
with a new justification for the act. Stories were
planted in the friendly Cheyenne press that Cattle Kate
was a mean, gun-toting bandit queen and Averill her
business manager. They were accused of systematically
looting the range, with her red-light activities a mere
cover for their crimes. Cattle Kate became a criminal
adventuress worthy of front-page coverage in even the
Police Gazette. The Cheyenne Weekly Mail observed
that the lynchings indicated the time had come “when
men would take the law into their own hands.” The
fate of Mafia victim’s family
A Sunday supplement phrase invented to describe the
sorry plight of the Catanias, father and son, who met
the same fate at the hands of Mafia executioners 29
years apart, it nevertheless reflects the primitive law of
survival pervading that criminal organization.
Joe Catania was a Mafia capo who ran the southern
Brooklyn docks area in 1902. This position made him
extremely valuable to New York’s first Mafia family,
the Morellos, in their counterfeit money distribution
setup. The bogus money was printed in Sicily and then
concealed in olive oil shipments that were sent to Catania’s piers. From there the bills went to Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Chicago and New Orleans, where they were
passed by Mafia organizations. The only threat to the
arrangement was Catania himself, whose increasing
addiction to the bottle weakened his sense of discretion.
When his saloon remarks became too open, Catania
was subject to a special Mafia trial—one that the defendant knew nothing about—and his execution was
ordered. His body was found near the Gowanus docks
inside a barrel, his throat slit from ear to ear. He had
also been so savagely beaten that all major bones in his
body were broken, a clear Mafia signal for all to maintain silence.
At the time of his father’s assassination, Joseph
“Joe the Baker” Catania was only a babe in arms. He
grew up in the rackets, as was his right since he was
related by blood to the Morello family. On February
3, 1931, just after he kissed his wife good-bye, Joe
the Baker was gunned down in the Bronx by Joe Valachi and the mysterious “Buster from Chicago.” Much
was made about Joe the Baker being a victim of the
Masseria-Maranzano war for control of New York, but
173
CERMAK, Anton J.
whitewash, the cattle barons soon saw, was effective
enough cover for them to launch a major attack on the
homesteaders in Johnson County, Wyo. Others were
accused of running rustling operations similar to Cattle Kate’s and, it was said, would have to be dealt with.
Thus, the lynching of a 26-year-old prostitute provided
the rationale for what was to become the Johnson
County War.
See also: JAMES AVERILL, JOHNSON COUNTY WAR.
convict local citizens for cutting a few animals out of a
big ranchman’s stock. Many alleged rustlers died of
“hemp fever” for no other reason than that they had
arrived on the scene at the wrong time. Just a few years
earlier the very men now doing the “stringing up” had
been committing the same crimes; in fact; that’s how
they had gotten started in the business. In the end, cattle rustling was stamped out by these extreme measures. “Range detectives,” who were often no more
than hired guns, barbed wire fences, and the forceful
closing of the range put an end to this traditional
method of breaking into the ranching business.
See also: JOHNSON COUNTY WAR, WET STOCK.
cattle rustling
The principal business of the American West was cattle
raising, and, quite naturally, the number one crime was
cattle rustling. Actually, the Indians did much of the
early stealing, mainly because they realized that if the
white man could not keep his cattle, he could not
occupy the Indian hunting grounds. Many Indians also
felt that stealing cattle made up in some small way for
the newcomers’ slaughter of the buffalo. In due course,
it became the main illegal activity of many outlaws.
Mexican bandits frequently raided the Texan and later
the American side of the Rio Grande and, according to
official claims made to the Mexican government, rustled 145,298 cattle from the King and Kennedy
ranches. Turnabout seemed fair play. Numerous Texas
stockmen built their vast herds by stealing animals
from Mexican-owned ranches on either side of the border. Often going to Mexico on a “buying trip” meant
stealing great herds and swimming them across the Rio
Grande at night. Such herds, in fact, came to be called
“wet stock.”
Having so accumulated much of their herds, these
same stockmen were nonetheless enraged by the relatively insignificant losses caused by other American
rustlers. Yet, cattle rustling never provoked the venom
that horse stealing did. The stealing of one neighbor’s
stock by another, however, was universally condemned, unless the other was a hated absentee owner,
in which case the prohibition did not apply. A small
rancher often would start his herd using a “rope with a
wide loop,” an accepted practice when restricted to
unbranded animals. As Bill Nye wrote in his Laramie
Boomerang in 1883: “A guileless tenderfoot came to
Wyoming, leading a single steer and carrying a branding iron. Now he is the opulent possessor of 600 head
of fine cattle—the ostensible progeny of that one
steer.”
The great cattle wars were essentially fought by the
hired guns of big ranchers out to eliminate thefts by
smaller ranchers and cowboys “to get a start in the
business.” This type of conflict was epitomized by
Wyoming’s bloody Johnson County War, which took
place in an area where local jurors simply would not
cave-in-rock pirates
The great commercial route that opened the frontier in
the early 19th century was down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to the port of New Orleans. The two rivers
teemed with pirates who falsely marked the channels so
that rafts and keelboats would run aground or crash
into the rocks. When this wasn’t practical, the boats
were attacked from skiffs and canoes. The most treacherous stretch was on the Kentucky shore of the Ohio
from Red Bank to Smithland, where the king of the
local pirates was Bully Wilson.
A Virginian, Wilson set up his headquarters in a cave
near the head of Hurricane Bars. Beckoning thirsty
travelers to shore was the following sign:
WILSON’S LIQUOR VAULT
and
HOUSE FOR ENTERTAINMENT
The unwary who paused there rarely resumed their
voyage. Wilson’s place was known as Cave-in-Rock,
and the only visitors who could stop there in safety
were pirates, robbers, slave stealers and murderers.
And if they were alone and were known to have a
hoard of loot with them, they were not particularly safe
either. But the main purpose of Cave-in-Rock was to
prey on river traffic, and Bully Wilson always had 80 to
100 men ready to swoop down on helpless vessels.
Whenever a craft was taken, all aboard were killed, and
the boat, manned by a pirate crew, would sail on to
New Orleans to sell its goods. The river pirates dominated the waterways until the mid-1820s, when the
boatmen organized to fight back.
In July 1824 the crews of about a dozen flatboats,
about 80 men in all, hid in the cargo box of a single
boat and floated down the river. The boat was soon
attacked by a force of about 30 pirates, coming out in
canoes and skiffs. As the pirates swept aboard the flatboat, the hidden men stormed out of the cargo box.
174
CHAMPION, Nathan D.
Ten pirates were killed and another 12 captured. They
were blindfolded and forced to walk the plank in 20
feet of water. As the helpless men surfaced, crewmen
armed with rifles stood on the cargo box and shot
them. The end result of such punitive expeditions
finally broke the power of Bully Wilson and other
pirates, so that the waterways were relatively free of
piracy and safe for commerce after 1825.
See also: COLONEL PLUG, PIRACY.
Center Street
won’t hurt you if you keep quiet and remain perfectly
still.’”
Cermak lingered for three weeks. From his deathbed
the mayor expounded a theory, long held by some historians after his death, that he, not Roosevelt, was the
intended victim all the time. Judge John H. Lyle, probably as knowledgeable as any non-Mafia man on the
subject of Chicago crime, stated categorically, “Zangara was a Mafia killer, sent from Sicily to do a job and
sworn to silence.” It was not an outlandish theory, the
concept of the sacrificial hit man having a long history
in the annals of the Mafia.
In theory, Cermak was a great reformer, but that
must be measured in light of what constituted reform in
Chicago. Born in Prague and brought to America when
he was one year old, Cermak went into politics at an
early age and soon won the nickname Ten Percent
Tony, since that figure was said to be his standard skim
in kickbacks and other deals. By the time Cermak had
served three terms in the state legislature, he was worth
$1 million. Before he took office as mayor, his net
worth was $7 million. In the words of a contemporary
writer, Cermak was guilty of using “surreptitious
means such as wire taps, mail drops, surveillance and
stool pigeons to ferret out information concerning the
weaknesses and foibles of administrative and political
friends, taking great pains to learn the identities of his
enemies.”
Cermak did not attempt to purge Chicago of
gansterism but only of the Capone element, which he
sought to replace with others who had supported his
campaign, headed by Gentleman Teddy Newberry.
Some writers have claimed that Cermak moved to take
over all crime in Chicago after the imprisonment of Al
Capone. Later court testimony indicated that the
mayor had dispatched some “tough cops” to eradicate
Frank Nitti, Capone’s regent during his absence. Nitti
was searched, found to be unarmed and was about to
be handcuffed when an officer leveled his gun at the
gangster and shot him three times in the neck and back.
The officer then shot himself in the finger. Nitti was
taken to the hospital to die, and the police announced
he had been wounded while resisting arrest, as the officer’s injured finger proved. Unfortunately for the
mayor, Nitti recovered and a full-scale war ensued, one
of the early victims being Cermak’s favorite gangster,
Newberry. At the time, Cermak was taking the sun in
Florida on a rather extended vacation, said to have
been so arranged to keep him away from the Capone
gangsters. Cermak had left Chicago for Florida on
December 21, 1932, and he was still there February
15, 1933. Some cynics suggested that the mayor was
seeking the protective wing of the president-elect to
New York vice district
For many decades the site of New York Police Headquarters, Center Street had an unwholesome history.
Its creation traces back to the financial crisis of the
winter of 1807–8, when business virtually ground to a
halt because of the weather. The out-of-work elements
were near starvation, and because of mob riots for
jobs and food, the city began its first public works
program to create employment. Large work gangs
were set to draining and filling a pond and marshland
known as the Collect. When the work was finally
completed and the earth settled, the area was opened
for settlement. The first street created was called Collect Street; later, it was renamed Rynders Street for
Capt. Isaiah Rynders, the corrupt political boss of the
Sixth Ward and protector of the gangsters that inhabited the Five Points section. For well over half a
decade, the street was known as one of the wickedest
in the city and contained virtually nothing but saloons
and brothels. Even with a determined effort to rid the
area of vice, unsavory elements remained when most
of the worst dives were closed and the name changed
to Centre Street (later altered to Center). But the real
cleanup was not made until police headquarters was
situated there and the criminals decided to move a few
blocks away.
Cermak, Anton J. (1873–1933) Chicago mayor and
murder victim
Mayor Anton J. Cermak of Chicago was with Franklin
D. Roosevelt in Miami on February 15, 1933 when
Joseph Zangara attempted to assassinate the presidentelect and fatally shot Cermak instead. Cermak became
a martyr.
At the time he was shot, Cermak cried, “The President, get him away!” He told Roosevelt, “I’m glad it
was me instead of you.” Roosevelt, who cradled the
wounded mayor, said: “I held him all the way to the
hospital and his pulse constantly improved. . . . I
remember I said, ‘Tony, keep quiet—don’t move—it
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CHAPIN, Charles E.
The hoax was simplicity itself, being so outrageous
that it was never questioned. Certainly, no one was
going to approach Carnegie for confirmation. The
Chadwicks now traveled frequently to Europe and,
when they were in Cleveland, entertained lavishly. Mrs.
Chadwick was also a leading public benefactor. In less
than a decade, it was later estimated, she took banks
and private lenders for upwards of $20 million.
The bubble burst in 1904, when the Cleveland Press
heard of a Boston creditor who had become dubious
about getting his money back. The newspaper checked
on Mrs. Chadwick’s background and found out her
real name was Elizabeth Bigley, a convicted forger who
had been pardoned in 1893 by Gov. William McKinley
of Ohio. When the news came out, Charles T. Beckwith, president of the Citizens National Bank of Oberlin, to whose institution Mrs. Chadwick owed $1.25
million, promptly keeled over from heart failure. There
was a run on the bank and on scores of others that
were found to have made loans to the woman.
Mrs. Chadwick, who was in New York on a spending spree when the unpleasantness surfaced, was
arrested and extradited back to Cleveland, where she
was tried and sentenced to 10 years in prison. She died
there in 1907. It was believed at the time of her death
that many of her victims had still not come forth, some
individuals hoping to avoid ridicule and the banks to
avoid runs. Remarkably, there were still those who
firmly believed that Mrs. Chadwick was indeed
Carnegie’s daughter and that he would in due course
make good on her debts. All of which made Cassie
Chadwick’s swindle among the most enduring ever concocted.
stay alive. Others contended that Cermak was merely
cementing relations with the incoming administration
and just possibly talking to Roosevelt’s campaign manager, James J. Farley, about an indictment said to be
pending against him for income tax evasion.
Zangara, who had been overwhelmed by guards and
the crowd after firing the shots, died in the electric
chair on March 21, 1933. He insisted Roosevelt was
the man he had meant to kill.
See also: JOSEPH ZANGARA.
Cero-Gallo case
wrong man case
In one of the most-twisted “wrong man” cases in history, Gangi Cero, a young Italian seaman was found
guilty of murder in Massachusetts and sentenced to die
in September 1928. Cero’s sympathetic employer,
Samuel Gallo, provided his own lawyer, who unsuccessfully tried to save the defendant. On the night
scheduled for the execution, a witness was found who
identified the murderer as Gallo. Cero was granted a
reprieve. Gallo was then indicted, and both he and
Cero were brought to trial together. Cero was quickly
found not guilty, but Gallo was convicted. Gallo, however, won a new trial, and after the main witness
against him left the country, he too was acquitted.
Chadwick, Cassie (1857–1907) swindler
One of the most audacious swindles ever worked in this
country was accomplished in the 1890s by a Canadian
woman and incorrigible thief, Mrs. Cassie Chadwick,
who married into Cleveland society. She was, she
hinted, the illegitimate daughter of Andrew Carnegie,
the steel magnate. In fact, she did more than hint—she
flashed all sorts of promissory notes supposedly signed
by Carnegie and then deposited some $7 million worth
of allegedly valid securities in a Cleveland bank. She
told the banker to keep her secret, which meant, of
course, that the news spread like wildfire throughout
the banking community and soon among the city’s
social set. Clearly, Mrs. Chadwick was somebody, and
she was invited to the best functions. Bankers too volunteered their services without asking. Yes, Mrs. Chadwick acknowledged, she might be able to use a little
loan or two against future payments from her tycoon
father. She took a few small loans, all under $100,000,
and repaid them promptly by taking out other loans
from different banks and private lenders. She then went
whole hog, borrowing millions. Mrs. Chadwick paid
high interest, but with all that Carnegie money behind
her, she seemed good for it.
chain gangs
The use of chain gangs for convict labor was not, as
the public now generally believes, an invention of the
Southern states; the custom was practiced in both
the North and in England during the 18th century. The
Southern states, having used the method to some extent
in antebellum years, embraced the custom wholeheartedly in the post–Civil War era as an important source
of revenue during their financial distress. Convicts were
turned over to leasees, who not only chained a prisoner’s two legs together but chained him as well to several other prisoners, lessening the chances of escape.
Public protests against the inhumane treatment of
chain gang convicts led to a sharp reduction of the
practice. However, the advent of the automobile and
the need for many new roads led to a great resurgence
of chain gang labor; by the early part of the 20th century, a major part of the prisoner force in several states
176
CHAPMAN, Gerald
labored in road gangs. Exposés of conditions became
common, the most potent being that written by an
escaped convict, Robert Elliott Burns, who authored
I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang, a bestselling book that was made into an important movie in
the 1930s. Reform pressures no doubt forced some
states to reduce greatly or discontinue chain gangs, but
in truth, their virtual elimination was due to a form of
“automation.” New road-making machinery simply
rendered chain gang labor obsolete.
In the late 1940s Georgia became the last state to
eliminate the practice, although in later years it was still
reported to exist for small details of brief duration.
See also: ROBERT ELLIOTT BURNS, CONVICT LABOR SYSTEM.
had died, but so had two of the invaders and several
others were wounded.
During lulls in the battle Champion kept a diary of
his ordeal. One entry read: “Boys, there is bullets coming like hail. They are shooting from the table and river
and back of the house.” Another went: “Boys, I feel
pretty lonesome just now. I wish there was someone
here with me so we could watch all sides at once.” The
final entry was made that evening, about 12 hours after
the first attack. “Well, they have just got through
shelling the house like hail. I heard them splitting
wood. I guess they are going to fire the house to-night. I
think I will make a break when night comes, if alive.
Shooting again. It’s not night yet. The house is all fired.
Goodbye, boys, if I never see you again.”
Champion signed his pathetic diary and then
charged out the back door, firing two guns. How many
bullets cut him down could not be determined because
his dead body was strung up and used for target practice. Later, 28 bullets were removed from the body.
Champion’s slayers also pinned a card on the body—
“Rustlers beware.”
The killings of Champion and Ray were the opening
shots in the Johnson County War, one in which the cattle barons’ mercenary army would go down to ignoble
defeat. Because a reporter accompanying the stockmen’s
hired army found their victim’s diary, Nate Champion
was to emerge as the folk hero of the struggle.
See also: JOHNSON COUNTY WAR, RED SASH GANG.
Champion, Nathan D. (1857–1892) victim of Johnson
County War
Even today in some quarters of Wyoming, the name of
Nate Champion is a hallowed one, that of a man killed
solely because he defied the great cattle barons. Others
regard him as a cunning rustler, the head of the notorious Red Sash Gang that allegedly stole thousands of
head of cattle. Whatever the truth may be, it is certain
that he was on a “death list” composed by the executive committee of the Wyoming Stock Growers’ Association on the basis of “nominations” received from
members.
Champion, a powerfully built man, had been a trailherder for several years until the early 1880s when he
collected his pay after a drive and settled in Johnson
County. Similar to many others, Champion became a
homesteader and built up a little herd of cattle, thus
earning the enmity of the cattle barons, who wanted an
open range for their huge herds. These absentee cattlemen sent Pinkerton agents onto the range and were
assured by them that there was organized rustling of
their stock in Johnson County, mainly the work of the
Red Sash Gang bossed by Nate Champion. Other
observers believed that the charge was a self-serving lie
and the only connection Champion had with any mythical Red Sashers was the fact that he, like a great many
other homesteaders who came up from Texas, wore a
vaquero-type red sash.
In the early morning hours of April 11, 1892, a
small army of about 50 gunmen, most hired for the
occasion, attacked Champion’s cabin, which he shared
with a cowboy named Nick Ray. Ray went outside in
the snow to chop some wood and was cut down by a
hail of bullets. Champion rushed out and hauled the
severely wounded Ray to safety. He then kept up a barrage of fire that held off his attackers. By afternoon Ray
Chapin, Charles E.
See ROSE MAN OF SING SING.
Chapman, Gerald (1892 or 1893–1926) robber and
murderer
The term “Public Enemy No. 1” was first coined by a
newspaperman to describe Gerald Chapman, the most
popular criminal in the country for a time in the 1920s.
When his picture was flashed in movie newsreels, the
audience responded with thunderous applause, a phenomenon not repeated until Franklin D. Roosevelt was
perceived by moviegoers in the 1930s as the savior of
the nation.
Even the New York Times, on April 7, 1923, editorialized under the heading “Something Almost Heroical”:
It is getting to be rather difficult to keep in mind that
fact that Gerald Chapman is a thoroughly bad man,
whose right place is in jail. The difficulty arises from the
fact that in his battle with the law he shows qualities—
courage, persistence, ingenuity and skill—which it is
impossible not to admire. The result is that unless one is
careful one finds one’s self hoping that he isn’t caught,
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CHAPMAN, Mrs. James
and, so great are the odds against him, that the struggle
seems somehow unfair. . . . The temptation is strong
to lament that such a man should make of his abilities
and peculiarities such miserable employment as devoting them to theft. There must be some explanation of
that, however, and the probability is that he is defective.
But it does seem hard that his punishment for his crimes
should be increased because of his attempts to evade it.
That he hates imprisonment is only human, and that he
takes desperate risks in his efforts to get out is rather to
his credit than his discredit—from every standpoint
except the safety of society.
they had expected on the ground 75 feet below. There
was no spread-eagled body.
Gerald Chapman might have escaped had not
a detective noticed a cleaning woman in a building
across the street frantically pointing to one side. Chapman had stepped onto a ledge and wormed his way
down to another open window. He was captured four
offices away.
Both men were convicted and sentenced to 25 years
in the Atlanta Penitentiary. Chapman refused to testify,
but one of his lawyers, Grace F. Crampton, reported
later:
Chapman’s philosophy of life excused his crimes. He
told me that he did not believe it as sinful to hold up a
mail truck or rob a store as it was to speculate on Wall
Street and probably steal money from widows and
orphans and poorly paid teachers. “At least we do not
take money from poor people,” he said to me. “What
we steal hurts nobody. Everything that is sent by mail
or express is fully insured and in the end the sender
loses nothing. The man who comes out the winner on
Wall Street is respected, and he is envied for his yachts
and cars and homes, while we are hunted and despised.
I think I am the more honorable of the two.
Thus did the Times come down on the side of law and
order, but it was a close decision.
Gerald Chapman had that way about him. An
accomplished criminal a dozen or so years older than
Chapman, Dutch Anderson, similarly impressed with
young Chapman when both were doing time in New
York’s Auburn Prison, taught him all he knew about
committing crimes and was eventually to become his
willing underling. When the pair got out within two
months of each other, they teamed up as con men and
made about $100,000 trimming suckers in Chicago
with varied swindles. They returned to New York City
to live the high life, with their hotel suite a parade
ground for showgirls, whores and impressionable
young things.
In 1921 they got together with an old Auburn crony,
Charley Loeber, and robbed a mail truck in New York
City in a daring escapade with Chapman jumping from
a moving car onto the running board of the truck and,
gun in hand, forcing the driver to stop. The trio made
off with five sacks of registered mail containing
$1,424,129 in cash and securities, the greatest mail
theft up to that time.
Chapman and Anderson fenced the securities slowly
while living the good life, but Loeber proved incapable
of handling the fruits of such a big-time heist and was
caught disposing of his loot. When he was nabbed, he
implicated Chapman and Anderson, and unaware of
any danger, they were easily captured. The pair had
been on a jaunt upstate, robbing five banks just to stay
in shape.
Taken to the main post office building for questioning, Chapman made his first electrifying attempt at an
escape. In the midst of the interrogation of Anderson
and himself, Chapman, in the middle of a yawn,
leaped from his chair, said “Sorry, gentlemen”, and
dashed to a window, stepped over the sill and disappeared.
“He’s jumped,” someone yelled, and everyone
rushed to the window. However, they did not see what
After seven months in Atlanta, Chapman escaped.
He feigned illness by drinking a disinfectant, overpowered a guard and went out the window using bedsheets
for a ladder. He was free only two days before being
cornered by a posse and shot in the arm, hip and back.
One bullet had penetrated his kidney. He was taken
back to the prison hospital for a real reason this time.
Yet, though it was feared he might die, Chapman
escaped the same way six days later. The authorities
were sure they would find his body shortly, but Chapman made a clean break.
Two months later, Dutch Anderson tunneled out of
Atlanta, and the team was back in business as two of
the most wanted men in the country. The Times was
not the only publication having difficulty managing
restraint in its admiration of Chapman. Meanwhile,
Chapman, separated for security reasons from Anderson, made the mistake of teaming up with one Walter J.
Shean, the black-sheep son of a wealthy hotel owner
and a fledgling criminal. They attempted to hold up a
department store in New Britain, Conn., on October
12, 1924, and in the process one of the bandits shot
and killed a police officer. Shean was captured and,
with some pride, proclaimed, “My pal was Gerald
Chapman.”
Finally, Chapman was caught in December in
Muncie, Ind. and returned to federal prison under
incredibly tight security. For a time the government
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CHAPPLEAU, Joseph Ernst
refused to turn over Chapman to Connecticut for trial,
fearing he would escape, but finally it relented. The
trial was an event that had the country going haywire.
Chapman fan clubs sprang up, and at least four or five
bouquets arrived each day at the front door of the
prison where he was kept during the trial.
It didn’t help Chapman, nor did his claim that he
had never been in New Britain and never even met
Shean. He was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Meanwhile, Dutch Anderson was going off his
rocker. Convinced that Chapman had been betrayed by
a man named Ben Hance, who had once shielded the
pair in Muncie, Anderson killed Hance and his wife.
He then tried to assassinate Shean, but he was too well
guarded and Anderson could not get near him. Anderson was finally recognized by a policeman in Muskegon, Mich. Both went for their guns at the same time,
and each killed the other.
Chapman’s execution was postponed a couple of
times. In his death cell he whiled away the time writing
epigrams (“The more we learn, the less we discover we
know”) and poetry (his favorite poet was Shelley). A
poem of his, “Reward,” was released by one of his
lawyers, who said, “I do this because I don’t want people to think Chapman was merely a bandit with nothing in his head.” It read in part:
much of it was stained with blood and powder, but the
handwritten name and address had only been torn
apart. These scraps were turned over to John F. Tyrrell,
then considered the country’s number one examiner of
questioned documents. Tyrrell reassembled the writing, which read, “J. A. Chapman, R. I, Marsfilld, [sic]
Wis.” From this tiny scrap of evidence Tyrrell reached
a startling number of conclusions. The writing was
stilted, as though the writer had deliberately attempted
to disguise it. Tyrrell studied the spacing, slope, alignment, pressure and rhythm of the script and determined this was not the case. It had been written the
best its author, who was not used to writing very
much, could manage. The misspelling of the town
name indicated the writer had simply spelled it phonetically. Tyrrell concluded the writer was a foreigner,
most likely a Swede. There was only one Swede in the
community, John Magnuson, and he had a long-running dispute with Chapman concerning a creek drain.
Tyrrell had only begun to make conclusions. He also
determined the writing had been done with a medium
smooth-pointed fountain pen. The ink was an odd mixture, mostly Carter’s black ink with a slight trace of
Sanford’s blue-black fluid ink. When postal inspectors
armed with a search warrant inspected the Magnuson
home, they found that the man’s daughter had a fountain pen with the very point Tyrrell had described. She
always used Sanford’s ink but had loaned her bottle of
ink to a schoolmate who, when it ran dry, had refilled it
with Carter’s black ink, producing the exact mixture
Tyrrell had discovered on the death package.
Then the iron-bomb remnants were turned over to
two professors at the University of Wisconsin, who polished them and matched their tell-tale properties with
metal found in Magnuson’s barn workshop. Fragments
of the wood portions of the bomb were sent to Arthur
Koehler, a wood expert who was to give vital testimony
in the Lindbergh kidnapping. He identified the wood as
elm. On the floor of his workshop, Magnuson had elm
lumber and wood shavings with the same cellular structure as the scraps from the bomb.
The jury convicted Magnuson on the very first ballot, and given the mound of scientific evidence, it was
hardly surprising that the high court of Wisconsin saw
no reason to set aside his life sentence.
Comes peace at last! The drums have beat disray,
No armistice of hours, but ever and ever
The slow dispersing legions of decay,
Under the muffled skies, tell all is over.
Returns the husbandman, returns the lover,
To reap the quiet harvest of alway,
The bright-plumed stars those wide fields
may not cover
Though wings beat on forever and a day. . . .
Chapman was hanged on April 6, 1926.
Chapman, Mrs. James (1874–1922) murder victim
When on December 27, 1922 Mr. and Mrs. James A.
Chapman opened a package they thought was a
Christmas present arriving late in the mail, the parcel
exploded in Mrs. Chapman’s face, fatally injuring her
and crippling her husband. Thus began a case that the
Winconsin Supreme Court, in rejecting the convicted
murderer’s appeal, was to call unrivaled for being “so
replete with scientific presentation of actualities.”
And indeed, the bomb murderer, John Magnuson,
never did have a chance, as one clue after another,
developed in brilliant scientific fashion, blared his
guilt.
The wrapping paper that the dynamite package
came in had been burst apart in the explosion and
Chapman, John T. (1832–?) train robber
A respected resident of Reno and superintendent of a
Sunday school, John Chapman, together with Jack
Davis, masterminded the robbery of the Central
Pacific’s Train No. 1 on November 4, 1870, the first
train holdup in the Far West.
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CHARLESTON Street Gang
Chapman’s arrest for the robbery, which occurred
near Verdi, Nev. came as a shock to the good folks of
Reno, who never suspected him of being anything
other than a pillar of the community. True, it was
known that he was often in the company of a deadbeat and gambler named Jack Davis, but it was
assumed he was out to save the soul of that sharper.
The facts were the other way around; Davis had introduced Chapman to a number of hard cases ready to
make some money in any logical six-gun manner.
When Chapman unveiled a plan to hold up a train,
something the Reno gang had pioneered just four
years earlier in Indiana, they all agreed enthusiastically. Since such robberies were not common at the
time, the gang had little trouble. They boarded the
train just as it was about to pull out of Verdi, overpowered the conductor and engineer and forced their
way into the express car after uncoupling that car and
the engine from the rest of the train. The messenger in
the express car gave up without a struggle, and the
gang broke into treasure boxes containing $41,600 in
coins and escaped with their loot.
Chapman and Davis hadn’t counted on their
accomplices acting like cowpokes at trail’s end, spending money so fast that they had to attract the attention of the Wells Fargo detectives. Under intensive
questioning, two of the gang confessed and led detectives to some of the buried loot. Davis and Chapman
were arrested, stunning Reno. Chapman put on a defiant front, denying all, but Davis saw that was useless
and confessed. Davis got 10 years, but Chapman was
given 20.
On September 28, 1871, nine months after he had
gone to prison, Chapman led three of his men in a
prison break; however, he and two of the others were
recaptured after a brief period and given an extra year
for their escape. The former Sunday school superintendent served his entire sentence. Upon his release he
advised the current crop of train robbers to cease their
wicked ways and find God. With that, he dropped from
sight, although he was named as a likely suspect in several train holdups, including two in widely separated
places within eight hours of each other.
See also: JACK DAVIS.
apartment building, where the singer and his wife,
Yoko Ono, lived. He had come prepared for the
weather, wearing two pairs of long underwear, a jacket,
an overcoat and a hat. He also carried a .38-caliber
Charter Arms revolver.
Chapman had been living in Honolulu since 1977,
arriving there from Decatur, Ga., his home state,
and had apparently been afflicted with John Lennon fantasies for a considerable period. Lennon’s wife
was Japanese, and although Chapman’s wife was not
Japanese, she was of Japanese descent. In the fall
of 1980 Chapman decided to “retire,” at the age of
25. After all, Lennon was retired. Later, a psychiatrist would testify that the more Chapman imitated
Lennon, “the more he came to believe he was John
Lennon.” He eventually began to look upon Lennon as
a “phony.”
In September 1980 Chapman sold a Norman Rockwell lithograph for $7,500, paid off a number of debts
and kept $5,000 for a “a job” he had to do. He contacted the Federal Aviation Administration to inquire
about the best way to transport a revolver by plane. He
was advised that he should put the gun in his baggage
but was warned that the change in air pressure could
damage any bullets. When Chapman left his job as a
security guard at a Honolulu condominium development for the last time, he scrawled the name John
Lennon on the sign-out sheet. On October 29 he flew
to New York, taking a gun but no bullets.
Frustrated in New York by an inability to obtain
bullets for his weapon or to gain access to Lennon,
Chapman left on November 12 or 13 to return to
Honolulu. After his arrival there he made an appointment at the Makiki Mental Health Clinic for November 26 but didn’t keep it. On December 6 he flew back
to New York.
Two days later, Chapman waited outside the Dakota
for Lennon to appear. About 4:30 P.M. the singer and
his wife left the building. When he saw the couple,
Chapman held up his copy of Lennon’s recently
released Double Fantasy album, and Lennon stopped
to autograph it. After the Lennons departed, the doorman asked Chapman why he lingered, and he said he
wanted to wait to get Yoko Ono’s autograph as well.
At 11 P.M. Lennon and his wife returned. Chapman
stepped out of the darkness and said, “Mr. Lennon.”
As Lennon turned, Chapman fired his revolver five
times. Four bullets struck Lennon, killing him. When
the police arrived, Chapman was reading his copy of
Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger.
A few weeks later, John W. Hinckley, Jr. recited into
a tape recorder: “I just want to say goodbye to the old
year, which was nothing, total misery, total death. John
Lennon is dead, the world is over, forget it.” In March
Chapman, Mark David (1955– ) murderer of John
Lennon
The murder of 40-year-old rock star John Lennon, a
former member of the Beatles, on December 8, 1980
by Mark David Chapman was a long time in the making. Chapman had waited all that wintry day and
evening in front of the Dakota, a celebrated New York
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CHEROKEE Bill
women and children for ransom. In the 1860s the
Charlton Streeters found the pickings on their side of
Manhattan slim because the Hudson piers were
reserved for ocean vessels and shippers kept an army
of watchmen on duty to protect their property. With
looting in the immediate city area not very rewarding,
gang leaders were forced to cast their eyes upstream. It
is doubtful if their ambitions would ever have become
as grandiose as they did without the inspiration of an
attractive but deadly haridan named Sadie the Goat.
She convinced them in 1869 that to be successful river
pirates, they had to have a first-class sloop of their
own, one that could outrun pursuers. The gang
promptly went out and stole one.
The gang flew the Jolly Roger from the masthead,
finding that its appearance frightened residents along
the Hudson from the Harlem River to Poughkeepsie and
tended to encourage flight rather than resistance. The
Charlton Streeters soon had a lucrative enterprise going,
looting farmhouses and mansions. Learning that Julius
Caesar had once been held for ransom by pirates, Sadie
involved the gang in kidnapping. She cut a sinister figure
pacing the deck, issuing orders. According to the sensationalist press of the day, Sadie on several occasions
made men walk the plank in proper piratical style.
After a number of murders had been committed, the
desperate riverside residents finally organized vigilante
posses to battle the pirates. Their ranks thinned by a
number of musket battles, the Charlton Streeters
returned to their home base and restricted their activities to more ordinary urban crimes. Sadie the Goat left
the group in disgust with its timidity.
See also: GALLUS MAG, PIRACY.
1981 Hinckley attempted to assassinate President
Ronald Reagan.
Chapman pleaded guilty to the Lennon killing. On
August 24, 1981, appearing in court with what looked
to be a bullet-proof vest underneath his T-shirt, evidently to protect him from possible retribution by distraught Lennon fans, he was sentenced to 20 years to
life. Under New York S tate law he would have to stay
in prison for 20 years before becoming eligible for
parole.
Chappleau, Joseph Ernst (1850–1911) murderer
Joseph Chappleau was the first man sentenced to die in
the electric chair, but he escaped that fate in 1889 when
the new-fangled instrument of death was not completed
in time for his execution, and his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In his memoirs, the famous
warden of Sing Sing, Lewis E. Lawes, later credited
Chappleau with doing more to shape his philosophy of
modern penology than any other man. While Lawes
was a rookie guard at Clinton Prison in New York in
1905, Chappleau was credited with saving his life in a
prison yard melee.
A New York farmer, Chappleau had been found
guilty of the murder of a neighbor named Tabor over
some poisoned cows. The real motive for the murder,
according to local gossip, was not the poisoning of the
cows but an affair between Tabor and Chappleau’s
wife. Once his sentence had been commuted, Chappleau became a prisoner uniquely popular with other
convicts and the guards. None regarded him as a true
criminal but rather a man trapped by fate. Lawes came
to regard Chappleau as the perfect example of a murderer not likely ever to commit another crime and perhaps the best possible argument against capital
punishment, a penalty Chappleau had escaped for
purely technical reasons. When Chappleau died in the
prison hospital at Clinton in 1911, guards and prisoners alike declared their happiness that he had been
released from the burdens of his life.
See also: WILLIAM KEMMLER, LEWIS E. LAWES.
check passing
Not long ago a professional check passer, a forger who
writes worthless checks, in New York, was asked why
he only passed his rubbery works of art in bars and taverns. Paraphrasing Willie Sutton, who supposedly said
one robs banks “because that’s where the money is,”
the check passer declared, “Because that’s where the
crooks are.” The check passer’s technique was simple
enough, relying as it did on human greed. He would
enter a saloon, appearing well bombed, and hoist a few.
Then he would produce what appeared to be his paycheck drawn on the account of a well-known local firm
and in an apparent stupor, ask the bartender to cash it.
Normally, the barkeep would be reluctant to cash a
check for an unknown party, but since in this case the
customer could barely stand erect, he would find it too
appetizing to pass up. The bartender would cash the
check and invariably shortchange the purported drunk
Charlton Street Gang Hudson River pirates
In early New York virtually all pirate activity was
restricted to the East River, where the prime loot was
the stores of relatively small craft. On the West Side,
only a daring bunch of ruffians called the Charlton
Street Gang worked the Hudson River, but they did it
with a vengeance, actually flying the Jolly Roger and
making forays as far upriver as Poughkeepsie, attacking riverside mansions and even kidnapping men,
181
CHERRY Hill Gang
$10 or $20, figuring he was too far gone to notice. The
check passer would hoist one more and stagger out of
the place, heading for another bar to repeat his routine.
The check passer stated he generally could cash eight
to 10 bad checks an evening and get turned down in no
more than two or three places. He had found a new
wrinkle to make one of this country’s most common
and easiest crimes even easier.
Check forgery is so common, in fact, that no one
really knows how extensive it is. Spokesmen for surety
companies have put the losses at $400 million to $1 billion, and those estimates are probably too low, since a
great many businesses have one to a dozen had checks
tucked away unreported. With the value of checks written annually now totaling a few trillion dollars, the
bogus-check business is currently the most lucrative
field available to a smooth-mannered con man, or even
to people with a lot less finesse.
In Washington, D.C. a few years ago, a 14-year-old
boy walked into a small store and made a few inexpensive purchases with a government check that eventually
bounced. It had been stolen, but the shopkeeper had no
one to blame but himself. The rightful recipient was an
83-year-old woman, and the check had been clearly
marked “Old Age and Survivor’s Insurance.”
Once, in Cleveland, Ohio, the story goes, a badcheck artist handed a bank clerk a check to cash after
signing it “Santa Claus.” He got his money.
Another comic check passer liked to sign his phony
masterpieces, “N. O. Good.” No one ever caught on—
in time. And a Bedford, Ind. grocer, who was not too
quick, accepted a check signed “U. R. Hooked.” Funloving check passers have used bum checks drawn on
such institutions as the East Bank of the Mississippi.
The interesting fact about all these cases is the
ridiculous chances the bad-check writer will take, so
sure is he that the sucker will bite at his bait. Not all
forgers are so cocky and contemptuous of their victims,
but these incidents do point out what check passers
have learned: with the proper approach and in many
cases, without, a person can have far less trouble cashing a bad check than a good one.
The professional operator runs into absolutely no
trouble 95 percent of the time as long as he has a gimmick to distract suspicion. A California forger cashed
200 bad checks by pretending to be a physician. He
found that by passing checks that carried such corner
notations as “In Payment for Tonsils” or “Balance over
Blue Cross,” he was seldom questioned. In big cities he
often entered a store dressed in a doctor’s white coat in
order to give the impression that he had just stepped
out of his office in a nearby building to get a check
cashed.
One of the most prolific bogus-check passers was
Courtney Townsend Taylor, who was most active in the
1940s and 1950s. In Chicago he once went down a certain street and cashed a check in every other store the
whole length of the street. On the return trip he hit all
the stores he had missed. Caught once in Mobile, Ala.,
he pulled a fountain pen from his pocket while he was
being frisked for a weapon and said: “This is the only
gun I need. I can get all the money I want with it.”
Nobody knows how many rubber-check artists are
operating, but one estimate placed the figure at around
2,500 full timers. Roughly two-thirds of all phony
checks sent to the FBI are quickly identified as the work
of known forgers by examining a file of about 60,000
current fraudulent check signatures. The rest are the
product of amateurs.
Check passing is the type of crime that gets into a
practitioner’s blood. Rapists and muggers may slow
down over the years and quit by the time they start
graying at the temples. Check passers simply mellow.
Their dignified look turns into a plus. Although in his
seventies, Joseph W. Martin had no trouble separating
thousands of dollars from gullible check cashers until
his arrest in 1952 by the FBI. An actor, Martin had
actually played in more than 500 motion pictures during more honest times, including a 1932 film in which
he portrayed President Warren Harding. As a check
passer, he simply carried on acting. His favorite technique was turning up at bar association meetings and
cashing checks with his “colleagues.” He was arrested
in New York while posing as a lawyer from Nebraska
attending a meeting of the American Bar Association in
the Waldorf-Astoria.
Experts consider the late Alexander Thiel the most
accomplished forger of modern times. Also high on the
list is Frederick Emerson Peters. However, the greatgranddaddy of all check chiselers clearly was Jim the
Penman, who was born Alonzo James Whitman in
1854. He dissipated an inherited fortune, amassed an
illegal million, became a state senator in Minnesota,
received an honorary degree from Hamilton College
and was almost elected to its board of trustees. He also
passed thousands of bad checks. During his career, Jim
the Penman was arrested 43 times, indicted 27, convicted 11. Once while doing a stretch in Auburn Prison,
he was assigned to teach in the prison school—until it
was discovered he was teaching forgery.
See also: FREDERICK EMERSON PETERS, ALEXANDER
THIEL.
Cherokee Bill (1876–1896) holdup man and murderer
It was often said that the man Hanging Judge Isaac
Parker most enjoyed sending to the gallows was
182
CHICAGO fire looting
although Cherokee Bill did kill a prison guard,
Lawrence Keating, the father of four children.
The escape effort roused Judge Parker to a fit of
anger. He blamed the guard’s death on the U.S.
Supreme Court and told reporters that the High Court’s
obsession with the “flimsiest technicalities” was allowing the 60 “murderers” then in his Fort Smith jail to
fight off their executions—Cherokee Bill among them.
Parker brought the outlaw to trial for the guard’s
murder without waiting for the outcome of his appeal
on the previous conviction. The judge found Cherokee
Bill guilty of this second charge and sentenced him to
death, but again the execution was forestalled by
appeals. Finally, though, the first appeal went against
the defendant, and on March 17, 1896, with Judge
Parker watching the execution from his office window,
Cherokee Bill mounted the gallows. Asked if he had
any last words, the young murderer replied, “I came
here to die, not to make a speech.” Cherokee Bill paid
for his 13 murders, but it appeared later that he was
responsible for one more. Ike Rogers, one of the men
who betrayed him, was murdered. The crime was
believed to have been the work of Cherokee Bill’s
young brother, Clarence Goldsby, in an act of
vengeance. If Clarence was the killer, he was never
brought to justice.
See also: ISAAC C. “HANGING JUDGE” PARKER.
Convict-author Caryl Chessman (left) appears in court in
1957 in a futile attempt to win a new trial.
Crawford Goldsby, a part-Cherokee, part-white, partMexican and part-black murderer better known as
Cherokee Bill, who killed 13 men before his 20th
birthday.
Goldsby came to live with a foster mother at Fort
Gibson, Okla. when he was seven years old. The
woman imbued the boy with the credo: “Stand up for
your rights. Don’t let anybody impose on you.” When
he was 18, he followed her advice. He shot a man who
beat him up at a dance. The man lived, but Goldsby
fled to Indian Territory and soon joined the outlaw
band of Bill and Jim Cook. In June 1894 the Cooks and
Goldsby shot their way out of a posse trap after
Goldsby killed a member of the law party, Sequoyah
Houston.
After that, the killings came fast, and Goldsby
became known and hunted as Cherokee Bill. The young
killer had a dozen notches on his gun before he was
betrayed by a couple of supposed friends while he was
paying a courting call on a young girl. The duo, Ike
Rogers and Clint Scales, clubbed him unconscious and
collected $1,300 in reward money. Cherokee Bill was
speedily tried before Judge Parker for just one of his
crimes and sentenced to be hanged. However, his
lawyer succeeded in delaying the execution through
several appeals. While the murderer was still being held
in his prison cell, he somehow got hold of a gun and
attempted to make an escape. The attempt failed,
Cherry Hill Gang
Gay Nineties criminals
A vicious bunch of thieves and killers, the Cherry Hill
Gang were the “dandies” of the New York underworld
in the 1890s. Members of the gang were seldom seen in
other than dress suits and often carried walking sticks,
metal-weighted of course. Disguised in the height of
fashion, they found it easy to get within striking range
of a well-heeled gentleman and attack before their victim had a chance to be alarmed.
The Cherry Hillers were also responsible for provoking others to crime out of envy. Other gangs often tried
to match their sartorial splendor and would go to any
lengths to do so. When the Batavia Street Gang
announced plans to hold a ball at New Irving Hall, the
Cherry Hillers announced they were obtaining new
wardrobes for the occasion. As hosts, the Batavians felt
required to match or surpass the Cherry Hillers in
dress. To raise funds the night before the gala social
affair, the gangsters smashed a window of Segal’s jewelry store on New Chambers Street and carried off 44
gold rings. They sold them the following morning, but
more than a dozen of the gangsters were caught by
police as they were being fitted for new suits at a Division Street tailor shop. On the night of the big event,
the leading lights of the Batavia Street Gang languished
183
CHICAGO May
in the Tombs while the elegant dandies of Cherry Hill
were once again the hit of the ball.
tied and he would not save Chessman. By then Chessman had survived eight scheduled dates of execution,
some by only a matter of hours. On May 2, 1960 he
entered the gas chamber at San Quentin. At that
moment federal judge Louis E. Goodman granted
Chessman’s attorneys a delay of at least 30 minutes to
argue their case. He asked his secretary to telephone
the warden at San Quentin. As the prison number
passed through several persons, a digit was inadvertently omitted. After being verified, the number had to
be redialed. By the time the call was put through,
Associate Warden Louis Nelson said the cyanide pellets had just been dropped.
Inside the gas chamber, Caryl Chessman had turned
to a female supporter who was there as a witness, and
his lips formed a final message: “Take it easy . . . It’s
all right . . . Tell Rosalie [one of his attorneys] goodbye. . . .”
After the pellets dropped, Chessman managed to
strain at the binds in order to see if his message had
been understood. The woman, a reporter, nodded.
Chessman half-smiled and winked.
Chessman had one more signal to give. Just before
he lost consciousness, he turned to reporter Will
Stevens of the San Francisco Examiner. He had agreed
to give the newsman a signal if a gas chamber death
was a form of agony. Chessman moved his head up and
down, staring at Stevens. It was the signal that death in
the gas chamber was agony.
One news account of the execution started, “Sexterrorist Carol Chessman ended his 12-year fight for
life today with a wink and a smile.”
Chessman, Caryl (1921–1960) executed sex offender
During the 1950s the case of Caryl Chessman produced
one of the most intense anti–capital punishment campaigns in history. Certainly no case since that of Sacco
and Vanzetti produced such furor. Protests came from all
levels of society. Millions of persons in Brazil, 2.5 million
in S˜ao Paulo alone, and thousands more in Switzerland
signed petitions pleading for his life. The queen of Belgium made a special plea for Chessman, as did Aldous
Huxley, Pablo Casals, Eleanor Roosevelt, Dr. Karl Menninger, Arthur Koestler, André Maurois and Franc5ois
Mauriac. Added to those names were Max Ascoli, Harry
Elmer Barnes, Ray Bradbury, Norman Corwin, William
Inge, Norman Mailer, Dwight MacDonald, Clifford
Odets, Christopher Isherwood, Carey McWilliams, Billy
Graham, Harry Golden and Robert Frost.
In January 1948 Chessman, then 27, had been on
parole for just six weeks from California’s Folsom
Prison when he was arrested in Los Angeles as the suspected Red-Light Bandit. This marauder approached
victims parked in lonely spots, flashing a red light
resembling that of a police car. He would rob the driver
and sometimes drive off with the woman and force her
to perform sexual acts with him. Chessman made a
confession, which he later said had been extracted from
him by police torture.
He was found guilty under California’s “Little Lindbergh” law, which provided for the death penalty in
cases of kidnapping “with bodily harm.” Chessman
had killed nobody and had held nobody for ransom.
Since the jury brought in a verdict of guilty without a
recommendation of mercy, he was automatically sentenced to death in the gas chamber. There were many
who thought Chessman’s punishment was excessive for
a felon who had not murdered anyone.
Chessman was sent to death row at San Quentin,
and his first execution date was set for March 28,
1952. Then began the famous drama of Cell 2455,
Death Row. That prison address became the title of a
best-selling book by Chessman, which sold a halfmillion copies and was translated into a dozen languages. It was one of four he would write, often smuggling out manuscripts after he had been forbidden to
publish any further. With the success of his first book,
Chessman retained a group of lawyers to help him with
his appeals, which previously he had handled on his
own, having “read or skimmed 10,000 law books.”
The fight went on for 12 years. It finally ended in
defeat when Gov. Edmund G. Brown, a stated opponent of capital punishment, insisted his hands were
Chicago amnesia
discouragement of witnesses
During the gang wars in Chicago during the 1920s,
successful prosecution of murderers and other lawbreakers often proved almost impossible. The gangsters
themselves never would impart information to the
police, even when dying. Despite the fact that a number
of eyewitnesses might step forward initially to do their
civic duty, by the time of the trial these witnesses almost
invariably had been “reached” by bribes, threats or
outright attempts on their lives. As a result, some witnesses even had trouble remembering their own names
on the stand. Gang leader Dion O’Banion, an accomplished practitioner of the art of witness discouragement, observed puckishly: “We have a new disease in
town. It’s called Chicago amnesia.”
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CHICAGO Times
Chicago fire looting
stock that could conveniently be made away with, and
then slouch off in search of further booty. The promise
of a share in the spoils gave them the assistance of rascally express-drivers, who stood with their wagons
before doors of stores, and waited as composedly for a
load of stolen property to be piled in as if they were
receiving the honestly-acquired goods of the best man
in town. . . . The scenes of robbery were not confined
to the sacking of stores. Burglars would raid into the
private dwellings that lay in the track of the coming
destruction, and snatch . . . anything which their practical senses told them would be of value. Interference
was useless. The scoundrels . . . were inflamed with
drink, and were alarmingly demonstrative in the flourishing of deadly weapons. Sometimes women and children, and not infrequently men, would be stopped as
they were bearing from their homes objects of especial
worth, and the articles would be torn from their grasp
by gangs of these wretches.
Without question the greatest rampage of criminality
sparked by an American disaster occurred during the
24 hours of the Great Chicago Fire on October 8–9,
1871.
The Chicago Post perhaps best set the scene:
The people were mad. Despite the police—indeed, the
police were powerless—they crowded upon frail coigns
of vantage, as fences and high sidewalks propped on
wooded piles, which fell beneath their weight, and
hurled them, bruised and bleeding, in the dust. They
stumbled over broken furniture and fell, and were
trampled under foot. Seized with wild and causeless
panics, they surged together, backwards and forwards,
in the narrow streets, cursing, threatening, imploring,
fighting to get free. Liquor flowed like water; for the
saloons were broken open and despoiled, and men on
all sides were to be seen frenzied with drink. . . .
Everywhere dust, smoke, flame, heat, thunder of falling
shouts, braying of trumpets, wind, tumult, and uproar.
Besides the looting, which the authorities were
unable to thwart, trouble developed from a new source.
By the time the conflagration was burning itself out on
the night of October 9, firebugs took to the streets trying to start new blazes, some for the thrill of it and others because they had seen how fire created
opportunities for looting. Seven men were shot after
being caught setting fires and another was stoned to
death by an angry mob, his body left on the street as a
warning to others. For the next 13 days Chicago was
patrolled by 2,400 regular and special policemen, six
companies of state militia and four companies of U.S.
Army troops, all under Gen. Phil Sheridan, who placed
the city under martial law. Perhaps the most significant
comment on the aftermath of the Chicago Fire was a
historian’s observation that “no part of Chicago was
rebuilt more quickly than the saloons, brothels, gambling-houses, and other resorts and habitations of the
underworld.”
And into this human cauldron the criminals
swarmed. Hoodlums, prostitutes, thieves hunting alone
or in packs snatched all they wanted from drays and
carriages. They broke into stores and homes and
stuffed their pockets with money and jewelry. Men ran
about wearing as many as a dozen women’s rings and
bracelets. They broke into saloons and guzzled down
liquor to fortify their criminal daring. “They smashed
windows with their naked hands,” the Post reported,
“regardless of the wounds inflicted, and with bloody
fingers rifled till and shelf and cellar, fighting viciously
for the spoils of their forage. Women, hollow-eyed and
brazen-faced, with filthy drapery tied over them, their
clothes in tatters and their feet in troddenover slippers,
moved here and there—scolding, stealing, fighting;
laughing at the beautiful and splendid crash of walls
and falling roofs.”
When the courthouse caught fire, guards released
350 prisoners from the basement jail and then watched
helplessly as they descended in a single horde on a jewelry store and looted every stone, every watch in the
place. William Walker, a Chicago reporter, added his
eyewitness account:
Chicago May (1876–1935) Queen of the Badger Game
May Churchill Sharpe did not invent the badger game,
whereby a gentleman is invited to a lady’s room to be
“done for” and ends up being “done out” of his money
through blackmail or simple robbery, but she was its
most accomplished practitioner in the 1890s.
Born in Dublin, Ireland in 1876, May Sharpe spent
six years in a convent school before running off to
America, with 60 pounds from her father’s strongbox
as traveling money. Within a year after arriving in New
York in the spring of 1889, she was living the fast life
as the mistress of Dal Churchill. Churchill eventually
married her and took her west. He was “a robber, high-
As the night wore on, and the terrors aggregated into
an intensity of misery, the thieves, amateur and professional, dropped all pretense at concealment and plied
their knavish calling undaunted by any fear of immediate retribution. They would storm into stores, smash
away at the safes, and if, as happily was almost always
the case, they failed to effect an opening, they would
turn their attention to securing all of value from the
185
CHICKEN Ranch
“I’m sorry, dear lady,” he said, “but I’m off to Washington in the morning and then am going West for an
extended period.”
Chicago May was crushed. However, the real
crusher came when Twain got up to leave. He kissed
her hand and whispered to her: “May I thank you, my
dear lady, for a most amusing time. Of course, I don’t
believe a word of your story that you are an English
noblewoman.”
Such defeats were rare for May, especially after she
formed a business relationship with Sgt. Charles
Becker, New York’s notorious cop-crook who was to
die in the electric chair for murder. Becker fed May victims and took a 25 percent cut of the revenues.
A few years after the turn of the century, Becker
advised Chicago May to pull out of New York because
of an impending reform wave, and she moved to London, where she met the accomplished bank robber
Eddie Guerin. She helped him rob some $250,000 from
the Paris branch of the American Express Co. However,
the couple had a falling out and were eventually caught
by French police. Eddie Guerin was sent to Devil’s
Island, from which he later made a sensational escape.
May did a short stint in an English jail for transporting
the American Express loot to London and then was
kicked out of the country. She returned to the United
States, but she was pushing 40. Hard-living had left her
with wrinkles, puffs and rheumy eyes. There was no
way she could be the Chicago May of the badger game.
The road the rest of the way was down. There were
a number of arrests and convictions for various thefts,
even petty larceny. For a time, May’s fortunes picked
up. She ran what she called a “nice house” in Philadelphia, where she used to entertain the prostitutes with
tales of her exploits as Chicago May. However, a
reform movement put her out of business.
Rather belatedly, May came to the conclusion that
crime did not pay and wrote her autobiography in
1928. In an amused air, she noted: “My old friends, in
the police write me letters of encouragement. Christians
feel called upon to send me platitudes. Reformers insist
upon drawing their pet theories to my attention. Professional crooks berate and praise me. Beggars importune
me. Sycophants lather me with adulation. The rich . . .
and others . . . patronize me.”
But May was actually trying to live in her past. Her
real life was nothing like that. The last newspaper clipping about her tells the whole story. She was arrested in
Detroit during the early 1930s for soliciting male
pedestrians, asking the bargain price of $2. She died a
few years later.
wayman, safecracker, cattle rustler and general allround crook,” according to May, and also a member of
the Dalton gang. May was sublimely happy for an
exciting year. Then Dal fouled up a train robbery and
ended up hanging from vigilantes’ rope near Phoenix,
Ariz.
Widowed at 15, May went to Chicago, where with
her looks she became the Queen of the Badger Game.
At first, she operated as a loner, choosing her victims
from hotels, night spots and other places where goodtime Charlies congregated. Because of the publicity
involved and the resultant effect on their families, most
of the men who took her to a hotel wouldn’t dream of
going to the police after she had robbed them. May
would also steal a sucker’s valuable papers and write
him, asking if he remembered the gay time they almost
had together and wondering if he wanted his papers
back. She would threaten, if ignored, to take the matter
up with the wives. The tactic got results, and the errant
husbands would give the money to an underworld
pickup man sent by May. She would then deliver the
papers. She never double-crossed a sucker a second
time. She took him in the badger game and then once
with a spot of blackmail, but then she let him off the
hook.
Later, May took to using male accomplices and an
older woman posing as her mother. The “mother”
would catch May and her gentleman and shriek for
help, which would come in the form of a hulking relative or neighbor. There would be no escape for the
unfortunate victim until he paid. By her 16th birthday
Chicago May had made $100,000, and by 17 she had
run that up to $300,000.
Deciding the really big money was in New York,
May transferred her operations there in the early
1890s. She frequented a famous criminal hangout,
Considine’s, which was also a slumming spot for
sportsmen and literary and theatrical personalities. One
evening she spotted a bushy-haired man with a drooping mustache. Thinking of him as a likely victim, she
inquired about his identity and learned he was the celebrated author Mark Twain. May immediately started
boning up on her Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, and one
night, done up in finery, she strolled over to Twain and
introduced herself as Lady May Avery of England. She
said she so admired Twain’s work and had to meet him.
The next evening Lady Avery dined with Twain and
amused him greatly. It was well known that Twain was
highly appreciative of the spicier things in life, and May
expected him to jump at the bait when she invited him
to visit her in Connecticut. Twain’s eyes twinkled, but
he shook his head.
186
CHINESE riots
managed to get all they wanted through a thriving
black market, although the price soared to thousands
of dollars.
Chicago Street Gazette
Chicago Times
sensationalist newspaper
If any one 19th-century newspaper can be singled out
as the most devoted to the coverage of crime news, it
would have to be the Chicago Times, which was
founded in 1854 to promote the political career of Sen.
Stephen A. Douglas, a role it continued to fulfill until it
was sold to Cyrus H. McCormick, the reaper manufacturer, in 1860. A year later, McCormick sold the newspaper to Wilbur F. Storey of Vermont, who made it into
an antiwar publication upon the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, which Storey regarded as a
deceitful act because it switched the war’s aims. To
silence Storey’s blasts at President Lincoln, Gen.
Ambrose Burnside seized the Times, provoking one of
the great civil liberties controversies of the Civil War.
Mobs formed at the Times to support the army action,
while Copperhead forces swarmed around the Chicago
Tribune office and threatened to burn down that newspaper’s building unless the Times was allowed to publish. Tempers were dampened when Lincoln revoked
Gen. Burnside’s order of suppression, and the Times
appeared again.
However, it was after the war that the Times
emerged, under Storey, as one of the great muckracking
and crusading newspapers, carrying on a steady fight
against crime and political corruption, exposing the
growing accommodation between the underworld and
politicians and identifying reputable citizens who
allowed their property to be used for immoral purposes. Storey’s staff reporters originated or popularized
many phrases that were to become criminal vernacular.
The word racket appears to have been born in the
Times on October 24, 1876, when the newspaper carried a story that noted, “big thieves are boldly traversing our streets by day, planning their racket.” The
Times headline style on criminal matters was certainly
colorful as well as prejudicial. When on September 10,
1872 a notorious hoodlum named Christopher Rafferty
was found guilty of the murder of Patrolman Patrick
O’Meara, Storey’s paper turned nearly poetic with the
following headline:
Scandal sheets of the 19th century constantly fanned
public opinion against the Chinese by depicting their
alleged corrupting influence on young white females.
Chicago piano
See SHANG ANDREWS.
tommy gun
The Chicago piano, or tommy gun, first gained underworld acceptance in the Chicago gang wars of the
1920s. Some historians insist its first use came in the
shooting of Jim Doherty and Tom Duffy, gunmen of the
O’Donnell gang, and William H. McSwiggin, an assistant state’s attorney, on April 27, 1926 in front of the
Pony Inn in Cicero. Supposedly, Al Capone handled the
weapon personally. However, the likelihood is that the
Chicago piano was introduced by the Polish SaltisMcErlane gang that controlled the Southwest Side of
Chicago. After Joe Saltis and Frank McErlane demonstrated the Chicago piano’s awesome potential, every
Chicago gangster wanted one. And it was easy to see
why. The weapon was light, weighing only 81/2 pounds,
easy to operate and could fire up to a thousand .45caliber cartridges a minute. Furthermore, it cost a mere
$175 by mail order. When the federal government
slapped controls on the sale of the guns, gangsters still
SHUT OFF HIS WIND
A Satisfactory Job for Jack Ketch at Last.
The Hangman’s Rope Awarded to
Christopher Rafferty.
187
CHINESE riots
Thorpe, a crusading reporter with an American flag
necktie. In 1978 the Small Business Administration
ordered an auction of the ranch’s fixtures. A bag of
brass tokens bearing the legend “Good for All Night”
sold for $30.
Now, Do Not Reprieve Nor Pardon Him.
Nor Give Him a New Trial.
And, in the Name of All That’s Decent,
Don’t Commute His Sentence.
The Jury Concludes, in Just Twenty Minutes,
To String the Ruffian Up.
Perhaps an even more colorful headline, one still
quoted in journalistic circles, appeared on November
27, 1875; it read:
Chinese riots
When the Chinese first arrived in this country in about
1850, they were greeted warmly, especially in San Francisco, where they worked for very low wages as household servants and menials. Within a year or two, as
their numbers increased, the Chinese became one of the
most hated ethnic groups because they allegedly took
jobs away from “Americans,” mostly other ethnics
who had also come to America from foreign shores.
The wanton killing of Chinese probably was even less
hindered by legal sanctions than the slaughter of Indians or Mexican “greasers.” The saying “not having a
Chinaman’s chance” had a very awesome meaning for
a “chink,” “heathen,” “celestial,” “coolie,” “moon
face” or “slant-eyes” meeting a white man with a gun.
Riots became common, with particularly bloody ones
occurring in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, Rock Springs, Wyo. and Pierce City, Idaho. Cities
like Tacoma, Wash. expelled their entire Chinese populations. The main opposition to the Chinese was economic, since such employers as the Union Pacific
preferred to hire Chinese because, besides being docile,
they worked for low pay and were satisfied with a bowl
of rice. However, their large numbers and their insistence on maintaining their own customs—an attitude
not really different than those of all other ethnic
groups—became an added irritant. Not surprisingly,
the Chinese were unmoved by efforts to Christianize
them, one missionary observing, “They were unable to
distinguish between our mobs and our Christian workers and could not be expected to favor or tolerate our
religion. They had no way of knowing that Christianity
was a religion of love, not one of bowie knife, insult,
and the worst oppression the world has yet seen.”
Henry Ward Beecher’s comment was more sarcastic:
“We have clubbed them, stoned them, burned their
houses and murdered some of them; yet they refuse to
be converted. I do not know any way, except to blow
them up with nitroglycerin, if we are ever to get them
to Heaven.”
It would probably be impossible to try to estimate
the hundreds or thousands of Chinese who were murdered by whites in this country during the 19th century
since most newspapers did not regard the killing of a
Chinese as newsworthy. Diaries of 49ers in California
constantly refer in passing to the killing of a “chink”
JERKED TO JESUS
Four Senegambian Butchers Were
Wafted to Heaven on Yesterday from Scaffolds.
Two of Them, in Louisiana, Died with
the Sweet Confidence of
Pious People.
While Yet Two Others, in Mississippi, Expired
Exhorting the Public to Beware of
Sisters-In-Law.
Sometimes Storey’s outspoken attitudes on crime
and morality got him in deep trouble. When the noted
burlesque actress Lydia Thompson appeared at
Crosby’s Opera House with her troupe of “English
Blondes,” the Times denounced the young maids for
“capering lasciviously and uttering gross indecencies.”
The Times added that Miss Thompson was not much
better than a common strumpet and that Chicagoans
would do well to run her out of their city. When Storey
refused to retract the statements, Miss Thompson
caught him in front of his home on Wabash Avenue and
beat him severely with a horsewhip.
Chicken Ranch
the best little whorehouse in Texas
A Texas institution that was around almost as long as
the Alamo, the Chicken Ranch was never a ranch during all its 129 years of existence, although chickens
sometimes pecked around its front yard. Its last and
most famous proprietor, gun-toting Miss Edna Milton,
called the establishment in La Grange a boarding
house. The boarders were all very attractive young
women in cocktail dresses, and their guests included
any man who happened to have $10. The Chicken
Ranch was closed down in 1973 after a television
newsman from Houston publicized what many people
in Texas knew it to be, and the “exposé” eventually
forced the governor to order it shuttered.
The Chicken Ranch went on to live again in a highly
successful Broadway musical called The Best Little
Whorehouse in Texas, with Miss Edna acting as an
adviser for the show and doing a short walk-on part.
The newsman whose story doomed the ranch, Marvin
Zindler, was portrayed on Broadway as Melvin P.
188
CHOWCHILLA school bus kidnapping
stoned streets with a rope around their necks until they
died.
Perhaps the most shocking killing, one that drew
international attention, was that of an elderly Chinese
doctor named Gene Tong. When caught by the mob, he
pleaded to be spared and offered several thousand dollars he was carrying in exchange for his life. The rioters
just laughed and hanged him anyway. As the old man
was choking to death, several women in the crowd
stepped forward and ripped off his trousers to get at his
money. Someone also severed his ring finger with a
bowie knife when a diamond ring would not slip off
readily.
The death toll in the 1871 massacre was placed at 20
to 25, with many more injured, and it was estimated
that the rioters had robbed and looted every room,
every strongbox, every trunk in all Chinatown. A grand
jury investigation condemned the mob for “disgracing
our city” and charged that the authorities had failed to
perform their duty properly, but not one person was
ever brought to trial. Not surprisingly therefore, a few
years later, after the first initial shock and revulsion had
passed, Anti-Coolie Clubs began to spring up in the
city. Finally stung by charges of intolerance, the officials of Los Angeles did something: they changed the
name of Nigger Alley to Los Angeles Street.
here or there. Practically no white man was ever convicted of killing a Chinese; the crude Texas judge Roy
Bean once dismissed a case because he said he found no
statutory restriction against the activity. Lawmen in
general showed no inclination to ascertain the facts in
the violent death of any Chinese. Perhaps the 19thcentury attitude in the West is best summed up in a ballad still popular around the turn of the century:
Old John Martin Duffy was judge of the court
In a small mining town in the West;
Although he knew nothing about rules of the law,
At judging he was one of the best.
One night in the winter a murder occurred,
And the blacksmith was accused of the crime;
We caught him red-handed and give him three trials,
But the verdict was “guilty” each time.
Now he was the only good blacksmith we had
And we wanted to spare him his life,
So Duffy stood up in the court like a lord
And with these words he settled the strife:
“I move we dismiss him, he’s needed in town”;
Then he spoke out these words which have gained him
renown:
“We’ve got two Chinese laundrymen, everyone knows;
Why not save the poor blacksmith and hang one of
those?”
PIERCE CITY, IDAHO TERRITORY
Compared to some anti-Chinese massacres, the slaughter at Pierce City, Idaho Territory was, as one participant put it, “small potatoes.” However, it is most
illustrative of the brutal and inhuman attitude of whites
toward Asians.
On September 10, 1885 the body of a white merchant, D. M. Frazier, was found “chopped to pieces in
his own store.” A vigilante mob was formed quickly
and on no apparent evidence, deduced the crime had
been committed by two Chinese merchants who were
in competition with the victim. The Chinese partners
were seized and tortured until each accused the other of
committing the crime. The verdict was that both should
be hanged, and as long as they were hanging them, the
vigilantes thought it would be a good idea to get rid of
three other undesirable Chinese—a gambler, a barber,
described as “hard featured,” and a “parasite,” meaning a local camp prostitute. Cooler heads among the
mob convinced the others that the five should be turned
over to the law so that they could be tried formally
before being hanged. That night when a half-dozen
lawmen set out with the prisoners for the county seat,
they were stopped by a large mob of masked men who
abducted the five. It seems some discussion among the
vigilantes had led to the conclusion that the three additional prisoners would most likely not be hanged for
Eventually, anti-Chinese violence petered out,
although not for any commendable reason. First, President Chester A. Arthur signed a bill suspending Chinese
immigration. Second, the focus of bigotry shifted to
newer immigrant groups, such as the Japanese.
See also: ROY BEAN.
LOS ANGELES
One of California’s bloodiest and most barbaric mob
actions occurred on October 4, 1871, when a huge
group of whites—men, women and children—rampaged through Calle de los Negros, or “Nigger Alley,”
which had become the city’s Chinatown. Ostensibly,
the reason for the riot was to avenge the death of a
white who had been killed in the cross fire of fighting
between two rival Chinese gangs, or tongs. But it was
clear that this was little more than a rationale for an
explosion of racially motivated violence. On the day of
the riot, hundreds of people charged through Nigger
Alley smashing windows and battering down doors.
Any Chinese seized was beaten or stabbed. When one
Chinese man broke free of his tormentors and tried to
run away, he was shot down in the street. Having thus
tasted blood, the crowd grabbed another Chinese and
hauled him through the streets to a corral, where they
hanged him. Other victims were pulled over the cobble189
CHRISTIE, Ned
shacks. One white miner’s diary recalled, “Bullets followed the fleeing Chinese and sixteen of them were
killed brutally, while the other casualties met an even
more horrible fate the same evening when some of the
citizens satisfied their murderous instincts and inhumanly slew the few remaining Chinese for the money
which their victims had hidden on their persons, after
setting fire to the buildings to hide their crimes.” The
entire Chinatown section was burned to the ground
and “the smell that arose from the smoking ruins was
horribly suggestive of burning flesh.” Overall, the
death toll was put at 50, or 10 percent of the Chinese
community.
The Rock Springs Independent put out an extra edition the following day and sided with the anti-Chinese
forces. It especially complimented saloon operators for
shutting down during the riot: “It cannot be said that a
‘drunken mob’ drove out the Chinamen. Everyone was
sober, and we did not see a case of drunkness. All of the
stores in town were closed, and men, women and children were out watching the hurried exit of John Chinaman and everyone seemed glad to see them on the
wing.”
the murder and that perhaps the confessions extracted
from the two merchants by torture might also be disallowed in a courtroom. Direct action would solve that
problem, and all five were hanged, if somewhat inefficiently and slowly, from a pole placed between the
forks of two pine trees. The incident triggered wholesale expulsions of Chinese from a number of Idaho
towns with the tacit approval of high government officials.
When news of the lynchings spread, the Department
of State received a protest from the Chinese government, but it was six months before the territorial governor E. A. Stevenson, arrived in Pierce City to launch an
investigation. The “investigation” consisted solely of
talking to anti-Chinese elements and announcing he
had failed to discover the identities of any perpetrators
of the lynchings. He did express regret at the hangings
but added, “The Chinese hanged were the identical parties, who so cruelly, shockingly and brutally murdered
without the least provocation (except jealousy) one of
the best citizens of Idaho.” The governor also insisted
that deportation was the only solution to the Chinese
problem, since “their low, filthy habits, their highbinder piratical societies, together with their low dens
of infamy, prostitution and opium smoking, have disgusted our people.”
After the Pierce City affair a prodeportation movement seemed to be gaining ground in Washington, but
by this time a new wave of immigrants, this one from
Japan, had started to arrive and hostility was shifted
away from the Chinese to meet this new menace.
Deportation of the Chinese was forgotten, and they
went on to become one of the most law-abiding ethnic
groups in America.
ROCK SPRINGS,WYOMING TERRITORY
As terrible as the slaughter was in the Los Angeles Chinese massacre of 1871, it did not compare with the
mob riot in Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory in 1885.
When the main line of the Union Pacific was completed in 1869, many of the Chinese laborers settled in
the railroad town of Rock Springs. In 1885 there were
500 Chinese in Rock Springs, the great majority working in the Union Pacific coal mines. In fact, the Chinese
were the majority in the mines, and this led to friction
as unemployment grew in the white community. When
on September 2 a white miner and two Chinese got
into an altercation underground, the fighting soon
spread in the shaft among other miners, leaving one
Chinese killed and three others severely injured. Word
of the battle was passed above ground, and a heavily
armed mob of white miners formed for the destruction
of Chinatown. The Chinese had no reason to expect an
attack and were easily routed from their dugouts and
Photograph of the lifeless body of Indian outlaw Ned
Christie nailed up to an old door became the most
popular pinup in the Oklahoma Territory during the 1890s.
190
CIMARRON County Seat War
Chowchilla school bus kidnapping
Because of demands by the Union Pacific, federal
troops were called in and took over the task of feeding
the destitute Chinese wandering about the countryside.
Many of the men involved in the massacre were identified; instead of being prosecuted, they were paid off by
the railroad, given train tickets and “strongly advised”
by the commander of the troops to leave the state. The
federal troops remained on duty in Rock Springs for
the next 13 years, finally departing at the start of the
Spanish-American War in 1898.
The greatest kidnap for ransom plot in terms of numbers of victims in the United States took place on July
15, 1976 near the town of Chowchilla, Calif. By blocking the road with a van, three stocking-masked armed
men stopped a school bus containing 19 girls and seven
boys returning from a summer school session. While
one of the three masked men drove the bus off and hid
it in a dried-out creek bed, the 26 children and the bus
driver were herded into the van used for the blockade
and a second van driven up from a hiding place. The
driver and the children, who ranged in age from six to
14 years, were driven around for more than 11 hours
and finally brought to a rock quarry near Livermore,
less than 100 miles from the kidnap site.
There they were all transferred to a large moving van
that had been buried in an isolated section of the
quarry. Tarpaulins were stretched from the two small
vans to the roof of the buried van so that the prisoners
could not see where they were. A hole had been cut in
the roof of the buried van, and the children were forced
to climb down a ladder into their underground prison.
Before each child was transferred, his or her name and
age were recorded and a personal item or bit of clothing was taken, obviously for proof later that the kidnappers indeed held them prisoner.
The bus driver was given a flashlight and ordered
into the moving van, which was then sealed off with
large sheets of metal, plywood, dirt and other debris.
The van, 25 feet long and 8 feet wide, had been well
furnished for accommodation of the prisoners, containing a portable toilet and supplies of water, bread,
potato chips and breakfast cereal. There were a number
of matresses, and ventilation was provided by 4-inch
rubber tubing, with air pumped in and out by two battery-driven fans.
Later that day a police air search located the abandoned school bus, but there was no trace of the children, and terror gripped the Chowchilla area.
Twenty-four hours went by without a ransom demand
from the kidnappers, who were apparently determined
to fuel the parents’ anxiety further so that the state
would be forced to make payment immediately. However, the kidnappers’ plans went awry when, 16 hours
after their imprisonment in the large van, the driver and
some of the older children managed to dig their way
out. When all the children were pulled free, the group
walked toward lights in the distance. They found a
quarry employee, who immediately called the police.
The Chowchilla children’s ordeal was over.
It took the authorities 12 days to round up the three
kidnappers involved. The day before the kidnapping a
woman had jotted down the license number—
1C91414—of a small van near what was to prove to be
Chivington, John M. (1821–1894) leader of massacre
The minister-soldier who commanded the infamous
Sand Creek Indian Massacre in 1864, John Chivington
was court-martialed but acquitted. To escape further
military justice, he resigned from the army. Most
authorities on Chivington say that he was hated the rest
of his life, unable to escape the stigma of his deeds,
unable to find employment. The truth, however, was
that the man once tried for the wanton slaughter of 450
Indian men, women and children later became a lawman. For many years until his death, he held the job of
undersheriff in Denver, Colo., where he did his duty, so
it is said, with honor and fairness and was respected by
all those who worked with him.
Choctaw legacy, the
con game
Fleecing Indians became a major sport for con men
during the 1930s. Most of these swindles were based
on telling the victims that under old treaties Indians
were entitled to $1,000 each for their deceased relatives
and that the only thing needed was to get an enabling
act through Congress. The Indians could finance the
lobbying necessary to pass the act for a mere $5 apiece.
A notorious sharper, Odie Moore, worked the
scheme to perfection in Neshoba County, Miss., promising the Indians great rewards due them because of the
breaking of the Dancing Rabbit Treaty of 1839. Since
there had been wide intermarriage between whites and
Choctaws over the decades, thousands of white suckers
added their $5 contributions. Moore’s fanciful association managed to come up with a slogan, promising
“$1,000 for every dollar.” A number of young whites
even sought out girls with traces of Choctaw blood in
them to get on the promised gravy train.
Moore’s victims gave and gave from the time he
started his swindle in 1930 until his death in 1945, and
even after that, many remained sure their promised
windfall would soon be forthcoming.
191
CINCINNATI riots
and the cannon balls had the disconcerting habit of
bouncing back at the besiegers. Twenty-four hours of
battle had not added up to a day of glory for the law.
Finally, the attackers used dynamite to breach the walls.
Although shellshocked, the Indian came out fighting, riding hard and pumping away with his Winchester. With
some 20 guns trained on him, Ned Christie was blasted
off his mount, full of holes and dead.
The killing of Oklahoma’s most wanted Indian desperado deserved special artistic commemoration. His
body was allowed to harden somewhat into a pre–rigor
mortis pose, propped up against an old door with his
rifle cradled in his hands, and then his picture was
taken. Ned Christie became the most popular pinup in
Oklahoma during the 1890s.
See also: HECK THOMAS.
the site of the abduction. She had become suspicious of
the van’s occupants. The school bus driver underwent
voluntary hypnosis and was able to recall the license
number of one of the vans—1C91414—and all but one
digit of the other. The numbers were eventually traced
to an Oakland car dealer, and the large buried van to a
Palo Alto firm, which had sold it to one Mark Hall.
Employees at the Palo Alto and Oakland firms identified the purchaser from photographs as Frederick
Newhall Woods, IV, the son of the owner of the rock
quarry. Some of the children recalled hearing their
abductors use the names Fred and James, and since
Woods was known to be close friends with two brothers
named James and Richard Allen Schoenfeld, sons of a
prominent Atherton podiatrist, warrants were issued for
them as well. Richard Allen Schoenfeld surrendered to
authorities on July 23, and his older brother was captured on July 29. On the same day, Woods was arrested
by Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Vancouver.
The defendants chose a court trial rather than a jury
trial, feeling that jurors would be hostile because the
victims had been children. Evidence indicated that the
trio had worked on the details of the kidnapping for an
entire year before setting it in motion. All three were
convicted of 24 counts of kidnapping and three of kidnapping with bodily harm. Richard Allen Schoenfeld
got life imprisonment, and brother James and Woods
drew life with a stipulation barring parole.
Cicero, Ill. mob-controlled Chicago suburb
In the heyday of the Capone mob, Cicero was known
as the syndicate’s town. Al Capone’s private guard in
Cicero totaled about 800 gunmen, while the town’s
police force numbered about 50. Any officer who considered standing up to the Capone gang thought twice
because every official from the major down to the dogcatcher was believed to follow Capone’s orders without
question. Once when the mayor dared to displease
Capone, the mob chieftain knocked His Honor down
on the steps of the town hall and kicked him unmercifully in the groin. A Cicero policeman watched the
entire procedure, reportedly looking quite embarrassed.
In 1924 the Democrats dared to put up candidates
opposing the Klenha slate, which with bipartisan backing had ruled the town for three terms. The Capone
forces sent in hundreds of gangsters to guarantee the
proper election results. On the eve of the election,
William F. Pflaum, the Democratic candidate for town
clerk, was roughed up in his office and the place was
totally wrecked. On election day gangsters in sevenpassenger black limousines patrolled the streets, terrorizing the citizenry. Persons known to favor the
Democrats were beaten. Capone men walked up and
down lines of voters asking people how they intended
to vote. If they gave a wrong answer, their ballots
would be snatched from their hands and marked properly by the mobsters. Then a Capone hood, fingering a
revolver in his coat pocket, would stand beside the
voter until he or she dropped the ballot into the box.
Honest poll watchers and election officials were simply
kidnapped and held until the polls closed. A Democratic campaign worker, Michael Gavin, was shot through
both legs; policemen were blackjacked.
Terrified Cicero citizens appealed to the courts for
aid. Cook County judge Edmund K. Jarecki deputized
Christie, Ned (1867?–1892) Indian outlaw
Along with the Apache Kid, Ned Christie, a fullblooded Cherokee, became one of the most wanted
Indian outlaws in the West.
A bright youth, Christie served in the Cherokee tribal
legislature, but in 1885 he became an outlaw in a big
way. For some unknown reason, he killed Deputy U.S.
Marshal Dan Maples and vanished into the Cookson
Hills of the Oklahoma Indian Territory. In that area he
functioned as a horse thief, rumrunner, bandit and murderer, although there is no doubt that, as was the case
with the Apache Kid, just about any crime committed in
the territory by a young Indian was pinned on him.
It took Hanging Judge Parker’s deputies seven years to
catch up with Ned, who was cornered by U.S. marshals
Heck Thomas and Paden Tolbert in a log fort near Tahlequah on November 1, 1892. Finding Ned and flushing
him out were two different matters, however, as the fort
was close to impregnable. The marshals sent all the way
to Kansas for an army cannon and then set about the
task of blasting out the Indian outlaw with the aid of
about 20 reinforcements. They pumped an estimated
2,000 bullets into the fortress that did no damage at all;
the cannon proved even less helpful. The logs held firm
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CIVIL War gold hoax
70 Chicago patrolmen, nine squads of motorized police
and five squads of detectives and sent them to the
beleaguered town. That afternoon and evening pitched
battles were fought between gangsters and police.
Frank Capone, Al’s brother, took aim at officers piling
out of an unmarked black limousine and squeezed the
trigger of his automatic, but it clicked on an empty
chamber. Before he could pull the trigger again, two
lawmen blasted him with their shotguns.
When Al buried Frank a few days later, he could at
least console himself with the knowledge that his
brother had not died in vain. The Klenha slate carried
the election by a huge margin.
See also: AL CAPONE, FRANK CAPONE, HAWTHORNE
INN.
telegraph lines, reaching their noted brother, Bat Masterson, in Denver. He immediately wired Cimarron
warning the townspeople to release the trio or he
would lead an army of gunfighters to level the town. It
was no idle threat. Bat commanded the loyalty of
scores of noted gunmen, such as the Earps, Doc Holliday, Luke Short and others, men whom ordinary citizens could never stand up to. Thus, the following
morning the trapped trio was allowed to leave town
under a flag of truce.
By its forceful action, Ingalls did indeed become the
county seat and held on to this honor until 1893, when
it was passed back to Cimarron following another election. On this occasion there was no warring, however.
Hard economic times had punctured the land bubble.
Within a few years the populations of both Cimarron
and Ingalls dropped to a few hundred souls each, and
the bitter struggle had proved meaningless.
See also: COUNTY SEAT WARS.
Cimarron County Seat War
While the Cimarron County Seat War in Kansas in
1889 may not have been the most murderous of the
struggles of this kind, it has often been cited as the prototype of the county seat wars that bloodied Kansas
and several other states during the land boom era, especially in the 1880s.
In October 1887 Cimmaron had been voted the seat
of Gray County, a decision that did not please Asa T.
Soule, a leading citizen of Ingalls, the town that had
competed with Cimarron for the designation. Soule had
invested heavily in Ingalls real estate and knew that if
Ingalls became the county seat, his holdings would soar
in value. At the time, custom dictated that the possession of the county court records established the legal
location of the county seat. Promising a $1,000 reward,
Soule got Sheriff Bill Tilghman to deputize a gang of
hired guns and go after the records. Tilghman and more
than a dozen gunfighters, including Neal Brown and
Jim and Tom Masterson, arrived in Cimarron in the
early hours of January 13, 1889. While several stood
guard outside, the two Mastersons and Brown broke
into the courthouse and began hauling out the records.
They had almost completed the job when a Cimarron
resident spotted them and sounded the alarm. The
awakened Cimarron citizenry pushed guns out of
scores of windows and opened fire. Four Ingalls
invaders went down in the fusillade. Their bodies were
tossed into a wagon loaded with the court records and
the invaders fled. The Mastersons and Brown were left
trapped inside the courthouse. A gunfight consumed
the entire next day, with more than 200 armed men
keeping the trio pinned down. Talk of lynching filled
the air after a resident died and three others were badly
hurt, but in the end, nothing happened. By that time
two of the trapped men had been identified as the Mastersons, and the news of their plight went out over the
Cincinnati riots
A common public perception in 19th-century big-city
America was that enforcment agencies and the courts
were corrupt and that criminals could often buy their
freedom or mild sentences. This view, hardly unjustified, led to the organization of many vigilance committees and to frequent and bloody riots.
One of the worst of these took place in Cincinnati,
Ohio in 1884. The public had been outraged by the
action of the criminal courts, which in the previous
year had sentenced to death only four persons out of 50
convicted of capital crimes. On March 28, 1884 a
huge mob stormed the jail where two youths who had
been let off with manslaughter convictions were being
held. They lynched the pair and were finally dispersed
by a militia company. The following night mobs
formed again to perform additional acts of “instant justice.” Stores were looted of guns, the jail attacked and
the courthouse set afire and almost totally destroyed.
The rioters were eventually driven off after a pitched
battle with troops. Violence continued the third day, a
Sunday, and that night the mobs, which now contained
large numbers of criminals protesting for law and order
and looting stores at the same time, again battled the
militia. Soldiers were rushed in from all parts of the
state and streets were barricaded to isolate the mobs.
Vicious fighting continued for three more days before
the barricades could be removed and street-car service
restored. The death toll in the rioting was at least 45
persons with 138 more badly injured. Despite the riots,
Cincinnati retained its reputation as a wide-open city
during the immediate ensuing years.
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CLAIBORNE, Billy
circus grifting
one to be perhaps a clown and the other to work, say,
at the refreshment stand.
Circus grifting was an accepted practice in virtually
all circuses until the 1880s and in all except Ringling’s
up to 1900. By as late as 1930, only the large circuses
were free of grifting. The change did not come about as
a result of a sudden reformation of the circuses or
because public officials were less willing to take bribes
or due to any growing sophistication among the customers. In earlier years a circus changed its name frequently so that it could return the following year to a
community that it had angered on a previous trip. But
as circuses grew, their very name became more of an
asset than the revenues brought in by grifting. Faced
with the necessity of making a choice, the bigger outfits, reluctantly, gave up grifting.
See also: CARNIVAL GYPS, SHELL GAME, THREE-CARD
MONTE.
Compared to circuses in other countries, the American
version has relied much more on criminal enterprises
and fake exhibits and less on talented performers. A
prime source of revenue in 19th-century circuses was
gambling, particularly such crooked pastimes as the
shell game, three-card monte and eight-dice cloth.
Some seemingly ran independently of the circus management, but all paid a certain percentage of their take
for the right to operate on the circus grounds. For these
circus cons to thrive required four basic ingredients:
grifters, victims, a dishonest circus management and
public officials open to bribes. None were ever hard to
come by.
The arrival of a circus in a community meant that
within the next day or two many residents would find
themselves swindled out of much of their ready cash,
just as several church sermons the previous Sunday
had warned. What the gambling grifters didn’t take,
circus shortchangers and pickpockets would. As late as
1900, many of the small circuses that traveled about
the country still made each ticket seller pay up to $35 a
week for the job because shortchanging the excited
“rubes” on ticket sales was so easy and profitable. The
pickpocketing franchise was sold to professional
thieves, and to assist them in their chores, the master
of ceremonies would make it a point to warn patrons
about pickpockets. As a result, most men would
quickly feel their wallets and thus reveal to the watchful crooks in which pocket they carried their cash.
When a circus pulled up stakes, the grifters would ride
out in the “privilege car,” one lined with steel to protect them from angered rubes taken by the gambling
grifts.
Criminologists have attributed the dishonest inclinations of the American circus to its more mobile existence compared to its European counterparts, especially
the English circus, which stayed rooted in one place for
much longer periods of time. The footloose lifestyle of
American circuses encouraged a criminal business
thrust. Many circuses in early years were ideal fences
for stolen horses. Knowing they would be gone from an
area the next day, circus employees became notorious
for stealing from farms, barns and clotheslines.
Any one-shot method for improving profits would
do. Balloon sellers typically hired an assistant to blow
tacks at balloons in order to create an instant demand
by howling children for a second or third sale. Many of
the exhibits were outright frauds, particularly in small
circuses, which used grifters because they could be paid
far less than, for example, talented acrobats. Thus, the
“Siamese twins” were simply two individuals held
together by a flesh-colored belt while on display. As
soon as that exhibit closed, the twins could hurry off,
Ciucci, Vincent (1925–1962) murderer
The Ciucci case is often cited by critics of the court system as an example of justice delayed. Vincent Ciucci of
Chicago was found guilty of having murdered his wife
and three young children because he had fallen in love
with an 18-year-old girl and wanted his freedom. He
chloroformed his wife and three children on the night
of December 4, 1953 and then shot each in the head.
After the killings he set his apartment ablaze, apparently in the futile hope that the flames would eradicate
all evidence of the shootings.
Although the case seemed open-and-shut and the
jury quickly found Ciucci guilty, the wheels of justice
moved slowly. Ingenious appeals and constant applications for commutation kept Ciucci alive for almost nine
years until his execution in 1962. While these delays
did not equal the 12 years on death row served by California’s Caryl Chessman, the Ciucci case was criticized
from all sides, by those who felt constant appeals were
making a mockery of the death penalty and by opponents of capital punishment who condemned a system
of justice that could make any defendant go through
such a long ordeal. The Ciucci case contributed to the
public’s disenchantment with capital punishment in the
1960s, an attitude not reversed until the mid-1970s,
when the death penalty once more became regarded as
the cure-all for crime.
Civil War gold hoax
Perhaps the most audacious illegal money scheme of
the Civil War period was perpetrated by a professional
newspaperman, Joseph Howard, city editor of the
Brooklyn Eagle, who concocted a false proclamation
194
CLARK, Douglas
family” and his only guilt was “the hope of making
some money.” Finally, after the culprits had been confined for less than three months, Lincoln ordered their
release.
The freeing of the gold hoaxers many not have been
as magnanimous as it appeared on the surface. Ironically, when the report of the phony proclamation was
published, an as yet unreleased proclamation lay on
Lincoln’s desk. It called for the draft of 300,000 more
men. When Lincoln saw the adverse effect of the bogus
report on the people and on the financial markets, he
postponed all call-up plans for an additional two
months.
by President Abraham Lincoln. The hoax, in the words
of one witness, “angered Lincoln more than almost any
other occurrence of the war period.”
Working with a reporter named Francis A. Mallison,
Howard forged an Associated Press dispatch of the supposed proclamation that began, “In all seasons of exigency it becomes a nation carefully to scrutinize its line
of conduct, humbly to approach the Throne of Grace,
and meekly to improve forgiveness, wisdom, and guidance.” The document, recounting the military stalemate
in Virginia and disastrous news from Louisiana, called
for a national day of “fasting, humiliation and prayer”
eight days hence, on May 26, 1864. The real crushing
news in the proclamation was the drafting of an additional 400,000 men.
Howard realized such a doleful pronouncement
would shake the financial community to its roots, upset
the stock market and undoubtedly cause a rise in price
of gold. Days before he and Mallison unleashed their
hoax, Howard bought a considerable amount of gold
on margins, much of it apparently under other names,
so that the best estimate of his profits could only be put
at “many, many thousands of dollars.”
The schemers used young boys to deliver the bogus
AP dispatch to various New York newspapers. The
news was so startling that several of the publications
decided to confirm the facts before printing the story.
However, two papers, the World and the Journal of
Commerce, were pressed by deadlines and tore down
their makeup at the last moment to get the story out.
Quite as Howard had expected, the stock exchange
“was thrown into a violent fever.” The price of gold
instantly shot up 10 percent. Fortunes were made and
lost before the hoax was exposed.
Incensed by the false story, President Lincoln, Secretary of State William H. Seward and Secretary of War
Edwin M. Stanton ordered the two newspapers seized.
Only two days later, on May 20, the trail led to
Howard and Mallison when it became apparent that
the newspapers had been the victims rather than the
perpetrators of an act that in Stanton’s words “distinguished [them] by the violence of their opposition to
the Administration.”
The clearing of the newspapers led to a firestorm of
protest against President Lincoln’s initial seizure of
them. Lincoln, locked in a battle for renomination
and reelection, found the charges of suppression of the
free press particularly embarrassing. Almost forgotten
in the controversy were the culprits, Howard and
Mallison, who were confined in Fort Lafayette. Finally,
Howard’s father, an elder of Henry Ward Beecher’s
church, prevailed upon the famous minister to petition
Lincoln for mercy. Beecher told Lincoln that the 35year-old Howard was “the only spotted child of a large
Claiborne, Billy (1860–1882) gunfighter and rustler
Billy Claiborne is most noted as a survivor of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.
Claiborne was a young gunslinger who insisted on
being called Billy the Kid after the death of the more
famous bearer of that name in July 1881. It is recorded
that each of the three men who laughed in Claiborne’s
face over that pretension paid with his life. The last
doubter to die was Jim Hickey, and Claiborne was
arrested for his murder. Incarcerated in San Pedro, Arizona Territory, Claiborne, a member of the Clanton
gang of rustlers, was busted out of jail by Ike Clanton
and the McLowery brothers on October 22, 1881. At
the time, a showdown was fast approaching with the
Earp forces, and Ike Clanton undoubtedly wanted all
the guns he could get.
Claiborne’s two guns proved of questionable value.
The gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place four days
later, and as nearly as can be determined, Claiborne got
off one or two wild shots in the general direction of
Virgil Earp and then fled for the sanctuary of C. S. Fly’s
photography studio. Ike Clanton himself had little
ground for complaint since he also sought shelter there
while his brother Billy and the McLowery brothers
were being gunned down.
It was a while before Claiborne again insisted
on being referred to as Billy the Kid. While drunk
in Tombstone’s Oriental Saloon on November 14,
1882, he made the same demand of Buckskin Frank
Leslie, a pitiless gunfighter who may well have
killed more of the Clanton gang than the Earps ever
did. Leslie, then serving as a sort of combination barman and bouncer, stepped outside on the street with
Billy the Kid, II and shot him dead. Claiborne had
managed to live to be one year older than his selfproclaimed namesake.
See also: BUCKSKIN FRANK LESLIE, O.K. CORRAL, ORIENTAL SALOON.
195
CLARK, James G.
cattle, continuing to operate without trouble from the
law until the new sheriff of Apache County, Commodore Perry Owens, led a posse that trapped the
Clanton rustlers at their camp on the Blue River. Finn
Clanton was captured and received a long prison term,
but Ike fought to the end and was killed.
See also: WYATT EARP, O.K. CORRAL, COMMODORE
PERRY OWENS.
claim jumping
Few crimes in the mining communities of the West were
considered more reprehensible than that of claim jumping, stealing another man’s goldfield property before he
had a chance to record it officially.
Filing a claim was not really the legalistic ritual it
might seem. The district recorder was often a merchant
or saloon keeper, and once a man had filed his claim, he
still had to protect it. A typical sign read, “CLAME
NOTISE—Jim Brown of Missoury takes this ground;
jumpers will be shot.” If by chance Brown or a counterpart did shoot a jumper, a miners court would readily
clear him and most likely set up a bottle for him at the
local saloon. Claim jumpers were not treated leniently.
A frequent punishment called for a jumper to have his
ears cut off so that, said one miner’s diary, he would
“not hear about no more strikes.” When a stranger
showed up in gold-strike country, he would not be welcomed if he had a reputation as a claim jumper. “Preventative hangings” were not unheard of in such
circumstances. Overall, however, it must be said that
the miners and their courts generally settled claimjumping problems in a fair and equitable manner.
When the law became fully established years later, few
miners court findings were ever upset.
See also: SOAPY SMITH.
Clanton, Newman H. “Old Man” (?–1881) outlaw
clan leader
A Texan of a hazy but definitely bloody past, Newman
“Old Man” Clanton settled his family in the 1870s on
a ranch at Lewis Springs, Arizona Territory, which was
stocked with a constantly changing supply of stolen
cattle. Old Man Clanton directed the lawless activities
of the family and numerous hangers-on. The Clanton
gang swept into Mexico and Texas to undertake robberies of stagecoaches and bullion pack trains. Besides
his three sons, Ike, Finn and young Billy, important
members of the gang included such cutthroats as
Johnny Ringo, Curly Bill Brocius and the McLowery
brothers, Tom and Frank. Clanton also maintained a
spy network on both sides of the border that advised
him on potential victims. One of the Old Man’s worst
depredations was the Guadalupe Canyon Massacre in
July 1881, in which he and his men slaughtered 19
Mexicans escorting a mule train loaded with $75,000
in silver bullion. That vicious act made Old Man Clanton just about the most hated of all gringos. But about
two weeks later, a large posse of Mexicans ambushed
the old man and five of his gang as they were driving a
herd of stolen cattle through the same Guadalupe
Canyon. Only one of the gang, a man named Earnshaw, got away.
See also: GUADALUPE CANYON MASSACRE.
Clanton, Joseph Isaac “Ike” (?–1887) outlaw
Son of the notorious Old Man Clanton, Ike became
nominal head of the Clanton gang following the
death of his father in July 1881, but he was not that
strong a personality and ranked no better than second
in command to Curly Bill Brocius. While Ike Clanton
hated the Earps and others of the “townie/gambler”
element and plotted against them, he never really
sought a confrontation with them. In the noted gunfight at the O.K. Corral on October 26, 1881, Ike
aligned with Billy Claiborne, the McLowery brothers
and his younger brother Billy against the Earps and
Doc Holliday. Ike begged that the shooting be
stopped and then fled, leaving Billy Clanton and the
McLowerys to be killed. A few months later, Ike was
involved in the plan to kill Virgil Earp, and although
it failed, the shooting left Virgil maimed for life.
While Ike was not present when Morgan Earp was
murdered in March 1882, there is little doubt he was
in on the planning.
After the Earps left Tombstone later that same year
under considerable pressure from the citizens, Ike Clanton and brother Finn became scarce in the area as well,
and rumor had it that Wyatt Earp must have killed Ike.
Within a year, however, Ike was back at work rustling
Clanton, William (c. 1865–1881) outlaw
The only Clanton to die at the O.K. Corral, young Billy
Clanton was considered by many the bravest of the
family. While the Earp supporters always sought to
claim that Billy was 17 or 19 at the time of the O.K.
Corral fight, the anti-Earps have tended to set his age
between 13 and 15 at most and thus claim that Wyatt
Earp killed a “baby.” Billy Clanton was deserted by his
brother, Ike, and Billy Claiborne, and the McLowerys
staggered off as they were hit. His right hand shattered
by a shot, Billy shifted his gun to his left hand and kept
fighting alone. He shot Virgil Earp through the leg.
Then Wyatt Earp put the sixth bullet in Billy Clanton,
and he went down. Billy worked his way up to his
196
CLUM, John P.
knees and tried to level his .45, allegedly pleading,
“Just one more shot, God, just one more shot.” Finally,
he fell back to the dirt, and the Earps and Holliday all
held their fire.
Billy Clanton’s reputed last words were: “Pull off my
boots. I promised my mother I’d never die with my
boots on.”
See also: O.K. CORRAL.
murderous involvement with Clark, a liquored-up
Carol let too much slip out about Clark and their
doings. Murray said he might well go to the police
about it all, a prospect that threw Carol into a panic.
On August 5, 1980 she set up a midnight rendezvous
with Murray in his van near the bar where he was
doing a gig. She shot him in the head. Murray’s body
turned up four days later with nine stab wounds and
deep slashes across his buttocks. The head was missing, removed by Carol and Clark to prevent any ballistics identification.
Two days after the discovery of the corpse, Carol
sank into a state of depression, crying out on her job to
another nurse, “I can’t take it anymore. I’m supposed
to save lives, not take them.” Her coworker reported
her comments to the police, who arrested Carol and in
a search of her home found shocking pictures involving
Clark and young girls. Clark was arrested at his job,
where police found a pistol that ballistics tests linked to
five of the known victims of the Sunset Slayer.
According to Carol, Clark claimed he had killed at
least 50 young girls both before and after meeting her
and that he hoped to hit 100 before he inevitably was
caught. At his trial, Clark tried to shift the Sunset Slayings to Carol and victim Murray, claiming it was they
who were ardent fans of Ted Bundy. The jury believed
otherwise. Clark was sentenced to death and joined the
Clark, Douglas (1959– ) the “Sunset Slayer”
Perhaps the most infamous serial killer of recent years,
Ted Bundy left his mark in the chronicles of serial
killings in many ways, particularly as an inspiration to
“copy-cat” criminals. It is apparent that a sometime
factory worker named Douglas Daniel Clark—the
“Sunset Slayer”—had been much impressed by Bundy’s
murder spree and sought to imitate it. His murders,
often in company of his lover, Carol Mary Bundy (no
relation of Ted Bundy), began in 1980 and were far
more ghoulish than those of his role model.
Calling himself the “king of the one-night stands,”
he dated either women older than himself or young
girls between ages 10 and 15. However, sexual liaisons,
even kinky ones, hardly sated his desires, which ran to
dark reflections on rape, mutilation, murder and
necrophilia. In 1980, Clark met Carol Bundy, a vocational nurse in Burbank, who at age 37 was a halfdozen years older than he, and she became his willing
accomplice in his gruesome activities. When their game
turned deadly, Carol cruised the Sunset Strip looking
for prostitutes—with a strong preference for blonds—
for Clark to murder and then engage in depraved sexual acts. Clark and Carol committed about 10 known
murders in this fashion; at times, the heads of their
decapitated victims were stored in a refrigerator for
later gory fun and games. In one case, Carol later confessed to making up one face with cosmetics, saying,
“We had a lot of fun with her. I washed her up like a
Barbie with makeup.”
Typical of Clark’s killings were those of two half sisters, 16-year-old Cynthia Chandler and 15-year-old
Gina Narano, who vanished from a beach. They were
later found on the side of the Ventura Freeway in Los
Angeles, each shot in the head. Gleefully, Clark
described to Carol how he had had forced sex with the
girls before killing them.
Carol clearly had become a murder slave for Clark,
a fairly common occurrence among female consorts of
serial killers, but she was also responsible for his
eventual capture. In the past, she had had a romantic
attachment with an apartment house superintendent
and part-time singer in country and western bars,
John Robert Murray. On a date with Murray after her
John Clum poses with some of his highly regarded Indian
police.
197
CLUTTER family murders
sailors, which banned them from the streets after 8 P.M.
without a written pass from their owners or commanding officers. With the official takeover by the United
States on December 17, 1803, these new laws-by-posse
became permanent.
growing list of condemned prisoners waiting for years
for execution with the restored California death
penalty. Carol first claimed insanity but then admitted
her part in some of the slayings, including that of John
Murray, and she was sentenced to a total of 52 years in
prison.
Cleary, Katherine (1954–1973) “Looking for Mr. Goodbar
murder”
Clark, James G. (1924– ) sheriff and smuggler
Using electric cattle prods on demonstrators during the
Selma, Ala. desegregation protests of the 1960s, Sheriff
James G. Clark of Dallas County became a symbol of
resistance to black voting rights.
Following passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965,
Clark was defeated for sheriff. After that, he himself
got into trouble with the law. In 1978 he was charged
with marijuana smuggling after officials confiscated
about three tons of the drug aboard a DC-3 that had
landed in Montgomery, Ala. in May of that year. The
marijuana, valued at $4.3 million, had been flown in
from Colombia. Pleading guilty to the charge, Clark
was sentenced to two years in federal prison. At the
time of his sentencing in December 1978, four charges
of fraud and one of racketeering were also pending
against him, in an unrelated case in New York City.
Clark’s Battalion
This was, in a sense, the murder of an era, when the
sexual revolution was increasingly embraced by young
people. Twenty-eight-year-old Katherine Cleary was
haunting Manhattan’s Upper West Side looking to find
a man for some casual sex. In Tweed’s bar, she met Joe
Willie Sampson, who had a sexual hang-up: trying to
go “straight” despite a homosexual orientation. Cleary
invited Sampson back to her apartment. When Sampson proved unable to perform sexually, Cleary derided
him. In a rage Sampson beat her to the floor and, seizing a carving knife, stabbed her several times until the
knife broke. He jammed a candle into her vagina and
left. Taken into custody, the following May Simpson
hanged himself in his cell.
The protagonist in Judith Rossner’s novel Looking
for Mr. Goodbar was patterned on Simpson.
New Orleans posse
Clifton, Dan (?1865–1896?) outlaw
In 1800 Spain, which had held New Orleans and the
rest of the Louisiana province for 30 years, ceded the
area back to France. However, the French were slow
taking possession, the reason becoming clear with the
purchase of Louisiana by the United States in 1803.
During that three-year period, and especially in the final
year, law and order crumbled. The Spaniards remained
in nominal control but had lost all interest in maintaining the peace. On November 3, 1803 Spanish troops
sailed for Havana, leaving the city with no organized
protection and facing the likelihood of full-scale rioting
and looting by the lower and criminal elements.
To fill this vacuum, the American consul, Daniel
Clark, organized a battalion of 300 men, Americans
living in the city and Creoles. The battalion had no
clear legal code and in effect meted out posse justice to
offenders, utilizing pillories located on Chartres Street.
Major offenders were warned they faced the American
hangman as soon as full authority was established.
With a few French officials, Clark supervised the imposition of several regulations that were in keeping with
American law and provided residents with a foretaste
of U.S. rule. Among the ordinances adopted were ones
outlawing profanity and the driving of carts on Sunday.
Other regulations established curfews for slaves and
Better known as Dynamite Dick, Dan Clifton was a
small-time Oklahoma Indian Territory safe blower,
holdup man and rustler who hooked up with the
Doolin gang in 1892. He was involved in all the gang’s
jobs from then on and had three fingers shot off during
the Doolins’ famous battle with the law at Ingalls,
Okla. in 1893. A reward of $3,500 was put on Dynamite Dick’s head, and he became the most “killed” outlaw in America, as reward-hungry posses kept trying to
pin his identification on any shot-up corpse. Some overlooked the matter of the three missing fingers, while the
more knowledgeable would simply cut three off, alas
often the wrong three.
In all likelihood, Dynamite Dick was tracked down
in 1896 near Blackwell, Okla. and shot dead. While
there were three fingers missing on the corpse, considerable speculation arose that the dead man was still not
Dynamite Dick but another outlaw named Buck
McGregg.
Cline, Alfred L. (1888–1948) bluebeard
One of the most successful criminals at marrying and
murdering widows for their money was Alfred L. Cline,
until the law cut off his career in California in 1945.
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COHEN, Mickey
His modus operandi remained constant, and he is
known to have killed eight unfortunate wives after he
had convinced them to will their estates to him. Cline
would take his brides on a lavish vacation and in
some smart hotel get them to drink a glass of buttermilk that he had laced with a heavy amount of a
sleep-producing drug. He would follow this up a few
hours later with a fatal dose of the drug, but in the
meantime he would call the house physician and
inform him that “Mrs. Cline has had another heart
attack.” When he resummoned the doctor shortly
thereafter, his wife would be dead, and the doctor,
prepared for that event, would not be suspicious and
would issue a death certificate, citing heart failure as
the cause.
Eventually, many of the facts about Cline’s crimes
surfaced, but the law invariably foundered on one key
element. Cline always had his wives’ bodies cremated, a
process that destroyed all evidence of the poison he had
used. However, the authorities were able to prove that
he had used forgery to get his hands on his wives’
money, and for this he was sentenced to 126 years in
prison. Cline died in California’s Folsom Prison in
1948.
See also:
WYATT EARP, INDIAN POLICE, TOMBSTONE EPI-
TAPH.
Clutter family murders
In Cold Blood case
The Clutter family murders in 1959 were a brutal,
senseless affair that became the subject of Truman
Capote’s best-selling book In Cold Blood.
The Clutters were sought out, robbed and killed by
two ex-jailbirds and vagrants named Richard E. Hickock and Perry E. Smith. Hickock had learned of the
Clutters while sharing a prison cell with a convict
named Floyd Wells, who had once worked for Clutter,
a well-to-do wheat farmer in Holcomb, Kan. Hickock
pumped Wells about Clutter’s wealth and whether he
kept a safe in his home and how much money he was
likely to have on hand. When Hickock was paroled
from the Kansas State Penitentiary, he hooked up with
Smith, and the two headed for the Clutter home. They
invaded it on November 15, 1959. After terrorizing
the family, the pair killed Clutter and his wife, Bonnie,
both 45, daughter Nancy, 16, and son Kenyon, 15.
Clutter’s body was found in the basement of his home
with his throat cut and shot in the head. His wife and
two children had been killed with shotgun blasts at
close range. All the victims were bound by the wrists.
When news of the murders reached the penitentiary,
Wells went to the warden and told him of Hickock’s
interest in the Clutters. This put the police on Hickock’s
trail, and he and Smith were captured in Las Vegas. Both
men made confessions, each trying to shift more of the
blame on the other. While they had expected to find
$10,000, they had netted less than $50 for the four murders. Smith said of Clutter: “He was a nice gentleman. .
. . I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.”
At the trial the jury was urged by the prosecuting
attorney not to be “chicken-hearted” and to find them
guilty of first-degree murder. The jury did so, and after
a number of appeals, Hickock, 33, and Smith, 36, were
hanged in April 1965.
Clum, John P. (1851–1932) Indian agent and publisher
One of the most colorful men of the Old West, John
Clum was born near Claverack, N.Y. At the age of 23
he was an Indian agent on the San Carlos Reservation,
where he is generally credited with developing the concept of the Indian police. The principle of giving Indians armed authority was not one that came easily to
many whites, and Clum and other Indian agents who
tried it found themselves involved in many imbroglios
with the power structure. Of all the agents, Clum, not
surprisingly, had the most effective Indian police force.
He resigned from the Indian Service in 1878 because of
the government’s hardening line toward the Indians.
In 1880 in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, he
founded one of the West’s most colorful and outspoken
newspapers, the Tombstone Epitaph, which became
known as the town’s pro-Earp publication. Publisher
Clum was often a more worthy citizen than the elements he supported at times—Earp and Doc Holliday,
for instance, were little more than corrupt lawmen and
murderers—and there is little doubt that his newspaper
did much to bring law and order to the area. Selling out
his interests in the Epitaph in 1882, Clum left the area
after the death of his wife and daughter to become
assistant editor of the San Francisco Examiner. He died
in 1932, two years after making a sentimental return to
Tombstone.
cockfighting
A generally illegal but much practiced sport, cockfighting
was imported into the United States from the Spanish
islands and Mexico. During the 19th century it became a
common weekend entertainment in many parts of the
South and West. Some cocks were armed with steel spurs
to make their battles more bloody and furious.
Cockfighting has never been stamped out, and secret
matches are still held in large cities for big-money
prizes. Not long ago, police in Los Angeles broke up a
cockfighting gambling ring and freed some two dozen
cocks that had fought in matches for stakes of up to
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COLVERT, Chunk
were being cheated at the Alamo’s tables while Hickok
looked the other way; the marshal charged in turn that
Coe ran a crooked game.
The tension was further heightened by what became
known as the Shame of Abilene. Coe and Thompson
had the front of their establishment painted with a huge
bull, with even larger genitalia. If some considered the
representation offensive, Coe and Thompson found it
boosted business greatly. Within weeks, reports of the
Shame of Abilene were even being carried in the Eastern
press. Finally, Hickok, prodded by the more genteel elements as well as the other gambling interests, ordered
Coe to remove the painting or at least reduce the size of
the more offending parts to scale. When Coe refused,
Hickok, armed with paint can and brush, did the job
himself, revealing perhaps some overlooked talents.
There has been much speculation that the argument
over the bull painting was the cause of the Hickok-Coe
gun duel, but it appears more likely that the showdown
stemmed from Hickok’s desire to win control of the
lion’s share of Abilene’s gambling business. The trouble
came to a head on October 5, 1871, at a time when
Ben Thompson, whose skills with a gun more closely
approached Hickok’s than did Coe’s, was out of town.
Coe was bidding a liquid farewell to a bunch of Texas
cowboys. They wound up in front of the Alamo, where
Coe fired a shot from his gun. Hickok hurried out of
the saloon, there being an ordinance against carrying
firearms inside the town limits. Putting away his
weapon, Coe explained that he had just shot at a stray
dog, and Hickok reprimanded him. Some anti-Hickok
observers have suggested that Coe’s explanation only
infuriated Hickok more, since as marshal he collected
25¢ for each stray he killed and Coe was thus threatening to cut the marshal’s paycheck. What happened next
is a matter of dispute. The Texans all insisted that when
Coe turned away, Hickok whipped out a pair of derringers and shot him. The other version was that
Hickok did not shoot until Coe pulled his gun and fired
point blank at him. In any event, Hickok’s image as a
gunfighter was soon tarnished by a charge that he was
“trigger-happy.” As Coe fell mortally wounded,
Hickok heard loud bootsteps behind him and, thinking
he was being attacked from behind, whirled and fired
again. He shot his own deputy, Mike Williams, who
was rushing to his aid. Williams died a few minutes
later stretched out on a poker table in the Alamo, while
Hickok continued to curse the dying Coe. One rather
maudlin pro-Hickok recorded of the events added:
“Tears are the safety valves of a woman’s soul. Without
them she could not survive. Sometimes they and strong
men also. ‘Jesus wept.’ declares the Gospel. So did Wild
Bill.” In reality, there was little doubt Hickok was
$10,000. Similar arrests have been made in Chicago
and New York, where vacant buildings in deserted
slum areas have been turned into exhibition halls.
Cockfighting has outlasted dogfighting because it is
easier to maintain secretly and because much of the
action takes place in barrios, where police investigation
is generally unpopular.
While local laws generally ban cockfighting, proposals in Congress have called for action on a federal level,
which has brought protests from congressmen representing Mexican-American areas. A Texas congressman
denounced a successful House vote to ban interstate
transportation of birds and the use of the mails for the
promotion of cockfighting, citing “the ethnic and cultural background of some of us.”
Coe, George Washington (1856–1941) gunfighter
A sidekick of Billy the Kid, George Coe took part in
most of Billy’s battles during New Mexico’s Lincoln
County War in the late 1870s, barely escaping death
when severely wounded in the gunfight at Blazer’s Mill.
He accepted amnesty when it was offered by the new
governor of the territory, Lew Wallace, and thereafter
lived a long and peaceful life, becoming the last survivor of that great commercial conflict for the wealth
and riches of New Mexico.
In 1934 Coe had his reminiscences ghost-written in a
book called Frontier Fighter, which offered a rather
cleaned-up portrait of Billy the Kid. One observation
said Billy was as fine as any “college-bred youth and
with his humorous and pleasing personality got to be a
community favorite. In fact, Billy was so popular there
wasn’t enough of him to go around.”
Coe, Phil (?–1871) gambler and Wild Bill Hickok victim
A Texas dandy, Coe was the Hollywood prototype of
the western gambler, handsome and elegant with neatly
trimmed beard, gold-headed cane and derby hat. His
killing by Wild Bill Hickok tarnished the latter’s reputation as a fair gunfighter more than any of Hickok’s
other shootings.
Little is known of Coe’s origins because “he told as
many stories about his past as there were cards in a
deck,” but he was a fixture on the gambling circuit of the
1860s and early 1870s and prospered. In 1871
Coe turned up in Abilene, Kan. with a vicious gunfighter
named Ben Thompson, and they opened the Bull’s Head
Tavern and Gambling Saloon. The establishment thrived,
and this put the partners in conflict with Wild Bill
Hickok, who, as town marshal, was also the protector of
the Alamo, the leading gambling emporium in the town.
Coe charged that his fellow Texans up on cattle drives
200
COLL, Vincent “Mad Dog”
From the time of its first appearance in America during
the 19th century, the Mafia has been most inventive in
the ways it disposes of the bodies of murder victims; a
great many are finally listed in official records as missing, instead of dead. Some victims have been fitted with
“concrete overcoats” or ground up in garbage shredders. Top New York mafioso Tony Bender is believed
now to be either part of a large Manhattan skyscraper
or of the recently crumbling West Side Highway (an injoke in certain Mafia circles is that “dagos make lousy
roads”).
Perhaps the quaintest of all body disposal devices is
the “double-decker coffin.” A murder victim is taken to
one of the mob’s cooperative undertakers who constructs a special panel in a coffin he has ready for an
about-to-be-buried corpse. The unwanted murder victim is placed in the bottom of the coffin and a panel is
put over the body. Then the right corpse is placed on
top. After a properly mournful funeral, the two corpses
are buried together. No undertaker has ever been convicted as a result of this method because he can always
claim the mob must have dug open the grave after burial and put in the extra corpse. The undertaker cooperating with the mob on such a matter is assured of the
proper financial reward because the crime family will
see to it that he gets a good deal of their regular business thrown his way.
no man that in the first place didn’t deserve killing by
the standards of our way of life.” When asked to name
the California politicians who had once protected his
gambling interests, he refused, stating, “that is not my
way of life.”
Cohen wasn’t any more communicative when he
appeared before the Kefauver Committee’s hearings on
organized crime in 1950. When asked by Sen. Charles
Tobey, “Is is not a fact that you live extravagantly . . .
surrounded by violence?” Cohen responded “Whadda
ya mean, ‘surrounded by violence’? People are shooting
at me.”
When pressed on how he had obtained a $35,000
loan without putting up collateral from a Hollywood
banker, Mickey quipped, “I guess he just likes me.”
In 1958 Cohen, ever the publicity hound, gave the
newspapers love letters written by actress Lana Turner
to Johnny Stompanato, her gangster lover and a former
Cohen bodyguard who was stabbed to death by
Turner’s teenage daughter. What upset Mickey was the
fact that he had been struck with the bill for Stompanato’s funeral.
The Internal Revenue Service nailed Cohen twice for
income tax violations. He served four years the first
time and did 10 years of a 15-year term the second time.
Released in 1972, he announced his intention to go
straight. Cohen didn’t have too much choice in the matter since he was partly paralyzed as the result of a head
injury inflicted by a fellow convict in the federal penitentiary at Atlanta in 1963. In 1974 Cohen attracted
attention by campaigning for prison reform and, later,
by stating he had been in touch with people who knew
the whereabouts of kidnap victim Patricia Hearst.
Cohen died of natural causes in 1976.
Cohen, Mickey (1913–1976) gangster
Colbert, Chunk (?–1874) gunfighter and outlaw
One of the most shot-at gangsters of the 1940s and
1950s, Mickey Cohen was the gambling czar of the
West Coast, succeeding to that position after the underworld execution of Bugsy Siegel, Cohen’s mentor, in
1947 by “persons unknown.” Those unknown persons
were members of the national syndicate. Cohen later
did battle with them, especially the syndicate’s Los
Angeles representative, Jack Dragna, refusing to turn
over a cut of the proceeds from his bookmaking operations despite a series of attempts on his life.
Cohen lived in a mansion surrounded with an electrified fence and spotlights. On two occasions his home
was dynamited. While he survived both times, he
bemoaned the loss of much of his 200-suit wardrobe in
one of the blasts.
Noted for his colorful and fiery comments, Cohen
told television interviewer Mike Wallace, “I have killed
Chunk Colbert was a gunfighter credited with killing
seven men, but he is best remembered for taking part in
one of the most famed gun duels in the history of the
West.
The man Colbert challenged in an obvious effort to
become known as one of the truly great gunfighters
was an accomplished duelist and outlaw named Clay
Allison, whose own killings eventually totaled somewhere between 15 to 21. Colbert rode from the Colorado to the New Mexico Territory just to face down
Allison. Once there he invited Allison to dine with
him at the Colfax County Inn. As the duel was
immortalized by Hollywood and John Wayne, the
pair, eyeball to eyeball, stirred their coffee and
whiskey with the muzzles of their six-guns. Each
reholstered their piece, still eyeing the other carefully,
and started to eat. In a telltale sign, Colbert reached
determined to kill Coe; he simply got more than he bargained for in the process.
See also: WILD BILL HICKOK, SHAME OF ABILENE, BEN
THOMPSON.
coffin, double-decker
Mafia body disposal method
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COLLEGE Kidnappers
for his coffee cup with his left hand. Below the table
he was moving up his gun with his right hand. Allison
detected the move and went for his own gun. Desperate, Colbert fired before his gun had cleared the table
top and the slug plowed into the wood. Allison shot
him directly over the right eye, and then, the story
goes, calmly proceeded to finish his meal as his foe’s
body was being removed.
Later, Allison was asked why he had sat down to eat
with a man he knew was determined to kill him.
“Because,” he said, “I didn’t want to send a man to hell
on an empty stomach.”
See also: CLAY ALLISON.
pleted Tombs prison, a punishment much applauded by
a public who still knew the victim only by the name of
the Pretty Hot Corn Girl.
Coll, Vincent “Mad Dog” (1909–1932) gangster and
murderer
Alternately known as Mad Dog and the Mad Mick,
Vincent Coll stands as the best remembered of the socalled baby-faced killers of the 1930s. On another level,
he was typical of the latter-day Irish gangsters who
resisted the growth of organized crime, fighting a
bloody war for an independent existence.
Some have described Coll as at least half-demented,
with no regard for human life. Others have said he had
no regard for even his own life, exhibiting a death wish
as he invaded the far stronger gangland empires of
Dutch Schultz, Legs Diamond and Owney Madden.
With mindless nerve, he even accepted a commission to
assassinate Lucky Luciano, Vito Genovese, Frank
Costello and Joe Adonis. He was hired by Salvatore
Maranzano, then the Mafia’s “boss of bosses,” who
wished to rid himself of the young Turks he knew were
plotting against him. Maranzano wanted the killings
done by a non-Italian so that he could insist he was
above the bloodshed. Coll drew a $25,000 advance and
was on his way to Maranzano’s office, where a trap
was being laid for Luciano and Genovese. Luciano
learned of the plot and had Maranzano killed first.
When Coll got there, he found he had lost his murder
contract, but being ahead $25,000, he walked off content.
Vince Coll emerged from the Irish ghetto of New
York’s Hell’s Kitchen, where criminal activity was an
accepted mode of behavior. In his early twenties, he and
his brother Peter hired out as rumrunners to Dutch
Schultz at $150 a week each. As he told his brother, the
job was merely a way of learning the ropes before they
either started up a bootleg empire of their own or simply took over the Dutchman’s. Within a short time,
Coll was demanding a cut of the action from Schultz, a
proposal that was angrily rejected. The Coll brothers
then started laying the groundwork for their own organization. As the fate of Vincent Barelli, a Schultz hood,
and Mary Smith, Barelli’s girlfriend, proved, Vince Coll
was prepared to use gratuitous violence to accomplish
his goal. The Coll brothers and Mary’s brother,
Carmine, had attended the same Hell’s Kitchen grade
school, and on the basis of this connection, Mary got
Barelli to attend a meeting with the plotting brothers.
When Barelli refused to desert Schultz, Coll shot him
and Mary.
Schultz was unaware of the scheming and still
regarded the Coll brothers as being in his stable. After
Coleman, Edward (?–1839) murderer
A fierce New York gangster, Edward Coleman became
one of the city’s most hated murderers for killing one of
New York’s favorite street characters.
The Hot Corn Girls of the early 19th century were
the predecessors of the hot dog and peanut vendors of
today, but they also had a certain aura of romance
about them. Appearing mostly in the Five Points section of early New York, the Hot Corn Girls sold hot
ears of corn from wooden buckets that hung from their
shoulders. All successful Hot Corn Girls were of striking beauty; they had to be because of the intense competition. They strode through the streets barefoot in
calico dresses and plaid shawls singing:
Hot Corn! Hot Corn!
Here’s your lily white corn.
All you that’s got money—
Poor me that’s got none—
Come buy my lily hot corn
And let me go home.
The young bloods of the city would vie for the
favors of a Hot Corn Girl. Many duels were fought
over them. The more artistic suitors celebrated their
beauty in story and verse. If a man had an aversion for
work and a handsome wife, he could live a life of
leisure by sending her forth with a cedar bucket full of
corn. Such a husband, however, might find he would
have to trail behind her to fend off the blades who tried
to flirt with his Hot Corn Girl.
Edward Coleman wooed and won a truly beautiful
member of this elite group, one so fetching that she was
called the Pretty Hot Corn Girl. He married her after
winning battles with about a dozen other suitors. The
marriage was a short one, though. Coleman became
enraged when he found her earnings were less than he
had expected. He beat her so badly that she died. He
was arrested, convicted and, on January 12, 1839,
became the first man to be executed in the newly com202
COLLINS, Dapper Don
College Kidnappers
Vince was arrested for violating the Sullivan Law aginst
carrying weapons, Schultz put up $10,000 bail. He
became duly incensed when Coll promptly jumped bail;
as a moral lesson, the beer baron had Peter Coll murdered. This launched the bitter Coll-Schultz war, in
which at least 20 gunmen were killed. An exact count
was impossible since the Castellammarese War for control of the New York Mafia was raging at the same
time and the police had difficulty figuring out which
corpse resulted from which feud.
Even though he had less firepower, Coll held his own
against the Schultz forces. Constantly pressed for cash,
he raised it in desperate fashion by kidnapping mobster
kingpins attached to the Legs Diamond and Owney
Madden gangs and collecting huge ransoms for their
freedom. Thus, Coll was soon being hunted by a large
portion of the New York underworld. In July 1932 Coll
won his sobriquet of Mad Dog when he tried to gun
down several Schultz gangsters on East 107th Street.
Riding by them in a car, Coll cut loose a machine-gun
blast that missed the gangsters but hit five small children, aged five to seven, leaving them writhing on the
ground, some shot as many as five times. Five-year-old
Michael Vengalli died, most of his stomach blown
away.
The public was indignant, and orders went out to
the police to bring in Mad Dog Coll dead or alive.
Realizing he would be caught sooner or later, Coll kidnapped yet another Owney Madden aide and collected
$30,000 in ransom. He used this money to hire the top
lawyer of the day, Samuel Leibowitz, to defend him.
Remarkably, Coll was acquitted of the murder charge
after the masterful Leibowitz somehow seemed to make
the eyewitnesses, rather than his client, the defendants.
The Mad Dog was back on the streets.
Later, the underworld put a $50,000 reward out for
the trigger-happy youth. Schultz gunners almost cornered Coll on four occasions but he fought his way to
safety each time. Then one day late in 1932, Coll was
in a drug store telephone booth talking to Owney
Madden, threatening to kill him unless he was given
money. Madden kept talking to him while the call was
traced. Coll was still in the phone booth when a black
automobile pulled up outside the drug store. One man
stood outside on the street and another just inside the
door. A third with something bulging under his overcoat strode toward the phone booth. Coll saw him as
the man leveled a tommy gun at him. In his cramped
position Coll was unable to react as the man squeezed
the trigger.
At the autopsy 15 steel-jacketed bullets were removed
from Coll’s face, chest and stomach.
See also: SAMUEL S. LEIBOWITZ, OWNEY “THE KILLER”
MADDEN, SALVATORE MARANZANO.
Chicago gang
During the early-1930s heyday of the kidnapping
gangs, one combine that operated in unique fashion
was the so-called College Kidnappers of Chicago. They
specialized in snatching only underworld characters,
who not only could afford to pay but also were not
likely to complain to the police.
The gang got its name because most of its members
were college graduates; the leader, Theodore “Handsome
Jack” Klutas, was an alumnus of the University of Illinois. The modus operandi of the gang was to pick up
gossip in underworld circles about who had made a big
“score.” They would then kidnap the individual and
release him only when they received a slice of the loot.
Quite often, members of the Chicago mob were their victims, a pattern that earned the College Kidnappers the
enmity of the Capone operation. But Klutas and his men
had little fear of organized crime and continued their
onslaughts, reportedly pulling in more than $500,000
dollars in ransom money between 1930 and 1933.
In 1933 a hot rumor, later proven to have some basis
in fact, spread that the College Kidnappers had merged
the Dillinger gang into their operations. Faced with this
disturbing news, the Capone forces decided to try to
buy off the kidnappers and persuaded one of the kidnappers, Julius “Babe” Jones, to approach Klutas to
arrange a deal. Klutas told Jones he would consider it
but, as soon as Jones left, ordered his assassination.
The attempt was made by first stealing Jones’ car and
then faking a telephone call, allegedly from the Joliet
police, to tell him that his car had been found and
could be picked up at a local garage. Jones, an old hand
at College Kidnapper tricks, was suspicious and drove
by the garage dressed as a woman. As he expected, he
spotted two gang members parked in a car opposite the
garage, ready to gun him down when he appeared.
Now trapped between the College Kidnappers and
the Capones, Jones could only turn to the police,
informing them about a number of the gang’s hideouts.
One was a brick bungalow in Bellwood. When two
squads of detectives stormed the bungalow, they captured two wanted criminals. One was Walter Dietrich,
one of 10 convicts Dillinger had helped to break out of
the Michigan City Prison. Dietrich refused to say where
Klutas was or whether he alone or the rest of the
Dillinger gang had joined the College Kidnappers.
Meanwhile, acting on Jones’ information, the police
rounded up several other gang members, but not Klutas.
Later that same day a stakeout at the Bellwood
bungalow paid off. A car pulled up, and Klutas boldly
strode up the walkway. As Klutas pushed open the
door, four police officers trained guns on him, including
Sgt. Joe Healy’s machine gun. Healy said: “Hands up.
Police officers.”
203
COLLINS, John Norman
$1,000 from each of them, but now the “law officers”
confiscated the rest of their personal fortunes as a payoff for not taking them into custody. Because Collins
was fearful of overlooking some of their money, he
even had his men take all the victims’ luggage with
them to search at their leisure.
While he bossed many of these grandiose schemes,
Collins could not pass up even the smallest take. For a
time, he headed a “punch mob” on Manhattan’s West
Side that specialized in looting nickels from pay telephones. One of his extraordinary cons occurred in
1920 during the hunt for a Railway Express agent who
had skipped out of his job with $6,000. While police
hunted the agent, Dapper Don came across him first.
He immediately turned copper and swindled the thief
out of his haul in return for letting him go free, appropriating as well the man’s watch, ring and tiepin.
While Collins occasionally did time for various
capers, he usually beat the rap for his blackmail
exploits because his victims refused to testify against
him. He retained the Great Mouthpiece, Bill Fallon, to
defend him on a number of charges and usually went
free. The pair were constant companions on Broadway.
According to Gene Fowler in The Great Mouthpiece,
when Fallon was asked why he chummed with such a
notorious individual, he replied: “Because he is a
philosopher as well as the Chesterfield of crime. He
performs in a gentlemanly manner. This first bit of philosophy he ever dropped in my company made me
laugh and made me like him. We were discussing
whether any man is normal; precisely sane; and what
sanity consists of. Collins said: ‘Between the ages of sixteen and sixty, no man is entirely sane. The only time
any man between those ages is sane is during the first
ten minutes after he has concluded the supreme love
gesture. Fifteen minutes after, and the old insanity
creeps back again’!”
Part of his success with the ladies stemmed from his
reputation as the biggest spender and fashion plate on
Broadway. It cost him plenty. What Collins netted
from one gullible but adoring lady one day he might
blow the next on another lady. Once Collins set up a
Maryland matron and took off to Atlantic City with
her. He was then to guide her to Washington for the
kill. Instead, he stayed in Atlantic City for a week with
her. At the end of that week of bliss, he kissed her
good-bye and went to Washington alone. He had four
confederates in this operation and had to pay them
$350 apiece for a caper that was intended to net a
$10,000 profit.
In 1924, with the police hunting him for a number
of capers, Dapper Don transferred his operations to
Europe and seduced several women in Berlin and Paris.
Klutas, who had always vowed never to be taken
alive, reached under his overcoat for a gun. Healy
loosed a burst of machine-gun bullets into the gangster’s chest. Klutas was thrown clear off the bungalow
porch to the sidewalk. He was dead, and the College
Kidnappers were finished.
Collins, Dapper Don (1880–1950) confidence man
The archetypal smooth operator who uses his charms
to seduce women and defraud them of their wealth,
Dapper Don Collins was a notorious rogue who, by
his own admission, “could never pass up a score,”
large or small. He swindled women by reversing the
old badger game, so that they were extorted when he
was “arrested” by confederates posing as law officers.
The police impersonators would say he was a Mann
Act violator or suspected procurer for white slavers.
To protect the honor of the woman, usually upper
class and perhaps married, he would give the bogus
officers all his cash, only to be visibly shaken when
they announced it was not enough. The panicky
woman, facing sure ruin if the case was publicized,
could be counted on to contribute her money, jewelry
and furs.
Born in Atlanta, Ga. as Robert Arthur Tourbillon, he
affected a number of aliases for his various cons but
became best known as Dapper Don Collins, because
according to his confederates, he was a dandy who
could “sweet talk a lady” or anyone else for that matter. He often used a phony police badge and pretended
to be a police officer, one who, of course, was always
open to a bribe. Dapper Don first arrived in New York
around the turn of the century after an unrewarding
circus career riding a bicycle around in a cage full of
lions. He gravitated to the notorious Broadway poolroom of Curly Bennett, where he befriended most of
the metropolitan underworld.
Dapper Don soon became a gang leader, forming the
first of his blackmail rings for extorting money from
women. Besides his various confidence games, he masterminded train robberies and drug-smuggling and
alien-smuggling operations and later, with the onset of
Prohibition, was a top bootlegger and rumrunner.
Collins often used a luxury yacht for rumrunning and
bringing in aliens. In one of his more audacious
exploits, he once entrapped a society woman aboard
the yatch by having phony law enforcement raiders
seize him on Mann Act violation for transporting the
woman from Connecticut for “illicit purposes.” They
shook the woman down for $7,000 in cash and diamonds. Before the raiders left the yacht, they seized
three aliens Collins had brought into the country from
a ship offshore. Dapper Don had already collected
204
COLOMBO, Joseph, Sr.
Mafia boss Joseph Colombo, Sr., holding umbrella, pickets FBI headquarters in 1971 as part of his Italian-American Civil
Rights League activities.
In the French capital, he took up with Mrs. Helen Petterson, former wife of Otto Young Heyworth, and
extracted money from her under a number of ruses.
Moreover, during a New Year’s party at the Hotel
Majestic, he flipped her out of a third-floor window.
She broke her leg in the fall, and Collins was hustled off
to prison for that offense and failure to pay his hotel
bill. Undaunted, Mrs. Petterson limped from her hospital room at Neuilly to visit Collins, announcing, “We
are going to be married.” However, some New York
police officers were in France to pick up a suspect in
another case and spotted Collins in the prison. They
promptly arranged for his extradition to the States on a
robbery charge. Dapper Don was brought home in
grand style aboard the steamship Paris, sharing a fine
stateroom with a New York detective. Passengers knew
that one of the two was a crook, but most believed the
detective was the guilty party.
205
Back home, Collins beat the rap but later did short
stretches on a couple of other charges. Dapper Don
then got involved in a liquor-smuggling operation with
another top confidence operator, Count Victor Lustig,
supplying the notorious Legs Diamond with booze.
They worked a label-switching dodge that enabled
them to cheat the gangster out of thousands of dollars.
Eventually, Diamond found out about the swindle, and
the pair had to go into hiding. For a time, Collins left
the country again, but in 1929 he came back and was
caught swindling a New Jersey farmer out of $30,000.
He was sent to prison for three years. When he came
out, a lot of the old Dapper Don was gone, as indeed
was the pre-Depression era that nurtured him. He was
over 50, paunchy around the waist and looking tired,
perhaps having lost some of his self-confidence. He told
the press he was reforming.
That was impossible; he was plain tired. In 1939
Dapper Don, then a drug addict, was far gone, and his
COLONEL Plug
swindles were petty. Long ago, Collins had learned the
danger of going after small potatoes. Unlike big people,
little victims scream. He swindled an immigrant
woman out of a few hundred dollars by pretending to
be an immigration official and threatening to deport
her husband. For this unimportant caper Collins drew
the longest sentence of his career, 15 to 30 years.
The newspapers reported that Dapper Don started
off on his train ride up the river as light hearted and
debonair as ever. But that was newspaper hyperbole.
Collins was old and beat. “The only way I’ll ever come
out again,” he told the officer escorting him, “is feet
first.”
He was right. He died in Attica Prison in June 1950
and was buried in a pauper’s grave. No one attended
the funeral.
trial in Ann Arbor in 1970. He was convicted and
given a life sentence.
Collins, Walter (1919–1928) kidnap and murder victim
Nine-year-old Walter Collins suffered the sad fate of
being kidnapped and murdered by a maniac on March
10, 1928, although his body was not found until the
following year. However, it was his widowed mother’s
fate rather than that of the unfortunate child’s, that
made Walter’s case so bizarre.
When Walter disappeared, a nationwide search for
him was launched, and some five months later, a boy
who looked exactly like him was picked up in Lee,
Mass. The boy was a runaway and readily identified
himself as the missing Walter Collins. In the period
before he was turned over to Mrs. Collins, someone,
whose identity was never learned, coached him so that
he could pass himself off as Walter. This meant knowing little details that allowed the boy to discuss Walter’s
past with relatives and friends. It took Mrs. Collins
three weeks to become suspicious that the boy was not
Walter. She then measured his height and found he was
an inch and a half shorter than her son had been before
he disappeared. Convinced she had an impostor on her
hands, Mrs. Collins went to the police, demanding that
this strange boy be taken away. The police promptly
committed the woman to a psychopathic institution for
observation. Mrs. Collins was kept there almost a week
before doctors became convinced she was sane and
released her. Finally, the boy confessed his impersonation. Mrs. Collins sued the authorities who had had
her wrongly committed and was awarded $10,800.
Collins, John Norman (1947– ) Michigan co-ed
murderer
For a time it appeared that the murders of seven co-eds
in the Ypsilanti area between August 1967 and July
1969 would never be solved. The victims had been
shot, strangled or beaten to death and then sexually
mutilated. There were no clues, and even the importing
of Peter Hurkos, the Dutch “psychic detective,” failed
to provide any fruitful leads. With the seventh murder,
that of 18-year-old Karen Sue Beckemann, the police
had what appeared to be a logical suspect in 22-yearold John Norman Collins, an Eastern Michigan University student and motorcycle enthusiast. Karen Sue had
been seen with him shortly before her disappearance,
and other students told of hearing things Collins had
said that hinted he might be the Michigan co-ed killer.
Collins was arrested but soon released because
there was no solid evidence against him. Like so many
other suspects, he seemed to be just another odd character caught up in the investigation. The eventual case
against Collins resulted from a discovery made by a
relative, his aunt, Mrs. Dana Loucks. Mr. and Mrs.
Loucks had gone away on vacation and let Collins use
their home. When they returned, Mrs. Loucks found
some dark stains in the basement. She pointed them
out to her husband, who was a member of the Ypsilanti police force. The stains proved to be blood, of
the same type as that of Karen Sue, who had been
killed while the Loucks were away. The police then
searched the basement and discovered some male hair
clippings, which matched hair clippings found on
Karen Sue’s underwear. It developed that Mrs. Loucks
cut the hair of her two boys in the basement. Based on
the hair clippings, the blood stains and Collins’ admission that he had used the Loucks’ basement during the
time they were on vacation, Collins was brought to
Colombo, Joseph, Sr. (1914–1978) murdered mafioso
There were those in the underworld who said that Joe
Colombo, the head of one of the Mafia’s biggest crime
families, had to come to a bad end. He was a lightweight in a killers’ world. Colombo’s rise to power had
been achieved through neither muscle nor brain power
but by the simple expedient of being what was regarded
as a “fink.” When Joe Bananas made a powerful push
in the 1960s to take over the whole New York Mafia,
he planned the murder of the entire top echelon of the
crime syndicate’s ruling board. Bananas gave the
assignment to his ally Giuseppe Magliocco, who had
fallen heir to Joe Profaci’s Brooklyn crime family, and
Magliocco in turn ordered his ambitious underboss,
Colombo, to carry out the hit contracts.
Colombo was probably too frightened to make the
hits and also judged Magliocco a sure loser, so instead,
he betrayed the plot to the leading would-be New York
victims, Carlo Gambino and Tommy Lucchese. Eventu206
COLT, John C.
ally, the old guard won the ensuing Banana War, and
Colombo was rewarded by being put in charge of the
Profaci family. Colombo soon found he had his hands
full trying to deal with an insurrection led by the
upstart Joey Gallo and his brothers.
At the same time, Colombo went off on an illconceived program to improve the image of Italian
Americans by forming the Italian-American Civil
Rights League. Colombo’s idea was that this organization would make Italian Americans proud of their heritage and that in unity they would be able to fight the
authorities’ alleged victimization of them. The league
was also intended to fight the Italian gangster stereotype. Other Mafia leaders looked upon Colombo’s
efforts with distaste. They had long ago learned that
denying the existence of the Mafia was another way of
calling attention to it. Ignoring their displeasure,
Colombo went ahead with a giant rally on June 29,
1970 at Columbus Circle. It was a smashing success,
with 50,000 persons in attendance. And it was too
powerful a demonstration to be ignored by the politicians. Even Gov. Nelson Rockefeller accepted honorary membership in the league, despite its Colombo
imprint.
Joe Colombo came out of it appearing, to himself
at least, a hero. He laid new plans for extending
the league’s power. Meanwhile, some of Colombo’s
lieutenants fretted over the declining revenues of the
family while the chief spent ever more time pushing the
league instead of minding criminal business. These men
approached the other families who were upset by
Colombo’s activities, and they agreed that he had
become more than a mere tribulation. The leading
voice among them was Carlo Gambino, whose life had
been saved by Colombo’s finking. Gratitude was one
thing and business another.
It was decided to let the Gallo forces have a shot at
Colombo. Joey Gallo jumped at the chance. The second
Unity Day rally of the league was set for June 28,
1971. Gallo knew he and his men could not get close
enough to kill Colombo, but he had other sources of
strength. Of all the Italian racketeers, Joe Gallo was the
only one who had genuine power in the black gangster
movement in Harlem.
On the morning of the 28th, Joe Colombo showed
up early at the rally, as the crowd was just starting to
form. A black man, Jerome A. Johnson, wearing a
newspaper photographer’s badge neared. When he was
within a step of Colombo, he pulled out a pistol and
fired three quick shots into the gang leader’s head.
Instantly, Colombo’s bodyguards gunned down the
assassin.
Johnson died on the spot. Colombo did not, but he
suffered such brain damage that he turned into a vegetable. He died seven years later in an upstate hospital.
See also: BANANA WAR, CRAZY JOE GALLO.
Colonel Plug (?–1820?) river pirate
With Bully Wilson, Col. Plug was one of the two most
important pirates who preyed on boat traffic along
the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. A bewhiskered giant
whose real name was Fluger, Col. Plug boasted he had
been a colonel in the American Revolution. Plug’s
modus operandi was to hide aboard a flatboat that
was tied up for the night. When it got going in the
morning, he would dig out the caulking between the
planks and bore holes in the bottom. Col. Plug would
time his work so that the boat would be scuttled
opposite his hideout. His gang would row out to the
flatboat in skiffs, supposedly coming to the rescue.
The only person to be rescued would be Col. Plug,
of course, along with the cargo; the crew and passengers would be left to drown, or, if they resisted, to be
shot. Col. Plug was active for many years until,
according to the legend, he bored too many holes one
day and the boat he was sabotaging went to the bottom before Plug could climb out of the hold. At least,
so the story was told in pirate circles, presumably
accurate since suddenly Col. Plug ceased to be a
scourge of the rivers.
See also: CAVE-IN-ROCK PIRATES, PIRACY.
colonial punishment
Punishment for crime tended to be less severe in colonial America than in the countries from which most
colonists had come. The New England colonies and the
Quaker settlements in West Jersey and Pennsylvania
had punishments that in general were less harsh than
those used in New York and the South. In New England the main thrust of punishment came in the form of
humiliation; thus when Mary Mandame of Plymouth
became the supposed first female sex offender in 1639,
she was required to wear a badge of shame on her left
sleeve. Had she failed to do so, she would have been
branded in the face with a hot iron, but the mere threat
of this punishment brought compliance in almost all
cases. Vagrancy brought punishment in the stocks,
while the ducking stool was held ready for the scold.
More serious crimes brought stricter penalties. Murder
and witchcraft called for hanging, and burglars were
branded.
The same crime called for far different punishments in various jurisdictions. Theft in New York was
punishable by multiple restitution and whipping, but
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COLT .45
rifle. At 22 John was tall, slim and handsome, with
curly blond hair and steel gray eyes. The darling of
society, he fancied himself a writer of sorts and numbered among his close friends Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, John Howard
Payne, George Palmer Putnam and Lewis Clark.
Despite his literary bent, Colt had a quick, uncertain
temper, and in a nasty argument he killed Samuel
Adams, a printer he had hired to produce a book of his.
Colt was tried speedily and sentenced to be hanged.
There were those who said Colt would never hang, that
his family was too powerful. Press exposés of Colt’s
treatment in the city’s new prison, the Tombs, informed
the public that Colt lived an exceedingly happy life for
a condemned man. He had flowers on his table and a
pet canary. A young Charles Dana reported: “In a
patent extension chair he lolls smoking an aromatic
Havana. . . . He has on an elegant dress-gown, faced
with cherry-colored silk, and his feet are encased in delicately worked slippers.” His food was “not cooked in
the Tombs, but brought in from a hotel. It consists of a
variety of dishes—quail on toast, game pates, reed
birds, ortolans, fowl, vegetables, coffee, cognac.”
The greatest concession to Colt’s grand station was
the permission granted by prison authorities that he be
allowed to marry his fiancée Caroline Henshaw on the
morning of November 18, the day of his execution.
Newspaper announcements of the bizarre nuptialsgallows ceremony brought out thousands of thrill seekers who jammed Centre (later Center) Street at dawn.
Miss Henshaw was forced to come by carriage to a side
street entrance to the Tombs at about 11:30. During the
actual wedding ceremony, carpenters assembling the
gallows in the courtyard politely suspended their hammering, a fact a guard relayed to the crowd outside.
The crowd moaned at that. It moaned again when
word was passed, “They’re married.” Other news was
passed as it happened. “The guests have gone. . . .
There are silk curtains across the cell door. . . .
They’ve ordered champagne. . . . They’re testing the
gallows!”
Shortly after 1 P.M. the new Mrs. Colt was advised
that she had to leave, and she did so “smiling bravely.”
Later, there would be much conjecture over whether
Caroline slipped her groom a large dagger with which
he could stab himself in the heart and thus escape the
noose. At 3:30 P.M. the Rev. Henry Anton, who had
officiated at the wedding, was ordered to offer his final
services to the condemned man. At that moment the
tinder-dry wooden cupola atop the adjacent Hall of
Justice mysteriously caught fire. Within three minutes
smoke was pouring into the interior of the prison.
Panic broke out and several guards raced out of the
building. Convicts banged on their bars and begged to
in numerous Southern colonies the death penalty was
often exacted when the sum taken was more than
12 pence. In several New England settlements a gentleman could commit the following offenses and be
fined a sum equivalent to $10: lie eight times; swear
four times; beat his wife twice; or criticize a court
once.
In the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the early 18th
century punishment did not end with a mere flogging
or confinement in the stocks. After initial punishment
offenders were then required to wear on their arm or
bosom for a year or many years a large letter cut from
scarlet cloth. The letter identified the crime for which
the offender had been punished, such as A for adultery,
B for blasphemy, D for drunkenness, I for incest, P for
poisoning, R for rape, T for thievery. However, it was
soon decided that this punishment was too inhumane
and it was abandoned.
Whippings were often carried to excess, with the
result that the convicted person often was left crippled
for life. In New England an attempt was made to prevent this abuse by limiting the number of lashes to 39,
as called for under Mosaic law. Contrary to common
belief, no one, not even a witch, was burned at the
stake in New England. However, burning and quartering were practiced in New York and the South. In the
great Negro Plot of 1741 in New York, many blacks
were put to the stake. Quartering was generally
applied for treason and to blacks. In Maryland a
black who murdered an overseer was punished by
having a hand cut off, then hanging and finally quartering.
Perhaps the sternest punishments were carried out in
Virginia. A slave who ran away might have an ear
nailed to the pillory and then cut off. Criticism of the
authorities in that colony meant an offender could be
pilloried with a placard, lose both ears, do a year’s service for the colony or have his ears nailed to the pillory.
The most common punishment for the offense was
being laid “neck and hells” in irons and then heavily
fined. Virginia probably decreed more castrations of
blacks than did any other colony.
See also: BOOK WHIPPINGS, BRANDING, FLOGGING,
MARY MANDAME, MUTILATION, PILLORY, SALEM WITCHCRAFT TRIALS.
Colt, John C. (1819–1842?) murderer
John C. Colt was the central figure in a classic murder
case in 1841 that started with a solution but concluded
in a mystery.
Colt was a member of one of New York’s millionaire
merchant families and the brother of Samuel Colt,
inventor of the Colt revolver and the Colt repeating
208
CONFESSIONS
Colt .45
be let out, and some apparently were by the few
remaining keepers. In the smoke-filled confusion, Rev.
Anton rushed up to Sheriff Monmouth Hart and cried:
“Mr. Colt is dead! He has a dagger in his heart!”
Instead of proceeding to the cell, the sheriff rushed
around in search of the doctor who was there to pronounce Colt dead after his now unnecessary execution.
At 7 P.M. a hurriedly convened coroner’s jury officially
declared Colt had committed suicide. It was a remarkable hearing, with no official identification of Colt
being made. Not even Rev. Anton was called to testify.
The body was released and buried that same night in
the yard of St. Mark’s Church. Afterward, the recently
widowed Mrs. Colt disappeared.
At first, the newspapers focused on the source of the
death dagger, including in the speculation every member of the wedding party. Only when it later was conceded by officials that a number of prisoners had
escaped during the fire, did it suddenly occur to anyone
that Colt could have escaped in the confusion—if there
was a body to substitute for him.
The New York Herald commented, “We have no
doubt that Governor Seward will order an investigation
at once into this most unheard of, most unparalleled
tragedy.” No investigation was ever held, however,
although even George Walling, who was appointed
chief of police shortly therafter, gave considerable credence to the idea of a substitute corpse. So too did
Colt’s friends. In 1849 Edgar Allan Poe received an
unsigned manuscript from Texas written in the unmistakable hand of John Colt. He took the manuscript to
Lewis Clark, editor of The Knickerbocker magazine,
and found Clark too had gotten a copy. They concluded it was Colt’s way of letting them know he was
alive and still trying for a literary career. Then in 1852
Samuel Everett, a close friend of Colt, returned from a
visit to California and told others in the Colt circle of
friends that he had met John Colt while horseback riding in the Santa Clara Valley. According to Everett,
Colt lived in a magnificent hacienda with his wife, the
former Caroline Henshaw.
Many students of crime dismiss the substitute corpse
theory and regard Everett’s story as apocryphal, insisting it was just an exotic fillip to an incredible tale. Others find the chain of events too mired in coincidence.
That Colt should commit suicide just at the moment of
a mysterious fire during which several prisoners
escaped, they say, staggers the imagination. And why
did the widowed Mrs. Colt disappear from New York
City after her husband’s death?
See also: TOMBS PRISON.
early police weapon
Well into the 19th century, lawmen relied almost solely
on nightsticks and muskets for weapons. In 1830 James
D. Colt, while on a voyage at sea, whittled a wooden
model of a new-style six-shot handgun. When he
returned home, he started production but soon found
that few law enforcement officers had much interest in
the weapon. The one consistent buyer was the Texas
Rangers. During the war with Mexico in 1846, the
Texas Rangers refused to fight without their beloved
Colts. This brought added fame to the Colt six-shooter,
and after the war most lawmen in the West used the
weapon. They continued to do so until the first decade
of the 20th century, when they switched to the smaller
but potent .38-caliber Smith and Wesson, which most
policemen in the rest of the country had already
adopted as the basic firearm.
Commission, The
organized crime overseers
There is the mistaken impression that Organized Crime,
in capital letters, is ruled by something called The Commission, also in capital letters, which is the ruling body
of the Mafia. In point of fact, the Mafia is not organized
crime (or the national crime syndicate) and above all,
the commission does not rule over the forces of crime
with the powers of life and death. Organized crime is
not a monolith but rather a confederation of forces, and
the commission is the body charged with seeing it
remains no more than a confederation. It restrains itself
from interfering with the internal operations of any
member gang or crime family.
While the Mafia supplies many or most of the members of the commission, it does not totally control it,
just as it does not fully control organized crime. The
commission is composed of nine members drawn
mostly from the 24 crime families that blanket the
United States. While many of the commission members
are rotated from this pool of 24 families, some nonMafia members, e.g., the late Meyer Lansky, remained
a regular and powerful participant in all syndicate
discussions. For a time in the late 1940s and early
1950s the commission was dominated by the so-called
Big Six, including Tony Accardo and Greasy Jake
Guzik of the Chicago mob, the heirs of Al Capone.
(While dominated by Mafia types, the Chicago mob,
with its heavy Jewish and Irish membership, never
really qualified as a Mafia crime family.) Frank
Costello, the so-called Prime Minister of the Underworld, who recognized the need for a broader base of
support for the Mafia, was also one of the Big Six. Joe
Adonis was another member, one whose power spread
from Brooklyn to New Jersey and was closely tied to
Costello’s interests. The remaining two members were,
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CONFESSIONS
computer crime
like Guzik, Jews: Meyer Lansky and Abner “Longy”
Zwillman. Zwillman had been a Prohibition bootleg
king who later infiltrated a number of legal enterprises
and frequently played an important role in naming
governors, attorneys general and mayors in New Jersey, political clout that made him vital to the commission. Lansky, of course, was for decades vital to the
syndicate in handling gambling enterprises for criminal
elements in Miami, New Orleans, Las Vegas, the
Bahamas, Saratoga, N.Y. and, in pre-Castro days,
Cuba.
While Hollywood has never failed to portray the
commission as ruthless and efficient, the group has by
the very nature of its composition and assigned duties
been somewhat less than all powerful. The commission’s more notable failures include its inability to stifle
the Profaci-Gallo war in Brooklyn and the more explosive Banana war, in which Joseph “Joe Bananas”
Bonanno came close to becoming a new “boss of
bosses.” On the whole, however, the commission has
undoubtedly done much to keep crime organized and
operating in relative harmony.
See also: MAFIA.
“Company, girls!”
Computer crime is the least understood of all illegal
activities because it is so new and steeped in a technology not as yet fully developed. The difficulty of detecting computer fraud has attracted many criminal minds.
Some known swindles are monumental, such as the
64,000 fake insurance policies created between 1964
and 1973 on the Equity Funding Corp.’s computer.
That operation involved $2 billion.
The main weakness in a computer system is that a
criminal can perpetrate a fraud once he or she has
learned the code or password that will activate the system. In one case a bank employee simply programmed
the firm’s computer to divert over $120,000 from various customers’ accounts to those of two friends. A
clever scheme was pulled off by a programmer who
ordered a computer to deduct sums from many
accounts and credit them to dummy accounts, which he
then emptied. In another case a bank employee embezzled more than $1 million to finance his betting on
horse racing and basketball games. Ironically, his computer-based system for handicapping the horses proved
nowhere near as efficient as his money diversion
scheme.
With the discovery of each new method, computer
practices are changed to prevent such fraud. Some
sophisticated systems use fingerprints or voiceprints as
a method of insuring their integrity, and the FBI has
computer fraud experts who conduct training seminars
for police officers and businessmen to combat this new
type of crime. But it is obvious that computer fraud is
itself a growth industry.
See also: INTERNET CRIME.
brothel phrase
For over a century the traditional call of harlots to
work in American houses of prostitution has been a
madam’s shout of “Company, girls!” Many historians
of the subject have mistakenly credited the origin of the
custom to a San Francisco madam named Tessie Wall;
however, the call preceded Miss Tessie by at least three
decades and appears to have been sounded first in San
Francisco in a Sacramento Street brothel run by
Madame Bertha Kahn. A large woman with a vibrant
contralto voice, she would stride to the foot of the
stairs and shout, “Company, girls!”
It had a certain genteel quality compared to such
earlier calls as “All whores!” And in fact, Madame
Bertha’s establishment became one of the most popular
of the 1870s. Her girls were dressed in red sandals,
matching red velvet caps and long lacey white nightgowns. Unlike other bagnios, Madame Bertha’s sold no
liquor, and no obscene talk or rough conduct was permitted. Each bedroom bore a sign reading, “No Vulgarity Allowed in This Establishment.” It is said that
Madame Bertha also introduced to San Francisco
charge accounts for regular customers. But she is best
remembered for forbidding the prodding and feeling of
the merchandise, which was the practice in other
houses, and insisting her girls be refined in greeting
company and in turn be treated as ladies by the company.
Comstock, Anthony (1844–1915) censor
The “great American bluenose,” Anthony Comstock
conducted a lifetime crusade against vice—as he saw it.
He was responsible for the arrest of at least 3,000 persons for obscenity, destroyed 160 tons of “obscene literature” and got the Department of the Interior to fire
Walt Whitman for publishing Leaves of Grass and the
city of New York to ban Margaret Sanger’s books on
birth control. He proudly boasted that he had caused
16 persons to be hounded to death, either through fear
or suicide, under his relentless attacks. He caused
George Bernard Shaw to coin the word Comstockery,
which is defined in the American College Dictionary as
“over-zealous censorship of the fine arts and literature,
often mistaking outspokenly honest works for salacious
productions.”
At the age of 18, Comstock started his crusade
against sin by breaking into a liquor store in New
210
CONFESSIONS, false
confessions
Canaan, Conn. and opening the spigots on all the kegs.
Throughout the ensuing years, in concert with the
Young Men’s Christian Association, he launched a
campaign against pornography. In 1873 he established
the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice and
labored as its secretary until his death 42 years later. In
that same year Congress passed the Comstock Act,
which banned obscene materials, including rubber prophylactics, from the mails. The post office appointed
Comstock a special agent charged with enforcing the
new law. As a result of his activities, publishers stripped
their books of any explicit language, e.g., pregnant
became enceinte.
What constituted pornography or sin was determined by Comstock’s fanatical puritanism. Female
crusader Victoria Claflin Woodhull was hauled into
court for what Comstock considered a “crime,” her
exposure of a love affair between clergyman Henry
Ward Beecher and a parishioner’s wife. In 1905 Comstock instituted actions against George Bernard Shaw’s
play Mrs. Warren’s Profession. Shaw, who had already
invented the word Comstockery, warmed to this
opportunity to do battle with the censor, declaring:
“Comstockery is the world’s standing joke at the
expense of the U.S. It confirms the deepseated conviction of the Old World that America is a provincial
place, a second-rate country town.” The resultant publicity made the play a box office sensation. Such was
also the case when Comstock leveled his sights at the
innocuous nude painting September Morn, by Paul
Chabas. The publicity generated by Comstock’s blasts
made the painting a monumental success, after it had
been rejected as being too tame for a barber shop calendar.
In 1915 President Woodrow Wilson named Comstock the U.S. representative to the International Purity
Congress in San Francisco. Although in failing health,
Comstock was a fiery figure at the congress. But he lost
a humiliating battle in that city’s courts during the congress when he arrested some department-store window
dressers for putting clothes on five bare models in full
view of passersby. A San Francisco judge listened to the
charges the next morning and promptly dismissed the
case. “Mr. Comstock,” said the judge, “I think you’re
nuts.”
Comstock came back home and died shortly after,
on September 21, 1915. He was buried in Brooklyn,
New York City, his epitaph reading, “In memory of a
fearless witness.”
See also: MADAME RESTELL, SEPTEMBER MORN.
In the “old days,” as veteran policemen will admit, the
standard way for the police to extract confessions was
through the time-honored “third degree.” In the 1920s
one of New York’s legendary cops, Johnny Broderick,
imparted the keen deductive processes he used to solve
a certain case. “Ah, it was nothing,” he said. “All I did
was bat around some guys until they told me what I
wanted to know.” Four decades before that, Chief
Inspector Alexander S. Williams, better known as
“Clubber” Williams, explained to his men the art of
cracking cases with just three words, “Beat, beat,
beat.”
Some years ago a California police authority once
listed the only three possible results of third-degree
treatment: the suspect would finally confess to anything, guilty or not; he would go insane; or he would
die. Since by the 1930s too much of this had occurred,
a presidential fact-finding group known as the Wickersham Commission was assigned to investigate the
extent of third-degree practices around the country. Its
report of brutal treatment in 29 large cities from coast
to coast led to such a public outcry that many police
departments finally mended their ways, or at least,
forced confessions dropped in a number of cities.
The pattern of reform however, was mixed, particularly because in some cities the practice was more
entrenched than in others. Even in recent times the saying in Philadelphia was, “If you get arrested in this
town, your only defense may be the telephone company.” It was meant literally. According to official findings, one of the methods used by Philadelphia police to
question a suspect was to put a telephone book on his
head and then hammer on it. Somehow, guilty or not,
the record shows quite a few suspects confessed under
this treatment.
The record also indicates that telephone book interrogation was not the only one employed by the
Philadelphia police. A case in point occurred in October 1975. At that time the family of Radames Santiago
was on the alert because of several recent firebombings
in their neighborhood and had stationed a 14-year-old
youth to keep guard on their tiny porch during the
night. At 3:20 one morning a Molotov cocktail, a bottle filled with gasoline and stuffed with a flaming rag,
crashed through the window of the house. As the
screams of Mrs. Santiago and her four children filled
the night, a passerby, 26-year-old Robert “Reds”
Wilkinson, returning home from celebrating his first
wedding anniversary, rang a fire alarm. By the time the
fire engines arrived, the screams had stopped—Mrs.
Santiago and her children were dead.
It didn’t take the police long to latch on to a suspect.
According to an old axiom, an arsonist often turns in
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CONNORS, Babe
the alarm to his own handiwork. That, as far as the
police were concerned, pointed the finger of guilt at
Wilkinson. The only thing needed was that he be interrogated and make a confession. Wilkinson did not get
the telephone book treatment. Instead, before each
question someone slapped him hard across the face.
Wilkinson, with no police record at all, insisted he did
not do the firebombing. Another slap, another question. Then with each slap Wilkinson was warned that
unless he confessed, “You’ll never see your wife and
baby again.”
While this was going on, Mrs. Wilkinson was being
abused in another room. A police officer constantly
screamed at her: “We already know your husband did
it. Tell us the truth, or you’ll never see your baby
again.”
Hour after hour the slapping went on. And at the
same time, seven other “witnesses” were also being
verbally abused and beaten until they gave “evidence”
against Wilkinson. They all fell in line, and after nine
solid hours of punishment, Wilkinson did the only thing
he was by then capable of doing: he confessed.
The case seemed air-tight. The culprit had confessed,
and there was a host of witnesses against him. The 14year-old boy who was standing guard positively identified Wilkinson as the firebomber. Wilkinson was sent
to prison for murder and arson, but fortunately for him
a later federal investigation cleared him of any involvement in the case. All the witnesses admitted they had
been pressured by the police into giving false testimony.
The 14-year-old guard had fallen asleep and was too
ashamed to admit it; when the police informed him
Wilkinson was guilty, he was all too willing to agree
with them.
While third-degree confessions obviously still occur,
they are definitely on the decline, as much because of
the sloppiness of the method as due to public revulsion.
J. Edgar Hoover once stated: “My indignation against
the third degree arises from practical as well as humanitarian reasons. No matter how viciously they beat and
abuse their suspects, the average third-degree officer
manages to convict only about one out of every five
prisoners whom he takes into court. That is a record of
20 percent efficiency.”
In comparison, the FBI’s record on confessions has
always been phenomenal. An agency that gets about 97
convictions out of every 100 arrests, the FBI has actually gone into court with confessions in up to 94 percent of its cases during some periods. Yet, as American
Civil Liberties Union counsel Morris L. Ernst, a veteran
of countless battles involving violations of an individual’s civil rights has stated, the charge of third degree
“is almost never raised against the FBI.”
What the FBI employs instead is a psychological
approach, often using what is known as the “one-two”
or “Mutt-and-Jeff” technique. A typical case was one
in which the agency was called when a batch of rifles
was stolen from an army post. The military officers had
a suspect, the only person who logically could have
taken and disposed of the rifles with ease. But they had
no proof. The agents knew that to get a confession,
they had to find the emotional key to the suspect’s
mind. Usually, it’s love or pride or even a happy memory of a childhood incident.
The agents tried one trick after another but couldn’t
get the suspect talking. Then the man was asked how
long he had been in the army.
“Nine years,” the soldier answered with pride.
The FBI men knew they had their angle. Isn’t it a
joke, one of them said, how the army couldn’t even
clear up a little matter like some missing rifles without
having to call in the FBI. “Does this brass think all we
have to do is stuff like this?” The conversation continued to set the pattern of thought that it was almost disloyal for anyone to put the army in such a spot, making
it a laughing stock. After about an hour or so, the FBI
men left the room and told the company commander to
go inside. The soldier saluted him and said: “Sir, I stole
those rifles. I wouldn’t tell those bastards, but I want to
tell you.”
Most police forces now use variations of the onetwo or Mutt and Jeff to get confessions. The first detective to question the suspect will generally come on
strong, talking tough and trying to antagonize or
frighten him. His teammate then moves in gently,
befriending the suspect. The second man stands out as
a friend in a sea of foes and becomes, so to speak, the
prisoner’s father confessor. Sometimes the friendly
detective pretends to be on the outs with the suspect’s
chief tormentor. He may, if the prisoner’s condition has
made him so gullible as to believe almost anything, suggest that the tough officer is out for his scalp, trying to
boot him off the squad or even off the force. Both he
and the suspect are thus kindred souls, oppressed by
the same villain. The whole thrust of the approach is to
find a way to “stick it to” the enemy detective. The
friendly one tells the suspect, “If you are going to confess, say you’ll only do it if he leaves the room.” In the
Mutt-and-Jeff technique, this brings on a strong emotional response that can produce a fast confession
before the feeling wears off.
Men who have succumbed to the Mutt and Jeff often
wonder afterwards what made them “be sucker enough
to confess.” However, members of the psychiatric fraternity, realizing the effect of the technique, have
invented the term menticide for this shrewd wearing
down of a suspect’s mind. Anyone, experts say, can be
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CONSIGLIERE
made to confess to anything if the pressure is great
enough.
Even the new tightened rules that require officers to
inform a suspect of his right to have counsel present
during interrogation can be gotten around by the sort
of emotional response evoked by this new-wave type of
police questioning, a method that in large part has rendered the third degree obsolete.
See also: CONFESSIONS, FALSE.
fied many of the offenders, and some of them were run
down and hanged.
Many innocent sailors confessed to taking part in the
Hermione mutiny. One admiralty officer later wrote:
In my own experience, I have known, on separate occasions, more than six sailors who voluntarily confessed
to having struck the first blow at Captain Pigot. These
men detailed all the horrid circumstances of the mutiny
with extreme minuteness and perfect accuracy. Nevertheless, not one of them had even been in the ship, nor
had so much as seen Captain Pigot in their lives. They
had obtained from their messmates the particulars of
the story. When long on a foreign station, hungering
and thirsting for home, their minds became enfeebled.
At length, they actually believed themselves guilty of
the crime over which they had so long brooded, and
submitted with a gloomy pleasure to being sent to England in irons for judgment. At the Admiralty, we were
always able to detect and establish their innocence.
confessions, false
In Chicago during the 1950s a pregnant woman was
viciously slain and her body dumped in a snowbank.
Almost immediately a factory worker came forth and
confessed. He stood a good chance of becoming a
modern-day lynching victim since a spirit of vengeance
dominated the woman’s neighborhood. That sentiment
dissipated, however, when a 19-year-old sailor at the
Great Lakes Naval Station also confessed to the slaying. This second confession turned out to be the real
one.
In 1961 a young widow in New York tearfully told
police she had killed her husband several years earlier.
His death had been attributed to natural causes. The
body was exhumed and an autopsy performed. The
man had died of natural causes, and psychiatrists found
the woman was merely suffering from delusions that
stemmed from a guilt complex that she had failed to be
a good wife to her late husband.
Both of these persons could easily have been convicted of the crimes to which they so eagerly confessed.
Throughout hundreds of years of legal history, the confession has been viewed by the courts and society as the
“queen of proofs” of criminal guilt. Yet, each year
probably thousands of persons in this country confess
to crimes that they did not, and could not, have committed. Why do they do it? Some are neurotics who will
confess to any crime just for the excitement of being the
center of attention; for example, more than 200 persons confessed to the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. Others are motivated by bizarre guilt feelings for some
other incident, often trivial; they seek punishment, consciously or subconsciously, for a crime they did not
commit.
Whenever legal experts discuss false confessions, the
subject of the mutiny of the Hermione is raised. The
Hermione was a British frigate captained by a harsh
disciplinarian named Pigot. In September 1797 the
seething anger of the crew erupted against Pigot and his
officers. The men of the Hermione not only murdered
the captain and the officers, they butchered them. The
crew then sailed to an enemy port, but one young midshipman escaped and got back to England. He identi-
The last sentiment was, of course, self-serving and
perhaps not shared by all. Sir Samuel Romilly related
the fate of another seaman who confessed to taking
part in the same incident. He was executed. Later, Sir
Samuel learned that when the mutiny had taken place
on the Hermione, the sailor was at Portsmouth aboard
the Marlborough.
American criminal history is replete with persons
confessing to crimes and indeed to noncrimes. The classic case of the latter occurred in Vermont during the
19th century, when two brothers, Stephen and Jesse
Boorn, confessed in colorful detail the slaying of Russell Colvin, their brother-in-law. They were both sentenced to death, but Jesse, in recognition of the fact that
he had confessed first, had his sentence commuted to
life. Stephen’s hanging was only postponed when
Colvin fortuitously returned home after an absence of
seven years, during which time he had had no idea that
he had been “murdered.”
Probably the great-granddaddy of all cases involving
false confessions was the Los Angeles murder of Elizabeth Short in 1947. The case was to become famous as
the Black Dahlia murder. The police took full written
confessions from at least 38 suspects, and after more
than 200 others had telephoned their admissions of
guilt and offers to surrender, the police stopped keeping
count of confessions.
In the Black Dahlia case the number of confessions
was attributable to the sadistic nature of the crime.
Such vile crimes invariably produce great numbers of
confessions, as though the neurotic confessors literally
beg for the spotlight of revulsion and contempt. Many,
experts say, are made by persons propelled by a death
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CONTRACT
wish and eager to find the most spectacular method of
committing suicide, e.g., in the Black Dahlia case,
going to the gas chamber. Others have different motivations. When a girl named Selma Graff was bludgeoned to death by a burglar in Brooklyn during the
1950s, the police got the usual rash of phony confessions. One of them came from a young ex-con out on
probation for auto theft. He carried within him a
vicious hatred for his mother, who was always so
embarrassed by his criminal traits and who at the
moment was threatening to notify his parole officer
that he had been visiting bars. So he walked into police
headquarters and gave himself up for the Graff killing.
His story proved to be a hoax when he was unable to
supply the murder weapon and could not describe the
Graff home accurately. Finally admitting his falsehood,
he said he gladly would have gotten himself convicted
of the murder, even gone to the chair, in order to torment his mother.
Privately, even some former prosecutors say all confessions should be suspect, that it is illogical to expect
that a police officer who has worked hard to extract a
confession from a suspect will be just as diligent in his
efforts to test whether the confession is true or not.
More often, the police and prosecutors have clung to
discredited confessions in an effort to convict someone
who later proved to be an innocent man. A case in point
was George Whitmore, Jr., the man who was wrongly
accused of the notorious “career girl” sex slayings of
Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert in their Manhattan
apartment in 1963. Whitmore-type incidents, especially
repudiated confessions, were cited by the Supreme
Court in the landmark Miranda decision, which led to
curbs on police powers to interrogate suspects. Some
attorneys, such as O. John Rogge, a former assistant
attorney general of the United States and author of the
book Why Men Confess, hold to the theory that no
repudiated confession should ever be used in court.
They believe that the Supreme Court is gradually moving, perhaps with some steps backward from time to
time, in that direction. Quite naturally, prosecuting
attorneys claim that such action will make convictions
next to impossible to obtain.
See also: BLACK DAHLIA, BOORN BROTHERS, HAROLD
ISRAEL, JANICE WYLIE.
pleasure but also as centers of entertainment, mostly
erotic of course, but musical as well. The Palace itself
was a work of art, featuring magnificent crystal chandeliers, extremely expensive rugs, tapestries and objets
d’art. Babe staged renowned shows in which her most
lovely octoroons danced on a mirrored floor wearing
elegant evening gowns and no underclothes. But the
highlight of the show was always music and song. For
years Babe presented the incredible old black singer
Mama Lou. Mama, who wore the traditional calico
dress, gingham apron and bright bandana, gave forth
with famous downhome field songs and blues. Musicloving whites flocked to Babe Connors’ establishment
to listen to Mama Lou. Even the great Ignace
Paderewski journeyed to hear Mama Lou and accompany her on the parlor piano in the early 1890s. Virtually all of Mama Lou’s songs were obscene, but many
provided the original melodies for such later hits as
“Bully Song” and “Hot Time in the Old Town
Tonight.”
While Babe Connors’ resorts, such as the Palace on
Chestnut Street and the earlier Castle on Sixth Street,
were among the most lavish in the country, racial law
and custom restricted their profit level to about a
third or less than what other great houses of the
period netted. But even as $5 houses, Babe Connors’
famed resorts produced revenues that made her
among the most illustrious women of her kind and
allowed her to live in fun-loving elegance. Her open
carriage was one of the sights at Forest Park, where
Babe, bedecked with feathered boa and parasol, rode
by in regal splendor, nodding her head only at those
gentlemen who acknowledged her first. In her later
years Babe converted to Catholicism and, unlike most
of her scarlet sisters, was permitted burial in consecrated ground.
conscience fund
anonymous donation money
Every day the U.S. Treasury receives money, often
anonymously, from persons who, having stolen or
otherwise withheld money from the government,
have become conscious-stricken and have decided
to pay up. Conscience money is the popular term for
these sums, although it enters the records as “Miscellaneous receipts: Moneys received from persons
unknown.” Sums received have varied from as little as
1¢ to $80,000.
One immigrant wrote that he had achieved success
in his adopted country and was therefore upset because
he had avoided a tax payment of $30 some 30 years
previous. He enclosed $50 to cover the payment on the
principal plus interest. Most contributors do indeed
add the interest. Some go to unusual lengths to make
Connors, Babe (1856–1918) St. Louis madam
Outside of the bagnios of New Orleans, no brothel
contributed more to the arts than the famous St. Louis
parlor of a plump mulatto madam named Babe Connors. More than most practitioners of her trade, Babe
thought of her places, especially her famous Palace,
which she opened in 1898, not only as houses of sexual
214
COOK, Dr. Frederick A.
sure their money goes where it truly belongs this time.
One man, taking care that the money was not stolen in
the mail or up on receipt, cut a total of $250 in half and
sent the halves to two separate government bureaus
with an explanation of his actions. Another sent in only
a half of each bill and demanded a receipt for these
before sending the other half.
Many of the donors to the conscience fund are former government employees weighed down by the
knowledge that they illegally appropriated government supplies or money. Other persons confess failing
to pay certain taxes and customs duties or even
under-stamping mail. Remarkably, very few say their
conscience money is to cover income tax underpayments.
The biggest contribution ever made came from an
anonymous donor of a total of $80,000. Sending in
$30,000 as his final installment, the person wrote:
Luciano, probably the most brilliant leader the Mafia
ever produced.
By 1932 Luciano had risen to the zenith of power,
having engineered the murders of Giuseppe “Joe the
Boss” Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano on the Night
of the Sicilian Vespers. With these killings Luciano
became in fact if not in name the new “boss of bosses,”
a position previously held by Masseria and then
Maranzano.
It was now in Luciano’s interests to bring the killings
to a halt; he therefore announced the establishment of
the position of consigliere, with one to be named in
each crime family. The function of the consigliere was
that of a hearing officer who would have to clear any
plan to knock off a member of the Mafia before a hit
could be made. Thus, it would be possible for everyone
to get back to plucking the fruits of crime and to reduce
intrafamily warfare. If he disapproved because the reasons for the killing were unjust, there would be no hit.
It was a marvelous cosmetic device that gave Mafia
members a sense of “law and order.” In actuality, no
hearing officer would ever dare interfere with the
orders of the top bosses, and the record shows that
none ever has. But the position hangs on to this day,
having long ago served Luciano’s purposes and fostered
an image of himself as Lucky the Just.
This amount makes a sum aggregating $80,000 which I
have sent the United States, or four times the amount
which I stole years ago. I have hesitated about sending
all this money because I think it does not really belong
to the government, but conscience has given me no rest
until I have consummated the four-fold return like Zacchaeus, the Publican of old. That every thief may
understand the awfulness of the sin of stealing is the
sincere wish of a penitent. Let no one claim any of this
amount on any pretext.
contract
When details of this donation were printed, a
woman wrote in to claim part of it. She said her husband, a habitual drunkard, was the anonymous donor
and had sent in $15,000 too much. She demanded its
return. Treasury investigators checked out the woman’s
claim and found it spurious.
No effort is made by the government to otherwise
determine the identity of a donor. The official government position is that it will not prosecute persons making restitution. If requested, it will even mail a formal
receipt—with no questions asked. This attitude of nonprosecution is not necessarily all that high minded. It is
recognized that if prosecutions were undertaken, the
flow of conscience money would cease.
consigliere
mob killing assignment
The word contract has graduated from argot into common English. However, underworld murders by hire
are arranged through an elaborate technique little
understood by the general public. The importance of
the use of a contract is the protection it affords the
party ordering the execution. He is completely isolated
from the trigger man, never talking to him about the
job. Instead, he lets the contract to a second party. This
person then selects the hit man, or killer. Even this person will sometimes have the order passed by another
party. All negotiations are handled one to one so that
even if someone in the line of command eventually
talks, the authorities still do not have the vital corrobative witness required to make a case against whomever
he informs on.
This shrewd procedure protected Albert Anastasia,
the Lord High Executioner of Murder, Inc., again and
again. The same caution protected the planners of the
October 1957 rub-out of Anastasia himself, even
though the name of the man who ordered it was no
secret to the police. Anastasia was eliminated as part
of Vito Genovese’s strategy to take control of the
major portion of New York crime. In a cunning stroke,
Genovese gave the contract to Carlo Gambino, the
number two man in Anastasia’s crime family. Gambino
Mafia “hearing officer”
The press and various books revealing the “inside”
story on organized crime have spread a fundamental
misconception about the post of consigliere in the
Mafia. He is often pictured as the operating brains of a
crime family, the adviser to the don, the master planner.
The role is far less important. Originally, it was little
more than a public relations invention of Lucky
215
COOK, William
convicts have labored producing goods for the use of
the state and other political subdivisions. The prisoners
are paid only enough to buy cigarettes or candy, an irritant said to be the cause of much convict discontent.
Reformers insist this dissatisfaction will continue until
prisoners’ pay is raised enough to let them provide
some assistance to their families.
See also: CHAIN GANGS, CONVICT LEASE BATTLES.
was ambitious and saw he would ascend to Anastasia’s
throne if the crime boss was eliminated. Gambino
accepted the contract but in turn protected himself by
passing it on to Joe Profaci, another top Mafia leader.
Profaci then picked as hit men the three brothers,
Crazy Joey, Larry and Albert “Kid Blast” Gallo. It has
never been fully established whether Crazy Joey and
Larry personally carried out the famed execution of
Anastasia in a Manhattan hotel barber shop or
whether they merely acted as spotters, pointing out the
victim to the person whom they may have passed the
hit contract to.
This near-scientific method of parceling out contracts explains why virtually all gang murders end up
unsolved. In Chicago from 1919 until February 1,
1967, there were approximately 1,000 gangland executions, but only in 13 of these cases was there a conviction.
convict lease battles
Probably few methods of strikebreaking during the
19th century aroused the ire of unionists more than
that of the convict lease system, whereby employers
could rent convict labor from the state whenever faced
with a work stoppage.
The procedure was in very wide use in Tennessee,
where it always set off violent conflicts with civilian
workers. One of the state’s greatest confrontations was
an escalating battle during 1891–92. In Briceville mine
owners leased 40 convicts to take over a mine idled by
a strike and had them rip down the miners’ houses and
erect a stockade for themselves. Ten days later, on July
15, 1891, 300 heavily armed miners overwhelmed the
stockade, marched the convicts, their guards and some
management officials to the railroad station and put
convict labor system
Throughout the years and in different jurisdictions,
various forms of convict labor systems developed. In
the earliest form, manufacturers supplied prisons with
raw materials, supervised the work of the convicts and
marketed the goods they made. The pay for the convicts’ labor went to the state. Then some states
switched to piece work, whereby the prison authorities
supervised the work and got paid on delivery of the finished products.
Early in the 19th century leasing convicts for work
outside prison walls became common, especially in
mines and sawmills and for railroad construction. The
employers paid a lump sum for the leased workers and
were responsible for board and discipline. Excesses and
abuses marked this system, as prisoners were generally
overworked, underfed and often brutalized. The system
continued to grow well into the latter half of the century, when union opposition became fierce and frequently turned violent, more against the outside
employers than against the convicts, a notable instance
occurring in Tennessee in 1891–92. Consequently, the
convict lease system virtually died in the first decade of
the 20th century.
Ironically, the working conditions of the convicts did
not improve as the prisons switched to turning out
goods themselves and, when this foundered because of
business opposition, to manufacturing items solely for
governmental use. The states proved to be harsh
exploiters of convict labor. In the South especially,
states found a new outlet for leasing, providing convicts
to the counties for road construction. This produced
the great excesses of the Southern chain gangs. Since
World War II, when most chain gang abuses ended,
Police officers hold up left hand of mass murderer Billy
Cook to show “Hard Luck” tattoo across his fingers.
216
COONS, William
them on a train to Knoxville. The following day the
convicts were brought back, escorted by 125 militiamen led personally by the governor. Outrage spread
through the surrounding area, and on July 20 a force
of 2,000 miners confronted the militia and again succeeded in marching them and the convicts to the depot
and sending them all back to Knoxville. The governor
responded by sending in 600 militiamen, but a truce
was agreed upon to allow the legislature to hold a special session for the purpose of repealing the convict
lease law. Under lobbying by business interests, however, the legislators failed to act, and the miners
returned to the use of force. In early October they
evicted several hundred convicts and burned three
stockades to the ground. In December the governor
brought the convicts back and had Fort Anderson built.
This was a permanent military barracks, guarded by
175 troopers and a Gatling gun and surrounded by
trenches. Matters festered for the next several months,
while the nation’s attention focused on the great Homestead steel strike in Pennsylvania. In August 1892 similar trouble developed at the Oliver Springs mine in
Anderson County. When miners marched on the convicts’ stockade, the guards fired and several miners
were wounded. Miners poured into the area, marched
on the stockade again and forced the guards to lay
down their arms. The strikers followed their usual
practice of burning the facility to the ground and
returning the convicts and their guards to Knoxville.
The miners then marched on Fort Anderson and placed
it under siege. The arrival of 500 soldiers routed the
miners, and they were taken into custody and locked
up in churches, schoolhouses and railroad cars. The
revolt had been crushed but local juries soon released
all the miners. It was clear that resistance was too great
to the convict lease system and that it could not be
made to work; soon thereafter, it was abolished.
in 1859. Joining the Colorado Cavalry in the Civil War,
he was assigned to detective duty tracking spies, gold
smugglers and the like and earned himself enough of a
reputation to become city marshal of Denver in 1866.
Subsequently, he served as a federal marshal and later
as a range private eye. Cook was credited with almost
single-handedly wiping out the Musgrove-Franklin gang
that terrorized Colorado in the 1860s, running down
Musgrove in 1868 and holding him in jail to lure
Franklin into a rescue attempt. Franklin arrived in Denver with that idea in mind, but Cook learned he was hiding out in the Overland Hotel and burst into his room to
find the outlaw lying on the bed with nothing on except
a pair of long johns and a gun belt. When Franklin went
for his piece, Cook, to use his own words, sent “a ball
crashing through his very heart.”
If Cook had a failing, it appears to have been a singular propensity to lose his prisoners to lynchers. But
that may have been one of his maxims for staying alive.
Another was, “Never hit a man over the head with a
pistol, because afterward you may want to use your
weapon and find it disabled.” Thanks to such rules,
one of the most gunfight-prone lawmen the West ever
saw was able to die with his boots off. He passed away
on April 2, 1907.
See also: LEE H. MUSGROVE.
Cook, Dr. Frederick A. (1865–1940) explorer and land
fraud conspirator
Dr. Frederick A. Cook is most famous for his dispute
with Commodore Robert E. Peary over who was the
first to reach the North Pole. For a brief time, Dr. Cook
was hailed throughout the world after announcing he
had reached the North Pole. However, shortly thereafter, Peary made the same claim and labeled all of
Cook’s claims false. In the controversy that followed,
Peary clearly gained the upper hand, and Cook was to
keep only a few believers. He returned home disheartened and in disgrace, and things were to get worse for
him. In the 1920s Cook’s name was used to promote a
Texas oil-land sale that was branded fraudulent. While
there was much reason to believe that Cook was not an
active member of the fraud, he had a famous name and
thus made an excellent target. He was convicted of
using the mails to defraud and sentenced to 14 years.
After working as a prison doctor in Leavenworth, he
was released in 1931. Considering that the lands in
question were now selling at prices well above the socalled fraud figure, it would indeed have been unseemly
to hold him longer. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
granted Dr. Cook a presidential pardon shortly before
the latter’s death in 1940.
Cook, David J. (1842–1907) lawman
A remarkable western crime fighter, Dave Cook never
achieved the press of an Earp, Hickok or Masterson,
but it was not for lack of trying. His memoirs, published in 1882 under the title of Hands Up! or Twenty
Years of Detective Work in the Mountains and on the
Plains, is an almost incredible account of robbery,
shoot-outs and bloodletting that stakes his claim to
being one of the most violent characters of the West,
even allowing for a certain amount of exaggeration.
Cook did make a total of 3,000 arrests, many, of
course, for minor offenses, and that meant contending
with a lot of quick tempers and quick triggers.
Cook was born in Indiana in 1842, and after working
as a farmhand in the corn belt, he moved on to Colorado
217
“Cooper, D. B.”
Cook, William (1929–1952) mass murderer
alarm for him covering the western half of the country,
Cook headed into Mexico, kidnapping two other men.
In the little town of Santa Rosalía, 400 miles below the
border, Cook, with his hostages in tow, was recognized
by the police chief. The officer simply walked up to
Cook, snatched a gun from the killer’s belt and placed
him under arrest. Cook was rushed back to the border
and turned over to FBI agents. On December 12, 1952
he died in the gas chamber at San Quentin for the
Dewey murder.
Few mass murderers have ever gone on a worse bloodletting spree than the one 21-year-old Billy Cook
launched on December 30, 1950. On that day, Cook,
posing as a hitchhiker, forced a motorist at gunpoint to
get into the trunk of his own car and then drove off.
Over the next two weeks Cook went on a senseless
killing rampage. He kidnapped nearly a dozen people,
including a deputy sheriff; murdered six in cold blood,
including three children; attempted other killings; and
generally terrorized the Southwest border area.
A hell raiser as a child, Cook was in and out of
reform schools. He sported a tattooed letter between
the knuckle and first joint of each finger of each hand,
and when he held his hands together, the letters spelled
H-A-R-D-L-U-C-K, an obvious form of self-pity that in
retrospect psychologists said fostered a feeling of persecution. He clearly turned this feeling outward, even
shrieking to his lawyer in the San Quentin death house,
“I hate them; I hate their guts—everybody!”
Cook exhibited that feeling from the moment he kidnapped his first victim, a motorist, near Lubbock, Tex.
Luckily for the motorist, he was able to force open the
trunk and escaped on a small road. Far less lucky was
the family of Carl Mosser. Mosser, his wife, Thelma,
and their three small children were on a motor trip
from Illinois to New Mexico when they picked up the
killer. Cook soon produced a gun and forced Mosser to
drive on. Following the gunman’s mercurial directions,
they went to Carlsbad, N.M., to El Paso, to Houston.
After a time, Cook shot and killed all five of them and,
for good measure, the family dog. He dumped their
bodies in an abandoned mine shaft just outside Joplin,
Mo.
Eventually, the Mossers’ car was found abandoned
near Tulsa, Okla. The car was a complete shambles, the
upholstery bloodsoaked and ripped open by bullets.
Then their bodies were discovered. But Cook left something in the car besides bullets, a receipt for a gun he had
bought. The killer’s identity was learned and a massive
manhunt was launched. Cook headed for California and
there kidnapped a deputy sheriff who had almost captured him. He forced the deputy to drive him around
while he bragged about killing the Mosser family.
After a 40-mile ride in the deputy’s car, Cook
ordered the lawman to stop. “Out,” he ordered his
prisoner. Then he forced the deputy to lie down in a
gully and tied his hands behind him. “I won’t bother to
tie your feet because I’m going to put a bullet through
your head anyway,” Cook said.
The mass murderer was just having his joke. He
drove off as the officer waited for the shot that would
kill him. A short time later, Cook stopped another
motorist, Robert Dewey, whom he did kill. With the
Cookson Hills, Oklahoma
outlaw hideout
Ranking with such outlaw refuges as Hole in the Wall
and Robber’s Roost, the Cookson Hills of Oklahoma
have harbored badmen of all kinds over the last two
centuries.
With its endless peaks and twisted gullies, the Cooksons have served as the hideout for the Bandit Queen,
Belle Starr, and, in this century, for public enemy Pretty
Boy Floyd. In 1979 the hills again made the news when
a 57-year-old army air corps deserter from World War
II came out after hiding there for 36 years. Pvt. D. B.
Benson had hidden in one abandoned shack or temporary shelter after another ever since going AWOL from
the service in June 1943. From time to time he roamed
the woods and mountains into Arkansas but was rarely
seen. While newsmen were amazed at his feat, lawmen
were not. “A lawbreaker can get lost in those hills for
all his life and live off the land without ever being
caught,” one said.
Cooley, Scott (1845–?) Texas Ranger and murderer
The man who ignited the Mason County War of 1875,
Scott Cooley is often cited as the type of gunslinger
who never should have been a Texas Ranger. To be fair
to the Rangers, it should be pointed out that Cooley’s
major offenses occurred after he left that organization,
where his record was nondescript. Cooley had been
attracted to big money, which in Texas during the
1870s meant cattle money, and he became close with a
number of cattlemen, including Timothy Williamson of
Mason County.
In September 1875 Williamson was shot to death by
a mob as he was being taken to jail for rustling by
Deputy Sheriff John Worley. This was the official start
of the Mason County War, although it might have
ended there. Most similar wars in the Old West generally sprang from obvious monetary motives, such as
cattleman vs. cattleman, or vs. sheep man, or vs. homesteader. If the Mason County warfare began that way, it
soon became a matter of friends choosing sides.
Williamson was Cooley’s friend, and the latter blamed
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COPPOLINO, Dr. Carl
was Coons’ birthday, however, the members of the
court and jury felt obliged to help the condemned man
finish off the party’s supply of whiskey. Then, in further
deference to the occasion, an improvised band formed
to play at the hanging. Since there were more Flemming
supporters than Coons’ men in Lincoln County, no
arrests were ever made for the lynching.
See also: LYNCHING.
Worley for being involved in the killing. Riding to the
lawman’s home, he shot him dead and then cut off his
ears, which he showed around as an example of what
awaited all the anti-Williamsons in the county. Cooley
was good to his word, and several more murders were
attributed to him and his friends, just as others were
linked to Williamson’s enemies. About a year later, the
Texas Rangers were sent in and the fighting ended. But
Cooley never was brought to justice for his crimes.
What happened to him is not known, although there
was talk that he was killed in 1876. However, the
record shows the Rangers continued to hunt for him
long after that, without success.
See also: FRANK JONES, MASON COUNTY WAR, TEXAS
RANGERS.
“Cooper, D. B.” (?–?) legendary airline hijacker
A hijacker who commandeered an airliner, collected a
$200,000 ransom and then apparently parachuted to
earth, “D. B. Cooper” achieved folk hero status in the
Pacific Northwest. His daring 1971 exploit made him
the perpetrator of the nation’s only unsolved skyjacking. D. B. Cooper T-shirts were sold, and books about
his crime were written. The community of Ariel, Wash.,
near the spot where Cooper was believed to have
landed, has held annual daylong celebrations on the
anniversary of the crime.
On Thanksgiving eve 1971, a man calling himself D.
B. Cooper bought a ticket for a Northwest Orient Airlines flight from Portland, Ore. to Seattle, Wash. Once
airborne, Cooper, wearing dark glasses, told a flight
attendant he had a bomb in his briefcase and demanded
$200,000 in $20 bills and four parachutes. After the
plane, a 727 Trijet, landed in Seattle, the hijacker
released the 36 passengers and all but three of the crew
upon receipt of the ransom money. He then ordered the
727 be flown to Reno, Nev. When the plane landed in
Reno, there was no trace of Cooper, but the rear exit
door under the tail was open. The FBI theorized that
Cooper, dressed only in a business suit and street shoes,
jumped from the plane over southwest Washington into
a howling wind and a freezing rain.
Did D. B. Cooper survive? Although the FBI never
said so officially, it was known to have felt that the
hijacker-extortionist had most likely perished in the
plunge. However, no body has ever been found. The
$200,000 in ransom had been paid in marked bills,
none of which turned up until 1980, when a few thousand dollars was discovered partially buried along the
north bank of the Columbia River near Vancouver,
Wash. The bills had been dug up by children playing in
the sand during a family picnic. It was unclear whether
the money had been buried there or washed downstream years ago from a Columbia River tributary.
While the find reinvigorated the investigation of the
case, the true believers in D. B. Cooper refused to
accept the theory that the money had been blown away
when Cooper died on impact. They felt it could have
been lost or, because it was a small portion of the loot,
deliberately discarded by Cooper in an effort to make it
Coons, William (1838–1881) murderer and western lynch
victim
The “stringing up” of William Coons, a relatively
minor outlaw in the Old West, was, besides having a
touch of rather macabre humor, illustrative of the
region’s theory and practice of lynching, which was
that the man with the fewest friends got hanged more
readily.
Coons, a homesteader, spent two years working his
land in Lincoln County, N.M. without incident; the
only bad mark against him during this time was a suspicion that he was doing a spot of rustling and hog
stealing on the side. Then in 1881 Coons got into a dispute with John Flemming, a neighbor, over water
rights. One day in April he rode over to Flemming’s
place and shot him dead. Since Flemming was hit in the
chest, Coons claimed that Flemming had gone for his
gun first. In point of fact, according to witnesses,
Coons drew on Flemming and started shooting while
his neighbor’s back was turned. After Coons missed
several shots, Flemming turned around and was hit full
in the chest. However, when Sheriff Pat Garrett investigated, the witnesses couldn’t be found, having fled out
of fear of Coons. Flemming’s friends started some lynch
talk, but Coons had his supporters, and the matter
became a Mexican standoff. The following month
Coons celebrated his 43rd birthday with about a dozen
supporters. Quite a few other apparent well-wishers
showed up at Coons’ home, and it appeared the Flemming people had decided to let the past be forgotten.
When the Coons people were “plastered good,” the
Flemming forces all drew guns, herded the drunken celebrants into a bedroom and locked them up. Bill Coons
suddenly found himself facing an impromptu court,
with the evidence of the eyewitnesses now presented
against him. He was found guilty and sentenced to be
hanged forthwith from a tree outside his house. Since it
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CORBETT, Boston
Copeland, James (c. 1815–1857) land pirate and hired
killer
appear he had not survived. Obviously, as far as the
legend goes, until a body is found and identified, D. B.
Cooper lives!
cooping
The most feared outlaw in Mississippi during the
1840s, James Copeland bossed a vicious gang of “land
pirate” highwaymen and hired killers, yet was welcomed within a certain strata of high society in the
state. This resulted from his performing several
“chores” for one of the state’s most arrogant, powerful
and corrupt families, the Wages, great landowners
around Augusta.
Being under the protection of the Wages gave
Copeland virtual immunity from the law, but he finally
committed an act so brazen that he had to be arrested.
When Gale H. Wages and another man were killed by
one James Harvey, the elder Wages paid Copeland
$1,000 to avenge his son’s death. Taking on the chore
eagerly, Copeland shot Harvey in the head on July 15,
1848. However, he was identified as the killer, quickly
tried, convicted and sentenced to be hanged. That Old
Man Wages had paid Copeland to do the job was common knowledge, but Copeland refused to say anything
and for his silence won the full support of the Wages
clan. He thus stayed alive for nine years, such being the
power of the family. Even when he was finally executed
on October 30, 1857, the famed land pirate said nothing to implicate any of the Wages in his crime.
police sleeping on duty
Few rule infractions are more common on major city
police forces than that of sleeping on duty.
In 1969 a major exposé in New York City revealed
that the custom was so ritualized that some officers
showed up for the duty lineup armed with pillows and
alarm clocks. Newspapers ran pictures of police officers sleeping in patrol cars in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene
Park. The practice is known as “cooping” in New York
and has different names in other localities. In Boston
on-duty carnapping is known as “holing,” and in
Atlanta policemen have been described as seeking out
“pits,” usually in lovers’ lanes or in a tunnel under
the city. An investigation of “huddling” in Washington, D.C. revealed that a harassed headquarters could
only awaken drowsy officers by activating the shrill
buzzers on their walkie-talkies.
Cooping has been a problem ever since there have
been police forces in this country. The earliest form of
protection in most cities in this country was a
guardian of the peace, often a private citizen drafted
for the chore, who was little more than a night watchman assigned to patrol a given area. He was provided
with a small wooden shanty in which to take short
respites from the weather, and of course, many slept
on the job. It became a favorite sport of the young
bloods of the 17th and 18th centuries to sneak up on
such a cooper, bind the shed with rope and uproot it
and then drag it away a goodly distance, much to the
guard’s embarrassment and disgrace among his neighbors.
The highest-ranking police officer ever charged with
the offense of cooping in New York was a Brooklyn
police captain, who was allegedly caught napping while
on duty in 1980. Facing charges of “conduct unbecoming an officer,” he submitted his resignation. Earlier
that year a lieutenant was suspended for sleeping on
duty, becoming for a time the highest-ranking officer
caught cooping. Two months later, 11 officers in a station house were charged with snoozing on the job. In
1978 six other New York City officers had been found
guilty of the charge and given fines ranging from
$1,052 to $2,880.
While most officers deny it vehemently, some experts
view the two-man police car as the worst invitation
possible to cooping, since one officer can remain by the
car radio while the other goes off to snooze.
copper
slang for policeman
The origin of the word copper, referring to a police officer, most probably goes back to Jacob Hays, the first
high constable of New York City in the early 19th century, who introduced the badge system for policemen.
According to Detective Alfred Young, official historian of the New York Police Department: “The badge
then was a five-pointed star. Different metals were used
for different ranks. Brass was for patrolmen, silver for
lieutenants and captains, gold for the commissioner.
But everybody with a beef always went to the sergeant.
He was the guy with the copper star. So whenever a
problem came up, they just said, ‘Take it to the copper,’
and the name just sort of stuck.”
Coppola, Michael “Trigger Mike” (1904–1966)
syndicate gangster
Trigger Mike Coppola was successful in the LucianoGenovese crime family because he was a raging sadist
and thus an excellent enforcer.
When Vito Genovese fled a possible murder rap and
Luciano was sent to prison in the 1930s, Coppola ran
much of the crime family’s rackets, including the lush
artichoke racket, levying an underworld tribute on the
vegetable no Italian family wanted to do without, and a
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CORNETT, Brack
found badly mauled on an isolated beach, recovered
and continued to testify against him. Finally, Trigger
Mike gave in and pleaded guilty; he was sent to Atlanta
Penitentiary.
Ann Coppola, who had squirreled away something
like $250,000 of Trigger Mike’s underworld money,
fled to Europe to escape the mob’s hit men. In Rome in
1962 Ann Coppola stopped running. She wrote a last
letter to Internal Revenue, addressing certain portions
of it to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. She
penned a farewell to Trigger Mike as well, saying:
“Mike Coppola, someday, somehow, a person or God
or the law shall catch up with you, you yellow-bellied
bastard. You are the lowest and biggest coward I have
had the misfortune to meet.” Then she wrote in lipstick on the wall above her hotel bed: “I have always
suffered, I am going to kill myself. Forget me.” She
took a dozen sleeping pills and lapsed quietly into
death.
Trigger Mike was released from prison the following
year and died in 1966 of natural causes.
FPO
FIG #40
TO BE
PICKED-UP
FROM
PREVIOUS ED.
A soldier with mental problems, Boston Corbett was
credited with shooting John Wilkes Booth after the
assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, and since
that time he has figured in a number of Lincoln
conspiracy theories.
Coppolino, Dr. Carl (1933– ) murderer
Two of the most sensational murder trials in the 1960s
involved Dr. Carl Coppolino, an anesthesiologist
charged with murdering his wife and, in a separate
case, a male patient with whose wife he had had an
affair.
The doctor was the first alleged to have used succinylcholine chloride to commit a murder. The drug
commonly was used during operations to keep patients’
muscles from trembling; an excessive dose could paralyze the muscles of the lungs, causing death. However,
saying that and proving it in court were two different
matters because when injected into the body, succinylcholine chloride broke down into its component parts
and, for all practical purposes, disappeared.
Coppolino had given up his practice in anesthesiology at the age of 30, retiring because of heart trouble. Although the insurance company in time would
become suspicious that he was faking his ailment, it
paid him benefits of $22,000 a year. Coppolino and his
wife moved from New Jersey to Sarasota, Fla., where
they lived rather comfortably. Carmela Coppolino was
a doctor herself, and between her practice and Carl’s
insurance payments, they had no trouble making ends
meet, including covering the cost of a new $65,000
insurance policy taken out on Carmela’s life. In 1965
Carmela died. A local doctor who knew Coppolino was
some kind of expert on heart problems accepted his
word that Carmela had had such an ailment and put
down heart attack as the cause of her death.
Perhaps the matter would have ended there had
Coppolino not married a 38-year-old divorcée named
goodly portion of the Harlem numbers racket. He was
said to net something around $1 million a year. An ofttold underworld tale concerns the time Coppola woke
up in the middle of the night remembering he had left a
package in the freezer of one of his favorite night spots.
A hurried phone call brought the package to his door
and he spent the rest of the night thawing out $219,000
of mob money, which he had to dispense in the morning.
There is considerable evidence that Coppola would
do anything and kill anybody to advance his fortunes
or protect himself. His first wife, according to the subsequent testimony of his second wife, Ann, happened to
overhear her husband discussing with another gangster
the impending murder of a Republican political worker,
Joseph Scottoriggio. She was called to testify against
her husband in the case, but her appearance was postponed because of her impending pregnancy. She gave
birth to a baby daughter and conveniently died afterward in her hospital bed. Coppola’s second wife later
charged that Trigger Mike had her killed to prevent her
from talking.
Ann Coppola’s marriage to Trigger Mike was a
nightmare highlighted by mental and physical abuse. At
their honeymoon party Coppola took a shot at her for
the entertainment of the guests. In 1960 Ann discovered her husband was giving drugs to her teenage
daughter by a prior marriage. She filed for divorce and
testified in an income tax case against Coppola, who
sent strongarm men to kidnap and beat her up. She was
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CORONA, Juan
Corbett, Boston (1822–?) killer of John Wilkes Booth
Mary Gibson. Hearing of the marriage, an older
woman named Marjorie Farber, a widow then living in
Sarasota who had been a neighbor of the Coppolinos in
New Jersey, came forward and accused the doctor of
killing his first wife. He had also, she said, killed her
husband in 1963. According to Marge Farber, she and
Coppolino had carried on a torrid love affair, and
because he was jealous of her husband, the doctor had
murdered him. She said she had watched the whole
thing. Coppolino gave Farber, a retired army colonel,
an injection of some drug that was supposed to kill
him. When it failed to take effect quickly enough, the
doctor took a bed pillow and smothered the unconscious man. The death was passed off as coronary
thrombosis.
After an extensive investigation, Dr. Coppolino was
indicted for murder both in Florida and New Jersey. He
was tried first in the Farber case but won an acquittal.
No trace of any poison had been found in the dead
man’s body, and the only testimony against the doctor
came from a scorned woman.
Florida authorities decided to press their case,
which, on the surface at least, looked weaker. There
was no eyewitness to the alleged crime, and there
appeared to be no proof as to the cause of death. The
Florida trial was dominated by scientific evidence. Dr.
Milton Helpern, the New York City medical examiner,
did an autopsy on Carmela’s body and found that she
had been in good health and had not suffered a heart
attack. He also found that she had been given an injection in her left buttock just prior to death. Next, Dr.
Joseph Umberger, the toxicologist in the Medical
Examiner’s Office took over, attempting to identify any
poison in Carmela Coppolino’s body. Dr. Umberger set
about finding a method to identify the drug succinylcholine chloride—or its component parts—in the
corpse in quantities or qualities that could only be
explained by an injection. For six months he worked
with tissue from the victim’s liver, kidneys, brain and
other organs and finally, using spectrography, found
succinic acid, one of the components of the drug, in her
brain.
Dr. Umberger was on the witness stand for two and
a half days, mostly under withering cross-examination
by the defense, which contended that succinic acid is
present in every brain. Dr. Umberger agreed but
pointed out that such acid is “bound,” that is, tied to
the proteins and perhaps other substances in human tissue. But the type of succinic acid Dr. Umberger had discovered in the woman’s body was “unbound,” or what
he preferred to call “store-bought,” and this could only
have gotten there by injection.
Coppolino was found guilty of second-degree murder and given a life sentence.
An army sergeant named Boston Corbett, whose name
has always figured prominently in logical or illogical
Lincoln conspiracy plots, was one of the pursuers
of John Wilkes Booth, the man who assassinated
the president. When Booth was trapped in a tobaccocuring barn near Port Royal, Va., Corbett shot and
killed him after the structure was set afire. Did Corbett
shoot Booth because, as he claimed, God had told him
to or because he was part of a conspiratorial cover-up,
as some later investigators claimed? There is little
doubt that Corbett suffered from serious disorders that
led to further unstable behavior and criminality. He
later castrated himself so that he might better “resist
sin.” After he fired two pistols into a crowded session
of the Kansas legislature, Corbett was committed to a
mental institution. He escaped and vanished from sight
forever.
Corey, Giles (1612–1692) Salem witchcraft trial victim
Of all the victims of the Salem witchcraft hysteria, none
died a worse death than 80-year-old Giles Corey. Corey
made a strange martyr. Like most people of his day, he
believed in evil spirits and had originally accused his
wife of witchcraft. However, when he himself was
accused in the madness, he protested by contemptuous
silence. Under English law a defendant had three
chances to plead, and if he did not, he or she could not
be tried but was subject to a judicial sentence of death.
Giles entered the court and stood mute, causing the
judges to order a judicial finding. He was stretched out
on the ground and weights were placed on his chest.
Nevertheless, he refused to utter a word for the two
days he suffered before dying. Only near the end did he
gasp, “More weight!” so that he might die sooner.
After Corey’s death the townspeople’s uneasiness about
the trials turned to revulsion, and his demise hastened
the end of the witchcraft trials.
Corey’s fate has been portrayed in Arthur Miller’s
play The Crucible and in a ballad written in 1692. The
latter goes in part:
“Giles Corey,” said ye Magistrates,
“What hast thou hearde to pleade,
To those who now accuse thy soule
Of Crymes and horrid Deed?”
Giles Corey he sayde not a Word,
No single Word spake he;
“Giles Corey,” sayeth ye Magistrates,
“We’ll press it out of thee!”
They got them then a heavy Beam
They layde it on his Breast,
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COSTELLO, Frank
Cornett, Brack (1859–1888) western outlaw
They loaded it with heavy Stones,
And hard upon him presst.
A little-remembered south Texas bank and train robber, Brack Cornett, a fast-shooting cowboy from
Louisiana, deserves recognition as a criminal far ahead
of his time. He was the most advanced of the western
outlaws at “casing” a job and plotting an escape route,
especially compared to the prevailing criminal technique of shoot-’em-up-and-ride. Cornett would have
his gang travel the escape route several times, noting
each possible cut-off, a method not seen again in bank
robbing until the 20th-century days of Baron Lamm,
John Dillinger and the Barkers. Because he was a pioneer, Cornett’s modus operandi stood out like a sore
thumb and led to his downfall. His gang was seen riding hell-for-leather near Pearsall, Tex. by a rancher
who suspected they had just pulled something. He
reported them but no crime had been committed, and
they were written off as some cowpokes in a hurry.
When a train was robbed a few days later and the gang
rode off hell-for-leather in the direction of Pearsall, the
report was recalled. It took sheriff’s deputies a while to
track down some fast riders, but on February 12,
1888 they located Cornett hiding out on a ranch near
Pearsall and, when he refused to surrender, killed him
in a spirited gunfight.
“More weight!” now sayde this wretched Man,
“More weight” again he cryde,
And he did not Confession make
But wickedly, he dyed.
See also: SALEM WITCHCRAFT TRIALS.
Further reading: Capital Punishment, U.S.A. by Elinor Lander Horwitz.
Corll, Dean (1940–1973) mass murderer
Many people who knew Dean Corll of Houston, Tex.
thought of him as a friendly sort of guy, but there was
another Dean Corll, a homosexual murderer of at least
27 young boys in that city’s “crime of the century” during the early 1970s. Corll used two teenage boys, Elmer
Wayne Henley and David Brooks, to steer young victims to him. They would get the victim drunk and then
Corll would take over.
The victim would revive to find himself stripped
naked, gagged and spread-eagled on a plywood plank.
His legs and arms would be secured by handcuffs and
nylon ropes. A radio would be going full blast and
there would be plastic sheeting on the floor to take care
of the blood. Sometimes Corll would kill his victim in
as little as 10 minutes, but other times he’d stretch it
out for as long as 24 hours or even more. On occasions,
perversely, he would suddenly cut the boy loose and
explain, laughing, that he was just kidding, seeing if he
could scare the youth. But for the murder victims, there
was a wooden “body box” on hand in which the slain
boys were transported to a city boat shed, a Gulf Coast
beach or a wooded area in East Texas for disposal.
On August 7, 1973, 17-year-old Henley shot and
killed Corll in self-defense because of fear the sadistic
murderer intended to turn on him and Brooks. The
police investigation soon implicated Henley and Brooks
in the murderous reign of terror, and the pair admitted
they had been paid from $5 to $10 for each adolescent
boy they had recruited for Corll. For their parts in the
crimes, Brooks, convicted on one count, got life imprisonment and Henley, convicted on nine counts, got a
total of 594 years. By then the Houston police had
recovered somewhat from the criticism heaped on them
when the murders were discovered. In most cases, when
the victims were reported missing to the police, worried
relatives had been informed they had probably run off
and “joined those hippies in California.”
Henley, who was not charged in the Corll killing, won
a new trial in 1979 but was convicted for a second time.
Corona, Juan (1934)
mass murderer
A Mexican labor contractor who had started out as a
migrant fruit picker, Juan Corona was convicted of the
murder of 25 migrant workers in 1970-71, becoming
labeled as the greatest captured mass killer in California history. (There is speculation that the uncaptured
“Zodiac Killer” may have killed almost twice as many
people.)
All Corona’s victims were transient laborers between
the ages of 40 and 68. They had been mutilated, usually
with a machete, and buried in peach orchards and
along a river bank in Yuba County. Unfortunately for
Corona, some of his bank deposit slips and receipts had
apparently been found buried with some of the victims,
leading the authorities directly to him.
Bloodstained weapons and clothing were found in
his home, including two butcher’s knives, a machete, a
pistol, a jacket and some shorts. The most sensational
evidence, however, was what the prosecution called
Corona’s “death list,” a ledger containing the names of
many of the victims with a date after them.
In January 1973 Corona was found guilty and sentenced to 25 consecutive life terms, a somewhat meaningless exercise in overkill since he technically would
become eligible for parole in 1980. Later that year he
was attacked in his prison cell and stabbed 32 times,
causing him to lose the sight of one eye. In 1978 a new
223
COSTELLO, Frank
At the pinnacle of his power during the Kefauver Committee hearings in the early 1950s, Frank Costello, as Prime
Minister of the Underworld, was the mob’s representative in dealings with politicians, judges and the police.
trial was ordered for Corona on the grounds that his
lawyer had failed to provide him with an adequate
defense by not presenting what the appeals court called
an “obvious” insanity plea. The court emphasized it
did not doubt the correctness of the guilty verdict, but
it insisted Corona was entitled to an insanity defense.
Corona was sent to a mental facility for observation to
see if he could eventually be put on trial again. In the
early 1980s he was still there and was found guilty
again.
homicide cases: “No person can be convicted of murder
or manslaughter unless the death of the person alleged
to have been killed and the fact of the killing by the
defendant, as alleged, are each established as independent facts; the former by direct proof, and the latter
beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Naturally, a number of murderers have escaped
prosecution because they succeeded in getting rid of the
body without anyone seeing it. The law is not required
to produce the actual body, however, if it can produce
witnesses who saw the body and can thus testify that a
crime had been committed. In one case neighbors heard
shooting in a Bronx luncheonette and saw several men
carry a body from the establishment to a car. Although
the body was never found, the testimony of the witnesses was sufficient to prove that a murder had
occurred. A corpus delicti can also be proved if bone or
corpus delicti
Technically, a corpus delicti refers to “the body of the
crime,” which in homicide cases means first that death
has occurred and second that the death was caused by a
criminal agency. Typical of the laws in other states, the
New York penal law demands the following in all
224
COUNTERFEITING
came upon the marshal of Brownsville brutally beating
a former employee of the Cortina ranch. He wounded
the officer and helped the beaten Mexican to escape.
Brownsville boiled over this “greaser insult,” and there
was talk of going out and capturing Cortina. Instead,
on September 28 Cortina, at the head of an army of
1,000 cutthroats, captured Brownsville. According to
the Texan version, Cortina then summarily executed
several men. The Mexican version was that the only
killings occurred while Brownsville was being seized.
What is not in dispute is that Cortina held the town for
ransom, demanding $100,000 under threat of burning
it to the ground. Eventually, influenced by less volatile
members of his family, he relented, withdrawing to the
town limits and keeping it under siege. A Brownsville
citizen slipped through the cordon and summoned aid
in the form of U.S. troops, Texas Rangers and civilian
volunteers. Cortina and his men routed this force in a
battle at Palo Alto, but by December 1859 he was compelled to keep constantly on the move, harassed by
superior forces. Still, Cortina was able to capture Edinburg, and then Rio Grande City, from which he
extracted a ransom of $100,000 in gold. By Christmas
Day a large contingent of Texas Rangers was able to
force Cortina across the border into Mexico, but neither the Rangers nor the U.S. Army was able to keep
him from periodically raiding far into Texas over the
next several years.
Cortina and his men were regarded by Texans as
that state’s worst cattle rustlers, making off with an
estimated 900,000 animals in their raids. From the
Mexican viewpoint, Cortina was merely making up in a
small degree for the cattle previously stolen from Mexicans. During his later years in Mexico, Cortina’s fortunes ran to extremes. He was a general in the army of
President Benito Juárez and then served as military governor of the state of Tamaulipas. In 1875, with the
emergence of the Díaz regime, Cortina was imprisoned
and remained there until 1890. He lived out the last
two years of his life in retirement on the border with
Texas.
See also: LEANDER H. MCNELLY.
body fragments necessary to human life can be identified.
Cortez, Gregorio (1875–1916) fugitive
Mexicans in Texas still sing the “Ballad of Gregorio
Cortez.” In the song, the hero, pistol in hand, defiantly
declares, “Ah, so many mounted Rangers just to take
one Mexican!”
Cortez came to Texas with his family when he was
12. He worked as a ranch hand until he and his brother
took over a farm. In 1901 the Karnes County sheriff
came to arrest the brothers on charges of horse stealing.
Gregorio Cortez denied the charges and refused to surrender. The sheriff opened fire and wounded his
brother. Gregorio then shot and killed the sheriff. Fearing Texas justice, which was undoubtedly prejudiced in
its treatment of Mexicans, Cortez fled. He was to fight
off posse after posse, some with up to 300 men, that
tried to take him. The chase covered more than 400
miles. During it he became a hero to his compatriots,
fighting for his and their rights. A posse caught Cortez
close to the Mexican border and in the ensuing gun battle he killed another sheriff.
The legal battle on Cortez’s behalf lasted four years,
with hundreds of Mexicans contributing to his defense
fund. They looked upon Cortez’s act as a protest
against American injustice. He was cleared in the
killing of the first sheriff but sentenced to life imprisonment for killing the second. Protests continued until in
1913, at the age of 38, he was freed. He died three
years later but the “Ballad of Gregorio Cortez” preserves his memory.
Cortina, Juan (1824–1892) bandit and Mexican patriot
Juan Cortina, a Mexican born on the Texas side of the
Rio Grande, was, in the view of Anglo Texans, one of
the worst bandits that state had ever seen. In the Mexican view, he was a daring patriot unafraid to stand
up to the gringos who stole everything the Mexicans
had.
Cortina was heir to a huge spread that spanned both
sides of the Rio Grande; as such, he became a leader of
the Mexican community. Mexicans and Mexican property were fair game in Texas, and land grabbers began
whittling away at the Cortina spread. By the time
Cortina had reached manhood, he had killed a number
of these land grabbers, and there was a warrant out for
his arrest.
Cortina was living on the family ranch near
Brownsville, but although it was no mystery where he
was, no one seemed too interested in invading that
stronghold to take him. On September 13, 1859 he
Cosa Nostra
The Mafia, pure and simple, by another name: Cosa
Nostra—literally, “Our Thing.” For many years FBI
chief J. Edgar Hoover insisted there was no such thing
as organized crime or the Mafia. Says crime historian
Richard Hammer, “In order to get Hoover off the hook,
a new name had to be created, hence Cosa Nostra.”
See also: MAFIA.
225
COUNTERFEITING
Costello, Frank (1891–1973) Prime Minister of the
Underworld
enterprises, mostly bootlegging and gambling, were
making them rich. To protect these interests, they
were paying, through Costello, $10,000 a week in
“grease” directly into the police commissioner’s
office. Within a few years, during the regimes of commissioners Joseph A. Warren and Grover A. Whalen,
the amount rose to $20,000 a week. In 1929, just
after the stock market crash, Costello told Luciano he
had to advance Whalen $30,000 to cover his margin
calls in the market. “What could I do?” Costello told
Luciano. “I hadda give it to him. We own him.”
No one ever questioned whether Costello always dispensed mob money the way it was intended. Costello
was a man of honor on such matters. Besides, the
results were there for the mob to see, with cases never
brought to court, complaints dropped and so on.
Costello became the most vital cog in the national
crime syndicate after the forceful purging of the old
mafiosi or “Mustache Petes.” The gangs cooperated,
and Costello supplied the protection. As part of his
reward, Costello got the rights to gambling in the lucrative New Orleans area.
He was respected by all the crime family heads and
was considered the Prime Minister of the Underworld,
the man who dealt with the “foreign dignitaries”—the
police, judges and politicos. Much has been made of the
fact that Costello was not a murderer, but he sat in on
all syndicate decisions concerning major hits, and while
he may have often been a moderating force, he was a
party to murder plans. His general reluctance to use violence was not due to squeamishness; it was just that he
felt hitting a man over the head with a wad of greenbacks could be more persuasive than using a blackjack.
One of the prime accomplishments of the Kefauver
investigation during the 1950s was the exposure of
Costello’s vast influence in government. While he insisted
that only his hands be shown on television, that minor
subterfuge could hardly cover up his activities. When he
left the stand, Costello knew his term as prime minister
was at an end. He was too hot for everyone, those who
appreciated the mob’s favors and the mob itself.
Through the 1950s, with Luciano deported to Italy,
Joe Adonis being harassed and facing the same fate,
and Costello facing tax raps that would finally send
him to prison, Vito Genovese moved to take over the
syndicate. In 1957 Genovese engineered an attempt to
assassinate Costello; he survived by perhaps an inch
or two, his assailant’s bullets just grazing his scalp.
Later that same year Genovese arranged the rub-out
of Albert Anastasia, the Lord High Executioner of
Murder, Inc. and a devoted follower of Costello and
Luciano.
It looked like Genovese was in. Meanwhile,
Costello really wanted out, to retire in peace and con-
No syndicate criminal in this country ever enjoyed as
much political pull as did Frank Costello, who was the
advocate within the national crime syndicate of the
“big fix.” He believed in buying favors and even paying
for them in advance. Scores of political leaders and
judges were beholden to him. An entire array of New
York’s Tammany Hall bosses “owed” him. They ranged
from Christy Sullivan to Mike Kennedy, from Frank
Rosetti to Bert Stand and from Hugo Rogers to
Carmine DeSapio. Costello had done them favors, had
raised money for them, had delivered votes that really
counted. And when it came time to make appointments, Costello practically exercised the equivalent of
the Senate’s prerogatives to advise and consent. Tammany kingpin Rogers put it best when he said, “If
Costello wanted me, he would send for me.”
It was the same with judges. In 1943 Manhattan
district attorney Frank Hogan obtained a wiretap
on Costello’s telephone. Investigators were treated to
this enlightening conversation on August 23 between
Costello and Thomas Aurelio just minutes after the latter had learned he was getting the Democratic nomination to become a state supreme court justice:
“How are you, and thanks for everything,” Aurelio
said.
“Congratulations,” Costello answered. “It went
over perfect. When I tell you something is in the bag,
you can rest assured.”
“It was perfect,” Aurelio said. “It was fine.”
“Well, we will all have to get together and have dinner some night real soon.”
“That would be fine,” the judge-to-be said. “But
right now I want to assure you of my loyalty for all you
have done. It is unwavering.”
Despite the disclosure of the wiretap, the grateful
Aurelio went on to be elected to the judgeship after beating back disbarment proceedings. Clearly, when Costello
said something was in the bag, it was in the bag.
Born Franceso Castiglia in Calabria, Italy in 1891,
he came to New York with his family at age four. At
21 he had a police record of two arrests for assault
and robbery. At 24 he was sentenced to a year in
prison for carrying a gun. He did not return to prison
for another 37 years. Beginning in the early days of
Prohibition, his best friends were Lucky Luciano, a
Sicilian, and Meyer Lansky, a Polish Jew. These three
were to become the most important figures in the formation of the national crime syndicate during the
1930s. While Luciano and Lansky did most of the
organizing among criminals, Costello’s mission was to
develop contacts and influence among the police and
politicians. By the mid-1920s the trio’s varied criminal
226
COURTRIGHT, Longhair Jim
counterfeiting
centrate on his battles with the government about his
citizenship and tax problems. But Genovese’s blueprint for power was soon destroyed. Costello, Lansky,
Carlo Gambino and Luciano masterminded a drug
operation that involved Genovese. As soon as he was
mired deeply in it, evidence was turned over to prosecutors, and in 1959 Genovese went to prison for a
term of 15 years. He would die there in 1969. During
this period Costello did a short stint in Atlanta Penitentiary, the same one Genovese was in; it was said the
two had a sentimental reconciliation there. Genovese
may have been sincere, but Costello certainly was not.
When he left prison, he felt no pangs of sorrow for
Genovese.
Costello went into quiet retirement after that, living the life of a Long Island squire until his death in
1973.
See also: APALACHIN CONFERENCE, CARLO GAMBINO,
VITO GENOVESE, VINCENT “THE CHIN” GIGANTE, KEFAUVER INVESTIGATION, MEYER LANSKY, CHARLES “LUCKY”
LUCIANO, WILLIE MORETTI, SLOT MACHINES, WIRETAPPING
AND BUGGING.
Coster, F. Donald
Cotroni gang
Throughout American history there have always been
people who have thought the best way to make money
is, simply, to make money.
Mary Butterworth, the kitchen counterfeiter, may
have been the first. This housewife with seven children
operated a highly successful counterfeiting ring in Plymouth colony during the early 1700s.
The comparatively crude paper money used in colonial times, “Continental currency,” was so frequently
and successfully faked that it gave rise to the saying,
“Not worth a Continental.” During the Civil War, it was
estimated that a good third of the currency in circulation
was “funny money.” The counterfeiter’s chore was made
much easier because some 11,600 state banks across the
nation designed and printed their own currency. Finally,
in 1863 the nation adopted a uniform currency.
Counterfeiting today is hardly a lost art, but few stay
successful at it for very long. In 1976 the Secret Service
made a record haul in the Bronx, New York City,
arresting six suspects who had run off $20 million in
what was characterized as “highly passable” bills. This
followed on the heels of raids in Los Angeles that netted four men with more than $8 million worth of bogus
bills. The main worry of the government today is that
sophisticated new photographic and printing equipment will permit counterfeiters, as never before, to
approximate the intricate whorls, loops and crosshatching that makes American paper money just about
the most difficult in the world to imitate. In recent
years, the government has introduced new bills said to
be even more counterfeit-proof, but that must be tested
over time, while understanding that all moneys have
always been duplicated.
In a typical counterfeiting operation, distribution is
handled by an army of wholesalers, distributors and
passers. The standard breakdown calls for the counterfeiters to sell their output to wholesalers for 12 percent
of face value. The wholesaler then has the job of reselling
the bills to distributors for 25 percent. The distributors
turn it over to street-level passers for 35 percent.
Although counterfeiting is punishable by up to 15
years in prison and a $10,000 fine and Treasury officials estimate that almost 90 percent of all bad-money
makers are jailed in less than a year, counterfeiters, big
and small, still keep trying their luck. There are those
who will print fake $1 bills despite the rather high overhead involved. It took the Secret Service 10 years to
catch up with a lone operator who passed fake $1 bills
in New York. He was an elderly former janitor who circulated only eight or 10 ones every few days, making it
a point never to pass them twice at the same place. He
explained later that he “didn’t want to stick anybody
for more than a dollar.”
See PHILIP MUSICA.
Mafia’s “body importers”
Based in Montreal, Canada, the Cotroni gang has a
tremendous impact on crime in the United States, its
main function being to import for the Mafia new
blood, mainly Sicilians who have proved tougher and
more reliable than second- and third-generation American recruits. The mass importation of native Sicilians
was started in the 1960s by the late “boss of bosses”
Carlo Gambino, who felt there was a need for tough
young recruits still schooled in the old Mafia codes
and, above all, “hungry” and not as anxious to move to
the suburbs.
According to Canadian police, the Cotroni gang provides aliens with a pipeline into the United States for a
fee that runs between $2,000 and $3,000. It is easy for
aliens to get into Canada since the only thing needed
for a three-month stay without a visa is $300 in cash
and a Canadian address where they can be reached.
The Cotronis supply the addresses and have little trouble moving their immigrants across the border.
Many of the mobsters recently arrested by police
have been new Mafia faces, all recent arrivals, which
has led to fears that American police will lose track of
mob operations as these unknown newcomers take on
more and more of the Mafia’s street duties.
227
COY, Bernard Paul
different problem. With their former workshop under
government padlock, there was no way to get the special bleaches and inks that were needed. One couldn’t
buy the proper ink legitimately without the government
knowing about it, so the pair stole the bleaches they
needed from the prison laundry and then their relatives started bringing fruits and flowers. From the dried
fruits and berries and the green leaves of the flowers,
they made their own ink.
Soon the Bredell-Taylor $20s—virtually as good as
Uncle Sam’s—started turning up. What the pair hadn’t
counted on was that John E. Wilkie, the chief of the
U.S. Secret Service, would spot the work as being too
good to be anybody’s but theirs. Naturally, Wilkie
assumed the plates had been prepared by the pair
before their arrest and they were just being used now,
so he put a watch on relatives of Taylor and Bredell,
and after one was caught passing some of the fake
$20s, Wilkie uncovered the whole story. The experts
called in by the Secret Service scoffed at the possibility
that Bredell and Taylor could have produced such
work in prison. They insisted it could not have been
done without a camera, a huge workroom and an 8-ton
press. Only when the prisoners reenacted their feat
were the experts convinced.
In recognition of their extraordinary talents, Chief
Wilkie decided to help the pair get a new start in life
when they were released. He got financial backing for a
mechanical engraving machine Taylor had perfected,
starting the ex-counterfeiter on the way to becoming a
prosperous manufacturer. Bredell went on to establish a
leading engraving and lithography plant and also
became rich. The two master counterfeiters were lured
away from their illicit activities the only way the government could think of—by making them rich, legally.
Today, there are no counterfeiting geniuses such as
Taylor and Bredell or Jim the Penman, perhaps the only
counterfeiter in history to make top-grade notes simply
by drawing them. Using a fine camel’s hair brush, he
made phony bills by tracing them from genuine notes
that he placed before a strong light. Criminal craftsmen
of such caliber, to the U.S. government’s relief, are a
dying breed.
See also: MARY BUTTERWORTH, “COUNT” VICTOR
LUSTIG.
Further reading: Money of Their Own by Murray
Teign Bloom.
Some even try their hand at counterfeiting coins,
even though breaking even is nearly impossible in these
inflationary times. In the past, however, coin counterfeiting was big business. In 1883 a deaf-mute named
Joshua Tatum made a small fortune by slightly altering
the original liberty head nickel and passing it for 100
times its real value. On the face of the nickel was a
woman’s head wearing a liberty headpiece. On the
other side was the motto E. Pluribus Unum and a large
V. The V, the Roman numeral five, was the only indication of the coin’s value to be found on the nickel.
Tatum noted that the liberty head nickel closely resembled in design and size the half eagle, or $5 gold piece,
which was then in general circulation. The face of the
latter also displayed a woman’s head with a liberty
headpiece. On the reverse side was the sign of value,
Five D., indicating $5. About the only difference was
the color: the nickel had a silvery appearance, and the
half eagle, gold. Tatum began gold-plating nickels by
the thousand and then buying 5¢ items all over the East
Coast. Invariably, he got $4.95 in change. On occasion,
a merchant would flip the coin over, note the V for five
and assume it was a newly issued $5 gold piece. He
couldn’t prove it by Tatum, who was a deaf-mute.
When Tatum was finally caught, the courts freed him
because he was a deaf-mute. The authorities could
never prove Tatum had ever asked for change, and
there were no laws on the book prohibiting a person
from gold-plating a nickel. The law was changed
accordingly and an emergency session of Congress was
called to alter the design of the nickel.
Students of the fine art of counterfeiting contend
that the true craftsmen are all in their graves. There
were, for example, artists like Baldwin Bredell and
Arthur Taylor, who in the late 1890s turned out such
perfect $100 bills that the government had to withdraw from circulation the entire issue of $26 million in
Monroe-head bills. Sent to Moyamensing Prison, Bredell and Taylor astounded the experts by pulling off a
moneymaking caper so amazing that Treasury Department experts at first refused to concede it possible.
Within several months of their arrival in the prison,
Bredell and Taylor began turning out counterfeit $20
bills at night in their cell. To do this, they needed to
have supplies smuggled in. One of Taylor’s relatives
brought books and magazines on his weekly visits.
These hid engraving tools, steel plates, files and vials of
acids. Another smuggled in a kerosene lamp piece by
piece and some magnifying glasses hidden in a basket
of cookies. The printing press they needed was made to
specifications the counterfeiters drew up and had smuggled out. Getting the press in was easy because it was
the size of a cigar box. Since Bredell’s wife was pregnant, she became just a bit more expecting. Inks were a
county seat wars
Midwest boomtown violence
Encouraged by unscrupulous speculators during the
land boom in several western states following the Civil
War, fierce struggles broke out between various communities over the location of county seats. Obviously,
228
CRANE, Stephen
the prestige of being the county seat would add to the
value of a town’s property and deadly wars were fought
to win this distinction. Kansas alone had 28 of these
disputes, and others cropped up in Nebraska and
North and South Dakota. The ultimate decision on the
location of a county seat was left to local elections, but
both sides would use bribes, trickery and fraud to fix
the results as well as hire professional gunmen to intimidate voters. Even civic-minded citizens resorted to
importing gunslingers to protect the polls. Unfortunately, whatever the result, the losing side seldom
accepted it. A common practice was to invade the winning town and simply attempt to steal the courthouse
records, a typical case being the invasion of Cimarron
by Ingalls forces in Gray County, Kan. In one case an
attempt was made to jack up a wooden courthouse on
rollers and physically cart away the entire building.
One of the bloodiest confrontations involved Hugoton and Woodsdale in Stevens County, Kan. The sheriff
and three Woodsdale citizens were murdered by Hugoton men on July 25, 1888, and Woodsdale prosecutor
Col. Sam N. Wood was assassinated in Hugoton in
1891. As was often the case in county seat wars, all
murder charges eventually were dropped. In the end,
Hugoton became the county seat. At Coronado in
Wichita County, Kan., three Leoti residents died in a
street battle in 1887, but not in vain; their community
eventually won the war. Finally, bad economic times
and the ensuing collapse of the short-grass land boom
brought an end to the county seat wars.
See also: CIMARRON COUNTY SEAT WAR.
smuggled a pair of pistols, he escaped, fleeing to South
America. After three years he returned to face trial, but
by that time the witnesses against him had scattered,
and he was easily acquitted. Returning to Fort Worth,
he set up the T.I.C. Commercial Detective Agency.
Finding little demand for his services, Courtright used
the agency as a guise to demand protection money from
the town’s various gambling halls and saloons. For this
ploy to be successful, a 100 percent record of collection
was necessary; it was Courtright’s misfortune that an
emporium called the White Elephant Saloon was run by
a pint-sized gambler named Luke Short, one of the
West’s grand masters of the six-gun. On February 8,
1887 Courtright sent a messenger into the White Elephant demanding that Short step outside. Short did,
and moments later, Courtright called out, “Don’t try to
pull a gun on me.” Courtright clearly was laying the
legal basis for a claim that he was acting in self-defense.
The matter was academic, however. Courtright started
to draw one gun, but Short shot his thumb off as he
tried to trip back the hammer. This was not a trick
shot; Short’s aim was slightly off on his first blast. As
Courtright went to pull his other gun, Short was on target with three more shots, two in the chest and one in
the forehead.
See also: LUKE SHORT.
Coy, Bernard Paul (1900–1946) bank robber and
Alcatraz Prison Rebellion leader
Bernie Coy was 46, with 16 years more to go on a 25year sentence for bank robbery, when he masterminded
the famous breakout-rebellion attempt from Alcatraz in
May 1946.
Regarded as little more than an ignorant Kentucky
hillbilly, Coy initially was not considered smart enough
to be the mastermind behind the escape attempt. During the 48-hour break attempt, prison officials were
sure the leader of the plot was Dutch Cretzer, a former
Public Enemy No. 4 doing a life sentence. Unlike Coy,
Cretzer was a brutal killer and hard to control, but Coy
needed him in the escape because of Cretzer’s outside
connections, who could arrange a getaway once they
reached the mainland.
In fact, as a subsequent investigation proved, the
entire escape plot was Coy’s. He secretly designed and
had built a bar spreader made from plumbing fixtures
and valve parts and concealed it until the time of the
break, both incredible accomplishments in securityconscious Alcatraz. With the bar spread, Coy was able
to break into the gun gallery, where the only weapons
in the cell block were kept, overpower the guard and
arm his accomplices. There is no doubt the escapers,
having turned loose a great number of other convicts
Courtright, Longhair Jim (1845?–1887) western
lawman and murderer
A prime example of a lawman gone bad, Jim Courtright, variously reported as being born in Iowa or Illinois between 1845 and 1848, was a popular two-gun
sheriff in Fort Worth, Tex., but after two years on the
job, he was fired in 1878 for drinking. Courtright
bounced around to a few other jobs as a lawman, but
his brooding nature was such that these rarely lasted
for long. Eventually, he drifted into a job as a guard for
the American Mining Co., in whose employ he killed
two would-be robbers in 1883. News of this exploit
reached the attention of a New Mexico rancher named
Logan, who had been Courtright’s old Civil War commander. Logan offered him a job as a ranch foreman,
but Courtright’s real assignment would be to rid
Logan’s range of squatters. He got off to a fast start by
promptly shooting two unarmed nesters. Because there
had been witnesses, Courtright was forced to flee. He
was arrested in Fort Worth and held for extradition.
Courtright knew the jail routine well, and after being
229
CRATER, Joseph Force
to make things look like a prison riot rather than
break, could have made it across the prison yard to
the wharf and then aboard the prison launch. Coy’s
plan adhered to a strict timetable that took advantage
of the very guard procedure designed to prevent
escapes. His plan foundered, ironically, because one
guard disobeyed the rules and failed to put the key to
the last door back on its rack. He had it in his pocket
and, when taken hostage, managed to hide it in a cell.
The escapers took nine guards hostage, but because of
one locked door, Coy’s plan failed and the prison
launch left the island before they had a chance to
reach it. Although the break and riot lasted 48 hours,
Coy lost control of his men, and Dutch Cretzer, who
all along chafed at taking orders from Coy, “a hick
hillbilly,” shot up the hostages while Coy was trying
to negotiate over the phone with the warden.
Throughout the remainder of the rebellion, Cretzer
spent his time trying to find and kill Coy and Marv
Hubbard, a con who supported Coy, while Coy tried
to hunt down Cretzer. As marines and the guards
bombarded the prison with grenades and raked the
cell blocks with rifle and shotgun fire, the grim duel
continued. Although popular accounts to this day
often insist that the three ringleaders joined together
and fought the attacking guards to the death deep
within the underground tunnels of the prison, the fact
was that Cretzer killed Coy and then died in a final
confrontation with a host of attackers, who also killed
the wounded Hubbard.
See also: ALCATRAZ PRISON REBELLION, JOSEPH PAUL
“DUTCH” CRETZER.
Twenty-five years after Judge Joseph Force Crater’s
disappearance, his wife, since remarried, calls for a
renewal of the hunt for him.
madams’ or harlots’ money. He was constantly urging
various madams to give their workers a better break,
and while he would be most helpful in initiating a new
girl “into the business,” he would just as willingly aid
others who wanted to get out. While his affair with
Lizzie Allen was blossoming, Crabb apparently played
the same role with another madam, Mollie Fitch. When
the latter died a few years later, she left Crabb
$150,000. In 1890 Crabb and Lizzie spent $125,000 to
build a large double house at 2131 South Dearborn
Street, which was later taken over by the Everleigh sisters and became the nation’s most famous bordello.
Under Lizzie, the resort was called the House of Mirrors. When she retired in 1896, Lizzie signed over all
her property to Crabb and died later that same year.
Crabb buried her in Rosehill Cemetery and had her
tombstone inscribed, “Perpetual Ease.”
The press estimated that Crabb inherited well over
$300,000 from Lizzie. He spent the later years of his
life as a sort of elder statesman in vice circles, and when
he died on January 5, 1935, he left an estate of
$416,589.81, three quarters of which he bequeathed to
the Illinois Masonic Orphans’ Home.
See also: LIZZIE ALLEN, EVERLEIGH SISTERS.
Crabb, Christopher Columbus (1852–1935) “solid
man”
It is generally acknowledged that the most eminent and
successful “solid man” in the history of American vice
was Christopher Columbus Crabb, whom Chicago
mayor Carter Harrison, Jr. described as “an imposing
looking rooster.” Remarkably, Crabb was able to function as lover and financial manager for more than one
madam at the same time.
Crabb was a $14-a-week clerk in Marshall Field’s
department store when he met Lizzie Allen in 1878.
Lizzie was one of the city’s top madams, operating
brothels just a cut in quality below those of the famous
Carrie Watson. Crabb had been a lover to several of
Lizzie’s prostitutes, and while he was not a pimp, the
ladies lavished gifts upon him. At the age of 38, Lizzie
had at last found her true love and promptly smothered
Crabb with kindness.
Crabb was known as a square-shooter in Chicago
vice circles, a man who could be trusted to handle
230
CRAZY Eddie’s insane fraud
Craft, Gerald (1965–1973) kidnap victim
Dora Clark was definitely not soliciting when Becker
started roughing her up and arrested her. Crane, having
witnessed the entire incident, so testified at her hearing.
The Clark woman complained she had been subjected
to Becker’s constant harassment and demands for
money. The judge chose to believe Crane over Becker
and released the woman.
Becker was brought up on police departmental
charges before Commissioner Frederick Grant, who
at the time was considered one of the department’s
looser administrators and an opponent of reforms
advocated by another commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt. Becker’s defense tried to shift the case to one
against Crane, accusing him of regularly consorting
with prostitutes and of being an opium smoker.
Despite attacks by the newspapers, Commissioner
Grant allowed a long line of questioning on such
points, causing the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to lament
that “the reputation of private citizens is permitted to
be assailed without comment or protest, while so much
is done to shield one of a body of men that collectively
was lately shown to be one of the most corrupt, brutal,
incompetent organizations in the world.” Other newspapers joined in observing that the rank treatment of
Crane showed the police had hardly reformed since the
revelations of their crookedness by the Lexow Committee two years previously.
Becker escaped without suffering any major penalties for his conduct, and the police thereafter kept up a
steady campaign of intimidation and harassment
against Crane. His rooms were raided, and police
insisted they had found opium there. (The conventional
wisdom was that they had brought the opium with
them.) The police vendetta against Crane reached such
intensity that the author was forced to flee the city for a
time. As soon as he returned, the police resumed their
persecution of him. When a policeman saw Crane at
the theater with a woman, he loudly accused her of
being a “goddam French whore” and only beat a
retreat after realizing the other member of the Crane
party was a priest.
By 1898 the malicious attacks on Crane again forced
him to leave the city. When next he returned, there was
no need for the police to reactivate their campaign a
third time. Crane was dying of tuberculosis.
See also: CHARLES BECKER.
Although not very well known in white circles, the kidnapmurders of eight-year-old Gerald Craft and six-year-old
Keith Arnold in Detroit on December 1, 1973 stand as
the “black Lindbergh case.”
Gerald Craft was actually a familiar face to most
of the country’s whites, being famous, if anonymously, for a television commercial in which he gobbled down big helpings of fried chicken with a
devilish grin on his face. On that December 1, a Saturday afternoon, Gerald was playing football with a
friend, Keith, in front of his grandmother’s house
when both suddenly disappeared. The next day a
hoarsely whispered telephone call demanded a ransom of $53,000 for the return of the children. This
was an amount the families could not pay. With the
help of the Detroit police, a bogus package of ransom
money was dropped at a designated spot, which the
police staked out. Two men came to retrieve it, but
officers moved too slowly to capture them before they
drove off. Two days later, the bodies of the two boys,
both shot twice, were found in a field near Detroit’s
Metropolitan Airport.
The Detroit News offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the kidnappers and set
up a “secret witness” phone number for informers.
Within a week the information received through this
source led to the arrest of three 21-year-old men and a
teenage girl and the solution of the case. The girl provided evidence that convicted the men, Byron Smith,
Geary Gilmore and Jerome Holloway. All three were
given mandatory life sentences.
As big a news splash as the kidnapping made in the
black press around the country, few whites ever heard
much about it.
Crane, Stephen (1870–1900) writer and police victim
Few writers have suffered as much harassment from the
police as did Stephen Crane during the last four years
of his life. Crane’s troubles began in September 1896,
when the author, already famous for his book The Red
Badge of Courage, visited the vice-ridden tenderloin
section of Manhattan to collect material for a series of
sketches on the district. A tall, broad-shouldered
policeman named Charles Becker walked up to a freelance prostitute, Dora Clark, and started beating her to
a pulp. Becker over the years was to become famous as
“the crookedest cop who ever stood behind a shield,”
and in 1915 he died in the electric chair for the murder
of gambler Herman Rosenthal. His prime concern during his days in the tenderloin was not to drive out the
prostitutes but to make sure he got his share of their
income.
Crater, Joseph Force (1889–1937?) missing judge
On August 6, 1930 a portly 41-year-old man wearing
a high-collared shirt, brown pin-striped doublebreasted suit and extremely polished and pointed shoes
stepped into a taxi in front of a Manhattan restaurant,
waved good-bye to a friend and rode off into history, to
231
CREDIT Mobilier Scandal
become known as America’s greatest vanishing act. The
man was Justice Joseph Force Crater of the New York
Supreme Court. From that day forth, Crater was never
seen again—alive or dead. His disappearance provided
grist for the mills of jokers, playwrights, graffiti writers,
cartoonists and amateur detectives over the next half
century.
Crater was born in Easton, Pa., graduated from
Lafayette College and earned a law degree at Columbia
University. He established a successful New York practice and formed important political connections, later
rising to the presidency of the Cayuga Democratic
Club, an important part of the Tammany organization.
In April 1930 Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed
him to the New York Supreme Court.
Crater cut short a vacation in Maine to return to the
city in order to take care of some business. He was seen
in his court chambers on August 5 and 6 and had his
aide cash two checks for him totaling $5,150. Later
that day he met some friends at a restaurant and then
stepped into the taxi and oblivion.
The investigation into his disappearance eventually
mushroomed into a months-long grand jury probe that
quizzed hundreds of witnesses but produced no leads to
explain what happened to him. One theory was developed about why he had vanished. The grand jury
uncovered considerable evidence of corruption in the
Cayuga Democratic Club, which brought on the much
publicized Seabury probe.
Meanwhile, the tantalizing mysteries of the case continued. Under New York City law, cabbies were
required to keep records of all their trips, starting
points and destinations. But despite many appeals from
the police, a $5,000 reward offered by the city and a
$2,500 reward offered by the New York World, the
cabbie who picked up Judge Crater never came forward
nor offered any information concerning the case. If he
had, Crater’s movements could have been traced at
least one more step.
On countless occasions in the 1930s, the case
seemed to be a fraction of an inch from being solved,
but each lead fizzled. There was no limit to the type of
leads the police ran down over the years. The missing
Crater was identified wrongly as a gold prospector in
the California desert country; a human torch who died
of self-inflicted burns in Leavenworth, Kan.; a skeleton
at Walden, Vt.; an unidentified murder victim in
Westchester County, N.Y.; a man who hanged himself
from a tree less than 15 miles from the Crater summer
home at Belgrade Lakes, Maine; an amnesia victim in
the Missouri State Insane Asylum; a sufferer of “daytime somnambulism.”
Then again he was a Hollywood race tout; a freespending American tourist in Italy; an ill-shaven door-
to-door beggar in Illinois (“I didn’t pull his whiskers
but I’m pretty sure they were false,” one Chicago
housewife bubbled to police). Perhaps the best of all
was the GI who returned from overseas in 1946 with
the emphatic intelligence that Crater was operating a
bingo game in North Africa for a strictly Arab clientele.
Jokers, of course, got into the act. Assistant Chief
John J. Sullivan was sitting at his desk one day when a
call from Montreal was switched to him. A very calm
voice said: “I can’t tell you my name, because I don’t
care to get mixed up in it, but Judge Crater is now in
room 761 at my hotel. I am in the hotel now, but I
don’t dare give you my name.” In a matter of minutes
Sullivan had the Montreal police breaking into the
room of a honeymooning couple.
Throughout the country a number of dying bums
felt compelled to make deathbed confessions, each
admitting that he was the judge. One in the Midwest,
who lived long enough for the police to question him,
admitted finally that he was just trying to “get myself a
decent burial instead of being laid in that pauper’s plot
all the other boys end up in.”
In 1937 Judge Crater was ruled legally dead, and his
widow remarried. At the time, it was estimated the
hunt for Crater had expended 300,000 Depression dollars. Even by the 1950s the Judge Crater legend had not
faded. Former police commissioner Edward P. Mulrooney, under whose supervision the case was first
investigated, revealed he still carried a picture of Crater
in his pocket at all times. “You never know but that
someday you might run into him,” he said. “I’d give my
right arm to find him.” During the following decade
the police were still up to the search, digging up a
Yonkers, N.Y. backyard in the hope of finding the
judge’s bones. Nothing came of it.
Crazy Butch gang
During the 1890s and first few years of the 20th century, the most efficient gang of young criminals in New
York City was the Crazy Butch gang. Crazy Butch, the
leader of the gang, had been tossed into the world at
the tender age of eight. Renouncing his alcoholic parents, he never acknowledged his family name. After
surviving for two years as a shoeshine boy, Crazy Butch
became a pickpocket. When he was about 13, Butch
stole a dog, which he named Rabbi, and trained it to
steal handbags from careless women’s hands. Rabbi
would snatch a purse, race through the streets until it
lost any pursuers and then meet Crazy Butch at Willett
and Stanton Streets, tail wagging and the purse
clenched in his teeth.
In his late teens Crazy Butch switched his operation
from a dog to a gang of 20 to 30 youths, whom he
232
CRETZER, Joseph Paul “Dutch”
stock offerings were truly insane
trained to prowl the streets snatching handbags and
muffs. Butch would lead his minions down a street on a
bicycle, bump into a pedestrian, preferably a little old
lady, and alight to help her up while at the same time
berating her as a careless walker. As people pressed in
to see what was happening, Crazy Butch’s boys would
thread through the mob rifling pockets and purses.
When the crowd was completely milked or a policeman
appeared, Butch would apologize to his victim and
pedal away. At the gang’s headquarters, his protégés
would turn in their spoils, and Crazy Butch would
reward each with a few pennies.
By the turn of the century, Crazy Butch and many
of his followers had advanced to such adult occupations as musclemen, sluggers and, on occasion, paid
murderers, often pursuing their criminal endeavors in
bicycle teams. A subchief under the celebrated Monk
Eastman, Crazy Butch held his followers, some 60
strong, always at the ready should they be needed to
do battle with the Five Points Gang of Paul Kelly,
whose ranks already included a young hoodlum
named Johnny Torrio and would soon be graced by
such names as Luciano, Yale and Capone. Crazy
Butch demanded his men be ready for action at all
times. Once, hearing the Five Pointers were preparing
an onslaught, Crazy Butch decided to test his boys’
preparedness. So, one night Crazy Butch and three of
his men charged up the stairs and into the hall of the
gang’s Forsyth Street headquarters, blazing away with
two revolvers each. The gang members, who were
boozing or playing cards, either went out the windows or down the backstairs. Little Kishky, who had
been sitting on a window sill, was so startled he fell
backwards out the window and was killed. Crazy
Butch was furious; he wanted his men better prepared
for action than that.
Crazy Butch survived a number of gun battles with
the Five Pointers and other gangsters under Humpty
Jackson, but his own gang and the great Eastman gang
started falling apart at the same time. In 1904 both he
and Eastman disappeared from the scene. Eastman was
sentenced to 10 years in prison for robbery, and Crazy
Butch was killed by Harry the Soldier in a fight over a
girl, an expert shoplifter called the Darby Kid.
Crazy Butch is seldom remembered today in criminal
histories, but he trained many of the early 20th-century
gangsters and especially the sluggers of the union wars.
Big Jack Zelig had started out under Crazy Butch. In
fact, that notorious bruiser had always quaked under
Butch’s rage.
See also: MONK EASTMAN.
In the 1980s few television pitches bombarded Easterners more than of Crazy Eddie’s, an appliance and hi-fi
chain that declared ad nauseum “our prices are
insane.” And they were—and so was their accounting
system, their tax payments and their Wall Street deals.
Crazy Eddie’s went public at a time when Wall Street
was mad about rapidly growing companies. In effect,
proprietor Eddie Antar and his cousin Sam were telling
the best brains in the financial community: “You want
super growth, we got super growth.”
The Antars realized that super growth thanks to Sam
Antar’s creative accounting. As the law was later to
determine, the Antars had been skimming money from
the business for years. In fact, they were making money
not only from actual profits but just as lucratively from
avoiding sales taxes. It was as near to a Marx Brothers
operation as possible. But then an even more insane
inspiration hit the Antars:
“Why don’t we go public?” Why not indeed.
Of course, to be a super growth company they had
to show explosive profits. Nothing was easier for
the boys. All that had to be done was to cut back on
the family skimming. With the abrupt reduction in the
skim, profits seemingly ballooned from $1.7 million to
$4.6 million. That figure for 1984 truly astounded Wall
Street brokers, and a public stock offering was a
resounding success. The Antars had barely warmed up.
In the quest for more imaginary profits, the family
bought up imaginary merchandise so that gross profits
by 1986 had soared to the level of 40 percent. For a
second time Wall Street put out a stock issue that was
even more successful than the first.
Alas for the Antars and their investors, there was no
way Sam Antar could produce more bogus profits.
Hungry Wall Streeters now were expecting an additional $20–$30 million for 1987.
“My pencil is only so long,” Sam informed Eddie.
The boys tried to move inventories from store to store
so that auditors would count the same goods time after
time. Unfortunately, that was the end of the road. Auditors were not that insane.
Jail sentences followed, but this did not end the
Antar saga. In later years Sam Antar made speeches to
such groups as the National Association of Fraud
Examiners, outlining the crookedness of Crazy Eddie’s.
His theme to the experts and to credulous investors was
that fraud is so easy—insanely so.
Credit Mobilier Scandal
Crazy Eddie’s insane fraud
first great robber baron plot
A financial unit set up to finance the construction costs
of the Union Pacific, Credit Mobilier was the cause of
their prices and their
233
CRIME clocks
knowledge that such cribs had a push-button alarm
attached to a nearby barroom which, if activated,
would bring the saloon bouncer and several other
toughs over to manhandle the protesting victim.
See also: BADGER GAME, PANEL HOUSE.
one of the greatest congressional scandals of the 19th
century.
In order to get favorable legislation on land grants
and rights-of-way, Credit Mobilier “sold” company
stock at half price to key congressmen—“where it
would do the most good.” The chief bagman in the
operation was Rep. Oakes Ames of Massachusetts, a
principal officer of Credit Mobilier. When the New
York Sun broke the scandal in 1872, it was determined
that among those whose goodwill Ames had managed
to buy was Vice President Schuyler Colfax (who had
been speaker of the House at the time of his alleged
involvement), Sen. Henry Wilson and Rep. James A.
Garfield. A congressional committee investigating the
case concluded that the Credit Mobilier stockholders,
including the congressmen involved, had reaped $23
million in ill-gotten profits. Garfield survived the scandal and went on to be elected president in 1880. Ames,
however, fell victim to a censure motion in the House
and returned home to Massachusetts, broken hearted
but still maintaining his innocence.
Some later economic historians concluded that
Credit Mobilier’s profits totaled “only $13 million to
$16 million” and were not “excessive” by the standards of the day. Ames is described by some of these
historians as being guilty of no more than a “grievous
error of judgment.” Nonetheless, the label of “robber
baron” has remained attached to him.
creep joint
Cretzer, Joseph Paul “Dutch” (1911–1946) bank
bandit and murderer
One of the key figures in the Alcatraz Prison Rebellion
of 1946, the Rock’s greatest break-out attempt, Dutch
Cretzer was the country’s top bank bandit of the late
1930s and Public Enemy No. 4.
The Cretzer gang laid waste to banks all along the
West Coast up to the time their leader was captured in
1939. Sent to the federal prison on McNeil Island in the
state of Washington, Cretzer attempted an escape by
crashing a truck through a gate but was caught.
Brought to trial in Tacoma for the attempt, he was
quickly found guilty and given five additional years. As
he was being led from the court, Cretzer clubbed a federal marshal with his handcuffed hands, killing him. He
then picked up the dead lawman’s gun and leveled it at
the judge, intending to use him as a hostage. But before
he could reach the judge, a court bailiff returning to the
room jammed his gun into Cretzer’s neck and disarmed
him. Cretzer was convicted of murdering the federal
marshal but escaped the death sentence because his victim had actually died of a heart attack during the
assault on him.
Given a life term, Cretzer was taken in chains to
Alcatraz, where within nine months he attempted
another escape. He and another convict, Crazy Sam
Shockley, overpowered a guard and tried to drill
through a barred window in a prison workshop. In a
speedboat nearby, two men were fishing, or at least
they appeared to be fishing. They were really Cretzer
gang members, and under some canvas aboard the boat
were four submachine guns. The drilling of the bars
was unsuccessful, however, and the convicts were
found by other guards.
Cretzer was put in solitary for the next five years, an
unusually harsh punishment in any federal penitentiary
other than Alcatraz. But even that didn’t stop Cretzer
from once more joining an escape attempt after he was
returned to the main cell house in March 1946. He
once told a Seattle detective who came to see him about
a bank job he had pulled: “I can’t stand living at Alcatraz. I was reared in San Francisco, and being able to
see the city lights go on each evening from my cell . . .
I can’t stand that. I’ll make a break from here one day.
And if I don’t get killed in the trying, I’ll kill myself.”
Within days of returning to the cell house, Cretzer
threw in with a Kentucky bank robber named Bernie
crooked brothel
Much of the prostitution activity in San Francisco during
the 19th century was conducted in what were called cribs
or cowyard cubicles. When business was brisk, a customer was not permitted time to undress, even to remove
his footwear. Instead, a piece of oilcloth was spread along
the bottom of the bed to keep the man’s boots from soiling the bedding. Of course, all customers were required to
remove their hats, since no self-respecting prostitute
would consider entertaining a man with his hat on.
One type of crib that never forbade the removal of
clothing by customers was the so-called creep joint.
Here men were encouraged to hang everything in a
closet that was attached to the back wall of the crib.
The back walls, however, were really doors, and while
the customer was otherwise occupied, an accomplice of
the woman would open the door and steal all the man’s
money and valuables.
Creep joints may or may not have originated first in
San Francisco, but at least in that city the rip-off was
carried out with a certain amount of style and a touch
of sympathy; a dime was always left in the man’s clothing for his carfare home. Few men ever taken in creep
joints attempted to put up a fight. It was common
234
CROWLEY, Francis “Two Gun”
Coy who had plotted out the most intricate escape plan
ever devised in the prison. Coy had designed and built a
bar spreader made from plumbing fixtures and valve
parts and had figured out a way to break into the cell
house gun gallery, where the only weapons in the building were kept. This acquisition of weapons was the one
thing no previous Alcatraz breakout attempt had ever
achieved. Coy had planned out a minute-by-minute,
step-by-step escape route that would get himself, Cretzer and four others through Alcatraz’s tight security
net, across the prison yard and to the wharf, where they
would seize a prison launch when it was just about to
sail. They could make the mainland quickly, and then
Cretzer’s gang would pick them up in fast getaway cars
before the authorities would have time to react.
Cretzer went into the deal even though he had a
problem accepting Coy, whom he regarded as a “hick
hillbilly,” giving the orders. The great Alcatraz Prison
Rebellion started on May 2, 1946 when the six plotters took over the cell block and freed the prisoners to
confuse matters for prison officials. Once armed, they
quickly took nine guards hostage. Cretzer, without
Coy’s knowledge and despite orders against any killing,
shot and killed another guard. The plotters almost
made it to freedom, Coy’s plan failing only at the last
corridor door because a guard had, against prison
rules, kept the key to the door in his pocket instead of
returning it to its proper peg. Coy’s delicate timetable
collapsed, and the prison launch left the island before
the escapers could locate the key.
Cretzer went wild at the plan’s failure and during
Coy’s absence turned his guns on the nine hostages,
killing only one but severely wounding several others.
Thinking he had killed them all, Cretzer retreated into
an isolated part of the prison. Three of the plotters then
slipped back to their cells as Cretzer, Coy and another
prisoner, Marv Hubbard, tried to devise alternate
escape plans. In a bizarre development Cretzer stalked
Coy and his friend Hubbard, determined to kill them,
while they in turn hunted him. Meanwhile, the released
prisoners started a full-scale riot, and alarmed officials
called in sharpshooter guards from other prisons as
well as a detachment of battle-outfitted marines. The
“battle of Alcatraz” raged for almost 48 hours, as hundreds of grenades and gas bombs were dropped
through holes in the roof to try to subdue the rampaging convicts. During this time Cretzer moved deeper
into the bowels of the prison, attempting to find a way
out along the sewer lines. Coy and Hubbard made their
way to the same area, and it was here that all three men
would die. According to some accounts, guards cornered them and a fierce gun battle ensued. Fanciful stories of this hit-and-run confrontation have Cretzer
cackling insanely as he fired at the pursuers and
screaming, “Hey, this is fun!” with Coy responding,
“Yeah, and there’s more coming.”
Nothing like this happened. In a darkened tunnel
Coy walked right into Cretzer, who shot him dead. The
maddened Cretzer also tried to kill Hubbard but was
driven off by the guards. A short time later, Cretzer was
trapped and shot to death. So was Hubbard. The great
crashout attempt was over.
See also: ALCATRAZ PRISON REBELLION, BERNARD PAUL
COY, SAM SHOCKLEY, MIRAN “BUDDY” THOMPSON.
crime clocks FBI statistical device
Probably no FBI method of publicizing crime statistics
is more controversial than its so-called crime clocks,
whereby an anxious public is given such intelligence
as “there is a rape in this country every (14, 13, 12)
minutes” or “someone is robbed every (51/2, 5, 41/2)
minutes,” etc.
What is most severely criticized about these crime
clocks is that each year the time between the occurrence
of such offenses almost inevitably shrinks, indicating an
apparently constant increase in crime. The fallacy in the
presentation is that no allowance is made for a steadily
growing population, which may well mean more crimes
statistically but not necessarily proportionally. Perhaps
an even more germane criticism is based on the fact
that an enormous number of all violent crimes are committed by teenagers, and in periods of rapid growth of
this age group, the crime clock figures present a far
greater distortion.
Much better than crime clocks, insist some critics,
would be comparative figures to indicate the risk of
violent attack from strangers, which is one of the less
likely hazards facing the average American. For
instance, the risk of death from reported cases of willful
homicide until recently was about one in 20,000 and
now less, and a scant 25 percent of such murders are
committed by strangers, all the rest being the work of
the victim’s family or friends. An average American is
about 15 times more likely to be killed in a car crash.
Rather than reduce crime statistics to mere minutes or
seconds, critics prefer to note that the average chance
of one being the victim of a crime of violence is roughly
once in 400 years.
Crimmins, Alice (1939– ) convicted child killer
One of New York’s most lurid criminal cases started on
July 14, 1965, when a 26-year-old mother and divorcée, Alice Crimmins, reported her two young children,
four-year-old Alice Marie and five-year-old Edmund,
were missing from her Queens apartment, apparently
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CUNANAN, Andrew
abducted. Both children were later found dead. The girl
had clearly been murdered by strangulation, but the
boy’s body was too decomposed to ascertain the cause
of his death.
However, the kidnapping theory was soon abandoned, and investigators focused on the possibility that
Alice Crimmins had killed her daughter in a fit of anger
and then, with the aid of gangsters, murdered her son
because he had witnessed the strangulation of his sister.
Originally tried in 1968 on a charge of killing her
daughter, Alice Crimmins was found guilty of firstdegree manslaughter in a trial spiced with lurid testimony about the defendant’s extramarital affairs and
“swinging” lifestyle. Many courtroom observers were
surprised at the verdict and expressed the opinion that
the manslaughter case had been rather weak and the
woman had been convicted mainly because of her style
of living, which much of the public found offensive.
Crimmins was sentenced to five to 20 years, but the
guilty verdict was set aside after it was learned that several jurors had visited the scene of the alleged slayings
on their own. When Crimmins was retried in 1971, she
was charged with murdering both her daughter and her
son. After a five-week trial she was convicted of
manslaughter in the case of her daughter, for which she
was given five to 20 years, and first-degree murder of
her son, for which she drew life. An assistant district
attorney was overheard to say he was “stunned” by the
severity of the murder verdict. Eventually, higher courts
threw out the murder conviction because of insufficient
evidence but found there was “overwhelming proof”
that Mrs. Crimmins had killed her daughter. As a
result, her life sentence was lifted and she was left with
the term of five to 20 years on the manslaughter count.
Early in 1975 newspapers reported that Crimmins
was in a work-release program working as a secretary
for an undisclosed Queens company while living in a
Manhattan medium-security residential facility. She
had also been allowed to marry Anthony Grace, a
wealthy contractor who admitted he had been having
an affair with her at the time of her daughter’s death
and on whose yacht she had been spending her summer
weekends while on the work-release program. Later
that same year Crimmins was granted a parole after
serving the minimum five years of her sentence.
By 1882 the James gang was in disarray, most of its
stalwart members either killed or jailed, and Jesse and
Frank James were forced to rely on such less trustworthy accomplices as Dick Little and Bob and Charles
Ford. By late 1881 Dick Little was secretly negotiating
to surrender. Either through him or others, the Ford
brothers had begun dickering with Gov. Crittenden
about the $10,000 reward offered for Jesse James, dead
or alive. They eventually met with Crittenden, and it
later became a common belief that he actually gave the
Ford brothers a written guarantee that they would be
pardoned and given the reward money if they killed
James. No such document ever surfaced, but when on
April 3, 1882 Bob Ford shot the outlaw leader, Crittenden kept his part of the bargain, granting the Fords
pardons and the reward money.
Crittenden clearly expected to be applauded for ridding the state of Jesse James and so was not prepared
for maudlin support given to the murderous outlaw.
“Good-Bye, Jesse!” wailed the Kansas City Journal;
“Jesse By Jehovah,” cried the St. Joseph Gazette. But
the governor did not help his cause by telling the St.
Louis Republican after the killing: “I have no excuse to
make, no apologies to render to any living man for the
part I have played in this bloody drama . . . I am not
regretful of his death, and have no censure for the boys
who removed him. They deserve credit, is my candid,
solemn opinion. Why should these Ford boys be so
abused?”
Such are not the statements of political heroes.
When in 1882 Frank James stalked into the governor’s
office, unstrapped his guns and announced it was the
first time he had done that since his days riding with
Quantrill, the governor’s stock plummeted further.
Mobs cheered Frank James as he stood on train platforms on his way back to stand trial in Clay County.
Crittenden was booed.
Crittenden had hoped to win another term as governor and then to pick up the mantle of the illustrious
George Vest in the U.S. Senate, but the “James vote”
was now against him, and his party refused even to
renominate him for governor, leaving his political
career in ruins. By contrast, when Frank James
announced his support for Rough Rider Teddy Roosevelt after the turn of the century, the Missouri newspapers considered the endorsement important news and
a boost for TR.
See also: CHARLES FORD, ROBERT NEWTON FORD, JAMES
BROTHERS, DICK LITTLE.
Crittenden, Thomas T. (1832–1909) Missouri governor
The governor of Missouri during the last years of the
Jesse James gang’s reign, Thomas Crittenden clearly
conspired with the Ford brothers to kill the noted criminal leader, an act that was to have a profound effect on
his political career.
Crowley, Francis “Two Gun” (1911–1931) murderer
Francis “Two Gun” Crowley was perhaps the nearest
thing America produced to a 20th-century counterpart
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CUNNINGHAMS’ revenge
of Billy the Kid. The only differences were that Crowley
lived two years less and the Kid was never involved in
as fierce a gun battle as Crowley was. In a short but
violent criminal career, Crowley engineered a bank robbery, shot down a storekeeper in one of several
holdups, was involved in the murder of Virginia Banner, a dance hall hostess who had turned down his partner-in-crime, and killed Frederick Hirsch, a policeman
who had asked him for identification in a deserted spot
near North Merrick, Long Island.
By then the newspapers had labeled the sallowfaced 19-year-old Two Gun Crowley, a reputation he
would enhance in the most savage gun battle in the
history of New York City. On May 7, 1931, in what
was termed the “siege on West 90th Street,” Crowley
traded bullets with 300 police attackers from his hideout room, while his 16-year-old girlfriend, Helen
Walsh, and his partner, Rudolph Duringer, cowered
under a bed. The police poured more than 700 bullets
into the room, blasting away brick and mortar from
the building’s facade. In response, Crowley raced from
window to window firing back and throwing tear gas
cannisters lobbed into his room back to the street,
where they overcame a number of his besiegers. Fifteen thousand persons jammed against police barricades, often seeming about to press through the
barriers into the “no-man’s-land” where the battle
raged. More leaned out of neighboring windows, using
pillows as armrests. It was violent Dodge City transferred to a Depression-weary Manhattan, an event to
be savored. Finally, Crowley, shot four times and
weakened by tear gas, was overwhelmed by a police
assault squad that smashed through his door.
At his trial Crowley lived up to his press notices with
an air of bravado, bantering with reporters, officers
and the judge. He smirked when sentenced to the electric chair. In Sing Sing, Crowley maintained that attitude for a while. He fashioned a club out of a tightly
wrapped magazine bound with wire from his cot and
tried to slug a guard and escape from the death house.
He set fire to his cell. He took off his clothes, stuffed
the toilet with them and flooded the cell. Warden Lewis
E. Lawes ordered Crowley be kept naked. Still, the
youth looked for violence. He placed grains of sugar on
the floor, and whenever a fly settled there, he would kill
it and laugh.
Then slowly, Crowley changed. A starling flew into
the cell, and Crowley didn’t kill it. He fed it, and each
day the bird returned. “The prisoner had tamed the
bird,” Lawes noted. “But more surprising was the fact
that the tiny bird tamed the bandit.” The warden
allowed Crowley all his former privileges, and they
talked for hours. Lawes saw Crowley for what he was,
a pathetic youth with a mental age of 10, born illegiti-
mately and deserted by his mother. The only mother
he had ever known was a woman who took him from
a foundling home. He had had to work since the age
of 12.
Shortly before he was to be executed, a press syndicate offered him $5,000 for his signature on a series of
articles already written that purported to tell his life
story. Crowley rejected the deal, telling Lawes, “If
mother [meaning his foster mother] had that five grand
when I was a kid, maybe things would have been different.”
A few hours before he died, Crowley pointed to a
large water bug running around his cell floor. “See
that?” he said to Lawes. “I was about to kill it. Several
times I wanted to crush it. It’s a dirty looking thing. But
then I decided to give it a chance and let it live.” Lawes
doubted if Crowley even grasped the significance of his
remark.
He went to his death without the braggadocio of the
newspaper-bred Two Gun Crowley. “Give my love to
mother,” he called out to Lawes as the hood went over
his head.
Cunanan, Andrew (1969–1997) murderer of Gianni
Versace
Andrew Cunanan was, if there is such a thing, just an
average multiple killer—until he gained notoriety from
shooting and killing famed fashion designer Gianni
Versace outside his Florida mansion. Clues left at the
scene soon identified Cunanan as the killer, just as telltale evidence of his identity clumsily littered the scenes
of crimes he’d committed previously.
To the sensation-hungry media, such behavior was
reflective of his stature as one of the most daring and
brilliant criminals of the century: he disdained covering
things up because he knew he could always elude his
hunters, utilizing among other attributes his mastery of
the art of disguise. One had to assume he was like that
“damned elusive” Scarlet Pimpernel—here, there and
everywhere—and the police, like the French, knew not
where.
In Three Month Fever: The Andrew Cunanan Story
Gary Indiana noted that Cunanan’s killing of Versace
instantly made him a world-famous “diabolic icon.”
According to Indiana, the tabloid press magnified the
stories of his many disguises, among other matters, to
fashion “a homosexual golem to absorb every scary
fantasy about the gay community.”
Cunanan did indeed spin his disguises and deceptions through a lifetime of lies going back to childhood
to aggrandize his relatively humdrum existence. Thus
at times he could pose as the son of a Filipino plantation owner who had fled from the oppression of the
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CURRY, Big Nose George
Ferdinand Marcos regime, or as having a multimillionaire Israeli father who doted on him and gave him anything he wanted, or then again that he was himself a
major international drug dealer. In point of fact
Cunanan’s father had fled the States after embezzling
$106,000 from his company, after which his mother
was reduced to living in public housing in Eureka, Ill.
As for his being a major drug dealer, for a time he was
actually a drugstore clerk who sold prescription drugs
such as Prozac and Xanax on the street. Flashiness and
lies were part of his nature, and none of his acquaintances took him seriously for long, forcing him to constantly reinvent himself.
While still in his teens he learned the art of living off
very rich men. It would be wrong to say that Cunanan
was a simple hustler. He was rather a compensated
companion. He was very good looking and lent a touch
of class to the men he escorted, being well-versed in
current events, fine wines and etiquette. His companions tended to be very friendly and generous to him.
With younger men Cunanan was apparently into sadomasochism.
Thus Cunanan reinvented himself to accommodate
two different lifestyles. His most successful and fruitful
relationship with an older man was with an arts patron
in San Diego who moved among the La Jolla elite.
There were lavish gifts for Cunanan as well as a grand
tour of Europe with his patron. Then Cunanan mixed
his two lifestyles. He complained to his millionaire
friend that he was worth more. He got a hefty
allowance, a lavish apartment and more, but he was
not satisfied. Now his patron started viewing him as
more of a cheap hustler than a cherished companion.
The millionaire kicked him out, giving him severance
variously stated to have been $15,000 or $50,000.
Cunanan was crushed. He realized it would be harder
to reestablish himself in social circles. He was getting
older and going to paunch. He tried to maintain his ties
to younger friends and companions.
One was David Madsen, a young blond architect
from Minnesota. Madsen wanted to end his relationship with Cunanan, suspecting him of being involved in
some “shady dealings.” Madsen headed back to Minnesota in April 1997. Now low on funds and overdrawn on his credit cards, Cunanan managed to scrape
up the money for a one-way ticket to Minneapolis.
Madsen took his visitor to dinner but seemed to maintain a certain aloofness. Cunanan found Madsen now
had become closer to another friend, Jeffrey Trail,
whom he did not like and had that feeling returned
from Trail. Trail often objected to Cunanan’s use of
drugs. Fresh from rejection by his wealthy patron,
Cunanan suspected there was no way he could be a
part of the Madsen-Trail relationship.
Now the situation became unclear. Cunanan invited
Trail to come to Madsen’s loft apartment. It is unclear
if Madsen was present. What was a fact was that
Cunanan beat Trail to death with a claw hammer and
rolled the corpse in a carpet and stayed with it for two
days. On the second day, Madsen reappeared. The pair
were seen walking a dog and later, without the dog, the
pair drove to a lake outside Minneapolis. Cunanan shot
Madsen with Trail’s pistol and dumped the body where
it was later found by fishermen.
Authorities readily determined that Cunanan was
staying with Madsen but had disappeared. Plenty of
evidence was found to link him to the two murders.
But where was Andrew Cunanan?
It turned out Cunanan had moved on to Chicago.
Somehow he got to know Lee Miglin, one of Chicago’s
most successful real estate developers. Apparently
Cunanan used a fake gun to force the millionaire into
his garage, where he was bound and eventually murdered, his throat cut with a bow saw. Miglin was
wrapped in masking tape in bondage mask style. There
were also wounds from a garden tool on Miglin’s body,
indicating Cunanan had tortured him to reveal where
his money and some gold coins were. Then Cunanan
drove off in Miglin’s green Lexus.
Again there were plenty of clues left that linked
Cunanan, the murderer of Madsen and Trail, to the
Miglin murder as well. Madsen’s red jeep was left
behind. Again Cunanan was gone.
How he wound up in a Civil War cemetery in
Pennsville, N.J., not far from Philadelphia, was never
determined except that he may have decided he needed
new wheels. He shot caretaker William Reese to death
in the cemetery office, deserted the Lexus as too hot
and made off with a pickup truck.
Because most, but not all, his victims were gay, homosexuals around the country grew rather tense about
meeting young, dark-haired men.
It was known that Cunanan spent a few days in
Manhattan and then passed through Florence, S.C. But
where was he bound?
In Homicide: 100 Years of Murder in America, Gini
Graham Scott, Ph.D., surmised: “Knowing what we do
now, there seems only one reason Cunanan went all the
way to Miami: He was going to kill Versace because—
there seems no other explanation—he admired him yet
had no way to enter his circle of friends.”
It has never been established that Cunanan knew Versace. Cunanan had been present at a lavish party in San
Francisco to greet the fashion designer in celebration of
the work he’d done on a production of the Richard
Strauss opera Cappricio. According to Cunanan, Versace had thought he recognized him and introduced
himself but that he, Cunanan, brushed him off, saying,
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Cunninghams’ revenge
“If you’re Versace, I’m Coco Chanel.” That would have
been a typical claim for Cunanan to make, true or not.
In Miami Beach Gianni Versace went about his life.
He never suspected his lavish mansion and grounds in
South Beach were being watched. On Tuesday morning, Versace left to buy some publications at a newsstand, then turned around and walked back home. He
was in the process of inserting a key in the lock to the
gate when, innocuous in black shorts, gray T-shirt,
black cap and white tennis shoes, Cunanan stepped up
behind him. He fired two shots, leaving the designer
dying.
Again there were tons of clues identifying the culprit,
fingerprints and more. And now knowing what part of
the country he was in the law could marshal its forces
in vast numbers. Authorities located a garage where
Cunanan had stored the cemetery pickup. He had a
considerable library of clippings there covering the
manhunt for him.
The question was whether Cunanan was still in the
Miami area. Was he not, the media noted, a master of
disguise? He could be anywhere. The tabloids were
very grateful when some authorities speculated that
Cunanan might be disguised as a woman.
While the authorities pressed their search, Cunanan
had broken into a houseboat moored across from the
luxury hotels and condos on Collins Avenue. It had
been lavishly furnished by the owner, a Las Vegas club
operator. Cunanan was comfortably ensconced in surroundings of wealth. It was where he always wanted to
be. But where could he go next? The media had no
problem; he was a serial killer who would continue
with his killing spree.
But the shadows were closing in on Cunanan. He
had all the fame he could ever hope to achieve. He was
at a dead end. He knew sooner or later such vessels are
checked for intruders. There was no way he dared leave
and there was no way he dared stay.
Finally a caretaker did show up and spotted signs of
an intrusion. He called police. A SWAT team responded
and moved slowly through the boat. They found
Cunanan’s body propped up on two pillows in the bedroom of the master cabin on the second level. He was
dead, his gun in his lap.
The search for the master killer who had dared so
often for the authorities to catch him—or was so
clumsy he left a parcel of clues wherever he went—was
over.
Fittingly, the houseboat Cunanan occupied was demolished in January 1998. But the legend of a mythic killer
still remains.
In 1855 a band of 13 Mexican bandits, Juan Navarro’s
band, raided the Arizona ranch of Dave Cunningham
and made off with his daughter, 15-year-old Mary.
Cunningham and his two sons, John and Adrian, took
up the pursuit and soon discovered the sad fate of the
girl. She had been raped, and then she and her pinto
pony had been forced over a precipice. The trail of the
bandits showed they were headed for Mexico. The
older Cunningham turned back. He had a wife and
ranch to take care of. The two boys went on in what a
president of the United States would later call “the
most audacious feat ever brought to my attention.”
They tracked Navarro’s band to the town of Naco
and then on to Agua Prieta, where the gang had taken
over a cantina. One bandit came outside to relieve himself, and the brothers stabbed him to death with their
razor-sharp skinning knives. Soon, another bandit came
out to call to the first one. He met the same fate. Two
other bandits emerged, accompanied by a woman. John
jumped on one, neatly slitting his throat. Adrian, however, missed his man, who drew a long knife and gashed
Adrian’s arm before John came to the rescue and
stabbed the bandit. The woman began screaming and
the brothers fled. The remaining nine-man Navarro
band did not give chase but rode off, after shooting up
the town in anger. They obviously were not sure who or
how many men had done the killings.
Eventually, after a run-in with the Mexican police,
who were suspicious of their reasons for being in Mexico, the brothers again caught up with Navarro’s band
heading toward their home base at Chihuahua. They
crept close to the bandits’ sleeping camp and opened
fire. The brothers did not know how many they had
killed until dawn, when they found five corpses and the
tracks of four horses. Navarro was among the missing.
Now, however, Navarro knew he was being hunted
and set a trap for the two brothers. One bandit rode
ahead with the four horses while Navarro and the
other two bandits waited in ambush. In the ensuing
shoot-out two bandits were killed, but Adrian was
badly wounded in the leg. The brothers continued their
pursuit with Adrian suffering in agony. Only Navarro
and one other bandit were left. The Cunninghams had
no choice but to make their way to Chihuahua openly,
even though they knew Navarro would be waiting for
them. Gangrene had infected Adrian’s leg, and when
they reached the town, a doctor said there was no
alternative but amputation. Meanwhile, John Cunningham went out searching for the two bandits. He found
them in a cantina. On the lookout for any American,
they were instantly suspicious of him and may or may
not have recognized him. When John walked out of the
cantina, Navarro and the other bandit followed him.
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FPO
FIG #43
TO BE
PICKED-UP
FROM
PREVIOUS ED.
Firing a shot into President William McKinley’s stomach, assassin Leon Czolgosz cries, “I done my duty.”
Outside, John Cunningham whirled, drew two sixguns and opened fire. Both Mexicans dropped, and
John stepped over them and fired several more shots
into their bodies.
John Cunningham was arrested, but no charges
could be pressed against Adrian. While they languished
in Chihuahua, a detachment of U.S. cavalry under Maj.
Ben Hunt, returning from a mission to Mexico City,
passed through and heard of the affair. Maj. Hunt went
to see the Cunninghams. The niceties of Mexican law
did not impress Hunt; with a veiled threat of force, he
secured the release of John Cunningham and returned
the brothers to the United States. The Mexican government filed a protest, saying that what the brothers had
done amounted to an armed incursion into Mexican
sovereignty. A complete report of the affair was made
to President Franklin Pierce, who decided that the Cunninghams would not be extradited to Mexico. He
called their bloody ride “the most audacious feat ever
brought to my attention.” Eventually, Mexico let the
matter drop.
Curry, Big Nose George (1841–1882) outlaw and
murderer
Often confused with Kid Curry (Harvey Logan), Big
Nose George Curry (alias Flat Nose George Parrott,
alias George Manuse) stands in his own right as not
only a prolific stagecoach and train robber but also as
the biggest cattle rustler of the 1870s in the Powder
River region, Wyoming Territory. Harvey Logan, one
of the most prominent of the Wild Bunch, was so taken
with Big Nose’s criminal career that he appropriated
Curry as a nickname for himself.
Big Nose Curry was finally apprehended for the
1880 holdup of a Union Pacific train and the killing of
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CZOLGOSZ, Leon
Custom House Place Chicago vice district
two deputy sheriffs; he was sentenced to hang on April
3, 1882 in Rawlins, Wyo. A week before his slated execution, Big Nose broke out of jail but was immediately
captured by a mob that, taking unkindly to condemned
men escaping, resolved to hang him on the spot. Big
Nose was ordered to climb a ladder set against a lamp
post, put a rope around his own neck and jump. Big
Nose did, but the rope broke. While some of the mob
said another rope should be secured, others felt it wasn’t worth the effort and shot Big Nose to death as he
lay on the ground.
Even in death, Big Nose had a role to play. The local
druggist, Dr. J. E. Osborne, who was also the coroner,
performed an autopsy on the badman and in the
process helped himself to some of his parts. He peeled
off the hide from Big Nose’s chest, tanned it and made a
pair of slippers, which were still on display in a Rawlins
bank during the 1970s. Osborne, who incidentally
went on to become governor of Wyoming, fashioned
other tanned hide from the outlaw into a tobacco
pouch. When he had finished skinning Big Nose,
Osborne dropped the rest of the corpse into a barrel of
alcohol, put it out behind his premises and forgot about
it. The barrel was rediscovered in 1950 and caused
quite a stir until the dry bones therein were identified as
the old badman Big Nose Curry.
Of all the “brothel streets” in Chicago during the 19th
century, the one that gave the police the most trouble
was Custom House Place. Besides the standard bordellos, the street contained an abundance of panel houses,
where, by use of sliding panels, a male customer’s possessions would be stolen while he was involved with a
prostitute. A study in 1890 revealed there were almost
200 panel houses on Custom House Place, Plymouth
Place, and Clark and State Streets, with the greatest
number on Custom House Place.
Probably the most notorious business on Custom
House Place was at No. 202, a resort that functioned as
a standard brothel, as a panel house and as a meeting
place for some of the worst female ruffians of the 1880s
and 1890s. The house was run by Lizzie Davenport,
probably the biggest operator of panel houses in the
city and certainly the wealthiest. Among the women
who headquartered at No. 202 were Emma Ford, her
sister Pearl Smith, Flossie Moore and Mary White, better known as the Strangler. All these women functioned
as panel house workers, street muggers and holdup
artists. The Strangler was estimated by police to have
stolen more than $50,000 in less than three years.
Inside No. 202 it was quite common for 10 to 15 robberies to take place in a night. Because the house was
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D
to enter. Dahmer, having consumed a large amount of
beer, did not object, and the officers found a knife
under a bed in the two-room apartment. In a dresser
Dahmer, Jeffrey (1960–1994) the underinvestigated killer
In February 1992, 31-year-old Jeffrey L. Dahmer was
convicted of the murder of 15 young men and boys
(plus another one in a later prosecution), most of them
killed right in his apartment. Far from being on the
alert for a serial killer, the Milwaukee police did nothing to catch Dahmer early on—and actually were subjected to national outrage as being virtually guilty
themselves of ignorant complicity before the fact!
In one case, a Dahmer victim escaped naked and
bloodied from the killer’s apartment and raced screaming down the street. Three police officers who “investigated” simply decided the matter was no more than a
quarrel between gay lovers and turned the victim back
over to Dahmer without so much as checking out his
apartment. Dahmer took his victim in tow and after
terrorizing him for a few hours, he got around to
butchering him. It would be charged that if the victim
had been white, rather than a member of a minority—
in this case, a Laotian—the police would have been
more competent in the investigation.
Meanwhile Dahmer went on luring victims to his
home, drugging them, killing them to perform primitive
lobotomies by drilling holes in their heads in an effort
to make them into zombie-like sex slaves. Dahmer also
engaged in frightful practices of cannibalism and
necrophilia, descriptions of which are best left to medical texts.
On July 22, 1991 two police officers stopped a
black man running with a set of handcuffs around one
wrist. The man, near hysteria, told them a white man
with a big knife was saying he was going to cut out his
heart. The officers went to Dahmer’s home and asked
Jeffrey Dahmer, killer of 16 young men and boys, was
actually caught once by Milwaukee police but was
inexplicably let go. (Reuters/Corbis-Bettmann)
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DALTON brothers
drawer there were scores of photographs of homosexual acts and other pictures of apparently dead male
bodies and body parts. Opening the refrigerator, the
police found a human head. (It became a bit of talk
radio black humor that this find made the police somewhat suspicious.)
Dahmer was taken into custody, and detectives and
technicians took over a frightening search of the
premises. Body parts turned up in drawers, coolers,
closets, boxes and a large plastic drum. Checking missing persons reports, authorities were able to determine
the identities of the victims, ranging in age from late
teens to 30 years old. The victims were mostly black
but some were white, Hispanic, Laotian and American
Indian.
Since Wisconsin had no death penalty, Dahmer was
given 15 life sentences, plus one more for a fatal beating of an 18-year-old in Ohio. Only technically was
Dahmer spared execution. He and another prisoner,
Jesse Anderson, a wife killer, were attacked by prisoners while they were cleaning a washroom and shower
area in Columbia Correctional Center in Portage. Both
were killed with a metal club wielded by Christopher
Searver, who was doing life for robbery-murder.
Even in death, Dahmer did not escape a bizarre circumstance: Shackles were kept on him during his
autopsy as though there was some fear that he might
rise from the dead to kill again. His brain was preserved for forensic study.
Dalton, J. Frank
Dalton brothers
Contemporary rendering depicts the bloody demise of the
Dalton gang in Death Alley, Coffeyville, Kan
See JESSE JAMES—IMPOSTORS.
In Oklahoma the trio started up a gang that took in
such worthies as Charlie Bryant, Charley Pierce,
George Newcomb and Bill Doolin, who was to become
a more distinguished outlaw than any of the Daltons.
They pulled a few minor jobs, during which Doolin
was starting to think the Daltons were nothing like
their kinfolk, the Youngers.
The brothers, for their part, were determined to do
something big to make the West stand up and take
notice of them, and they came up with the idea of the
great Coffeyville Raid. They decided to hit the Kansas
town and pull a double bank job, robbing two institutions at the same time. It made sense to them, one
entrance into town, one escape from town and double
profits. Six men started out on the raid, but Doolin
pulled out when his horse went lame, perhaps thinking,
What am I doing with clowns like these?
On October 5, 1892 the three Daltons plus Dick
Broadwell and Bill Powers rode into the Coffeyville
town plaza and set about holding up the Condon and
First National banks. They had done no recent scouting
outlaws
The outlaw Dalton brothers might have become great
bandits in the tradition of their cousins, the Younger
brothers, who rode with Jesse James, had they not
come into the Wild West just as it was taming down.
Law and order were taking over, but the Daltons
refused to believe it. They were driven to make a name
for themselves.
Oddly enough, four of the brothers—Frank, Gratton, Robert and Emmett—first pinned on U.S. marshal
badges for Hanging Judge Parker’s court in Fort Smith,
Ark., and Frank was killed in the line of duty. Evidently, the surviving brothers plus younger William
were unimpressed by Judge Parker’s hang-’em-high
policies and decided to hit the outlaw trail. They
headed for California, where they pulled a few small
capers and then tried a train robbery in 1891. Bill was
caught and sent to prison for 25 years. Grat was given
the same sentence but escaped and rejoined Bob and
Emmett, and they hightailed it back east.
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DALTON brothers
The end of the Daltons. Photo shows corpses of (left to right) Bill Powers, Bob Dalton, Grat Dalton and Dick Broadwell.
Only Emmett made it to the end of the alley and
could have gotten away, but in a show of brotherly
devotion, he turned back to try to save Bob, whom he
idolized. Dying, Bob moaned: “Don’t mind me, boy.
I’m done for. Don’t surrender! Die game!”
Emmett was still trying to pull Bob up in the saddle
when he was felled by 18 buckshot in the back. Of the
five, only Emmett survived. He was sentenced to life in
the Kansas State Penitentiary. Ironically, his act of
pointless heroism at Coffeyville gave the Daltons their
greatest claim to fame.
In 1895 Bill Dalton, released from prison, was killed
by a posse in Oklahoma Territory. Emmett Dalton was
pardoned in 1907 and moved to California, where he
prospered as a building contractor. He also did some
writing for the movies and appeared in small roles in
some of his own epics. His main literary work was entitled When the Daltons Rode, which appeared in 1931,
six years before the last of the Daltons died. It purported to be a true account of the Daltons’ activities
but has never been regarded as overly accurate or incisive. The fact is the Daltons never understood they had
been born a quarter of a century too late. Emmett
showed that in 1910 when a New York reporter asked
and found the hitching posts in front of both banks had
been removed because workmen were busy on the
street. The bandits had to leave their horses in an
alley—Death Alley, it would be called later—about a
block away. They came out of Death Alley carrying
Winchesters and broke off in two groups to head for
the banks. The scene was noted by a local citizen, Alec
McKenna, who thought he even recognized one or two
of the men as Daltons. Watching from a distance,
McKenna spotted weapons being pointed in one of the
banks and sounded the alarm. The robbers still might
have gotten away in time had they not had to wait
around for a time lock to open one of the safes.
By the time the gang emerged from the two banks,
half the town was armed and laying for them. In the
next two hectic minutes, four citizens of Coffeyville
died from the outlaws’ gunfire, but the Dalton gang
would ride no more. None of them survived the race
through Death Alley, although they did make it to their
horses. Charlie Connelly, the town marshal, traded bullets with Grat Dalton, and both fell dead. Broadwell
was shot out of his saddle, and both Powers and Bob
Dalton were gunned down by John Kloehr, a livery stable owner.
244
DANIELS, James
his expert opinion on how to keep the city cleansed of
crime. The reformed outlaw earnestly advised, “Guard
the entrances to the town.”
tunate name notwithstanding. Sam Fooy, a half-breed
who had murdered a schoolteacher during a robbery,
had made peace with himself and was ready, even eager,
to die. John Whittingham, who had clubbed and knifed
a drinking companion to death, left behind a written
condemnation of “demon rum.” Edmund Campbell,
convicted of a double-passion slaying, had nothing to
say. James H. Moore, a horse thief and murderer, spotted a friend in the crowd, waved and called, “Good-bye,
Sandy.” And Dan Evans, who had killed an 18-year-old
for his boots, surveyed the throng from the high platform and opined, “There are worse men here than me.”
After prayers led by four local clergymen, Maledon
slipped black masks over the men’s heads and adjusted
the nooses of specially ordered Kentucky hemp rope
around their necks. He clambered down the 12 steps
and pressed the trigger-release. Six bodies hurtled into
an 8-foot drop. Not a single body twitched. All had
died instantly of broken necks rather than suffering
slow strangulation. Hangman Maledon was proud of
his handiwork and certainly the local citizenry was satisfied both with the show and the demonstration of
quick, unyielding justice.
The hangings received coast-to-coast newspaper coverage, and the reaction was generally far from laudatory.
Newspaper readers were horrified over the simultaneous
public hangings, although most probably, they would
readily have accepted such executions if performed separately. Judge Parker bore the brunt of the public revulsion, being regarded as a monster who enjoyed wholesale
executions and gaining for the first time the sobriquet of
Hanging Parker, a name that would stick to him during
the 21 years of his judicial reign. Despite the criticism,
Parker and Maledon continued their brand of legal retribution, although never again would six doomed men do
the Dance of Death at one time. Thereafter, the top number was five.
See also: GEORGE MALEDON, ISAAC “HANGING JUDGE”
PARKER.
Daly, John (1839–1864) Western outlaw
The head of perhaps the most vicious gang to terrorize
the Nevada gold fields in the 1860s, John Daly, a young
gunfighter from California who followed the gold trail,
firmly believed in what might be called “criminal vigilantism.” He felt that resistance by law-abiding elements called for their lynching. Because of these fear
tactics, the Daly gang operated with a great deal of
impunity and left a trail of robbery and murder from
Aurora to Carson City. In 1863 one of Daly’s confederates, Jim Sears, tried some horse stealing and was shot
dead by an employee of William R. Johnson. Daly
promptly held Johnson responsible for this act of resistance and prepared to exercise his form of vigilante justice. On February 1, 1864 Daly and three of his men
cornered Johnson and made an example of him by cutting his throat and setting his body aflame. Daly later
boasted of the work of “us vigilantes,” but it developed
that what he had accomplished was not the quashing of
all resistance but the planting of a powerful suggestion.
The Citizens’ Protective Association was set up, and
exactly one week after the Johnson assassination, Daly
and three members of his gang, Johnny McDowell,
William Buckley and Jim Masterson, were seized separately before they suspected what was afoot and were
summarily hanged outside Aurora’s Armory Hall.
Dance of Death
famed multiple hangings
Probably no simultaneous public hangings in the 19th century produced more protests than the celebrated Dance of
Death at Fort Smith, Ark. on September 3, 1875.
Six condemned men had been found guilty in Hanging Judge Parker’s so-called Court of the Damned and
were sentenced to die on a special 12-man gallows constructed by George Maledon, who became known as
Parker’s Lord High Executioner. This first multiuse of
the gallows brought out a crowd of 5,000 eager citizens.
Jamming into the fort compound, families came by the
wagonload from as far as 50 to 60 miles away to witness
the first dispensation of Parker-style justice. Youngsters
mounted the walls of the fort for a better view; however,
the more comfortable vantage points were reserved for
gentlemen of the press from St. Louis, Kansas City,
Philadelphia, New York and Boston, among others.
At exactly 9:30 A.M. the six men were brought to the
gallows. One, a Cherokee named Smoker Mankiller,
had been found guilty of killing his white neighbor but
protested to the end that he had not done so, his unfor-
Daniels, James (?–1865) murderer and vigilante victim
Called the “vigilante’s experiment,” murderer James
Daniels was the first prisoner of the famous Montana
Vigilance Committee of the 1860s to be turned over to
the law instead of being promptly lynched. The experiment was not a glowing success and the vigilantes did
not make the same mistake twice—at least not with the
same man.
A bad-tempered Californian, Daniels stabbed to
death a man named Gartley in a dispute over cards.
When she heard of her husband’s death, Mrs. Gartley
suffered a fatal heart attack. Normally, Daniels would
have faced quick vigilante action, but times were
245
DANIELS, Murl
changing in the territory, and many citizens—even vigilance committee members—were convinced the politic
thing to do was to hand over Daniels for trial in the
regular courts of justice. And they prevailed.
In view of the extenuating circumstance—both men
had gone after each other at the same time—Daniels
was found guilty only of murder in the second degree
and was sent to prison for three years. If that conclusion galled a number of citizens, it was nothing compared to the feelings aroused when Daniels was granted
a pardon after only a few months. It appeared that the
pardon may have resulted from a clerical error, but the
matter was soon academic. Daniels returned to the
scene of his crime and made it clear he intended to
wage war on the vigilantes who had brought him to
justice. In Daniels’ case such loose talk was a capital
matter, and he was seized by vigilantes on his first night
in Helena and hanged forthwith. It was a considerable
length of time before the vigilantes decided their experiment with established justice was worth trying again.
See also: PROFESSOR THOMAS J. DIMSDALE.
ris. They took the three of them to a cornfield outside
of town and ordered them to take off their clothes, in
order to make it more difficult for them to give an
alarm if they worked themselves loose from their
bindings, but then the pair realized that they had
neglected to bring any rope with them. So instead,
they shot and killed all three and fled to Cleveland.
When they were identified as the killers an intensive
manhunt was mounted. Daniels and West raced
around the state, killing a farmer to get his car and
later a truck driver for his truck.
They almost made it out of the state with the truck, a
haulaway carrying new Studebaker cars. They were
waved through a number of police roadblocks until one
sheriff realized that the truck was headed back toward the
auto plant instead away from it. The two were ordered to
stop, and West started shooting, hitting a guard before he
himself was killed. Daniels surrendered meekly and went
to the electric chair on January 3, 1949.
Danites
alleged Mormon murder squads
There was a time when almost every anti-Mormon in
the West was certain that the Mormon Church had a
special terrorist killer squad charged with the violent
eradication of all those who opposed the Mormons.
According to the belief, Brigham Young had organized
these Destroying Angels, or Danites, who operated as a
separate cell of the church and took on all assignments
involving death or violence. In an interview with
Horace Greeley, Young emphatically denied their existence. Real or not, the story of the Danites was widely
believed, and every Mormon charged with a crime
would be labeled a Danite. The belief, of course, kept
anti-Mormonism at fever pitch for many years.
Daniels, Murl (1924–1949) mass murderer
With another parolee, Murl Daniels committed a series
of senseless murders in Ohio in 1948, making him the
quarry in what came to be labeled the “greatest manhunt in Ohio history.”
Both Daniels, a psychopath, and his partner, John
Coulter West, had done time at the Mansfield Reformatory, where, said Daniels, they had formed a compact
that they would return someday to “take care” of one
or more of the guards who had mistreated them. At the
time, Daniels was serving a one-to-25-year term for a
stickup and West, a feeble-minded man, was doing a
one-to-seven-year stretch for stealing tires off a truck.
Some critics of the American justice and penal systems
have said that Daniels never should have been paroled,
while others have insisted that the state was negligent
in permitting an inmate such as West to mingle with a
dangerous psychopath like Daniels.
When the two were paroled, they teamed up to
commit stickups throughout the Midwest, finally
killing a tavern owner during a robbery. They continued to rove the Midwest, committing several more
holdups before they remembered their compact about
killing some of their former guards. They headed for
Mansfield, especially determined to kill a guard
named Harris. But they were unable to locate him.
They then decided to get Harris’ address from his
superior, John Elmer Niebel, who was in charge of the
reformatory farm. They awakened Niebel about midnight and decided they would have to hold him and
his wife and daughter until after they had killed Har-
Dannan, Emmanuel (1843–1851) murder victim, folk hero
Known as the “boy who wouldn’t lie,” eight-year-old
Emmanuel Dannan became an instant Wisconsin folk
hero when he was killed by his adopted parents,
Samuel Norton and his wife, in 1851. Both of
Emmanuel’s English-immigrant parents died before he
was five years old, and he was saved from the poorhouse by an uncle, who unfortunately died a year later.
The Samuel Nortons then adopted the child.
Emmanuel was eight when he happened to see his
stepparents murder a peddler. The Nortons ordered the
boy to lie to the police, but he said he would not. He was
hanged by his wrists from the rafters of the family’s log
cabin deep in the woods and beaten with willow
switches for two hours. During his ordeal the only thing
the boy would say was, “Pa, I will not lie!” After two
hours the boy’s spirit was still unbroken, but his body
246
DARROW, Clarence Seward
was and he died. The facts came out in an investigation,
and the Nortons were both sent to prison for seven
years, while Emmanuel’s tale spread throughout the area.
There was talk of erecting a monument to his memory, and a total of $1,099.94 was collected, only to be
siphoned off by a fund-raiser. Over the years the story
of Emmanuel Dannan’s bravery became part of the
state’s folklore, and finally, on May 2, 1954 a monument was erected in his memory at Montello, Wis. The
inscription read, “Blessed are they which are persecuted
for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of
Heaven.” Since then, Truth Day in Montello has been
celebrated every May 2.
famous lawyer represented more than 50 accused murderers, many of whom were definitely guilty.
Born in the Ohio farmlands in 1857, Darrow’s formal education ended after he finished the equivalent of
one year of high school. He continued to study law
books at night, however, and saved up enough money
to go to law school. In 1878 Darrow was admitted to
the bar and soon became a political reformer, backing
the ill-fated John Peter Altgeld’s efforts in Illinois. Later,
he was a well-paid corporation lawyer, but his natural
sympathies lay with the working man, and in 1894 he
rejected the business world to defend labor leader
Eugene V. Debs in connection with the Pullman strike.
He earned the permanent enmity of business when in
1906 he successfully defended radical labor leader Big
Bill Haywood on a murder charge. However, he was
forced to plead labor men James McNamara and John
J. McNamara guilty in the 1910 bombing of the Los
Angeles Times, a decision that had a shattering effect
on the Western labor movement. The unions refused to
pay him his $50,000 fee in the case, and the prosecution, prodded by Times publisher and rabid anti-union-
Darrow, Clarence Seward (1857–1938) defense lawyer
America’s greatest lawyer, Clarence Darrow, had been
practicing before the bar for 16 years when in 1894 he
took on the case of a convicted murderer who was
appealing to a higher court. Darrow lost and the man,
Robert Prendergast, was hanged. He was the first—and
last—Darrow client to be executed, although the
FPO
FIG # 47
TO BE
PICKED-UP
FROM
PREVIOUS ED.
The Great Defender, Clarence Darrow, is shown in shirt sleeves, at the Monkey Trial. Standing behind him in light jacket
is schoolteacher John Scopes.
247
DAUGHERTY, Roy
of making his case to a judge. From experience, Darrow knew that while a juror might convict and thus
doom a defendant if his vote was only 1/12 of the decision, that same juror would draw back if his vote alone
was the deciding factor. He shrewdly viewed the judge,
a humane jurist, John Caverly, as no different than the
average juror.
Although both sides presented expert psychiatric testimony, Darrow knew in the end that he would have to
sway the judge with his summation, in part because he
himself probably recognized his two clients were homicidal. Throughout the trial Darrow had had trouble
keeping them from smirking in court and hamming it
up for photographers outside the court. Public opinion
had been against the two rich boys from the beginning
and became even more so because of their mannerisms
during the trial.
For two days Darrow summarized his case, maintaining his clients were not murderers but two boys
who had taken a human life because they were mentally and morally sick, victims of complicated, often
misunderstood forces, buried deep in their past. He
ended by declaring: “Your Honor, if these two boys
hang, you must order them to hang. It will be entirely
up to you, Your Honor. There must be no division of
responsibility here, Your Honor. The sentencing of
these boys to die must be an act on your part alone.
Such a sentencing must be your own cold, deliberate,
premeditated act, without the slightest chance to shift
any part of the responsibility. Your Honor alone stands
between these boys and the trap door of the scaffold.”
Darrow’s gamble of bypassing a jury trial worked.
The judge sentenced the pair to life imprisonment.
The following year Darrow won worldwide acclaim
in Tennessee’s famous Monkey Trial, in which he
dueled with William Jennings Bryan over the theory of
evolution. Darrow’s client, a young schoolteacher
named John Scopes, was convicted of teaching evolution, a decision that was almost inevitable considering
the time and the place, and fined $100, but the famous
lawyer clearly won the case against Bryan in the world
of public opinion.
Darrow published his autobiography in 1932, six
years before he died at the age of 81.
See also: JOHN P. ALTGELD, WILLIAM J. BURNS, WILLIAM
D. “BIG BILL” HAYWOOD, LOS ANGELES TIMES BOMBING,
LEOPOLD AND LOEB, MASSIE CASE, MISTAKEN IDENTITY,
HARRY ORCHARD, EARL ROGERS, JOHN T. SCOPES.
ist Harrison Gray Otis, tried to convict him of jury
tampering. Darrow beat the charges, but he never again
took a labor-related case.
He continued to achieve considerable success, however, in leading criminal cases. Darrow’s secret, he
admitted, was his ability to pick a jury, which he considered the most important part of any case. “Get the
right men in the box,” he said, “and the rest is window
dressing.” Darrow would seldom accept a German or a
Swede for a jury. A German, he felt, was too bullheaded and too “law and order” oriented and a Swede
also too stubborn. His favorite jurors were Irishmen
and Jews. Both, he felt, were highly emotional and easily moved to sympathy. He often said the perfect jury
was six Irishmen and six Jews. “Give me that combination in the box,” he remarked often, “and I could get
Judas Iscariot off with a five dollar fine.”
Darrow also preferred older men to younger ones.
An older man, he said, was more sympathetic to the
jams other men got into. In important cases Darrow
assigned investigators to look into the lives of prospective jurors and would come into court with a dossier on
all the veniremen, aware of their foibles, their likes and
dislikes, and their prejudices. Through the years Darrow was never troubled by the testimony of experts
against his clients. His handling of a medical witness
called to testify that an accident victim would soon be
up and around was typical; it ran:
“You came here from out of town to testify for the company, Doctor?”
“Yes.”
“And you had a nice trip?”
“Yes, Mr. Darrow.”
“How much are you getting for testifying, Doctor—over
and above the expenses of your trip?”
“Three hundred dollars.”
Darrow then turned to the jury, raised his eyebrows
and, still looking at the jurors rather than the witness,
growled, “That will be all, Doctor.”
Once Darrow implied that an expert was a money
grubber, he never deigned to concern himself with what
the witness had to say—and usually neither did the jury.
There is no record of how much money Darrow
made in a year. There were years when he made over
$100,000, but others when, bogged down in cases with
penniless clients, he netted very little. Even in what was
perhaps his most famous case—that of thrill-slayers
Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb in 1924, two
wealthy Chicago youths whom he saved from execution—his clients, the boys’ parents, reneged on paying
him the major part of his fee.
The Leopold and Loeb case showed Darrow’s courtroom genius at its best, passing up a jury trial in favor
Daugherty, Roy (1871–1924) outlaw
One of the few Western bank robbers to make the transition from riding a horse to driving an automobile in
his line of work, Roy Daugherty, better known as
248
DAVIS, Angela
at the University of California at Los Angeles. In 1972
Davis was charged with kidnapping, murder and conspiracy in connection with the highly publicized shootout at the Marin County Courthouse in San Raphael,
Calif. in August 1970. Before she was brought to trial,
Davis fled and was placed on the FBI’s list of the 10
most wanted fugitives.
Born in Birmingham, Ala., Davis took part, with her
mother, in civil rights demonstrations during the mid1950s. After graduation from Brandeis University and
two years of postgraduate study in West Germany, she
enrolled in the University of California at San Diego in
1967 to study under marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse. Growing more radical in her political beliefs,
Davis became involved with a number of militant black
organizations, including the Black Panthers. In 1968
she joined the Communist Party. The following year
Davis was hired to teach four courses in philosophy at
UCLA. Within a few short months she was dismissed
from her position after her membership in the Communist Party was revealed by an ex-FBI informer. She won
reinstatement under court order and in 1969–70 her
courses were described as among the most popular on
campus. The school administration monitored her
classes and found them “excellent,” but the Board of
Regents, which included Gov. Ronald Reagan, refused
to reappoint her.
What most upset the regents was her speeches in
support of the Soledad Brothers, the name given to a
group of black prisoners at Soledad Prison who had
organized a marxist revolutionary collective among the
convicts. Three of the Brothers, George Jackson, Fleeta
Drumgo and John Cluchette, were accused of murdering a white prison guard a short time after three other
blacks involved in a fistfight had been shot dead by a
tower guard, an action the local district attorney had
labeled justifiable homicide.
Davis became a principal figure in the Soledad
Brothers’ Defense Committee, organized in support of
the three prisoners. She established a clandestine correspondence with George Jackson even before meeting
him. Eventually, the charges against Jackson, Drumgo
and Cluchette were dismissed.
Meanwhile, after receiving threats against her life,
Davis legally bought several guns for the defense of
Soledad House, her base during the trial of the trio. On
August 7, 1970 Jonathan Jackson, George’s teenage
brother, and Davis’ constant companion during this
period, took the guns Davis had purchased and entered
the Marin County Courthouse, where a San Quentin
prisoner, James McClain, was on trial for a prison stabbing. Jackson’s plan was to free McClain and two other
inmates there to testify in McClain’s defense and to
Arkansas Tom, was born in to a very religious Missouri
family; two of his older brothers became preachers.
Leaving home in his early teens, he turned up in Oklahoma Territory and by 1892 was riding with the notorious Doolin gang.
He was with Bill Doolin and his men in the epic Battle of Ingalls on September 1, 1893 and was the only
member of the gang captured there. While the other
gang members were in Murray’s Saloon, Arkansas Tom
was sleeping in his room at the Pierce Hotel when a
posse of 13 lawmen headed by Jim Masterson, Bat’s
brother, came thundering into town. When the shooting started, Arkansas Tom climbed up on the hotel roof
for a better overview and from there killed Deputy Tom
Houston and probably killed Deputy Ike Steel. His
sharpshooting permitted the rest of the Doolin gang to
fight their way out of town with only one man
wounded, but Arkansas Tom was trapped on the hotel
roof. An hour-long shoot-out ended when Tom Masterson got hold of several sticks of dynamite and threatened to blow up the entire building and Arkansas with
it. Arkansas Tom laid down his arms and surrendered.
For his part in the Battle of Ingalls, Daugherty was
sentenced to 50 years in prison, but he was paroled in
1910, in large part due to the efforts of his preacher
brothers. Arkansas Tom vowed to go straight after that.
Nonetheless, he took part in a bank job in Neosho, Mo.
in 1916. Sent back to prison, he was not released until
November 11, 1921. Arkansas Tom was soon identified as having been involved in another bank stickup,
this time in Asbury, Mo., but he managed to stay out of
the way of the law until August 6, 1924, when a young
policeman recognized him in Joplin, Mo. Arkansas had
managed the switch from horses to cars in bank robberies easily enough, but the switch in clothing fashions
was more difficult for the old-fashioned gunfighter.
Back in his younger days, Arkansas Tom was quite a
fast draw, but in 1924 it wasn’t common practice to
walk around with hip holsters. While fast-draw Tom
was trying to claw his shooting iron out of his back
pocket, the policeman easily cut him down.
See also: DOOLIN GANG; INGALLS, OKLAHOMA TERRITORY, BATTLE OF.
d’Autremont brothers See EDWARD OSCAR
HEINRICH.
Davis, Angela (1944– ) political activist and accused
murderess
Few political figures in recent years have been so
enmeshed in a criminal case as black activist Angela
Davis, a former acting assistant professor of philosophy
249
DAVIS, Jack
would prove no different now. Western historians have
delighted in telling of the gang’s misadventures. The
first stage they attempted to hold up just never stopped
despite their murderous gunplay. The next two stages
did stop, but the first was devoid of passengers, gold
or cash. The second yielded only $30 from four flatbroke passengers; the road agents gave each $1 for
breakfast money. Another stage robbery brought in a
gold watch and $3. The one after that produced $6.
The gang was clearly operating at a loss, and Davis
suggested they try a train. Bass was dubious but did
concede that Davis had a record of a big score in the
train-robbing field.
Surprisingly, the gang executed a train holdup at Big
Springs, Neb., on September 18, 1877 that was a
crowning success, the loot totaling $60,000. The gang
then scattered. Collins and two others were shot down
in gunfights with the law, and only Davis, Bass and one
other member avoided pursuers. Davis drifted on to
New Orleans, where he presumably dropped his
$10,000 share of the loot at the gaming tables. In any
event, by 1879 he was back in Nevada robbing stagecoaches with his accustomed lack of success. In fact, his
bad luck in this field may have resulted in his death. A
bandit tried to hold up a stage at Willow station and
wounded one of the guards. The other guard was
Eugene Blair, a legendary Wells Fargo shotgun rider
with an amazing record of dispatching road agents. He
did so in this case with two hefty charges from a scattergun in the bandit’s face, which made recognition of
the outlaw impossible. Blair insisted he had a look at
the man first and it was Jack Davis. However, there
were reports as late as 1920 that Davis was alive in
Nicaragua.
See also: SAM BASS, JOHN T. CHAPMAN.
take white hostages who would be held as ransom for
the release of the Soledad Brothers. Passing guns to the
three convicts, Jackson supervised the taking of five
hostages from the courthouse, including Judge Harold
Haley and District Attorney Gary Thomas. A gunfight
erupted in the parking lot and Judge Haley, Jackson
and two of the inmates were killed, while Thomas was
badly wounded and left permanently paralyzed.
Because the guns were owned by her, Davis was
indicted on charges of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy. She went into hiding and became the object of a
nationwide search. Two months later, she was captured
by the FBI in a New York City motel and extradited
back to California. While she was held without bail in
California, a worldwide Free Angela movement sprang
up. Finally, Davis was released on $102,000 bail.
During her trial, which finally began on February
28, 1972 after a series of procedural delays, the prosecution’s case proved to be astonishingly fragile, based
on the premise that Davis’ “passion for George Jackson”—who had been killed in August of the previous
year while allegedly attempting to escape from prison—
had led her to plot the courthouse kidnappings. The
defense countered that there was absolutely no evidence linking Davis to the kidnapping or to the planning of it. On June 4, 1972 a jury of 11 whites and one
Mexican-American acquitted her on all counts following 13 hours of deliberation.
Davis, Jack (?1845–1879?) train robber
On November 4, 1870 Jack Davis, a leader of the
Davis-Chapman gang, pulled the first train robbery in
the Far West, holding up the Central Pacific’s Train No.
1 near Verdi, Nev. The job netted more than $40,000.
As successful as he was at train robbing, Davis was a
failure at most other criminal endeavors. He appeared
as a not too successful gambler around Virginia City in
the late 1860s. Davis was suspected of having taken
part in some small-time stagecoach holdups but the
charges never stuck. Early in 1870 he linked up with
John Chapman, the superintendent of a Sunday school
in Reno, and together they plotted to imitate the trainrobbing exploits of the Reno gang of Indiana. Their
first robbery was a success, but careless free spending
by some of the gang eventually led to their capture.
Davis was sentenced to 10 years and Chapman to 20.
Davis got out after serving less than six years and
went back on the outlaw trail, joining up with a couple
of young hard cases named Joel Collins and Sam Bass
from Texas; the latter would go on to become a legend
on his own. With a few other men, the trio went into
the stagecoach-robbing business, a line that had never
proved too remunerative for Davis. And it certainly
Day, Gertie (1895–1915) murder victim
The 1915 murder of Gertie Day is memorable mainly
because her killer was trapped thanks to his ignorance
of the unusual properties of dynamite. Her killing followed the pattern of An American Tragedy: a young
girl gets pregnant, tells her lover and is murdered by
him. In Gertie’s case her lover was more than two
decades older, George Morton Field, the richest man in
Mustoch, Kan., a small community 30 miles west of
Atchison.
Field was also the religious leader of the community,
having contributed generously to local church building
funds. When a visiting preacher was not on hand, Field
often gave the sermon from the pulpit. They were frequently of the fire-and-brimstone variety, promising
damnation to all sinners. Field, however, was not one
to heed his own dire warnings and seduced young,
250
DE KAPLANY, Dr. Geza
rosy-cheeked Gertie, whose full alto voice was the pride
of the church choir.
Unfortunately, Gertie became pregnant and informed
Field he had better find a solution to her problem. Gertie agreed to accept $2,000 and leave the area, but Field
soon realized he would be open to blackmail from the
girl and decided to kill her, thus protecting his good
name for sure. He journeyed to Kansas City to purchase
all the necessary ingredients for a bomb and then
arranged a meeting with Gertie at the church late one
night.
While Gertie awaited her $2,000, Field crept under
the wooden church and planted his paper-wrapped
homemade bomb. He returned home just as the bomb
exploded, killing Gertie and totally demolishing the
church.
Field felt free of suspicion, not realizing that he had
unwittingly wrapped the dynamite bomb in paper on
which he had started to compose a new church sermon. As is often the case in dynamite explosions, the
material closest to the dynamite was not totally
destroyed. Sheriff James R. Carter, a famous Kansas
peace officer of the time, found enough of the sermon
text to realize that Field was implicated, a fact confirmed when store clerks in Kansas City identified him
as the man who had bought the makings of a bomb.
Field was sentenced to life imprisonment and died in
1926.
Daybreak Boys
cers named Blair, Spratt and Gilbert killed 12 of the
gang in various gun battles in 1858. By the end of 1859
the gang, having lost so many of its leaders, broke up,
although individual members still remained dangerous
criminals on their own for years afterward.
De Feo, Ronald, Jr. (1951– ) mass murderer
In November 1974 Ronald De Feo, Jr., stunned Amityville, Long Island by shooting to death his mother,
father, two brothers and two sisters as they slept. It
marked the start of what can only be described as a
“murder groupie” rage.
The type of killings De Feo perpetrated is hardly
unusual on police blotters, yet his crime supposedly
made the house haunted. The alleged ghostly experiences of its next owners were described in a book, The
Amityville Horror, which became a best-seller.
As for De Feo himself, no more than a necessary
prop in the ghostly tales that followed, he tried unsuccessfully to plead insanity and was sentenced in 1975 to
a total of 150 years imprisonment.
de Kaplany, Dr. Geza (1926– ) murderer
Dubbed the Acid Doctor, Dr. Geza de Kaplany committed what one expert called “the most horrendous single
murder in American history” and caused a further
scandal when he was paroled. Dr. de Kaplany was an
anesthetist at a San Jose, Calif. hospital. He wooed and
eventually married his 25-year-old fiancée, Hajna, a
part-time model and leading beauty of California’s
Hungarian community, largely on the basis of his professional status. The marriage proved a failure. Exactly
why is not absolutely clear: according to the prosecution in the subsequent murder trial, de Kaplany was
unable to consummate the marriage, but the defense
contended his love had been rejected. For whatever reason, de Kaplany decided in his own words, “to ruin her
beauty.”
He assembled an elaborate torture kit in their honeymoon apartment and, on the evening of August 27,
1962, even stopped off to get a manicure so as not to
puncture the rubber gloves he would wear. Exactly
what de Kaplany did early the following morning, during what he called “my one-hour crackup” is best left
to the medical texts. In any event, neighbors in the
building got annoyed by loud music from the de
Kaplany apartment, and despite the music, they could
hear some terrible wailing. The police were summoned,
and they took Hajna away, her once lovely face and
body now covered with third-degree, corrosive burns.
Careless ambulance attendants burned their own hands
moving her body.
New York criminal gang
Although no member was much over the age of 20,
the Daybreak Boys were among the most desperate
New York gangs in the 1850s. It was said that no one
could join the gang until he had killed at least one
man, but this was an exaggeration since some members were as young as 12 or even 10 and hadn’t yet
advanced to homicide. However, once in the gang,
such delinquents were quickly initiated in the practice.
Police estimated conservatively that from 1850 to
1852 alone the gang committed at least 20 murders—
and more likely over 40—and stole loot worth
$200,000. What made the gang so fearsome was its
habit of scuttling ships just to demonstrate its power
and willingness to kill even when there was no hope
for gain. The roster of leaders of the gang was a who’s
who of the most dangerous criminals in New York
during the 1850s: Nicholas Saul, Bill Howlett, Patsy
the Barber, Slobbery Jim, Cowlegged Sam McCarthy
and Sow Madden.
In time, the depredations of the Daybreak Boys
became so troublesome the police declared a virtual
war on them and killed with an abandon that matched
the tactics of the Daybreakers themselves. Three offi251
DE PALMA,William
The bedroom resembled a torture chamber, the bedclothes virtually disintegrated in acid. There were bottles of nitric, sulfuric and hydrochloric acids in a leather
case. Also found were rubber gloves, a roll of adhesive
tape and a note that read, “If you want to live—do not
shout; do what I tell you; or else you will die.”
Hajna did die but only after suffering excruciating
pain for three weeks in a hospital, with her mother
praying for her death and nurses unable to look at de
Kaplany’s handiwork.
During his trial, at which he pleaded both “not
guilty” and “not guilty by reason of insanity,” de
Kaplany denied wanting to kill his wife, only to mar
her looks. He was convicted and escaped with just one
life sentence because the jury was assured by a
spokesman for the state prison system that he would be
classified a “special interest prisoner,” that is, someone
almost certain never to be paroled. To add to that precaution, the judge ordered that photographs of de
Kaplany’s wife’s body be kept in his file. Later on, it
was discovered the pictures had not remained there
very long.
Many Californians were both amazed and shocked
when they heard an announcement in 1976 that de
Kaplany had been paroled and quietly put aboard a
plane to Taiwan. Pressed for an explanation, the Adult
Authority, the state parole board, said that de Kaplany
had been released six months ahead of any possible
scheduled parole because a missionary hospital in Taiwan urgently needed the skills of a cardiac specialist.
Since de Kaplany was not a heart specialist but an anesthesiologist whose skills had wasted for 13 years and
whose medical license had been revoked, the explanation seemed implausible. The uproar over the parole of
a murderer many people thought would never be
released from prison was tempered only by the fact that
he prudently had been sent out of the country.
Byrnes of the New York City police announced on
March 12, 1880 the establishment of a “dead line” at
Fulton Street. He said known criminals would be
“dead,” i.e., arrested, if they were found south of the
line. The plan, like so many others by Byrnes, who was
always more flamboyant than effective, proved to be a
dud. But the officer is credited by some scholars with
popularizing the word deadline in America.
De Palma, William (1938– ) wrong man
Dead Man’s Tree
A former federal convict, William De Palma holds the
record for receiving the highest compensation ever
awarded to a man wrongfully convicted of a crime. The
Whittier, Calif. native agreed on August 12, 1975 to a
$750,000 settlement for 16 months wrongful imprisonment at McNeil Island Prison in Washington. De Palma
had been found guilty of armed robbery and given a
15-year sentence in 1968 on the basis of forged fingerprint evidence.
During the infamous Aldermen’s Wars that wracked
Chicago’s 19th Ward, the so-called Bloody Ward, from
1916 to 1921, a poplar tree on Loomis Street in Little
Italy became famous as the Dead Man’s Tree. Both
sides, those supporting John “Johnny de Pow” Powers
and those backing Tony D’Andrea, took to announcing
the impending death of a victim by posting his name on
the tree, a notice that, if it did not completely shatter
his nerve, at least offered the marked man an opportunity to set his affairs in order. In a majority of the 30
deaths that occurred during the wars, the victim’s name
had been written on the tree; none of these deaths were
ever solved.
See also: ALDERMEN’S WARS.
dead line
dead man’s eyes
superstition
An old story has it that the last thing a murder victim
sees is his killer and that this image remains imprinted
on the retina. Some superstitious murderers have gone
to considerable trouble to shoot out a victim’s eyes in
order to destroy such imaginary evidence. Monk Eastman, a famed gangster and murderer at the turn of the
century, supposedly heard the theory discussed once
and suddenly remembered it after his next murder. He
thereupon reclimbed three flights of stairs and shot out
the dead man’s eyes.
The origin of the superstition is unknown, but it
came into renewed vogue around 1900, when criminals
had become impressed with such scientific advances as
fingerprinting, which was making police detection more
effective. Even now, there are a few reports of murder
victims found with their eyes shot out each year.
dead man’s hand
aces and eights
A poker hand of a pair of aces and a pair of eights has
been known in American culture as a “dead man’s
hand” ever since Jack McCall shot Wild Bill Hickok in
the back of the head on August 2, 1876 as Hickok held
those cards in a poker game in Carl Mann’s saloon in
Deadwood, S.D.
See also: WILD BILL HICKOK, JACK MCCALL.
Fulton Street, New York City
Attempting to contain a growing wave of bank robberies in the financial district, Inspector Thomas F.
252
Chicago “murder announcement” site
DEATH Corner
Dead Rabbits
early New York gang
From the 1820s until their final decline in the 1870s,
the Dead Rabbits were a huge gang of criminals who
controlled much of the Lower East Side, excluding the
Bowery, and achieved great renown as thieves and
thugs. When they went on looting forays or to do battle
with other gangs, their leaders carried a dead rabbit
impaled on a pike. The Dead Rabbits were also noted
political sluggers, supporting pro-Irish candidates.
They were given credit for controlling the voting
booths in 1856 when Tammany Hall’s Fernando Wood
was reelected mayor during an election in which at
least 10,000 fraudulent votes were cast. Wood won by
a little more than 9,000 votes.
The main foes of the Dead Rabbits were the Bowery
Boys, who were aligned with the anti-Irish Native
American Party, and the two organizations, each with
satellite supporters, fought many pitched battles. The
greatest of these occurred on July 4 and 5, 1857, when
the Dead Rabbits and the Plug Uglies and several other
Five Points gangs marched into the Bowery to loot
stores and do battle with the Bowery Boys. Armed with
knives, pistols, clubs, iron bars and huge paving blocks,
they attacked a Bowery Boys headquarters, putting a
small contingent of the enemy to rout. When the news
of the outrage spread, the Bowery Boys, in alliance with
the Atlantic Guards and other gangsters determined to
protect the sanctity of the Bowery, poured out of their
holes onto Bayard Street to engage in the most desperate and largest free-for-all in the city’s history.
The police made an early and feeble effort to control
the fighting but merely took a few prisoners before
wisely retreating. By this time the fighting forces had
grown to an estimated strength of about 400 to 500 on
each side. The New York Times reported:
Brick-bats, stones and clubs were flying thickly around
and from the windows in all directions, and men ran
wildly about brandishing firearms. Wounded men lay
on the sidewalks and were trampled upon. Now the
Rabbits would make a combined rush and force their
antagonists up Bayard Street to the Bowery. Then the
fugitives, being reinforced, would turn on their pursuers and compel a retreat to Mulberry, Elizabeth and
Baxter streets.
While the rioting was going on, other gangsters used
the opportunity to attack households and stores along
the Bowery and several other streets, and residents and
storeowners had to barricade their buildings and fight
off attacks with shotguns and pistols. In the afternoon
a much larger force of police moved into the area and
cleared the streets, forcing the rioters into the houses
and up to the roofs. One gangster who refused to sur253
render fell from the roof of a house onto Baxter Street.
As he lay there, his head in a pool of blood, his foes
stomped him to death. As soon as the police retreated
with more prisoners, the fighting resumed. It continued
until three regiments of troops were brought into action
the next day. At that point, eight rioters were dead and
more than 100 wounded, half of whom required long
hospitalization. More of their dead were carried off by
both sides and it was common knowledge that several
new graves decorated the underground passages and
cellars of the Five Points and Paradise Square.
Small bands of the rioters continued battling for
another week, while the general citizenry demanded
something be done to curb the criminal elements. The
Dead Rabbits resented descriptions of themselves as
criminals and so informed the press. The Times
reported:
We are requested by the Dead Rabbits to state that the
Dead Rabbit club members are not thieves, that they
did not participate in the riot with the Bowery Boys,
and that the fight in Mulberry street was between the
Roach Guards of Mulberry street and the Atlantic
Guards of the Bowery. The Dead Rabbits are sensitive
on points of honor, we are assured, and wouldn’t allow
a thief to live on their beat, much less be a member of
their club.
Nonetheless, several noted sluggers of the Dead Rabbits, and the Bowery Boys as well, were never seen alive
again.
See also: BOWERY BOYS, ROACH GUARDS.
Death Corner
Chicago murder locale
During the heyday of the Black Hand, this loose society
of extortionists terrorized Italian communities in America, demanding money from designated victims and
promising them death if they refused. The most dangerous locale in Chicago’s Little Italy at this time was the
intersection of Milton and Oak Streets, nicknamed
Death Corner because so many Black Hand victims
were slain there. In one 15-month period, from January
1, 1910 until March 26, 1911, 38 Black Hand murders
occurred there.
There never was one official Black Hand organization; rather the extortions and killings were carried out
on a freelance basis by various criminals. It is likely that
some so-called Black Hand murders were really private
affairs and disguised as Black Hand matters to confuse
the police. Whatever the case, none of the 38 murders
were ever solved, and there were many residents of Little Italy who would always go blocks out of their way
to avoid passing Death Corner.
DEBTORS, imprisonment of
See also:
tion was to come from Deep Nightstick, a secret source
with close ties to the police department who provided
them leads that kept their investigations on course.
Checking the records of 433 homicide cases between
1974 and 1977, they found confessions and statements
in 80 cases were thrown out because of illegal interrogations, but no action had been taken against the
policemen involved. By the time the pair won their
journalistic prize, nine officers had been convicted,
three had been acquitted, three were under indictment,
seven were under arrest and two others had pleaded
guilty to departmental misconduct charges.
In 1979 Mayor Rizzo tried to effect a change in the
city charter that would allow him to run for a third
four-year term in November 1979. However, the police
brutality charges became a dominant issue in the campaign for the charter revision, and Rizzo lost by a twoto-one margin.
See also: FRANK L. RIZZO.
BLACK HAND, SHOTGUN MAN, WHITE HAND
SOCIETY.
debtors, imprisonment of
The practice of imprisoning debtors was an English
custom readily imported into the American colonies,
and it also became common that such persons could be
sold into service for periods of time in order to pay off
their debts. However, this method of discharging debts
was eliminated during the early years of the 19th century thanks to a backlash against the imprisonment of
debtors that had started about 1775 (more than a century after similar outcries in England). By 1800 strong
reform movements were active and some state legislatures passed poor debtor and insolvency laws that were
liberal. “Prison limits” for debtors posting bonds sometimes extended throughout an entire county. Yet despite
these improvements, the most common crime in America was debt, and more than 75,000 debtors a year
were sent to prison for the offense. The amount owed
had little to do with the sentence. A survey in one Pennsylvania penitentiary in 1829 revealed that there were
almost 100 prisoners serving sentences for owing
amounts of less than $1.
It became clear to reformers that the only true cure
was the absolute and total ban on jailing debtors, and
laws were passed totally banning imprisonment of
debtors or at least greatly restricting the rules under
which imprisonment was called for. In 1821 Kentucky
became the first state to act, followed by New York a
decade later. North Carolina, South Carolina and
Florida were the last to act, constitutionally forbidding
imprisonment for simple debt in 1868.
Deep Throat
Watergate informant
Without doubt the most famous informer in U.S. history, Deep Throat, named after the title of what has
been described as a landmark pornographic film of the
early 1960s, remains unidentified. He was the chief
source of Washington Post reporters Robert Woodward and Carl Bernstein during their investigation of
the break-in at the Democratic Party’s headquarters in
the Watergate office complex, which toppled the
administration of President Richard Nixon and sent a
number of his top aides, including a former attorney
general—the first ever—to prison.
Defenbach, Marie (?–1900) murder victim
Deep Nightstick
secret informant
A young Chicago model named Marie Defenbach may
have been the most gullible murder victim in American
history. Marie got involved in a plot to bilk 10 insurance companies out of $70,000 by faking her own
death. She named her three accomplices as beneficiaries
and then moved into a boarding house under another
name. According to the plan, the brains of the conspiracy, Dr. August M. Unger, would give her a special
medicine that would induce a deathlike sleep and later
he would revive her. Meanwhile, another body would
be substituted for cremation. For her troubles, Marie
was to get half of the $70,000, whereupon she would
depart on a tour of Europe. Remarkably, Marie
accepted the plan, not considering that her three
accomplices would get twice as much money if they
really killed her. On August 25, 1900 Marie took the
medicine and died in severe agony 15 minutes later. Dr.
Unger signed the death certificate. The three conspira-
As famous as Deep Throat in the Watergate scandal
was Deep Nightstick in a newspaper investigation of
police brutality in Philadelphia during the mid-1970s.
The investigation was given much of the credit for ending the mayoral career of controversial tough ex-cop
Frank L. Rizzo.
In 1976 a new court reporter for the Philadelphia
Inquirer, Jonathan Neumann, observed that although
murder suspects routinely testified to brutal beatings by
the police, officials never bothered to investigate. Later,
Neumann, a former New Yorker, asked an editor about
this strange situation and was told, “Welcome to
Philadelphia.”
Neumann and another young reporter, William
Marimow, began digging into the subject of police brutality and produced a series of articles that would win
them a Pulitzer Prize in 1978. Much of their informa254
DELOREAN, John
tors then proceded to collect all the insurance money.
But an uncle of the girl investigated her disappearance
and uncovered the bizarre plot with the aid of private
detectives. One of the three killers turned state’s evidence, and Dr. Unger and the third accomplice, Frank
Brown, were sentenced to five years in prison for fraud.
The murder itself could not be proved against them,
however.
Dekker, Albert (1905–1968) accidental or deliberate
death?
The death of veteran actor Albert Dekker in early May
1968 had the element that the tabloids love best in Hollywood scandals—kinkiness. Dekker, long famed for
his career in the theater and later in top Hollywood
films, was in a sense best known to a generation of
young moviegoers for playing the title role in Dr.
Cyclops, about a mad scientist who shrinks people to
doll size. Perhaps that Cyclops association somehow fit
the gruesome death he suffered.
Dekker was found in a scene that was called a
“grotesque nightmare.” Police had to break into the
bathroom of his Hollywood apartment, where they
found him dead and naked except for some female
underwear. His wrists were handcuffed and he was
bound with leather ropes around his neck, chest, waist
and ankles. There were punctures on his arms and buttocks caused by a hypodermic needle that lay beside the
body. Scrawled on his body with bright red lipstick
were a number of words, among which the tamer were
whip and slave. There was a drawing of a vagina on his
lower stomach. He had been choked to death by the
leather rope.
If Dekker was into kink, it was something neither his
friends nor his longtime fiancée, fashion model Geraldine Saunders, seemed to know. It was Saunders, unable
to reach him by phone the previous two days, who had
sounded the alarm.
In the entertainment world Dekker was known to be
cultured and intellectual. He had served two years in
the 1940s in the California legislature as a liberal
Democrat. His liberal stance and his attacks on Sen.
Joseph McCarthy led to his being blacklisted as an
actor for several years. During the last year of his life,
although his career was very much on track, Dekker
was despondent over the death of his 16-year-old son
Jan, who fatally shot himself accidentally.
The official verdict on Albert Dekker’s death was
first said to be suicide but was later changed to accidental death. This seemed to be rather logical since the
bathroom door had been chainlocked from the inside.
But many observers found the idea unconvincing,
declaring that Harry Houdini, and lesser sorts, would
255
Albert Dekker won great fame in “mad” and kinky roles. In
that sense his death was his kinkiest role ever.
know it is as easy to lock a chainlock from the outside
as from the inside. And Houdini certainly could have
escaped the restraints on Dekker but might have had a
bit more difficulty getting in them without help of some
sort. The way Dekker was bound and choked indicated
1) that he had not been alone and 2) that he was unconscious at the time of his death.
Then there was the drug that had certainly been
injected in him. Officials could not identify it.
On a more prosaic crime level, it was known that
Dekker had $70,000 in cash in his apartment. The
money was missing, as was an expensive camera.
But to officials an autoerotic asphyxiation thesis was
more fitting to write fini to the life of an actor who had
played so many spooky roles.
DeLorean, John (1925– ) accused multimillionaire drug
smuggler
He was one of the most flamboyant automotive entrepreneurs to come out of Detroit. He was also perhaps
the only American multimillionaire ever busted for
alleged drug trafficking. Federal authorities were
reportedly ecstatic over netting such a big fish in a huge
DELOREAN, John
divorce he married 22-year-old fashion model Cristina
Ferrare.
About this time GM and DeLorean came to a parting of the ways. DeLorean resigned from his post,
which paid him $650,000 a year in salary and bonuses.
The way DeLorean told it, he “fired” GM.
DeLorean was by then totally involved in developing
his “dream car”—a state-of-the-art sports car. He made
an offer to the British government that it could not
refuse. Britain was to invest $110 million for his dream
car, and he would build a “showcase” auto factory in
Belfast where thousands of jobs would go to that strifetorn and unemployment-ridden area. The British government coughed up loads of grants and low-interest
loans, and, attracted by DeLorean’s reputation for
genius, a number of rich American investors put up
additional backing.
The first of DeLorean’s gleaming products came off
the assembly line in 1981, most of the cars targeted
for the American market at a then eye-popping
$25,000. Unfortunately for DeLorean and his govern-
sting operation. However, the results did not turn out
the way the government wanted.
John DeLorean was reputed to be both a wunderkind and incorrigible playboy. From the very
beginning of his career in the automotive industry
at Chrysler he showed the signs of developing into
a swashbuckler—“hustler” not seeming to suitably
reflect his style. From Chrysler DeLorean shifted to
Packard and was by then generally known as a real
“comer.” In 1956 DeLorean hopped to General Motors
and at age 44 was general manager of the Chevrolet
division. In 1972 he was a vice president with much
more expanded duties. Observers of the automotive
scene cast him as a logical candidate to eventually
become president of GM if he could keep his personal
ardor under control. But DeLorean took his own measure of his status; he regarded most of GM’s leadership
as dinosaurs. He felt he could do wonders for company
policies without their interference, and he ignored
objections to his “fast lane” lifestyle, which included
marrying a 20-year-old fashion model. In 1973 after a
Flamboyant automotive hot shot John DeLorean produced his “dream car,” which turned out to be a bust. Then he was
accused of being the only American multimillionaire ever busted for alleged drug trafficking.
256
DENNISON, Stephen
fully as a doctor of philosophy named Robert L. French
and to teach college psychology classes. He also passed
himself off as Cecil Boyce Haman, a zoology Ph.D.; a
Trappist monk in a Kentucky monastery; a biologist
doing cancer research in a Seattle, Wash. institution; a
law student; a hospital orderly; an American soldier; an
American sailor; a recreational officer at a maximum
security prison in Texas; a two-time “convert” to
Catholicism (although he was born a Roman Catholic);
and a deputy sheriff.
Demara’s greatest impersonation occurred during the
Korean War, when he assumed the role of a lieutenantsurgeon with the Canadian navy and successfully performed a number of major operations under severe
battle conditions. Demara would bone up on medical
books aboard ship and then remove tonsils, pull teeth
and amputate limbs. In his most accomplished operation, he successfully removed a bullet from within a
fraction of an inch of the heart of a wounded South
Korean soldier. When he finished the skillful operation,
a small cheer went up from fascinated spectators.
However, news stories about the amazing medical
lieutenant wired back to Canada finally resulted in
Demara’s exposure, and he was ordered back to Victoria. Incredibly, the Canadian navy decided that Demara
had enlisted under a false name; it didn’t occur to them
that he was not actually a doctor. As a result, he was
merely discharged with all pay due him and asked to
leave the country.
In 1956 Demara was caught posing as an accredited
teacher at a school in Maine. He served a few months
in jail for “cheating by false premises.” His longest
prison term for any offense was 18 months. Demara
was the subject of a book and then a Hollywood movie
starring Tony Curtis. When asked why he engaged in a
lifetime of impersonations, Demara said, “Rascality,
pure rascality.”
mental and private backers, the roll-out coincided
with a worldwide recession. Sales were, to say the
least, disappointing.
The following year the British government could no
longer keep a stiff upper lip and was obliged to put
DeLorean’s company in receivership. Later the Belfast
factory was to be shut down permanently.
However, when the shoe dropped it was not then
DeLorean’s major worry. The very day of the announcement of the shutdown, DeLorean was arrested in Los
Angeles by federal authorities, who charged him as being
involved in a $50-million cocaine deal. It was a shocking
story for the American and British public.
Federal prosecutors were sure they had an iron-clad
case. They had videotapes involving DeLorean and federal agents posing as drug dealers going over details of
the negotiations. When authorities broke in on the
scene and arrested DeLorean, he was defiant, declaring,
“I am absolutely an innocent man” and that the case
was “a pure frame-up and FBI cheap shot.”
Usually sting operations of this type easily go the
prosecution’s way, since, to use a law enforcement
phrase, a “dog was caught with the meat in his
mouth.” But after a 22-week trial in which DeLorean
was charged with conspiracy to sell $24 million worth
of cocaine, as well as other charges involving possession and distribution of drugs, proved no easy sell to
the jury. The defense made much of what it called
improper entrapment and that federal agents had set up
DeLorean because he was known to be desperate for
funds to bail out his ailing dream car enterprise. At the
time a congressional inquiry had subjected such stings
to severe criticism. The jury felt the same way about the
DeLorean case and voted not guilty on all charges.
Clearly enraged by the verdict, prosecutors brought
new charges accusing their elusive quarry with wire and
mail fraud, interstate transportation of stolen money
and income-tax evasion. DeLorean was accused of funneling millions into a Dutch bank. However, once again
a federal jury was not buying the charges and cleared
DeLorean on all counts.
All told, DeLorean’s company owed more than $100
million to creditors, and finally a federal bankruptcy
court okayed an agreement under which a shade more
than $9 million settled the company’s debt.
In later years John DeLorean lived in reclusion in his
New Jersey mansion.
Dennison, Stephen (1909– ) candy thief
One of the most bizarre miscarriages of justice in
American history occurred in 1925, when 16-year-old
Stephen Dennison was sent to a reformatory for stealing a $5 box of candy in New York. Treated brutally in
the institution, Dennison became known as a rebellious
troublemaker. He was transferred to the state prison,
and because of continuous minor infractions, he had
years and years added on to his original sentence.
Incredibly, Dennison ended up doing a total of 34 years
for having committed no crime greater than stealing a
box of candy. After he was finally found “buried alive”
in a prison cell, he was released in 1959. It took Dennison seven years in the courts to win compensation: the
New York Court of Claims granted him $115,000. The
Demara, Ferdinand Waldo, Jr. (1921–1982) impostor
Known as the greatest impostor in 20th-century America, Ferdinand Waldo Demara, Jr. had a compulsion to
impersonate people. A high school dropout, he was
nonetheless able in the 1940s to masquerade success257
DENVER’S “Spiderman” Murderer
court said, “No amount of money could compensate
Dennison for the injuries he suffered and the scars he
bears.” So it allotted him a little over $3,000 for each
year he spent behind bars.
Big Fellow says we’ve all got to tighten our belts a little
to help those poor guys who haven’t got any jobs.”
derrick, the Folsom
Denver’s “Spiderman” Murderer See PHILIP PETERS.
Depression, the Great
prison torture
The “derrick” was used in various forms at many prisons but nowhere more freely than at California’s Folsom Prison. Around 1900 it was estimated that an
average of 10 men were on the derrick day in and day
out the year round. Sentences on the derrick might be
for as long as 50 hours, but the maximum length a man
could stand it was about five hours a day, so long sentences had to be stretched out over 10 days.
Located in the prison dungeon, the derrick was a
block and tackle suspended from a balcony over the
convict’s head. The prisoner’s arms would be yanked
backward and a pair of handcuffs snapped on his
wrists. Then a guard would pull a rope attached to the
handcuffs, drawing the prisoner upward. When the
victim’s heels were just off the floor, the attendant
would give the rope a sharp jerk and then tie it fast to
a cleat on the side of the wall. The weight of the prisoner’s body would make the handcuffs bite deeply into
his wrists as he swung limply from the block and
tackle. Then the guard would release an inch or so of
slack so that the prisoner could get a steadying position, the tips of his shoes barely resting on the flagstones of the dungeon. Prisoners who had suffered on
the derrick said later that after the initial pain, they
were overcome by a sense of reeling drunkenness, followed by the return of pain which steadily increased to
an excruciating level.
A prisoner’s ordeal on the derrick might continue for
two and a half hours in the morning and then resume
for two and a half hours in the afternoon. Once sentenced to punishment on the derrick, only severe medical reasons justified its interruption or suspension. A
common ailment caused by the punishment was bleeding from a prisoner’s kidneys. The prison doctor would
be summoned when a prisoner’s shoes were soggy with
blood. This might gain the prisoner a three-day respite
in the prison hospital, but he would then be returned to
the dungeon to complete his punishment. The derrick
remained in use at Folsom until 1911, when an outraged legislature outlawed all forms of corporal punishment at places of detention. However, it was believed
that some limited forms of derrick punishment continued thereafter for a number of years.
(1929–1940)
On the surface, it would seem that the underworld
should have been a victim not a beneficiary of the Great
Depression of the 1930s. Generally, this was not the
case because the goods and services it provided—liquor,
sex, drugs and gambling—all boomed when everything
else went bust, avidly craved by Americans caught in
the hopelessness of an economic system gone to pot.
While businessmen, small and large were ruined by
“cash flow” problems and the banks were shutting down,
the underworld was flush with greenbacks. Where could
strapped businessmen readily get the money needed to
tide them over? Only the underworld extended credit so
generously, making loansharking one of organized crime’s
most lucrative fields. Moreover, during the 1930s the
underworld’s grip on corrupt unions strengthened, as
workers, desperate to keep their jobs, willingly kicked in
more dues and paid more assessments even if they knew
the money went straight into gangster’s pockets.
Al Capone played a role as a “socially responsible”
gangster, taking care of many of Chicago’s unemployed.
A Capone storefront on State Street offered food and
warmth for the destitute. It was, Capone informed
reporters, his civic duty to do his share to help the jobless.
Capone’s Loop soup kitchen dispensed 120,000 meals at
a cost of $12,000. On Thanksgiving Day, Capone
proudly announced he was donating 5,000 turkeys.
Capone turned his famous soup kitchen into a great
publicity campaign. As it turned out, the charity really
hadn’t cost him very much. Coffee roasters and blenders
in Chicago had been leaned on to supply that commodity. Various bakeries were required to provide day-old
doughnuts and pastries. The hearty meat dishes were
gratis from the packinghouses, and the South Water
Market Commission merchants pitched in the potatoes
and vegetables. They were all assigned regular quotas,
and those who objected that the amount was too much
were informed the Big Fellow was very concerned that
their trucks were not wrecked or their tires slashed.
Capone also knew how to squeeze a bit of profit out
of all this unemployment. In December 1930 the price
of beer to the speakeasies, which cost an estimated $4 a
barrel to produce, was raised from $55 to $60, allegedly
to help finance aid for the poor. The Loop’s speakeasy
operators were informed by Capone’s salesmen, “The
derringer
The derringer might be called the Saturday Night Special of the 19th century. The original $3 version was
produced around 1850 by a Philadelphia gunsmith
258
DESALVO, Albert H.
named Henry Deringer, Jr., who turned out some versions that were only 33/4 inches long and thus easily
concealed by a professional gambler in his vest pocket
or up his sleeve, an outlaw in his boot or a prostitute in
her garter. Most were one-shot affairs and accurate
only at a range of less than 6 feet, which was generally
more than sufficient for its purposes.
Since Deringer had failed to patent his model,
dozens of other gunsmiths began putting out imitations
shortly after the appearance of what is now called the
Deringer-derringer. The only thing these manufacturers
did to conceal their theft was to add an r to the name of
the weapon. One of the more popular competing models was E. Remington and Sons’ over-and-under double-barreled version, which was in continuous
production from 1865 to1935.
Despite the fact that the derringer was tiny to hold, it
had an unusually large caliber, .50 the largest and .41 the
most common, and was thus a real killer at close range.
The derringer inspired such other quaint weapons as the
muff pistol and the pepperbox revolver in the constant
hunt for sneakier ways to kill.
See also: MUFF PISTOL, PEPPERBOX REVOLVER, SATURDAY
NIGHT SPECIAL.
DeSalvo, Albert H. (1933–1973) Boston Strangler
Between June 1962 and January 1964, a mass murderer
who became known as the Boston Strangler killed 13
women in Boston, Mass. He used various devices to
talk his way into the homes of women living alone and
then sexually assaulted and strangled them. The first
murder, that of 55-year-old divorcée Anna Slesers in
June 1962, was typical. She was found sprawled on the
floor of her apartment, strangled with the cord from
her own housecoat. In some of the other cases, there
was a hint of a robbery attempt, but police concluded
this was merely a blind to cover up the clear sexual
motivations of the murderer.
As the murders continued, a hysteria developed
among Boston women, and many would never open a
door to a stranger’s knock. While the police pressed
their hunt and brought in numerous suspects, the
crimes continued up to January 1964, when they suddenly stopped without explanation. Then in October
the Strangler struck again, molesting a young woman in
her home after gaining entrance by pretending to be a
detective. But although he threatened her with a knife,
he left without killing her. The victim was able to identify her attacker as Albert DeSalvo, who had been
released from prison in April 1962 after serving time
for indecent assault. When his photograph appeared in
the papers, scores of women reported to police that he
was the man who had assaulted them.
259
The Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, dances with senior
citizen in a 1972 prison affair sponsored by a volunteer
community agency “trying to show how both these
neglected groups of people [senior citizens and prisoners]
can help each other.” DeSalvo was stabbed to death the
following year by one or more of his fellow inmates.
There still was no direct proof that DeSalvo was the
Boston Strangler until he made a confession, relating
scores of details no one but the murderer could have
known.
After his incarceration for life, a weird interest in the
quotations of the Boston Strangler continued. Some, in
letters by DeSalvo, were auctioned off, while others were
recorded by reporters who had managed to have themselves confined in cells near him. Two sample quotes:
“Ha, they even know me in the Soviet Union.”
“Boston people are sexpots, they all love sex. . . .
Most broads are just waiting to get so-called raped.”
Copies of a paperback about him, which DeSalvo
attempted to slip to female visitors at the institution
where he was confined for a time, were inscribed with
the dedication, “Can’t wait to get my hands around
your throat.”
Apparently, some of his fellow inmates at the Walpole State Prison, where he was confined in 1973, had
somewhat similar feelings about him. He was found
DEVIL’S River Valley
dead in his cell, stabbed 16 times by an unidentified
convict or convicts.
See also: F. LEE BAILEY.
Devil’s River Valley
decks on the same hand and dealt each of the other
players a set of four aces. He then sat back and
watched the fireworks. Each of the gamblers felt he had
been hit with a hand that comes once in a lifetime, and
soon, everything the gamblers owned was in the pot.
When the hilarious showdown came, it took them
hours to sort out who owned what.
Like all cardsharps, Devol appreciated a sucker who
lost magnanimously, but not surprisingly, he often met
the opposite kind. A sore loser once pulled a gun on
Devol, who extricated himself from the dilemma by
“using my head.” He butted his foe unconscious. Devol
was probably correct when he said he engaged in more
rough-and-tumble fights than any other man in America. He usually did so as a “butter.” Devol was the
proud possessor of a massive, dome-shaped cranium
that made an awesome weapon. Besides using it against
sore-losing gamblers, he won many a bet in butting
contests against various strongmen and circus performers, including the famed Billy Carroll of Robinson’s
Circus, billed as “the man with the thick skull, or the
great butter.” When Carroll recovered consciousness,
he placed his hand on the gambler’s head and said,
“Gentlemen, I have found my papa at last.”
After more than 40 years of gambling on the great
rivers and in the Wild West, Devol married late in life.
Between his wife and a militant mother-in-law, he was
pressured to give up gambling and settle down in
Cincinnati. In 1887 he published his memoirs. More or
less retired from gambling, he sneaked away for an
occasional poker game and allegedly slipped into Kentucky now and then to trim the racetrack suckers at
monte. He celebrated his 60th birthday by winning a
bet that he could batter an oak whiskey cast to splinters
with his hard head. When Devol cashed in his chips in
1902, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that he had
won and lost more money than any other gambler in
American history. Whether that was true or not,
George Devol typified his lusty era.
See also: WILLIAM “CANADA BILL” JONES, THREE-CARD
MONTE.
Texas outlaw hideout
While Hole in the Wall and Robbers’ Roost were the
most fabled outlaw hideouts in the West, neither was
any meaner than Devil’s River Valley in the alkali section of southwestern Texas. The St. Louis Star once
reported of the refuge: “For many years it has been
known to convicts from the Texas Penitentiary that if
they could reach the Devil’s River country after escaping there would be small danger of being recaptured. It
is probable that no other portion of the West harbors
so many notorious characters as this particular section.
In fact, some of them boast that should they be arrested
it would be impossible for the arresting officer to take
them out on account of the intervention of friends.” It
was an unnecessary boast since no such attempt was
ever made.
Devine, John
See SHANGHAI CHICKEN.
Devol, George (1829–1902) riverboat gambler
With Canada Bill Jones, George Devol was probably
the most talented of the riverboat gamblers, an expert
not only at three-card monte but also at poker, sevenup and other card games, especially faro, in which he
was the bank and could control the flimflamming. By
his own estimate in his 1887 autobiography, Forty
Years a Gambler on the Mississippi, he made more than
$2 million but, like most others in his profession, could
not hold on to it, losing most of it in casino faro games.
He described himself as “a cabin boy in 1839; could
steal cards and cheat the boys at eleven; stack a deck at
fourteen . . . fought more rough-and-tumble fights
than any man in America, and was the most daring
gambler in the world.” And the amount of exaggeration was not too great.
Devol’s most constant partner was Canada Bill
Jones, and the pair made a perfect team. Devol dressed
like a fashion plate while Canada Bill acted and dressed
like a lout with an intelligence level somewhere below
that of moron. Together with Canada Bill and two others, Devol formed a riverboat combine that netted each
of the participants $200,000 a year by the time the
group broke up. While he was not, and most likely no
one was, as great a manipulator at three-card monte as
Canada Bill, Devol was nonetheless a master at card
skullduggery. On one occasion, in a friendly poker
game with four other gamblers he rang in four cold
Dewey, Thomas E. (1902–1971) prosecutor and near
assassination victim
Thomas E. Dewey was only one of several prosecutors,
especially in New York State, to use his crime-fighting
prowess to advance himself politically, moving on to
the governorship and twice running for president, in
1944 and 1948. Dewey had started off as a Wall Street
lawyer, and observers would note that as a prosecutor
of industrialists, businessmen and financiers, he showed
limited brilliance and effectiveness. In prosecuting
gangsters, however, the Dewey zeal was limitless and
260
DIAMOND, Jack “Legs”
telling. In various roles—U.S. attorney, special prosecutor and district attorney—he clapped in prison the likes
of Waxey Gordon, Louis Lepke, Gurrah Shapiro and
Lucky Luciano.
Before he got Luciano, Dewey set his sights on Dutch
Schultz, the king of Harlem policy rackets and numerous
other criminal enterprises. Although the Dutchman was
a brilliant criminal leader, he was also a bit of a flake,
fond of solving pressing problems with a gun. When
Dewey’s investigators closed in on his operations, Schultz
went before the national board of the crime syndicate to
demand that the prosecutor be assassinated as a solution
to both Schultz’s present problems and the future ones of
others. When the crime syndicate was formed, a firm
rule was agreed upon, as Luciano stated it, that “we
wouldn’t hit newspaper guys or cops or DAs. We don’t
want the kind of trouble everybody’d get.”
Led by the forces of Luciano and Lansky, the crime
board voted down Schultz. “I still say he ought to be
hit,” the mad dog underworld leader is reported to
have snarled in defiance. “And if nobody else is gonna
do it, I’m gonna hit him myself.”
At first, the syndicate decided that Schultz was simply blowing off steam, but then it was discovered in
October 1935 that Schultz was setting an assassination
plot in place. He had Dewey’s Fifth Avenue apartment
staked out by a man who posed each morning as the
father of a child pedaling a velocipede. What could be
less suspicious than a devoted parent strolling with his
offspring? Dewey and the two body guards always at
his side passed them without suspicion on their way to
a nearby drug store, where Dewey made his first phone
call of the morning to his office from one of several
booths. He did not use his home phone for fear it might
be tapped.
Once the “caser” with the child learned this, a murder plot was worked out; a killer carrying a gun with a
silencer would be inside the drug store first and shoot
Dewey when he entered one of the booths. Dewey’s
bodyguards waiting outside would not be aware of a
thing as the killer walked out past them.
Schultz’s mistake was involving Albert Anastasia in
the plot. Anastasia was close to Luciano, and although
he also favored killing Dewey, he would never betray
Luciano. He passed the word about the plot to Luciano
and others in the syndicate. Luciano was horrified. So
were most of the others. An immediate trial was held
and the death sentence passed on the absent Schultz.
According to Martin A. Gosch and Richard Hammer in
The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky,
while not casting a dissenting vote, told Luciano:
“Charlie, as your Jewish consigliere, I want to remind
you of something. Right now, Schultz is your cover. If
Dutch is eliminated, you’re gonna stand out like a
naked guy who just lost his clothes. The way La
Guardia and the rest of them guys’ve been screamin’
about you, it’s ten to one they’ll be after you next.”
Luciano allowed that Lansky could be right, but the
syndicate had no other choice than to eliminate Schultz.
The vote taken was unanimous On October 23, 1935
Schultz was shot to death in a chop house in Newark,
N.J.
Dewey did not learn of his “almost assassination”
until 1940, when it was revealed to him by Murder, Inc.
prosecutor Burton Turkus. Dewey listened impassively
to the step-by-step details, but his eyes widened perceptibly when mention was made of the proud papa with
the tot on the velocipede. After five years he apparently
still remembered them.
By that time, as a result of Dewey’s efforts, Lucky
Luciano had been sent to prison for 30 to 50 years on a
charge of compulsory prostitution, the longest sentence
ever handed out for such an offense. After the end of
World War II, Dewey backed a parole board’s recommendation that Luciano be released, an action for
which Dewey was roundly criticized by political opponents. The move was made because of Luciano’s aid to
the war effort, Dewey said, but it may also have been
based to some degree on what had to remain an unspoken gratitude for Luciano’s having saved his life. Perhaps somewhat ingraciously, Luciano to his dying day
insisted there was yet another reason; the mob had contributed $90,000 in small bills to Dewey’s campaign
fund.
See also: LOUIS “LEPKE” BUCHALTER, CHARLES “LUCKY”
LUCIANO, DUTCH SCHULTZ, JACOB “GURRAH” SHAPIRO.
Diamond, Jack “Legs” (1896–1931) racketeer and
murderer
Two things often said about Jack “Legs” Diamond, one
of the most notorious gangsters of the 1920s, was that
“the only woman who ever loved him was his mother
and she died when he was a kid” and “the bullet hasn’t
been made that can kill Legs Diamond.” Both were
inaccurate. Although he was a brutal killer, quite a few
women loved Legs, especially his wife, Alice, and his
showgirl mistress, Kiki Roberts. While he was indeed
called the Clay Pigeon of the Underworld, he was the
ultimate proof that no one can live forever with bullets
constantly being fired at him.
Legs’ main problem in life was that almost everyone
in the underworld hated him. He was a double-crosser,
a chiseler, a man totally incapable of keeping his word.
At various times, he fought with most of the leading
criminals in New York, thinking nothing of continually
increasing his roster of enemies.
261
DIAMOND, Jack “Legs”
The club provided Diamond with a cover, and he often
invited underworld rivals to peace meetings there. Many
of the overly trusting gangsters were murdered in a back
room. In 1929 Diamond committed a murder that really
demonstrated his recklessness and total lack of conscience. He and his lieutenant, Charles Entratta, murdered a hoodlum named Red Cassidy right at the bar in
front of a number of employees and patrons. Diamond
and Entratta were forced to flee. Then from hiding, they
decided to eliminate the law’s case against them. Four
witnesses who had seen the killing were in turn murdered,
three customers and the club bartender. Four other persons, including the hat-check girl, simply disappeared and
were never heard from again. Apparently, Diamond and
Entratta had no fear that the missing witnesses might suddenly turn up again because the two resurfaced, confident
the police no longer had a case against them.
However, Legs’ forced retirement caused complications. The notorious Dutch Schultz had moved in on
Diamond’s rackets while he was gone, and what the
Dutchman took, he seldom gave back. It led to a fullscale war between the two. Schultz was never a popular
figure with the rest of the underworld, but no one complained about his efforts to kill Diamond.
There were many who were convinced that Diamond
couldn’t be killed. It had always been that way. In October 1924 some unknown gunmen had peppered his head
with birdshot and put a bullet in his heel. Diamond then
drove himself to Mt. Sinai Hospital and had his wounds
taken care of. The second near miss was the attack on
Little Augie. Diamond had lost so much blood from
wounds in his arm and leg that he was not expected to
survive. The war with Schultz added to his battle
injuries. Shortly after he killed a couple of Schultz’s men
in October 1930, Legs was curled up in a cozy suite with
showgirl Kiki Roberts when gunmen broke in and
pumped five bullets into him. Kiki was unhurt.
Legs was rushed to a hospital and, to the amazement
of doctors, survived. In April 1931 Diamond was
ambushed as he left a roadside inn. He got a bullet in
the lung, another in the back, a third in the liver and a
fourth in the arm. Once again, surgeons gave up on
him, but again he recovered.
By this time, Diamond himself was convinced he
couldn’t be killed. He let it be known that once he was all
better, he intended to take a bigger slice of the action in
Manhattan. Legs indicated he was not satisfied with what
he had gotten when criminal mastermind Arnold Rothstein was murdered and his empire divided. He served
notice on Joey Fay that he wanted more of the nightclub
rackets and on Waxey Gordon that he deserved more of
the bootlegging and moonshining business.
All of this made it rather difficult to determine
whose troops paid him a fatal visit on December 18,
Legs started out as a sneak thief in his early teens,
heisting packages off the backs of delivery trucks and
outracing pursuers, thus gaining his nickname. In the
early 1920s Legs had moved up to work for Little
Augie Orgen, the top labor racketeer in the city, after
he arranged the death of Nathan Kaplan, better known
as Kid Dropper. Little Augie turned over to Diamond
his smaller bootlegging enterprises. It appears that
Augie was the last important gangster Diamond was
loyal to. He acted as his bodyguard and even took some
bullets in his arm and leg when Little Augie was shot
down on a Lower East Side street in 1927. That loyalty
did not extend to seeking vengeance for the death of his
boss, however, even though Diamond had recognized
the killers—Louis Lepke and Gurrah Shapiro. When he
got out of the hospital, he made peace with them. They
got what they wanted—the labor rackets—and Diamond took over the rest of Little Augie’s bootleg business and his narcotics trade.
Suddenly, Legs Diamond was a big-timer, a sport on
Broadway. He even opened his own joint, the Hotsy
Totsy Club, a second-floor bistro on Broadway in the 50s.
Legs Diamond, in pin stripes, was considered “unkillable”
by the underworld and “unconvictable” by the law. The
theory proved to be half true.
262
DILLINGER, John Herbert
1931. Diamond was hiding away in a room in Albany,
N.Y. that only a few confederates knew about. He was
sound asleep when two gunmen slipped into the room.
One held him by the ears and the other shot him three
times in the head. This time Diamond was absolutely
dead.
See also: HOTSY TOTSY CLUB, JACOB “LITTLE AUGIE”
ORGEN, DUTCH SCHULTZ.
diamond switch
confidence theft game
Considered to be superstars of shoplifters, diamond
switch experts, often women, victimize top jewelry
stores by feigning interest in the purchase of a diamond. The thief will examine the stone and, when the
salesperson’s attention is distracted, substitute a worthless or inferior stone for the genuine article. The thief
then makes a hasty exit before the switch is discovered.
The prowess of these operators was pointed out not
long ago by a woman who had cheated two leading
jewelry stores on New York’s Fifth Avenue. Handsomely dressed in a fur coat, the woman considered the
purchase of an $18,000 ring but after some thought
decided it was too expensive. She handed the clerk back
a cheaper diamond, one worth only about $7,500.
Since the two stones were cut alike and determination
of the full quality of the costlier diamond required
more than examination by the naked eye, no suspicions
were aroused until some time after the supposed customer had departed. Meanwhile, the same thief had
entered a second store to inspect a $35,000 diamond,
for which she neatly substituted the $18,000 stone. By
the time both stores discovered their losses, the woman
was long gone from Fifth Avenue.
Dillinger, John Herbert (1903–1934) public enemy
John Dillinger was the consummate public enemy, certainly the “superstar” gangster of the 1930s. But what is
really amazing is that he achieved this status in a criminal career that spanned a mere 11 months, from September 1933 to July 1934. Dillinger and his mob—he
actually was not the leader but merely a member among
equals of the first so-called Dillinger mob—robbed
between 10 and 20 banks. They also plundered three
police arsenals, engaged in three spectacular jail breaks
and fought their way out of police traps, murdering 10
men and wounding seven others in the process. This last
fact was never considered very important by the public,
just as Missourians did not hold such indiscretions
against Jesse James a half-century earlier.
Dillinger captured the public’s imagination with his
style and verve; he displayed dash and derring-do in a
spectacular but apocryphal “wooden gun” jail escape,
263
had a casual impudence toward authority and often
displayed a form of chivalry during robberies, especially flirting with older women bystanders, that turned
him into a Depression-day Robin Hood. After all, he
just robbed banks, not people, and on occasion told
depositors to hang on to their money, that all the gang
wanted was the bank’s money. Undoubtedly, Dillinger
was smart enough to understand such behavior stood
him well with the public and could conceivably help
him out of a tight spot someday.
Dillinger was a master bank robber. His gang’s jobs
were all well planned and timed to precision. During his
nine-year stretch in prison for attempting to rob a grocer, he had learned the meticulous “Baron Lamm
method” of bank robbery, named after a former Prussian army officer turned American criminal, which called
for careful casing of a bank beforehand, pretested and
timed getaway routes, and the like. Dillinger followed
the technique to the utmost detail but added his own
daring touches. The day before one robbery, two of his
men cased a bank posing as journalists and were taken
on a grand tour of the institution by its chief officer.
During another caper the townsfolk thought they were
witnessing a rehearsal for the filming of a movie; a
“movie director”—reputedly Homer Van Meter, the
daring clown of the gang—had visited the scene the day
before to publicize the event.
The product of an unhappy home life—John’s
mother died when he was three and his father subsequently remarried—young Dillinger became a juvenile
delinquent. As a member of a youth gang called the
Dirty Dozen, he was charged with stealing coal from
the Pennsylvania Railroad’s gondolas to sell to residents
of his Indianapolis neighborhood; he was in the sixth
grade at the time.
So far as the record shows, Dillinger did not get
involved in serious crime until 1924, following a stint
in the navy from which he just “walked away.” That
year he and an older, more seasoned criminal, Ed Singleton, attempted to rob a grocer whom they knew carried the day’s receipts on him. The two men accosted
their victim, B. F. Morgan, on a darkened street, and
Dillinger, armed with a .32, struck him on the head
with a bolt wrapped in a handkerchief. The grocer
stayed erect and struggled, and Dillinger’s gun went off.
The hapless robbers then fled. Apprehended quickly,
Dillinger drew a sentence of 10 to 20 years, although he
had been assured by the local prosecutor that as a first
offender, he would be treated lightly if he pleaded
guilty. Dillinger’s accomplice, 10 years older, was
brought before a different judge and drew a far shorter
sentence; he was released after doing two years.
Dillinger ended up serving nine and the experience
embittered him.
DILLINGER, John Herbert
Pierpont group, being totally unmindful at the time that
Capt. Matt Leach of the Indiana State Police had identified him as the busy holdup artist. Leach had an alarm
out for Dillinger and had just missed catching him on a
number of occasions.
Meanwhile, Dillinger gave a large part of the escape
money to Mary Kinder, a 22-year-old woman whose
brother was one of the convicts slated to be in on the
escape and who would become Pierpont’s mistress. The
complete story about the Michigan City breakout of 10
convicts was never fully revealed. Payoffs were made,
that much is certain. In addition, Dillinger traveled to
Chicago, where through an intermediary he bribed the
foreman of a thread-making firm to conceal several
guns in a barrel of thread destined for the prison’s shirt
shop. The barrel was marked with a red X so that the
escapees would recognize it.
On September 26, 1933 Pierpont and nine others
took several hostages and made their way out of the
prison, a feat that resulted in all sorts of political
recriminations in Indiana. The new McNutt administration contended that holdover Republican guards or
some who had been dismissed must have been involved,
but the former Republican governor, Harry Leslie,
blamed the breakout on the 69 new guards appointed
by the Democrats. It mattered little to the Pierpont
bunch. They were free. It mattered less to Dillinger. He
had in the meantime been captured in Dayton, Ohio
while visiting one of several new girlfriends.
The Pierpont bunch were stunned when they learned
from Mary Kinder that Dillinger had been arrested.
There was no question of what they were going to do
about it. Dillinger had kept his word and freed them,
and now they were going to free him. They planned a
raid on the jail in Lima, Ohio where Dillinger was
being held. Dillinger had been informed of the escape
plot in advance and asked that another of his girlfriends, Evelyn “Billie” Frechette, a half Indian in her
mid-twenties, be waiting for him when he got out.
The grateful Pierpont would deny Dillinger nothing.
Billie, the wife of a bank robber then in Leavenworth,
was brought to an apartment in Cincinnati to await
Dillinger’s release. On October 12, Columbus Day,
Pierpont, Makley and Clark broke into the Lima Jail,
mortally wounded Sheriff Jess Sarber and freed
Dillinger. On the way out of the jail, Dillinger paused to
look at the dying sheriff, who had treated him kindly
and whom Dillinger had developed an affection for, and
said sharply to Pierpont, “Did you have to do that?”
Pierpont shrugged. He might not have taken such a
rebuke from another man, but he genuinely liked and
respected Dillinger.
The “Dillinger mob” was now ready for action,
although at the time, it should have been called the
In 1934 Indiana governor Paul V. McNutt’s secretary, Wayne Coy, would observe: “There does not seem
to me to be any escape from the fact that the State of
Indiana made John Dillinger the Public Enemy that he
is today. The Indiana constitution provides that our
penal code shall be reformative and not vindictive. . .
. Instead of reforming the prisoner, the penal institutions provided him with an education in crime.”
Doing time first in the Indiana State Reformatory at
Pendleton and then in the state prison at Michigan City,
Dillinger came in contact with criminals who became
his mentors and later his accomplices, among them
accomplished bank robbers like Harry Pierpont, John
Hamilton, Homer Van Meter, Far Charley Makley,
Russell Clark and Walter Dietrich. Despite his youth
and relative inexperience, Dillinger was accepted as a
member of this clique of hardened criminals because of
his personal trustworthiness and willingness to help
other prisoners. These were qualities much respected by
men behind bars, even causing Pierpont, the group’s
nominal leader, to overlook a failing in Dillinger that he
tolerated in no other associate—having an “old lady”
prison lover.
Several members of the Pierpont clique had unsuccessfully attempted to break out of the prison, leading
most of them to conclude their only chance for escape
was a scheme based on having aid from outside and
making the proper payoffs inside. Dillinger, soon to be
paroled, was designated the “outside man.” As such, he
would have to raise a lot of money and fast, and the
group, which included a number of “jugmarkers” (men
who had knowledge of good banks to be robbed), told
him how to go about it. Pierpont and others also supplied him with names of trustworthy accomplices to use
on various capers. Dillinger’s duties were to get enough
money to make the proper payoffs, buy guns, obtain
getaway cars and clothes, and find a hideout for the
escapees. With only limited experience but a vast
amount of criminal knowledge, Dillinger emerged from
prison to become the greatest public enemy in the history of American crime.
He was released in May 1933, after a petition bearing the signatures of almost 200 residents of his
adopted hometown of Mooresville, Ind., including that
of his grocer victim, was presented to the governor.
Dillinger immediately set about committing robberies
to raise the funds needed for the mass escape. Many of
his capers were pulled with criminals little more experienced than he was and were badly bungled, often clearing less than $100. But Dillinger kept trying for bigger
scores and finally pulled off a bank robbery that netted
$10,600, no small sum for a bank in a Depressionracked area, and then a payroll heist that yielded more
than $24,000. He now had enough funds to spring the
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DILLINGER, John Herbert
John Dillinger (second from left) is photographed at arraignment in Arizona, the last time he would be taken alive.
“Pierpont mob.” Dubbing it the Dillinger mob was the
idea of lawman Matt Leach, who thought he might
produce friction between the pair by making Dillinger
into a greater criminal than he was. However, Leach’s
ploy failed. Nothing would come between Dillinger and
Pierpont, and in fact, the latter wanted Dillinger to
assume a more active leadership. He quickly grasped
that Dillinger inspired confidence, trust and loyalty,
vital qualities in a criminal organization, and could
bring peace between feuding gangsters.
The mob pulled off a string of somewhere between
10 to 20 bank robberies; the number could not be
determined because the gangsters never confessed
which ones they had perpetrated and which were
falsely attributed to them. This first so-called Dillinger
mob functioned until January 1934, by which time the
gang, after going to Florida for a rest, had moved to
Tucson, Ariz. Several members were captured there by
police work that was partly brilliant, partly pure luck
and partly a result of tips from persons who recognized
some of the gang from detective magazine pictures.
265
Dillinger was caught with Billie Frechette. Pierpont,
Makley and Clark were taken with Mary Kinder and
another woman. The three men were shipped to Ohio
to be charged with the murder of Sheriff Sarber.
Dillinger was flown to Chicago, where that city’s entire
“Dillinger Squad,” 40 officers permanently assigned to
the job of capturing him, and 85 other policemen met
the plane. A 13-car convoy then took America’s most
famous prisoner to an “escape-proof” jail in Crown
Point, Ind.
It was here that Dillinger was to electrify the nation
with his famous “wooden gun” escape. According to
the first version of the story, he used a knife to whittle a
wooden gun out of the top of a washboard, colored it
with shoe polish and used it to escape. But how did
America’s number one criminal get hold of a knife in
jail? All right, change that to a razor blade. Both versions were sheer nonsense. Dillinger’s wooden gun was
a real one. The true story behind his escape from the
Crown Point Jail was that his lawyer, an incredible
rogue named Louis Piquett, had met with a prominent
DILLINGER, John Herbert
Indiana judge on the grounds of the Century of
Progress in Chicago and handed over an envelope containing several thousand of dollars. In return, the judge
agreed to smuggle a gun into the jail. Dillinger used the
gun to capture and lock up several guards and then
made his way to the warden’s office, where he grabbed
two machine guns.
He gave one of the machine guns to a black prisoner,
35-year-old Herbert Youngblood, and together they
locked up several more officers; snatched the car of a
lady sheriff, Mrs. Lillian Holley, from the jail parking
lot; and made good their escape, taking two hostages
with them. Dillinger later released the two hostages,
giving one, an auto mechanic, $4 for his troubles.
Naturally, the supposed wooden gun escape made
headlines. Sometime later, however, a secret investigation conducted by the Hargrave Secret Service of
Chicago on orders of Gov. McNutt turned up the true
story about the gun. McNutt and Attorney General
Philip Lutz, Jr. decided not to reveal the information
because they quite properly didn’t want Dillinger to
know that certain informants whom he might trust
again in the future had talked to private detectives. By
the time Dillinger was killed, the judge too had died,
and the findings about the gun never were made public.
Meanwhile, Dillinger basked in the glory of the
wooden gun story and sought to perpetuate it. In a letter to his sister, he told her not to worry about him and
that he was “having a lot of fun.” Concerning the gun,
he added:
1934, Youngblood was mortally wounded in a gun battle with lawmen in Port Huron, Mich. As evidence of
the loyalty Dillinger inspired in men, the dying Youngblood falsely told police that Dillinger had been with
him the day before.
Immediately, Dillinger put together the real Dillinger
mob, including among others Van Meter, jugmarker
Eddie Green, Hamilton, Tommy Carroll and a newcomer, a short, violent-tempered punk named Lester
Gillis, better known as Baby Face Nelson. It took considerable skill on Dillinger’s part to keep Nelson and Van
Meter, and occasionally some of the others, from shooting at one another. Dillinger undoubtedly disliked Nelson but he needed him. Nelson was the sort who would
never desert his post in a robbery, and Dillinger had to
commit several robberies fast. He had to get money to
provide a legal defense for Pierpont, Makley and Clark,
who were to be tried for murdering Sheriff Sarber.
Dillinger sent the money, but it did little good. All
three were convicted: Clark got life and the other two
were sentenced to the electric chair.
Time was running out for Dillinger as well. The same
month as his breakout from the Crown Point Jail, he
barely escaped in a barrage of machine-gun fire during a
confrontation with FBI agents in St. Paul. Dillinger was
wounded in the leg, but Billie Frechette drove him to
safety. The next month, April 1934, Dillinger and the
rest of the mob were hiding out at Little Bohemia
Lodge, a closed summer resort about 50 miles north of
Rhinelander, Wis., when the FBI closed in. Warned by
barking dogs, Dillinger and his men escaped. Baby Face
Nelson killed Special Agent W. Carter Baum and
wounded another agent and a local police officer. The
FBI wound up capturing only three of the mob’s
women, who were found hiding in the basement. They
also managed to shoot two innocent bystanders, a salesman and a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) cook,
and kill another young CCC worker, all of whom they
thought were escaping gangsters.
It was a debacle for the FBI and, in a sense, another
laurel for Dillinger. Will Rogers got into the act, writing, “Well, they had Dillinger surrounded and was all
ready to shoot him when he come out, but another
bunch of folks come out ahead, so they just shot them
instead. Dillinger is going to accidentally get with some
innocent bystanders some time, then he will get shot.”
Dillinger and Van Meter both submitted to plastic
surgery to alter their faces and fingerprints. Neither job
was overly effective. Ironically, Dillinger “died” on the
operating cot. Given a general anesthetic, he swallowed
his tongue and stopped breathing. One of the panicky
outlaw doctors managed to pull out his tongue with a
forceps and applied artificial respirations, and Dillinger
started breathing again.
. . . [the reports] I had a real forty five Thats just a lot
of hooey to cover up because they don’t like to admit
that I locked eight Deputys and a dozen trustys up with
my wooden gun before I got my hands on the two
machine guns. I showed everyone the wooden gun after
I got a hold of the machine guns and you should have
seen thire faces. Ha! Ha! Ha! Pulling that off was
worth ten years of my life. Ha! Ha!
Dillinger’s intention obviously was to cover up the
fact that a real gun had been smuggled to him and to satisfy his ego. It was not the only time he had done that.
Dillinger had often tormented his chief pursuer, Matt
Leach, with phone calls and letters. And on one occasion
he supposedly sent a book entitled How to Be a Detective to the excitable Leach. When he was captured in Arizona, Dillinger had been asked if he had in fact sent the
book. He replied, “I was there when it was sent.” That
too was sheer nonsense. The book had been sent to
Leach as a practical joke by Jack Cejnar, the bureau chief
of the International News Service in Indianapolis.
After their escape Dillinger and Youngblood immediately separated. Thirteen days later, on March 16,
266
DILLINGER, John Herbert—double
By this time Hamilton had died of wounds received
in a shoot-out with pursuing officers, and while
Dillinger was recovering from the plastic surgery,
Tommy Carroll was killed near Waterloo, Iowa. The
mob was falling apart, and Dillinger could only think
of making a few big scores and then fleeing to Mexico.
Still, Dillinger’s facial surgery gave him enough confidence to venture openly in the streets. Using the identity
of Jimmy Lawrence, he took up with a 26-year-old
Chicago waitress named Polly Hamilton. Polly shared
rooms with a friend, Anna Sage, whose real name was
Ana Cumpanis. Sage had come to America from Romania just after the war and had operated whorehouses in
Gary, Ind., and East Chicago, Ill. She had twice been convicted of operating a disorderly house but had won pardons from Indiana governor Leslie. Recently, however,
Sage had been convicted a third time and Gov. McNutt
had refused her request for a pardon. The Immigration
Bureau was seeking to deport her as an undesirable alien.
Dillinger felt safe with Polly Hamilton and Anna
Sage; he had never had trouble with women betraying
him. It is doubtful that Hamilton knew his true identity,
but Anna Sage soon discovered it. Dillinger felt comfortable talking to her. She was 42, an older woman
and perhaps even a mother figure for him. Sage listened
to his stories and ramblings and perhaps would not
have informed on him merely because there was a
$10,000 reward for his capture. But through a police
contact in East Chicago, she made a deal with the FBI
to betray Dillinger in exchange for a promise that the
deportation proceedings against her would be dropped
and the reward money would be given to her. Melvin
Purvis, agent in charge of the Chicago office of the FBI,
agreed to help with those matters as far as possible.
On July 22, 1934 Dillinger took the two women to
a Chicago movie. Earlier in the day Sage had called the
FBI to tell them about Dillinger’s plans, but at that time
she did not know which of two movies they would
attend. The FBI staked out both and waited. As
planned, Sage dressed in red so that the FBI men would
recognize her. The agents at the Biograph Theater saw
Dillinger and the two women enter. FBI inspector Sam
Cowley, in charge of the nationwide hunt for Dillinger,
telephoned J. Edgar Hoover and the decision was not
to try to take Dillinger inside the movie house but to
wait until he came out. When Dillinger and the women
walked out of the theater, Purvis lit a cigar, the signal
that identified Dillinger. Then he called on Dillinger to
halt. The gangster looked about suddenly, and he saw
that his female companions had vanished. In that brief
instant he must have realized he had been betrayed by a
woman. He pulled a Colt automatic from his right
pants pocket and sprinted for the alley at the side of the
movie house. Three FBI agents fired. They wounded
two women passing, but they also shot Dillinger. One
bullet went through his left side, another tore through
his stooped back and came out his right eye. Dillinger
fell dead.
Within a few months the second Dillinger mob was
completely wiped out. Eddie Green was shot by the FBI.
A month after Dillinger died, Homer Van Meter was
also killed in an alley, this one in St. Paul, after being
betrayed by friends. In November, Baby Face Nelson
killed two FBI agents but died himself of wounds
received in the gun battle. Meanwhile, Pierpont and
Makley attempted to escape from the death house at the
Ohio State Prison in Columbus by imitating Dillinger’s
mythical wooden gun ruse. With guns carved out of
soap, they succeeded in overpowering one guard and
were trying to batter their way out through the door
leading from the death house when a riot squad opened
fire. Makley was killed and Pierpont wounded. A month
later, Pierpont died in the electric chair.
See also: JOHN HERBERT DILLINGER—DOUBLE, DIRTY
DOZEN GANG, JUG MARKERS, HERMAN “BARON” LAMM,
GEORGE “BABY FACE” NELSON, PUBLIC ENEMIES, MELVIN
PURVIS, ED SINGLETON, WOODEN GUN ESCAPES, HERBERT
YOUNGBLOOD.
Dillinger, John Herbert—double
The death of John Dillinger in July 1934 marked the
end of crime’s greatest folk hero of the 20th century,
and it was therefore hardly surprising that his death
was not accepted by many. This has been a common
behavioral reaction. For decades there were people who
believed Jesse James had not been shot by Bob Ford,
that a substitute corpse had been used. And for decades
one “real Jesse James” after another turned up. In the
cases of the Apache Kid and Butch Cassidy, the weight
of opinion seems to favor the theory that they survived
their alleged demises, but the identification of their
corpses was far more controversial.
The disbelief about John Dillinger started instantly
after his death and continued for years. In a book entitled Dillinger: Dead or Alive? (1970), Jay Robert Nash
and Ron Offen made perhaps the most complete case
that the great public enemy had not been killed by FBI
agents. Their basic premise was that the FBI had been
duped into thinking the dead man was Dillinger, and
when the agency discovered otherwise, it could do
nothing but develop a massive cover-up.
What makes this case less than totally acceptable is
the number of people such a plot would have required.
Certainly Anna Sage, “the woman in red,” and her East
Chicago police contact or contacts. And someone
would have had to have planted a phony Dillinger fingerprint card days before the killing. According to this
267
DIMSDALE, Professor Thomas J.
dant over to the law for the exacting of justice. However, he was as incensed as the rest of the community
when Daniels got only a three-year sentence and was
pardoned after serving just a few months. The pardoned
killer returned to Helena and went about threatening to
take vengeance on the vigilantes who had caught him.
As a result of this misbehavior, the vigilantes seized him
a second time and hanged him without recourse to the
courts. While Dimsdale agreed that the “politic and the
proper course would have been to arrest him and hold
him for the action of the authorities,” he could not condemn the lynching. He wrote in the Post:
theory, “Jimmy Lawrence” was not a Dillinger alias but
the name of a real minor hoodlum whose career was
rather hazy.
Proponents of the fake Dillinger theory make much
of glaring discrepancies found in Dillinger’s autopsy
report, which was allegedly lost for more than 30 years.
For instance, in the report the dead man’s eyes were
listed as brown, Dillinger’s were blue. But this was an
autopsy performed in Cook County during the 1930s, a
time when coroners’ findings nationwide were notorious for being replete with errors. The autopsy was performed in a “looney bin” atmosphere. A reporter for
the Chicago Tribune appeared in news photos propping
up Dillinger’s head and was identified as the “coroner.”
Even after the autopsy was performed, Dillinger’s brain
was actually “mislaid” for a time. If all errors made in
autopsies of that period were taken seriously, probably
just half the victims of violent deaths could really have
been considered dead.
Another question that must be raised is how John
Dillinger lived happily ever after and on what. By all
accounts, he had less than $10,000 available to him for a
final, permanent escape. Could he stay away from crime
forever? And if he could not, would he not have been identified sooner or later? And what of Anna Sage? Despite
promises made to her by the FBI, she was deported back
to her native Romania. She could undoubtedly have
bought a reprieve from that fate had she come forward
with the true facts about a Dillinger hoax.
In sum, the “Dillinger lives” theory appears to be a
case of wishful thinking, one fostered by the fact that
John Dillinger was too good—or too bad—to be
allowed to die.
When escaped murderers utter threats of murder
against peaceable citizens, mountain law is apt to be
administered without much regard to technicalities,
and when a man says he is going to kill any one, in a
mining country, it is understood that he means what he
says, and must abide the consequences. Two human
beings had fallen victims to his thirst of blood—the
husband and the wife. Three more were threatened; but
the action of the Vigilantes prevented the commission
of the contemplated atrocities. To have waited for the
consummation of his avowed purpose, after what he
had done before, would have been shutting the stable
door after the steed was stolen.
And, Dimsdale added, Daniels was hanged “not
because he was pardoned, but because he was unfit to
live in the community.”
Dimsdale’s articles in the Post provided an instant
history of the vigilante movement and certainly the
most authoritative accounts on the subject. In 1866 a
large number of them were collected and published in
book form under the title of Vigilantes of Montana, the
first book published in the territory. Dimsdale died on
September 22, 1866, at the age of 35, just after the
book’s appearance. Although copies of the original edition are extremely rare, the book was republished in
1953 by the University of Oklahoma Press.
See also: JAMES DANIELS, VIGILANTES OF MONTANA.
Dimsdale, Professor Thomas J. (1831–1866)
vigilante chronicler
Just as John X. Beidler is remembered as the hangman
of the famous Vigilantes of Montana, Professor Thomas
J. Dimsdale stands as their authorized biographer.
A consumptive English professor and Oxford graduate, Dimsdale settled in Virginia City, Mont. in search
of a healthful mountain climate. After running a private
school for a time, he was named Montana’s first superintendent of public instruction in 1864 by the territorial
governor. In August of that year he also became editor
of the Montana Post, the first important newspaper in
the territory, and he regularly chronicled the doings of
the Montana vigilantes, offering what folks considered
“book learning” justification for rope justice.
When in 1865 a bully named James Daniels killed
another man in a dispute over cards and the victim’s
wife died of a heart attack on hearing the news, Dimsdale approved the vigilantes’ decision to turn the defen-
Dio, Johnny (1915–1979) labor racketeer
Johnny Dio, whose real name was John DioGuardi, rose
from the ranks of the old Murder, Inc. to become organized crime’s most notorious labor racketeer. He was
always believed to have been responsible for the acid
blinding of labor communist Victor Reisel in 1956.
According to the police theory, Dio had ordered the acid
blinding of Reisel because Teamster official Jimmy Hoffa
had said in a moment of rage that something should be
done about the labor writer’s probing columns. Dio
reputedly carried out Hoffa’s wishes in order to curry
268
DNA evidence
favor with him. In any event, Dio was arrested; but the
case never came to trial.
Years earlier Thomas E. Dewey, then New York’s
racket-busting special prosecutor, called Dio “a young
gorilla who began his career at the age of 15.” As a
protégé of the leaders of the old Brooklyn Murder, Inc.
syndicate, Dio became an important mobster by the age
of 20 and a gang chieftain at 24. In the mid-1950s Senate investigators named Teamster head Hoffa and Dio
as the co-organizers of the paper locals of the union
that eventually seized control of the lucrative airport
trucking business in New York City. Finally, Dio was
convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison for stock
fraud. He died in a Pennsylvania hospital after being
moved there from the federal penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pa. Although he had been front-page copy for
years, Dio’s death escaped public attention for several
days, even though a paid death notice appeared in the
New York Daily News.
inmates lived in the most inhumane conditions, chained
naked and whipped with rods. She started a crusade,
traveling the breadth of the country inspecting prisons,
jails and almshouses and presenting her findings to legislative bodies. She told about how convicts and those
having committed no crime other than being insane
were imprisoned in cages, cellars, stalls and closets.
More than any one person, she effected enormous
improvements almost everywhere she went.
There was only a brief hiatus in her reform work
when she was appointed superintendent of women
nurses for the North during the Civil War. Immediately
after the war she resumed her prison reform crusade.
She even journeyed to England and elsewhere in
Europe, where her initiative and perserverance brought
reforms in every country she visited. She died in Trenton, N.J. on July 17, 1887, active to the end stopping
prison horrors wherever she found them.
DNA evidence
Dirty Dozen Gang
Indianapolis kids’ gang
In 1913 a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Railroad
declared that a neighborhood kid gang in the Oak Hill
section of Indianapolis was “the worst on our entire
right-of-way,” but at the time, he could hardly have
known why. What started out as little more than a typical neighborhood gang of 10-year-olds had soon
turned into a band of minor criminals. One of their
biggest illegal activities was stealing tons of coal from
railroad gondolas on the belt line that ran through the
area and selling it at bargain rates to local homeowners
and residents.
The Dirty Dozen were finally caught by railroad
detectives. When hauled into juvenile court, all except
one of them was frightened. The leader of the gang,
chewing gum, faced the judge with arms folded and a
slouch cap over one eye. Angrily, the judge ordered him
to take the gum from his mouth and the cap from his
head. With a crooked smirk, the youth did both and
then stuck the gum on the cap’s peak.
“Your mind is crippled,” the judge said to 10-yearold John Dillinger.
See also: JOHN DILLINGER.
Dix, Dorothea Lynde (1802–1887) prison reformer
In 1841 Dorothea Dix, a consumptive 39-year-old
teacher went to the East Cambridge, Mass. House of
Correction to teach Sunday school to the convicts and
emerged to become the “angel of mercy” of prison
reform. From that point on, she spent almost five
decades of her life improving conditions for prisoners,
the insane and the mentally ill. She found that prison
269
convicting the guilty, freeing the innocent
The crime was probably as worthy of the death penalty
as any. Robert Lee Miller, Jr., was convicted by an
Oklahoma jury in 1988 for the rape and asphyxiation
of two women, 92-year-old Zelma Cutler and 83-yearold Anne Laura Fowler. Miller was sentenced to death
in 1988 and remained under that sentence for 10 years
until a judge dismissed the case because of insufficient
evidence. “Insufficient” was not quite the word for it.
DNA in a semen sample turned out not to match
Miller’s DNA but did match that of an already convicted rapist.
DNA has revolutionized the field of crime. It has frequently convicted the guilty and in many cases kept
innocent people from being prosecuted; in fact, it has
often freed the innocent. However DNA testing
involves utilizing human beings in the process and
therein can lie the rub. There remains a crying need for
competence and thoroughness during an investigation.
Robert Hayes was convicted in 1991 in Florida for the
rape and murder of a coworker. The conviction was
based largely on DNA evidence taken from hair found
in the victim’s hands. Hayes was released in 1997 by
the Florida Supreme Court when it was learned the hair
was from a white man. Hayes was black.
DNA could be said to have had its birth in 1953
when English physicist M. H. F. Wilkins, together with
Francis Crick and an American. John Watson, worked
on the acids comprising the cell nucleus. They discovered DNA.
The great breakthrough in crime detection occurred
in 1984 when Dr. Alec Jeffreys in England came up
with chemical typing of “genetic fingerprints.”
Through Dr. Jeffreys’ research it was established that
DNA evidence
even after the defendant has been released. In other
cases it is a matter of gamesmanship to even introduce
DNA evidence. This is especially the case when there is
what some critics call “quickie deadlines” on new evidence. In Virginia the statute of limitations is 21 days,
which left Earl Washington, Jr., in hard luck. In 1994
his DNA testing arrived too late. An optimist might say
he still had some good luck. Subsequently his sentence
was commuted to life imprisonment. David Botkins, a
spokesman for Mark Earley, Virginia’s attorney general, announced, “The inmates who have been granted
clemency and had their death sentences commuted
show the system works.”
Some reformers do not see this as making the system
work, and they have called for federal legislation to
guarantee inmates an opportunity to require DNA testing. At the time only New York and Illinois offered
such requirements.
Above all, this would require that DNA testing be
done correctly. In the celebrated murder trial of exfootball star O. J. Simpson, Barry Scheck persuaded the
jury in the criminal proceeding to disregard DNA evidence offered by the prosecution by demonstrating how
such evidence could be misused.
Also required would be the fair use of the DNA evidence. In 1992 Randall Padgett was convicted of the
stabbing death of his estranged wife. Virtually the entire
case against Padgett was based on blood samples left at
the scene, which were tested for DNA. It turned out the
FBI crime laboratory had concluded the blood was not
Padgett’s. The Alabama prosecutors simply suppressed
that fact. Padgett was acquitted at a retrial and was
released after spending five years on death row.
There were indications by late 1999 that a bit of a
sea change was taking place concerning the death
penalty, especially in light of the DNA record. In some
cases reforms were even supported by vocal deathpenalty supporters. In Illinois, the house passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on executions and for
the formation of an independent group to study how
the death penalty was being applied in the state. In
Nebraska, death penalty foes and proponents joined
forces to pass a law that would stop executions for two
years.
But in other jurisdictions the push remained strong
for speedier executions. In fact, in August 1999 a conference organized by the United States Court of
Appeals for the 11th Circuit, known to attorneys as
hard-line, was held to find ways to expedite capital
punishment. Some states have cut financing, in some
cases to zero, for lawyers representing death row
inmates for their appeals.
Calling for the rights to every death row inmate to
have access to DNA testing, a decent attorney and the
the only persons in the world with identical “bar
codes” were identical twins.
Dr. Jeffreys first applied the technique in paternity
cases and in 1987 he made the great breakthrough in a
murder case. Colin Pitchfork raped and strangled two
teenagers three years apart. In a sweep that would
never get compliance in the United States but did in
Britain, authorities gained the cooperation of 4,600
men for blood samples. Pitchfork realized something
was up although he did not understand what was
involved and got a stand-in to give blood for him.
Unfortunately, the police discovered the trickery and
Jeffreys got his man.
Within a short time DNA testing started being used
extensively in the United States. The FBI started doing
DNA testing in rape and rape-homicide cases in 1989.
The agency only gets the cases when there has been an
arrest or an indictment and then does DNA testing to
confirm or exclude the suspect. In one out of four cases
where they get a result, the primary suspect is excluded.
The noted DNA expert Barry Scheck, has asked,
“How many of those people would have been convicted had there been no DNA testing?”
Scheck is codirector, with Peter Neufeld, of the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of
Law in Manhattan. As of 1999 well over 60 persons,
more than half of them with the aid of project, had
their convictions overturned because of DNA testing.
In eight of those cases, the convicts were on death row.
More important, thousands of others, said Scheck,
“have been exonerated after an arrest, in the middle of
a trial, things like that.” Still, in 70 percent of the Innocence Project cases, the evidence the investigators
wished to test could not be located.
On August 23, 1999 the New York Times stated
that since capital punishment was reinstated by the
United States Supreme Court there had been 566 executions, and at the same time 82 awaiting executions
were exonerated—one in seven. There was no estimate
of how many of those executed had been afforded the
opportunity to use DNA evidence. This was not to be
unexpected. Back in 1957, in Not Guilty, a trailblazing
book examining the extent of wrongful convictions,
Judge Jerome Frank, noted, “No one knows how many
innocent men, erroneously convicted of murder, have
been put to death by American governments. For . . .
once a convicted man is dead, all interest in vindicating
him usually evaporates.” A “scorecard” of sorts could
be offered by the death penalty experiences in Illinois to
show 12 persons executed and in that same period 12
other inmates exonerated.
It is not always easy to free a defendant even after it
has been proved that he is not guilty. There have been
cases of prosecutors simply refusing to drop the charges
270
DOAN’S Store
stole only from the patriot side, but at no time was any
of their loot delivered to His Majesty’s forces. Their
most daring robbery took place on a cold, windy night
in October 1781, when 16 members of the gang boldly
rode into Newtown, Pa. and headed directly for the
home of John Hart, Esq., the treasurer of Bucks
County, who was in the habit of hiding government
funds in his home for fear of seizure by the British. Terrifying Hart and threatening his children, Moses Doane
forced him to reveal the various hiding places of a total
of about $4,500 in today’s currency, then little short of
a king’s ransom. The robbery showed how proficient
the Doane spy service was. Whenever and wherever in
Bucks County a hoard of patriot money was to be
found, the Doanes soon knew it. Tax collectors who
changed their appointed rounds found that such intelligence was not long kept from the Doanes. Ironically,
the Newtown robbery coincided with the collapse of
Moses Doane’s strategy of aligning himself with the
British cause. Just three days previously, Cornwallis
had surrendered at Yorktown, dooming the hopes of
the Crown. The Doanes were now labeled outlaws by
the recognized forces of law and order and were on the
run. Their forays continued for several years, but they
had few safe refuges other than caves, there being as
many storied Doane cave hideouts in Pennsylvania as
there were Jesse James caves in Missouri.
From 1783 on, wanted posters for various gang
members dotted the Pennsylvania and New Jersey
countryside. Before that, the Doanes had intimidated
the local inhabitants by exacting vengeance on the
nearest inhabitant to any wanted poster. If an individual didn’t remove the poster, he faced a visit from the
Doanes, one he would not forget—if he survived it. But
by 1783 fear of the Doanes was fading, and additionally, some gang members, such as the fabled James
“Sandy Flash” Fitzpatrick, had split off with gangs of
their own. Fitzpatrick was hanged in 1787. On September 24, 1788 Abraham and Levy Doane, by then more
critical to the gang than Moses, were executed on the
Philadelphia Commons. A short time thereafter, Moses
Doane was also caught and hanged.
See also: JAMES FITZPATRICK.
opportunity to introduce evidence of innocence no matter when it is uncovered, the New York Times editorialized: “It is the rare death-row inmate who does not
claim to be innocent. But many states are finding, to
their horror, that it is not a rarity that this claim is true
. . . A wrongful conviction, of course, means that the
real killer has gone free.”
And of course the Times reiterated the long-standing
view of reformers: “There is no way to know how
many innocent people have been executed because the
dead do not search for champions to prove their case.”
Against this, many death penalty supporters tend to
demand a date certain on all executions. A fairly standard call is for a definite cut-off after five years of conviction. Proponents argue that the absence of a
date-certain provision makes a mockery of capital punishment. One who might have fallen victim to such a
schedule for death would be Gregory Wilhoit, who was
convicted in 1987 for killing his estranged wife in her
sleep in Oklahoma. The prosecution relied on an expert
who testified that Wilhoit’s teeth matched bite marks
on the victim’s body. Later the state appeals court ruled
that Wilhoit’s counsel had failed to challenge the
expert’s claim. The court said at the time he—the
defense attorney was “suffering from alcohol dependence and abuse and brain damage during his representation of appellant.” At a new trial, 11 experts were
brought in to testify that the bite marks did not match,
and Wilhoit was freed.
However, this was six years later—beyond the socalled five-year limit.
Doane gang
Revolutionary War outlaws
The American Revolution was the first golden age for
criminality in this country. The turmoil produced by
the shifting fortunes of war created the ideal setting for
bands of cattle rustlers, horse thieves and highway robbers. If a criminal stole from the British, he could count
on the sympathies and sometimes even the active support of revolutionaries; if he preyed on known enemies
of England, he was to the British a supporter of the
Crown. Into this law enforcement vacuum stepped the
notorious Doanes (sometimes called Doans), who left a
trail of plunder through eastern Pennsylvania and parts
of New Jersey.
Commanded by raw-boned Moses Doane, a fiercelooking man with long hair and a fur hat, the gang,
composed of five of his brothers and as many as 10 to
15 others, became the terror of Bucks County, Pa. especially. Moses Doane declared himself a Tory so that
upon the anticipated triumph of the British, he and his
confederates would be labeled Loyalists and free from
the threat of punishment. On that basis, the Doanes
Doan’s Store
While much can be said about lawlessness in the Old
West, the fact remains that overall the frontier was
composed of honest folk, as exemplified by the existence of Doan’s Store, located at the Red River crossing
just north of Vernon, Tex. Founded in 1874 by two
brothers, Jonathan and Corwin Doan, the store sold
supplies and clothing on credit and loaned out money
to hundreds and hundreds of trail drivers and cowboys,
271
DOBBS, Johnny
Doctors’ Mob
all without collateral and to many men who were complete strangers.
Author J. Frank Dobie insisted that in almost two
decades of business, the Doan brothers never lost
a cent to any of their customers and that cowboys
would ride hundreds of miles to pay up their accounts.
And of course, it was the very clear code of the West
that Doane’s Store could and would never be robbed
and that anyone who did so would have no place to
hide.
great New York riot
On a Sunday evening in April 1788, a strange and
bloody riot developed after a young medical student,
annoyed by several children peering in the window of
the New York Hospital in lower Manhattan, picked up
the arm of a corpse he had just dissected and pointed it
at them. “This is your mother’s hand,” he yelled. “I just
dug it up. Watch out or I’ll smack you with it.” Ironically, one child among those who scattered upon hearing that terrifying threat had just lost his mother. He
rushed home and told his father of the event. The man
rushed to the cemetery where his wife had recently been
buried, and by the greatest of coincidences, the grave
was open and the woman’s body gone. In a rage, the
man headed for the hospital, telling his friends on the
way what had transpired. Within minutes he was
joined by an angry mob of hundreds.
Armed with torches, bricks and ropes, the members
of the mob screamed for the doctors to come out.
Dressed in street clothes most of the physicians slipped
out by mingling with the crowd. Frustrated, the mob
stormed the hospital and wrecked tables holding valuable specimens. One doctor and three students who
remained behind to try to stop them barely escaped
with their lives and were put in jail by the sheriff to
protect them.
The mob’s fury was not spent, and the rioters spilled
back into the street looking for doctors. They attacked
many doctors’ homes. One of the homes was that of Sir
John Temple, who was not a physician, but “Sir John”
sounded like “surgeon.” The medical student whose jest
started the riot, John Hicks, Jr., was almost cornered in a
physician’s house but escaped over the rooftops.
On the following morning, April 14, authorities
fully expected the riot to be over, but the mob’s violence
increased and scores of doctors were forced to leave the
city. Later in the day a huge, ugly mob moved toward
Columbia College in search of more grisly specimens
and the “savage experimenters” who had gathered
them. Several prominent citizens tried to intervene to
end the madness. Alexander Hamilton was shoved
aside. John Jay was knocked unconscious with a rock.
Meanwhile, Gov. George Clinton had called out the
militia and prepared to use force to put down the violence. Baron Friedrich von Steuben, a hero of the Revolution and one of the most popular men in the city,
begged the governor to hold off. Standing in front of
the troops, he said he would try to dissuade the rioters.
For his efforts the baron got hit on the head with a
brick. In a quick turnabout, Steuben got to his knees
and shouted, “Fire, Clinton, fire!”
The militia cut loose and 20 rioters fell in the first
volley alone. In all, eight rioters were killed and dozens
more injured.
Dobbs, Johnny (?–1892) bank robber and murderer
Johnny Dobbs was one of the most successful crooks in
America during the 19th century. A colorful fence, bank
robber and murderer, he was credited by authorities
with netting himself at least $1 million over a 20-year
criminal career.
During his youth Dobbs, whose real name was
Michael Kerrigan, served in the Patsy Conroy gang of
river pirates and then became a bank burglar of
renown, working with the likes of Worcester Sam Perris
Shang Draper, Red Leary, Jimmy Hope, Jimmy Brady,
Banjo Pete Emerson, Abe Coakley and the King of the
Bank Robbers, George Leonidas Leslie, in whose murder Dobbs later participated. Dobbs played a key role
in the celebrated $2.7 million robbery of New York’s
Manhattan Savings Institution in 1878. He reportedly
took part in bank jobs all over the East that netted perhaps $8 million in loot.
With a portion of his revenues, Dobbs opened a
saloon at 100 Mott Street, just a short distance from
police headquarters, and blatantly operated there as
one of the biggest fences in New York. He supposedly
fenced over $2 million in hot money and securities,
keeping about $650,000 as his own share. When asked
once why crooks congregated right by police headquarters, he replied, “The nearer the church the closer to
God.”
Dobbs and his accomplices murdered Leslie because
they believed the King of the Bank Robbers was
informing on them in exchange for the opportunity to
start a new life elsewhere. Although he was not convicted of the murder, Dobbs was sent to prison for a
number of robberies and spent most of the 1880s in
various institutions. A week after he was discharged
from the Massachusetts State Prison, he was found
lying in a gutter in New York City and taken to Bellevue Hospital’s alcoholic ward. He died there broke on
May 15, 1892. To pay for his burial, one of Dobbs’
former mistresses pawned an expensive brooch he had
presented to her in happier days.
See also: GEORGE LEONIDAS LESLIE.
272
DODGE City Peace Commission
Still, the riot continued until the morning of the
15th, when the mob was at last sated and returning
physicians could tend the wounded rioters. Laws were
passed giving medical researchers access to the bodies
of executed persons, but this hardly fulfilled the need,
and grave robbing remained a serious problem for
many years, although no more bloody riots such as the
Doctors’ Mob incident occurred.
of the toughest and meanest gunfighters of the West—
Wyatt Earp, Luke Short, Doc Holliday, Bat Masterson,
Shotgun Collins and others—who threatened to drown
Dodge City in a sea of blood in defense of the institutions
they held dear, namely gambling and prostitution.
During its early years Dodge City was dominated by
a political group of saloon keepers, brothel owners and
gamblers that became known as “the Gang.” The
Gang, especially under Mayor “Dog” Kelly, maintained
their idea of a wide-open town by utilizing the guns of
Earp, Masterson and Short. By the early 1880s times
were changing in Kansas. For one thing, the forces of
prohibition were gaining in the state, although not in
Dodge. Still, there were reformers trying to change
Dodge, primarily by warring on prostitution, the
lifeblood of an open cattle town.
In 1883 the “reformers” under Lawrence E. Deger
pushed through ordinances against prostitution and
vagrancy, the latter instituted as a way of harassing
gunfighters and gamblers. The first crackdown was
made against the Long Branch Saloon, owned by Luke
Short and W. H. Harris, two of the out-of-power
Dodge City Gang. The reform party itself contained
other saloon elements, especially those of A. B. Webster, who was the chief business rival of Short and Harris, and the new laws seemed to be enforced unevenly.
Of course, the reformers could argue a start had to be
Dodge City, Kansas
In 1872 the railroad gangs of the Atchison, Topeka and
Santa Fe Railroad turned a small hole-in-the-ground
oasis where whiskey peddlers camped into what became
probably the biggest, bawdiest, brawliest train town
America ever saw. Located on the Arkansas River a few
miles from the military reservation at Fort Dodge, the
new town sprouted makeshift saloons and gambling
dens in dugouts or tents on both sides of the tracks.
Soon, rickety buildings were going up. The place was
christened Dodge City and labeled the “queen of cow
towns,” the “wickedest little city in America,” the
“Gomorrah of the Plains” and, perhaps most picturesque of all, the “beautiful, bibulous Babylon of the
frontier.” It was all these and more. The mecca of buffalo hunters and trail herders, Dodge City became a
wanton paradise of gamblers, gunmen and harlots. As
one journalist reported: “No restriction is placed on
licentiousness. The town is full of prostitutes and brothels.” Another quotable remark made by an observer
was “All they raise around Dodge City is cattle and
hell.” The terms boot hill and red-light district were
born there. Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson and company,
the lawmen of Dodge, were called the Fighting Pimps,
which should explain some of what was allowed in
Dodge. Through a man named Ned Buntline, Earp
achieved his first nationwide fame in Dodge, although
he killed but one man there. Buntline, a journalistic
rogue, came to Dodge in 1876 and with his writings did
for Earp what he also did for Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill. Earp, according to Buntline, was all good and
Dodge was all bad. Buntline was wrong on the first
item but at least half right on the second.
Good or bad, Dodge had to be because it was a vital
cattle center. With the years, it tamed down as the West
itself did. Today, it is still a cattle center of some 14,000
people.
See also: DODGE CITY PEACE COMMISSION, WYATT EARP,
LUKE MCGLUE, RED-LIGHT DISTRICT.
Dodge City Peace Commission
Members of the Dodge City Peace Commission were
dedicated to preserving gambling and prostitution in
Dodge City. Seated, left to right: Charles E. Bassett,
Wyatt Earp, M. C. Clark and Neal Brown. Standing, left to
right: W. H. Harris. Luke Short and Bat Masterson.
gunmen
The Dodge City Peace Commission was anything but
what its name implied. It was a conglomeration of some
273
DOGFIGHTING
made somewhere. Somewhere came with the arrest of
three singers from the Long Branch, known as “horizontal singers,” on prostitution charges.
Those arrests marked the start of the so-called
Dodge City War. Luke Short was fighting mad at the
arrest of his ladies and tried to shoot L. C. Hartman,
the lawman who had taken them into custody. Hartman survived the fusillade only because he accidentally
slipped to the ground. Short was later arrested for
attempted murder and released on bond. When Mayor
Deger learned that Short and a half dozen of his supporters were composing a “death list” and that some
reformers were talking of setting up a vigilante group,
he ordered Short and his men run out of town.
Short took his side of the argument to the governor
and the newspapers. Both sides deluged the state capital with petitions supporting their views. Short threatened open warfare, and when the governor made it
clear he would not send troops in to protect Dodge,
Short acted. First Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, two
of Short’s oldest friends, showed up to lend a hand in
Topeka and plan strategy. Suddenly, the citizens of
Dodge found Doc Holliday was in town. And there
were others to back up Holliday—Charlie Bassett,
Neal Brown, Shotgun Collins, Rowdy Joe Lowe and
others.
While a nervous governor sent in the adjutant general on a fact-finding mission, Earp and Masterson
escorted Short into town. Hysteria started building. A
local newspaper gave its readers some of the foreboding
facts:
for whom these men have rallied, is a noted man himself. He has killed several men and is utterly devoid of
fear.
While there was considerable exaggeration in the
biographies of many of the gunfighters, it was obvious the Short-Earp forces had the firepower to make
the O.K. Corral fight a Sunday school outing by comparison. With each hour their legions grew. The citizenry learned of the arrival of gunmen now known
only as Cold Chuck Johnny, Dynamite Sam, Black
Jack Bill, Three-Fingered Dave, Six-Toed Pete and,
most ominously, Dark Alley Jim. They began thinking
that the militia would be unable to handle such
skilled gunfighters even if it did intervene. Faced with
this bleak outlook, the reformers in Dodge capitulated. Short and Harris were invited back to run the
Long Branch as they had in the good old days. Prostitution was saved and Dodge City remained a wideopen town.
Later, seven of the Short supporters posed for a victory photograph and labeled themselves the Dodge City
Peace Commissioners. Through the years, and especially thanks to Hollywood, the impression took hold
that the peace commissioners had something to do with
peace and law and order.
See also: LUKE SHORT.
dogfighting
Dogfighting is an illegal sport that is now almost completely eradicated in this country, unlike cockfighting,
which continues. Nonetheless, it has a long and terrible
tradition in America. Although illegal in almost every
state, dogfighting contests were common in every part
of the country during the 19th century, and thousands
of dogs suffered horrible deaths. Dog stealing became a
major criminal activity, as gangsters used every means
possible to provide enough animals to keep up with
demand. Most top fighting dogs were imported from
England or bred from that country’s stock. Championship battles often generated as much betting action
as did prize fights. Some of the most infamous dogfighting arenas in the country were Hanly’s Dog Pit and
Bill Swan’s Saloon and Rat Pit in New Orleans and Kit
Burns’ Sportsmen’s Hall in New York.
Fights were not only staged between dogs but also
with wharf rats, which were brought in to battle dogs
after being starved for a considerable length of time.
Generally, fighting terriers could handle the rats but
occasionally one would start to flee after taking several
nips from the rodents. The rooting of the crowd would
then shift in favor of the rats, as the spectators hoped to
see an execution by them. In a contest at Bill Swan’s
A brief history of these gentlemen who will meet here
tomorrow will explain the gravity of the situation. At
the head is Bat Masterson. He is credited with having
killed one man for every year of his life. This may be
exaggerated, but he is certainly entitled to a record of a
dozen or more. He is a cool, brave man, pleasant in his
manners, but terrible in a fight. Doc Holliday is
another famous killer. Among the desperate men of the
West, he is looked upon with the respect born of awe,
for he has killed in single combat no less than eight desperadoes. He was the chief character in the Earp war at
Tombstone, where the celebrated brothers, aided by
Holliday, broke up the terrible rustlers.
Wyatt Earp is equally famous in the cheerful business of depopulating the country. He has killed within
our personal knowledge six men, and he is popularly
accredited with relegating to the dust no less than ten
of his fellow men. Shotgun Collins was a Wells, Fargo
& Co. messenger, and obtained his name from the
peculiar weapon he used, a sawed-off shotgun. He has
killed two men in Montana and two in Arizona, but
beyond this his exploits are not known. Luke Short,
274
DONAHUE, Cornelius “Lame Johnny”
establishment in 1879, a dog named Modoc killed 36
rats in two minutes and 58 seconds, but good as that
was, it hardly equaled the record of a dog named Jacko,
who in 1862 had killed 60 rats in two minutes, 43 seconds. The same year, Jacko set his all-time endurance
record by disposing of 200 rats in 14 minutes, 37 seconds.
Probably America’s greatest dogfight was that staged
at the Garr farm near Louisville, Ky. on October 19,
1881. The battle was fought under The Police Gazette’s
revised rules for dogfighting with the purse of $2,000
being held by Richard K. Fox, the owner of that publication. While the match was illegal and in danger of
being halted, the contest enjoyed such advance publicity that bets were made on it from coast to coast. The
Ohio and Mississippi Railroad ran special excursion
trains that brought dogfight fanatics from places as distant as New York and New Orleans. It became apparent that if authorities stopped the battle, they would
face rioting in Louisville by disgruntled fans.
The contestants were New York’s Cockney Charlie
Loyod’s brindled, white dog Pilot and Louisville’s “Colonel” Louis Kreiger’s white battler Crib. Because the fight
was for the title of “American champion,” the winner
was required to kill his foe. Therefore, the brutal and
inhumane fight lasted one hour and 25 minutes before
Pilot emerged victorious. Pilot became as well known as
the famous bare-knuckled boxing champion of the era
John L. Sullivan.
By the turn of the century, interest in dogfighting
had given way to boxing, which had become somewhat
more civilized with the introduction of boxing gloves
and three-minute rounds.
Dolan’s downfall came when James H. Noe, a
brush manufacturer, caught him in the process of robbing his factory. The gangster managed to get away by
using his terrible eye gouger on Noe and then beating
his victim to death with an iron bar. Later, Dolan
proudly displayed eyes to admiring members of the
Whyos. The police did not catch Dolan with the eyes,
but they did find him in possession of Noe’s cane,
which had a metal handle carved in the likeness of a
monkey, as well as his watch and chain. This evidence
was enough to doom Dolan, and he was hanged on
April 21, 1876.
See also: WHYOS.
Dollar Store
first “big store” swindle
In 1867 a stocky, red-whiskered, friendly man named
Ben Marks opened the Dollar Store in Cheyenne, Wyo.,
where everything in stock sold for that price. Marks,
however, was not interested in merchandising but in
confidence games, and what he started would develop
into the “big store,” the grift that was to become the
technique used in most great confidence rackets for the
next 100 years.
In the windows of his store, Marks featured all
sorts of useful price-worthy items, but sales proved
few and far between since the pitch was used merely
to draw gullible travelers and immigrants into the
store. A pioneer exponent of three-card monte and
other swindles, Marks had confederates operating
several games complete with shills who appeared to
be winning. Many a wagon train settler stepped into
the store to buy a sturdy shovel and left minus most of
his stake for a new life in the West. Ben Marks’ cheating Dollar Store in time graduated into the big store
concept, the phony gambling club, horse parlor or
fake brokerage and other “stings” in which the
gullible were separated from thousands of dollars.
Ironically, among the scores of dollar stores that
sprang up to imitate Ben Marks’ pioneer venture was
one in Chicago that grew into a great modern department store. Its founder had originally leased the building for a monte operation but discovered he could
actually sell cheap and flashy goods at a dollar and
make more profits than he could at monte.
See also: BIG STORE, THREE-CARD MONTE.
Dolan, Dandy Johnny (c. 1850–1876) gangster and
murderer
One of the most imaginative and brutal gangsters of
the 19th century, Dandy Johnny Dolan probably qualified as the Thomas Edison of the underworld. A
renowned member of the Whyos, a gang that dominated crime in New York during the decades following
the Civil War, Dolan came up with a host of innovative
methods to maim and kill, his prize invention being a
great advance in the technique of gouging out eyes.
Dolan produced an apparatus, made of copper and
worn on the thumb, that could do the gruesome job
with dispatch. It served the Whyos well both in criminal endeavors and in battles with other gangs. Dolan
also designed special fighting boots for himself with
sections of a sharp ax blade imbedded in the soles. A
simple stomping of a downed enemy produced an ending both gory and mortal.
Donahue, Cornelius “Lame Johnny” (1850–1878)
outlaw, lawman and lynch victim
Long an enigma in the Dakotas, Cornelius Donahue
had the distinction of having Lame Johnny Creek in the
Black Hills named after him, no doubt because of his
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DONNER Party
other claim to fame, that of being the victim of one of
the strangest lynchings in American history.
Donahue was a college-trained Philadelphian who
went to Texas to satisfy his romantic dreams of being a
cowboy. Because he suffered from a deformity that
earned him the nickname Lame Johnny, he found that
he commanded very poor pay and soon turned to stealing horses. When he puled out of Texas in the mid1870s, he was a much wanted thief. Lame Johnny
moved north to Deadwood in Dakota Territory and
showed enough talent with a gun to become a deputy
sheriff. Later, he worked for a mining company until he
was recognized in early 1878 by a rider from Texas.
Oddly, he was not sent back to Texas, probably
because he had been so popular, but he lost his job and
finally reverted to horse stealing, perhaps doing some
stage robbing as well. In 1878 a livestock detective
named Frank Smith caught Lame Johnny stealing
horses from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Smith
and his prisoner boarded a stage bound for Deadwood,
where he was to be lodged in jail, but on the trip the
coach was halted by a masked man who rescued Lame
Johnny. At least that’s what was thought until Johnny
was found hanging from a tree the next day. It
appeared he had been spirited away and lynched by a
mob of one. No one could figure it out. Perhaps,
according to one theory, Lame Johnny had done something really terrible in Texas that merited his fatal treatment at the hands of a mysterious kidnapper. But the
puzzle remained unsolved; the miners named a creek
after Lame Johnny and let it go at that.
Donner Party
foot snows had stopped the wagon train from making
it through their last obstacle, the Sierra Nevada. Desperately, the pioneers built shelters and tried to last
through the winter by killing their remaining animals to
augment the dwindling food supply. However, it soon
became apparent that they would starve, and a party of
17 men and five women started out on foot to try to
break out of the mountains and get help. One of them
died along the way and the others ate his flesh to survive. Only two Indian guides refused to partake of the
human flesh. They decided to leave the rest of the party,
suspecting they would be killed next to provide more
food, but were quickly located and murdered. Meanwhile, members of the party at Donner Lake started
dying and the survivors there also resorted to cannibalism to keep themselves alive. Then the murdering
started. No one ever found out who died naturally and
who was killed.
Finally, the escape party made it through the mountains to an Indian camp and then to an outpost. Rescuers from the outpost set out back across the
mountains. One of them was James Reed, who heroically led the largest rescue team and found his wife and
two of his children (another child had died and was
eaten). It was not until April 17, 1847 that the last of
the travelers were saved; by that time, of the 89 emigrants only 45 still survived.
It soon became evident that a number of the dead
had been murdered to provide food, while whole legs of
oxen lay untouched in the snow not far away. The
weakened pioneers had lacked the strength to dig up the
meat. The villain of the party was made out to be Lewis
Keseberg, who was found lying beside a simmering pot
containing the liver and lungs of a small boy. Other
parts of human flesh were scattered around the floor of
his cabin, and a contemporary account described his
“lair” as “containing buckets of blood, about a gallon,
and parts of human flesh strewn all around.”
After the rescue Keseberg was charged with committing six murders, robbing the dead George Donner of
his gold and cannibalizing several bodies. Denying all
the charges except that of cannibalism, he described
what had happened: “Five of my companions had died
in my cabin, and their stark and ghastly bodies lay
there day and night, seemingly gazing at me with their
glazed and staring eyes. I was too weak to move them
had I tried.”
He insisted he had resorted to flesh eating as a last
desperate act.
murder and cannibalism
The tragic fate of the Donner Party, a group of Californiabound settlers who split off from a wagon train at Fort
Bridger, Wyo. remains the ultimate horror story of
America’s westward migration.
Following the lead of George Donner, the 89-member
caravan took the so-called Hastings Cut-off, a supposed shortcut that was instead to bring them to
tragedy. Progress was slow through the rugged
Wasatch Mountains, and many of the settlers’ horses
and oxen died on the tortuous trek. Bickering broke
out and a number of killings resulted. One of the organizers of the group, James Reed, killed a young man
named James Snyder in an argument. At first, the other
members of the wagon train favored hanging Reed but
later decided merely to banish him, and he was forced
to leave behind his wife and children and continue on
his own.
By the end of October 1846, the Donner Party was
compelled to camp at what was then called Truckee
Lake, now known as Donner Lake, because 20- to 60-
I cannot describe the unutterable repugnance with
which I tasted the first mouthful of flesh. There is an
instinct in our nature that revolts at the thought of
touching, much less eating, a corpse. It makes my
276
DOOLIN gang
blood curdle to think of it. It has been told that I
boasted of my shame—said that I enjoyed this horrid
food, and that I remarked that human flesh was more
palatable than California beef. This is a falsehood. It is
a horrible, revolting falsehood. This food was never
otherwise than loathsome, insipid, and disgusting.”
tured him in a Eureka Springs, Ark. bathhouse after a
fierce half-hour fight in which neither man used a gun.
When Tilghman brought Doolin to Guthrie, Okla.,
5,000 people crowded the town to greet Doolin. They
all but ignored the brave marshal as they pressed in to
touch the famed outlaw and ask him for autographs.
Doolin was bigger than life, and he proved that by
promptly escaping from the Guthrie jail, freeing 37
prisoners in the process.
Doolin fled to New Mexico, where, it was learned
40 years later, he was sheltered at the ranch of the
famous novelist Eugene Manlove Rhodes. There he
saved his host from being killed by a wild horse. By
1896 Doolin and his wife had settled in a small house
near Lawton, Okla.; at this point the outlaw was in
very poor health due to consumption.
For years there have been two versions of Doolin’s
death. The original story was that Heck Thomas caught
up with Doolin on a dark night as the outlaw walked
down a road, cradling a Winchester in one arm while
leading a wagon driven by his wife. Doolin fired first and
Marshal Thomas blasted him to death with a shotgun.
Years later a second version surfaced. There had
been no confrontation on a dusty road. Thomas had
pushed through the door of the Doolin home to find
the outlaw’s wife in tears. Doolin was dead, she said.
Thomas walked into the bedroom to find Doolin’s stillwarm body. He was dead and that meant no reward
money. Quickly, Thomas leveled his shotgun and fired.
Then, after concocting the story about a shooting on a
road, he claimed a reward. It was not, however, an act
of greed on Thomas’ part. Like many other law officers, he respected Bill Doolin and did not wish to see
his widow and young boy live in poverty. He gave the
$5,000 reward money to the widow.
See also: DOOLIN GANG; INGALLS, OKLAHOMA TERRITORY, BATTLE OF; HENRY ANDREW “HECK” THOMAS; BILL
TILGHMAN.
A court freed Keseberg, but he suffered the rest of his
life from public disrepute. Whenever children saw him,
they shouted: “Stone him! Stone him!” In a sense, Keseberg was the last victim of the ill-fated Donner Party.
Doolin, Bill (1863–1896) outlaw leader
Probably the most popular of the Western outlaws with
the public was not Butch Cassidy, Jesse James or Sam
Bass but Bill Doolin, the leader of the Oklahombres of
the 1890s.
An Arkansas-born cowboy, Doolin punched cattle in
Wyoming and later in Oklahoma for the HX (Halsell)
Ranch, the breeding ground for a lot of future badmen.
Doolin hit the outlaw trail in 1891 with the Daltons.
He enjoyed the easy money but clearly was never too
sure how smart the brothers were. Doolin started out
with the gang for the famed raid on Coffeyville, Kan.,
where the brothers sought to recapture the lost glory of
the James boys and the Youngers by holding up two
banks at the same time—a stupid play as far as Doolin
was concerned. Fortunately, or conveniently, for him,
his horse turned lame and he was forced to turn back.
The Daltons were annihilated in Coffeyville, and
Doolin alone went back to Oklahoma to form a new
band of robbers.
The new Doolin gang reflected much of their leader’s
personality. They were friendly and fun-loving except
when cornered—then they shot to kill. The gang even
operated under a code of honor that barred shooting a
tracking lawman in the back. Indeed, when the redoubtable lawman Bill Tilghman once appeared unexpectedly
in the gang’s camp, Doolin saved his life by telling his
men to put down their weapons. Doolin knew the Oklahoma badlands section called Hell’s Fringe like the back
of his hand and always led pursuers on a merry chase
there. He was aided too by his popularity with residents,
counting on warnings from them whenever posses were
in the area. Warned in time, Doolin and his men beat off
and escaped a huge posse in the famed Battle of Ingalls in
September 1893.
Early in 1894 Doolin married a minister’s daughter
and under her influence started to settle down to honest
pursuits. The Oklahombres began splintering, individuals or pairs going their separate ways. But Doolin had
too long a record, having committed too many robberies, for the law to forget him. Bill Tilghman cap-
Doolin gang
While Western criminals were often the object of a
great deal of hero-worship, one outlaw band that was
genuinely respected during the 1890s, not only by the
public but by law officers as well, was the Doolins of
the Oklahoma Territory. Neither Bill Doolin nor any of
the members ever claimed they “were forced into
crime,” admitting they were in it for the sheer devilry.
The gang was formed by Bill Doolin, who had ridden on a number of bank jobs with the Daltons, but
unlike the Daltons, members of the Doolin bunch were
good at their trade. They took their work seriously and
practiced hard before a bank robbery, gunning a target
tree as they rode past and dropping to one side of their
277
DOOR-knocker thieves
them and then designed skeleton keys to fit the various
types. He also perfected a set of pliers that could be
inserted in a door to turn a key on the other side. With
these impressive improvements in the art of burglary,
Doty was able to boast that he could break into any
hotel room in any establishment in the country. In
1835, for example, Doty hit the United States Hotel in
Detroit, which was then the state capital, and burglarized the rooms of about a dozen state legislators.
Because of his great success as the King of the Hotel
Thieves, Doty in later years set up a criminal network
that included crooked hotel managers and clerks, who
steered him on to likely victims, and corrupt sheriffs
and judges, who protected him in case of a hitch. With
this apparatus in place, Doty branched into circulating
counterfeit money, but his first love remained anything
to do with locks. He designed handcuffs and sold them
to sheriffs and then sold criminals special keys that
could open the cuffs even while they were being worn.
Doty liked to claim he “made crime pay,” but
despite all his brilliance and his payoffs, he spent 20
years of his life—on and off—behind bars before retiring at 72 and writing his memoirs.
mounts as they dodged imaginary bullets. They seldom
had to hide in their home areas, such as Rock Fort and
Ingalls, where friendly residents provided a network of
spies that informed them whenever the law was coming. The gang clearly won the great Battle of Ingalls,
beating a posse of about twice its size. Although some
of the leading lawmen of the era, respected names like
Tilghman, Madsen, Thomas, Ledbetter, Jim Masterson,
captured a few gang members, the group, including Bill
Doolin, dissolved of its own accord to follow more
peaceful pursuits.
See also: ROY DAUGHERTY; BILL DOOLIN; INGALLS,
OKLAHOMA TERRITORY, BATTLE OF; GEORGE “BITTER
CREEK” NEWCOMB; ROSE OF CIMARRON.
door-knocker thieves
colonial lawbreakers
One of the most prevalent types of theft in colonial
days was stealing brass knockers from the doors of
fashionable homes. Professional criminals netted considerable profits from such crimes, disposing of their
loot to receivers of stolen goods who transported the
knockers to another colony for resale. Door-knocker
thefts became such a rage that even well-to-do youths
took up the crime as a form of sport, making it perhaps
the first form of middle-class crime in America. A
Philadelphia newspaper in 1773 reported that “wonton
Frolicks of sundry intoxicated Bucks and Blades of the
City” resulted in the theft of scores of brass knockers
from various homes. That same year, in a story datelined Philadelphia, the Newport Mercury told of how
“three of our Philadelphia Bucks, in the Night, lately
attacked one of our Watchmen with swords” while he
was attempting to prevent their nefarious deeds. However, “before he got relief they wounded him, of which
Wounds he died. One of them made his escape, two
were taken; one of those a reputable Merchant’s Son in
the City; the other a Merchant’s Clerk, unknown to me.
Various Opinions concerning them, what will be their
fate. They are, I hear, loaded with Irons in the Dungeon.”
The record appears incomplete regarding the ultimate fate of the perpetrators of this vicious crime, but
knocker thievery finally was eliminated through the
efforts of one Daniel King, who invented a knocker
“the Construction of which is peculiarly singular, and
which will stand Proof against the United Attacks of
those nocturnal Sons of Violence.”
Draft Riots
Beginning early on the morning of July 13, 1863 and
continuing for three more bloody days, great riots broke
out in New York City, leaving, according to the best estimates, 2,000 dead and another 8,000 wounded. The
cause of the rioting was indignation over President Lincoln’s draft, fanned by racial hatred, Irish resentment at
occupying the lowest level of the social and economic
order, and the greed of the great criminal gangs of the
Bowery and the Five Points, which saw a chance to loot
the city much as had been done during the earlier antiabolitionist and anti-English Astor Place riots of the
1830s and 1840s.
There were minor disturbances of the peace in opposition to the draft in Boston, Mass., Portsmouth, N.H.,
Rutland, Vt. and Wooster, Ohio, but none approached
the size or ferocity of the New York riots. There the
city’s poor, largely Irish, allied with the Democrats in
opposition to the war, rioted to protest the draft, which
they saw as trading rich men’s money for poor men’s
blood through a provision in the law that allowed a
potential draftee to buy out of the service for $300.
Since this was a monumental sum to the Irish, it meant
they had to do the fighting and dying in the conflict
between the North and the South.
What had started out as violent protest against the
draft turned by the second day into savage lynching of
blacks—the cause of the war in the Irish poor’s eyes—
and wholesale looting, as rioters and criminals sought
Doty, Sile (1800–1876) king of the hotel thieves
One of the great “lock men” of crime, Sile Doty was
the first thief to develop the complete burglar kit. He
bought locks by the dozen, took them apart, studied
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DRAFT Riots
Great throngs—estimated to be between 50,000 and
70,000 persons in all—stormed across Manhattan from
the Hudson to the East Rivers, looting stores, burning
buildings and beating every black they saw. At least
three black men were hanged before sundown of the
first day, and thereafter, the sight of bodies hanging
from lampposts and trees were common throughout
the city. The blacks’ bodies were all viciously mutilated,
slashed with knives and beaten with clubs. Often, they
were mere charred skeletons, the handiwork of the
most ferocious element in all early American riots—
women. Trailing behind the men, they poured oil into
the knife wounds of victims and set the corpses ablaze,
dancing beneath the awesome human torches, singing
obscene songs and telling antiblack jokes.
The black settlements were the scene of much of the
violence, the target of those of the rioters more concerned with bloodletting than looting. A house of prostitution on Water Street was burned and its occupants
tortured because they refused to reveal the hiding place
of a black servant. In New Bowery three black men
were cornered on a rooftop and the building set afire.
For a time the men clung by their fingers to the gutters
while the mob below chanted for them to fall. When
they did, they were stomped to death.
Meanwhile, as other groups of rioters attacked
armories in search of weapons and police stations in
anger at the police resistance to them, a mob sought to
destroy the offices of Horace Greeley’s prodraft New
York Tribune. They started several blazes that forced the
Burning of the Second Avenue Armory caused many
deaths.
to seize armory supplies, overpowering and then torturing, mutilating and murdering defending soldiers. Some
saw in the great riots a Roman Catholic insurrection,
which they were not, although along with the “No
Draft” signs were some that sang the praises of the
pope and proclaimed, “Down with the Protestants.”
Considerable church properties of various Protestant
faiths were among the 100 buildings burned to the
ground by the rioters, but none belonging to the
Catholic faith were touched. Lone Catholic priests
turned back rioters bent on looting and killing, but
Catholic archbishop Hughes refused to counsel the
rioters to disband until the fourth day, when the violence had run its course. On that day he addressed a
pastoral letter entitled “Archbishop Hughes to the Men
of New York, who are called in many of the papers
rioters.” Later, the archbishop was to acknowledge that
he had “spak too late.”
The rioters were bent on mayhem, and some of their
crimes were heinous indeed. Policemen and soldiers
were murdered, and the children of the rioters picked
the bodies clean of every stitch of clothing, proudly
wearing the bloodstained garments as badges of honor.
Drawing shows the corpse of a policeman killed in the
riot being abused by children and women following in the
wake of the mob.
279
DRISCOLL, Danny
Catholic priest intervened long enough to administer
the last rites and then departed. For three hours the
rioters tortured O’Brien, slashing him with knives and
dropping stones on his body. He was then allowed to
lie suffering in the afternoon sun until sundown, when
another mob descended on him and inflicted new tortures. Finally, he was dragged to his own backyard,
where a group of vicious Five Points Gang women
squatted around him and mutilated him with knives
until at last he was dead.
On July 15 militia regiments sent toward Gettysburg
were ordered back to the city, and by the end of the
16th, the rioters had been quelled. The losses by various
military units were never disclosed, but the toll of dead
and wounded was believed to have been at least 350.
The overall casualties in the riots, 2,000 dead and 8,000
wounded, were greater than those suffered at such
famous Civil War battles as Bull Run and Shiloh; virtually every member of the police force had suffered some
sort of injury. The number of blacks lynched, including
bodies found and others missing, was believed to total
88. Property losses probably exceeded $5 million.
Among the 100 buildings totally burned were a Protestant mission, the Negro Orphanage, an armory, three
police stations, three provost marshals’ offices as well as
factories, stores and dwellings. Another 200 buildings
were looted and partially damaged.
Even while the riots were going on and in the days
following them, Democratic politicians seeking to
embarrass a Republican president and a Republican
mayor, demanded the police and troops be withdrawn
from their districts because they were “killing the people.” As a result of political influence almost all of the
hundreds of prisoners taken in the last two days of the
riots were released. This was especially true of the gang
leaders of the Five Points and the waterfront who were
caught leading looting expeditions during the fighting.
In the end, only 20 men out of the thousands of rioters
were brought to trial. Nineteen of them were convicted
and sentenced to an average of five years in prison. No
one was convicted of murder.
On August 19, the city now filled with troops, the
draft drawings resumed, and those who could not pay
$300 were sent off to war.
By the second day most of the rioters’ fury was taken out
on blacks, many of whom were lynched.
staff to flee by the back stairway. Greeley was compelled
to take refuge under a table in a Park Row restaurant. A
police garrison of 100 men retook the newspaper’s
premises and extinguished the fires, and the following day
100 marines and sailors took up guard in and around the
building, which bristled with Gatling guns and a howitzer
posted at the main entrance.
By late evening the mobs moved further uptown, leaving the scene behind them filled with numerous fires. At
11 o’clock a great thunder and lightning storm extinguished the blazes. Had it not, many historians believe
the city would have been subjected to a conflagration far
worse than the Great Chicago Fire a few years hence.
Complicating the firefighting was the fact that several
fire units had joined the rioters and others were driven
away from many of the blazes by the rampaging mobs.
Probably the greatest hero of the first day of the riots
was Patrolman George Rallings, who learned of a mob’s
plan to attack the Negro Orphanage at 43rd Street and
Fifth Avenue where 260 children of freed slaves were sheltered. He spirited the children away before the building
was torched. Only one tiny black girl was killed by the
ax-wielding rioters. Overlooked in the exodus, she was
found hiding under a bed and axed to death.
The fighting over the ensuing three days reflected
the tides of military battle, as first the rioters and then
the police and various militia units took control of an
area. A pitched battle that left an estimated 50 dead
was fought at barricades on Ninth Avenue until the
police finally gained control of the thoroughfare. Rioters captured Col. H. J. O’Brien of the Eleventh New
York Volunteers, tied a rope around his ankles and
dragged him back and forth over the cobblestones. A
Driscoll, Danny (?1860–1888) gang leader and murderer
The last great New York ruffian gang of the 19th century was the Whyos, captained jointly in their heyday
by Danny Lyons and Danny Driscoll. In the 1880s
Lyons and Driscoll reportedly mandated that a potential member of the gang had to kill at least one man. It
is perhaps fitting that this brutal pair were themselves
hanged within eight months each other.
280
DRUCCI, Vincent “Schemer”
Weiss, were assassinated by the Capone forces.
In one sense, Drucci was Capone’s toughest rival in
that opposing gang, because he was, as Capone put it,
“a bedbug.” The Schemer had earned his nickname
because of his imaginative but totally off-the-wall ideas
for robbing banks and kidnapping millionaires. He was
also a tough kill. In a street duel with ambushing
Capone gunners, he traded shot for shot with them
while giggling and dancing a jig to avoid the bullets that
sprayed the pavement around him. When a police car
appeared on the scene, the Capone gunmen sped off in
their car, but the Schemer had not had enough. Despite
a slight leg wound, he hopped on the running board of
a passing car, poked his gun at the motorist’s head and
yelled, “Follow that goddamn car.” Police had to drag
him off the car. When questioned, Drucci claimed it was
not an underworld battle but a stickup. “They wanted
my roll,” he said, flashing a wad of $13,500.
With Drucci at the head of the O’Banion gang,
Capone had to beef up protection for himself, since the
Schemer was capable of any wild plot to get at him.
According to one unconfirmed story, Drucci actually
cornered Capone alone in a Turkish bath and almost
strangled him to death before the gang leader’s bodyguards showed up. The Schemer escaped stark naked,
hopped in his car and drove off.
Frustrated in his efforts to get Big Al, Drucci decided
to hurt him as best he could. A few weeks later, he had
Theodore “the Greek” Anton, the owner of a popular
restaurant over a Capone headquarters, the Hawthorne
Smoke Shop, kidnapped. Anton was an honest man who
idolized Capone for what he considered the gangster’s
tenderheartedness, such as his practice of buying all a
newsboy’s papers for $20 and sending him home. Capone
was eating in the restaurant when Anton was snatched by
lurking O’Banionites. He understood what it meant and
sat in a booth the rest of the evening crying inconsolably.
Anton’s body was found in quicklime. He had been
tortured and then shot.
Capone vowed to kill Drucci, but the next several
murder attempts were made by the Schemer. As a matter of fact, the Capone gang never did get Drucci. He
was arrested on April 5, 1927 for perpetrating some
election day violence against reformers seeking to supplant the William Hale Thompson machine. Put in a
squad car, Drucci got enraged because a detective, Dan
Healy, had dared lay a hand on him. He screamed, “I’ll
get you for this!” and tried to wrestle the detective’s
gun away. The officer pulled his hand free and pumped
four quick shots into Drucci’s body.
The O’Banionites wanted Healy charged with murder. “Murder?” asked Chief of Detectives William
Schoemaker. “We’re having a medal struck for Healy.”
Driscoll went first. In 1887 he and tough Five Points
gangster Johnny McCarthy became involved in a shooting dispute over whom a young prostitute, Breezy Garrity, was working for. Breezy made the mistake of
standing around to see who the winner would be, presumably to hand over to him her recent receipts. In the
fusillade one of Driscoll’s stray shots struck and killed
her. It was clearly a case of unintentional homicide, and
by most measures of justice Driscoll should have
escaped with something less than the ultimate penalty.
However, the authorities had been after Driscoll for
years on suspicion of several murders and were not
going to allow a golden opportunity such as this to slip
away because of legal niceties. The prosecution hardly
had to remind the jurors of the many atrocities committed by the Whyos, since everyone living in New York
ventured out in constant fear of these gangsters.
Driscoll, screaming outrage and frame-up, was sentenced to death, and on January 23, 1888 he was
hanged in the Tombs.
See also: DANNY LYONS, WHYOS.
drop swindle
A notorious con game employing a variety of techniques
is the drop swindle. A “dropper” drops a wallet at the
heels of a likely victim and then pretends to find it. The
wallet is stuffed with counterfeit money. Pleading that he
is in a hurry, the dropper offers to sell the wallet to the
victim, saying something like: “There’s a couple of hundred bucks in there. The guy who lost it will probably
give half the dough as a reward just to get the rest of it
and his IDs back. Tell you what, give me fifty and you
can take care of returning the wallet to him and get the
rest of the reward.” Naturally, like most cons, this racket
appeals to a victim’s larcenous streak since he has the
option of simply keeping the wallet. One of the most
famous practitioners of this swindle was Nathan Kaplan,
better known as Kid Dropper, who, after earning his
nickname practicing the swindle in his youth, went on to
become the most famous gangster in New York City during the early 1920s.
While the drop swindle is well worn, it remains viable.
Almost any big city police force will handle a few dozen
complaints of the scam annually, and of course, the unreported cases are undoubtedly far more numerous.
See also: KID DROPPER.
Drucci, Vincent “Schemer” (1895–1927) bootlegger
and murderer
One of the chief lieutenants in Dion O’Banion’s North
Side Gang during the 1920s, Drucci took charge of the
Chicago outfit after O’Banion and his successor, Hymie
281
DRUG racket
cuts the purity to 40 percent, doubling his supply. This
he will sell at $65,000 a kilo, earning a profit of
$400,000, or a gain of 160 percent on his investment.
The heroin is passed on to the big supplier, who further
dilutes the product, so that each kilo he has bought
becomes 1.6 kilos. The drug is sold in quarter- kilo bags
for $15,000 each, netting the big supplier a total of
$300,000. From the supplier the heroin goes to the
pushers, who then dilute the product to about 5 percent pure and retail the stuff in $5 and $10 units. The
profit for the pushers is about $300,000. Thus, besides
recouping the original investment, the 5 kilograms of
heroin has produced a million dollars in illegal profits
throughout the distribution pipeline.
The North Siders gave Drucci a marvelous funeral.
He lay in state a day and a night in a $10,000 casket of
aluminum and silver at the undertaking establishment
of Assistant State’s Attorney John A. Sbarbaro. The
walls of the room were hidden by masses of flowers;
the dominant floral design was a throne of white and
purple blooms with the inscription “Our Pal.” After
Drucci was buried, his blond wife declared proudly, “A
cop bumped him off like a dog, but we gave him a
king’s funeral.”
See also: SAMUEL J. “NAILS” MORTON; CHARLES DION
“DEANIE” O’BANION; STANDARD OIL BUILDING, BATTLES OF
THE; HYMIE WEISS.
drug racket
drugs in prisons
The drug racket is among the most lucrative of all criminal activities. It has long attracted much of the Mafia’s
attention and is the prime activity of both the new black
and Latin American criminal combines. The potential
profits involved are truly staggering. It is said to be one
of the most tempting sources of potential police corruption. In the early years of his reign over the FBI, J. Edgar
Hoover fought desperately and successfully to keep narcotics control out of the hands of his agency. He was
known to have felt that corruption and bribery were virtually inevitable in the policing of this field.
It would be pure guesswork to attempt to put a total
dollar value on the drug racket. According to the Drug
Enforcement Administration, the average heroin junkie
needs some 50 milligrams of the drug each day to satisfy his habit. A rule of thumb sets the average cost of
such a habit at $65 a day or $24,000 a year. Since there
are between 100,000 to 150,000 hard-core heroin users
in the country, this aspect alone makes narcotics at least
a $2.5 billion dollar business.
Of course, heroin is just a small part of the drug
trade. The Senate Internal Securities Subcommittee has
placed the number of regular pot users at more than 10
million. Another 25 million have smoked marijuana at
some time or other, indicating that public hostility
toward marijuana today is probably not much more
severe than that toward whiskey during Prohibition.
This public acceptance has done wonders for the marijuana seller. He can charge excessive prices because he
is dealing in an illegal product, yet the high public
acceptance of the drug lessens the amount he must pay
for protection and the risk he has to take.
The drug racket’s profit margins up the distribution
ladder work much like European value-added taxes but
in vastly greater percentages. The importer goes out of
the country and obtains 5 kilograms of “pure heroin,”
which really means about 80 percent pure, for a total
price of $250,000. Adding quinine and milk sugar, he
Perhaps the most constant cat-and-mouse game played
in jails and prisons today involves the smuggling of
drugs. New prisoners must be searched thoroughly to
prevent illegal drugs from being slipped into penal institutions in the hair, ears or mouth. All body cavities and
the groin area must be searched. Even if such searches
were 100 percent effective, however, the flow of drugs
into the jails still would be of flood-like proportions.
Jail authorities have found prisoners trying to conceal
narcotics by saturating handkerchiefs, pants pockets
and shirts with them and then reironing. Relatives
bringing a tie for a prisoner to wear to court may well
have soaked it in a concentration of narcotics.
When female visitors are allowed to kiss prisoners,
they sometimes pass packets of drugs by mouth. Prisoners have been known to swallow balloons filled with
narcotics that can be retrieved after a bowel movement.
Visitors have discarded cigarette butts filled with narcotics. There have been cases of narcotics being thrown
over jail walls inside rubber balls or even dropped from
low-flying helicopters.
Of course, prisoners have their own explanation for
why some police guards are so determined to stop the
flow of drugs into an institution. They say it is because
these guards want to be the convicts’ only—and highpriced—suppliers.
Dry Tortugas Prison
Although its correct name was Fort Jefferson, the mostdreaded federal prison of its day was generally called by
the name of the Florida coral islet on which it was situated, Dry Tortugas. Built in 1846 originally as a fort, it
turned out to be a fiasco—at a reported cost of $1 per
brick—when it was determined that the water around it
was too shallow for enemy ships ever to get within cannon range. The government then simply converted it
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DUKE’S Restaurant
into a prison, and Dry Tortugas became a hellhole for
everyone in it—prisoners, guards, soldiers and officials.
Mosquitoes swarmed over the place and were considered a terrible nuisance, but the yellow fever that
abounded was never attributed to these insects. The
prison was hit with periodic epidemics during which
men often died faster than they could be buried.
The guards and soldiers stationed there treated the
prisoners brutally, a behavior fueled in part by the terrible living conditions they themselves had to endure. It
was an open secret that the government sent to Dry
Tortugas those prisoners who deserved “special treatment.” That certainly was the case with Dr. Samuel
Mudd, the physician who set John Wilkes Booth’s leg
after he had assassinated Abraham Lincoln. Prison officials specifically instructed the guards to be exceptionally harsh with “that Lincoln murderer.” Mudd,
however, was to nurse the garrison and prisoners
through a yellow fever epidemic and thereby win the
gratitude of the officials. He was pardoned in 1869
after his humanitarian acts became known, and the
resulting publicity about conditions in the hellhole led
to its abandonment in the early 1870s. The prison
became a national monument in 1934.
See also: DR. SAMUEL MUDD.
was arrested before a lynching could be arranged, but
the next morning a judge freed him on a technicality. A
miners lynch mob formed immediately, but Duggan
again avoided capture and made it out of town.
He fled east to Laramie City, a Union Pacific end-oftrack town. Apparently in such urgent need of a lawman that they had no time to check into Duggan’s
background, the town’s authorities named him marshal. However, in due course a traveler from Denver
revealed the details of the Kittie Wells affair, and Duggan was stripped of his badge.
The facts of the case have been lost, but not long
afterwards, Duggan was given 24 hours to get out of
town. Once again, the alleged offense was woman beating. Duggan then rode the holdup trail until he was
captured at Golden by Marshal Dave Cook, who took
him back to Denver. This was a double stroke of bad
luck for Duggan: he was hated in Denver and Dave
Cook had the misfortune, or perhaps the knack, of
often losing prisoners to lynch mobs.
That’s exactly what happened to Duggan. He was
dragged out of jail and quickly strung up from a cottonwood tree. Someone tacked a sign on his corpse that
read, “woman beater.”
Duke’s Restaurant mob headquarters
drygulch
The best location for killing a man in the West was at a
place he would have to come to sooner or later, and in
dry, arid country that meant a waterhole. The attacker
could hide in the waterhole’s protective cover and shoot
the victim before he could quench his thirst. Even if he
missed or only wounded the victim, the killer could
hold the key ground until the man died or surrendered
to get a drink, hence the origin of the term drygulch.
Duggan, Sandford S. C. (1845–1868) woman beater
Sandford Duggan was one of a hated breed in the West,
a lawman turned outlaw and murderer. Yet his life
ended swinging from a rope not because of the murders
or holdups he had committed but rather for woman
beating.
A Pennsylvanian who developed an itchy trigger finger after migrating west, Duggan was still in his teens
when he murdered his first man in a Black Hawk, Colo.
saloon. He got away before a miners court could convene and wound up in Denver, where he was soon living off the earnings of a young prostitute named Kittie
Wells, who willingly supported him. Duggan banged
her around regularly and one night he pistol-whipped
her almost to death. Such actions toward women,
respectable or otherwise, were not tolerated in the
West, where families were in such short supply. Duggan
283
If any building or place during the 1940s and 1950s
could have been called the underworld’s Capitol, it
would have been Duke’s Restaurant, 73 Palisades
Avenue, Cliffside Park, N.J. It became a prime topic of
inquiry during the historic Kefauver Committee’s probe
of organized crime in the early 1950s. Duke’s was the
meeting place, and safe sanctuary, for the leaders of the
national crime syndicate. Presiding over all affairs at
Duke’s was one of the top leaders of crime in New York
and New Jersey, Joe Adonis.
Casual visitors to Duke’s, which was across the
street from the popular Palisades Amusement Park,
found it to be a typical Italian restaurant. It had a long
bar and booths and served tasty meals. Most did not
suspect that to the rear of the public dining area there
was a sliding panel with an “ice box door,” typical of
the nearly indestructible and soundproof barriers used
by illegal gambling establishments. Behind the panel
there was what could be called the control room from
which the Mafia and much of organized crime planned
and directed their operations.
Much of the surveillance of Duke’s was done by various federal agencies, mainly the Internal Revenue Service and the Bureau of Narcotics, and by Manhattan
district attorney Frank Hogan’s staff. It was not an
easy undertaking. These investigators found that once
they had crossed the George Washington Bridge into
DUNCAN’S Saloon
Professional hoboes also used Duncan’s place as a
rendezvous and mail drop and always saved whatever
money they had for a spree in the establishment. One of
the most illustrious knights of the road to headquarter
at the saloon was Wyoming Slivers. Slivers retired from
the road life in 1896, when he married a rich widow in
Minnesota. Mrs. Slivers died a couple of years later,
leaving him a nest egg of $10,000. Slivers immediately
repaired to Duncan’s Saloon and, with about 20 of his
cronies, staged a six-month spree with the money. Ten
of the hoboes died of delirium tremens, and Slivers
came through the orgy minus an ear and three fingers
lost in fistfights.
Duncan’s Saloon closed following one of Chicago’s
periodic graft investigations, and it was believed that
Duncan then returned to his light-fingered trade.
New Jersey, they were shadowed, hounded, badgered
and even picked up by various local police departments. A car of investigators parked outside of Duke’s
to keep an eye on the alleged diners entering and leaving were often harassed by police telling them to move
on, even after they displayed their credentials. Duke’s
obviously was set it unfriendly territory for New York
and federal investigators.
Meanwhile, inside the restaurant’s chamber the likes
of Adonis and Albert Anastasia presided over criminal
activities, collecting the revenues from various enterprises, arranging “hits,” handling “affairs at the table,”
which were trials of syndicate soldiers for various alleged
offenses. On Tuesday, known as the “big day,” the top
leaders of crime in America came in for their “cabinet”
meetings. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, when
the syndicate’s national commission was dominated by
the so-called Big Six, the top men converged on Duke’s.
Flying in from the Midwest were Tony Accardo and
Greasy Jake Guzik, the representatives of Chicago’s
Capone mob. The remaining four came from the East.
They were Adonis; Frank Costello; Meyer Lansky, who
could be coming from anywhere since he handled the
mob’s gambling interests in Saratoga, N.Y., Miami and
Las Vegas; and Longy Zwillman, the boss of New Jersey,
who had a powerful voice in naming the state’s governors and, more important, its attorneys general.
Duke’s even survived the prying of the Kefauver
Committee. Gangster Willie Moretti insisted he went
there for the food and ambience, which was, he said
with a straight face, “like Lindy’s on Broadway.” Tony
Bender took the Fifth Amendment rather than reveal if
he had ever been in Duke’s, insisting even a visit to a
restaurant could be incriminating.
Duke’s lost its significance when Adonis was deported
in 1957. It was, in the words of one newspaperman,
“something like the British burning the White House.”
Duncan’s Saloon
Durrant, William Henry Theodore (1872–1898)
murderer
William “Theo” Durrant, who became famous in this
country and Europe as the Demon in the Belfry for the
murder of two young women in San Francisco in 1895,
was as close to a real-life Jekyll and Hyde as America ever
produced.
At 23 Theo was an excellent student in his senior
class of Cooper Medical College and a dedicated member of the Emanuel Baptist Church, functioning as
assistant Sunday school superintendent, Sunday usher,
church librarian and secretary of the young people’s
Christian Endeavor Society. Whenever there were
repairs to be made on the church, Theo could be
counted on to offer his services. Several times a week,
in his less sane moments, Theo patronized the notorious brothels on Commercial Street, regarded as far
more degenerate than those elsewhere in the city.
Theo’s custom was to bring with him a sack or small
crate containing a chicken or pigeon; during the high
point of the evening’s debauch, he would slit the bird’s
throat and let the blood trickle over himself. The only
hint of Theo’s other life was some gossip that he had
attempted to kiss girls at church socials.
On April 3, 1895 Theo was seen entering the church
with 18-year-old Blanche Lamont, a high school student
who often spoke of becoming a teacher. Inside the
church Theo excused himself, saying he had a chore to
perform. He returned a moment later, stripped naked.
When the girl resisted him, Durrant killed her in a frenzy,
strangling her and mutilating her body. He then dragged
the body up to the belfry and hid it. Two hours later, he
calmly appeared at a Christian Endeavor meeting.
Theo was questioned when Blanche was reported
missing, but he earnestly informed the police that it was
his theory that white slavers might have kidnapped her
Chicago pickpocket haven
From 1890 through most of the first decade of the 20th
century, Duncan’s Saloon on Chicago’s State Street was
the best-known hangout for pickpockets and professional tramps in the United States. The proprietor, Bob
Duncan, had long been heralded by the Chicago press
as the King of the Pickpockets, but he had retired from
active duty to serve as a sort of unofficial greeter for
traveling pickpocketing mobs. No less than 20 professional mobs headquartered at Duncan’s place, not only
for sociability but also because Duncan had developed
considerable clout as a fixer with the police. Duncan
supposedly could arrange matters so that an individual
mob enjoyed free hunting in specified locales. Furthermore he could even fix it so that a police officer would
be on hand to confuse victims.
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DUTCH Henry
and installed her in a brothel somewhere in San Francisco or perhaps shipped her to some faraway locality.
Nothing much would have developed from the investigation had not Theo struck again that same month,
killing 20-year-old Minnie Williams in the church after
some naked trysts. Minnie, unlike Blanche, had
responded to Theo’s bizarre wooing, but he murdered
her just as well. He slashed the body with a knife and
left it hidden behind a door in the blood-spattered
church library, where it was found the next day. The
theory was that Theo might have told her about
Blanche’s murder, and Minnie responded by saying she
was going to the police.
Again, Theo had been seen with a young woman
who later disappeared or was murdered, but he denied
any knowledge of the crime. However, police found
Minnie’s purse hidden in a suit pocket in his closet, and
they finally trekked up to the belfry and found Blanche
Lamont’s body as well.
Theo’s trial was a spectacle, perhaps the first to
receive sensational “sob-sister” coverage. William Randolph Hearst’s Examiner printed a front-page sketch
of Theo’s hands so that its readers could recognize
the “hands of murder.” A “sweet pea girl” appeared
at each session of the court and offered Theo a bouquet
of flowers. This was either a defense tactic or a
newspaper trick to generate reader interest. In all, 125
witnesses testified, including Theo himself, who
thought he had convinced the jury with his denials of
guilt. He was nonetheless found guilty on the first ballot. Appeals delayed the execution for almost three
years until January 7, 1898, when Durrant was
hanged.
On the scaffold, Theo told the hangman, “Don’t put
that rope on, my boy, until I talk.” The sheriff merely
waved to the hangman to continue his work, and Theo
was hanged without further ado. The newspapers were
somewhat peeved at being deprived of some final
words from the fiendish killer, but they were able to
report one final macabre incident.
Theo’s mother and father had apparently reveled in
their notoriety during the trial. After the hanging they
called for their son’s body. While waiting in a prison
anteroom, the couple was offered some food by the
warden. When the body arrived, with Theo’s face contorted in a hideous grimace, they sat eating not 5 feet
from the open coffin. Hearst’s newspaper reported that
at one point Mother Durrant said, “Papa, I’d like some
more of that roast.”
Dutch Henry (?–c. 1930) western horse thief
In the Old West, where stealing a man’s horse was considered the equivalent of cutting off a man’s legs, it was
285
The Demon in the Belfry is depicted carrying a beautiful
victim to his hiding place in the bell tower.
remarkable that a man like Dutch Henry could live to a
ripe old age as the King of Horse Thieves, with an estimated 300 men working for him in his prime.
Dutch Henry, whose real name was Henry Borne,
was of German extraction. He first turns up as a member of the 7th Cavalry, which he quit in the late 1860s.
Apparently, he had greater expectations in another
line of work because he was soon arrested at Fort
Smith, Ark. for stealing 20 government mules. Sentenced to a long term at hard labor in 1868, Dutch
Henry broke prison three months later and went into
the horse-stealing business in earnest. He soon was hiring men to steal whole herds at a time for him. No deal
being too small for Dutch Henry, a thief with but a
single pilfered animal would find him a ready, if tightfisted, customer. Legends about Dutch Henry abound;
one of the best-known tales concerns Henry selling a
sheriff one of his own stolen horses.
Dutch Henry had his run-ins with the law but
seemed to lead a charmed life. In 1874 he was wounded
in a gunfight after being found in possession of a large
DUTCH Mob
Dyer, Mary (?–1660) executed Quaker martyr
number of stolen horses—but he was not prosecuted.
Bat Masterson arrested Dutch Henry in 1878 and
brought him to Dodge City for trial only to see the
horse thief beat the charge. The way Dutch Henry
always told it, he was a victim just as much as the original owner of the property. Nobody really believed
that, and a “Dutch Henry” became another name for a
stolen horse. Eventually, the champion horse stealer’s
luck ran out, and authorities in Arkansas tied Dutch
Henry to the long-escaped Henry Borne. Henry was
sent back to prison, and other jurisdictions later seized
him to serve terms in their area. As a result, Dutch
Henry was out of circulation for well over 20 years. By
that time the horse-stealing trade was in its decline, better law enforcement and something called the horseless
carriage sealing its fate. Dutch Henry just faded away,
although a number of old-timers insisted they saw him
alive in Arkansas and elsewhere as late as 1930 and
heard that he died shortly after that. Be that as it may,
Dutch Henry’s name lived on as a part of American culture, preserved in Hollywood movies as the favorite
name used by uninventive screen writers for a villain
and, almost always, for a horse thief.
See also: HORSE STEALING.
Dutch Mob
A Quaker who became a religious martyr, Mary Dyer
may have been the only person ever executed in America simply to test a law. Dyer came to America about
1635 with her husband, William Dyer, and settled in
Boston. In 1650 she went back to England on a visit
and there was converted to Quakerism. When she
returned to New England to spread the Quaker word,
she was imprisoned in Boston and later banished. In
1657 Dyer was banished from the New Haven settlement. At this time the Massachusetts Bay Colony
passed a law that made a visit following banishment
punishable by death. Nevertheless, Mary Dyer returned
to visit and minister to other jailed Quakers. She was
arrested and condemned to death but was saved
through the efforts of her son. In May 1660 Mary Dyer
returned to Massachusetts once again, determined to
see if the death penalty would ever be enforced and
confident that it would not be. She was again seized
and, on June 1, 1660, hanged on the Boston Common.
Dyer Act
auto theft law
Following World War I Congress became upset about
the shocking growth of a new crime, automobile theft.
The previous year 29,399 cars had been stolen in 21
cities, and 5,541 of them were never recovered. The
theft problem already had proved too great for local
authorities to handle, since they legally could not pursue a stolen vehicle across a state line. So, in an effort to
curb car thefts, legislation was introduced making it a
federal offense to transport a stolen automobile across
a state line.
Although it produced a long debate over states
rights, the National Motor Vehicle Theft Act, or Dyer
Act, was passed in 1919. It hardly solved the problem,
however, as the number of thefts mushroomed with the
growth of automobile use. Between 1935 and 1955 an
estimated 4 million vehicles were stolen; by 1994 the
rate was up to 1.5 million per year. And auto theft has
continued to present a major problem for law enforcement officials.
The real impact of the Dyer Act was in its effect on
the criminal justice system in general, bringing the FBI
into areas of law enforcement never originally intended
as part of its bailiwick. The public enemies of the early
1930s often needed to steal a car to pull off a bank robbery or some other crime and then escape across state
borders. This provided the legal authority for the FBI to
enter the chase.
See also: AUTO THEFT.
19th-century pickpocket gang
One of the largest gangs of pickpockets and muggers
ever to operate in an American city, the Dutch Mob,
under the cunning leadership of Little Freddie, Sheeney
Mike and Johnny Irving, controlled the area just east of
New York’s Bowery from Houston Street to Fifth Street
for about a decade beginning in 1867.
At its peak the gang consisted of 300 members, all
professional pickpockets, who used varied methods to
rob victims. A common practice would be to stage a
street fight that attracted viewers who were then
stripped of their wallets as they watched the action. In
other instances a few of the gang would pick a fight
with a victim and threaten to beat him up, but before
they could, the cowed victim would be “rescued” by
other members of the mob who would deftly pick his
pockets while rushing him to safety. In time, the newspapers referred to the entire area from Houston to Fifth
as “pickpocket paradise.” Under a newly appointed
precinct captain, Anthony J. Allaire, the police finally
acted to clean up the district in 1877. Allaire’s technique was simple enough; he sent in flying squads of
police with orders to club anyone in the area resembling a pickpocket or mugger. The strategy worked and
the Dutch Mob soon dwindled to a few. Irving moved
into a new line of work, becoming a bank robber.
See also: PICKPOCKETING.
286
E
Earle, Willie (1922–1947) lynch victim
tice would be done, a feeling, observers agreed, that
was shared by most residents of the state.
Nevertheless, the result of the trial reflected the longstanding behavior of juries in cases where whites were
accused of lynching blacks. The defense offered no testimony whatsoever, and despite the confessions, all the
defendants were found “not guilty.”
One of the most shocking cases of a Southern jury
refusing to convict whites for the lynching of a black
man occurred following the 1947 killing of 25-year-old
Willie Earle in South Carolina.
Earle was picked up for questioning following the
fatal stabbing of a cab driver near Liberty, S.C. He was
taken to the Pickens County Jail, where he was interrogated and protested his innocence. Earle was not
charged with the slaying, but word spread of his arrest,
and outraged cabbies gathered in Greenville to discuss
the murder of a fellow driver. Soon, a large mob,
armed with shotguns and knives, formed a convoy and
headed for the jail. They broke into the jail and forced
the jailer to open Earle’s cell. Earle was dragged
screaming to an automobile and taken in convoy to
Saluda Dam, where he was “questioned” and “confessed.” The prisoner was then driven to Bramlett
Road in Greenville County and viciously put to death
there. Earle was stabbed several times and one lyncher
shattered the butt of his shotgun on the victim’s skull.
Others in the mob knife-gouged huge chunks of flesh
from Earle’s body. Only then was the pathetic prisoner
finished off with several shotgun blasts. Satisfied, the
lynchers drove home.
The killing shocked the nation and indeed most people in South Carolina. The FBI was called and cleared
the jailer of violating Earle’s civil rights, finding that he
had not willingly released the prisoner. However, the
agency cooperated with local authorities in identifying
28 persons among the lynch mob. Twenty-six of these
confessed their part in the lynching. Gov. Strom Thurmond named a special prosecutor and pledged that jus-
Earp, James C. (1841–1926) brother of Wyatt
The eldest of the Earp brothers, James Earp came home
from the Civil War in 1863 so severely wounded that
he could not become a lawman like his other brothers.
However, he was always linked to his brothers’ shadier
activities, generally looking after their gambling and
saloon interests, while his wife ran an Earp-protected
brothel. James died in San Francisco in 1926.
Earp, Morgan (1851–1882) lawman
The brother of Wyatt Earp and participant in the
famous, or infamous, gunfight at the O.K. Corral,
Morgan Earp was an erstwhile lawman in his own
right.
Born in Iowa, he started his career as a deputy town
marshal in Dodge City, Kan. in 1876. He later worked
in Dodge as a deputy sheriff and developed a reputation as an efficient gunman. Morgan Earp then moved
on to Butte, Mont., where he became even more
famous as a “town tamer.” He apparently dispatched
more than a few gunfighters, although the so-called
classic gun duel he reputedly had with Billy Brooks in
1880 was no doubt fictional since Brooks had been
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EARP, Virgil W.
Ariz., where he was even asked to run for sheriff. He
declined, and there was some speculation that he couldn’t win with the Earp name. Virgil Earp died of pneumonia early in 1906.
See also: MORGAN EARP, WYATT EARP, O.K. CORRAL.
hanged some six years earlier. If Earp killed a man
named Billy Brooks, it was some nonentity. Later that
year Morgan joined his brothers Virgil and Wyatt in
Tombstone and became a shotgun rider on Wells Fargo
coaches. In October 1881 the Earp and Clanton forces
had their famous shoot-out at the O.K. Corral, and
Morgan was wounded in the battle. He was still recuperating on the night of March 17, 1882 when he went
to Bob Hatch’s billiard saloon on Allen Street. Morgan
was lining up a shot when a hail of .45 slugs smashed
through the glass-windowed door and into his back,
shattering his spine. He died about 30 minutes later on
the sofa in Bob Hatch’s office.
Within a short time of Morgan Earp’s murder, Wyatt
Earp gained vengeance by killing at least three men
apparently involved in the crime, Deputy Sheriff Frank
Stilwell, Wild Bill Brocius (although others besides
Wyatt Earp are suspected of the Brocius killing) and
Florentino Cruz, who had been paid $25 for holding
the horses.
See also: WILLIAM L. BROOKS, VIRGIL EARP, WYATT EARP,
O.K. CORRAL.
Earp, Warren B. (1855–1900) lawman
The baby brother of the Earp family, Warren never
achieved the fame or notoriety of Wyatt, Virgil or Morgan, arriving in Tombstone, Ariz. just after the gunfight
at the O.K. Corral in 1881. He did serve, however, as
deputy federal marshal for a while and aided Wyatt in
the hunt for Morgan Earp’s assassins. After the Earps
left, or were run out of, Arizona in 1882, Warren went
with them to California. In 1900 he returned to Arizona to become a cattle detective. It was not a wise
move. A few months later, he was killed in Wilcox in a
saloon gunfight with a man named Johnny Boyett. The
shooting seemed linked with the troubles at Tombstone’s O.K. Corral and the revenge slayings that followed the Morgan Earp murder.
Virgil Earp let it be known that he intended to kill
the man responsible, and he didn’t mean Boyett.
Chroniclers of the Earp family agree Virgil did just that
in 1905, although the victim’s identity was never officially revealed. The Earps had become a little more circumspect in taking their vengeance.
Earp, Virgil W. (1843–1906) lawman
After serving with the Union during the Civil War, Virgil Earp divided his time between being a prospector
and lawman. In 1877, after serving as deputy town
marshal of Dodge City, Kan., Virgil moved to Prescott,
Arizona Territory to try the mining business. Because of
his enthusiasm about the chances of becoming rich
there, his brothers James and lawmen Wyatt and Morgan followed him. The brothers all settled in Tombstone, and in 1881 Virgil became temporary marshal
when the former holder of the position died of “lead
poisoning.” During this period the growing conflict
between the gambler forces in Tombstone, represented
by the Earps, and the cowboy forces, represented by the
Clanton family, climaxed in the gunfight at the O.K.
Corral; the war continued long afterward.
Like his brother Morgan, Virgil was wounded at the
O.K. Corral, and a few months later, he was the object
of an ambush shooting. Hit by five shotgun blasts,
Virgil was temporarily paralyzed and lost the use of
his left arm permanently. When brother Morgan was
murdered in February 1882, Wyatt put Virgil and his
family on a train out of the state, and Wyatt and young
brother Warren concentrated on avenging the two
crimes. Wyatt Earp succeeded but was also forced to
flee Arizona. The Earps didn’t return to the territory
until around the turn of the century, and shortly after
Warren Earp came back, he was murdered. It is said
Virgil Earp exacted vengeance for that killing in due
course. Virgil had by that time returned to Prescott,
Earp, Wyatt Berry Stapp (1848–1929) gunfighter,
pimp, lawman
Few Western characters are credited with more heroic
deeds than Wyatt Earp. His legendary stature, however,
is almost entirely a product of the 20th century. Those
who knew him best treated him differently. They drove
him out of California for horse stealing; they fired him
from his job as a policeman in Wichita for pocketing
fines; they chased him out of Arizona after the gunfight, or slaughter, at the O.K. Corral and the ensuing
murders. About the only place he wasn’t kicked out of
was Dodge City; he left voluntarily for not exactly
heroic reasons.
Earp belonged to a clan of brothers: James, Virgil,
Morgan and Warren. Natives of Illinois, the Earps
moved to California in 1864 by wagon train. Wyatt’s
jobs there included stagecoach driver, bartender and
gambler. In 1871 he was indicted for horse stealing,
paid $500 bail and took off for greener pastures doing
stints as a buffalo hunter. In Wichita, Kan. he became a
lawman and, according to some biographers, performed many a valiant deed. But he apparently made
no important arrests and eventually came under a cloud
of suspicion when fines he collected never seemed to
288
EARP, Wyatt Berry Stapp
end up in the town treasury. He was dismissed from his
post in 1874 and drifted into Dodge City, Kan., where
he served as a deputy marshal from 1876 to 1879.
Again, the legend tells how he cleaned up Dodge and
gunned down many a varmint in the process. In reality,
however, he had only one kill during all his years in
Dodge, and that was of a drunken cowboy named
George Hoy or Hoyt, who may or may not have been
trying to gun down Earp for a bounty put on him by a
Texas cattleman. The Dodge City cleanup by Earp and
his friend Bat Masterson was strictly a part-time thing.
Both supplemented their income working as cardsharps
and procurers and became known as the Fighting
Pimps. Earp had a piece of the action in most of the
whorehouses south of the “deadline,” the railroad
tracks that bisected Dodge. He probably was at least
half owner of the brothel-saloon that belonged to his
brother James. James’ wife ran the brothel, while James
took care of the gambling and saloon end of the business. The couple always trailed after Earp and set up
shop wherever he was a lawman.
In 1879 Dodge City kind of settled down—meaning
that the Earps’ brothel profits weren’t what they used
to be—and Wyatt decided to try something more lucrative. He headed for the rich silver-strike area of the Arizona Territory. On the way, Earp stopped off in
Mobeetie, Tex., where, with the aid of Mysterious
Dave Mather, he perpetrated a gold brick swindle on
gullible cowboys and was run out of town by Deputy
Sheriff James McIntire. Moving on to Tombstone,
Wyatt set himself up as a saloon keeper. Brother James
became a bartender, and several of the Earp women
opened brothels. When Virgil was named temporary
town marshal upon the death of the marshal, Wyatt
became his deputy. When he later lost out on appointment to the sheriff’s office of the newly created Cochise
County, Wyatt consoled himself by becoming a part
owner in the fabulously successful Oriental Saloon,
amazingly without any monetary investment, a clear
indication of his shakedown ability and the value
attached to the protection he could offer such an establishment.
By early 1881 the Earps—four of the brothers now
on hand in various capacities—became involved in a
feud with the out-county cowboy element led by the
Clanton family. The Earps drew to their banner a character as unsavory as any of the Clanton family killers,
the murderous Doc Holliday. There are experts who
insist the trouble between the two groups resulted from
the Earps’ rigid enforcement of the law, mainly to protect their casino and vice interests, and infringement on
the Clanton ring’s rustling and stage-robbing activities.
Really serious trouble broke out in March 1881,
when the Kinnear and Co. stage was attacked and two
289
men killed. Wyatt Earp went after the killers and named
a trio of gunmen as suspects. In June, however, Doc Holliday was arrested as one of the suspects in the robbery
and murders. The charges were dropped as unproven,
but the incident sapped the Earps’ popularity. More and
more citizens believed the Earps were involved in various
criminal activities, including stage robberies.
It was this climate of antagonism that actually led to
the great gunfight at the O.K. Corral on October 26,
1881, in which three of the Clanton gang—the two
McLowery brothers and Billy Clanton—were killed.
The battle later brought fame to Wyatt Earp, then a
deputy U.S. marshal, but the local Earp-supporting
Tombstone Epitaph gave it only page-three coverage at
the time, possibly because the Earps could have been
brought up on murder charges for the killings. There
were and still are considerable doubts about whether
two of their opponents were even armed, but there is
no doubt the Earps provoked the shoot-out.
The gunfight did not end the Earp-Clanton feud but
merely intensified it. In its aftermath, Clanton supporters separately ambushed Virgil and Morgan Earp,
fatally wounding Morgan. In revenge, Wyatt Earp shot
and killed Frank Stilwell, who was known to have been
involved in Morgan’s death. He then led a posse that
shot to death Florentino Cruz, another man involved in
the ambush. It is unclear whether Wyatt also killed
Curly Bill Brocius, the reigning head of the Clanton
gang. With a warrant for murder hanging over his
head, Wyatt was forced to flee Arizona, and the rest of
the Earps followed.
In 1883 Earp turned up in Dodge City as part of the
celebrated but short-lived Dodge City Peace Commission, really a terrorist action to force the return of gambling and prostitution interests to the town. It is
interesting to note that the local newspaper did not
remember Earp as the man who had “cleaned up”
Dodge but as a man “famous in the cheerful business of
depopulating the country.”
In 1884 Wyatt was living in Idaho Territory, where
he and his brother James operated a couple of saloons,
and became involved in a combine that specialized in
claim jumping. Shortly thereafter, Wyatt saw the merits
of moving on to California, where he spent the rest of
his days except for four years when he was a saloon
keeper in Alaska during the gold rush. In the 1920s
Earp hung around the movie lots of Hollywood,
befriending Tom Mix and William S. Hart in an effort
to get them to do his life story. Studio producers and
directors exploited him for information about the Wild
West days without ever paying him. In 1927 Earp
finally began setting down the facts for an enthusiastic
young writer, Stuart Lake, who produced a highly fanciful biography that established the ill-deserved legend
EAST Texas Regulator War
produced. Historian Herbert Asbury called him “the
prince of gangsters” and “as brave a thug as ever shot
an enemy in the back.”
Eastman was the boss of the last great primarily Jewish street gang in New York City, able to field 1,200 to
1,500 vicious gangsters on short notice. The Eastmans
wiped out the remnants of the brutal Whyos, a truly
murderous collection of thugs, near the end of the last
century and were always ready to do battle with Paul
Kelly’s notorious gangsters, the great Italian Five Points
Gang. After the turn of the century, the Five Pointers
boasted on their roster such future devotees of mayhem
and violence as Johnny Torrio, Al Capone, Lucky
Luciano and Frankie Yale. Yet, in comparison to Eastman’s crew they were choir boys.
In appearance, Eastman looked precisely the way a
gangster should—squat, massive, bullet-headed, with a
busted nose and a pair of cauliflower ears. And his behavior was worse than his appearance. He deserted his home
area in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, where his
respectable Jewish restaurateur father had set up a pet
store for him, and headed for the crime-ridden fleshpots
of lower Manhattan. He was to become a legend.
In the early 1890s Eastman became a bouncer at a
rough dance hall, New Irving Hall, where a girl might
well get raped by a number of the boys if not by her
date. Eastman patrolled his domain with a huge bludgeon, a blackjack in his hip pocket and brass knuckles
on each hand. He was always proud of the fact that
during the six months of his reign no less than 50 men
required the attention of surgeons and that jocular
ambulance drivers referred to the accident ward of
Bellevue Hospital as the Eastman Pavilion. Eastman
kept close count of the victims he clubbed and notched
each assault on his club. One night an inoffensive little
man was sitting at the bar drinking beer when Eastman
walked up to him and cracked his scalp open with a
mighty swipe. When asked why he’d done so, he
replied, “Well, I had 49 nicks in me stick, an’ I wanted
to make it an even 50.”
If that seemed a bit antisocial, at least Monk could
pride himself on his near-Victorian treatment of
women. He never once struck a woman with his club,
no matter how trying she became. At most, he simply
blackened her eyes with his hammy fist. “I only gave
her a little poke,” he would exclaim. “Just enough to
put a shanty on her glimmer. But I always takes off me
knucks first.”
With behavior such as that, Monk Eastman became
a legend on the East Side, and other young bloods took
to imitating him in speech and manner. Of course, from
such personal magnetism great leaders are born, and
Eastman soon gathered around him a band of hoodlums eager to do his bidding. It didn’t take long before
of Wyatt Earp. Earp died on January 13, 1929, before
the book appeared.
See also: JOHN BEHAN; JOSEPH ISAAC “IKE” CLANTON;
WILLIAM CLANTON; DODGE CITY, KANSAS; DODGE CITY
PEACE COMMISSION; MORGAN EARP; VIRGIL W. EARP; GOLD
BRICK SWINDLE; JOHN HENRY “DOC” HOLLIDAY; WILLIAM
B. “BAT” MASTERSON; MIKE MEAGER; ORIENTAL SALOON
AND GAMBLING HOUSE; JOHNNY RINGO.
East Texas Regulator War (1841–1844) vigilante conflict
The establishment of a Regulator vigilante movement
in 1840 in Shelby County eventually resulted in turning
much of eastern Texas into a battlefield. The need for
vigilantes was as acute in Shelby County as anywhere
in the West. The area was overrun with thieves, counterfeiters, murderers and corrupt county officials, who
made law and order virtually impossible to maintain.
Unfortunately, the leadership of the Regulators fell to
Charles Jackson, a steamboat operator suspected of
rather shady dealings, and it appears he created the
Regulators as much for gaining personal control of the
country as for ridding it of outlaws. When Jackson was
cut down by an assassin, the leadership passed to Watt
Moorman, a man with even less scruples than Jackson.
Soon, the Regulators descended to the level of the outlaws they had been founded to drive out. In 1841 a
countermovement of moderators appeared on the scene
to curb the excesses of the Regulators, but both sides
attracted criminal elements to their banners. While
Regulators and Moderators theoretically battled outlaws and other villains, they began to spend more time
warring with each other. In a short while, the entire
county became involved; every man had to align with
one side or the other and often found himself fighting
with his neighbor or even his own relatives. To their
credit, the Moderators cleaned their ranks of outlaw
forces over the next three years, and by 1844 they were
poised for a wholesale shooting war with the Regulators. President Sam Houston of the Republic of Texas
prevented a certain bloodbath by sending in the militia,
and the outbreak of the Mexican War further defused
matters. In all, 18 deaths were officially attributed to
the vigilante war; the number of severely wounded or
permanently crippled was put in the hundreds. Thereafter, many blood feuds among Regulator and Moderator partisans continued for several decades and the
hatreds kept alive lasted into this century.
See also: REGULATORS AND MODERATORS.
Eastman, Monk (1873–1920) great gang leader
There are those authorities on crime who consider
Monk Eastman the greatest gangster this country ever
290
EDWARDS Heirs Association
he told them to go forth, beat up some citizens and
bring back some money.
From then on, Eastman’s gang grew rapidly. He and
his men took over much of the crime on the Lower East
Side, engaging in robberies, burglaries, assault, muggings and murder for pay. Eastman seized control of
many of the gambling dens and houses of prostitution,
and even individual streetwalkers and hoodlums had to
pay him for the privilege of operating in his turf.
Although a crude savage, Eastman was smart enough
to ingratiate himself with Tammany Hall and, in
exchange for protection and a regular stipend, handled
any chore required. On election day he furnished the
largest contingent of voters, his own men, who voted
early and often, and then blackjacked any honest citizen who was considering voting against Eastman’s
patrons. Whenever Eastman or his men got in trouble,
Tammany Hall lawyers appeared in court for them.
Bail was posted and promptly forfeited until the case
was expunged from the records.
As rich and powerful as he became, Eastman could
never resist doing violence himself, sometimes even personally carrying out a blackjacking commission. “I like
to beat up a guy once in a while,” he used to say. “It
keeps me hand in.”
In one confrontation with the hated Five Pointers,
Eastman was shot twice in the stomach and left for
dead, but he climbed to his feet and staggered to Gouverneur Hospital, plugging a gaping wound with his
fingers. Eastman hovered near death but, in keeping
with underworld tradition, would not name his
assailant. When he got out, Eastman personally shot
the Five Pointer and dumped his body in the gutter.
In time, the Eastmans appeared to be winning the
war with the Five Pointers and also routing the forces
of another major gang leader, Humpty Jackson, but in
1904 Eastman caused his own downfall by holding up
a expensively dressed young man who had overimbibed. It was a robbery Eastman did not have to commit but could not resist. Unfortunately for the gangster,
the victim was a scion of wealth whose family had
hired a Pinkerton to follow him for his protection. Seeing Eastman accost the young man, the detective
opened fire on him, and the gangster fled right into the
arms of a policeman, who knocked him out before recognizing him.
If Eastman expected aid from Tammany, he was
sadly disappointed. In view of the rising spirit of
reform, the political bosses were happy for the chance
to be rid of him. The great gangster was shipped off in
ignominy to do 10 years in Sing Sing. When he was
released, he found his power was gone. The Eastmans
had factionalized a dozen ways, as the times would no
longer support great street gangs. Eastman could not
One of the most famous turn-of-the-century gang leaders,
Monk Eastman once clubbed a hapless bar patron
because “I had 49 nicks in me stick, an’ I wanted to make
it an even 50.”
understand what had happened. But World War I
proved to be a godsend for him, and he went off to
fight. When he returned, he was awarded a pardon by
Gov. Al Smith, who signed an executive order restoring
him to full citizenship.
In December 1920 Eastman was shot dead by a corrupt Prohibition agent with whom he was running a
penny-ante bootlegging and dope-selling operation.
See also: CRAZY BUTCH GANG.
Edwards Heirs Association
swindle
As much as any of the incredible “heirs swindle,” the
one involving the so-called Edwards estate was among
the most durable. Its operation was handed down from
father to son and lasted for decades.
The swindle was the brainchild of Dr. Herbert H.
Edwards of Cleveland, Ohio, who in the 1880s maintained with much fervor that he was a descendant of
Robert Edwards, a colonial merchant who had willed
to his heirs 65 acres of Manhattan Island, right in the
middle of which eventually had been erected the Woolworth Building. It was obvious that this bit of real
estate had become one of the most valuable in the
world. The Edwards estate was apparently worth not
millions, but billions.
Dr. Edwards formed the Edwards Heirs Association,
which was passed down from father to son, taking in
$26 annually from each of thousands of people named
Edwards as dues to fight for their legal rights. Naturally, every member of the association believed he
would receive at least a thousand times what he had
put in when a settlement was reached, an event that
291
EGAN’S Rats
electric shock as crime punishment
proposal
was always just about to be achieved. The association
was also noted for having a great fete each year, which
members attended by the hundreds, to celebrate the
profits soon to come. The suckers even had their own
anthem, which they sang with leather-lunged joy:
In the constant search for new, or the reworking of
older, methods for punishing crime, there has been a
renewed effort to restore corporal punishment in place
of jail time and the like. Some scholars insist that corporal punishment is more humane and less expensive
than incarceration.
One of the more controversial suggestions has been
made by a leading authority on punishment, Graeme
Newman, who offers electric shock as a general punishment. Electric shock, says Newman, inflicts punishment
only where it belongs—on the offender rather than on
his family, who also suffers when he is sent to prison.
Among the benefits, according to Newman, is that the
public is spared the expense of incarceration and of
families becoming dependent on welfare. Under the
electric shock proposal, all offenders would receive the
same penalty for the same crime and no added penalty
would be applied because of previous crimes. According to Newman, this would make the punishment fit
the crime, not the criminal. And such corporal punishment would work on the offender’s body, not on his
mind. Newman’s ideas, expounded in a 1983 book,
have not gone very far.
Further reading: Just and Painful: A Case for the
Corporal Punishment of Criminals by Graeme Newman.
We have rallied here in blissful state
Our jubilee to celebrate.
When fortune kindly on us smiled,
The Edwards Heirs now reconciled.
Our president deserves our praise,
For strenuous work through dreary days,
In consummating our affairs
and rounding up the Edwards heirs.
We’re Robert Edward’s legal heirs,
And cheerfully we take our shares.
Then let us shout with joy and glee
And celebrate the jubilee.
Finally, after several decades of successful operation, the great swindle was smashed by the post office.
The members of the association never saw any of the
promised rewards, but they could at least recall their
annual hangovers, perhaps still with some measure of
fondness.
Egan’s Rats
St. Louis gang
First organized in St. Louis about 1900 by Jellyroll
Egan, the Rats became the most feared gang in the city.
Egan specialized in renting out his men as “legbreakers” to anti-union businessmen. When such activities
became less profitable about 1920, Dinty Colbeck, who
had taken over the reins from the late founder, turned
Egan’s Rats in new criminal directions. Operating out
of a poolhall called Buckley’s, Colbeck controlled bootlegging operations in the St. Louis–Kansas City area
and masterminded a number of spectacular safecracking and jewelry thefts, many with the aid of the best
safecracker of the 1920s, Red Rudensky.
Dinty Colbeck cut a flamboyant figure in St. Louis
and paid enormous bribes to crooked politicians and
policemen to allow his enterprises to operate without
harassment. Approaching an officer on the street, he
was known to pull out a big wad of bills and say,
“Want a bribe, officer?”
Like many of the other independent gangs that had
been given a new life by Prohibition, Egan’s Rats could
not cope with the changing crime scene of the postbootlegging 1930s. Colbeck was killed by rival gangsters and the surviving Rats had to find new homes in
other criminal combinations.
Einstein, Isadore
controversial
Electrolytic Marine Salts Company
See GOLD
ACCUMULATOR SWINDLE.
Elwell, Joseph Bowne (1875–1920) murder victim
Joseph Bowne Elwell was the bridge expert of the day
and a notorious ladies’ man. He was the author of
Elwell on Bridge and Elwell’s Advanced Bridge, or so it
seemed. In fact, the books were written by his wife,
later ex-wife, Helen Darby, whose high social position
gave Elwell entrée into the world of society. This was
vital for Elwell because the bridge books did not really
bring in the kind of money needed to afford him the
really good life. Elwell was basically a card hustler who
milked the rich. With his ill-won wealth he established
himself as one of them, becoming the owner of a racing
stable, a yacht, an art collection and several cars.
Elwell was also the owner of what the tabloids
referred to after his death as a “love index,” a roster of
53 women, married and single, who boasted both high
social affiliations and considerable allure. He maintained another list for male acquaintances and more
run-of-the-mill females. Clearly, Elwell was a womanizer, a fact that proved to be something of a minor mys-
See IZZY AND MOE.
292
EMBEZZLEMENT
tery in itself since after death he was revealed to have
been toothless and bald, owning a collection of no less
than 40 toupees.
Early one morning in 1920, just as dawn crept
over Manhattan’s West 70th Street, someone put a .45caliber bullet into Elwell’s head as he was reading a
letter in his study. His housekeeper found him near
death when she came to work; he was not wearing his
toupee or his false teeth. The housekeeper, Marie
Larsen, was a devoted servant who, while doctors
labored over Elwell, hid a pink kimono she found in
the house. Later, it was discovered, but the young lady
who owned it had an alibi for the time of the shooting.
Almost all of the ladies on the love index and those in
Elwell’s larger file had been sound asleep at the time of
the murder.
The newspapers had a field day with this first sexand-murder scandal of the decade. All sorts of filmy
underclothes were found secreted in Elwell’s bedroom.
It undoubtedly took a keen mind to remember which
belonged to whom and perhaps a slip of this kind is
what did Elwell in. All sorts of theories developed, featuring jealous women, their husbands or other lovers,
gambling rings, gambling victims, mysterious spies
(according to this postulation, Elwell, who had been a
secret government agent in the war, was killed by spies
he had uncovered) and even rival horse owners. One
could have a pick of suspects and motives, but the public clearly preferred the idea that some fashionable
matron (or her daughter) committed the murder for
reasons of passion. Yet a .45 was hardly a woman’s
weapon and Elwell, a notoriously vain man, would
never have admitted a female to his presence without
putting in his teeth and donning his toupee. The answer
to that argument was, of course, that a woman murderer might use a .45 and then remove his plates and
wig precisely to make it look like the work of a man.
Russel Crouse, the playwright and a former crime
reporter, who had a keen eye for such things, once
observed, “‘Cherchez la femme!’ will echo every time
the murder of Joseph Bowne Elwell is mentioned. And
the fact that she will never be found will not still the
whispers.”
See also: CHARLES NORRIS.
embezzlement
The most enduring crime magazine article is probably
the embezzlement story. There is something so eternal
about the crime, probably because its root causes are
deeply related to basic human failings. At times a writer
will explain the motive for embezzlement in terms of
the “three W’s” or the “three R’s”—it’s all the same
whether one speaks of wine, women and wagering or
293
rum, redheads and race horses. The fact is that sex and
greed can drive many people to steal large amounts of
money, and they frequently do. Recent estimates place
embezzlement losses at more than $4 billion a year.
Typical embezzlers work at a bank or other business
institution for years or even decades before they are
finally exposed—if ever. As a cashier, John F. Wagner,
was able to skim somewhat more than $1.1 million
from the First National Bank of Cecil, Pa., by juggling
the bank’s books for at least a score of years until he
committed suicide in 1950. The vice president of a
bank in Baton Rouge, La. kept up his looting for a
dozen years. When he was finally caught, he said: “I’m
glad it’s finally over. These past twelve years of living
under the constant strain of wondering when I’d eventually get caught have cost me more than any amount
of money could be worth.”
Some embezzlers don’t like the strain of wondering if
and when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
auditors will come calling. Richard H. Crowe, an assistant branch manager of a New York bank, was that
type. So he simply went to the vault one Friday in the
late 1940s, stuffed $883,000 into a bag and went home
to dinner. The following Monday he was nowhere to be
found. However, such runaways are generally not difficult to find, and often all the FBI has to do is determine
where a man with a lot of extra spending money is
most likely to turn up. Agents found Crowe in a plush
bar in Daytona Beach, Fla.
Perhaps the classic bank embezzlement, with certainly the brashest motive of all, was that committed by
bank president Ludwig R. Schlekat. Out of the
$719,000 in cash supposedly on hand at the Parnassus
National Bank of New Kensington, Pa., Schlekat managed to appropriate no less than $600,000, accumulating the sum over a 23-year period. When the shortage
was found by bank examiners in 1947, it was determined that Schlekat had used $100,000 for his own
better living. What had happened to the rest? Well,
when Schlekat started working for the bank as an
apprentice clerk at the age of 17 he had had only one
ambition: to rise to bank president. After the bank’s
owner became eager to retire, Schlekat used the bulk of
the $600,000 to purchase the bank through two nonexistent individuals who supposedly lived in Cleveland.
Schlekat had simply used the bank’s own money to buy
the institution for himself. Then he had the bogus owners make him president. He was caught, tried and given
a prison term of 10 years.
Generally, bankers and other business officials insist
that people continue to embezzle because of the light
sentences that are often imposed. It would be a somewhat more telling argument if all banks paid employees
decent wages. In a classic case of that sort some years
EMMA Mine fraud
Emma Mine fraud
ago, federal judge Frank L. Kloeb refused to sentence a
cashier of an Ohio bank who had been convicted of
embezzling $7,500 over a 10-year period ending in
1941. The judge hit the ceiling when he learned that the
man had started as a cashier in 1920 at an annual
salary of $1,080 and 22 years later he had been earning
no more than $1,900 a year. The cashier had stopped
his embezzlements as his salary started to rise faster,
and he was not found out until many years later.
The judge simply deferred sentencing indefinitely
and refused even to put the cashier on probation,
because that would have made him a criminal. “If I
had the authority,” the judge said, “I would sentence
the bank officers and the Board of Directors to read
the story of Scrooge at Christmas and think of the
defendant.”
Experts say women are just as likely to become
embezzlers as men are. Bankers claim it is very common
for middle-aged spinsters to resort to juggling the
books. Having gone through life with perhaps little or
no romance, such women may be desperate for companionship at this stage. In their eagerness to cement new
friendships, they bestow gifts with reckless abandon.
That old cliché of a shocked banker asking a trusted
employee-turned-embezzler—“Was it a woman?”—
definitely has its reverse—“Was it a man?”
As a rule, women are more generous with their loot
than men. One trusted bookkeeper who stole $30,000
with the aid of some skillful record doctoring gave
most of it to fellow employees in the form of salary
increases.
The boom in computers in recent years has opened
up new vistas for embezzlers. One bank employee
developed a computerized money-diversion scheme to
steal more than $1 million, which he used to finance his
gambling. It seemed he also had a computer system for
handicapping the horses, but unfortunately for him, it
was less efficient than his embezzlement operation.
Computer embezzlement has even become a problem within the Internal Revenue Service. One IRS computer programmer set up a system that funneled
unclaimed tax credits into a relative’s account, and
another IRS programmer computer-transferred to his
own account checks being held for taxpayers whose
mailing addresses could not be determined.
In the precomputer era it was estimated that there
were at least 200 ways to embezzle money from a bank
without danger of immediate exposure. Now, in an era
of advancing technology, the ways cannot be counted.
According to John Rankine, IBM’s director of data
security, “The data security job will never be done—
after all, there will never be a bank that absolutely can’t
be robbed.”
See also: COMPUTER CRIME, JOHN F. WAGNER.
In the West’s great scramble for the riches of silver ore
from the 1870s to the end of the 19th century, there
was scant exploitation by legitimate mining interests of
Utah’s silver deposits. The origin of this strange diffidence toward a profitable opportunity was the notorious Emma Silver Mining Co. bubble, which had caused
investors to lose millions, some in this country and even
more in England.
With the first sign of a silver strike in Little Cottonwood Canyon in 1868, a mining speculator, James E.
Lyon of New York, moved in to take effective control.
He in turn had to yield a good deal of it to San Francisco mining interests, and they then brought in Trevor
W. Park of Vermont and Gen. H. Henry Baxter of New
York. To protect his interests, Lyon introduced Sen.
William M. Stewart of Nevada into the combine, which
by then had decided to sell stock in the mine in England. Important names were added to the operation.
Professor Benjamin Silliman, Jr. of Yale, for a fee of
$25,000, issued a favorable report on the mine’s ore
deposits. The board of directors of the British company
included three members of Parliament, the U.S. minister to the Court of St. James and a former president of
the New York Central Railroad, among others. Marketing of the company’s stock was handled by Baron
Albert Grant, a London financier of dubious ethical
standards but a brilliant salesman, who was paid a fee
of £170,000 for his troubles. It was a small price since
the income from floating the stock was something like
£600,000. All the American operators did extremely
well, with the possible exception of the original
investor, James Lyon. His supposed protector, Sen.
Stewart, was able to buy him out for £50,000, half of
what Lyon had been promised.
For a time, even the English investors did well, as the
stock in the Emma Silver Mining Company, Ltd.,
quickly moved from £20 to £50. Then a rival firm, the
Illinois Tunnel Co., announced the Emma claim had
not been recorded correctly and that the English company was mining the ore from the claim to pay the dividends on its stock. Even more shocking was the
revelation that the owner of Illinois Tunnel was Trevor
W. Park, who was also a member of the board of Emma
Mining and who had made one of the biggest profits in
the entire deal. All sorts of suits were then filed, especially after 1872, when Emma Mining announced its
ore deposits had run out. In the end, everyone who had
been in the original combine made and kept money and
all the shareholders in Emma Mining lost their money
except for a total of $150,000, which Park offered in
1877 for all outstanding shares. Park continued to mine
Emma for a number of years and is believed to have
made that money back easily. In any event, the Emma
294
EVANS, Charles
Mine scandal was to frighten off virtually all investment in Utah mines by outsiders for some three
decades, and the fraud was often cited as an example of
“Yankee ingenuity.”
Espinosa brothers
murderers
In 1861 three Mexican brothers and some other kin
invaded Colorado with the announced purpose of
killing 600 Americans. This vendetta, they said, was to
make up—at the rate of 100 to one—for the loss of life
suffered by the Espinosa family during the Mexican
War. By mid-1863 the three brothers, Felipe, Julián and
Victorio, had managed to dispatch 26 Americans. Their
typical victims were freighters, prospectors, sawmill
workers or soldiers whom they had caught alone.
While vengeance was supposedly the first order of the
day, the Espinosas saw to it that their victims were also
worth robbing; their soldier-victims, for instance, had
generally been waylaid right after payday.
With 574 victims to go, Felipe Espinosa, the leader
and most audacious member of the family, sent a message to the territorial governor, offering to quit the
murderous campaign if the Espinosas were given a land
grant of 5,000 acres and made captains in the Colorado
Volunteers. Such an offer was hardly likely to be
accepted, as Felipe most certainly knew, and probably
represented a bold attempt to put the best possible face
on the criminal acts. The governor responded by placing a reward of $2,500 on Felipe’s head.
The killings went on and terror gripped the territory.
Groups of vigilante miners rode hell-for-leather around
the countryside trying to corner the Espinosas and
hanged more than one suspect, even some who quite
clearly were not Mexicans. Finally, however, they did
catch Victorio Espinosa in the Fairplay–California
Gulch area and strung him up. Later they staged a
drunken celebration because they mistakenly believed
their victim was Felipe, without whom the Espinosas
were thought to be incapable of continuing their murderous activities.
When the terror did not end, it was obvious Felipe
was still alive. He continued to elude posses of miners
and army patrols. Finally, the army commissioned a
storied scout named Tom Tobin to bring in the
Espinosas with the aid of a 15-soldier detail. Late in
1863, Tobin successfully tracked down the remaining
two Espinosa brothers, but at the last moment he
slipped away from the troopers because he did not
want to share the reward money with them. Tobin cornered Felipe and Julián Espinosa at Indian Creek and
shot them dead before they could return his fire. He
cut off their heads as proof he had gotten the right men
and returned to Fort Garland to claim his reward.
295
However, because of a shortage of cash in the territorial coffers, Tobin was given only $1,500 and some
buckskins.
For several years pickled “Espinosa heads” were
exhibited around the West. Long after, in 1955, Kit
Carson III labeled these exhibits, some still around, as
fakes. Carson said Tom Tobin, his maternal grandfather, had always insisted the heads had been buried
behind Fort Garland and never removed.
Estes, Billie Sol (1925– ) con man
In the 1960s Billie Sol Estes, a flamboyant Texas “salesman” and political supporter of President Lyndon
Johnson, became famous as a prototypical big-time
swindler after being convicted of inducing farmers to
invest in fertilizer tanks that never existed. He was sentenced to 15 years and paroled in 1971 after serving six
years. Under the terms of his parole, Estes was not
allowed to engage in promotional schemes, but almost
immediately, he was implicated in some financial dealings that involved allegations of fraud. In August 1979
Estes was sentenced to two five-year federal prison
terms to be served consecutively following his conviction for bilking investors by borrowing money and
using as collateral oil field cleaning equipment that was
nonexistent. One of his victims, J. H. Burkett, an Abilene used-car dealer who lent Estes his life savings of
$50,000 shortly after meeting him in 1975, said: “I met
him in church, in Bible study in Abilene, and he struck
me as a very nice guy. He seemed very humble, very
earnest, remorseful. I was very impressed by him, and I
still am, but in a different way. The man is the world’s
best salesman. Just go and meet him, and you’ll find
out. He’ll sell you something.”
Following his 1979 conviction Estes told the judge:
“I love this country. I’d rather be in prison here than
free anywhere else in the world.” He said that whether
or not he went to jail, he would pay the money he
owed, including $10 million in back taxes, to the government. Estes claimed he had more than a million
friends and could raise $10 from each of them. There
were those who said he probably could.
Estes was always a spellbinder. In a 1961 interview
he once outlined his personal philosophy, which apparently won him devoted followers. “You win by losing,
hold on by letting go, increase by diminishing, and multiply by dividing. These are the principles that have
brought me success.”
Evans, Charles (?–1875) murderer
In another era or in another jurisdiction, Charles, or
Daniel (as he was sometimes called), Evans might not
EVANS, Christopher
barely walk or ride. He ordered Morrell to go to Evans
and arrange for a jail break, during which Evans would
be shot. Morrell said he frustrated the plan by helping
Evans to escape 24 hours ahead of schedule.
While Morrell carried, or half-dragged, Evans for
weeks, Smith flooded the valley and surrounding hills
with hundreds of agents. Eventually, the fugitives were
forced to take refuge in a farmhouse. Although many
residents of the area were sympathizers and hid them
willingly, there was now a huge reward offered for their
capture, and they were betrayed. Chris Evans was
quickly sentenced to life imprisonment. So was Morrell, who later was subjected to brutal torture in prison.
When word of Morrell’s ordeal got out, he was pardoned in 1907 and became a national hero and a champion of prison reform. Evans was paroled in 1911 and
quietly lived the last six years of his life with his family
in Portland, Ore.
See also: CALIFORNIA OUTLAWS, ED MORRELL, SONTAG
BROTHERS.
have ended up on the end of a rope, thereby helping to
make Isaac C. Parker’s reputation as “the hanging judge.”
Long known as a thief and horse stealer, Evans was
arrested in April 1875 for the murder of an 18-year-old
boy named Seabolt. The body was found in Indian Territory, Oklahoma, bootless and with an empty wallet
nearby. Evans was arrested when he was found in possession of Seabolt’s horse. At his trial he insisted he had
bought the horse. Since all the evidence against him
was circumstantial, he was found not guilty. However,
the presiding judge who was resigning and leaving the
area, failed to sign certain legal papers, so that Evans
had to be held over for a new trial. In June he was
brought before a new judge, Isaac C. Parker, who was
later to become known as the Hanging Judge. Parker
could have ruled that Evans was being exposed to double jeopardy, but such legalisms seldom influenced him
and he ordered a trial.
Evans was sure of acquittal and came into court all
dolled up to celebrate his forthcoming freedom. The
dead man’s father was in the courtroom, and when he
looked down at the boots the defendant was wearing,
he realized they were his son’s. Judge Parker sentenced
Evans to hang and no doubt noted to himself how a
legal technicality had almost freed a guilty man.
See also: ISAAC C. “HANGING JUDGE” PARKER.
Everleigh sisters
madams
Some experts on the subject insist there has not been
a genuine bordello in America since 1910, when
Chicago’s Everleigh Club, run by sisters Ada and Minna
Everleigh, shut its doors. And when it did, the sisters,
still in their early thirties, retired with, among other
things, $1 million in cash; perhaps $250,000 in jewelry,
much of which had come from grateful clients; paintings, statues, rare books, rugs and other valuables for
which they had paid $150,000; about 50 brass beds
inlaid with marble and fitted with specially designed
matresses and springs; and 25 gold-plated spittoons
worth $650 apiece. For the Everleighs the wages of sin
had been enormous.
Coming from a small Kentucky town, the Everleighs
inherited about $35,000 between them. Everleigh was
not their real name—it may have been Lester—but one
they adopted in honor of their grandmother, who
signed her letters, “Everly Yours.” For a time the sisters
joined a theatrical troupe while they looked for a nice
town in which to invest their money. Early in 1898 they
decided on Omaha, Neb., then readying for the TransMississippi Exposition, which was expected to bring
big crowds. At the time, Ada was 23 and Minna not
quite 21, but they were hard-headed businesswomen
and coolly analyzed what type of business would please
a fun-seeking exposition crowd. So they went out and
bought a whorehouse, a field in which they had no
experience. They brought in all new girls and charged
the highest prices in Omaha. It worked during the
exposition, but when the crowds left, the sisters found
out there was no way the sports of Omaha were going
Evans, Christopher (1847–1917) anti-railroad outlaw
Called affectionately the Old Chief by many residents
of the San Joaquin Valley, Chris Evans, together with
the Sontag brothers, led the California Outlaws, a
group of train robbers who carried on a fierce war with
the Southern Pacific Railroad, looting its express cars
but never victimizing any of its passengers.
A veteran of many gun battles with railroad and federal posses, Evans survived a number of wounds,
including one that blinded his right eye, but kept up his
relentless campaign against the railroad. After George
Sontag was captured, Evans and John Sontag were
forced up into the hills where they were finally cornered by a huge posse in the famous Battle of Simpsons
Flat. The gunfight raged for eight hours, with Evans
and Sontag dashing from tree to tree and holding off
the army of pursuers. Two Tulare County deputies were
killed and a number wounded, but in the end, John
Sontag lay dying and Evans was “too filled with lead to
run any more.” Although expected to die, Evans survived and was lodged in jail in Fresno.
In his autobiography, written many years later, Ed
Morrell, a member of the outlaws who worked as a spy
inside the ranks of railroad detectives, said that their
boss, Big Bill Smith, decided it would be best if Evans
died trying to escape, despite the fact that he could
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EXECUTION, methods of
to pay $10 for a girl and $12 for a bottle of wine. So
they packed up and moved to Chicago. The sisters
bought the lease to and girls at the brothel of Madam
Effie Hankins at 2131-3 South Dearborn Street for
$55,000. On February 1, 1900 they opened the incredible Everleigh Club. Describing it, the Chicago Tribune
said, “No house of courtesans in the world was so
richly furnished, so well advertised, and so continuously patronized by men of wealth and slight morals.”
On opening night the club took in $1,000. Never
again were revenues so small, as word got around
about the fabulous services offered. Separate soundproof parlors were called the Gold, Silver, Copper,
Moorish, Red, Green, Rose, Blue, Oriental, Chinese,
Egyptian and Japanese rooms and were appropriately
furnished. The Tribune described the Japanese Room as
“a harlot’s dream of what a Japanese palace might look
like.” Every room had a fountain that squirted a jet of
perfume into the air.
Quite naturally, the charges were hardly cheap for
the era, ranging from $10 to $25 to $50, depending on
how long a client wished to avail himself of a prostitute’s company. The $10 price was really little more
than the cost of admission; if a man failed to spend at
least $50, he was told not to return. The costs of running such a magnificent house—which included a
library, an art gallery, a dining room, rooms where
three orchestras played and a Turkish ballroom with a
huge indoor fountain—were enormous. Overhead ran
to $75,000 a year, including $30,000 for servants,
music and entertainment and probably protection,
since the sisters were never bothered and the name of
the club did not appear on the police lists of bawdy
houses. Also on the payroll were 15 to 25 cooks. This
was an excellent investment because, while a good
sport might spend $50 or $100, and gentleman throwing a dinner party for a small group of friends (with
wine at $12 a bottle) could easily run up a tab of
$1,500 for an evening’s fun.
Madame Minna met each visitor in the grand hallway, clad in a silk gown and bedecked with jewels,
including a diamond dog collar. The sisters permitted
no lineup of their girls but had them drift from parlor
to parlor, talking to a man only after a formal introduction. Everleigh Club prostitutes were much sought after
by other bordellos and a girl who made it in the club
had her future assured in the business—if she did not
go directly from the business to marriage of a wealthy
patron.
“I talk with each applicant myself,” Ada once
explained. “She must have worked somewhere else
before coming here. We do not like amateurs. . . . To
get in a girl must have a good face and figure, must be
in perfect health, must understand what it is to act like
a lady. If she is addicted to drugs, or to drink, we do
not want her.” For the girls the work was lighter and
the pay higher than elsewhere, so the sisters always had
a waiting list of applicants. Those accepted got regular
classes in dress, manners and makeup and had to read
books from the establishment’s library.
A man who partied at the Everleigh Club even once
could boast of it for years. The real secret of the sister’s
success was their understanding of male chauvinism
and fantasies. One much appreciated gimmick used at
times was to have butterflies to flit about the house. As
a rival madam, Cleo Maitland, observed, “No man is
going to forget he got his behind fanned by a butterfly
at the Everleigh Club.”
The list of celebrities who patronized the club was
almost endless. Prince Henry of Prussia enjoyed a
mighty orgy there in 1902, and repeat callers included
John Barrymore, Ring Lardner, heavyweight boxing
champion James J. “Gentleman Jim” Corbett, George
Ade, Percy Hammond and Bet-A-Million Gates. One of
the rave reviews of the establishment was offered by
newsman Jack Lait, who said, “Minna and Ada Everleigh are to pleasure what Christ was to Christianity.”
Other madams and whoremasters were jealous of
the sisters’ success and tried to fabricate charges of
clients being robbed or drugged there, but the Everleighs paid the highest graft in the city and the authorities would not listen to such nonsense. One resourceful
bordello operator, Ed Weiss, opened up next door to
the Everleigh Club and put taxi drivers on his payrolls
so that when a particularly drunken sport asked to be
taken there, he would be deposited at the Weiss place
instead without knowing the difference.
The great reform drive against vice in Chicago in
1910 forced the Everleigh Club to close. The sisters had
no intention of doing battle with the authorities, who
were under attack from do-gooders. Most Everleigh
clients could not believe such a palace of pleasure
would ever go out of business. The trauma was much
worse for them than for the sisters, who took a year’s
grand tour of Europe and on their return settled in New
York City in a fashionable home off Central Park. They
lived out their lives in genteel fashion, Minna dying in
1948 and Ada in 1960.
See also: FRIENDLY FRIENDS, NATHANIEL FORD MOORE,
WEISS CLUB.
execution, methods of
Aside from a few early and isolated instances of executions by crushing with weights, drawing and quartering
or burning at the stake (these last two almost exclusively punishments reserved for blacks), the death
penalty in America has been accomplished by four
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EXECUTION, methods of
basic methods: hanging, the electric chair, the gas
chamber and the firing squad.
These methods can be discussed in their general
order of chronological usage and popularity.
HANGING
Allowing for possible changes and the reimposition of
the death penalty following the Supreme Court’s 1976
approval of executions, hanging is in vogue in a halfdozen states, although at one time its use was almost
universal. The main argument against hanging is that it
is far more cruel and painful than other methods; on
the other hand, proponents of hanging argue that its
very repulsiveness makes it more of a deterrent. Of
course, were this latter viewpoint true, hanging should
have eliminated murder and other capital crimes centuries ago.
Years of practice and refinement have gone into the
technique in an effort to achieve what is known as a
“clean” hanging. Here is how things go if a clean hanging occurs—which, according to experts, happens in a
minority of the cases. First of all, there is no longer the
embarrassment of the rope slipping from the crossbeam
since it is now attached to a chain suspended from the
gallows crossbeam. The noose is adjusted so that the
knot is positioned extremely tightly behind the victim’s
left ear, and a black hood is placed over his head so that
witnesses will be spared the condemned man’s final grimaces. In some states the hangman does not spring the
trapdoor himself. His job is limited to fixing the knot,
binding the legs together to prevent disconcerting kicking and centering the doomed man correctly over the
trapdoor. Then he gives a signal and three men in a little booth on the platform each cut a string, only one of
which springs the trapdoor. When the door occurs, the
knot ideally will strike behind the left ear, instantly
knocking the doomed man unconscious. If things work
to perfection, just the right number of small bones of
the cervical vertebrae in the neck are broken so that the
head is not ripped off. The bones should then collapse
on the spinal cord, cutting off oxygen to the brain and
paralyzing the rest of the body. Rapid brain death follows. This is what can be considered a “clean” clean
hanging. It doesn’t happen all that often. There are
other hangings that are still clean enough.
In the average clean job, the victim’s thrashing at the
end of the rope lasts for but a few minutes. His wheezing can be heard but never reaches the fever pitch of a
botched job. The stench, however, may be rather troublesome, since the victim often urinates, defecates and
ejaculates at the same time. The resultant odors, mixed
with an overwhelming one of perspiration, is somewhat
sickening, especially as human waste runs down the
victim’s legs and drops to the floor. Finally, after a rela-
Many printed accounts and renderings of 19th century
hangings afforded that form of execution a romantic
flavor devoid of reality.
tively short few minutes, the dying man’s violent shudders subside and the rope stops dancing. There is one
final jerk, just a bit of twitching and quiet.
So much for the good work. Former San Quentin
warden Clinton Duffy, who witnessed 60 hangings,
describes most hanging as being of the less than clean
variety. In a “dirty” hanging the condemned man will
strangle to death slowly, a vile process that can take as
long as a quarter of an hour. His wheezing is extremely
loud, and indescribable, save to someone who has
heard the hysterical squealing of a dying pig. The victim may even bob up and down on the rope like a yoyo as he fights for air. Sometimes his legs, even when
bound together, whip far out in search of a perch. It
may become necessary for a guard to seize the man’s
legs and hold them steady so that his violent churnings
do not break the rope, a development that might upset
the witnesses. When death finally comes, it may be difficult to determine for whom the agony was worse—the
condemned or the witnesses.
Of course, sometimes things get even messier. A
poorly placed knot occasionally gouges out a chunk of
the face and head and witnesses see this gory mess drop
to the floor. When the noted outlaw Black Jack
Ketchum was hanged in New Mexico in 1901, he
shouted out as the hood went over his face, “Let her
rip!” The rope did so, decapitating Ketchum as he hurtled into space.
The same thing happened during the 1930s in West
Virginia when a wife murderer named Frank Myer was
hanged. Myer was a bad hanging victim, being heavyset
with short neck and what were described as “soft bones.”
When the trapdoor opened, Myer’s body crashed to the
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EXECUTION, methods of
concrete floor, followed by a second thud as his head
landed nearby. Several of the witnesses got sick as the
head rolled a few feet in their direction, and after the execution some of them allowed they would never again
attend a hanging.
The sheer messiness of hangings finally led to the
abandonment of the method by most states, which
opted for either the electric chair or the gas chamber.
One state, Utah, just couldn’t sever its sentimental
attachment to hanging, but it at least has offered the
condemned a choice, the noose or the firing squad. The
rope has lost out in that popularity contest as well.
SHOOTING
Most condemned men in Utah opt for the firing squad
over hanging, two of the most illustrious examples
being labor hero Joe Hill, almost certainly executed for
a crime he did not commit, and Gary Gilmore, the first
man executed after the Supreme Court’s reimposition
of the death penalty. In some respects, death by firing
squad is the most “humane” method of all. The condemned man is strapped down in a chair against an
oval-shaped canvas-covered wall. A doctor locates the
heart precisely and pins a cloth target directly over it.
Unless the victim objects, he is hooded.
Just 20 feet away in a canvas enclosure, five sharpshooters are given .30-caliber rifles, each loaded with a
single cartridge. One, however, receives a blank so that
each marksmen can later rationalize he did not do the
killing. They place their weapons through slits in the
canvas, and when the order is given, they fire in unison.
Four bullets thump into the heart, making death virtually instantaneous and probably painless. With such a
fine method for killing, it may be surprising that more
jurisdictions haven’t switched to death by shooting, but
there are good reasons. One is the fact that the execution is bloody, and society generally does not like a
mess around to remind it that a human being has just
been slaughtered. But even more important is that
sometimes the marksmen turn “chicken” or “cheat.” If
a marksman wants to make sure he does not fire the
fatal bullet, he will aim “off-heart” and thus be able to
figure that the victim died long before his shot could
have taken any effect. In 1951 the height of official
embarrassment was achieved when all four marksmen
hit the victim, Elisio J. Mares, on the right side of the
chest. He bled to death slowly. Because of such inefficiencies, death by firing squad never will gain much
popularity.
“Old Sparky” as some called the venerable electric
chair at the state prison at Raiford, might not be up to
the task, having been in disuse for 15 years. The worry
was groundless. Old Sparky worked beautifully. The
Spenkelink execution was not without fault, however.
A venetian blind was dropped over the window
through which witnesses were supposed to watch
Spenkelink being brought to the chair and strapped in.
Evidently, he staged a battle royal with his guards.
When the blind was opened, he was strapped down
with a gag in his mouth. It was something that shouldn’t happen. Death house guards are supposed to know
how to handle a condemned man and be able to con
him into dying easy, but Spenkelink had carried on in
such macabre fashion that it was thought wise to spare
the witnesses this sight. However, the guards too had
had a 15-year layoff.
More than 1,000 men and women have gone to the
hot seat since its introduction in 1890, and the history
of electrocution is dotted with ghoulish and bizarre
incidents. In Florida in 1926 a condemned man named
Jim Williams was in the chair waiting for death when
an argument broke out between Warden John S. Blitch
and Sheriff R. J. Hancock, each of whom insisted it was
the other’s duty to throw the switch. The argument
went on for 20 minutes until poor Williams collapsed.
He was carried back to his cell while the dispute went
to the courts. Eventually, a ruling was made that the
ELECTRIC CHAIR
When in May 1979 30-year-old John Spenkelink
became the first man in more than a dozen years to die
in Florida’s electric chair, there was some worry that
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Early version of the electric chair.
EXECUTION, methods of
which it is cut back to 1,000 volts to prevent what witnesses might take as unseemly burning of the body. At
this stage the victim may pass waste. The tradition of a
last hearty meal for the condemned is truly a tribulation for the executioner. Almost certainly, mouth foam
will seep out from under the hood. Often, the electrical
jolt may be repeated to make sure the victim is dead. It
is a worthwhile precaution. When Arthur Lee Grimes
was executed in Alabama in 1954, the doctor found his
heart still beating. He stepped back and waited for it to
stop, but instead of expiring, Grimes started to shudder
violently and thrash against the straps. He started to
come back to consciousness, gasping and sucking in air.
It took seven full minutes of juice, six massive jolts in
all, to end his life.
Proponents of electrocution find such lapses as the
Grimes execution lamentable, just as they did the
world’s first electrocution, that of William Kemmler in
New York in 1890. In the 1880s a state legislative commission was established to decide if hanging should be
abolished. After viewing a number of hangings, including that of a woman who slowly strangled to death, the
members decided the noose had to go. But it is doubtful
they would have conceived of the electric chair had it
not been for a monumental battle over business profits.
Thomas A. Edison and George Westinghouse were
competing for domination of the then-budding electric
power industry. Edison had developed the first electric
power system in 1882 by the use of low-tension, direct
current (DC). Two years later, Westinghouse came out
with his alternating current (AC) system, which utilized
light, easily installed wires compared to the expensive
heavy-wire installation required for DC. Faced with an
opposing product that was clearly superior, Edison
decided his best hope lay in disparaging AC in the public’s eye and dispatched a young engineer, Harold P.
Brown, to stage shows around the country demonstrating the system’s death-dealing potential. Brown
shocked people by electrocuting stray dogs and cats
and even horses. When he took his show to Albany, the
special commission asked if he could kill an orangutan.
He could and he did. The poor orangutan even caught
fire, but that didn’t deter the commission from coming
up with the concept of an electric chair. A human being
wasn’t covered with hair and so was not likely to catch
fire. The electric chair was born.
Kemmler’s execution was not a happy one. A first
jolt of 17 seconds failed to kill him and shocked doctors watched Kemmler’s breast heave and his heart
resume beating. Panic ensued in the execution chamber
and finally the current was turned on again for another
70 seconds at 1,300 volts. Some of the witnesses
fainted, and another retched and bolted from the room.
Finally, William Kemmler was good and dead. Unfortu-
sheriff had to do the job, but by then the Board of Pardons decided Williams had done enough penance and
commuted his death sentence to life imprisonment.
During World War II two convicted murderers, Clifford Haas and Paul Sewell, beat the death sentence
when one state switched to electrocution from hanging.
The War Production Board said the materials required
for the chair could be better used fighting the Japanese
and the Nazis and refused to grant a priority. No chair,
no killing.
The usual electric chair has two legs in back and a
heavier single leg in front, all bolted to the floor. The
extrawide arms are fitted with straps to hold the arms of
the victim rigid. Other straps go around his chest and
abdomen. The wiring around the chair is covered with
rubber matting. Actually, the electric chair is a rather
simple contraption, as indicated by the fact that some
Southern states have used portable or mobile chairs.
In Mississippi the chair was carried around in a van
with its own generators and controls so that it could be
brought into the courtroom where the defendant was
convicted. A power line lead from the truck’s generators into the packed courtroom. When a newsman once
told Sen. Theodore G. Bilbo that the practice was little
different than lynching, he responded, “Ah, this is
pretty tame compared to a lynching.”
Ideally, an electrocution is a three-minute drill, with
the prisoner strapped into the chair quickly. Inexperienced guards practice with the straps in advance to
avoid fumbling delays. The so-called humane character
of electrocution is probably best measured by what the
witnesses are spared rather than what happens to the
condemned person. A tight mask is placed over the prisoner’s face to hide the facial contortions when the
“juice” is turned on. The mask is especially tight around
the eyes to keep them from popping out of their sockets.
Two popular myths about the execution chamber
almost never happen. There are no long good-byes or last
statements, although a famous gangster of the 1930s,
Two-Gun Crowley, did manage, “Give my love to
mother.” And the lights never dim in the rest of the
prison, because the chair is always powered by a separate
source. Hollywood prefers the light-dimming routine
because it gives a scriptwriter an opportunity to stage a
prisoner protest or achieve special dramatic effect.
Once he is sure everyone is clear of the chair, the executioner throws a switch and the raging current pitches
the victim against the bindings with terrible force. His
hair stands up and his flesh turns the color of beets. If
the executioner fails to flip the switch when the prisoner’s lungs are empty, there is a “gurgling” noise as air
is forced from the lungs by the shock of the current.
The first jolt, executioners have learned by trial and
error, should be 2,000 volts or slightly more, after
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EXECUTION, methods of
nately, the flesh on Kemmler’s back was badly burned
and his muscles carbonized. When his body was autopsied, a witness described his flesh as well-cooked beef.
Despite worldwide protests of the tortures involved
in the new method of extermination, the electric chair
was here to stay. In time, executioners learned to watch
the condemned person’s hands. When they turn pink,
other parts of the body, nearer to the source of the electrical charge, are far darker and closer to being burned.
Unfortunately, in later years “overburning” still
occurred.
To the public there was something fascinating about
botched-up jobs; thus when the first electrocutions of
four murderers took place at Sing Sing in 1891, the
roads from Ossining to the prison were jammed with
tourists and sightseers hoping that something would go
wrong. But the chair worked four times without a
hitch. In 1903 disaster struck at Clinton Prison when
one of three brothers executed, Fred Van Wormer,
started to move in the autopsy room. A rush call
brought the executioner, Robert P. Elliott, back to the
prison. By the time he got there, Van Wormer had
expired, but everyone agreed it made sense not to take
any chances. The dead man was hauled back to the
chair and given another 1,700 volts.
Survival after death in the electric chair has always
been an intriguing idea. When Ruth Snyder was executed along with her lover Judd Gray for the murder of
her husband, her lawyer sought a court order to prevent the performance of an autopsy on her body, a legal
requirement to determine the cause of death. The
lawyer planned to revive her with adrenalin. The idea
was never tried out because the courts rejected the
move. A number of condemned persons have swallowed all types of metal objects under the belief that
somehow this would cause the electric chair to “short.”
In the 1950s a prisoner named Donald Snyder entered
his Sing Sing death cell weighing 150 pounds and soon
started eating and eating and eating. He had come up
with the novel idea of getting too fat to fit into the
chair. Weightwise he did remarkably, eventually tipping
the scales at over 300 pounds. His request for the traditional last meal was, “Pork chops, eggs and plenty of
’em!” He spent his last few hours speculating with a
guard how the newspapers would go wild when it
turned out he couldn’t be executed.
It remained for a New York tabloid to write finis to
Snyder’s bizarre plan: “The hot seat fitted him as
though it had been made to order.”
Contrary to all the evidence of botched executions,
burnings, gasping for air and continuing heartbeats,
there are many experts who insist that electrocution is
immediate and painless. They can perhaps take comfort
in the case of Harry Roberts, a New York slayer who
informed the prison doctor as he was strapped into the
chair: “Doc, my last act is going to be for science. We’ll
see how fast this juice really works. The moment I feel
it, I’ll wiggle this finger.” It never wiggled.
A more or less authoritative source, depending on
one’s viewpoint, would be Dr. Harold W. Kipp, who, as
chief medical officer of Sing Sing, attended more than
200 executions. Dr. Kipp said: “The effect of electricity
is instantaneous brain death. What observers see are
muscle contractions, not agony.”
Not all medical authorities agreed with this enthusiasm for electrocution and the hunt was on for yet a new
more humane method of killing. They found it in the
gas chamber, and during the 1920s and 1930s it was
hyped as truly superior to electrocution and hanging.
By the late 1990s only four states still required execution death by electrocution—Florida, Alabama,
Georgia and Nebraska. Two others, Kentucky and Tennessee, switched to offering condemned men an execution of choice, electrocution and lethal injection.
In recent cases years protest against the electric chair
centered mainly on Florida where the chair had led to
botched executions from time to time. In a 1967 incident, flames and smoke arose from Pedro Medina’s
head when the electric current was turned on. The
cause was said to be the sponges in the chair’s headpiece. A one-year moratorium was imposed on executions after that, and an autopsy report insisted Medina
had died instantly and suffered no pain from the fire.
The Florida Supreme Court ruled by a 4-3 vote that
electric chair executions, even in Medina’s case did not
violate the ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
(Around the country courts have been singularly unable
to find much in the way of cruel and unusual punishments, even when hanging victims ended up having
their heads ripped off when the body was dropped, or
slow strangulation followed.)
Then in 1990 and 1997 flames shot out of masks of
the inmates and the smell of burned flesh filled the witness room. Similar malfunctions had occurred in other
states. The next botch-up involved Allen Lee Davis who
had blood seep through his shirt and the buckle holes
of the chest strap. Bloody photographs of Davis were
posted on the Internet and were to be considered in a
U.S. Supreme Court review to determine if electrocution was a violation of the Constitution.
These gruesome examples of a malfunctioning chair
led to further claims that Florida was incapable of carrying out executions competently, and the Supreme
Court was set to review the state’s electric chair practices to decide if Florida was engaging in cruel and
unusual punishment. The Jeb Bush administration at
first sought to give condemned men the right to choose
between the electric chair and lethal injection. By that
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EXECUTION, methods of
utes. The record, although statistics are not definitive
on the matter, appears to be 11 minutes in a North Carolina execution.
Caryl Chessman’s ordeal of dying in 1960 may not
have been the most unusual but it received greater
media coverage than most other executions. He tried to
make his dying easy, inhaling as quickly and deeply as
he could. By prearrangement with a newsman witness,
Chessman was to signal if the pain became agony.
Shortly after his ordeal began, Chessman looked
towards the reporter and nodded his head vigorously,
the signal the dying process was indeed agonizing.
Finally, his head slumped to his chest and his tongue
popped out.
A woman reporter on the scene described what happened next:
time the state legislature had quite enough of the controversy and voted unanimously in the senate and by
102 to 5 in the house to get rid of the chair.
GAS CHAMBER
First employed in Nevada, the gas chamber was eventually adopted by eight other states—Arizona, Colorado,
Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina,
Wyoming and California. The most famous gas chamber is the one at San Quentin. Built in 1938, it has been
the site of some of the nation’s most dramatic executions, including those of Barbara Graham, Caryl Chessman and Button W. Abbott, whose gassing in 1957 was
almost stayed by an order of Gov. Goodwin Knight.
When the phone call came from the governor’s office,
the gas pellets had already been dropped behind his
chair, so the execution proceeded.
The gas chamber is designed with two chairs so that
two executions can take place at the same time. (Double executions almost certainly guarantee newspapers
good quotes. When kidnapper and murderess Bonnie
Heady died in the Missouri gas chamber along with her
partner, Carl Austin Hall, she asked guards not to strap
in her man too tightly. “You got plenty of room,
honey?” Heady asked. Hall replied, “Yes, Mama.”
Thus satisfied, the woman smiled and sat back to
breathe the deadly fumes.) Under the chairs are shallow
pans into which tubes from a small vestibule are fed a
mixture of water and sulfuric acid. A lever is pulled,
and bags with 16 1-ounce cyanide pellets are dropped
into the mixture. Fumes rise swiftly, and the victim dies
quickly—once in a while. Some reporters who have
covered various types of executions regard the gas
chamber as the most vile and inhumane of all.
Essentially, the victim strangles to death without the
courtesy of a rope. He is forced to do it to himself as he
battles for oxygen that is no longer there, except in a
“frozen” state that is useless to the body. The condemned person is often told that as soon as he smells an
odor resembling rotten eggs, he should count to 10 and
then take several deep breaths. This, he is told, will cause
him to pass out quickly and die without pain. It doesn’t
happen that way. Human instinct, the body’s instinct, is
to live. The victim will gasp and wheeze, struggling for
air. His mouth opens and shuts like a beached fish.
Often, he screams or sobs. Choking, he thrashes about.
He pulls on his bonds. Occasionally, it is said, a victim
will break an arm free, usually in the process severing
the skin, so that his blood may spurt over the windows
through which the witnesses are watching.
The asphyxiation process is slow. The thrashing victim’s face turns purple, his eyes bulge. He starts to
drool. A swollen tongue hangs out. But death still hasn’t occurred. The death process takes eight or nine min-
I thought he must be dead but no, there was another
agonizing period during which he choked on the gas.
And again. And then again. There was a long period,
another deep gasp. At the fourth such straining, Chessman’s head lolled in a half circle, coming forward so
that he faced downward with his chin almost touching
his chest. This must be the end. But the dying went on.
A deep gasp, then his head came up for an instant,
dropped forward again. After two or three deep
breaths, which seemed something like sobs, a trembling
set up throughout his body. Along the line of his broad
shoulders, down the arms to his fingers, I could see the
tremor run. Then I saw his pale face grow suddenly
paler, though I had not thought that it could be after
his 12 years in prison. A little saliva came from his lips,
spotted the white shirt that a condemned man wears
for his last appearance. Even more color drained from
his face and the furrows in his head smoothed out a little. And I knew he was dead. . . .
There seemed to be some sentiment among the witnesses to the Chessman execution that death in the gas
chamber was not really the painless process it was
billed as. None of the methods of executions used in
this country really are. And the search for the perfect
method continues.
INJECTION
The newest method of capital punishment in the United
States is death by injection, or what the inhabitants of
the death rows in the various states opting for it refer to
sardonically as “the ultimate high.” Under an Oklahoma law passed in 1977, death is to occur by the continuous intravenous injection of “an ultrashort-acting
barbituarate in combination with a chemical paralytic
agent.” Death would be almost instantaneous, with the
condemned man simply falling asleep and expiring.
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EXECUTIONS, public
Officially, death would be attributable to coronary
arrest.
In 1977 Texas joined Oklahoma in passing death-bydrug legislation, and Idaho and New Mexico followed
later. Other states have considered similar action. Because
of appeals on death sentences, no such executions had
been carried out by mid-1981, although 200 men were
under such sentence, and it was believed injection executions might not begin until well into the decade.
The routine, however, had been well planned. In the
Oklahoma State Penitentiary at McAlester, there would
be no more “last-mile” walk through the basement to
the electric chair. Instead, the doomed man would be
strapped onto a stretcher and transported, head
propped up, to the third floor of the administration
building to be executed there in view of about 30 persons. Among them would be six newsmen and five persons chosen by the condemned.
The executioner would be one of three unidentified
medical technicians. They would stand behind a panel
through which a tube would be passed and connected to
the condemned person’s arm or leg. The three technicians
would inject a dark fluid into the tube, but none would
know which of them was injecting the lethal substance.
In essence, this would be similar in approach to the
firing squad technique of supplying one marksman
with a blank. The argument has been made that execution by injection is more humane than any other
method of legal killing, but it must be noted that as
society becomes more “humane,” the anonymity of the
procedure increases to a point where the actual killing
is done by only one man in three.
The American Medical Association passed a resolution in 1980 labeling participation in such executions
by doctors unethical. However, in 1982 the first execution by injection was carried out in Texas. It was a
botched affair. Prison employees had considerable difficulty in trying to pierce with a large needle the badly
scarred veins of the condemned man, and blood splattered all over the sheets. Among those witnessing the
fouled-up attempt was the prison doctor. For a firsttime try it was not, however, as bungled as the first
electrocution, that of Willie Kemmler.
Since that time injection has become the execution
method of choice for both officials and condemned
men, at latest count in 21 states. Some states offer
doomed men a choice of execution: Missouri and North
Carolina by gas chamber; Montana and Washington by
hanging; Idaho and Montana by firing squad.
In 1980 when some of the more rabid advocates of
capital punishment, including some in Congress, proposed that the exacting of the death penalty be shown
on television, opponents of capital punishment were
appalled. Why, it is hard to understand. It was not the
303
student demonstrations or the draft card burners who
stopped the Vietnam War. Rather, it was television.
Through the constant showing on the evening news of
the blood and violence occurring in a senseless conflict,
the American public sickened of that conflict. The same
thing would happen after a dozen or so execution spectaculars were viewed on the home screen. The public
turned against the death penalty from 1945 to the mid1960s without being exposed to the full graphic horrors of executions. The impact of television showings
are readily predictable—and not even the death penalty
could survive the public’s reaction to such exposure.
See also: JOHN X. BEIDLER, CAPITAL PUNISHMENT,
CARYL CHESSMAN, GARY MARK GILMORE, GEE JON,
WILLIAM KEMMLER, GEORGE MALEDON, MONSIEUR NEW
YORK.
execution of children
See CAPITAL PUNISHMENT OF
CHILDREN.
executions, public
From the time of the first execution in this country’s
history in 1630, that of John Billington, one of the original pilgrims on the Mayflower, Americans followed
the European custom of public executions on the dubious theory that such legal killings would serve as a
warning to others.
Throughout the years such public executions were no
more than circuses, drawing proportionally a far greater
audience than Sunday football games. In the Old West
many hangings were reserved for the weekend so that as
many people as possible would be free for the festivities.
When in 1824 a hatchet murderer named John Johnson
was hanged in New York City at 13th Street and Second
Avenue, journals of the day reported that some 50,000
spectators attended the execution. Perhaps the most
spectacular hanging in New York took place on Bedloe’s
Island, now the home of the Statue of Liberty, where the
murderer Albert E. Hicks was executed on July 13,
1860 not merely for the edification of those squeezed on
the island for the event but for thousands more who
jammed aboard a mass of ships, from small craft to
large excursion vessels, that filled the water around the
island. Hawkers paddled in rowboats between the craft
selling their wares.
In due course, many communities and many sheriffs
banned public executions, finding that they could run a
ghoulish sort of black market selling invitations to private executions at hefty prices. However, the custom of
public executions stretched into the present century,
even extending to electrocutions. In some states, primarily Southern ones, a portable electric chair was
EXTORTION
brought into the courtroom and the condemned man
was executed there before as many spectators as could
get inside. The current was fed into the courtroom from
a van-type truck equipped with the necessary generators. A journalist once asked Sen. Theodore G. Bilbo of
Mississippi if he did not think such executions were little different than lynchings. “Ah,” Bilbo replied, “this
is pretty tame compared to a lynching.”
The last public execution in the United States took
place in Owensboro, Ky. in 1936, when a 22-year-old
black named Rainey Bethea was hanged for the murder
of a 70-year-old white woman. Some 20,000 persons
crowded into the town for the big event, and when
Bethea was pronounced dead, souvenir hunters fought
over the hood that covered his head, ripped off pieces
of his clothing and even tried to cut chunks of flesh
from his hanging body.
See also: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, RAINEY BETHEA, JOHN
BILLINGTON, ALBERT E. HICKS.
extortion
So despised did this cruel practice become that vigorous laws were passed in many jurisdictions specifically
to combat it. In the Northwest Territory a law was promulgated stating:
Whosoever . . . shall voluntarily, maliciously, and on
purpose, pull out or put out an eye while fighting or
otherwise . . . shall be sentenced to undergo confinement in jail . . . and shall also pay a fine of not less
than fifty dollars and not exceeding one thousand dollars, one fourth of which shall be for the use of the Territory, and three fourths . . . to the use of the party
grieved, and for want of means of payment, the
offender shall be sold into service by the court . . . for
any time not exceeding five years, the purchaser finding
him food and raiment during the term.
Such punishment was perhaps the only reason a white
man on the frontier could be sold into servitude.
Gouging was not easy to eradicate. As late as the
1870s a New York gangster named Dandy Johnny
Dolan became celebrated for the invention of an
improved eye gouger made of copper and worn on the
thumb for instant use. Dolan was hanged in 1876, and
for the next quarter century, magistrates meted out
heavy penalties against eye gougers. The public became
particularly exercised about the practice, and political
leaders, who relied on and supported the great gangs of
the city, passed the word that eye gouging was out. A
criminal caught in possession of a pistol, two or three
knives and a pair of brass knuckles had no great fear of
the law provided he had the proper political protection,
but if he was found with eye gougers, he would be
abandoned by his patrons and given severe punishment. Over the years the practice of eye gouging faded
away, proof perhaps that rigid enforcement of the laws
could in fact eliminate a considerable amount of crime.
See BLACK HAND.
eye gouging
Eye gouging was a common crime in pre-20th-century
America, especially in the big cities, where Irish gangsters used the technique—often against Englishmen—
and on the frontier, where it was a part of the so-called
rough-and-tumble style of fighting and much used
against the Indians. In his diary Maj. Eluries Beatty tells
of witnessing one eye gouging in Louisville, Ky. In
1791: “One of these . . . gougers, a perfect bully; all
the country round stood in awe of him, for he was so
dextrous in these matters that he had, in his time, taken
out five eyes, bit off two or three noses and ears and
spit them in their faces.”
304
F
Fahy, William J. (1886–1943) postal inspector and
criminal mastermind
The robbery of the eight-car mail train of the Chicago,
Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad on June 12, 1924 at
Roundout, Ill., proved memorable in the annals of the
U.S. Postal Service for a reason greater than the mere
fact that $2,059,612 in loot had been taken. It was a
case that shook the service to its core.
What particularly upset the postal service was that
the robbers, six masked men, had known precisely
when the most loot would be aboard. Had they struck
earlier or later, the amount would have been far less.
The robbers clearly had good information.
Put in charge of the case was Bill Fahy, a slim, welldressed postal inspector of 40 with a confident and alert
attitude. He had cracked a number of tough cases as a
member of both the Philadelphia and the Chicago offices
and was considered the fair-haired boy of the service. If
anyone could solve the Roundout mess, he could.
However, Fahy proved a total disappointment. His
investigation was a disaster, following clues down one
blind alley after another. Soon, the other agents on the
case began striking out on their own investigations.
They caught some professional thieves with a portion
of the loot. They named the others involved and admitted the gang had inside information. The robbers had a
contact in the postal service, but the six never knew his
identity.
Suspicion centered on the 18 mail clerks aboard the
train. Fahy and his men checked on all of them. But one
of the captured gang members said their informer had
made it clear he was running the show and was getting
the biggest cut. It hardly seemed likely that a mere
305
postal clerk could have that much muscle with a gang
of professional criminals. Finally, the other investigators discovered that Fahy had been secretly trying to
break down the witnesses’ positive identifications of
the criminals. That only made sense if Fahy was the
inside man.
A trap was baited. Fahy was told a high postal service official was coming to town with a lead on where
one of the fugitives of the gang was hiding. The fugitive
was Jimmy Murray, the contact man in the gang who
had dealt with the postal service insider. When Fahy
heard the news, he went home and telephoned a certain
C. Anderson at the Ambassador Hotel in Chicago. In a
wire-tapped conversation he told Anderson to lie low,
that someone was in town who apparently had a lead
on his whereabouts. With that, Murray was nabbed,
and so was Bill Fahy. Fahy was convicted along with
the other robbers and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
He was released in 1937, still proclaiming his innocence and saying he had been “framed by my criminal
and professional enemies.” He had earlier rejected a
commutation offered in exchange for an admission of
guilt. Fahy said he was going to prove his innocence but
he never did. He died in 1943.
faked deaths
See INSURANCE FRAUD—FAKED DEATHS.
Fall, Albert Bacon (1861–1944) political grafter
The central figure in the Teapot Dome scandal, Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall was the most tragic
figure in the Harding administration. Unlike many of
FALLON, William J.
personal fortunes had sagged badly. His ranch needed
many repairs and improvements, and all his properties
were heavily mortgaged. In 1922 Fall secretly leased the
Elk Hills, Calif. and the Teapot Dome, Wyo. oil lands,
which were held by the government as a reserve in case
of war, to Doheny’s Pan-American Co. and Harry F.
Sinclair’s Mammoth Oil Co. It is doubtful if Fall would
have done this had it not been for his long friendship
with Doheny. Furthermore, Congress had authorized
the leasing of the oil lands, although not the secret way
Fall had gone about it or, of course, as a quid pro quo
for bribes. Doheny gave Fall $100,000, and Sinclair
arranged to have Fall receive a “loan” of $260,000 in
Liberty Bonds.
The affair became public when a Wyoming oil man
wrote his congressman demanding to know how Sinclair had leased Teapot Dome without competitive bidding. In the resulting senatorial inquiry the story of the
payoffs to Fall was unraveled. Fall at first insisted that
he had gotten the $100,000 as a loan from the eccentric
millionaire Edward B. McLean. When McLean then
surprised him by denying such a loan, Fall admitted
getting the money “in a black bag” from Doheny.
Over the next several years Fall went on trial eight
times, sometimes with Doheny or Sinclair and sometimes alone. On the witness stand, Doheny told a tale
of how the two young friends started out together, with
one eventually striking it rich in oil while the other had
nothing but bad luck. “Why shouldn’t I lend him
$100,000 and tear his name off the note?” he asked.
“He was an old friend.” Then Doheny called the
$100,000 “a mere bagatelle,” and the newspapers and
public were outraged. It was said that remark did more
to doom Fall than any evidence against him. While the
two oil men were finally acquitted of the charges
against them (Sinclair did get nine months for contempt
for having a Burns detective follow the jurors during
one trial), Fall was convicted, drawing a year in prison
and a fine of $100,000. The money penalty was
dropped when Fall signed a pauper’s oath, and because
he was suffering from tuberculosis, he was allowed to
serve his sentence in the New Mexico State Penitentiary, into which Fall, his face ashen, was carried on a
stretcher. He came out of the prison an invalid, needing
the constant attention of his family until he died
poverty-stricken in El Paso in 1944.
See also: OHIO GANG, TEAPOT DOME.
the other grafters, his motive was not so much avarice
as a genuine need for money. There is evidence that he
resisted temptation until he saw clear cases of corruption by Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty and the
rest of the Ohio Gang.
Born in Frankfort, Ky. in 1861, Fall was forced by ill
health to move to a Western climate. He taught school
for a short time in Indian Territory in the Oklahoma
area and then became a cattle drive rider, later trying
his hand at mining and oil prospecting. In New Mexico
he became a close friend of Edward L. Doheny, was
admitted to the bar and started to develop a huge ranch
at Three Rivers, N.M.
Fall also turned to politics, holding several positions
in the territorial government, and in 1912, after New
Mexico had achieved statehood, he became one of the
state’s first two senators. In 1921 his friend Warren
Harding named him to the cabinet as secretary of the
interior. It was a welcomed opportunity for Fall, whose
FPO
FIG # 61
TO BE
PICKED-UP
FROM
PREVIOUS ED.
Fallon, William J. (1886–1927) defense attorney
Albert Fall, secretary of the interior during the Harding
administration, was broken physically by the time of his
conviction and imprisonment and remained an invalid the
rest of his years.
William Joseph Fallon was New York’s greatest criminal lawyer during the Roaring Twenties. Fallon was the
Great Mouthpiece, as his biography by Gene Fowler
was entitled, for pimps, madams, prostitutes, thieves,
306
FALLON, William J.
stock swindlers, second-story men, gangsters and murderers. Few Fallon clients ever spent a day in jail pending trial. Even if a Fallon client were not acquitted, he
almost certainly benefitted from long delays due to
hung juries. The novelist Donald Henderson Clarke
called Fallon “the Jail Robber.”
A large number of Fallon’s cases never made it to a
courtroom. Fallon paid off cops and bought people
working in district attorneys’ offices who could see to it
that the evidence against his clients disappeared. On
one occasion, during a court recess, the prosecutor was
called to the telephone; he took along his briefcase,
which contained the prosecution’s case against the
defendant. On the telephone, he was startled to hear an
anonymous female voice inform him his wife was guilty
of infidelity. The prosecutor walked out of the telephone booth in a daze and down the corridor. When he
remembered his briefcase and went back for it, it had
“disappeared.” In court, Fallon demanded the trial
continue; without the state’s key evidence, his client
was cleared.
Unlike those defense lawyers who never take on
murder cases when the evidence is overwhelming, in
order to protect their claim of never losing a client to
the electric chair, Fallon took on any number of individuals who seemed doomed. Still, not one of his clients
ever went to the chair. In 12 years before the New York
bar, he defended about 100 murderers. About 60 percent of them were acquitted, and the rest got off with
comparatively light sentences. Fallon’s technique was to
badger prosecutors and judges, confuse prosecution
witnesses, and fool jurors. Above all, his specialty was
producing a hung jury. He would address his entire
summation to a single juror, picking out the one he
judged to be most susceptible to such flattery. After
some years a Hearst newspaper would point to Fallon’s
almost endless record of cases with juries hung by 1-to11 votes. When he judged his skills were not winning
the battle, Fallon was not above bribing a juror. He
often paid them off in the courthouse elevator, giving
them half in advance and half afterwards. He reputedly
never made a second payment.
His courtroom performances were replete with
trickery. In one case he defended a Russian who stood
accused of arson and against whom the case looked
strong indeed. The man twice previously had been convicted of setting fire to stores he had owned in attempts
to bilk insurance companies. Fallon realized his only
hope was to discredit the prosecution’s witnesses. A
fireman testified to entering the burning structure and
smelling kerosene on a number of wet rags. Fallon
insisted the rags were soaked with water and
demanded the fireman submit to a test to see if he
could tell the difference. The lawyer produced five bot-
tles number 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 and asked the fireman to
sniff the contents of each and say if it was kerosene or
water. The fireman sniffed bottle number 1 and
announced it was kerosene. So too were bottles 2, 3, 4
and 5, he declared.
Fallon then took a sip of bottle number 5 and told
the jury: “The contents of this bottle does not taste like
kerosene to me. This bottle—this bottle that the gentleman on the witness stand would have you believe contains kerosene—doesn’t contain kerosene at all. It
contains water. When you get into the jury room, I wish
you would all help yourself to a taste of its contents. If
what you taste in the slightest resembles kerosene, I
think it is your duty to convict my client. If what you
taste is water, then it is your duty to acquit my client.”
Fallon’s client was of course acquitted because the
liquid was pure water. What he had done was to have
the fireman inhale deeply of the first four bottles all of
which contained kerosene. Then when he sniffed the
water, the fumes from the first four bottles were still in
his nostrils.
In 1924 Fallon himself was brought to trial for
allegedly bribing a juror in one of his 1-to-11 specialties. Reporters for Hearst’s New York American had
followed a number of jurors who had voted the Fallon
way until they found one who was spending an
unseemly amount of money after being the lone holdout in a jury hearing the case against two stock
swindlers. It appeared Fallon had extracted $25,000
from his clients for the bribing of the juror, offered the
man $5,000, given him $2,500 and kept the balance.
The juror confessed, and Fallon was brought up on
charges. The famous lawyer ran his own defense, even
putting himself on the stand, and proceeded to make
William Randolph Hearst, rather than William Joseph
Fallon, the defendant. The lawyer insisted Hearst had
trumped up the charges because he, Fallon, had gone to
Mexico and uncovered the birth certificates of twins
fathered by Hearst with a well-known Hollywood
actress. While the jurors sat agog at the testimony, the
prosecution tried to knock out all references to Hearst.
But the point had been scored. It took the jury only five
hours, with time out for dinner, to bring in a not-guilty
verdict.
Fallon bounded out of his chair and thanked each
juror, and then as the crowds of well-wishers thinned
out, he approached the press table, where Nat Ferber,
the American reporter who had dug up the case against
him, was sitting. “Nat,” he whispered, “I promise you
I’ll never bribe another juror!”
Actually, Fallon went on operating the way he
always had for another couple of years, but by then
drink was taking its toll. He died in 1927 of heart disease complicated by alcoholism. He was only 41.
307
FANNY Hill case
Fanny Hill case
American obscenity prosecution
In 1871 Levi Farrington was taken by the Pinkertons
during a hand-to-hand battle in the town square in
Farmingdale, Ill. Crowds gathered, but unlike the
admiration people showed for the James boys, they
wanted to string Levi up. The Pinkertons held off the
mob at gunpoint and got their prisoner back to Union
City. They could have saved themselves the trip, however. A large band of nightriders seized Levi Farrington
from the sheriff and hanged him from a tree near the
main gate of the Union City cemetery.
The American edition of John Cleland’s English classic
of soft pornography, Fanny Hill, or the Memoirs of a
Woman of Pleasure, became the subject of the first
obscenity trial of a book in the United States.
In 1821, 71 years after Fanny Hill first appeared in
Britain, printer Peter Holmes, the American publisher
of the book, was found guilty of smut peddling. Three
years later, the state got around to writing a law that
defined and outlawed obscenity. In 1963 G. P. Putnam’s
Sons republished the work and was promptly taken to
court. After winning in the first court and then losing in
the second, Fanny Hill won her final emancipation by a
vote of four to three in New York’s Court of Appeals.
Farrington brothers
Faurot, Joseph A. (1872–1942) father of fingerprinting
Joseph Faurot is regarded as the father of fingerprinting
in the United States, although he was a lowly member
of the New York Police Department when the system
was introduced in St. Louis. However, it was Faurot’s
insistence on the system that shook up the brass of the
nation’s biggest, and often most complacent, police
department and literally forced it into accepting the
new scientific method.
Fingerprinting had been an attraction at the 1904
Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, where it
was demonstrated by experts sent from London’s Scotland Yard. St. Louis police officials were so impressed
they sent a man to London to study the method and
subsequently installed the first American system. Meanwhile, a 32-year-old detective sergeant in the New York
Police Department, Joseph Faurot, was bombarding his
superiors with proposals that they adopt the system.
Faurot finally prevailed upon Commissioner William
McAdoo to grant him permission to go to London and
study fingerprinting. When Faurot returned, he discovered McAdoo was no longer commissioner and that the
current brass had little interest in new methods.
Faurot had realized the enormous value of fingerprinting in Europe and refused to stop lobbying for its
use in New York. He got his first break when the suite
of a socially prominent person in the Waldorf-Astoria
was burglarized. Important pressure was put on the
police to solve the theft, and Faurot was given permission to fingerprint several suspects. The prints were
sent on to Scotland Yard, and in due course, one of the
suspects was identified as Henry Johnson, an international hotel jewelry thief. Johnson was intensively questioned and finally confessed, leading officers to the
hidden loot.
In 1908 Faurot used fingerprinting to crack a murder case. A nurse named Nellie Quinn had been choked
to death in her room. By the time Faurot arrived, the
policeman on the beat and several others had entered
the premises, and since they understood nothing about
fingerprints, they touched many things in the room.
Fortunately, they had not touched a whiskey bottle on
outlaws
It has been estimated that at least 25 young Missourians turned to a life of crime when they saw the public
adulation that was lavished on the James brothers. Two
of these were the Farrington brothers, Levi and Hilary.
Like the James boys, they were ex-Confederate guerrillas who had taken part in Quantrill’s bloody raid on
Lawrence, Kan. Later, they rode under George Todd.
These two bearded, hardly literate giants witnessed
what “ole Jesse and Frank were adoin” and saw no reason they couldn’t do the same. They, however, lacked
the flair of the James brothers, being nothing more than
brutish killers, and never basked in the hero worship
accorded to Jesse and Frank. Nonetheless, they were
skillful riders and gunmen and their crimes cut a wide
swath from Missouri and Tennessee down into Mississippi.
In 1870 they teamed up with another bloody pair,
William Barton and William Taylor; flagged down the
Mobile and Ohio flyer at Union City; and robbed the
express car of $20,000. As they continued their depredations and recruited new members to their gang,
Pinkertons and express company detectives picked up
their trail and finally cornered the gang in a hideout
deep in the canebreaks at Lester’s Landing in Mississippi. The raiders, headed by William Pinkerton, the
son of the founder of the agency, and Pat O’Connell,
considered the best express company detective of the
time, captured five gang members after a gunfight but
then discovered the Farringtons had pulled out two
hours earlier. Weeks later, Pinkerton and O’Connell
cornered Hilary Farrington in a farmhouse in Verona,
Mo. and captured him after a daylong gun battle.
Extraditing him to Union City, Tenn., his captors
placed Hilary aboard the sternwheeler Illinois. When
he attempted a nighttime escape, he fell overboard in a
battle with William Pinkerton and was crushed to
death by the vessel’s stern paddle.
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FENCE
the table. Faurot confirmed this by matching the officers’ prints against those on the bottle. Some of the
prints were the nurse’s but there was another set of fingerprints that could not be identified. After fingerprinting friends and neighbors of the slain woman, he
discovered the owner of the prints—a man—on the
bottle. Since the nurse had bought the bottle the
evening of the murder, that placed the murderer in
the murder room on the evening of the crime. Confronted with the evidence, the man confessed.
The shadow on Faurot’s accomplishments in both
cases was that convictions were obtained because of the
culprit’s confessions and not because of the fingerprint
evidence. Until convictions could be obtained on the
basis of fingerprint evidence, the technique had an
uncertain future. The precedent-setting case turned out
to be a prosaic burglary in 1911. A suspect taken into
custody had an alibi, but Faurot’s fingerprinting
method identified him as the guilty party. The trial
judge seemed dubious about the worth of fingerprint
evidence. Faurot, however, offered a demonstration.
While he left the courtroom, some 15 men in the room
(various court attendants and lawyers) pressed their
fingers on an ink pad and then put their prints on
paper. One of the 15 then put his prints on a glass.
When Faurot returned to the room, he quickly matched
the prints on the glass with the correct set on paper.
Both the judge and jury were impressed, and the defendant was found guilty.
Fingerprint evidence had been tested by a court and
accepted, and a new method of identification had been
firmly established. Armed with this success, Faurot
went on to establish the police department’s fingerprint
bureau and through the years provided the evidence
that convicted thousands of criminals. By the time he
retired in 1930, he had risen to the rank of deputy commissioner and had been acknowledged as the father of
fingerprinting in the United States.
See also: FINGERPRINTING.
fence
receiver of stolen property
Without fences to buy stolen goods, criminals would
find many types of thefts unprofitable. Yet despite their
key position in the world of crime, the receivers of
stolen property seldom face much risk. During one year
in New York State some 6,400 persons were arrested
for criminal possession of stolen property, but only 30
of those arrested actually served time. This tolerance of
fences is all the more incredible in light of the fact that
many criminals work in collaboration with them and
“steal to order” what the fence can resell at the time.
Obviously, rather than just a passive link in the commission of a crime, the fence is often closer to being its
309
mastermind. Unquestionably, fences enjoy most of the
fruits of crime, generally paying the professional thief
no more than 25 percent of the loot’s value, and much
less if the crime has generated “heat.”
The operation of one California fence ring, which
became the largest collector of stolen property throughout the entire state, was so lucrative that the head of
the ring used mink stoles for rugs in his office and lined
the dashboard of his car with other expensive stolen
furs.
Fagin-type receivers of stolen goods appeared in
America during earliest colonial days; an individual
named Silas is recorded as one of the pioneering practitioners in Massachusetts, being subjected to floggings,
brandings and the stocks in the 1660s and 1670s. Possibly the most important stamping ground for fences in
the 19th century was the so-called Thieves’ Exchange in
New York City during the 1860s, a dive located near
Houston Street and Broadway. Each night criminals
and fences would gather there to lift glasses in crooked
camaraderie while dickering over price. The exchange
operated with the connivance of the politicians and
police, who were paid by the fences for the right to
operate. Journalists of the period alleged that some
important politicians and police officials even garnered
commissions on a fence’s gross business. Criminals with
an illegal plan could even shop around for a fence to
furnish the capital needed for the enterprise. Despite
frequent exposés, the Thieves’ Exchange prospered
until the turn of the century, when police shut it down
because of public outrage.
The most prosperous fence in American history was
Fredericka “Marm” Mandelbaum, who from 1854 to
1884 so dominated the fencing racket that she has been
described as the first in the country to put crime on a
syndicated basis. She bossed the operations of several
gangs of bank robbers, blackmailers and confidence
men and even operated special schools for advanced
courses in burglary and safe blowing. She also ran special classes for young boys and girls to learn the art of
pickpocketing and sneak thievery. She enjoyed great
esteem in the underworld as one who never betrayed a
confidence. A leading thief, Banjo Pete Emerson, once
said, “She was scheming and dishonest as the day is
long, but she could be like an angel to the worst devil as
long as he played square with her.”
Marm’s chief competitor was a stooped little man
named Travelling Mike Grady, who went about the
streets of New York with a peddler’s box on his shoulder. It was always stuffed with such items as bonds,
pearls and diamonds, all stolen and purchased from
crooks by Travelling Mike, who never ventured forth
with less than $10,000 in cash to buy purloined loot. It
should be noted that neither Marm Mandelbaum nor
FENCE stealing
Travelling Mike ended up in prison but rather lived out
their time in lavish retirement, although Marm was
inconvenienced to the point where she was forced to
flee to the safety of Canada.
Today, police have found that maintaining their
own fence operation and using undercover officers to
pose as big-time buyers are excellent ways to round up
professional thieves and recover stolen property. Such
antifencing ruses are funded by federal grants from the
Law Enforcement Assistance Administration. During
the life of one such front in Washington, D.C. in the
1960s, the police took in a huge amount of stolen
items at extremely low prices. Some of the loot
included televisions, radios, stereos, cameras, sound
recorders, antiques, kitchen appliances, typewriters,
calculators, guns, cars, credit cards, savings bonds and
government checks. After many months of operation,
the supposed fancers held a party to celebrate the success of their ring, and the thieves showed up in droves
to take part. They arrived in luxury cars, many in
black tie. As they passed from one room to the next,
uniformed police placed them under arrest and hauled
them off to jail. It was most disconcerting to the
thieves, who thought all along they were working with
Mafia figures.
See also: GRADY GANG, FREDERICKA “MARM” MANDELBAUM, STING, THIEVES’ EXCHANGE.
against former Gov. Miriam Ferguson. Ma Ferguson
won and, as one of her first acts, dismissed all 44
rangers in service and put in her close political friends.
During the previous 15 years the Texas Rangers had
received considerable criticism for the way they
allegedly did and did not enforce law and order, but the
record of the Ferguson Rangers made any previous
abuses pale. Within a year a Ranger captain had been
charged with theft and embezzlement, another had
been convicted of murder and several others were
found to have seized illegal gambling equipment and set
up their own illicit betting enterprises. Undismayed by
these scandals, Gov. Ferguson handed out special commissions, and in time, there were 3,000 active “Special
Rangers,” with the right to carry weapons and exercise
other police privileges.
In 1935, following the succession of James Allred to
the governorship the Texas Rangers lost their independent status and were made part of the Department of
Public Safety. In a thorough housecleaning, their numbers were reduced to about 40.
See also: TEXAS RANGERS.
Fernandez, Manuel (?–1873) murderer
A young troublemaker named Manuel Fernandez
stabbed a Yuma, Ariz. storekeeper to death in December 1872. Yet, he avoided the obligatory and rapid
lynching that normally would have followed, especially for Mexicans. Instead, he became the first man
to be hanged legally in the Arizona Territory. By all
accounts, the long waiting period was difficult to bear
for a number of “rope-minded” citizens, but after Fernandez was duly and properly executed on May 3,
1873, the general opinion was that the delay hadn’t
“hurt too bad.”
fence stealing
Although widely practiced, the stripping of fences is
hardly considered much of a crime and is often the
work of children seeking supplies for building a clubhouse. But in past years it was a serious problem, being
among other things a way to obtain firewood and a
method to encourage a farmer’s stock to “stray.”
In this sense, fence stealing was considered a serious
offense that called for very severe penalties. A 1659
ordinance in New Amsterdam reveals how stern the
colonial punishment for the crime was. It read, “No
person shall strip the fences of posts or rails under
penalty of being whipped and branded, and for the second, of punishment with the cord until death ensues.”
Ferguson Rangers
Fernandez, Raymond Martinez
See MARTHA
BECK.
Ferris, Danny
Texas Ranger cronyism
See JAILHOUSE SHOPPING NETWORK.
Fields, Vina (?1865–?) madam
Probably the most scandalized law enforcement agency
in American history was the Texas Rangers from 1933
to 1935, when every officer in service was fired and
replaced by cronies of newly elected Gov. Miriam
“Ma” Ferguson. The force thus became known as Ferguson Rangers. The Texas Rangers had made the mistake of becoming politicized to the extent of openly
backing Gov. Ross Sterling in his race for reelection
The concept of the madam with the “heart of gold” is,
of course, more fancy than fact; yet if one woman of
that calling had to be singled out for the characteristic,
it would be Vina Fields, a black madam who flourished
during the last two decades of the 19th century in
Chicago. About her, even the antivice muckraker
William T. Stead conceded, “She is probably as good as
any woman can be who conducts so bad a business.”
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FINCH, Mrs. Barbara
Vina Fields maintained the largest brothel of the day
in Chicago, one that generally had no fewer than 40
prostitutes and as many as 70 or 80 during the World’s
Fair of 1893. Madame Fields employed black harlots
only but allowed patronage by whites only. From 1885
until just about the end of the century, she operated a
fancy house on Custom House Place, and during that
time, no man ever complained to the police about being
robbed there. Vina insisted she never paid a penny in
protection money, which may have been the only time
she told a lie. Hers was the one house in Chicago where
black prostitutes could count on getting a fair shake,
drawing a far larger percentage of the take than elsewhere. Because of her generosity, she could also maintain strict discipline. In a famous book on corruption
and vice, If Christ Came to Chicago, Stead wrote, “The
rules and regulations of the Fields house, which are
printed and posted in every room, enforce decorum and
decency with pains and penalties which could be hardly
more strict if they were drawn up for the regulation of
a Sunday School.” Fields permitted no drunkenness, no
soliciting from the windows and no overexposure in the
parlors or hallways. She held a court every three days,
and girls who had broken rules were fined, ordered to
perform menial duties, banned from the parlor or, for
major infractions, evicted from the house.
Stead further commented:
Dr. Raymond Bernard Finch and his wife were
prominent in social circles in Los Angeles and popular
members of the Los Angeles Tennis Club. By 1957 the
couple had drifted apart and Dr. Finch, using another
name, rented an apartment where he regularly met with
a 20-year-old married ex-model, Carole Tregoff. In
1958 Tregoff got a divorce, but Finch’s wife refused to
give him one.
Finally, she decided to seek a divorce. Under California divorce laws, when the grounds for divorce are desertion, cruelty or adultery, the courts can award all the
property to the innocent party instead of dividing it
equally. Suing on grounds of desertion, Mrs. Finch
claimed all the property, including her husband’s interest
in a medical center, and demanded heavy alimony. If she
won, Dr. Finch would have been left in virtual poverty.
Thereafter, according to later court testimony, Dr.
Finch and Tregoff sought to obtain compromising evidence against the doctor’s wife and, for that purpose,
involved a petty crook named John Patrick Cody to
make love to her. Later, according to Cody, he was
offered money to kill Mrs. Finch. Cody said Carole
Tregoff offered him $1,400 to shoot her. He claimed
she stated, “If you don’t kill her, Dr. Finch will . . . and
if he won’t, I’ll do it.”
On July 18, 1959 Dr. Finch and Carole Tregoff
drove to the Finch home for a conference with Mrs.
Finch. There was a shot, and Mrs. Finch lay dead on
the driveway with a .38 bullet in her back. Dr. Finch’s
version was that during an argument his wife had
pointed a gun at him and he had seized it and tossed it
over his shoulder. The gun went off, he said, and fatally
wounded his wife.
The prosecution’s version was somewhat different. It
claimed the pair had come to the Finch home with a socalled murder kit for the purpose of killing Mrs. Finch.
The first plan, according to the prosecution, called for
injecting an air bubble in her bloodstream; and if that
failed, injecting a lethal dose of sodium seconal. An
alternate plan, the prosecution contended, involved driving the unconscious woman over a cliff in back of the
house. The prosecution contended the shooting was
deliberate and presented scientific testimony that “the
woman was in flight” when shot.
Dr. Finch took the stand and, with tears coursing
down his face, gave a heartrending version of his wife’s
last words to him after the “accident.” They were: “I’m
sorry . . . I should have listened to you . . . I love you
. . . take care of the kids. . . .” It was a rather novel
defense, almost as though the victim was apologizing
for being killed.
Nevertheless, the doctor’s testimony was effective,
resulting in a hung jury after eight days of deliberations. Finch and Tregoff, who had not spoken a word
Strange though it may appear, [she] has acquired the
respect of nearly all who know her. An old experienced
police matron emphatically declared that ‘Vina is a
good woman,’ and I think it will be admitted by all
who know her, that she is probably as good as any
woman can be who conducts so bad a business. . . .
She is bringing up her daughter who knows nothing of
the life of her mother in the virginal seclusion of a convent school, and she contributes of her bounty to maintain her unfortunate sisters whose husbands down
south are among the hosts of unemployed. Nor is her
bounty confined to her own family. Every day this
whole winter [1893–94] she had fed a hungry, ragged
regiment of the out-of-work. The day before I called,
201 men had had free dinners of her providing.”
There are many tales, though all unsubstantiated,
about what became of Vina Fields in her later years.
See also: WILLIAM T. STEAD.
Finch, Mrs. Barbara (1923–1959) murder victim
The murder of Mrs. Barbara Finch by her California
doctor husband and his mistress was one of the most
sensational in recent decades. The case required three
jury trials before a verdict was given.
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FINGERPRINT forgeries
to each other throughout the trial, were retried a second time and again the jury failed to agree. On the
third try, Dr. Finch was convicted of first-degree murder and Carole Tregoff of second-degree. Both were
sentenced to life imprisonment. As they left the courtroom, Finch tried to kiss Tregoff but she turned away.
Carole Tregoff was paroled in 1969; she never
answered any of the many letters Finch wrote to her.
Dr. Finch was freed in 1971.
fingerprint forgeries
Twain accepted the worth of fingerprints long before
any police department in this country or elsewhere did.
Beginning in the 1880s, the primary identification
method used by all police agencies was a system developed by the French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon.
The Bertillon system compiled information on several
physical features of a subject based on the assumption
that a combination of measurements, photos and other
See WILLIAM DE PALMA.
fingerprinting
The art of fingerprinting as a means of identification is
a very old one. The ancient Chinese used a thumbprint
in clay as an identifying seal, and a clay tablet in a
British museum tells the tale of a Babylonian officer
ordered to make arrests and obtain the defendants’ fingerprints. In 1882 a geologist in New Mexico put his
fingerprint on his claims and then signed his name
across the print to protect against forgery. It was probably this incident that got Mark Twain to solve a crime
through the use of fingerprints in a remarkable story
called Pudd’nhead Wilson.
In the story, lawyer Pudd’nhead Wilson tells the
jury:
PICK UP
PICTURE
FROM FILM
Every human being carries with him from his cradle to
his grave certain physical marks which do not change
their character, and by which he can always be identified—and that without shade of doubt or question.
These marks are his signature, his physiological autograph, so to speak, and this autograph cannot be counterfeited, nor can he disguise it or hide it away, nor can
it become illegible by the wear and mutations of time
. . . . This autograph consists of the delicate lines or
corrugations with which Nature marks the insides of
the hands and the soles of the feet. If you will look at
the balls of your fingers . . . you will observe that
these dainty curving lines lie close together, like those
that indicate the borders of oceans in maps, and that
they form various clearly-defined patterns, such as
arches, circules, long curves, whorles, etc., and that
these patterns differ on the different fingers. . . . One
twin’s patterns are never the same as his fellow-twin’s
patterns. . . . You have often heard of twins who were
so exactly alike that when dressed alike their own parents could not tell them apart. Yet there was never a
twin born into this world that did not carry from birth
to death a sure identifier in this mysterious and marvelous natal autograph.
An FBI sampling of fingerprint patterns.
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FINK, Isidor
pect. Yet a single print found on a gas can put the FBI
on the trail of Doc Barker and his gang, who had
abducted a banker and released him. The banker
remembered the men had refueled their car on the road
with gas cans. The FBI found the discarded cans and
got one clear impression, that of Doc Barker.
Once, a small portion of a print proved sufficient to
doom a criminal in Alabama. A woman was criminally
assaulted one night, fighting her attacker until beaten
unconscious. When a doctor later treated her wounds,
he found a small piece of skin lodged between her
lower teeth. Under a microscope, its whorls suggested it
might be a piece of a man’s fingertip. A number of suspects were brought in and one had a bit of flesh torn
from his left middle finger. The man, Major Preston,
insisted he had injured his finger at work. His fingerprints were on file, however, and when the whorls on
the bit of flesh were compared with the print of his left
middle finger on the card, they matched exactly. Preston was convicted and executed.
Actually, duplicate fingerprints could possibly turn
up. An expert once estimated the chances were “one in
two quadrillion; a sum representing one million times
the earth’s population.” Probably half the population
of the United States have their fingerprints on file somewhere and thus could have their identities traced. An
“inquiring reporter” once queried a half-dozen persons
on the street about whether they had any objection to
universal fingerprinting. Only two of the six didn’t
object, and one was a policeman. One of the others
said, “Who knows, I might yet become another
Dillinger . . . I wouldn’t want my prints on file.”
Despite intensive campaigns, especially by the FBI, in
favor of universal fingerprinting based on the value it
has had in identifications following disasters, the American people have been notoriously unimpressed.
A not unfounded fear is the possibility of the planting of fingerprints. Experts have demonstrated how it
could be done, and while some fingerprint men claim
they can spot such plants, tests made to verify such
claims have turned up a rating of less than 50 percent,
statistically below even the law of averages.
See also: JOSEPH A. FAUROT, “WEST BROTHERS.”
data would always be distinct for different individuals.
It was a theory considered valid for only two decades,
however. In 1903 two American criminals imprisoned
in Leavenworth, one named William West and the
other Willie West, were found to have the same
Bertillon measurements. That discovery greatly undercut the validity of the Bertillon system. The fingerprints
of the two Wests were taken and found to be totally
dissimilar.
Scotland Yard pioneered development of a fingerprinting system in the late 1890s, and in 1904 a New
York detective sergeant, Joseph A. Faurot, began to
press for its adoption in this country, eventually becoming known as the father of American fingerprinting.
Today, it is estimated that well over 1,000 fugitives a
month are identified through fingerprint files. Unquestionably, numerous criminals would give the bulk of
their loot to change their prints. That, however, is an
almost impossible task, unless one is willing to destroy
not only the prints but most of the fingers as well.
Gangster John Dillinger paid a renegade doctor $5,000
to sear his prints with acid. Yet within a few agonizing
weeks, after the doctor had wisely moved on, identical
ridges grew back in place. After Dillinger was killed by
FBI agents, identification of his body was a simple matter for fingerprint technicians.
The only American criminal known to have successfully obliterated his prints was a minor bandit named
Robert James “Roscoe” Pitts, who accomplished the
task in the 1940s. Once he became famous as the
“man without fingerprints,” however, he was a
marked man. Whenever a robbery occurred in which
no prints were found, Pitts automatically became a top
suspect. He eventually was apprehended for a robbery
and sent to prison for 20 years. While Pitts had eliminated his fingerprints, he had failed to prevent his
identification. The doctor he used had erased his fingerprints down to the first joint, but when Pitts had
been officially fingerprinted, the prints had inadvertently extended below the crease into the second joint.
That area is not normally considered in the classification process, but it is actually just as unique as the primary, first-joint print. Pitts never would have been able
to deny his identity.
The facts and fallacies about fingerprints are legion.
Only in the movies do detectives pick up guns with
handkerchiefs or by sliding a pencil under the trigger
guard so as not to smudge fingerprints. Nor do killers
wipe a “rod” clean after using it. In not one case in
1,000 will a usable set of prints be found on a gun.
Normally, the finding of a single fingerprint is useless since fingerprints must be classified by full sets and
a partial would create an incredible search problem
unless it belonged to a person who was already a sus-
Fink, Isidor (c. 1899–1932) suspected murder victim
The killing of Isidor Fink on March 9, 1929 in a tiny
little laundry he operated on East 132nd Street in
New York City has remained one of the most perplexing in the history of American crime. Alfred Hitchcock wrote about it and undoubtedly toyed with the
idea of filming it but failed to come up with a logical
solution. Ben Hecht wrote The Mystery of the Fabulous Laundryman, but that short story hardly pleased
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FIRE bombing
the locked-room addicts seeking a plausible explanation.
Fink kept the doors and windows of his one-room
laundry locked at all times because of fear of robberies.
A woman napping next door heard three shots in rapid
succession and then something heavy, like a body, thud
to the floor. She called police. When Patrolman Albert
Kattenborn arrived, he found the door bolted and was
unable to enter. He lifted a small boy up to the transom, but the boy found it locked. He smashed the glass,
climbed inside and opened the door. Fink was dead on
the floor. Patrolman Kattenborn let no one else enter
and made the boy wait until detectives showed up. Fink
had two bullet wounds in the chest and one in the left
wrist. The immediate conclusion of the detectives was
that he must have committed suicide since it was evident that no one could have gotten out of the room.
The problem with that solution was the suicide gun.
It was nowhere to be found, and Fink had died almost
instantly. The small boy was searched to make sure he
had not secreted the weapon on his person. Then the
police set about searching the room. Perhaps Fink had
tied the gun to some sort of elastic device that pulled it
out of sight. They literally ripped the room apart. No
gun. No loose boards. No hidden panels. No trap
doors. A squad of specially picked sleuths was sent up
from headquarters to solve the mystery. At first, they
worked with vigor, then with some irritation and finally
in total bewilderment. Reluctantly, the police accepted
the fact that they had a case of murder, one that
through the years became a favorite of the Sunday supplements. About the most profound conclusion ever to
be drawn from the Fink case was the published comment of a detective after a year’s work on the puzzle:
“That damn two-for-a-cent mystery gives me the
creeps!”
fire bombing
Fish, Albert
it, “They don’t tell.” Certainly, the 15 to 17 children he
murdered never told.
He got married when he was 28. It lasted for about
20 years before his wife ran off with a half-wit. She
returned about a year later and asked to move back in
with her lover. Fish said she could stay but her lover
could not. Later, he discovered his wife had hidden her
lover in the attic. He kicked him out and again told his
wife she could stay, but she went off with her lover and
Fish never saw her again. Fish had six children. They
were aware their father was a bit peculiar, but he was
kind to them and never beat them. The children had
seen him use his nailed paddle on himself, but they
assumed he must be sane, if somewhat eccentric, since
they knew he had been under psychiatric observation a
number of times and had always been discharged by
the doctors.
His occupation as a house painter allowed him to
move from town to town and gave him access to cellars and deserted buildings. By his own count, he committed offenses in at least 23 states. He had some close
calls. In St. Louis Fish had almost been caught with a
small boy he had been torturing for days but escaped
just in time. There were narrow squeaks in Virginia
and in Delaware and several in New York. Children
disappeared with a kindly old man never to be seen
again; others were found brutally mutilated. He was
questioned several times but was never a serious suspect.
At a very minimum, he killed and ate at least 15 children. His last such victim apparently was a 12-year-old
New York City girl, Grace Budd, whom he lured from
her parents in 1928 by telling them he was bringing her
to a party a friend was giving for a daughter. He cut up
her body and cooked the parts in a stew with onions
and carrots. It took him nine days to eat most of her.
He buried what was left. It was six years before he was
caught for that crime. The police were baffled by the
case, but Fish could not resist writing Mrs. Budd to tell
her what he’d done. He didn’t sign the letter, but the
police readily traced him. Fish acted as though he had
been waiting for them for a long time. He immediately
confessed and led them to a spot in White Plains where
they found the girl’s bones. He also confessed to a number of additional cannibal murders.
Fish’s trial consisted of a long parade of psychiatric
specialists. Only Dr. Frederic Wertham and two other
defense experts insisted he was insane. Fish was judged
guilty and sane enough to die in the electric chair. The
prospect excited Fish. “What a thrill that will be if I
have to die in the electric chair,” he said with a broad
smile. “It will be the supreme thrill. The only one I
haven’t tried.” When he did go to the chair on January
16, 1936, he was described by the press as being posi-
See APACHE INDIAN JOB.
(1870–1936) mass murderer and cannibal
A harmless-looking house painter in New York City,
Albert Fish was a degenerate who admitted molesting
more than 400 children over a span of 20 years. Fish,
labeled by the press as the “inhuman monster,” was
described by one shocked psychiatrist as a man of
“unparalleled perversity. There was no known perversion that he did not practice and practice frequently.”
Fish had a personal and married life that was odd, to
say the least. He enjoyed sticking needles into himself,
spanking himself with a nail-studded paddle or having
children beat him until he bled. He appreciated children
because of their innocence and because, as he once put
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FITZPATRICK, James “The Sandy Flash”
tively joyful. He even helped adjust the electrodes when
he was being strapped down.
The newspapers had one more ghoulish report for
their readers. The first massive jolt of electricity failed
to kill Fish. The theory was that the 400 plus needles he
had inserted into his body over the years had apparently caused a short circuit. A second potent jolt was
needed to complete the job.
gambling hall whose proprietor, Jack Harris, Thompson had murdered some two years previously.
Thompson and Fisher had a drink at the bar and
then repaired to a box upstairs to watch the variety
show. They were joined in the box by bouncer Jacob
Coy and two of Harris’ former partners, Billy Simms
and Joe Foster. Thompson made several nasty remarks
about the Harris killing and then playfully jammed his
six-gun into Foster’s mouth, whereupon bouncer Coy
moved in and seized the cylinder. There was a moment
of tense silence, and Fisher made a remark about leaving before things got out of hand. Suddenly, there was a
blaze of fire and Thompson was dead, with nine slugs
in him. King Fisher went down in a hail of 13 bullets.
Some suggested that but for his chance meeting with
Thompson, the reformed King Fisher would have lived out
a full life as a respected rancher and lawman. Not everyone was sorry about Fisher’s demise. A woman whose
son Fisher had killed came to the Uvalde cemetery on
every anniversary of her son’s death, set a brush fire atop
Fisher’s grave and danced “with devilish glee” around it.
See also: BEN THOMPSON.
Fisher, John King (1854–1884) gunman and lawman
John King Fisher was one of the 19th century’s controversial gunmen for whom Texas was famous or infamous, becoming a popular hero to some and a callous
murderer to others. Fisher once shot a man in the head
because he wanted to see if a bullet would bounce off his
bald pate. Perhaps his mean streak was best illustrated
by the sign he erected at a crossroads when he established his own spread in southern Texas: “This is King
Fisher’s Road—Take the other one.” The sign became
something of a landmark and was considered no idle
threat. In 1878 Fisher said he was responsible for killing
seven men in gunfights, not counting Mexicans.
Fisher’s first scrape with the law occurred in 1870,
when at the age of 16 he drew a two-year term for robbery but served only four months. Gaining a pardon, he
worked as a cowboy for a few years and then started
his own spread, which became headquarters for an
unsavory crew of rustlers, killers and deadbeats. He
formed an alliance with Mexican rustlers, but after a
dispute on a division of the spoils, he pistol-whipped
one, shot a second as he went for his gun and then
gunned down two others who were just sitting on a
fence. During Fisher’s “ranching” days he reputedly
formed a partnership with an insurrecto named Porfirio
Díaz, who later became president-dictator of Mexico,
whereby Díaz delivered stolen Mexican cattle to Fisher
and received Fisher’s rustled American beef. On both
sides of the border there were stock buyers who were
not particularly mindful of brands if they were from the
other country.
Fisher frequently was arrested on murder charges
and was subject to considerable Texas Ranger harassment, but he was inevitably found not guilty or the
charges were dismissed for lack of evidence. Then King
Fisher made a sudden transformation: he got religion
and in 1881 became a lawman, appointed deputy sheriff of Uvalde County. There were those who insisted he
backslid a bit now and then, but in 1883 he made plans
to run for sheriff the following year. In March 1884
Fisher went to Austin, the state capital, on official business and ran into an old gunman buddy, the crazed Ben
Thompson. The pair rode together to San Antonio,
where they entered the Vaudeville Variety Theater, a
Fitzpatrick, James “The Sandy Flash” (c. 1760–1787)
early highwayman
The first of America’s “romantic” criminals, James
Fitzpatrick was a handsome young Irishman who was
for a time a member of the Doane gang, the first important band of criminals in this country, before splitting
off to form his own gang in the early 1780s. Preying on
wealthy landowners mainly in Chester and Delaware
Counties, Pa., he cut a dashing figure, so much so that
he would become the “Sandy Flash” of Bayard Taylor’s
Story of Kennett, a 19th-century best-seller. By 1785 a
reward of 200 pounds, a king’s ransom in those days,
was placed on the Sandy Flash, but fear of betrayal and
arrest did not faze him. One day, with the kind of daring that Jesse James would exhibit a century later, Fitzpatrick calmly rode his big black stallion into the center
of Chester, Pa. and took his meal at the Unicorn Tavern. Present at the bar were several members of the
posses searching for him. Fitzpatrick bought drinks for
his hunters, who regaled the tavern crown with what
they would do to the Sandy Flash when they captured
him. Fitzpatrick could get away with such feats of
courage because, like Jesse James, he was a man without a face, with no unusual features by which to be recognized. However, his luck eventually ran out and he
was cornered by a posse and taken prisoner. The fair
maidens of two counties wept, we are told, when the
Sandy Flash was hanged in the Old Chester Jail in January 1787.
See also: DOANE GANG.
315
FITZPATRICK, Richie
War, the Points and Paradise Square area housed no less
than 270 saloons, and many times that number of
dance halls, houses of prostitution and green-groceries
that dispensed more liquor than vegetables or other
provisions. It was already described as a slum section
far more wicked than even the Whitechapel district of
London.
Perhaps Charles Dickens offered the most graphic
picture of the district in his American Notes:
Fitzpatrick, Richie (1880–1905) gangster and murderer
One of the few non-Jews to achieve high stature in the
Eastman gang, the last great Jewish outfit to dominate
crime in New York City, Richie Fitzpatrick, a lethal
young Irishman, won the appreciation of leader Monk
Eastman because of his great cunning at killing. Once
assigned by Eastman to eradicate the owner of a
Chrystie Street dive, Fitzpatrick pulled a cunning ruse
long before the brothers Corleone thought of it in The
Godfather—he had a gun planted in the toilet of the
dive. Immediately suspect when he walked in, Fitzpatrick permitted himself to be searched and then
informed the dive operator that Eastman had ordered
him assassinated. He said he was defecting from the
Eastman ranks and was thus willing to aid the dive
owner. Fitzpatrick’s story was accepted, and he joined in
a round of drinks, swearing allegiance to his new allies.
His next move was to heed the call of nature. When
Fitzpatrick emerged from the toilet, he shot the dive
operator dead and fled before his henchman could react.
When Eastman was taken by the law for a 1904
attempted robbery, the leadership of the gang fell to an
uneasy combination of Fitzpatrick and Kid Twist, so
named because of his criminal cunning. It was soon
obvious that the pair would have to settle the leadership problem violently, and the gang began to divide
into warring factions. The Kid suggested a peace conference in a Chrystie Street dive. Fitzpatrick accepted
with alacrity, and the underworld awaited to see what
deceit he would conceive to eliminate his foe. Unfortunately for Fitzpatrick the Kid too was noted for his
trickery. As the talks began, the lights suddenly went
out and a revolver blazed. When the police reached the
scene, Fitzpatrick was alone in the back room with his
arms folded across his chest and a bullet in his heart.
The underworld applauded the treachery; Kid Twist,
the saying went, “had twisted first.”
See also: KID TWIST.
Five Points
Let us go on again, and plunge into the Five Points.
This is the place; these narrow ways diverging to the
right and left, and reeking everywhere with dirt and
filth. Such lives as are led here, bear the same fruit here
as elsewhere. The coarse and bloated faces at the doors
have counterparts at home and all the whole world
over. Debauchery has made the very houses prematurely old. See how the rotten beams are tumbling
down, and how the patched and broken windows seem
to scowl dimly, like eyes that have been hurt in drunken
frays. Many of these pigs live here. Do they ever wonder why their masters walk upright instead of going on
all-fours, and why they talk instead of grunting?
So far, nearly every house is a low tavern, and on the
barroom walls are colored prints of Washington and
Queen Victoria, and the American Eagle. Among the
pigeon-holes that hold the bottles are pieces of plate
glass and colored paper, for there is in some sort a taste
for decoration even here. And as seamen frequent these
haunts, there are maritime pictures by the dozen; of
partings between sailors and their lady-loves; portraits
of William of the ballad and his black-eyed Susan; of
Will Watch, the bold smuggler; of Paul Jones, the
pirate, and the like; on which the painted eyes of Queen
Victoria, and of Washington to boot, rest in a strange
companionship. . . .
From every corner, as you glance about you in these
dark streets, some figure crawls half-awakened, as if
the judgment hour were near at hand, and every
obscure grave were giving up its dead. Where dogs
would howl to lie men and women and boys slink off
to sleep, forcing the dislodged rats to move away in
quest of better lodgings. Here, too, are lanes and alleys
paved with mud knee-deep; underground chambers
where they dance and game; the walls bedecked with
rough designs of ships, of forts, and flags, and American Eagles out of number; ruined houses, open to the
street, whence through wide gaps in the walls other
ruins loom upon the eye, as though the world of vice
and misery had nothing else to show; hideous tenements which take their names from robbery and murder; all that is loathsome, drooping and decayed is
here.
New York City crime district
Every account of crime in old New York is replete with
references to the Five Points and the gangs and crimes it
spawned. It was the incubator of crime in the city for
an entire century. Its early history was tame enough,
being a relatively homey place at the junction of Cross,
Anthony, Little Water, Orange and Mulberry Streets. In
the center of the Five Points was Paradise Square where
the poor people of the city came for their fresh air and
recreation. By the 1820s the area had turned first seedy
and then vile, and the Five Points became a hellhole of
impoverished humanity that produced crime in awesome, if predictable, numbers. By the time of the Civil
316
FIVE Points Gang
The teeming Five Points in 1829.
mobs as murderers for hire. Probably more modernday gang leaders emerged from the Five Pointers than
any other similar organization.
Kelly’s headquarters was in his own New Brighton
Dance Hall on Great Jones Street, one of Manhattan’s
more lavish fleshpots and a mecca for slumming
socialites eager to meet a famous gangster. Kelly was an
urbane man who spoke fluent Italian, French and Spanish, dressed like a fashion plate and had manners that
fit easily into polite society. One of Kelly’s top aides
was a short youngster, Johnny Torrio, who was to
become “the Brain” of the underworld. Under Kelly’s
direction Torrio developed a subgang called the James
Street Gang. His recruits included such ambitious
youths as Al Capone, Lucky Luciano and Frankie Yale.
All of them were eventually moved up into the Five
Pointers, which by 1915 was fast deteriorating because
of a lack of rackets to sustain them. Kelly moved off to
waterfront labor racketeering and Torrio and Capone
to Chicago, while Luciano and Yale remained in New
York. All achieved new power and authority through
the fruits of Prohibition, a bizarre experiment that provided fresh impetus to gangsterism in America.
See also: JOHN TORRIO.
This was the Five Points that gave New York such
gangs as the Dead Rabbits, Chichesters, Plug Uglies and
Roach Guards and, much later, the dreaded Whyos and
the Five Points Gang. From the ranks of the Five Pointers came such fledgling gangsters as Johnny Torrio,
Frankie Yale, Lucky Luciano and Al Capone, an
impressive result of 100 years of crime breeding.
Today, the old Five Points section takes in parts of
Chinatown and Little Italy and a large portion is taken
up by Columbus Park. Much of the area consists of
decaying housing that the former residents of the Five
Points would have considered luxury apartments.
See also: LITTLE WATER STREET, OLD BREWERY.
Five Points Gang
pre-Prohibition New York gang
The last great pre-Prohibition gang in New York City
was a 1,500-man collection of eye-gouging terrorists
called the Five Points Gang. They carried on in the tradition of those 19th-century cutthroats the Whyos and
their predecessors, such as the Dead Rabbits. Bossed by
an ex-bantamweight prizefighter, Paul Kelly (né Paolo
Antonini Vaccarelli), the gang’s gunners and musclemen
hired out to businessmen as strikebreakers or to other
317
FLAKING
flaking
police slang for frame-up
tion funds. When Siegel refused to make good, indeed
could not make good, he was rubbed out.
After Siegel’s execution the mob continued to support the Flamingo and eventually saw it grow and prosper. The syndicate poured millions more into Las
Vegas, building one successful casino after another.
See also: LAS VEGAS, BENJAMIN “BUGSY” SIEGEL.
This is the term used by policemen and private detectives to describe the framing of an individual. When it
is done, the police officers usually justify it as being a
service to society; since the victim has committed so
many other crimes, it hardly matters if the facts of a
crime he is actually charged with are a fabrication.
Naturally, not all law enforcement officials engage in
the practice. Deputy Chief Fire Marshal John Barracato
of New York relates in a book called Arson! about how
he was urged to participate in a flaking by another fire
marshal and refused. He says, “To me flaking was the
most heinous violation of a cop’s honor.”
Flaking was heavily practiced in the heyday of
union organizing in this country, when private detectives framed unionists, often based on the belief that
unionism did a worker more harm than good, and that
even if a unionist was not actually guilty of a certain
act of labor violence, he was undoubtedly responsible
for others.
floaters
murder victims
Almost every waterfront city in America during the
18th and 19th centuries came to know the term floater,
used to describe a corpse found floating in the water
after meeting with foul play. It was a term imported
from England to refer to such crimes, which were common along the Thames in London.
The “floater” capital of the United States was probably Buffalo, N.Y., the terminus of the Erie Canal beginning in 1825. The canal at Buffalo was probably the
most crime-infested waterway in the country, and murder victims were dumped there with monotonous regularity. The primary source of this pollution was the
dives of Canal Street, whose rear areas extended over
the canal, supported by wooden dock pilings. Unsuspecting canalers and lakers were hustled to these places
by shills to be trimmed with exorbitant prices. However, if a man had a bundle and was uncooperative
about parting with it, he was fed enough knockout
drops to put a team of horses to sleep.
He would be hauled into a back room, stripped of all
his clothes and dumped naked down a slick wooden
chute into the canal with hardly an incriminating
splash. Not even the cold water would be enough to
revive him, and he eventually would be discovered floating face down in the murky water. The police would
know no more than that he had been killed in one of
about 100 places on Canal Street and would close the
file on the case by listing the victim as a “floater.” In
one week in 1863 no fewer than 14 floaters were fished
out of the canal, five on one morning alone.
Flamingo Hotel
Known as the casino that made Las Vegas, the
Flamingo was the brainchild of mobster Bugsy Siegel.
Siegel had come to the West Coast in the late 1930s to
handle the mob’s betting empire. During the war years
he began envisaging a new gambling empire, one that
could turn the Nevada sands into gold dust. Gambling
was legal in Nevada, where the main attraction was
Reno, offering diversion to passing tourists and individuals waiting for their divorce decrees. Siegel saw Las
Vegas, then no more than a highway rest stop with
some diners, gas stations and a sprinkling of slot
machines, as a lavish new gambling oasis.
Bugsy had little trouble convincing Meyer Lansky,
treasurer of the national crime syndicate, that his vision
was a great idea, and several big city mobs laid out
money to build a new casino-hotel, which was to be
called the Flamingo, the nickname of Virginia Hill,
Siegel’s girlfriend and the former bedmate of a number
of top mobsters.
During the construction of the Flamingo, Siegel
assured building contractor Del E. Webb, who had
become nervous about the mob’s involvement, that he
had nothing to fear because “we only kill each other.”
At the time Bugsy didn’t realize how accurate his statement would prove to be. In the short run, the Flamingo
was a disaster, mainly because in the immediate postwar years it was an idea ahead of its time. It would take
considerable patience to make it a success, but Siegel
had no time. Not only had he failed to produce the
profits the mob expected on its $6 million investment,
but it appeared he had been skimming off the construc-
floating hog ranches
riverboat bordellos
While from time to time it may have existed in other
countries, the floating brothel was fully developed on
the Mississippi and later migrated to the waterways of
the Far West.
The riverboat brothels made their first appearance
along the riverfronts of New Orleans and Natchezunder-the-Hill, where the flatboat crews couldn’t even
wait to get ashore to enjoy feminine companionship. It
was customary for flatboats to be sold once their cargoes were unloaded, and many were turned into
bagnios, with prostitutes entertaining customers in nar318
FLORES, Juan
row cubicles built into the cargo boxes. On occasion
there was not even time for that, and the harlots made
ready for business on deck with only a tarpaulin cover.
When prostitutes started west, following the frontier,
they shunned travel on horseback or by coach, which
represented a waste of valuable time. Instead, a typical
madam would travel overland with her girls until
reaching the next waterway and then purchase any
kind of available craft to do business while floating
westward. Since the brothels of the West were called
hog ranches, such boats were known as floating hog
ranches; and it has been said that among the most welcome calls on parts of the frontier was one announcing,
“Hog ranch a’coming!”
decrease in floggings; since mere confinement was not
regarded as a complete enough punishment, offenders
got both flogged and imprisoned. Floggings were brutal
affairs that often left the victim crippled or, at the very
least, permanently scarred. The Quakers were the first
to ban the practice, and after the Revolutionary War,
reformers made some headway against the whipping
post by calling it an “English” device.
The custom died slowly, however, always gaining
new life along the frontier, where there was a need for a
quick form of justice. In the mining camps of the West,
justice had to be fast so that a man could get back to
hunting for his fortune, and a malefactor faced either
hanging or whipping (or, to a lesser extent, amputation).
There simply were no other choices, and in that sense,
the whip undoubtedly saved many men from the noose.
Floggings virtually disappeared in the 20th century,
although Maryland, which had abandoned flogging
around the turn of the century, reinstituted it in 1933, at
a judge’s discretion, for wife beaters, and Delaware continued its use prior to a prison sentence for a number of
offenses. But while the custom died outside of prison, it
remained a form of punishment for recalcitrant convicts. With the introduction of modern ideas of penology, floggings in prisons tended to be abolished,
although a few institutions in the South have admitted
its use and others are believed to practice it secretly.
flogging
Almost from the beginning, the whipping post was a
common fixture in colonial America. Since prisons did
not come into being until much later, flogging or whipping became the most common form of punishment.
Initially, “knout,” which was made of knotted rawhide,
was used, but it was later replaced by several bound
leather strips, referred to as the cat-o’-nine-tails. The
development of prisons did not result in a great
Flores, Juan (1835–1857) outlaw and murderer
Unlike Joaquin Murieta, there was nothing fictional
about Juan Flores, one of California’s most spectacular
and bloodthirsty villains. He was no more than a minor
rustler and horse thief when he was put away in San
Quentin in 1856. If he had served out his term, he
probably would have remained a smalltimer, but Flores
and a number of other prisoners escaped. Their method
of escape made Flores a well-known figure, held in awe
by both the public and other outlaws.
Flores viewed the walls of San Quentin and decided
escape that way was difficult and dangerous, if not
impossible. But he soon found a weak spot in the
prison’s security. When the opportunity came, Flores
and a group of followers stormed aboard a provision
ship tied up at the prison wharf, took control of the
vessel and managed to sail off, erratically, but successfully in the end.
The fugitives were unsophisticated, to put it kindly,
since they seriously debated sailing their stolen vessel to
Australia to “take over the country.” Instead, the winds
and tides settled the matter, and they landed farther
down the California coast. Because of his new fame,
Flores, now an outlaw leader, had little trouble recruiting a gang of 50 guns within a few days, including a
Although the whipping post was condemned by reformers
after the Revolution as an “English” device, its use
continued in the 19th century and, to some extent, in
more recent times.
319
FLOUR Riots
fairly noted badman named Andrés Fontes. From their
hideout in the hills around San Juan Capistrano, the
gang terrorized the area south of Los Angeles. They
held up stagecoaches and mining supply wagons and
invaded small towns to loot stores. Flores also led the
gang in kidnapping or waylaying travelers and holding
them for ransom. When a German settler wouldn’t or
couldn’t meet his ransom demands, Flores paraded him
into the plaza at San Juan Capistrano and summarily
shot him to death as a warning to future victims to be
more cooperative.
A posse headed by Sheriff James R. Barton went out
after Flores in January 1857 and only three members of
the posse came back alive. Sheriff Barton was not among
them, having been gunned down by Fontes. Since the
outlaw attacked Americans and Mexicans alike, he was
soon hunted by posses of both nationalities. Led by Don
Andrés Pico, a 50-man Mexican-American posse armed
with lances routed the gang in one encounter, killing and
capturing several of its members, but both Flores and
Fontes escaped. On February 1 Flores was finally run to
ground by a 40-man posse headed by a Doc Gentry.
Held prisoner in a ranch house, Flores broke free but,
unarmed, was easily recaptured two days later. He was
brought back to Los Angeles, and on February 14, by
what was described as a “popular vote,” the 22-year-old
outlaw was sentenced to hang, the penalty being exacted
forthwith. Fontes made it back to Mexico but soon died
there in a gunfight.
Flour Riots
Despite defenses by the watchmen, the huge mob battered down the doors and began throwing barrels of
flour, sacks of wheat and watchmen out the windows.
Several watchmen were seriously injured, and the flour
and wheat were spilled out of their containers and scattered by the rioters. They destroyed an estimated 1,000
bushels of wheat and 500 barrels of flour before they
were driven off by a large contingent of police supported by two companies of national guardsmen. The
rioters scattered, carrying off their dead and wounded.
However, the mob simply poured across the city and
launched a new attack on the store of S. H. Herrick &
Co. Once again, a large amount of flour and wheat was
destroyed before the rioters were dispersed. Ironically,
very few of the mob made an attempt or even thought to
carry off any of the precious flour. And the following
day the price of flour increased another dollar.
The Flour Riots did little to alleviate the condition of
the poor, who, like their counterparts a century later,
simply learned to make do on less until the country
emerged from its economic woes.
Floyd, Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” (1901–1934)
public enemy
Raised in the Cherokee Indian Territory of Oklahoma,
Public Enemy No. 1 Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd was
probably the last of the great “social bandits” in America. Just as Billy the Kid was idolized by the poor Mexican herdsmen and villagers of New Mexico, and the
James brothers could do no wrong as far as Southern
sympathizers in Missouri were concerned, so too was
Floyd, the Robin Hood of the Cookson Hills, the hero
of the sharecroppers of eastern Oklahoma. As Pa Joad
in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath said: “When
Floyd was loose and goin’ wild, law said we got to give
him up—an’ nobody give him up. Sometimes a fella got
to sift the law.”
Unlike other gangsters of the 1920s and the Depression era, Floyd was known as a hard worker who might
never have gone wrong if he had been able to find legitimate work. In 1924 things were already tough for
sharecroppers in eastern Oklahoma when Floyd married
a 16-year-old girl. The following year, his wife pregnant,
Floyd turned to crime, got caught pulling a $5,000 payroll robbery and drew a three-year sentence. Released
after serving slightly half that time, he committed bank
and payroll robberies on his own until hooking up with
a few professionals. Working his way east, Floyd and
another criminal were arrested in 1930 for the robbery
of a Sylvania, Ohio bank, and Floyd was given 10 to 25
years. However, on his way to the Ohio State Penitentiary, Floyd leaped through an open train window,
rolled down an embankment just 10 miles from the
New York mob action
The Great New York Fire of December 1835 was
largely responsible for bringing on the Panic of 1837,
as banks failed and insurance companies went bankrupt, and set the stage for the bloody Flour Riots of
1837. Because many employers in New York could not
rebuild, thousands were thrown out of work and economic activities ground slowly down. There was also a
falloff in the supplies of food, and by the autumn of
1836 the price of a barrel of flour had risen first to $7 a
barrel and then to the unheard-of sum of $12. Actual
starvation developed in the slum areas of the Five
Points and the Bowery as bread, a staple of the poor’s
diet, disappeared. By February 1837 the flour depot at
Troy, N.Y. had on hand only 4,000 barrels of flour as
opposed to the usual 30,000, and it was predicted the
price would rise to $20 a barrel or more. New York
newspapers denounced as gougers certain merchants
who allegedly were hoarding great amounts of grain
and flour, waiting for bigger profits.
On February 10 an enormous mob attending a meeting in City Hall Park moved en masse on the big wheat
and flour store of Eli Hart & Co. on Washington Street.
320
FLOYD, Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy”
“I’m coming to see my mother. If you’re smart you
won’t try to stop me.” The sheriff was smart. On
another occasion, apparently on a dare, Floyd returned
home just to prove he could rob the bank there.
He casually stepped from a car with a machine gun
tucked under his arm, and, recognizing some friends
lounging outside the barbershop, waved to them.
“How de,” one called. “What you doin’ in town?”
“How you, Newt,” Floyd replied. “Going to rob the
bank.”
“Give ’em hell,” another admirer yelled. Floyd did.
Most Floyd-Birdwell forays were far from picturesque and harmless. They killed often during their
robberies, but none of this tarnished Floyd’s reputation.
He remained a hero while public opinion blamed all the
cold-blooded murders on Birdwell.
Late in 1932 Birdwell was killed pulling a bank robbery in which Floyd had not participated. After that,
Floyd gravitated back to big-city crime in Kansas City.
He became a prime suspect in the notorious Kansas
City Massacre of June 18, 1933, in which four lawmen
and their prisoner, Frank “Jelly” Nash, were machinegunned to death. Floyd was incensed by the charge and
wrote to the police and newspapers denying any complicity in the massacre. Subsequent disclosures combined with his uncharacteristically vehement denial
indicated Floyd probably was innocent.
Innocent or guilty, Floyd had only a little over a year
to live. Labeled Public Enemy No. 1, he reportedly was
forced to disguise himself as a woman to avoid detection (he had attended Birdwell’s funeral in such garb).
For a short time, Pretty Boy apparently hooked up with
the Dillinger gang, but he generally operated with his
own gang, with Adam Richetti as his main partner.
Floyd avoided several police traps set after tips from
informers, further building his legend. Meanwhile, his
wife was cashing in on the legend: early in 1934 Mrs.
Ruby Floyd and her nine-year-old son toured the country promoting a film called Crime Doesn’t Pay.
In October 1934 Floyd and Richetti were spotted in
a wooded area near Wellsville, Ohio. The local police
captured Richetti, but once again Floyd escaped. With
Richetti identified, FBI agents under Melvin Purvis
descended on the area, determined to tighten the ring
on Floyd. On October 22 Floyd was cornered in a
cornfield near East Liverpool. He ran in a zigzag pattern across the field, hoping to throw off the lawmen’s
aim, but went down with eight bullets in him.
Purvis hovered over the dying gangster and said,
“You’re Pretty Boy Floyd.” Even as his life ebbed away,
the gangster took offense at the nickname. “I’m Charles
Arthur Floyd,” he snapped. Another agent asked if he
took part in the Kansas City Massacre. Floyd raised
himself up and uttered several obscenities, adding, “I
prison gates and escaped. His fame back in Oklahoma
was now established, he would never spend another day
behind bars during the rest of his short life.
Floyd made his way to Toledo, Ohio, where he
joined forces with Bill “the Killer” Miller, who had
been recommended as trustworthy. Floyd’s idea was for
the pair to go about robbing banks. Bill the Killer—the
slayer of at least five men—was four years younger
than Floyd but still regarded him as a young punk who
needed “seasoning.” Miller probably did more than
anyone else to turn Floyd from a quick-triggered gunman into a future public enemy. Bill the Killer took
Floyd to Michigan, where they limited themselves to
$100 to $300 jobs, holding up filling stations and lone
farmers. Only then did they move on to some small
bank robberies.
By the time they reached Kansas City, the pair had
enough of a poke to retire for a time to the splendor
and safety of Mother Ash’s place, a brothel of considerable standing. Some say it was from the ladies at
Mother Ash’s that Floyd first picked up his nickname
Pretty Boy; others claimed the hill folk had so named
him because in his teens he always went around with a
pocket comb to neaten up his “slick as axle grease”
pompadour. However it started, Floyd always hated the
nickname. He did, however, love the girls at Mother
Ash’s, especially the madam’s daughter-in-law, Rose.
Bill the Killer was much impressed with Rose’s sister,
Beulah Bird. This proved to be a deadly double triangle
because the sisters were married to Wallace and
William Ash, the madam’s sons, gangsters in their own
right who doubled as bouncers at the establishment.
Floyd and his partner solved the problem by murdering
both brothers and setting off with the girls in tow on a
string of bank robberies.
In Bowling Green, Ohio the quartet attracted police
attention. Floyd shot and killed Chief of Police Carl
Galliher and wounded another officer, but he was the
only one to leave the scene of the shoot-out. Bill the
Killer was fatally shot and the two girls were wounded.
Immediately after that incident Floyd returned to
Oklahoma and hooked up with 40-year-old George
Birdwell, an ex–church deacon turned outlaw. By this
time Pretty Boy was regarded as a hero by many in the
Cookson Hills and the surrounding area, who saw him
as a modern Robin Hood. Rejoicing in this role, Floyd
would sprinkle money out the car window as he and
Birdwell and whatever aides they recruited rode off
after robbing a small-town bank. And inside the bank,
he always tried to locate and rip up any first mortgages
he could find, hoping they had not as yet been
recorded.
The Pretty Boy Floyd legend flowered best in his
hometown of Sallisaw. Once he wrote the sheriff there:
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FORD, Charles
won’t tell you nothing.” He died almost immediately
thereafter.
See also: KANSAS CITY MASSACRE, BILL “THE KILLER”
MILLER.
6 feet tall and weighing more than 200 pounds. She had
both strength and pantherlike agility. According to
detective Wooldridge: “She would never submit to
arrest except at the point of a revolver. No two men on
the police force were strong enough to handle her, and
she was dreaded by all of them.” While incarcerated in
Denver before coming to Chicago, she once seized a
prison guard by the hair, lifted him off the floor and
plucked out his whiskers one by one. In the Cook
County Jail she once held a guard submerged in a water
trough until he almost drowned. On another occasion
she badly scarred six other female convicts with a hot
iron. Every time she was released from jail, the word
would spread rapidly, and unhappily, throughout the
Levee that “Emma Ford’s loose again.”
Emma terrorized the South Side area until 1903,
when she vanished. Speculation had it that she had
been set on by a half-dozen male toughs and sent to
her reward, or had returned to Denver, or had gone
to New York, or had found a “loving man” and gone
off to raise a family. In any event, Chicago did not see
her again.
See also: CUSTOM HOUSE PLACE, FLOSSIE MOORE, PANEL
HOUSES, CLIFTON WOOLDRIDGE.
Ford, Charles (1858–1884) plotter in the assassination of
Jesse James
While it was Charley Ford’s brother, Bob, who killed
Jesse James, there have always been those who felt that
Charley deserves more infamy than he has received.
“I saw the governor,” Charley testified at the inquest
after James’ murder, “and he said $10,000 had been
offered for Jesse’s death, I went back and told Bob and
he said that if I was willing to go, all right. Then we
saddled up and rode over to the Samuel place. . . .”
Thus did Charley outline the script for the killing of
Jesse James. There is much to indicate that contacting
Gov. Thomas T. Crittenden of Missouri was more
Charley’s idea than Bob’s, and many Missourians felt
that older brother Charley knew how to manipulate his
younger brother. Certainly, things did work out somewhat better for Charley, at least on the surface. He
allowed Bob to get the credit, or discredit, for the assassination, but shared equally in the reward and enjoyed
an equal share of the profits in their stage appearances
as The Outlaws of Missouri. Yet, virtually all the boos,
catcalls and ripe fruit were directed at brother Bob.
Charley was found dead in his Richmond, Mo. hotel
room on May 6, 1884, a suicide, according to the
coroner. Quite naturally, his death was thought to be an
act of remorse by a man who had been denounced as
having one of “the blackest hearts in Creation.”
See also: THOMAS T. CRITTENDEN, ROBERT NEWTON
FORD, JAMES BROTHERS.
Ford, Robert Newton (1860–1892) assassin of Jesse
James
Bob Ford was the “dirty rotten coward who shot Mr.
Howard” of American ballad folklore, Mr. Howard
being the alias used in 1882 by the outlaw Jesse James.
At 22, Bob Ford was a minor member of the James
gang as well as a cousin of the Jameses. At the time, the
James gang had broken into factions and Jesse was in
the process of reorganizing it to rob a bank in Platte
City. Jesse didn’t trust Bob Ford or his brother Charley,
but he was scraping the bottom of the barrel for gunmen. It was a fatal mistake. The Ford brothers were in
negotiations, either through Charley or through an
intermediary, with Missouri governor Thomas Crittenden, who was offering them pardons and $10,000 in
reward money for bringing in Jesse James dead.
When Jesse, or “Mr. Howard,” welcomed the brothers into his home on the outskirts of St. Joseph, Mo., he
did so wearing his gun harness, which he kept on till he
finished breakfast. Then Jesse walked into the parlor to
talk to the Fords, by this time a little more relaxed. He
took off his holster and tossed it aside and then got up
on a chair to straighten out a picture. It was a chance
Bob Ford knew he would not likely get again. He drew
his single-action Colt .44 and thumbed back the hammer. The slight sound was enough to make Jesse start to
turn around. Ford’s gun blasted and the famed outlaw
tumbled to the floor, instantly dead. His wife, Zerelda,
Ford, Emma (c. 1870–?) female crook
Detective Clifton Wooldridge, a turn-of-the-century
historian of criminality in Chicago, described a black
woman named Emma Ford as the most dangerous
strong-arm woman in the city. In point of fact, it would
be a close call between Emma and another black
woman, Flossie Moore, with whom she maintained a
sometimes-friendly, sometimes-unfriendly rivalry.
Emma was a highly successful pickpocket and panelhouse worker, but her first love was always violent
street muggings. Operating alone or teaming up with
her sister, Pearl Smith, Emma would prowl Chicago’s
South Side and attack men with razors, brass knuckles,
knives, guns and sawed-off baseball bats. One of her
favorite tactics when a victim did not prove instantly
submissive was to slash his knuckles with a razor.
Emma Ford had an imposing air about her, being over
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FOREMAN, Percy
rushed from the kitchen to cradle the bloody head of
her dead husband.
Ford said in a stunned voice, still unable to comprehend that he had killed the great outlaw, “It went off
accidentally,” to which Zerelda James replied, “Yes, I
guess it did.”
Charley Ford was already out the door to telegraph
Gov. Crittenden. Ford quickly surrendered and was
tried and convicted of murder. However, the governor,
true to his word, pardoned both Fords and saw that
Bob got his reward money. Crittenden was sure his
actions in the matter would be applauded, but instead,
public opinion turned on him, and his political career
was wrecked.
Bob Ford and his brother hit the entertainment trail
to tell the story of how Jesse James had been killed.
Audiences flocked to see the act, mainly to hiss and boo
Bob. In September 1882 the pair appeared at Bunnell’s
Museum in New York. The Police Gazette reported:
“They will give exhibitions of how they did up Jesse
James and sold his cold meat for the reward of
$10,000. As the ‘Jesse James Avengers’ are said to be
upon their track, the museum will be put in a state of
defense. Manager Starr will wear an armor-lined shirt
and will be seated on a Gatling gun while taking tickets. Any suspicious person attempting to pass him will
be put on the deadhead list.”
A few years later, especially after Charley Ford committed suicide in 1884, Bob took heavily to drink—due
to a guilty conscience, some said—and then married.
He moved west and opened a saloon and gambling
joint in Walsenburg, Colo. In 1892 the Fords were
operating a new saloon-whorehouse in Creede, Colo.,
where they separated the miners from their silver. Mrs.
Ford ran the sex side of the business while Ford handled the bar and the gambling. He also handled the
rough stuff, especially from other gambling interests
trying to drive him out. Chief among these was Jefferson “Soapy” Smith, a con man and killer who was to
become famous later for his depredations in the
Klondike.
On the afternoon of June 8, 1892, a man carrying a
double-barreled shotgun stepped into Ford’s tent
saloon and, without a word, raised it up and blew the
killer of Jesse James away. The man was Edward
O’Kelly, who was related by marriage to the Younger
brothers and thus sort of kin to Jesse James. There was
some question about whether that was the reason he
had killed Ford or whether there was some private
grudge between them or whether Soapy Smith had paid
him to eliminate the competition. In any event, O’Kelly
was sent to prison for 20 years. Since his act was rather
popular, it was hardly surprising that he was granted a
full pardon after serving just two years.
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When Bob Ford, the slayer of Jesse James, began
making personal appearances after the shooting, crowds
turned out to hiss and boo.
Nobody seemed to mourn the “dirty rotten coward
who shot Mr. Howard,” and Jesse James admirers,
whose numbers were then legion, observed with some
satisfaction that Bob Ford had not lived to be as old as
his celebrated victim.
See also: THOMAS T. CRITTENDEN, CHARLES FORD,
JAMES BROTHERS, EDWARD O’KELLY.
Foreman, Percy (1904–1988) defense attorney
Perhaps the greatest accolade that can be heaped on a
defense attorney comes not from judges, prosecutors,
students of the law or even grateful clients but from
other defense lawyers. One who stands in the front
ranks of the profession, Texas attorney Richard “Racehorse” Haynes says he has tried to pattern himself after
his idol, Percy Foreman. In recent years any list of leading criminal lawyers would count Haynes, Edward
Bennett Williams, F. Lee Bailey and, of course, Foreman
on the fingers of the first hand.
Foreman, operating out of Houston, clearly deserved
this distinction. In a legal career that spanned five
FORMBY gang
decades, he represented more than 1,500 capital case
defendants and lost probably less than five percent to
prison and only one to the executioner.
In the courtroom Foreman often came across at first
as a somewhat ridiculous-looking figure, a hulking 6feet 4-inch 250 pounder with baggy pants. However, he
certainly did well by the vast majority of his clients,
with his grandstanding methods getting many a defendant off when earlier courtroom wisdom had declared
that a conviction was inescapable. In one case, Foreman’s client was a woman who had killed her husband,
a cattleman, because he had used a whip on her.
Addressing the jury, the lawyer picked up the long
black whip from the counsel table and cracked it continuously. When he finished, the jury was ready and
willing to vote the lady a medal of honor.
It had long been Foreman’s tack to save his client by
focusing on the murder victim as a person most deserving of being killed. He worked wonders in the 1966
scandal-ridden trial of Candy Mossler by portraying
murder victim Jacques Mossler as a “depraved” deviate
who could have been killed by many different persons.
Mossler was acquitted and then engaged in a long and
stormy quarrel with Foreman for the return of jewels
she had given him as security. His final fee worked out
to something like $200,000 and assorted baubles.
Over the years Foreman accepted all sorts of security
for later payment of fees, including a few dozen pianos,
five elephants and a pool table (fittingly, since the lady
in the case said she shot her husband because he was
always playing pool). While Foreman always had a reputation for showing no mercy when billing the wellheeled, he often represented penniless defendants
without charge.
At times, Foreman, like most great defense lawyers,
seemed cynical about the law. He was fond of quoting
Aaron Burr, who defined the law as “whatever is boldly
asserted and plausibly maintained.” However, Foreman, like his brethren of the craft, knew that it is the
state which does most of the asserting, leaving the average defendant at a disadvantage.
What made Foreman a great legal light was his ability to understand human reasoning and communicate
with jurors. That and, of course, the knack of picking
the right jurors. He once said: “If you have a drunkendriver client, you ask a prospective juror if he’s ever
been a member of a temperance organization. If he simply says no, pay no attention. But if he says no and
gives a little grin at the same time, grab him!”
Formby gang
of the Capone mob in the 1920s but some two decades
earlier, when young punks had virtually taken over the
community. Typical gangs included the Car Barn Bandits, the Market Streeters, the Briscoes, the Feinberg
gang, the Trilby gang, the Brady gang, and the Formby
gang, perhaps the most brutal of all.
Not a single member of the Formby gang was 20
years old, yet they committed a number of the city’s
most vicious crimes, including murder. Headed by a trio
of young toughs—David Kelly, 16, Bill Dulfer, 17, and
Jimmy Formby, 18—the gang committed hundreds of
burglaries and robberies. Formby and Dulfer were the
top “gunners” of the gang; the former murdered a street
car conductor in 1904 and the latter slayed two men
while the gang held up a saloon. Dulfer boasted of gunning down both victims at the same time. “I didn’t even
have to aim to hit ’em,” he said. “Just held a gun in each
hand and let go. They both went down. I saw ’em fall,
that was all I wanted.” When he was captured by the
police, he asked that he be charged with murder rather
than robbery. “I’m a killer, not a robber,” he insisted.
While Dulfer and Formby got long prison terms, the
city’s problem with their gang or others like it was far
from over. In 1906 the Chicago Tribune reported the
young gangster menace was worse than ever: “It is not
unusual for a boy six years old to be arrested for a serious offense. Boys who should be at home learning their
ABC’s are often found with cheap revolvers and
knives.” In one police precinct, the newspaper found,
arrests of boys under the age of 16 for serious crimes
totaled about 60 per month.
The newspaper concluded, “Chicago is terrorized by
. . . criminals who have helped to make the name
‘Chicago’ a by-word for crime-breeding throughout the
country.” It was from these fields that the O’Donnells,
the O’Banions, the Lakes, the Druggans and finally the
Torrios and the Capones plucked so many of their
members and perpetuated the concept of the Chicago
gangster.
Fort Smith Elevator
frontier newspaper
It has become common today to speak with disapproval of Judge Isaac Parker, better known as Hanging
Parker, but it should be remembered that he was dealing in one of the most lawless areas of the country, the
territory west of Fort Smith, Ark. The man reflected
the times, and the support and adulation he enjoyed
was considerable among those who wanted the territory “civilized.” While Parker may have been attacked
by the Eastern press, he had enthusiastic grass-roots
support. For example, it is hard to find a critical comment on the judge and the justice he dispensed at Fort
Smith in the columns of the city’s leading newspaper,
Chicago youth gang
Contrary to popular opinion, the term Chicago gangster did not first come into vogue with the appearance
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FORTY Thieves
the Elevator. Its comments proved that Parker was not
an aberration but rather a reflection of the inhabitants’
mood; his justice was their justice. When Lincoln
Sprole was sentenced for the brutal double murder of a
farmer and his young son, the Elevator commented, “It
is only to be regretted that he has not two necks to
break instead of one.” It was the sort of statement
Hanging Parker would make from the bench. The Elevator expressed wry satisfaction with Parker justice following the conviction of Crawford Goldsby, better
known as Cherokee Bill, noting that the defendant had
been found guilty of only one murder but was wanted
in four other states for murder and adding, “He will
hardly be wanted by any other state after they get
through with him here.”
When Cherokee Bill escaped the hangman because
of appeals to the Supreme Court and eventually murdered a jailer, the Elevator ranted (some say the words
were secretly written by Parker himself):
“square world” knew about the prison experience.
Members of the audience began inviting ex-convict
panels to address their church or school groups. The
Fortune Society at first operated out of a desk in
founder and executive director David Rothenberg’s
office but by 1980 had offices on Park Avenue South
with a full-time staff of 18 ex-cons and nine others plus
hundreds of volunteers. The society has been successful
in finding jobs for about 300 ex-offenders a year. It
does not claim to have a magic formula for crime prevention and reduction but rather shares those experiences that have worked in practice. In many instances
other programs and localities have utilized elements of
the Fortune Society’s program.
fortune-teller swindles
Forty Little Thieves
For the benefit of those who may not understand why
Cherokee Bill was not hanged (why he was allowed to
remain alive long enough to commit another brutal
murder), we will say that his case was appealed to the
Supreme Court of the United States upon what is
known in law as technicalities—little instruments sometimes used by lawyers to protect the rights of litigants
but oftener used to defeat the ends of justice. It will
remain there until the bald-headed and big-bellied
respectables who compose that body get ready to look
into its merits. . . .
See also: ISAAC C. “HANGING JUDGE” PARKER.
Fortune Society
Recognizing that one way to reduce crime is to maximize the opportunities for those who have been in trouble in the past, the Fortune Society, formed in 1967, is
probably the most well-known ex-convict rehabilitation organization in America.
At the heart of the society’s program is a one-to-one
counseling program, ex-offender to ex-offender, that
aims through tutoring programs to raise educational
levels and encourage development of careers. Over
1,500 new persons each year come to the Fortune Society’s offices in New York for help; of these about 100
are teenagers, most with arrest and conviction records.
The organization evolved from a 1967 off-Broadway
play, Fortune and Men’s Eyes, written by an ex-convict,
John Herbert. The play’s producer, David Rothenberg,
developed a weekly forum to permit audiences to
learn about prison life and problems. Ex-cons joined
these theatrical forums, and they learned how little the
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See HANDKERCHIEF
SWITCH.
19th-century juvenile gang
Of all the New York juvenile gangs of the mid-19th
century, few equaled the viciousness of the Forty Little
Thieves, who took the name of the first adult criminal
gang in the city with a disciplined membership. The
Forty Little Thieves were often used by grown criminals
as lookouts or decoys or to enter places to be burglarized through openings that would not admit an adult,
but the gang members, aged eight to about 13, committed a number of major crimes on their own, especially
looting the wharves. Their leader was a tough little
vixen named Wild Maggie Carson, a street orphan who
supposedly took her first bath at the age of nine. Under
her leadership the gang, according to the police, committed a number of murders, but none was ever proved.
In her 13th year, Wild Maggie went through a
remarkable reformation when the Rev. L. M. Pease
opened a mission in the Five Points section in 1850 for
the very purpose of saving juveniles. Under Pease, Wild
Maggie learned the joy of sewing buttons on shirts and
became as efficient a seamstress as she had been a mugger. When she was 15, Maggie was adopted by a good
family, and she eventually married well. Wild Maggie
was the exception rather than the rule, as most of the
Forty Little Thieves grew up to join the great gangs of
the Civil War era.
Forty Thieves
19th century New York gang
The first criminal gang in New York City with a disciplined membership and an acknowledged leadership
was the Forty Thieves, a group of Lower East Side Irish
immigrants who served as political sluggers as well as
muggers and holdup men.
FORTY-Two Gang
The gang, which was formed in the early 1820s, met
regularly in a grocery speakeasy run by a colorful
wench named Rosanna Peers on what is now Center
Street. In that speakeasy their chieftain, Edward Coleman, would parcel out assignments and criminal beats
to the stickup artists. Each man was expected to bring
in a certain amount of loot and knew that if he consistently missed his quota, there was a number of younger
criminals in the area eager for the opportunity to join
the Thieves.
It was perhaps unrealistic to think that a gang of
that size could maintain such discipline in an area as
lush as early New York, and indeed, by 1850 the Forty
Thieves had just about dissolved as a result of individual members striking out on their own or joining other
bigger, more loosely organized gangs. Oddly, the name
Forty Thieves then passed on to the Tammany Hall
politicians, who by 1850 had begun their systematic
looting of the city treasury. The Common Council of
1850 was given the sobriquet Forty Thieves, an affront
to the remnants of the old gang of strong-arm robbers,
who regarded themselves as much more honorable than
politicians.
Forty-Two Gang
original 42ers had either been killed or maimed or were
doing time for such crimes as murder, rape, armed robbery or other felonies.
In 1928, when a number of 42ers were confined to
the boys reformatory at St. Charles, the institution’s
head, Maj. William J. Butler, received a long-distance
phone call from Chicago. “This is the 42 Gang,” he
was informed. “Unless you let our pals go, we’ll come
down there and kill everybody we see. We’ve got plenty
of men and some machine guns.” Butler was inclined to
laugh off the threat until Chicago police told him the
42ers probably meant it. The state militia was called
out to guard the school, and Butler armed himself with
a gun. A few days later, a 42er advance guard of three
punks headed by Crazy Patsy Steffanelli was picked up
outside the reformatory walls. Crazy Patsy readily
admitted harboring plans to machine-gun his buddies
to freedom. The incident brought forth a spate of stories about the 42ers, pointing out they should not be
sent to St. Charles (an institution meant primarily for
wayward boys rather than hardened criminals), even
those of a tender age. The Chicago Tribune editorialized that the 42ers were a separate criminal class and
should be sent either to such higher institutions as Joliet
or to the electric chair.
The great ambition of the 42ers was to receive recognition from the big bootleggers and the Caponeites, and
after a successful caper they would turn up in mob
hangouts, dressed to the hilt and spending money like
water. While the big bootleggers occasionally used
them as beer runners or drivers, they still regarded the
42ers as “those crazy boys.”
But even the Capone men could eventually be convinced by enough accomplishments. It was one of the
“mooniest” of the gang, Sam Giancana, who finally
made it into the syndicate, winning the support of its
two top men, Paul Ricca and Tony Accardo, who took
Giancana on as his driver. When Giancana finally
proved he could curb his temper and wild behavior and
be a disciplined, cunning gangster, he quickly moved up
the organizational ladder, eventually becoming head of
the entire outfit. And with Giancana’s climb, the remnants of the 42 Gang were integrated into the mob.
See also: SAM “TEETS” BATTAGLIA, FIORE “FIFI”
BUCCIERI, SAM “MOMO” GIANCANA.
Chicago juvenile gang
Perhaps the worst juvenile gang ever produced by this
country, the 42 Gang out of the “Patch,” or Littly Italy,
section of Chicago became a source of recruits for the
Chicago mobs in the post–Al Capone era.
Even among the wild juvenile gangs of the 1920s,
the 42ers were known as crazy, willing to do anything
for a quick buck. They stripped cars, knocked over
cigar stores, held up nightclubs, slipped into peddlers’
stables and stole from their carts or killed their horses,
hacking off the hind legs to sell as horse meat. Many
neighborhood Italian girls idolized the 42ers, not only
becoming their sexual playthings but also going along
with them on their nightly crime capers to act as lookouts or “gun girls,” secreting the gangsters’ weapons
under their skirts until needed so that the boys would
be “clean” if stopped by police.
The gang derived its name from the story of Ali Baba
and the Forty Thieves, which had always fascinated the
members. In 1925 they decided to go Ali Baba two better and called themselves the 42 Gang, an exaggerated
figure since at their “founding” meeting there were
only 24 members. But in ensuing years their numbers
did grow to about 42. The violence-prone gang committed any number of murders, including stoolies and
policemen among their victims, but paid a high price.
In 1931 University of Chicago sociologists conducted a
study of the gang and came up with some staggering
statistics. More than 30 of those considered to be the
Fountain, Albert Jennings (1838–1896) murder victim
The Wild West’s most celebrated unsolved murder was
that of Col. Albert Jennings Fountain and his eightyear-old son, who were killed on January 31, 1896 in
New Mexico Territory.
A world traveler, former journalist and leading
lawyer, Fountain had been appointed a territorial
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“FOUR Hundred” assassination list
“Four Hundred” assassination list
suspects
judge and during his judicial career had sent a number of well-connected men to the penitentiary. At the
time of his murder, the judge was deeply involved in a
Lincoln County grand jury investigation of cattle
rustling that was expected to implicate certain prominent individuals. Returning to their home at Las
Cruces, Fountain and his child disappeared along the
Tularosa–Las Cruces road. Their bodies were not
found for several days. Eventually, three men—Oliver
Lee, William McNew and James Gililland—were
charged with the murders but acquitted. In Lincoln
County, there was a widely held suspicion, which
persists to this day, that a political enemy of Fountain, a youthful Albert B. Fall, later to be involved in
the Teapot Dome scandal, was implicated in the
killings.
Had the Fountain murders occurred less than two
decades before, at the time of the Lincoln County War,
the incident would no doubt have erupted into
another bloody frontier war, in which suspicions were
investigated with six-gun and rifle. Historian W.
Eugene Hollon theorized on this change in climate:
“Maybe it was because the Southwest had finally
reached the point in civilization where its people no
longer would tolerate wholesale violence. And maybe
too, in this corner of the vanishing frontier, the law
had finally begun to arise over the ruin wrought by
generations of lawlessness.”
See also: ALBERT B. FALL.
Further reading: The Life and Death of Colonel
Albert Jennings Fountain by A. M. Gibson.
Four Deuces
Secret Service
In the social world, the Four Hundred is a reference to
status, but the “400” listing put together by the Secret
Service’s Protective Research Section refers to the most
active potential political assassins in this country.
Obviously, the 400 is not a complete or definitive
grouping, but it does represent an effort to glean the
most likely candidates for political violence out of a
computer listing of 30,000 suspects maintained by the
Secret Service.
Most of the persons on the larger list have made verbal or written threats against the president or are suspect for some other reason. They are routinely checked
on whenever the president visits their locality. Members
of the 400 are subjected to closer scrutiny. Since they
are often mentally disturbed or have a history of violence, every effort is made to keep them far away from
a presidential appearance. If legal or family restraints
prove ineffective, the 400 suspect is put under close
surveillance, an operation which may require the work
of as many as 15 agents on a 24-hour basis.
Watching the 400 to make sure they don’t harm the
president can be dangerous for the agents. Many of
them are well known to the agents, and this familiarity
is a danger in itself. A case in point occurred in 1979.
That year the Secret Service had Joseph Hugh Ryan
committed to a mental hospital outside Washington,
D.C. after he tried to break through a gate at the White
House. Following his release, Ryan turned up in the
Denver, Colo. office of the Secret Service to complain
that he was being harassed by agents. Stewart Watkins
tried to calm him down, but when the agent moved
close to him, Ryan drew a .45-caliber pistol from under
his coat and shot Watkins twice, killing him. Another
agent then shot Ryan dead as the killer tried to turn his
weapon on him.
Of course, neither the 400 grouping nor the larger
computer listing is foolproof. Sara Jane Moore did not
qualify for either of them despite the fact that she had
threatened to kill President Gerald Ford and had one of
her guns confiscated by San Francisco police the day
before she took a potshot at the president in 1975.
Moore was interviewed by two Secret Service agents
but found to be “not of sufficient protective interest to
warrant surveillance.” Although she had a long history
of erratic behavior, her name was not put on the computer listing because of the fact that she was simultaneously an informer for the FBI, the San Francisco police
and the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms. It is possible that the Secret Service considered Moore’s “kookie behavior” merely a
cover for her other activities.
See also: SECRET SERVICE.
Capone mob gambling den
One of the most notorious “pleasure” joints run by the
Capone mob was a four-story structure on Chicago’s
South Wabash Avenue. The first floor was given over to
a bar, and gambling activities occupied the next two.
The fourth floor sported a lavish bordello. It was also
the scene of numerous murders.
The Four Deuces was not without competition,
especially from the nearby Frolics Club, which dispensed both liquor and women at lower prices. This
unfair competition was dealt with in an imaginative fashion. One night when a murder occurred in
the Four Deuces, the boys lugged the body over to
the Frolics and stuffed it into the furnace. One of the
Capone men then called the police with an irate complaint that the Frolics was running an illegal crematorium. The police rushed over and found evidence of a
corpse in the furnace. The Frolics was promptly padlocked, and the authorities ripped it apart in search of
more corpses. None were found, but the Frolics never
reopened.
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FRANCIS, Willy
Francis, Willy (1930–1947) double execution case
ing acts of sexual perversion with a number of young
girls who worked at the factory.
Lynch law pervaded the atmosphere during the 30-day
trial. Mobs cheered the prosecutor and harangued the
defense attorneys—“If the Jew doesn’t hang, we’ll hang
you.” A newspaper editorial declared: “Our little girl—
ours by the eternal God!—has been pursued to a hideous
death by this filthy perverted Jew from New York.”
While the jury deliberated, crowds outside the courthouse kept chanting the “Jew monster” had to hang.
Frank was found guilty and sentenced to death.
Leo Frank defense committees were formed in various parts of the nation. In Chicago 415,000 persons
signed petitions asking Georgia’s governor John M. Slaton to commute the death sentence, but the chief executive was also under considerable pressure, and threats
of death, not to do so. The Frank defense brought in
William J. Burns, perhaps the nation’s leading detective,
to investigate, and he turned up considerable proof of a
police frame-up. The police would not open any of
their records to Burns other than those he obtained
with a court order; on one occasion Burns and his assistant barely escaped from a lynch mob determined to
make the case against Frank stand. Ironically, this was
perhaps the first murder case in the South in which the
word of a black was taken over that of a white man.
Burns discovered a witness, a black woman, who
had been Conley’s lover from time to time, and she
signed a statement that Conley had told her he had
killed the white girl. She also had 100 sexually explicit
love notes from Conley in which he had described himself performing the very acts he later accused Frank of.
In response to the Burns findings, Gov. Slaton commuted Frank’s death sentence; it proved to be an act of
political suicide. “The Annie Maude Carter notes,
which were not before the jury, were powerful evidence
in behalf of the defendant,” he wrote. “These letters are
the most obscene and lecherous I have ever read.”
A Northern newspaper editorial announced, “The
reign of terror in Georgia is over.” But it was not. On
August 17, 1915, two months after the commutation,
25 members of a secret vigilante group—the Knights of
Mary Phagan—entered the Milledgeville Prison Farm
and, without any resistance from armed prison guards,
took Frank away with them on a ghastly 175-mile ride
to Marietta, the murdered girl’s hometown. Leo Frank
was lynched there before a howling, gloating mob. The
lynchers then proudly posed for pictures around the
hanging corpse.
Two months after the hanging, the Knights of Mary
Phagan congregated on the top of Stone Mountain near
Atlanta to burn a cross and sing a folk song that had
materialized out of the tragedy.
If everything had gone normally in the execution of
Willy Francis in Louisiana, the only unusual note in the
matter would have been that he had paid the supreme
penalty at a rather young age. However, the Willy Francis case was to result in a landmark decision on what
constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.
A 17-year-old boy, Francis was sentenced to the electric chair for a murder he had committed when he was
15. As it turned out, he went to the chair twice. The
first effort was botched when a malfunction in the chair
caused him to receive an insufficient electric shock.
Willy was returned to his death cell. When the state of
Louisiana prepared to electrocute him a second time,
his lawyers appealed to the Supreme Court that subjecting the youth to a second ordeal in the chair was cruel
and unusual punishment. The Supreme Court ruled by
a vote of five to four that since the first unsuccessful
electrocution was only cruel because of an accident, it
“did not make the subsequent execution any more cruel
in the constitutional sense than any other execution.”
In May 1947, about a year after the first try, the chair
worked fine.
Further reading: Death and the Supreme Court by
Barrett Prettyman, Jr.
Frank, Leo (1884–1915) lynch victim
Probably the most infamous anti-Semitic lynching in
America was that of Leo Frank, a 29-year-old Atlanta
businessman. Frank, Brooklyn-born, a graduate of Cornell and president of the Atlanta chapter of B’nai B’rith,
managed the National Pencil Co. factory for his wife’s
uncle. On Saturday, April 26, 1913, Confederate
Memorial Day, the factory was shut, but Frank was
there catching up on paperwork. At noon, as he later
told police, 14-year-old Mary Phagan, all dressed up to
go to the holiday parade, entered the plant to pick up
her wages. Frank said she left immediately, but her
body was found in the basement sometime after. She
had been strangled and beaten. Penciled notes found by
the body were supposedly written by the girl. One,
addressed to “Mum,” described her murderer as “a
long, tall, sleam, black negro . . . that long tall black
negro did buy his slef.”
The next day Leo Frank was charged with the rapeslaying. James Conley, a semiliterate Negro employed
at the factory made some startling accusations against
Frank, among them that he had been summoned by the
white man, shown Mary’s dead body and told to carry
it to the basement. In addition, he charged that Frank
had ordered him to write the notes. At Frank’s trial
Conley also said that he had often seen Frank perform-
328
FRAZER-Miller feud
Little Mary Phagan
Went to town one day,
Went to the pencil factory
To get her little pay.
Leo Frank, he met her
With an evil heart and grin. . . .
There are many versions of the verses that followed, and it is still sung today in rural pockets of
Georgia.
See also: WILLIAM J. BURNS.
Franklin, Rufus “Whitey” (1912–?) bank robber and
murderer
Whitey Franklin was probably America’s most mistreated federal prisoner, even more so than Robert
Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz.
A lean, slow-talking Alabaman, he first ran afoul of
the law in 1927, when at age 15 he was arrested for
stealing a car and sentenced to a chain gang. He later
served another year for carrying a gun and, before he
was 18, drew a life sentence for murder. Having oversentenced him as a youth, the state of Alabama made
up for it, in a manner of speaking, by paroling him
from his life sentence after he had served about six
years. A fully committed criminal by then, he was
arrested for bank robbery within two months of his
release and ended up at Alcatraz doing 30 years.
On May 23, 1938 Franklin led two other convicts,
Jimmy Lucas and Tom “Sandy” Limerick, on a desperate and foolish prison escape attempt. In the process,
Franklin apparently bludgeoned a guard to death with
a hammer. The escape, however, failed. Limerick was
killed, Lucas surrendered and Franklin ended up
trapped on barb wire atop the prison’s furniture factory
roof with bullets in both his shoulders.
Franklin and Lucas were both tried for the guard’s
murder and, much to the disgust of Alcatraz guards,
got life sentences instead of the death penalty. Although
the prosecution had considerable circumstantial evidence that Franklin was the killer, the jury had some
doubts and recommended a life sentence for both
defendants.
Lucas suffered much harsh treatment through the
years, but it was nothing compared to what Franklin
received. He was put into an isolation cell, which convicts called the hole, totally cut off from all contact
with the rest of the prison. It was always assumed by
the rest of the prisoners that Franklin was beaten regularly by the guards and physically and mentally abused
in many other ways. In 1946, following the great revolt
at Alcatraz, an investigation of prison conditions found
that Whitey Franklin was still in his solitary cell—after
329
seven years and 21 days straight. His skin was dry and
had a pasty look from his long years of confinement.
When reporters asked Warden James A. Johnston
how long the prisoner would remain in solitary, Johnston (frequently described in magazines and newspapers as “stern but fair”) replied, “As long as necessary
for discipline.” Sometime after the public revelation of
Franklin’s fate, he was transferred to an electrically
locked isolation cell, where he would remain. He was
fed the same prison fare as other convicts, a treatment
he had not received earlier, and on rare occasions was
taken for a walk in the exercise yard, but he never saw
another prisoner and his guards did not say a word to
him. In time, few of the Alcatraz prisoners even remembered him.
It must be assumed that Franklin is now dead, since
it is doubtful he ever would have been granted a
parole. In 1977 author Clark Howard, who was writing a book on the 1946 revolt, attempted to find out
from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons if either Franklin or
Lucas was still alive and, if so, still confined in prison
or free. He was informed that neither man was within
the federal prison system. Subsequent requests to
determine whether they had died in prison brought no
response.
See also: JAMES LUCAS.
Franks, Bobby
See LEOPOLD AND LOEB.
Frazer-Miller feud
Texas lawmen’s duels
One of the most storied feuds in Texas involved two
lawmen of the early 1890s, G. A. “Bud” Frazer and
Killin’ Jim Miller.
Frazer was elected sheriff of Reeves County in 1890
and shortly thereafter appointed Miller, a Pecos hotel
owner, as his deputy. At the time, Miller already had
the nickname of Killin’ Jim, apparently having gunned
down a number of men, but in Pecos he seemed to lead
a respectable life. When Miller killed a Mexican prisoner in 1892, Frazer fired him. Miller claimed the Mexican had resisted arrest, but the real reason for the
killing was that the prisoner knew Miller was engaged
in mule stealing.
Frazer also had Miller charged with livestock theft,
but since it was Miller’s word against that of a “dead
Mex,” he was soon freed. Later that year Miller ran
against Frazer for the sheriff’s post but lost. A short
while after, Miller was named city marshal of Pecos,
and the feud between the two men festered. Finally, in a
violent confrontation Frazer shot Miller in the arm in a
duel on a Pecos street. Miller, his gun incapacitated,
FRENCHY
fired back but managed only to wing a spectator. Frazer
then emptied his pistol into his foe’s chest and walked
away, certain he had killed him. He was rather surprised later to hear that Miller had recovered.
A few months afterward, Frazer lost his race for a
third term and moved on to the New Mexico Territory.
He returned in December 1894 and encountered Miller.
The inevitable shoot-out occurred and Frazer again got
the best of it, hitting Miller in the arm and leg. He then
pumped two more shots into the wounded man’s chest,
but incredibly, Miller would not go down. Frazer fled
the scene. It became a part of Texas folklore that
Miller’s life had been saved in the two duels because he
had worn a hidden steel breastplate.
Frazer would have needed more than a breastplate
to save him in the pair’s third and final confrontation
on September 14, 1896, when he was visiting his family in Toyah, Tex. Miller spotted Frazer playing cards in
a saloon and blasted him with a shotgun from outside
the door, blowing away most of his head and face.
When Frazer’s sister came at Miller with a gun, the
gunfighter warned her, “I’ll give you what your brother
got—I’ll shoot you right in the face!”
Miller was tried for Frazer’s murder, but the first
trial ended in a hung jury because of the argument that
the victim had started the shooting feud more than two
years earlier. In a second trial, however, Miller was convicted, but that verdict was set aside on appeal. No
more legal action was taken against Miller, who went
on to become one of the West’s most feared professional killers—he once boasted his victims totaled 51—
until he was lynched in 1909 in Ada, Okla. after his
murder-for-pay of another ex-lawman.
Frenchy
ness from their own fashionable establishments. The
Friendly Friends were reportedly behind a number of
plots to frame the Everleighs in various ways. When a
young male member of a leading Chicago family accidentally shot himself in his home in 1905, a story
spread that the man had really been the victim of a
shooting in the Everleigh Club. The rumor was later
put to rest after it was revealed that a black vice operator, Pony Moore, had offered one of the Everleigh
Club’s courtesans $20,000 to sign an affidavit confirming the alleged shooting. It was generally agreed that
most of the money for the bribe plus whatever went to
Moore had come from the Friendly Friends.
The leaders of the society were madams Zoe Millard, Georgie Spencer and Vic Shaw. Madam Millard
was the most disturbed of all by the Everleigh competition and once administered a frightful battering to one
of her prize bawds for speaking nicely of the Everleighs.
Madam Spencer was the hell raiser of the group, ready
with a complaint to the police whenever anything
occurred that displeased her. Her wrath intensified
greatly when police pressure increased as a result of
public indignation over the vice in Chicago’s Levee
area. “Redolent of riches and ablaze with diamonds,”
according to one account, she stormed into the office of
police captain Max Nootbaar, hammered on his desk
with her jeweled fist and declared: “Listen to me,
policeman! I’m rich. I own a hotel that’s worth fortyfive thousand dollars. I own a flat worth forty thousand, and these stones I’m wearing are worth another
fifteen thousand. I’d like to see you interfere with my
business.”
Capt. Nootbaar was that rare bird, an honest
Chicago police officer, and he eventually drove Madam
Spencer into wealthy retirement in California.
Of all the Friendly Friends, Vic Shaw held on the
longest, trying to keep the society in business even
after the shuttering of the Levee district. She continued
later with a lavish call house on South Michigan
Avenue. As late as 1938 when she was about 70 years
old, she turned up operating a similar resort on the
North Side.
See also: EVERLEIGH SISTERS, NATHANIEL FORD MOORE.
See OLD SHAKESPEARE.
Frick, Henry Clay
Friendly Friends
See ALEXANDER BERKMAN.
Chicago madams’ association
In the early 1900s a group of “better class” madams in
Chicago formed a trade society “to protect our interests,” which meant, among other things, controlling
prices and competition and, most important, seeing
they got their money’s worth for the protection they
bought.
The Friendly Friends specifically did not invite the
most successful madams of the era, the Everleigh sisters, to join. In fact, most of their proceedings were
given over to investigating ways of eliminating the fabulous Everleigh Club, the city’s most renowned brothel,
which took away so much of the “cream” of the busi-
Frisco Sue
(1853–?) stagecoach robber
Despite the Hollywood concept of the cowgirl hellion,
the number of Western badwomen can be counted on
one’s fingers. The facts about even those who really
existed have been steeped in the stuff of which legends
are made. One of the real female villains was a lady
known simply as Frisco Sue, a former San Francisco
dance hall shill and prostitute, supposedly of breathtaking beauty.
330
FUGMANN, Michael
In 1876, at the age of 23, Frisco Sue left for the
Nevada gold fields, not to trim the miners, as other
prostitutes did, but rather to reform herself. Sue
decided she could escape her dreary profession by turning to a career of violent crime. Realizing she could not
work alone, she shopped around for a suitable partner
and finally settled on a minor road agent named Sims
Talbot. If Talbot had any misgivings about working
with a woman, Frisco Sue had, we are assured by various biographers of the day, all the necessary charms to
make him forget them.
Sue’s plans were to become very rich and transport
herself to a new life in Europe, posing as an orphaned
heiress. But that dream was to founder in the reality of
her life of crime. The couple’s first effort at stagecoach
robbing netted them only $500—Sue had rolled society
drunks for more than that in her California days. She
was furious, and Talbot had a hard time calming her
down. But he quickly hit upon a daring scheme that
appealed to her. Now that the stage had been robbed,
Talbot explained, the line would be confident it would
not be robbed again right away and would therefore
put on board a valuable shipment. So the couple held
up the same stagecoach on its return run. Talbot’s
strategic thinking was less than perfect: this time the
stage carried two shotgunners. Talbot had barely time
to announce, “Hands up!” when he was blasted out of
his saddle, shot dead. Frisco Sue was captured and sent
to prison for three years. The Western press would not
let her legend die, however, and there was always a
story about some blade’s plans to bust the lady free. It
didn’t happen. Frisco Sue served her time and then disappeared. According to one oft-told tale, she was seen a
number of years later in San Francisco, married to a
millionaire, but then the West always liked stories that
ended with a happy and ironic twist.
Frye v. United States
his newly perfected lie detector. Acting without fee,
Marston did so and was surprised to find that his
examination agreed with Frye’s claims of innocence.
At Frye’s trial the defense team tried to introduce
Marston’s evidence but was overruled by the judge.
Even the offer to submit the defendant to a new test in
the courtroom was rejected. Frye was found guilty, but
only of second-degree murder; the jury had apparently
been impressed by the mention of the lie detector test in
open court. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Appeals of the case resulted in a federal court ruling
that lie detector findings were in a “twilight zone” and
lacked reliability and validity.
Finally, after Frye had been in prison for three years,
another man confessed to the murder of Dr. Brown, and
after an intensive investigation, Frye was released. However, his freedom did not erase the federal appellate
court decision that remains a legal precedent to this day.
See also: LIE DETECTOR.
Fugmann, Michael (1884–1937) murderer
Veterans of the bloody coal mine union organizing days
of the 1930s in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. still remember with
horror the frightful Easter season of 1936, when wholesale death came through the mails.
The first of six Easter gifts, each apparently a box of
cigars, came to the home of Tom Maloney on the morning of Good Friday. Maloney had left his position as a
leader of a union of anthracite coal miners to join John
L. Lewis’ United Mine Workers of America. When
Maloney opened the box, it blew up, killing him and
his four-year-old son. Meanwhile, a second homemade
bomb in a cigar box was being delivered via parcel post
to 70-year-old Mike Gallagher, who died instantly
when he opened it.
A third package was received by Luther Kniffen, former sheriff of Luzerne County, who made a mistake
that saved his life. Inadvertently, he slit the box open
from the rear, and, turning back the lid, found himself
staring at two sticks of dynamite, a detonator cap and a
trigger mechanism attached to the front of the lid.
Authorities immediately sent out a citywide alert, and
three other persons who had gotten cigar box-sized
parcels in the mail notified postal officials. The boxes
were opened under full precautions and discovered also
to contain booby-trap bombs.
At first, there seemed to be little chance of finding
the bomber. The cigar boxes were of a common type,
and while dynamite and detonator caps might be traced
in a big city, they were too readily available to be traced
in a coal-mining area.
There was one clue, however, in the form of the
small pieces of wood used in making the bombs. Just a
lie detector ruling
Almost without exception, courts have refused to
accept lie detector findings as evidence in courtroom
proceedings, generally falling back of the landmark
decision in Frye v. United States, ironically one that
would have saved an innocent man from prison had it
gone the other way.
In 1920 Dr. Robert Brown, a leading physician in
Washington, D.C. was shot to death in his office. An
arrest was finally made about a year later. Police said a
robbery suspect, a young black named James Alphonse
Frye, had confessed to the murder. Before the trial Frye
repudiated his confession, saying he had made it only
because he had been offered half the reward if he was
convicted. Frye’s young lawyers asked Dr. William M.
Marston, a pioneer polygraphist, to conduct a test with
331
FUNERALS of gangsters
few days before the bombings, Bruno Richard Hauptmann had been executed for the kidnap-murder of 20month-old Charles Lindbergh, Jr. Probably the most
damning evidence against him had been the testimony
of Arthur Koehler, an expert on woods, who had traced
one rung of the ladder used in the crime to the Hauptmann home. Koehler was summoned to Wilkes-Barre
by postal authorities and asked to study the wood
scraps. He soon traced the wood to the home of one of
the many suspects in the case. Slats from which the bits
of wood had been cut were found in the home of a
miner named Michael Fugmann, an independent unionist opposed to the United Mine Workers. Found guilty
of the crime, Fugmann went to the electric chair in June
1937, suffering the same fate as Hauptmann on much
the same evidence.
See also: ARTHUR KOEHLER.
Before the O’Banion funeral, with its 26-vehicle flower
procession, a previously deceased member of the gang,
Nails Morton, had been honored with 20 cars. When
Hymie Weiss departed, the flower train dropped to 18
vehicles; a patient Bugs Moran had to explain to the
grieving widow that since the passing of Morton and
O’Banion, 30 others in the gang had expired, obviously
reducing the number of donors and, consequently, the
amount of flowers. After Schemer Drucci was shot
dead by a police officer, his funeral was a touch less
impressive than Weiss’, although he still was buried
under a blanket of 3,500 flowers. His widow commented, “A cop bumped him off like a dog, but we
gave him a king’s funeral.”
Attendance at gangster funerals by public officeholders was more or less obligatory during this period.
After all, the underworld had bought them and therefore, had a right to call on them. Thus, when Big Jim
Colosimo, the great whoremaster and mentor of
Johnny Torrio—who with Al Capone plotted his
demise—was assassinated in 1920, the honorary and
active pallbearers included two congressmen, three
judges, a future federal judge, a state representative, 10
aldermen and a host of other politicians and community leaders. Mayor Big Bill Thompson sent personal
representatives to express his heartfelt loss. It made
sense, considering the fact that Colosimo’s organization
had piled up huge votes for Thompson and his Republican allies. In his eulogy of Big Jim, Alderman Bathhouse John Coughlin of the First Ward said: “Jim
wasn’t a bad fellow. You know what he did? He fixed
up an old farmhouse for broken-down prostitutes.
They rested up and got back in shape and he never
charged them a cent.”
Into the 1930s the big gangster funeral was considered a must. “That’s what buddies are for,” one mobster explained to a reporter. However, by the time Al
Capone died in 1947, low key was the vogue, and it has
been basically that way ever since. The only untoward
events at such affairs are scuffles between mobsters and
reporters and photographers.
When Frank Costello died in 1973, his widow saw
to it that his unsavory friends stayed away from the
funeral. The burial ceremony was over in a few minutes. The only person to approach her was a cousin of
Frank. Hat in hand, he whispered what she expected to
be words of condolence. “What are you going to do
with Frank’s clothes?” he asked. Mrs. Costello walked
on without bothering to answer.
funerals of gangsters
When Dion O’Banion, Chicago’s notorious Irish gangster, went to his grave in 1924, a newspaper commented, “Presidents are buried with less to-do.” His
bronze and silver casket, made to order in Philadelphia
and rushed to Chicago by express car, cost $10,000.
Forty thousand persons passed through an undertaker’s
chapel to view the body as it “lay in state,” as the
Chicago Tribune put it.
To the “Dead March” from Saul, the pallbearers—
triggermen Two Gun Alterie, Hymie Weiss, Bugs
Moran, Schemer Drucci and Frank Gusenberg, and
labor racketeer Maxie Eisen, president of the Kosher
Meat Peddlers’ Association—bore the casket to the
hearse. Close behind them came Johnny Torrio, Al
Capone and their henchmen. Despite the solemnity of
the occasion, police plainsclothesmen were still fearful
of a shoot-out and circulated among the gangsters confiscating firearms.
The funeral procession was about a mile long, with 26
cars and trucks carrying flowers, including particularly
garish ones sent by Torrio, Capone and the Genna brothers, all of whom probably had been involved in planning
O’Banion’s murder. Some 10,000 persons followed the
hearse, jamming every trolley car to the Mount Carmel
area, where the cemetery was situated. At the cemetery
5,000 to 10,000 more spectators waited.
“It was one of the most nauseating things I’ve ever
seen happen in Chicago,” commented Judge John H.
Lyle, an honest Chicago jurist—somewhat of a rarity in
that area.
The O’Banion funeral typified the gaudy gangster
funerals of the 1920s. Similar, though not quite as lavish, treatment was given to any number of the O’Banion gang, as one after another went to his reward.
Fury, Bridget (1837–1872?) ruffian and murderer
With the exception of Mary Jane “Bricktop” Jackson,
the toughest woman in New Orleans during the years
332
FURY, Bridget
just before and after the Civil War was a vicious freelance prostitute, mugger and pickpocket known as
Bridget Fury. Her real name was Delia Swift and she
was born in Cincinnati. There, by the age of 13, she
had become an accomplished criminal, working in a
dance house where her father was a fiddler. When her
father killed a girl in a fit of passion, Bridget moved on
to New Orleans, where she plied her trade with a fighting fury that earned her her nickname and established
her as a leading criminal of the French Quarter. For a
time she teamed up with Bricktop Jackson and a few
other vicious women in a gang that could best any
group of sailor bullies.
In 1858 she murdered a man and was sent to prison
for life but was freed in a general amnesty in 1862. Bridget immediately went back to her belligerent ways. After
a few years she decided the violent life did not pay
enough, so with money raised from cracking skulls, she
opened a brothel on Dryades Street in the late 1860s. In
1869 she was arrested on charges of robbing some $700
from two Texans visiting her house and was sent to
prison for several months. Upon her release she found
her brothel being run by others. A few years earlier
Bridget Fury would have torn the place apart getting her
due, but by then she was older and perhaps weary.
Within another year she had turned into a gutter hag
who was pulled in for drunkenness every two or three
days. She was last seen around 1872 in such a state of
deterioration that it was said she couldn’t live more than
a few weeks. The estimate was no doubt correct and
after a brief time she was seen no more.
See also: MARY JANE “BRICKTOP” JACKSON.
333
G
Gacy, John Wayne (1942–1994) mass murderer
nois had occurred in 1962. He was finally executed in
1994.
Charged with 33 killings, more than any other mass
murderer in American history, John Gacy was a building contractor who lived in a neat three-bedroom brickfronted house in Knollwood Park Township, Ill., a
Chicago suburb. During the period from 1972 to 1978,
Gacy, who was in his thirties, murdered 33 boys and
young men whom he had lured to his home with the
promise of a job. After having sexual relations with
them, he killed them and disposed of their bodies in a
variety of ways.
Gacy was arrested in December 1978, when authorities traced a missing youth, 15-year-old Robert Piest, to
his home. Twice-married, twice-divorced, he had come
under suspicion after police learned that he had once
served 18 months in an Iowa prison for sodomy with a
teenage boy. By the time the killer was apprehended,
however, young Piest was dead. Under questioning, following the discovery of three skeletons on his property,
Gacy made a rambling statement. He had strangled the
Piest boy and tossed his body in the Des Plaines River.
Police began searching for victims and found three bodies in his garage, fished four out of the river and discovered 28 buried beneath the crawl space under his
house. Of these, he was charged with a total of 33
deaths. It was clear that Gacy himself didn’t know the
exact count.
At his trial in March 1980, the chief issue was
whether Gacy was a cold-blooded murderer who
planned the killings or a mentally unbalanced man who
lacked the capacity for understanding his actions. He
was convicted and, on March 13, 1980, sentenced to
the electric chair. At the time, the last execution in Illi-
Galante, Carmine (1910–1979) murdered mafioso
After the death of Vito Genovese in 1969, Carmine
Galante was considered to be the most ruthless and
brutal of Mafia leaders. It could only be guessed how
many murders he had committed during a life of crime
that dated back to 1921. He was known to have carried
out many killings for Genovese, including the 1943
murder of radical journalist Carlo Tresca in New York.
(Genovese was in Italy at the time and seeking to curry
favor with Benito Mussolini, who was enraged by
Tresca’s antifascist activities.) Galante eventually
became an underboss in the Joe Bananas family, specializing in narcotics trade.
He was finally sent to prison for 20 years on a narcotics charge. While serving time, he plotted to seize
power from the other Mafia families in New York
upon his release and was considered fearsome and
capable enough to have done so. Even from prison, he
ran the Bananas family, in which he had ascended to
power in 1974, issuing orders to an estimated 200
members, among them many of the top gunners in the
country.
The Bananas family had been nothing but grief for
the other crime families in New York and elsewhere in
the country. In 1964 its retired head, Joe Bananas, had
plotted to eliminate virtually the entire governing board
of the Mafia and take over. After waging a bloody fiveyear war, he gave up. Now, it appeared certain Galante
would make the same try. Galante talked less than
334
GALLATIN Street
The assassination of mafioso Carmine Galante in the garden of a Brooklyn restaurant in 1979 was said to have solved
the underworld’s “Cigar” problem.
and fired two blasts into the gangster. Galante died
with his cigar still in his mouth.
A joke that made the rounds in the underworld
asked, What’s the first thing Galante would do if he
could come back to earth alive? Answer: Have dessert.
See also: VITO GENOVESE, CARLO TRESCA.
Bananas, believing the best policy was kill, kill, kill.
Freed in 1979, he was gathering strength and making
demands backed up with threats.
According to the underworld grapevine, a number of
crime leaders held a meeting in Boca Raton, Fla. to
decide the “Cigar” problem (Galante was noted for
always having a large cigar in his mouth). Mob leaders
not present were consulted about whether or not to
issue a contract on him. Those said to have been
involved included such big shots as Jerry Catena, Santo
Trafficante, Phil Rastelli and Frank Tieri. Even the
retired Joe Bananas was consulted and okayed the contract on Galante.
On July 12, 1979 Galante had just finished the
main course of a meal in the outdoor rear area of an
Italian restaurant in Brooklyn. His cigar was in his
mouth and he held a glass of wine in his right hand.
Three masked men suddenly came through the indoor
restaurant into the courtyard.
“Get him, Sal!” one of the masked men said and a
hood with a double-barreled shotgun stepped forward
Gallatin Street
New Orleans crime area
From 1840 until 1880 Gallatin Street in New Orleans
was described as having more crime per square foot
than any street in America. Indeed, it had the distinction of not containing a single legitimate enterprise anywhere on its two-block length. Running from Ursuline
Avenue to Barracks, it offered enough debaucheries
from dusk to dawn to sate the country boys, city slickers, sailors and steamboat men seeking varied pleasures. Such visitors, one historian noted, were in turn
sought out by “a horde of harlots, sneak thieves, garroters who openly carried their deadly strangling cords,
and footpads with slung shots looped about their
335
GALLO, Crazy Joe
Gallo, Crazy Joe (1929–1972) Brooklyn Mafia leader
wrists.” There were barrelhouses where for 5¢ a man
bought no mere glass of liquor but all the booze he
could drink, dance houses that were also bordellos and
sailors’ boarding houses from which seamen were at
times shanghaied. It was often said that a miracle man
in New Orleans was one who could enter Gallatin at
Ursuline with money in his pocket and emerge at Barracks with his cash and skull untapped. At times, the
police entered the street by day in large armed groups
but were nowhere to be seen after sunset.
Much of the mayhem on Gallatin Street was the
work of the Live Oak Boys, a gang formed in 1858 by
one Red Bill Wilson, a vicious thug who always concealed a knife in his bushy red beard. The Live Oak
Boys were not a disciplined bunch. While they collected
protection from virtually every house on the street, that
was no guarantee they would not smash such a place to
pieces when they had a mind to, which proved a rather
common occurrence. Then too, they considered any
payment they received from an establishment null and
void if the proprietor of a rival business offered them a
bounty to shut down the competition.
Despite such depredations, any resort on Gallatin
was invariably a gold mine. Typical was Archie Murphy’s, which in a decade of operation left the proprietor in a state a newspaper described as one of
“extreme wealth.” Murphy achieved that happy status by encouraging his girls “not to allow any sucker
to get away.” One of his more skillful harpies was
Lizzie Collins. A foolhardy farmer once bragged to
Lizzie that he had $110 in gold tied in a handkerchief
around his leg. He shrewdly refused all drinks but
jumped at Lizzie’s invitation to go upstairs. As the
couple entered Lizzie’s room, three other harlots
jumped on the man and held him while Lizzie poured
whiskey down his throat. When the farmer was helpless, Lizzie retrieved the handkerchief with the gold
and then called on the Murphy bouncers to toss the
farmer into the alley. The farmer pressed charges and
Lizzie was arrested, but the case was dismissed when
the farmer could produce no evidence other than his
word.
Lizzie Collins went on to suffer a bizarre fate. Years
of drink addled her brain and she developed a mania
for stealing items that Archie Murphy found little use
for. Instead of taking a man’s money, she would drug or
knock him out and then cut all the buttons off his
pants. Archie Murphy tried to get Lizzie to mend her
ways, but he finally kicked her out. For some years
thereafter, Lizzie stalked Gallatin Street practicing her
strange pastime, becoming one additional peril for visitors to the street.
See also: BRIDGET FURY, MARY JANE “BRICKTOP” JACKSON, LIVE OAK BOYS.
Joseph Gallo was nicknamed Crazy Joe by rival Mafia
figures who considered him “flaky” and hard to deal
with. Crazy was all that and mean besides, but at the
same time he was among the most perceptive of the
new breed of underworld leaders. In the 1960s Crazy
Joe recognized the changing tides in the underworld,
the steady shift in power from Italian to black and
sought to reach an accommodation with the emerging
power structure, much in the fashion that Meyer Lansky had recognized the decline of Jewish gangsterism in
the 1920s and allied with the Italian Mafia, under
which he continued to prosper. In prison, Crazy Joe
befriended black criminals. He attempted to break
down convict color lines by having a black barber cut
his hair; he became friends with Leroy “Nicky” Barnes
and tutored him on taking over control of the drug
racket in New York’s Harlem and then far beyond; he
sent released black prisoners to work. In all this, Crazy
Joe realized nothing was permanent in crime. Years
before, he had questioned the stranglehold the older
underworld element had on various activities. “Who
gave Louisiana to Frank Costello?” he once demanded
in a conversation taped by law enforcement officials.
Crazy Joe started his criminal career at the age of 17,
accumulating such charges as assault, burglary and kidnapping. He moved up rapidly in the Carlo Gambino
family and was believed to be the chief gunman in the
murder of Albert Anastasia in 1957. Gallo went to war
against the Profaci family, a war that took more than a
dozen lives, because he felt the Gallos were entitled to a
bigger slice of the rackets in Brooklyn. After Profaci
died and Joe Colombo, Sr. became head of the Profaci
family, the war continued. When Colombo was shot
and “vegetabled,” to use Gallo’s term, the murderer
turned out to be a black man, Jerome A. Johnson.
Gallo was immediately brought in for questioning
because of his ability to recruit black troops whenever
he needed them. But nothing could be proved against
him and he was released.
On April 7, 1972 Crazy Joe left the safe confines of
his Brooklyn territory and went to Umberto’s Clam
House in New York’s Little Italy to celebrate his 43rd
birthday. It seemed safe. There was always a tacit agreement within the Mafia that no rubouts would take place
in Little Italy. In Crazy Joe’s case, however, an exception
was made. The Gallo party was seated at two tables
when a man walked in with a .38-caliber pistol in his
hand. Women screamed and customers hit the floor as
the killer opened up on Gallo. Gallo’s two bodyguards
fired back. In all, some 20 shots were fired before the
assassin fled. Mortally wounded, Gallo staggered out
the front door and collapsed and died in the middle of
the street—one block from police headquarters.
336
GAMBI, Vincent
See also:
LEROY
“NICKY”
head would end the victim’s resistance, and Sadie
would rifle his pockets at leisure. One day Sadie
attempted to butt her way to a victory over Gallus
Mag, but a mallet proved more than a match for Sadie
the Goat’s skull. Gallus Mag chewed off her rival’s ear,
and Sadie fled the East Side waterfront in disgrace. The
vanquished warrior later achieved great fame as the
leader of the Charlton Street pirates on the West Side,
who terrorized the Hudson River for many miles north
of the city. When the Charlton Streeters were finally
broken up, Sadie the Goat returned to the East Side and
made her peace with Gallus Mag, accepting Mag’s primacy as the queen of the area. This total surrender so
impressed Gallus Mag that she magnanimously fished
around in her alcohol jar of ears and returned Sadie’s
severed member to her.
Gallus Mag’s reign on the East Side waterfront ran
from the late 1850s to 1871, when the Hole-In-TheWall was closed because of the numerous murders and
other crimes committed there. Many tales circulated
about Gallus Mag’s subsequent fate: one that she found
true love with a poor young man and another that she
found true love with a rich old man. Whatever her fate,
the waterfront was never the same after her reign.
See also: HOLE-IN-THE-WALL SALOON.
BARNES, JOSEPH COLOMBO,
SR.
Gallows Hill
execution spot
A hill on the outskirts of Salem, Mass. was the site
where a score of persons were hanged in 1692 during
the witchcraft delusions. From that time on, it was
known as Gallows Hill, even though during the period
of public remorse attempts were made to give it
another name. While there have been many other
American towns with similarly named hills, Salem’s has
the distinction of being the oldest by far.
See also: SALEM WITCHCRAFT TRIALS.
Gallus Mag (c. 1860s) female thug
Described by New York police as the most savage
female ruffian of the period from just before to just
after the Civil War, Gallus Mag was a towering sixfooter known as the Queen of the Waterfront. Her
antecedents were English, but little else was known
about her. At times, she would refuse to give any information and, on other occasions, would provide varying
and contradictory stories. Once when a saloon habitué
asked Gallus Mag her age, she punished him for his
nosiness by smashing his skull with a mallet, chewing
off his ear and throwing him into the street.
Gallus Mag, who earned her nickname by wearing
galluses, or suspenders, to hold her skirt up, held sway
in the legendary Hole-In-The-Wall Saloon on New
York City’s Water Street, where she was a partner with
One-Armed Charley Monell and acted as bouncer. The
saloon was a “bucket of blood” where more men were
said to have been robbed or killed than in any other
watering hole of that era. Despite her duty to keep the
peace, Gallus Mag was a prime cause of the violence.
She would stalk the dive looking for trouble and was
well prepared for it, with a pistol always tucked into
her skirt and a bludgeon strapped to her wrist. Whenever she found a man violating the rules of the place,
such as robbing a stranger without a permit from the
management, she would immediately crack him over
the head. Her custom was to then seize the offender’s
ear between her teeth and drag him out the door. If her
victim dared to struggle, she would bite his ear off. Gallus Mag became infamous for this act and kept all such
severed ears in a huge jar of alcohol behind the bar, a
trophy collection that was one of the more gory sights
on the crime-ridden waterfront.
Gallus Mag’s only real female competition was the
notorious Sadie the Goat, so named because when she
spotted a likely victim for a mugging she would lower
her head and butt him in the stomach. A blow to the
Gambi, Vincent (?–1819) pirate
A contemporary—at times a follower and at times a
foe—of Jean Lafitte, Vincent Gambi, a surly, hotblooded Italian, was easily the worst cutthroat to sail
the Gulf of Mexico during the first two decades of the
19th century. While Lafitte and many of the other
pirates headquartering in the “pirates’ home” of
Barataria Bay and the islands off Louisiana were more
or less privateers under commission to Cartagena,
which was then revolting against Spain, Gambi often
boasted he was a genuine bloody pirate, and he was. By
1810 he was known to have murdered a score of men
with his favorite weapon, a broadax.
When Lafitte became the acknowledged leader of the
Baratarian pirates about that time, Gambi was the only
captain who occasionally challenged his authority.
Unlike Lafitte, Gambi wished to attack all shipping,
including that of the United States, ignoring the consideration that American merchants were the prime purchasers of the Baratarian freebooters’ loot.
Once, Gambi attempted to overthrow Lafitte and
had his lieutenant announce loudly, “The men of
Gambi take orders only from Gambi!” Lafitte
answered that display of dissension by drawing a pistol
and shooting the man dead. Gambi immediately lost
interest in any thought of revolt. Even after the Americans finally drove the pirates from their Baratarian
337
GAMBINO, Carlo
bases in 1814, Gambi followed Lafitte in pledging to
support Gen. Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New
Orleans. Lafitte’s motive was undoubtedly financial
and political; Gambi’s was simply to satisfy his urge for
violence. He was credited with more killings than any
other pirate taking part in the battle.
Following the successful conclusion of the war
against the British, Gambi, like the other Baratarians,
was granted a full pardon with all the rights of an
American citizen, but by early 1816 he, Lafitte and
many of the others had tired of New Orleans city life.
Lafitte went off with perhaps 1,000 followers to found
a community on an island that later became Galveston,
Tex., but Gambi set off on his own to earn a new fortune and greater infamy as a pirate. He succeeded,
plundering and sinking a score of ships over the next
three years. In 1819 Gambi was slaughtered by his own
men with his own ax as he slept on a pile of stolen gold,
which, as was his wont, he had divided by a method
that defied the standard rules of mathematics.
See also: JEAN LAFITTE, PIRACY, PIRATES’ HOME.
retreat, the tomatoes planted in the garden and the
excursions to fruit stands in Italian neighborhoods.
Even in death, Gambino resembled the Godfather.
After he died of a heart attack in October 1976, the
hundreds of mourners at his funeral were cordoned off
from reporters and strangers by hard-faced men who
easily convinced onlookers that it would be impolite to
intrude on the grief of the family, friends and associates
of Carlo Gambino.
See also: ALBERT ANASTASIA; APALACHIN CONFERENCE;
JOSEPH COLOMBO, SR.; VITO GENOVESE.
gambler’s belt
Employed by crooked gamblers in the 19th century, the
so-called gambler’s belt was a lethal body device of considerable firepower used to discourage any attempt by a
victim to recover his losses forcibly.
The belt appeared in gambling dens in Philadelphia,
Cincinnati and Chicago and proved popular on the
Mississippi and in the West. In a typical version, a
body belt was fitted with three small-caliber revolvers
that could be fired simultaneously by operating a trigger mechanism hidden on the wearer’s right side. Naturally, when fired, the device destroyed the wearer’s
trousers but did far worse damage to his foe, who
would be struck by three shots in the abdomen.
According to one account, an unnamed gambler in
Nevada used such a belt to kill a miner objecting to his
method of dealing, and the other miners gathered
around, expressing wonder at the device’s design. On
reflection, they decided it gave the gambler an unfair
advantage in the gunfight, so they marched him out to
the street and hanged him.
Gambino, Carlo (1902–1976) Mafia chieftain
Whether Gambino ever was the so-called boss of
bosses, assuming the existence of any such character, is
debatable, but he was without doubt the head of New
York’s most powerful crime family as well as the model
for Mario Puzo’s Godfather. Gambino, a youthful companion of Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky, rose
through the underworld ranks to become the underboss
to Albert Anastasia in the 1940s and 1950s.
It is generally believed that Vito Genovese ordered
the execution of Anastasia after winning the approval
of Gambino. From the time of Anastasia’s murder in
1957 and the forced retirement of Frank Costello after
a botched assassination attempt on his life, Genovese
became the most powerful Mafia figure in New York,
allegedly controlling all five major New York crime
families. However, Genovese’s reign was a short one.
He was convicted in a narcotics case, which was reputedly “set up” by Costello, Lansky and Luciano, and
sentenced to 15 years in prison. Although he continued
to control syndicate operations from behind bars, several others, including Gambino, were able to increase
their power. By the time Genovese died in prison of natural causes in 1969, Gambino had emerged as the
strongest family leader in New York. By judicious
alliances and killings, he eventually became the dominant chieftain of the five families, although it is doubtful he ever attained the fictional Godfather status.
The short, bulb-nosed Gambino, however, did display many of the personal traits of the Godfather.
There was the same ruthless cunning, the Long Island
gangs and gangsters
The terms gangs and gangsters are used in this book—
and in almost every other book on the subject of American crime—in the loose modern definitions and not in
their specific original meanings. Thus, Jesse James had
a “gang,” and John Dillinger had a “gang” and was a
“gangster.” Originally, and strictly, the words applied
to 19th-century organizations that were virtual armies.
The Gophers, for instance, could field 500 fighting
men, every one a fierce thug and eager killer. Yet, by the
standards of the time, the size of the Gophers was unremarkable. Another New York gang, the Dead Rabbits,
mobilized far greater numbers. So did other gangs in all
parts of the country: the Sydney Ducks, Whyos, Bloody
Tubs, Bowery Boys, Roach Guards, Potato Peelers, Plug
Uglies and so on. In 1850 the New York police estimated the city gangs totaled about 30,000 men and
women. These gangs consisted of bruisers, brawlers
338
GANGS and gangsters
and thugs who could and did paralyze American cities
when they rampaged. On a more routine basis, a gang
might commit a dozen or more robberies of business
places and homes each night, and some gangs were
good for 30 to 50 street muggings every evening. They
often killed, but simply in the course of business with
little homicidal intent. If a victim had a weak skull, it
was his misfortune. Eventually, many gangs found and
met a demand in the marketplace for their murderous
abilities. The Whyos, among others, rented themselves
out as primitive forerunners of Murder, Inc., committing mayhem according to a set fee schedule.
In the same era there were specialized groups of
more sophisticated criminals who perpetuated spectacular and amazing crimes. They were called “mobs” and
ranged in number from as few as three or four individuals up to about 15 or so. By this usage, the 1930s saw
the Dillinger “mob” in action.
True gangs are still with us, although but for a
quirk of history they might well have vanished as they
did in many other advanced countries. The true era of
the great gangs ran 90 years, roughly from 1825 to
1915. They flourished almost unopposed until the
Civil War, when they finally met some police effort to
contain them. This was no easy task since many of the
gangs had strong political connections as a result of
their ability to provide votes for the political forces
protecting them and, more important, to dissuade voters from opposing their patrons. Where the gangs
were contained, it was basically through the raw force
of police beatings and improved educational, economic and social conditions. By the second decade of
the 20th century, the reform-minded citizenry in most
big cities had brought about wholesale destruction of
the gangs. In New York during 1914–15 some 300
gangsters, including the best-known underworld figures of the day were shipped off to prison. The great
gangs crumbled. The Whyos were no more, and the
last great New York gang, the Five Pointers, were losing the revenues required to keep a large criminal
combine alive. After World War I it seemed doubtful if
the big gangs could ever recover. But Prohibition provided the gangsters with a public-approved criminal
activity, bootlegging, around which to regroup and
which made the likes of Al Capone a hero worthy of
being cheered at baseball games. The Mafia crime
families were able to flourish and the national crime
syndicate was born. They were so well organized that
after the repeal of Prohibition they could move en
masse into the new criminal activities of the 20th century. Thus, the traditions of the old gangs are preserved today in the various Mafia crime families, the
new Purple Gang and the massive but less well-known
black narcotics gangs.
Of course, almost every ethnic group has its own
gangs, some of whom can be said to dominate crime
and drug activities in many cities. There are the
imported criminals of South America and the so-called
Russian Mafia, to cite just two. Then there are America’s homegrown gangs, whose members from their
early teens dominate the crime rates in many large cities
(and who have spread their activities into smaller cities
and rural communities).
Actually these gangs are little different from earlier
gangs, and they thrive on their ability to amass huge
sums of money. Just as earlier gangs engaged in bootlegging during Prohibition, recent street gangs have
profited from dealing in drugs. City youth gangs
develop and are nurtured in blighted communities,
where unemployment, family disorganization, neighborhood traditions of gang delinquency are common.
Gangs provide acceptance and protection to inner-city
youth. In 1985 there were an estimated 400 gangs in
Los Angeles compared to 800—with 90,000 members—in 1990. There are three major Latino gangs, the
Latin Kings, which started out as a fraternal organization in the 1940s, the Los Netas and the Los Solidos.
All engage in many criminal activities and constantly
war on each other for turf and profits.
The two major African-American gangs in Los
Angeles are the Crips and Bloods. Ironically the Crips
grew out of the fights at dances organized to keep
young people off the streets. The Bloods were organized in opposition to the Crips, and one of their rules
calls for every member to sign the gang charter in his
own blood.
In Los Angeles County, there are an estimated
157,000 Crips and Bloods in 1,100 chapters and related
gangs who kill each other at a clip of two a day and are
arrested at the rate of 50,000 a year. By 1996 in Los
Angeles the battle between the Crips and Bloods took at
least 3,000 lives and wounded and maimed thousands
of others. As Ben Sonder reported in Gangs, “Wheelchairs are a common sight in South Central Los Angeles.” By that time there were as many as 100,000
affiliated with these two groups, and their competition
spread up and down the West Coast from San Francisco
to Seattle. There are chapters of both groups in Phoenix,
Denver, Houston, Albuquerque, Omaha, Amarillo and
Colorado Springs. In Salt Lake City the crime rate
tripled from 1992 and 1993, in great measure because
of these gang chapters. In York, Pa. Crips were hauling
in $40,000 in crack sales per week.
The surest way to leave the gang life is, of course,
death, either by murder or overdosing on drugs. At first
the Bloods had a rule against using drugs themselves,
but then members defiantly decided that how they lived
their lives was their own business.
339
GARCIA, Manuel Philip
ing columnists of the early 1920s, S. Jay Kaufman,
wrote in the New York World: “There is no end of fascinating questions in the career of this extraordinary
man. How often do we find a criminal who has taught
Emerson and Thoreau, fought for liberty across the
border, knocked down the great Jim Jeffries, written a
book of scholarship that is a classic in its field? Roy
Gardner is a Renaissance man born too late in a world
he never made. He is a man of whom they make legends, and we are in need of legends to brighten this
dreary world.”
Roy Gardner was America’s greatest escape artist
during the Roaring Twenties, and as he slipped in and
out of the hands of the law, he produced one fantastic
newspaper headline after another. Born in 1888, the
son of a well-to-do Detroit businessman, Gardner
appeared to have a brilliant future when he graduated
from college with honors. He showed a strong literary
bent and at a very early age became a faculty member
of a Midwestern college. His record in the English
department was outstanding, and a work he published
on 17th-century literature was very well received.
By all rights, Roy Gardner should have become a fixture in the academic world and lived out a useful educational career, but youthful enthusiasm and a craving
for adventure caused him to drop out. He went to Mexico to live with the revolutionaries. In 1908 Gardner
was caught bringing ammunition to the Carranza army
and was sentenced to death after a summary government trial. He escaped from the military prison at Hermosillo before the execution could be carried out.
Three other Americans escaped with him. Later, two
were wounded and recaptured, but Gardner and the
other American made it away clean.
Having no desire to return to the university life, Roy
headed to the West Coast and took a fling at prizefighting becoming a sparring partner for James J. Jeffries. It
was through his acquaintances in the boxing world that
Gardner turned to crime. With two others, he pulled a
$19,000 van robbery. Afterward, one of his accomplices was caught and he implicated Gardner, who
spent two years in San Quentin as a result.
When he got out, he went straight and got married.
Gardner opened his own welding shop in Oakland,
Calif. and prospered until the shop burned to the
ground. He had no insurance. Thereafter, Gardner
went to Los Angeles and took a job as a welder. He also
started to do some serious writing, but after a while,
honest work ceased to interest him. He robbed a mail
truck in San Diego, netting only a small sum of money,
and was soon caught.
Gardner played the role of the flippant criminal,
answering the judge with Shakespearean quotes and
constantly showing off his literary knowledge. The
There is little chance for gang members to “resign.”
The saying is “Blood in, blood out.” The few members
who do get out have to do it slowly, maintaining their
loyalty to the gang even as they gradually become
somewhat legitimate, with a job and family. Similarly,
those who go on to become rappers of varying degrees
of success, often do not escape, or even want to escape
their past. A prime example was rap star Tupak Shakur,
who remained mired in gang warfare and died violently.
Efforts are constantly made to reform gang members, but as in all criminal organization activities, the
glue that keeps them active and violent is the millions
they make that none of the individuals can earn any
other way. Gangs have always lived by the law of the
money jungle.
See also: TUPAK SHAKUR.
Garcia, Manuel Philip (?–1821) murderer
As a murder, Manuel Garcia’s crime was rather ordinary, but it led to the introduction of a new method of
detection in this country that has been widely used ever
since. Garcia killed Peter Lagoardette, a rival highwayman and burglar in the Norfolk, Va. area, in a feud
over a woman. He had induced another bandit, Jose
Castillano, to help him lure the victim to an abandoned
house, where Garcia hacked Lagoardette to death and
the pair cut up the body and burned it in the fireplace.
The job was so messy both killers had to leave their
blood-drenched shirts behind.
When the neighbors were attracted by smoke coming from the chimney of an abandoned house, they
investigated and found Lagoardette’s partially burned
torso and limbs. They also found the shirts, which were
turned over to the sheriff. That lawman had been reading a recent newspaper account from England describing how a murderer’s clothing had been traced through
laundry marks. The same was done in the Lagoardette
case, and the trail led straight to Garcia and Castillano.
Apparently, it was the first time a laundry mark had
been used to apprehend a murderer in the United
States, and Virginia newspapers were at first ecstatic
about the method and then somewhat somber as they
speculated that many murderers henceforth would
undoubtedly do their foul business in an undressed
state. The two murderers were hanged in Norfolk on
July 1, 1821.
Gardner, Roy (1888–1940)
escape artist
As a criminal, Roy Gardner was less than a master, getting himself caught frequently. The problem for the law
was not catching him but holding him. One of the lead340
GARFIELD, James A.
he entered the prison, one journalist mourned “the end
of a legend.”
It wasn’t. On Labor Day 1921 Gardner was watching a baseball game from the bleachers of the prison
ball field. As all eyes were focused on the field, he and
two other convicts dropped through the bleacher seats
to the ground. They cut through the barbed wire fence
with wire cutters Gardner had stolen from the machine
shop and raced for undergrowth 50 yards from the
fence. If they made that, they would have a chance. The
tower guards didn’t see them until they were halfway
there. In the fusillade of bullets that followed, Gardner’s two companions went down. Gardner was
wounded in the left leg but made the bushes. He hid
out there until dark while guards searched for him and
police craft circled the island. What they didn’t know
was that Gardner had retraced his escape route and
was hiding out in the prison barn. He treated his
wound, which was not too serious, and milked a cow
whenever he got hungry.
Gardner stayed hidden for 48 hours, by which time
it was decided he had reached the mainland. Only then
did he move to the water’s edge, drift 21/2 miles to Fox
Island and from there swim to the mainland. He vanished for a few weeks and then was back in the headlines. Audaciously, he had addressed a letter to
President Warren Harding offering a deal. He wanted
his sentences suspended so that he could return to his
wife and young children “to start life anew.” In return,
he promised to pay back to the government some
$250,000 in loot, which he said he had salted away.
It made good newspaper copy but had no results.
The president naturally ignored the offer.
Gardner was now 33 years old. Somewhere between
his escape from the prison in September and November
15, all the fight went out of him. He tried to hold up a
mail clerk on a train in Arizona but was easily overpowered. This time he was sent to Leavenworth, his
sentence now having reached 75 years. He never
escaped custody again. Gardner’s reputation earned
him a transfer to the new maximum security federal
prison at Alcatraz in 1934, but he was sent back to
Leavenworth two years later because of his good
behavior. Two years after that, he was freed. The newspapers speculated investigators wanted him to lead
them to his stolen money hoard, but the real reason for
his release was his poor health. Thereafter, Gardner
lived alone in a rundown hotel in San Francisco, his
wife having died years before. In January 1940, at the
age of 52, the Escaping Professor made his final break
to freedom. He turned on the gas.
judge was unimpressed and sentenced him to 25 years
at the federal penitentiary on McNeil Island, Wash.
Gardner was stunned at the sentence. Then he regained
his composure. “You’ll never get me there,” he
shouted as he was being led away. No one paid him
any mind.
But Roy Gardner was right. He overpowered his
train guards, seized their weapons and hopped off the
train as it neared Portland, Ore. While a vast manhunt
for him was launched in the Pacific Northwest, he went
east through Canada, holed up in Minneapolis and
eventually moved to Davenport, Iowa, where he took a
job as a welding instructor. Soon, the old restlessness
surfaced, and he returned to Napa, Calif., where his
wife lived under constant surveillance. He slipped past
the stakeout to see her and sneaked away again. A
neighbor spotted him and called the police, but despite
an intensive hunt, with his picture splashed across the
newspapers, Gardner escaped.
In May 1921 he robbed a Southern Pacific mail car
of $200,000 in cash and securities. By not fleeing the
area, however, he again proved to be a poor thief. Six
days later, he was caught in a Roseville gambling room,
betting big and bragging about how smart he was.
When apprehended, Gardner had only a small amount
of his loot and refused to say where the rest was.
Another 25 years was added to his sentence, and the
law put him on a train for McNeil Island once more
and once more failed to get him there. Already the
newspapers had dubbed him the Escaping Professor
and printed his boast that he would not be taken as far
as Tacoma, Wash.
On the train Gardner asked his two guards for
permission to go to the toilet. The officers, being cautious, accompanied him and kept another prisoner
handcuffed to him. The four trooped to the men’s
room, one of the large types of the 1920s. Nothing
untoward happened until they moved to the sink.
Suddenly, using his free hand, Gardner pulled a gun
from under the sink. He and the other prisoner, Norris
Pryor, handcuffed the officers and taped their mouths
shut with the tape that had been used to secure the
gun in its hiding place. How it got there Gardner
never revealed. As the train slowed in the Vancouver
yards, Gardner and Pryor jumped off, disappearing in
the misty rain.
Gardner’s escape made headlines across the country,
and he became one of the nation’s most glorified criminals. Unfortunately for him, he became so recognizable that he was readily recaptured. The newspapers
speculated about how far the law would succeed in
transporting Gardner this time, but the authorities
took no chances. He was shackled to two unarmed
officers and guarded at a distance by two others. When
Garfield, James A.
341
See CHARLES JULIUS GUITEAU.
GARFIELD, portrait swindler
Garfield portrait swindle
were trapped and eventually did the only thing they
could do, surrender.
Garrett always thought ambush. When he caught up
with Billy on July 14, 1881, following the young gunman’s escape from custody, Garrett shot him to death
as the unsuspecting outlaw walked into a darkened
room in his stocking feet with his gun tucked in his
belt. He then ran triumphantly out of the building
shouting gleefully: “I killed the Kid! I killed the Kid!”
Garrett gained nationwide fame for the killing, especially far from New Mexico, where he was not all that
popular. In fact, he was denied renomination as sheriff
by the Democratic political powers, who undoubtedly
were not happy about the way he had killed the Kid
from ambush. In addition, Gov. Lew Wallace appeared
to have put obstacles in the way of Garrett’s collecting
the reward for Billy, and Garrett finally had to lobby in
Santa Fe to get a special act through the state legislature
awarding him $500.
There is reason to think Garrett lived in fear that
some fan of the Kid would take revenge on him. When
he became cattle boss on a large ranch, he ordered that
no cowhand be allowed to carry a six-shooter. Several
cowboys who resented the order said it was clearly
given because Garrett was afraid to turn his back on
them. In 1889 he ran for sheriff in Chavez County but
lost, the stigma of Billy the Kid still clinging to him.
Embittered, he pulled up stakes and moved to Uvalde
County, Tex., where he befriended John Nance Garner,
a future vice president of the United States then in his
thirties and already a political power. With Cactus
Jack’s help, he was elected a county commissioner and
held that post until 1897, when old friends in Dona
Ana County got him to return to New Mexico. Garrett
became sheriff of Las Cruces County and held the
office for one term. When he was not renominated, he
returned to ranching until Teddy Roosevelt, who
admired law-and-order types, named him a customs
collector in El Paso. For some unknown reason, he fell
from presidential favor and was not reappointed in
1905. Following his return to farming, Garrett got
involved in a feud and was shot to death in 1908. That
killing, like many of Garrett’s, was controversial. A
neighbor, Wayne Brazel, admitted he had killed Garrett
but said it was in self-defense, a version backed up by a
witness, Carl Adamson. However, it was evident that
Garrett had been shot in the back of the head while
heeding a call of nature. There was considerable reason
to believe that the real murderer was Killin’ Jim Miller,
a professional hired gun, and that he had been assigned
the task by Adamson, who wanted Garrett’s land. Officially, Brazel was charged in the killing and cleared.
Today, Garrett is remembered only for the killing of
Billy the Kid and is generally better thought of than he
Shortly after the assassination of President James A.
Garfield in 1881, some 200 newspapers carried an
advertisement that was to become a minor classic swindle. The ad offered the grieving public what seemed to
be a rare portrait of the dead president, stating:
I have secured the authorized steel engravings of the
late President Garfield, executed by the United States
Government, approved by the President of the United
States, by Congress and by every member of the President’s family as the most faithful of all portraits of the
President. It was executed by the Government’s most
expert steel engravers, and I will send a copy from the
original plate, in full colors approved by the Government, postpaid, for one dollar each.
To every eager person sending a dollar, the swindler
fulfilled his promises to the letter by mailing back an
engraving of President Garfield on a 5¢ postage stamp.
Following the Garfield portrait swindle, con men
went on to pull the same racket countless times in endless variations involving other notable persons and subjects that have appeared on commemorative stamps,
sometimes also promising “suitable mounting,” which
meant putting the stamp on an index card.
garment area crime
See HIJACKING, SNEAK
THIEVERY.
Garrett, Patrick Floyd (1850–1908) lawman and killer
of Billy the Kid
To sum up Pat Garrett’s career as a lawman, he was at
his best on a manhunt only when he killed from
ambush, a trait he exhibited constantly while tracking
his greatest prize, Billy the Kid. While stalking the Kid,
Garrett, then sheriff of Lincoln County, plotted an
ambush from the old hospital at Fort Sumner, New
Mexico Territory, where the wife of one of the Kid’s
gang members, Charlie Bowdre, was confined. When
the gang appeared and Garrett thought he spotted the
Kid, he ordered his men to open fire, but the wrong
man, Tom O’Folliard, was mortally wounded. Four
days later, Garrett set another ambush outside an
abandoned rock house near Stinking Springs, N.M. He
passed the word that the ambushers were to shoot
Billy the Kid when he walked outside at dawn. As
dawn broke, Charlie Bowdre came out, and since he
was of the same general appearance and size as the
Kid, Garrett signaled for the shooting to commence.
Bowdre too was fatally wounded. It was a needless
killing and a needless ambush. The Kid and his gang
342
GEBHARDT, Dr. Fritz
miles in six hours to get a buddy out of a Texas jail, as
Garrett claimed. In praise of himself, Garrett loftily
claimed credit for delivering to New Mexico “a season
of peace and prosperity to which she has ever, heretofore, been a stranger.”
See also: BILLY THE KID.
Gas House Gang 19th-century New York gang
A vicious group of street thugs, the Gas House Gang
originally controlled the Gas House district around
New York’s East 35th Street, but in an unusual criminal
migration just before the start of the 20th century, the
gang moved southward to take control of Third Avenue
from 11th Street to 18th Streets.
During their heyday over the next dozen or so years,
the Gas Housers, numbering about 200, controlled the
area with an iron fist, extracting tribute from saloon
keepers and businessmen, running gambling games and
so on. Whenever they failed to find enough entertainment and riches in their immediate neighborhoods,
they would invade other gang precincts and take what
they wanted. Usually, they met little resistance because
other gangs, even larger ones, knew any war with the
Gas Housers would be debilitating.
Essentially, however, the Gas Housers remained true
street thugs, revelling most in muggings; in their prime
they averaged some 30 street holdups a night. The term
Gas House Gang entered the English vernacular as a
description for a bunch of brawling rowdies; thus when
some years later the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team
developed into the rowdies of the diamond, they quite
naturally became known as the Gas House Gang.
Pat Garrett’s fanciful biography of Billy the Kid served to
enhance his own reputation as well as that of the young
outlaw.
Gebhardt, Dr. Fritz (1895–1935) murder victim
The first murder verdict in America with an anti-Nazi
tone was given in the case of Dr. Fritz Gebhardt, who in
1934 had met and wooed an American woman, Laura
Parr, on a sea cruise. Within a year both were living in
the Beekman Tower in New York City, Laura on the
l9th floor and Gebhardt on the 21st.
On November 25, 1935 Gebhardt telephoned
Laura and asked her to come to his apartment because
he was feeling ill. When she arrived in her nightclothes,
Gebhardt made a miraculous recovery. It was then that
he suggested Laura engage in what she regarded as an
immoral act. When she refused, according to her later
testimony, he threatened her with a gun. Laura seized
the gun and shot Gebhardt dead.
The press initially judged Laura guilty, labeling
her the Icy Blonde. The New York Daily Mirror ran
Laura’s picture on the editorial page with the caption
“With Such a Lady—Be Careful.” The New York World–
was at the time. Part of the reason for this is Garrett’s
contribution to Western history, An Authentic Life of
Billy the Kid, a book written in Garrett’s name by an
itinerant journalist, Ash Upson. In the preface Garrett
assured his readers, “I am incited to this labor by an
impulse to correct the thousand false statements which
have appeared in the public newspapers and in yellowcovered cheap novels.”
He nonetheless proceeded to deliver a version full of
falsehoods. One piece of misinformation was that Billy
the Kid had killed his first man at the age of 12 to
avenge an insult to his mother. He was also mistaken
when he said the Kid rescued a wagon train by routing
marauding Indians with an ax, and Billy never rode 81
343
GEIDEL, Paul
Gein developed a strong interest in female anatomy
and, greatly affected by Christine Jorgensen’s successful
transsexual operation, apparently wanted to change his
sex. He developed a morbid need to acquire women’s
bodies in order to study the anatomical structure of
female organs, and to satisfy that desire, he took to digging up female corpses from their graves.
To aid in this secret task, Gein recruited a lame-witted
old farmer, assuring him that their ghoulish activities
would advance the cause of science. The old man
helped Gein bring the corpses to a shed next to his
farmhouse. Here, Gein skinned the bodies and sometimes even donned the skin and walked around his
house so clad for hours. He also kept parts of the bodies as trophies, mounting the heads, hearts, livers and
sex organs. When the doting farmer was committed to
an old-age home, Gein was faced with the task of
gathering the corpses on his own—or finding some
easier way to collect bodies than exhuming them from
all those graves. Some time in the early 1950s, he
apparently decided it would be simpler to kill fresh
victims rather than go through all the trouble of digging graves
Later, Gein would helpfully try to name his victims,
but he suffered from a lack of memory on the subject
and could recall only two for certain. In 1954 Gein
walked into a bar run by 5l-year-old Mary Hogan in
Pine Grove and, seeing her alone, pulled out a pistol
and shot her in the head. He piled her body on a sled
and took her home. Subsequently, he accumulated
some other bodies, although after his arrest he couldn’t
remember if he had killed them or dug them up. In
November 1957 he killed Mrs. Bernice Worden, the
operator of a hardware store in Plainfield. Ironically,
the night before the murder Gein had mentioned to
Mrs. Worden’s son, who happened to be a deputy sheriff, that he would have to buy some antifreeze. The following evening the deputy went to his mother’s store
and found her missing. There was some blood on the
floor and a half-written receipt for a purchase of
antifreeze, and the cash register was gone.
Mrs. Worden’s son remembered his conversation
with Gein, and the latter’s farm was searched. There the
authorities found all sorts of grim relics, including
bracelets made of human skin, a sewn-up skull fashioned into a soup bowl and dozens of other gruesome
remains from at least 15 bodies. Gein admitted the
grave robbings and the murders but was most upset
when accused of robbing the cash register from his last
victim’s store. “I’m no robber,” he said indignantly. “I
took the money and the register only because I wanted
to see how the machine worked.”
Gein was committed for life to an institution for the
criminally insane. For some years the Gein farmhouse
Telegram asked, “Can True Love Yield to Murderous
Hatred?” Even the New York Times found interest in
the case so intense that it devoted four columns to it
just prior to the trial.
At the onset of the trial, public opinion was against
Laura Parr, but this changed as her defense lawyer, the
legendary Samuel Leibowitz, developed his case. The
lawyer succeeded in putting on trial not only the victim,
a German businessman, but the entire Nazi regime as
well. In fact, while prospective jurors were being questioned, it appeared as though the accused was German
philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, then dead
some 36 years. During the trial itself, for a time the real
defendant seemed to be Field Marshal Hermann Goering. (During World War I Dr. Gebhardt had served with
distinction in the Richtofen Squadron, where he
became friendly with a young pilot named Hermann
Goering.) Somehow even the personal peccadillos of
brutal Brownshirt chief Ernest Roehm became part of
the case, although there was no record of Roehm ever
residing in the Beekman Tower.
By the end of the trial, the choice was clear; the jury
could vote for the supermen of the German master race
or for American womanhood. When Laura Parr was
found not guilty, women spectators squealed in delight.
“The defendant is discharged,” the judge announced
stiffly and left the bench. It was one of the few times in
a New York court when a jury was not thanked by the
presiding judge for its labors.
See also: SAMUEL S. LEIBOWITZ.
Geidel, Paul (1894–?) longest-term convict
It is believed that no one ever served more time in an
American prison than Paul Geidel, who was found
guilty of the 1911 murder of a wealthy guest in a New
York City hotel where he worked as a porter. Geidel,
who was 17 years old at the time, was sentenced to 20
years to life in Clinton Prison. In May 1980, 68 years
and seven months later, he was released from the
Fishkill Correctional Facility, to which he had been
transferred, and was sent to live out his remaining days
in a nursing home.
Gein, Edward (1906–1984) murderer
Few murderers in the 20th century have evoked such
horror as Ed Gein, a Wisconsin farmer, in the 1950s.
Indeed his career inspired the movie Psycho. Gein
worked the family farm at Plainfield, Wis. with his
brother Henry and his elderly mother, who always
insisted that her two boys never marry. His mother died
in 1945, and brother Henry followed her within a year,
leaving Ed alone on his farm with his strange fantasies.
344
GENNA brothers
was regarded a place of horror until finally the local
people burned it to the ground.
Geller, Max
standard advice, but observers could not tell how much
of it the frightened Cahill had absorbed. Five minutes
later, Buck Linn entered the saloon. After spotting the
little gambler, he pulled his gun and fired four fast shots
from a distance of 12 to 15 feet. All missed. Cahill
aimed his .45 and sighted in on Linn’s belt buckle when
he was about 8 feet away. His aim was high, and he
shot Linn right through the heart.
Thus ended the Gem’s most famous shoot-out,
although Raynor did not expire for 48 hours. On the
chance that he might recover, both Rennick and Cahill,
who had pushed their luck to the limit, rode hard for
Mexico. The two victors had popular support, one
drunk at the bar proclaiming: “I’m damned glad Bill
got it. He should have been killed years ago.” From the
silence that greeted his comment, the drunk realized
there was still the chance that Raynor might recover.
He added quickly, “If Bill gets well, what I said don’t
go.” But Raynor, fortunately for the drunk, didn’t
make it.
The El Paso Herald stated: “The victims had no one
to blame but themselves. Their train of life collided
with loaded revolvers and they have gone down forever
in the smash-up. Thus endeth the first chapter of our
spring fights.”
See GREEN PARROT MURDER.
Gem Saloon, gunfight at the
While the O.K. Corral is the most famous shoot-out
site in America, far more deadly gun duels and killings
took place at the infamous Gem Saloon in El Paso,
Tex. It was here in January 1877 that Pink Higgins outdrew Merritt Horrell, chalking up another death in the
Horrell-Higgins feud. But just as there was the gunfight
at the O.K. Corral, so too was there the gunfight at the
Gem, one that probably had more stock elements than
any of a score of famous duels: right against wrong, a
man bucking incredible odds, mistaken identity, black
Western humor and a prime example of the art of gunfighting.
The duel or more correctly, duels were fought on
April 14, 1884. On that day a gambler and dandy
named Bill Raynor, who had gained his reputation as a
gunfighter by planting eight foes in the ground, turned
“mean” and walked through town looking for a fight.
Given his reputation, he found no takers. After challenging every man in a barbershop, he moved on to the
Gem. He sauntered into the saloon’s gambling room
and finally provoked one faro player, Bob Rennick, into
demanding Raynor stop leaning on him. Raynor told
him he was stepping out to the bar to have a drink and
was then coming back in to kill him. The other players
advised Rennick to move away from the table so they
could continue their game in peace. Rennick checked
his six-gun, moved to the wall and began watching the
doorway. A minute or so later, Raynor burst into the
room, his guns blazing. Four shots splintered the chair
Rennick had vacated; Rennick stepped out from the
wall and answered with two shots that caught Raynor
in the stomach and chest. Raynor staggered out to the
street and collapsed in the arms of a noted visitor in
town, Wyatt Earp, asking Earp to inform his mother
that he had “died game.”
Raynor was taken to the doctor’s office, where his
friend Buck Linn rushed to him, inquiring about who
had shot him. Raynor gave a garbled answer that indicated the man who had gunned him down was Bob
Cahill. Linn vowed to take vengeance on his friend’s
alleged assailant. When this news got back to the Gem,
Cahill, an inoffensive gambler who had never shot a
gun, became petrified. A friend named Dan Tipton
handed Cahill a loaded .45, and Wyatt Earp gave him a
fast lesson in gunfighting, to wit: stay calm, take plenty
of time aiming and shoot for the belly button. This was
gemstone
Watergate code word
The code word for the break-in at the Democratic
National Committee’s headquarters in the Watergate
complex in Washington, D.C. was gemstone. Five men
were caught in the ill-conceived, still not fully explained
operation that resulted in the toppling of the Nixon
administration, with Richard Nixon forced to resign
the presidency and several of his top associates sent to
prison.
Genna brothers
Prohibition-era Chicago family gang
The Genna brothers, known as the Terrible Gennas,
were the first Chicago gang to jump into moonshining
in a big way with the advent of Prohibition. Most of
the brothers had been Black Hand extortionists preying
on the residents of the city’s Little Italy section, but in
1919 they realized there was more money putting people to work producing illegal alcohol, and they turned
Little Italy into one large cottage moonshining industry.
The brothers Genna—Bloody Angelo, Tony the Gentleman, Mike the Devil, Pete, Sam and Jim—had come
to Chicago from Sicily in 1910. Five of them were typical Sicilian killers—haughty, vicious, treacherous, murderous and devoutly religious. They carried their
crucifixes in the same pocket with their pistols. The
“different” Genna was Tony the Gentleman, or, as he
345
GENOVESE, Kitty
was sometimes called, Tony the Aristocrat. He studied
architecture, constructed model tenements for poor
Italian immigrants, was a leading patron of the opera
and lived elegantly in a downtown hotel. Tony had
strong personal convictions against killing and never
did a job himself, although he attended all family councils at which rub-outs were planned. When Johnny Torrio and Al Capone were setting up their operation, the
two feared the Gennas more than any other gang
because they commanded the most savage set of killers.
Among them were Sam “Smoots” Amatuna, the gangland dandy who loved music almost as much as he
loved committing murder; Giuseppe “the Cavalier”
Nerone, a university graduate and mathematics teacher
turned gunman; and the celebrated murder duo John
Scalise and Albert Anselmi, who introduced the practice of rubbing bullets with garlic in the hope of inducing gangrene should the victim survive the initial
gunshot wound.
Combined with the Gennas’ constant application of
deadly force was their ability to corrupt the police. In
1925 a confession by their office manager indicated the
brothers had on their payroll five police captains and
some 400 uniformed officers, mostly from the Maxwell
Street station, as well as many plainclothesmen from
headquarters and the state attorney’s office. The Gennas’ booze-making operation grossed $350,000 a
month, and the six brothers netted a clear monthly
profit of $150,000. When Johnny Torrio brought most
of the gangs together under one umbrella, the Gennas
were the hardest to control. Ever devious, they constantly flooded other gangs’ areas with their cheap
booze, underselling them with terrible rotgut. A threeway competition soon developed among the Gennas,
the North Side O’Banions and the Torrio-Capone mob.
Eventually the Gennas started getting picked off one
by one, especially after Anselmi and Scalise deserted
their banner to join the Capone forces.
Bloody Angelo Genna fell victim on May 25, 1925
to North Side gangsters who had followed his roadster
through Chicago streets. When Angelo first became
aware of them, he picked up speed. But in his desperate
haste to get away, he smashed into a lamppost and was
pinned behind the wheel, unable to do anything but
watch as the pursuing black sedan glided to a stop by
him and three shotguns blasted him apart.
Mike Genna vowed vengeance on the O’Banions
who had done the job. The following month he and
Anselmi and Scalise were out hunting for North Siders.
What Mike Genna didn’t known was that he was being
taken for a ride by the pair, who had secretly defected to
Capone. The three got caught in a gunfight with police.
Anselmi and Scalise killed two officers, wounded a third
and fled, leaving a wounded Genna to be captured by
police. As Mike Genna was being placed on a stretcher,
he cut loose a powerful kick with his good leg and
knocked out one of the attendants. “Take that, you
dirty son of a bitch,” he snarled. He died two hours
later.
Tony the Gentleman, the real brains of the Terrible
Gennas, realizing that Anselmi and Scalise had
deserted, knew he was next. Just as he was about to
leave the city, he arranged for a final meeting with his
supporter Nerone on a darkened street corner. He did
not know that Nerone also had defected. When Tony
Genna emerged from his car, Nerone grasped his hand
in a steel-like handshake. Just then one or two gunmen
stepped out of the darkness and filled Tony with bullets. Tony the Gentleman lingered for days before
dying.
The power of the Gennas was now broken. The
three surviving brothers fled, Sam and Pete to hideouts
outside Chicago and Jim all the way back to Sicily. In
Palermo, Jim Genna got two years for stealing the jewels that adorned the statue of the Madonna di Trapani.
Eventually, the three brothers came back to Chicago
but avoided the rackets. They ran an olive oil and
cheese importing firm, finishing out their days in relative obscurity.
See also: ANSELMI AND SCALISE, ALPHONSE “SCARFACE
AL” CAPONE, MAXWELL STREET POLICE STATION.
Genovese, Kitty (1935–1964) murder victim
The events surrounding the murder of Kitty Genovese,
a 28-year-old woman from Queens, New York City,
were more bizarre than the brutal crime itself, in which
a killer stalked and killed his victim in three separate
attacks over a 35-minute period. The attacks occurred
after 3 A.M. on March 13, 1964. The killer, 29-year-old
Winston Moseley, walked away after first stabbing the
woman on Austin Street in the middle-class section of
Kew Gardens. As Kitty Genovese staggered around the
short block toward the entrance to her home, her
assailant returned in his car, looked for her in doorways, found her and stabbed her again. He drove off
but in a few minutes came back to find the woman in a
hallway at the foot of a staircase. He stabbed her a
third time, fatally, and drove off.
The crime itself was not all that unusual. What made
the Genovese case different is that at least 37 persons
witnessed all or part of the attacks but not one of them
called the police.
After the first attack, the victim shrieked: “Oh, my
God, he stabbed me! Please help me! Please help me!”
Lights went on in several apartments in a 10-story
apartment house across the street. A man yelled out:
“Let that girl alone!”
346
GENOVESE, Vito
It was enough to make Moseley walk away. When
he returned the first time and stabbed her again, Kitty
Genovese screamed: “I’m dying! I’m dying!” Again
lights went on and again windows went up. Many persons saw Moseley, but still no one called the police.
After Moseley finished off his victim on the third try,
the first call to the police was made.
Eventually, Moseley was caught and sentenced to the
electric chair, which because of the law on capital punishment at the time, meant in effect a life sentence.
What remained puzzling to police, newspaper reporters
and psychologists was why nobody had called the
police earlier. The man who finally placed the first call
had done so with trepidation. Before he made the call,
he telephoned a friend in Nassau County to seek his
advice on what to do. After some deliberation it was
decided he should telephone the police. The comments
gotten from some witnesses were perhaps instructive of
the noninvolvement instincts present in contemporary
American society. Among the statements were: “I didn’t
want to get involved”; “Frankly, we were afraid”; “I
didn’t want my husband to get involved”; “I don’t
know”; “I was tired. I went back to bed”; “Get away
or I’ll throw you down the steps.”
Another was possibly the most instructive: “The last
time I complained to the police, I was sent to a concentration camp.” Kew Gardens contained a high concentration of former victims of the Nazis in Europe, and a
common characteristic of many was that the last thing
one did was have anything to do with the symbols of
authority.
favor, Genovese ordered the execution of Il Duce’s
longtime nemesis, radical editor Carlo Tresca, in New
York City, a hit carried out by a Genovese underling,
Carmine Galante.
In 1944, with the Mussolini regime crumbling, Genovese turned up as an interpreter for the army’s intelligence service. Due to his energetic and diligent efforts,
a number of black market operatives were caught in
southern Italy. However, the military’s pleasure with
Genovese’s performance vanished when it was discovered that as he unearthed the black marketeers and put
them out of business, he simply took over their rackets.
Genovese returned to the United States after the war,
when the witnesses to the murder charge against him
had been dealt with. He took control of the Luciano
family and, with his mentor now in exile, set about
making himself the dominant figure in the American
underworld. To do that, he had to gain dominance over
the five New York crime families, eliminate Frank
Costello and lessen the influence of Meyer Lansky, all
the while paying lip service to Luciano.
It took Genovese almost a decade to solidify his
position to the point that he could attempt this
takeover, in the process gaining needed revenues from
the narcotics trade. By 1957 he was ready to move. He
first ordered the execution of Costello, whose importance in the underworld had diminished as a result of
the Kefauver hearings. The plot failed and Costello was
only slightly wounded. A few months later, however,
another of his assassination orders was spectacularly
successful. Albert Anastasia was shot to death as he sat
in a barber’s chair in a New York hotel. At the time,
Anastasia was Costello’s most important ally, and without him the fabled Prime Minister of the Underworld
appeared helpless.
Later that year Genovese sought to solidify his new
power by calling the famed Apalachin Conference in
upstate New York. That meeting ended in a fiasco
when the state police raided it and took dozens of leading Mafia dons into custody. Genovese was not perceptive enough to realize the meeting had been sabotaged
by enemies far smarter and craftier than he, including
Costello, Lansky, Luciano and Carlo Gambino, the heir
to the Anastasia crime family. Gambino and Lansky
had cooperated with Genovese in the elimination of
Anastasia for their own reasons—Gambino to gain new
power for himself and Lansky to eliminate the pressure
the kill-crazy Anastasia was putting on him for a share
of his vast Cuban gambling profits.
In these four, Genovese was facing the top doubledealers of the underworld. They understood better than
Genovese that war between the two camps would be
senseless, leading only to trouble for all. Instead, they
plotted to eliminate Genovese by cunning and treach-
Genovese, Vito (1897–1969) Mafia chieftain
Vito “Don Vito” Genovese was probably the most awesome of the Mafia dons. He is credited with being the
moving force that put the Mafia in the narcotics business, a shift some others, such as Frank Costello and,
despite the contentions of federal narcotics investigators, Lucky Luciano, strongly opposed. Genovese, who
started out in the shadow of Luciano in the early
1920s, rose to the top of the syndicate crime empire by
killing off his many rivals. He is known to have ordered
the deaths of Willie Moretti in 1951, Steve Franse in
1953 and Albert Anastasia in 1957. He was the obvious mastermind behind the attempt on the life of Frank
Costello, which eventually led to the latter’s retirement.
Genovese was always a cunning criminal. Faced with
a murder charge in 1937, he fled to Italy, where he
ingratiated himself with Benito Mussolini despite the
fascist leader’s ruthless campaign to wipe out the Italian
Mafia. Genovese became the chief drug supplier for
Mussolini’s foreign minister and son-in-law, Count
Ciano. During the war, to further gain Mussolini’s
347
GENTLE Annie
ery. They decided to set him up for a federal drug bust,
but the narcotics agents who were tipped off muffed
the opportunity and Genovese slipped away. The
underworld conspirators then arranged a trap that even
allowed for the government’s ineptitude. The four
pitched in a $100,000 kitty and paid a minor Puerto
Rican dope pusher named Nelson Cantellops to implicate Genovese in a deal. Although it was not logical
that an unimportant street pusher like Cantellops
would have the type of inside information to put away
a power like Genovese, the government gladly accepted
his testimony and convicted Genovese. In 1959 he was
sentenced to the Atlanta Penitentiary for 15 years.
According to underworld informer Joe Valachi, Genovese continued to direct the activities of his crime family from behind bars, but there is no doubt his influence
lessened. Unquestionably, his effort to become the top
boss of the underworld had been a disaster.
It was said that Genovese and Costello, sent to the
Atlanta Penitentiary on tax charges, later held a tearful
reconciliation in prison. If so, Genovese didn’t understand the role Costello had played in his downfall; the
facts of the plot were not revealed until Luciano broke
his silence on the matter shortly before he died in 1962.
When Genovese died in 1969, still a federal prisoner on
a trumped-up charge, he was proof that mere brawn
would never be enough to take over organized crime in
America.
See also: ALBERT ANASTASIA, APALACHIN CONFERENCE,
FRANK COSTELLO, CARMINE GALANTE, CARLO GAMBINO,
PETER LATEMPA, CHARLES “LUCKY” LUCIANO, WILLIE
MORETTI, CARLO TRESCA, JOSEPH M. VALACHI.
Gentle Annie
him through the crowd to the city jail and kept him
there overnight for protection. The disturbance became
known as the Gentlemen’s Riot. No convictions ever
resulted.
George, Christian (?–1724) cult leader and accused
murderer
Christian George was one of the first to preach free
love in the New World and died at the end of a rope
because of it.
A religious fanatic from Switzerland, he preached his
free love faith to the citizens of Charleston, S.C. He soon
gathered a small sect of faithful believers and lead them
to the Orange Quarter of South Carolina late in 1723
to set up a love commune. Among George’s converts were a young couple, Peter and Judith Dutartre.
The free love zealot apparently impressed the woman
considerably with his gospel, so much so that she was
soon pregnant with George’s child. News of this “Devil’s
child” shocked the good burghers of Charleston, who,
led by Justice Symmons, formed a posse to destroy
George’s love camp. Rather than submit to arrest,
George ordered his followers to barricade their camp
and resist. The Charleston forces stormed the commune’s
fortification but were beaten back. Then Peter Dutartre
seized a musket and shot Justice Symmons dead. The
next attack succeeded and the free love congregation was
captured.
While the killing of Justice Symmons was a lone act
by Peter Dutartre, the real quarry for Charleston justice
was Christian George, who, it was feared, might lead
other gullible persons from the path of morality.
Dutartre, Christian George and a third cult member,
Peter Rombert, were put on trial together, and after a
two-day hearing all three were sentenced to hang. The
verdict was carried out the following day. The citizens
of Charleston then burned the love commune to the
ground and returned to their own churches, content
that morality had carried the day against the teachings
of the Devil.
See ANNIE STAFFORD.
Gentlemen’s Riot
Easily the “classiest” riot in American history was
staged in 1835 in Boston by the “broadcloth mob,” a
crowd of 3,000 wealthy and socially prominent men,
most of whom were dressed in broadcloth. On October
21 they gathered to protest a lecture being given by the
famous English abolitionist George Thompson on
behalf of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. The
mob planned to tar and feather the speaker, but
Thompson had been forewarned and fled the city. The
mob, angered at losing the victim, vented its frustration
on William Lloyd Garrison, who published the antislavery newspaper Liberator. Garrison was bound with
ropes and hauled away some distance, and by this time
it was probably uncertain if the intent was a tar and
feathering or a hanging. Garrison, however, was rescued by a number of friends and the police who carried
Giancana, Sam “Momo” (1908–1975) syndicate leader
Considered by many to have been the most ruthless
Mafia killer in the country, Sam “Momo” Giancana
was for years the crime boss of Chicago and was suspected of involvement in various CIA plots to assassinate Cuban premier Fidel Castro.
Giancana’s arrest record dated back to 1925, when
he was a gun runner for Al Capone. Unlike other crime
bosses, whose arrest records were usually short, Giancana was a “doer,” with more than 70 arrests for everything from assault and bookmaking to bombing and
348
GIGANTE, Vincent “the Chin”
Wansley were captured and convicted. Much to the
delight of the press, Gibbs added one gory confession
after another to his murderous exploits. Some were definitely true; others were somewhat doubtful. In any
event, Gibbs achieved celebrity by the time he and
Wansley were hanged on Ellis Island on April 22,
1831. Thousands watched the spectacle from pleasure
boats and fireboats off-shore.
suspicion of murder. He served prison sentences for
auto theft, operation of an illegal still and burglary.
During World War II he was asked by the draft board
how he made his living; Giancana replied: “Me? I
steal.” He was rejected for service as “a constitutional
psychopath.”
According to well-publicized charges, Giancana was
recruited in 1960 by the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency to “hit” Fidel Castro. Some say Giancana deliberately botched the assignment because he still had
hopes of rebuilding the Mafia’s gambling business in
Cuba. In 1975 the Giancana-CIA connection talk was
so widespread that the crime boss was about to be summoned before a Senate investigating committee. Before
Giancana could appear, gunmen entered his fortresslike
home in Chicago’s Oak Park suburb and put seven bullets in him. CIA director William Colby announced
forthwith, “We had nothing to do with it.” Newsmen
contacting unofficial spokesmen for the syndicate got
the same response from that source.
See also: ANTHONY JOSEPH ACCARDO, APALACHIN CONFERENCE, FIORE “FIFI” BUCCIERI, FORTY-TWO GANG, PAUL
“THE WAITER” RICCA.
Gigante, Vincent “the Chin” (1926– ) mobster
Vincent “the Chin” Gigante was a hulking 300-pound
gangster generally credited as the hit man in the famous
attempt to assassinate crime boss Frank Costello in
1957. According to popular theory, the hit was masterminded by Vito Genovese to seize the leadership of
organized crime in New York. Gigante reportedly took
target practice daily in a Greenwich Village basement in
preparation for his big opportunity.
On May 2, 1957 Costello returned to his apartment
building on Central Park West at the corner of 72nd
Street. As he did, a large black Cadillac pulled to the
curb, and a huge man got out and hurried ahead of
Costello into the building. When Costello entered the
lobby, the big man stepped from behind a pillar and
produced a .38-caliber revolver. Just before firing, he
called out, “This is for you, Frank.”
At the sound of the man’s voice, Costello turned, and
by that movement saved his own life. The bullet tore
through the right side of his scalp just above the ear. The
fat man raced off for the waiting Cadillac, satisfied he
had killed his target. Costello, although needing hospitalization, was not seriously hurt. Maintaining the
underworld code, he refused to name his assailant.
However, the apartment house doorman had gotten a
good look at the blubbery gunman, and based on his evidence, an alert went out for the Chin. He was not readily
found. According to the later statement of underworld
informer Joe Valachi, “The Chin was just taken somewhere up in the country to lose some weight.”
When that body beautifying was completed, Gigante
surrendered, saying he understood the law was looking
for him. It was thus a trim and slim Chin who went on
trial for attempted murder, but Costello refused to identify him and the doorman either wouldn’t or couldn’t.
The Chin left the court a free man.
It was supposedly the Chin’s farewell to the big
time, his last moment in the spotlight, but he was
involved in a struggle far greater than himself. Powerful
Mafia forces lined up on two sides—Genovese and his
men on one side and the aging Costello, the deported
Lucky Luciano and the crafty Meyer Lansky on the
other. On the surface, peace was arranged. Genovese,
who wanted Costello eliminated to ease his path to
Gibbs, Charles (c. 1800–1831) pirate
Officially credited with the murder of 400 victims, a
Rhode Islander named Charles Gibbs stands high on
any list of American pirates, even if, as is probable, the
total number of killings attributed to him was greatly
exaggerated.
His modus operandi rarely varied. He would sign on
a ship and pilfer what supplies he could whenever the
vessel hit port. If he found the cargo aboard worthwhile, he would recruit a few other seamen aboard to
join him, and they would murder the captain, first mate
and whomever else in the crew they thought would harbor any feelings of loyalty. Since crews of the average
vessel generally numbered less than 10, three or four
murders usually were sufficient for Gibbs’ purpose.
When he was captured, Gibbs bragged that he often
was able to keep all the booty for himself by frightening
off the seamen who had helped him.
Gibbs’ biggest haul was his last one, some $50,000
worth of cargo seized from the Vineyard, which he had
signed on in New Orleans on November 1, 1830 for a
run to Philadelphia. Together with the ship’s cook,
Thomas Wansley, and three others, Gibbs murdered
Capt. William Thornby and First Mate William
Roberts off Cape Hatteras, N.C. After the mutineers
landed, the three sailors who had joined Gibbs and
Wansley went to the authorities, explaining they had
agreed to join in the piracy only because they realized
they would be killed if they had refused. Gibbs and
349
GILLETTE, Chester
total power, agreed that Costello would no longer be
threatened and would be allowed to retire on his racket
revenues. Costello and his allies consented to the arrangement, and apparently to show good faith, the Chin was
even invited to a number of Costello parties.
However, the Costello-Luciano-Lansky axis joined
by the cunning Carlo Gambino were determined to get
rid of Genovese and concocted a plot whereby he
would be handed over to federal narcotics detectives in
a tidy drug-smuggling plot. Part of the strategy called
for the payment of $100,000 to a minor dope pusher,
Nelson Cantellops, to implicate Genovese. Costello
contributed $25,000 to the kitty with only one proviso:
the Chin had to be involved as well. Everything went
according to the script: in 1959 Genovese got 15 years,
and 24 of his aides, including the Chin, received long
prison terms as well.
In the 1970s various printed accounts claimed
Gigante was still alive, although, according to underworld sources, suffering from a mental ailment and frequently regressing back to childhood. Actually he had
risen to the rank of consigliere under Genovese family
crime boss Frank “Funzi” Tieri. In fact, in 1987 with
the conviction of the next family boss, Fat Tony
Salerno, Gigante was named acting boss, this despite
the fact that he sometimes walked on the street in Little
Italy in his bathrobe, mumbling incoherently. Both the
family soldiers and the police saw this behavior as a
dodge to avoid possible later future prosecution. Under
Gigante the Genovese family became once more the
most powerful of all, eclipsing the Gambino family
under John Gotti, with whom he had a running battle
for power. Eventually Gigante’s “dummy act” collapsed
under attack by federal prosecutors, and in December
1997 he was sent to prison for 12 years, making it
unlikely at his age that he would resume control of his
family, presuming he survived his term.
See also: APALACHIN CONFERENCE, FRANK COSTELLO,
VITO GENOVESE.
partaking in the pleasures of the present, especially an
affair with Billie Brown, an 18-year-old secretary at the
factory.
Things went along well for the 22-year-old youth up
to the time he received a letter from Billie saying she
was pregnant. She did not ask Gillette to marry her but
kept sending him heart-rending letters, which were
intended sooner or later to persuade him to “do the
right thing.” Gillette ignored Billie’s plight until she
wrote warning him that she would tell his uncle. Seeing
his world threatened, Gillette informed Billie he not
only would do right by her but also intended to take
her on a glorious holiday.
On July 8 the couple spent the night in Utica, registering in a hotel as man and wife, and from there
moved on to the North Woods section of the southern
Adirondacks. After some time at Tupper Lake, they
moved on to Big Moose Lake, where Gillette asked for
“any old hotel where they have boats to rent.” They
were sent to the Glenmore Hotel, where Billie registered under her right name while Gillette used a phony.
They got separate rooms.
On the morning of July 11, the couple took along
a picnic lunch and a tennis racket and rowed out
on the large lake. Chester Gillette was not seen again
until almost 8 o’clock that evening; Billie Brown was
never seen alive again. Her body washed ashore at
Big Moose Lake on July 14. The medical report
revealed that she had died from blows to her face,
which had been badly battered, not from drowning.
The same day, Gillette was arrested for murder at the
Arrowhead Hotel on Eagle Bay, where he had since
registered. Under some newturned moss on the shore,
the police found a buried tennis racket and asserted it
was what Gillette had used to kill Billie. He denied it
and told many conflicting stories. One was that Billie
had committed suicide by jumping overboard; another
was that the boat had capsized accidentally and that
she had drowned after hitting her face on the side of
the boat.
During Gillette’s trial, which lasted 22 days, 109
witnesses appeared. So many of them came from the
Cortland skirt factory that it had to shut down.
Numerous women said they could not believe this
charming, calm and handsome young man was capable
of murder. From his cell Gillette sold photos of himself
for $5 apiece and thus could afford to have his meals
sent in from the local inn. Despite what his female supporters thought, the jury found differently, convicting
him of premeditated murder. After more than a year of
appeals, Chester Gillette went to the electric chair at
Auburn Prison on March 30, 1908, refusing to admit
his guilt.
Gillette, Chester (1884–1908) murderer
Chester Gillette was the real-life Clyde Griffiths of
Theodore Dreiser’s classic novel An American Tragedy.
An ambitious factory worker who wanted to make it
into high society, Gillette worked at his uncle’s skirt
factory in Cortland, N.Y. As the relative of a well-to-do
businessman in town—Gillette had been deserted at the
age of 14 by his own parents, who had gone off around
the country to spread the Salvation Army gospel—he
was accepted into local society and could look ahead to
the time when he would marry a wealthy girl. Those
future plans, however, did not prevent Gillette from
350
GING, Katherine “Kitty”
Gilmore, Gary Mark (1940–1977) murderer
Ging, Katherine “Kitty” (1867–1894) victim of
hypnotic murder
In 1977 Gary Gilmore, age 36, became the first man to
be executed in the United States in about a decade. His
death followed the reinstatement of the death penalty,
which had been outlawed in 1972, under constitutional
limits set by the Supreme Court.
Gilmore had been convicted of murdering a Utah
gas station attendant and a motel clerk in July 1976.
His case attracted worldwide attention not only
because his execution would mark the return of capital
punishment but also because he disparaged groups and
individuals opposed to capital punishment who tried to
block his execution. One stay was granted by the
Supreme Court on the request of Gilmore’s mother. The
High Court ruled that the state of Utah was required to
prove the prisoner, who had twice attempted suicide in
his cell, had been of sound mind when he waived his
right to appeal his death sentence. In its final decision,
however, the Supreme Court ruled five to four that
Utah’s capital punishment law was constitutionally
sound.
While a last-minute effort was made to get the High
Court to prevent his execution, Gilmore went to his
death on January 17, 1977 before a firing squad in the
Utah State Prison at Point of the Mountain. The condemned man spent his last hours with his family and
attorneys and showed little tension until he learned that
a federal judge had granted a restraining order delaying
the execution. However, a few hours later, a federal
appeals court reversed that order.
Meanwhile, as lawyers again petitioned the Supreme
Court to halt the proceedings, Gilmore was removed
from his cell to a warehouse on the prison grounds. He
was strapped in a chair on a raised platform, and a
black paper target with a white circle was pinned to his
T-shirt directly over his heart. Asked by the warden if
he had anything more to say, Gilmore responded, “Let’s
do it.” At 8:07 A.M. five men armed with .30-caliber
rifles fired from a cubicle 10 yards in front of Gilmore.
One of the rifles contained a blank cartridge and each
of the other four had a real bullet. All four bullets
pierced Gilmore’s heart, but he lived a full two minutes
after the shooting.
The final Supreme Court ruling against Gilmore
had been handed down at 8:04, just three minutes
prior to the shooting. Prison officials later admitted
the execution had taken place before they had received
word of the verdict on the appeal to the Supreme
Court.
Gilmore’s life and execution were scrutinized in
detail in a best-selling book, Executioner’s Song, by
novelist Norman Mailer.
See also: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT.
Criminologists have often cited the killing of 27-yearold Kitty Ging in Minneapolis, Minn. in 1894 as an
authentic case of hypnosis being used to cause a murder. The facts are hazy at best and certainly subject to
various interpretations.
Early that year Harry T. Hayward, a smooth-talking
local wastrel, had completed a course in hypnotism and
tried out his techniques both on Kitty Ging and on
Claus Blixt, a dim-witted building engineer and handyman. Eventually, Haywood induced Kitty to give him
several thousand dollars, all her ready cash, so that he
could “invest” it for her. How much of this was due to
“hypnotic powers” and how much to the sheer weight
of his personality cannot be measured. In any event, he
also was able in time to get Kitty to make him the beneficiary of two $5,000 life insurance policies.
Meanwhile, Hayward was spending long sessions
with Blixt too. “He always made me look into his
eyes,” the simple-minded Blixt later said. “He said that
unless I looked into his eyes, I couldn’t understand
what he was saying.” What Hayward was usually saying was that crime paid and was easy. Blixt insisted
Hayward “induced” him to set fire to a vacant factory
building on which Kitty Ging held a mortgage. She collected $1,500 in insurance and the money eventually
found its way into Hayward’s pockets. Since Hayward
gave some of the money to Blixt, it was unclear how
much of Blixt’s acts had been due to his own greed and
how much to Hayward’s hypnotic powers.
Hayward now began to plot Kitty Ging’s murder so
that he could collect her life insurance. Apparently, he
had less than total confidence in his power to induce
Blixt to carry out the crime because he first approached
his own brother, Adry Hayward, to commit the murder
while he established an iron-clad alibi. The astounded
Adry rejected the proposition. He later said: “I don’t
know why I listened when Harry talked to me of this
dreadful thing. He kept looking at me as he talked, and
sometimes I felt as if I was being hypnotized. When I
refused, he talked about getting Blixt to help him. He
said Blixt was so simple-minded that he could easily be
influenced.”
Adry related his conversation with his brother to a
lawyer friend of the family, who simply ignored the
story as too preposterous until Kitty Ging’s body,
her head crushed in and a bullet wound behind her
ear, was found on the evening of December 3, 1894.
The lawyer then took his information to the Hennepin County district attorney’s office, and Blixt and
Adry and Harry Hayward were brought in for questioning. Hayward proved to be a tough man to crack,
351
GLANTON, John J.
possessing a perfect alibi for the time of the murder:
attendance at the Grand Opera House.
For a while, Adry attempted to shield his brother,
and Blixt insisted he was not involved in any way.
Finally, Blixt broke and admitted murdering Kitty
Ging, arranging to do so at a time when Harry Howard
had an alibi. He said that before his act he had spent
several long sessions with Hayward during which he
was told over and over again that murder was an easy
crime to commit and get away with. After Blixt’s
admission, Adry talked, and finally, Harry Hayward
confessed to masterminding Kitty’s murder, saying his
mistake “was in not killing Blixt, as I had originally
intended.”
Claus Blixt was sentenced to life imprisonment and
Harry Hayward, “the hypnotic plotter,” was condemned to die on December 11, 1895. His execution
proved as bizarre as his crime. He promised to cause no
trouble if the scaffold was painted bright red and the
rope dipped in red dye. The authorities agreed to these
requests but refused to allow him to wear red clothing
or to use a red hood in place of the traditional black. On
the scaffold Hayward recited a prayer and asked God’s
forgiveness for his sins. Then he shouted: “Don’t pay
any attention to that! I just said it to oblige one of my
lawyers. I didn’t mean a word of it! I stand pat. . . .”
At that moment the outraged executioner, without
waiting for his signal, sprang the trap.
tions across the river. Learning that the Indians charged
covered-wagon immigrants a small sum to cross the river,
Glanton realized he could exact exorbitant sums if he
eliminated the Indian competition. Initially, the killing
margin favored Glanton, but on April 23, 1850 a large
force of Yumas overwhelmed Glanton and his men and
killed all but three of them. The massacre of whites by
the Indians brought an army detachment to the scene to
quell the “uprising,” but when the victims were found to
be Glanton and his men, peace was restored. When Fort
Yuma was built later in the year, it was named in honor
of the Indians who had wiped out one of the West’s
bloodiest gangs. The Yuma received no reward money,
however. Paying a reward to Indians for killing whites,
even those with a price on their heads, would have been
regarded as an outrage.
See also: SCALP HUNTING.
Glatman, Harvey Murray (1928–1959) rapist and
murderer
By masquerading as a detective magazine photographer, Harvey Glatman, a particularly sadistic California
murderer in the 1950s, got three young women to pose
for the usual “bound-and gagged” stuff and, after sexually abusing them and taking many pictures, strangled
them to death. Glatman was the classic example of a
mama’s boy turned killer. He had previously done time
in New York State for a string of “phantom bandit”
attacks on lone women and been imprisoned in Colorado for aggravated assaults on women. After each
run-in with the law, Glatman fell back on his aged
mother, who paid for his psychiatric treatment for five
years. In 1957 his mother gave him the money to attend
a television repairman’s school in Los Angeles and supplied him with funds to open a TV repair shop.
Glatman’s murder victims were two young photographic models and an attractive lonely hearts club
divorcée. On separate occasions he had succeeded in
convincing 19-year-old model Judy Dull and 24-yearold model Ruth Rita Mercado that he was a photographer on assignment for a detective magazine. With his
third victim, divorcée Shirley Bridgeport, he simply
made a date. In each case, after gaining their confidence, he then lured the women to his home, pulled out
a gun and tied them up. After sexually assaulting his
victims, he took lewd pictures of them. Later, he drove
each of the three women into the desert, where he
inflicted additional perversities on them for many more
hours before finally killing them.
“I used the same five-foot length of sash cord for all
three,” he later said, almost gloatingly. “I kept it in my
car with the gun. . . . I made them lie on their stomachs. Then I tied their ankles together, looped the end
Glanton, John J. (c. 1815–1850) scalp hunter and
murderer
Of all the men who operated in the bloody business of
scalp hunting, probably the most successful was a
Tennessee-born thug who had escaped prison in Nashville in 1845 while doing time for murder and taken
refuge in the Army during the Mexican War. When
mustered out in 1848, he organized a band of those
who were described in Texas as “border scum” and
went into the scalp-hunting business in a big way. It
was estimated that Glanton and his men took in about
$100,000 for scalps, which meant slaughtering well
over 1,000 Indians since the going rate for Apache
scalps paid by the Mexican governor of Chihuahua was
$100 for a male, $50 for a female and $25 for a child.
What spoiled their lucrative business was the discovery by both Mexican and U.S. authorities that they were
taking a lot of “suspect” scalps, apparently lifted from
the heads of Mexicans and Americans of a dark complexion. Rewards of more than $75,000 were posted on
Glanton and various confederates, forcing the gang to
flee west to the California border on the Colorado
River. There, Glanton engaged in a running war with
the Yuma Indians for control of ferrying opera352
GOHL, Billy
Mike Fink was hired by the drink-and-prostitution
crowd in Carson City, Nev. to break up Goad’s meeting
and promptly got a ball in the chest for his troubles.
That sort of gunsmoke preaching earned Goad proper
respect in time, and when John Goad came to town, the
lawless element made no effort to silence him.
of the cord about their necks and pulled until they were
dead.”
Two other women almost suffered the same fate.
One escaped when she grew suspicious of Glatman’s
actions. The other, 28-year-old Lorraine Vigil, offered
desperate resistance when he pointed a gun at her and
tried to tie her up on the shoulder of the Santa Ana
Freeway. Although shot in the leg, she managed to pull
the gun from Glatman’s hand and had it pointed at him
when a highway patrolman arrived on the scene.
Glatman eagerly described his murderous acts and
seemed to bear no remorse for them. His main concern
was keeping his 69-year-old mother from attending his
trial. “It would have been too hard on her,” he said
after his conviction. He refused to cooperate with
lawyers trying to appeal his case, announcing in San
Quentin’s death row that he wanted to die. “It’s better
this way,” he said. “I knew this is the way it would be.”
Glatman was executed in the gas chamber on August
18, 1959, undoubtedly pleased that a number of publications had engaged in spirited, if unseemly, bidding to
publish the photographs he had taken of his victims.
G-men
Gohl, Billy ( 1860?–1928) mass murderer
Billy Gohl undoubtedly belongs somewhere near the
top of any list of the most deadly American mass murderers, having killed a minimum of 40 men and almost
certainly many more.
Gohl was always mysterious about himself. He
turned up in the spring of 1903 in Aberdeen, Wash. as a
delegate of the Sailors’ Union of the Pacific. Nobody
among Aberdeen’s 12,000 inhabitants knew him, and
he seems to have told differing tales of his labor and
maritime past, although that was not unusual in a
wide-open town like Aberdeen. He was a squat, bullnecked man with a shaven head and an almost angeliclooking face. But everyone realized that Billy Gohl was
a man who could take care of himself and that earned
him respect in the Sailors’ Union.
As a union official, Gohl performed all sorts of
chores for seamen. The union office was generally the
first stop for sailors from schooners and four-riggers
arriving in port. The seamen would check with Gohl
for mail and would leave their valuables with him when
they went carousing. Since this would often be their
first shore leave in months, their pay generally came to
rather large sums. Union delegates always kept the
money in the safe until the sailors called for it. Billy
Gohl just kept it.
Gohl’s technique was to murder a seaman as soon as
he showed up, before he had time to make friends. He
would look out the window to see if anyone had seen the
man enter the union office; if not, and if the sailor had
turned in enough cash or other valuables to make the
effort worthwhile, Gohl would simply take a gun from
his desk drawer and shoot the man through the head.
From there on, Gohl had everything down to a science.
He cleaned the gun, searched the corpse for additional money and stripped the body of all identification. Gohl’s office was on the second floor of a building
whose rear extended out over the Wishkah River,
which fed into Gray’s Harbor. Supported by stilts, the
house had a trapdoor with a chute leading to the water.
Down the chute went the corpse to be carried away by
the rapid river current. If and when the body bobbed to
the surface, it would be miles out in the harbor.
After 1903 Aberdeen began to be known by sailors
as a “port of missing men,” but no one thought to
attribute that sad turn of events to Billy Gohl. Between
slang for FBI agents
The use of the term G-man to describe an FBI man was
bestowed, according to agency historians, by public
enemy George “Machine Gun” Kelly when he was captured in 1933 in a Memphis boarding house. Trapped
without his weapon, Kelly was described as screaming,
“It’s the government men—don’t shoot, G-men, don’t
shoot!”
Actually, a Memphis police sergeant, W. J. Raney,
was the man who broke in on Kelly and jammed a
shotgun in his stomach. Kelly said, “I’ve been waiting
for you.” Additionally, some accounts indicate that
during the 19th century members of the underworld
referred to other government agents, notably the Secret
Service, as G-men.
See also: GEORGE R. “MACHINE GUN” KELLY.
Goad, John (?–1907) gun-toting preacher
An itinerant Baptist preacher, John Goad roamed the
Nevada gold camps in the 1870s lecturing against sin
and crime and backing up his words with what was to
become famous throughout the West as the “John
Goad Bible.”
In his preaching he would denounce the lawless element in the area by name, and such denunciation often
brought attempts at retaliation. As protection, Goad
carried a loaded derringer in a hollowed-out Bible and
would not hesitate to use it when the situation
required. In a typical instance a local ruffian named
353
GOLD accumulator swindle
tial issue of 350,000 shares at $l a share soon climbed
to $50 a share as New Englanders rushed to get in on a
good thing. In addition, a grateful board of directors
voted to give Fisher and Jernegan $200,000 each for
their services. All this took place on the basis of
$25,000 having been “mined,” but it was apparent that
the process could just go on forever. It went on only
until Fisher quietly disposed of his shares of stock,
added that money to his $200,000 and left for Boston
“to get more supplies.” He didn’t return and suddenly
the gold accumulator didn’t accumulate any more gold.
Rev. Jernegan announced he was off in search of
Fisher and disappeared with his $200,000-plus as well.
His search apparently took him to France, where he
was later found living in luxury with his family. The
irate board of directors of the marine salts company
demanded the French government take him into custody. It did, but the minister was soon released. It was
obvious that the $200,000 had been legally voted him
and there was no way to force him to return it. All that
appeared to have gone wrong was that an apparent
gold-mining procedure had run dry.
Jernegan finally came back to America and actually
returned $175,000 to the swindled stockholders. This
represented what he said was left of the $200,000. He
continued to live well thereafter in the Philippines and
Hawaii, undoubtedly on the revenues from the sale of
his bloated stockholdings. When Jernegan died in
1942, there was a report circulated that Charlie Fisher
had been living in the South Seas as a rich American.
According to the story, Fisher had been caught fooling
around with the wife of a tribal chieftain and that he
and she had been killed according to tribal custom.
Apparently, the still-living investors in the Electrolytic
Marine Salts Co. were determined to have their
revenge, real or fancied.
1909 and 1912 a total of 41 “floaters” were fished out
of the water. Most were believed to be merchant seamen, and the most upset man in town was invariably
Billy Gohl, demanding the law do something. He was
finally trapped when one of his victims was traced to
his office and no further. Gohl had shot the man as
soon as he entered his office. When he searched the
body, he found a gold watch with the name August
Schleuter of Hamburg, Germany engraved on it. Gohl
decided it would be too incriminating to keep and
returned it to the body. When the corpse drifted ashore,
Gohl identified Schleuter as one of his men. It took the
law weeks to find out the truth, which as good as convicted Gohl. It turned out the victim really was a Danish seaman named Fred Nielssen. He had bought a
watch in Hamburg, and the name of the watchmaker
was August Schleuter.
In 1913 Gohl was convicted of two murders but
only laughed when asked to make a complete roster of
his victims. He avoided execution because the year
before, the state of Washington had eliminated capital
punishment. Gohl’s mass murder spree was used as an
argument for its restoration, even though he had committed his murders while the death penalty had been in
effect. In 1914 the death penalty was restored. Gohl
died in prison in 1928.
gold accumulator swindle
A monumental fraud perpetrated on hard-headed New
Englanders in 1897 involved a so-called gold accumulator, which allegedly mined gold from the ocean. The
scheme was the work of a veteran English con man
named Charles E. Fisher and a Connecticut Baptist
minister named Prescott Ford Jernegan. Jernegan may
well have been a dupe at the beginning of the operation, but by the time it reached fruition, he proved just
as adept as Fisher at holding on to his ill-gotten gains.
Fisher, it seemed, had a secret invention to extract
the gold eddying about in Passamaquoddy Bay near the
town of Lubec, Maine. Fisher’s gold accumulator was
painted with mercury and another “secret compound”
and lowered into the water. When the device was raised
the following day, it was crusted with thin flakes of
gold. Fisher and Jernegan demonstrated the device on
several occasions to some extremely dubious Yankee
businessmen, who insisted on guarding the scene of the
demonstration all night to prevent any tampering.
However, they were unaware that Fisher, who had been
a deep-sea diver back in England, would swim to the
accumulator during the night and plant the grains of
gold.
Eventually, shares in the Electrolytic Marine Salts
Co. were sold to a gullible public. The value of the ini-
gold brick swindle
confidence game
The gold brick swindle is a hardy perennial that just
will not die. The victim buys what he thinks are gold
brick ingots and ends up with worthless lead or brass.
Most big-city bunco squads handle several such cases
each year.
The origin of the gold brick swindle is unknown but
probably started in the California gold fields during the
1850s. Wyatt Earp and Mysterious Dave Mather got
involved in the game in Mobeetie, Tex. in 1878, after
Earp learned how well the racket worked in Kansas. A
fabulous young swindler, Reed Waddell, brought the
racket to New York in 1880 and trimmed some rather
bright and supposedly sharp businessmen with it. Waddell’s bricks certainly looked real, being triple goldplated and marked in the manner of a regulation brick
354
GONZALES,Thomas A.
from the United States Assayer’s Office, with the letters
“U.S.” at one end and, below that, the name of the
assayer and the weight and fineness of the bullion. Waddell’s operation included a phony assayer’s office where
the brick was supposedly tested. If the sucker hesitated,
Waddell would get angry, pull a slug from the brick and
insist the victim take it to any jeweler of his choice. As
part of the ruse, Waddell had sunk a slug of pure gold
into the center of the lead brick, but the trick always
worked and his victim would become eager to buy. In
all, he took in some $350,000 over the next dozen
years. Another ring, headed by Tom O’Brien, netted
$100,000 in just five months working the World’s Fair
in Chicago in 1893. Waddell and O’Brien then joined
forces and took the scam to Europe, where O’Brien
killed Waddell in an argument over the division of the
proceeds from one of their swindles.
Perhaps the greatest swindle of this nature occurred
in Texas, where from 1932 to 1935 two crooks, one
posing as a minister, victimized a wealthy widow. They
told her that gold had been buried in various spots on
her vast ranch about 100 years earlier and that ancient
maps to the locations could be bought from an old man
in Mexico. The widow gave them enough money to
buy one map, and sure enough, they came back with
some gold bricks. Over the next three years the widow
gave them $300,000 and they dug up what was
allegedly $4 million in gold. Since at this time the
hoarding of gold was illegal, the woman didn’t dare
attempt to cash in the bricks and therefore never
learned they were fake. The con men’s downfall came
about because of their wild spending, which caused a
government agent to investigate the source of their
money. The swindle was thus uncovered, and the two
crooks were sent to prison.
See also: REED WADDELL.
Goldsby, Crawford
“Gone to Texas”
An Easterner visiting Texas, Frederick Law Olmsted,
wrote:
In the rapid settlement of the country, many an adventurer crossed the border, spurred by love of liberty, forfeited at home, rather than drawn by a love of
adventure or of rich soil. Probably a more reckless and
vicious crew was seldom gathered than that which
peopled some parts of Eastern Texas at the time of its
first resistance to the Mexican government. ‘G.T.T.’
(gone to Texas) was the slang appendage . . . to every
man’s name who had disappeared before the discovery
of some rascality. Did a man emigrate thither, everyone
was on the watch for the discreditable reason to turn
up.
G.T.T. was the way of the rascal and the felon but it
was also part of the way America was built.
Gonzales, Thomas A. (1878–1956) medical examiner
Dr. Thomas A. Gonzales, chief medical examiner of
New York City from 1937 to 1954, was recognized as
one of the country’s foremost forensic pathologists. His
evidence convicted hundreds of murderers and saved a
number of other innocent men, some of whom were
accused of crimes that never happened. Often Dr. Gonzales needed only a moment’s view of the corpse to tell
immediately, for instance, that a husband who strangled his wife had tried to make it appear a case of suicide by gas inhalation.
Clearing an innocent suspect gave Dr. Gonzales the
most satisfaction. Such was the case when an elderly
tenant was found dead 15 minutes after he had had a
heated argument with a muscular real estate agent over
the rent and repairs. The old man’s body was discovered just inside the door of his apartment, his face
bruised and marked and his scalp deeply gashed. Several pieces of furniture in the foyer were overturned or
moved out of position. Police learned of the angry dispute from neighbors and arrested the agent. He denied
striking the old tenant, but the case against him was
strong indeed. There was the confrontation, the obvious signs of a fight, a witness in the hallway who said
no one entered the apartment after the agent left and
the fact that the victim was dead just a quarter of an
hour later.
Dr. Gonzales inspected the scene, diagrammed the
position of the furniture and then performed an
autopsy. As a result, charges against the real estate man
were dropped. The old man had not been beaten to
death. He had suffered a heart attack and stumbled
around the foyer, displacing the furniture in his death
throes. The diagrams of the furniture placement
See CHEROKEE BILL.
western saying
“Gone to Texas” was a euphemism that expressed one
important motivation for the Western migration and a
fact most people on the frontier knew: that a great
many of those who went to Texas or elsewhere in the
West were running from something. In fact, an early
settler, W. B. Dewees, related in his memoirs that it was
common to ask a man why he had fled his home. “Few
persons feel insulted at such a question. They generally
answer for some crime or other which they have committed. If they deny having committed any crime or say
they did not run away, they are looked upon suspiciously.”
355
GOOCH, Arthur
Federal authorities pressed for the death penalty in
the Gooch case to determine the constitutionality of the
law and to enhance its deterrent effects. However, the
case was clearly not the right one to serve their purposes. Much to the chagrin of the authorities, a large
part of the press ignored the trial. No one had been
killed and no ransom passed. Nevertheless, Gooch was
eventually convicted and sentenced to death.
Gooch’s attorneys appealed the verdict to the
Supreme Court on the ground that he had not committed a kidnapping for ransom and therefore should not
have been sentenced to die. In February 1936 the
Supreme Court held that the kidnapping of a police
officer was adequately covered by the phrase “for ransom, reward, or otherwise.” The precedent-setting
aspect of the Gooch decision was compromised by the
fact that although Gooch was executed on June 19—
an event that drew relatively minor attention—it
became quite common for juries in federal cases to recommend mercy when bringing in guilty verdicts for
capital offenses.
See also: LINDBERGH LAW.
demonstrated how the old man had suffered each of the
injuries he received.
Dr. Gonzales, a tall, spare man, was one of the top
assistants to Dr. Charles Norris, who founded the Medical Examiner’s Office in 1918. He took over following
Dr. Norris’ death in 1935, first as acting head and later
as the chief medical examiner, after outscoring all other
competitors in the tests given for the position. During
his career he testified in many famous cases in New
York and elsewhere in the country and coauthored
Legal Medicine and Toxicology, still regarded as a classic in the field. He often said only medicine could solve
many cases.
One common puzzle in many violent deaths was
whether the cause had been homicide or suicide. He
once proved that a man who had allegedly stabbed
himself through his shirt had actually been murdered.
(Suicides, he found, almost invaribly preferred to strip
away their clothing before stabbing themselves.) In
another case Gonzales solved a stabbing that had police
baffled. A man was found stabbed through the heart in
a third-floor bathroom that was locked from the inside.
The only window had been painted shut. It was clearly
a case of suicide except there was no knife. The case
was a stumper for the detectives but not for the medical
examiner. “Never mind what happened here,” he told
the police. “See if you can find out about a knife fight
anywhere in the area.” The police checked and found
that the victim had been stabbed in an altercation. As
Dr. Gonzales later explained, it was quite possible for a
man stabbed in the heart to walk a block, climb a couple of flights of stairs, lock himself in a bathroom and
then finally collapse. Such victims often head for the
bathroom to clean themselves up, not realizing they
have been fatally wounded.
Dr. Gonzales retired in 1954 and died two years later.
See also: CHARLES NORRIS.
good-time laws
Good-time laws, by which a convict can appreciably
reduce his sentence based on good conduct in prison,
have generally not fulfilled their promise. The average
good-time law prescribes the deduction of one month
for the first year of satisfactory behavior, two months
for the second and so on until, from the sixth year on, a
convict can earn six months off his sentence for every
year of good behavior. Unfortunately, such a formula is
of more value to a long-term offender than to a shorttermer, who is often a first offender and thus a more
likely candidate for rehabilitation. In the eyes of convicts, good-time laws seem to be intended less to benefit
the prisoner or his reformation than to assist the prison
administration in extracting labor from convicts and
maintaining discipline.
New York State appears to have started the first
good-time law in 1817, under which a first-term convict doing up to five years could reduce his sentence by
one-fourth. But there is no record of the system ever
actually being used. Similarly, relatively unused
statutes appeared over the next few decades in Connecticut, Tennessee and Ohio. The good-time principle
gained a more effective foothold in Australia and
France. But after the Civil War good-time laws spread
rapidly, following the example of the “Irish system,”
by which a prisoner could win his freedom by earning
a certain number of “marks,” or credits. By 1868 24
states had passed such laws, and today they are the
norm.
Gooch, Arthur (1909–1936) outlaw and kidnapper
The first man ever to die under the so-called Lindbergh
Law of the 1930s, which made kidnapping for ransom
a capital offense even if no harm came to the victim,
Arthur Gooch was considered by many persons to have
gotten a “raw deal.” On November 26, 1934 Gooch
and a partner in crime were stopped by two police officers for routine interrogation at a Paradise, Tex. gas
station. In an ensuing gunfight Gooch and his partner
seriously wounded one officer and then forced the two
lawmen to drive them across the state line into Oklahoma. There they ran into a force of federal agents
involved in another case and a second gun battle broke
out. Gooch’s confederate was killed and Gooch himself
captured. The officers were freed unharmed.
356
GORDON, Captain Nathaniel
thugs by the dozen soon were out on the streets clubbing and stripping policemen.
In brute power and violence, the police could seldom
match the Gophers. To do so would have accomplished
little anyway, since the gang enjoyed a measure of protection from the ward’s politicians, who found the
Gophers of immense assistance during elections. They
however, were too anarchistic to exploit this advantage
to the fullest, feeling that with raw power they could
achieve anything they wanted.
The Gophers had no reason to fear the police when
they looted the New York Central Railroad freight cars
along Eleventh Avenue. But while they might enjoy a
measure of tolerance from public officials, they failed
to grasp the extent of corporate power and the railroad’s ability to field a virtual army against them. The
New York Central’s special force was staffed with
many former policemen who had suffered insults and
injuries from the gangsters and who were anxious for
the opportunity to retaliate. Railroad property became
a no-man’s land, and the company detectives began to
venture further afield to devastate Hell’s Kitchen itself.
The Gophers were smashed, their prestige savaged and
their unity crushed. Gallagher and Brennan went to
Sing Sing, and many others were killed or maimed. Factions of the Gophers joined other criminal combines,
but these were organizations that specialized in purely
criminal ventures and wasted neither time nor strength
on unprofitable street bashings. An era of American
criminality was ending.
See also: LADY GOPHERS.
In addition to this reduction of sentence by statute,
in most states convicts can earn “industrial good time”
for taking part in prison industries and “merit good
time” for especially good behavior such as taking part
in medical experiments and the like. These reductions
generally affect only the amount of the time served
before an inmate is entitled to his first parole hearing
rather than the sentence itself. Thus, when a prisoner is
subsequently passed over for parole, he may feel he has
been “conned” by the system. Reformers often criticize
industrial good time on the grounds that many convicts
apply for the benefits and accept shop work instead of
training programs which develop the skills, the trades
and, more important, the attitudes required to reintegrate them into society upon release.
Another problem with good-time laws is that convicts view the benefits as a right, especially in prisons
where a new inmate is immediately credited with his
maximum time off and then this figure is reduced
whenever he violates prison rules. The practice can
encourage prisoners to believe that society constantly
discriminates against them by taking away good time,
an attitude that is at least partially the cause of many
prison riots.
Gophers
New York gang
One of the last of the all-Irish gangs of New York, the
Gophers were the kings of Hell’s Kitchen until they disintegrated in the changing society of the pre–World
War era. The Gophers controlled the territory between
Seventh and Eleventh Avenues from 42nd Street to
14th Street. Brawlers, muggers and thieves, they gained
their name because they liked to hide out in basements
and cellars. With an ability to summon 500 gangsters
to their banner, they were not a force to be dismissed
lightly by the police or other gangsters.
They were such hell raisers and so fickle in their allegiance that no one could emerge as the single leader of
the gang. Thus, the Gophers never produced a gangster
with the stature of Monk Eastman, the greatest villain
of the period. Among the most prominent Gophers,
however, there were numerous subleaders, such a Newburg Gallagher, Stumpy Malarkey, Happy Jack Mulraney and Marty Brennan.
Another celebrated Gopher was One-Lung Curran,
who in due course expired due to this deficiency. Once
when his girlfriend wailed that she was without a coat
for the chilly fall weather, Curran strode up to the first
policeman he saw and blackjacked him to the ground.
He stripped off the officer’s uniform coat and presented
it to his mistress, who, being an adept seamstress, converted it into a military-style lady’s jacket. This event
caused such a fashion sensation in Gopher society that
Gordon, Captain Nathaniel (?–1862) pirate
A big, bluff adventurer, Capt. Nathaniel Gordon plied
the trade of piracy long after it had declined as a popular
criminal endeavor. In the mid-1800s former pirates concentrated on smuggling slaves into the country, bringing
in as many as 15,000 per year and reaping enormous
profits. In the forefront of this activity were Gordon and
his daredevil crew aboard the 500-ton Erie. How bloody
a business they were engaged in is best revealed by the
statistics concerning the cargo. The Erie regularly transported approximately 1,000 black captives, but because
of the appalling conditions no more than 700 or so
would survive the journey. Finally captured on a slave
run by the American ship Mohican, Gordon was quickly
convicted and sentenced to be hanged.
Since the last death penalty for piracy had been carried out some 40 years earlier, protestors insisted it was
unfair to execute Gordon for a crime considered virtually extinct. His supporters petitioned President Abraham Lincoln for a pardon, but they failed to consider
the political realities. With the nation at war over the
357
GORDON, Vivian
was blackmailing men after taking them to hotel
rooms. She kept a diary loaded with names, dates and
details and put the bite on many an anxious gentleman.
During much of her career Vivian worked with a particularly nasty individual named Harry Stein. Later,
Stein would be charged with her murder but acquitted;
convicted of another woman’s murder and serve time
for it; and finally executed in the electric chair for a
robbery-murder.
While Vivian was living a purple present, she was
determined to prove to her teenage daughter that she
was a good woman. This and the fact that she felt she
had been double-crossed by some politicians in a vice
blackmailing scheme prompted her to take the story of
her criminal life to the Seabury investigators. In a meeting with one of Seabury’s young aides, Irving Ben
Cooper, she laid out charges against the police vice
squad, including a number of officers who were on her
bribe payroll. She claimed her diaries contained explosive evidence against several important men, many of
whom were public officials. Cooper listened to her
shocking story and told her to gather up all her evidence
and bring it to the probers the following week. Vivian
said she would. On February 27, 1931 she was found
dead in Van Cortlandt Park, strangled with a length of
clothesline looped around her neck three times.
Her death became a sensation and loosed the Seabury
Investigations with the full support of Gov. Franklin D.
Roosevelt. Her diaries were found and led to explosive
hearings. They revealed the names of officers on her
payroll and, more important, the names of many public
officials with indications of the prices for which they
could be “bought.” The ever-widening probe finally
included Mayor Walker who was accused of being “on
the take” from a number of business interests.
Under pressure, the police came up with a solution
to the Gordon murder, charging Harry Stein and one
Samuel Greenberg. They had witnesses who said Stein
had tried to pawn Vivian’s mink coat and diamond ring
just a few hours after the murder. And they had the testimony of Harry Schlitten, who allegedly drove the
death car, a Cadillac limousine rented by Stein for the
occasion. According to Schlitten, Stein had told him
that a party, who turned out to be Vivian Gordon, had
to be killed to oblige another party and that Greenberg,
posing as a diamond merchant to lure the victim along,
would be picked up as they drove toward the Bronx.
When Greenberg got in the car, Vivian supposedly said
to him, “Where have you been all my life?”
The trio, sitting in back of the limousine, killed off a
bottle of bourbon and then the men, said Schlitten,
killed off the lady. He said Vivian struggled quite a bit
and then he heard Stein say, “She’s finished now.” He
looked back and saw Stein with his hand on the rope.
matter of slavery, it would have been impossible for
Lincoln even to consider pardoning Gordon while
Northern soldiers were dying fighting the slave states.
Gordon was duly executed in the Tombs in New York
City on March 8, 1862. As one last token of fear of a
disappearing breed of criminals, authorities packed the
prison with armed guards to foil a buccaneer-style rescue attempt, which the newspapers insisted was sure to
be made. Unfortunately for Gordon, there were no
pirates left. Nathaniel Gordon was the last man hanged
for piracy in the United States.
See also: PIRACY.
Gordon, Vivian (1899–1931) murder victim
The murder of Vivian Gordon was one of New York
City’s gaudiest cases, so shocking that it wrecked the
lives of several others and even led to the abrupt end of
the corrupt administration of Mayor Jimmy Walker. At
the same time, it brought to prominence Samuel
Seabury, a lawyer and ex-jurist whose name was to
become synonymous with governmental honesty and
integrity as a result of the Seabury Investigations. Much
of the evidence in the Seabury probe came from a number of “little black books” belonging to Vivian. In them
she had kept a day-by-day account of her sexual and
criminal doings, which included blackmailing several
gentlemen. When revealed, they destroyed the personal
and private lives of many men. They also destroyed
Vivian’s 16-year-old daughter.
Vivian Gordon was born Benita Franklin in Detroit,
the daughter of John Franklin, former warden of the
Illinois State Penitentiary in Joliet, and was brought up
under strict supervision, which included being sent to a
convent school in Canada. Eventually, she rebelled and
ran away, determined to pursue an acting and modeling
career, and later, she married briefly and had a daughter. In 1923 Benita was arrested for prostitution by
Patrolman Andrew G. McLaughlin. McLaughlin was a
crooked cop who was subsequently found to have
banked—on a yearly salary of $3,000—an average of
$1,500 monthly. Benita was hauled before a magistrate,
H. Stanley Renaud, and became, allegedly, just one of
24 girls without legal representation whom Renaud
wrongfully sentenced. Both McLaughlin and Renaud
later became targets of the Seabury probe. Benita
always insisted she was innocent of the McLaughlin
charge, even in later years when, as Vivian Gordon, she
was no longer innocent of very much.
Whatever validity her claim of innocence to that
charge had, Vivian Gordon became a hooker, and while
she branched out into numerous other illegal enterprises, such as being part backer in a stock swindle and
financing bank robbery schemes, her steadiest scam
358
GORDON,Waxey
really hide major operations like distilleries and breweries, Gordon became probably the biggest graft-paying criminal in the East. When New Jersey reformers
grew upset about the noise made by trucks rumbling
out of his illicit breweries, Waxey paid off politicians
so that his beer could be pumped through pressure
hoses in the sewer systems of Elizabeth, Paterson and
Union City.
Gordon was so powerful that he even forced his way
into a “shotgun-partnership” with the LucianoCostello-Lansky-Siegel forces in New York, although
tension between himself and Lansky grew so intense
that they would not even sit at the same table with each
other. In the 1930s Gordon feuded with Dutch Schultz,
and when it looked like the end of Prohibition was
nearing, the two turned to open warfare for control of
legitimate beer distribution rights in New York.
By this time, Gordon had won the title of New
York’s Public Enemy No. 1, an accolade belied by his
short, dumpy appearance and the meager wisps of
hair on his dome. Outside of Schultz, one of the most
violence-prone gangsters of the era, few wanted to
take on Gordon in gangland combat, especially since
Waxey enjoyed extreme loyalty from his men, who
refused to be bought out or to engage in takeover
attempts.
There is little doubt that the Luciano-Lansky forces
brought about Gordon’s downfall by getting the law to
do their dirty work for them. Gordon was tossed to the
income tax wolves. Meyer Lansky’s brother Jake and
others, according to the underworld gossip, fed the tax
men information about Gordon’s operations. The government’s case, presented by a young federal prosecutor
named Thomas E. Dewey, showed that the Prohibition
bootleg baron took in $2 million a year, all the while
reporting a net income of just $8,125 annually. Convicted in December 1930, Waxey got 10 years, which
finished him as a major underworld operator. Just as
they were to do with others, the Luciano-Lansky forces
moved to take over Gordon’s rackets.
When Gordon was released from Leavenworth in
1940, he announced to reporters: “Waxey Gordon is
dead. From now on, it’s Irving Wexler, salesman.”
Actually, it proved to be Waxey Gordon, salesman,
hawking one of his old lines, narcotics. In 1951 Gordon, now a small-timer, was nailed as he delivered a
$6,300 package of heroin to a federal narcotics stool
pigeon.
Among the arresting officers the aged gangster recognized Sgt. Johnny Cottone. He broke down sobbing.
“My God, Johnny,” he pleaded. “Shoot me. Don’t take
me in for junk. Let me run, and then shoot me!” One of
the old man’s younger confederates started weeping
too. He pulled $2,500 from his pockets and ripped two
They dumped the body in the park, the informer said,
and drove back to Manhattan.
Not too surprisingly for the era, Stein and Greenberg
were found not guilty. Their lawyer, the famous Samuel
Leibowitz, went into one of his favorite routines, postulating a “police frame-up,” which worked very well
amidst the Seabury probe’s constant revelations of
police venality. Some detectives complained bitterly
about Stein beating their “perfect case” and pointed
out later that if he had been convicted, he wouldn’t
have been around to commit several other murders, one
of which was to send him to the electric chair in 1955.
That was only one of the misfortunes to result from
Vivian Gordon’s murder. There was also the tragedy of
Vivian’s teenage daughter, Benita. Although teachers
and classmates at her high school tried to shield her
from the details, she read every line about the case in
the newspapers. The girl became more and more withdrawn, but she too kept a diary. There were a series of
pitiful entries, including one on March 1 that said, “I
guess I will have to change my name.”
Two days later, she made a final entry: “March 3,
2:15 P.M. . . . I’m tired . . . I’ve decided to give it all
up . . . I am turning on the gas.”
See also: SEABURY INVESTIGATION.
Gordon, Waxey (Irving Wexler) (1888–1952)
Prohibition beer baron
One of the top three or four Prohibition bootleggers,
Irving Wexler, better known as Waxey Gordon, was a
multimillionaire by the end of the 1920s and then fell
to depths almost unparalleled in underworld history.
He got his nickname as a kid pickpocket because he
could slip a mark’s wallet out of his pocket as if it were
coated with wax. Although still a small-timer, Gordon
moved up in the underworld as a strikebreaker, whoremaster and, at times, a dope dealer.
As it did for so many other criminals of the era, Prohibition made Waxey Gordon a big-timer. First in
junior partnership with Mr. Big, Arnold Rothstein, and
finally in charge after buying Rothstein out, Gordon
was one of the leading illegal liquor importers on the
East Coast. His personal income ran somewhere
between $1 million and $2 million a year, and he
owned blocks of real estate in New York and Philadelphia. He also owned nightclubs, speakeasies, gambling
casinos and a fleet of ocean-going rumrunners and
lived in a castle, complete with moat, in southern New
Jersey. His distilleries in Philadelphia cut, reblended
and rebottled booze for dozens of leading bootleggers
around the country. He was able to charge an arm and
a leg for his supplies, often cutting himself in for a
piece of his customer’s action. Since one could not
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GORDON-Gordon, Lord
Gould with the margin of victory. But Gordon-Gordon
had a price for his aid. He wanted the management of
the railroad reformed and an active voice for himself,
but, he generously added, he was prepared to leave
Gould in charge. Gould was ecstatic—and grateful. He
handed over to Gordon-Gordon $1 million in negotiable securities and cash in “a pooling of interests”
that could only be considered a bribe.
Soon after this transaction, large chuncks of stock
began appearing for sale. Gordon-Gordon was quickly
cashing in on his profits from the gullible Gould. Convinced he had been swindled, Gould sued GordonGordon, who immediately threw in with Gould’s business rivals. But time was running out for Gordon-Gordon. On the witness stand he cheerfully reeled off the
names of important European personages he knew and
represented in the Erie deal. Before his references could
be checked, he decamped to Canada with a large portion of Gould’s money.
When located in Canada, Gordon-Gordon had little
trouble convincing the authorities there that he was a
man of high breeding and that charges by various
Americans, Gould in New York and railroaders in Minnesota, were ill founded and malicious. He told people
in Fort Garry, Manitoba that he intended to invest huge
sums in the area and that the Americans were being
vindictive because he would not utilize the funds in
their country.
Convinced they would never get the scoundrel back
to face charges by any legal means, a group of Minnesotan railroaders, perhaps financed by Gould,
attempted to kidnap Gordon-Gordon. They actually
snatched him in July 1873 and were only apprehended
at the border by a group of the swindler’s friends and a
contingent of Northwest Mounted Police. The kidnappers, including two future governors of Minnesota and
three future congressmen, were clapped into prison and
allowed no bail.
The Gordon-Gordon affair blew up into an international incident. Gov. Austin of Minnesota ordered the
state militia to be ready to march and demanded the
return of the kidnap party. Thousands of Minnesotans
volunteered for an invading expeditionary force.
Finally, negotiations between President Ulysses S. Grant
and his secretary of state, Hamilton Fish, and Canadian
prime minister Sir John MacDonald produced an agreement in the interests of international amity that allowed
the raiding party to go free on bail. Gordon-Gordon
was safe in Canada, since the treaties between the
United States and that country did not provide for
extradition for such minor offenses as larceny and
embezzlement.
All might have gone well for Gordon-Gordon had
not news of the incident reached Edinburgh. The own-
diamond rings off his fingers. “Take this,” he cried.
“Take me. Take the whole business. Just let Pop go.”
To the end, Waxey Gordon enjoyed the loyalty of his
men. In December the 63-year-old Gordon was sentenced to two terms of 25 years to life. He was sent to
Alcatraz, a fate the aged criminal hardly deserved. Six
months later, on June 24, 1952, he died there of a
heart attack.
Gordon-Gordon, Lord (?–1873) swindler
One of America’s most audacious confidence operators
was a Scotsman who, masquerading as Lord GordonGordon, swindled some of America’s greatest robber
barons, including Jay Gould, out of $l million in negotiable securities. Gordon-Gordon never revealed his
real identity. Instead, he spread the word through intermediaries that he was the heir of the great Earl of Gordon, cousin of the Campbells, collateral relative of
Lord Byron and proud descendant of the Lochinvar
and the ancient kings of the Highlanders.
Gordon-Gordon’s first known peccadillo occurred in
1868 in Edinburgh, where, under the equally fanciful
name of Lord Glencairn, he swindled a jeweler out of
£25,000. Then in 1871, as Lord Gordon-Gordon, he
appeared in Minneapolis and opened a bank account
with $40,000 from his jewelry swindle. He set up representatives of the Northern Pacific Railroad for a
swindle by declaring he was in search of immense areas
of good lands on which to settle his overpopulated
Scottish tenantry. He suggested he could use upwards
of a half-million acres, the very answer to the railroad’s
dreams. Since the company in its push westward was
sorely pressed for capital, it did all it could to woo several millions from Gordon-Gordon. He was wined,
dined and taken on lavish hunting expeditions. How
much hard cash Gordon-Gordon managed to pocket
was never known, but the “trinkets” given him in one
instance were worth $40,000. After some three months
Gordon-Gordon had picked out all the land he wished
to buy, and he told the railroad executives he was
returning to New York to arrange for the transfer of
funds from Scotland to make the purchase. He left
Minneapolis not only with fond farewells but also with
special letters of introduction from Col. John S.
Loomis, the line’s land commissioner, to Jay Gould,
then fighting for control of the Erie Railroad, and
Horace Greeley, a stockholder in the Erie and a business associate of Gould.
Lord Gordon-Gordon portrayed himself as a potential savior to Gould, just as he had to the Northern
Pacific. He let Greeley believe he was a substantial
holder of Erie stock and also the holder of proxies from
a number of European friends, enough to provide
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GOTTI, John
ers of Marshall and Son, Jewelers became convinced
that the description of Lord Gordon-Gordon matched
that of the long-gone Lord Glencairn. They dispatched
a clerk who had dealt with His Lordship to check up on
Gordon-Gordon in person. He made a firm identification and the master swindler was ordered returned to
England to clear up the matter. Gordon-Gordon undertook a legal battle, but when it was obvious he had lost,
he shot himself to death.
Gotti, John (1940– ) imprisoned godfather and former
“Teflon Don”
Certainly the most storied and important “godfather”
in American organized crime in the 1980s and 1990s,
John Gotti could well have become the “boss of
bosses,” even though that is nothing more than a mythical title bestowed by the media and some prosecutors.
Gotti was cut from the old mold, a type not seen in
New York Mafia circles since the demise of the vicious
Albert Anastasia, the “Lord High Executioner” of
Murder Inc., and the mobster Gotti most admired.
On one occasion Gotti was overheard chastising an
underling for failing to return his phone calls. “Follow
orders,” he snarled, “or I’ll blow up your house.” The
mobster, thoroughly terrified, swore it would not happen again. “You bet it won’t,” Gotti responded, “I got
to make an example of somebody. Don’t let it be you.”
Veteran officers agreed that if they shut their eyes and
heard the words, they would have been sure it was the
ghost of Albert Anastasia talking.
By 1985 Gotti was considered the top capo, or lieutenant, in the Gambino crime family, the most powerful
Mafia outfit in the country. He bossed a number of
lucrative rackets, including those at John F. Kennedy
airport as well as other Gambino operations in much of
the New York metropolitan area. Additionally he was
the favorite of underboss Aniello Dellacroce, an aging
but brutal mafioso. As much as Dellacroce admired
Gotti, boss Paul Castellano hated—and feared—him.
Gotti moved up the mob ladder in 1972 when the
nephew of Carlo Gambino was kidnapped by Irish
gangsters who demanded a $350,000 ransom. When
part of the ransom was paid, the kidnappers killed the
Gambino kin. The FBI grabbed two suspects but not
the third one, James McBratney, on whom Gambino
put out a contract. Gotti was part of a mob execution
squad that caught up with McBratney in a Staten Island
bar. Gotti was convicted of his part in the job and drew
a seven-year prison sentence. When he got out Gotti
was embraced by Gambino, who moved him steadily
up the crime family ladder. In about 1978 or 1979
Gotti became a capo and top associate of Dellacroce.
Like many others in the family Gotti felt Dellacroce
Mob boss John Gotti in a victory pose after beating a
case during his “Teflon Don” period.
should succeed the dying Gambino, but the latter
wanted his kin, Castellano, to succeed him.
Dellacroce kept Gotti in line in this period, since he,
Dellacroce, knew he was dying of cancer. He urged
Gotti to be patient, a characteristic which was not
Gotti’s strong suit. And neither was gentility. He was
once quoted complaining to another mafioso: “Can
you beat this—they’re telling me I’m too tough for the
job. Can you imagine what our thing [Cosa Nostra] is
coming to?”
When Dellacroce died in early December 1985,
there was no stopping Gotti. Two weeks later Paul
Castellano was murdered outside a Manhattan steakhouse on Gotti’s orders, Gotti audaciously riding past
the murder scene to make sure everything had gone off
without a hitch. Normally, the killing of a boss has
severe ramifications, but not in this case. Castellano
was under indictment and faced a likely long prison
sentence as he approached age 70. Many in the crime
family were not sure that “Big Paul” could take it. It
was thought likely that Castellano might crack and flip
for the government. That was one of the lines Gotti
used on members of the family as well as other crime
families. No one had any problems with Castellano
being erased.
Gotti was in, now the godfather of the most powerful crime family in the country, or what had been so
until Castellano’s misrule had weakened it to the extent
that the Genovese crime family was at least its equal or
even its superior.
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GRABBERS
Gotti became known as the “Dapper Don.” As one
police veteran stated, “He [operated] in style, brutal
perhaps, but suave. Gotti looks like a movie star. He
wears hand-tailored clothes, drives a big black Lincoln
and likes good restaurants.”
In 1986 Gotti became the target of federal prosecutors on charges that could take him out of action. But
Gotti probably marked a new trend in the Mafia—back
to younger bosses, as was common in the 1920s and
’30s. In recent years the mobs were concerned about
the older dons taking heat. If even one talked, the damage would be enormous. A 20-year prison term wasn’t
too bad if young leaders got out in seven with good
behavior. Everyone knew Gotti was tough enough to
take it. Not that Gotti couldn’t exhibit coolness. When
entering a federal courtroom he insisted on a female
radio reporter entering before him. “I was brought up
to hold doors open for ladies,” he said.
He had a different disposition in family “business,”
ordering murder after murder without a qualm.
The government clearly had Gotti dead to rights on
some major criminal charges, yet three times in a row,
Gotti beat the rap, perhaps not always without certain
dishonest means. But in any event, the media now had
a new nickname for him. He was the “Teflon Don,”
against whom charges bounced harmlessly off.
Finally the FBI built a solid case against Gotti,
involving some 100 hours of incriminating tapes in
which Gotti spoke openly about many murders and
sundry criminal activities. The game now involved the
RICO statutes, which meant if convicted Gotti was
gone for good. Even better for the FBI they were able to
“flip” Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, Gotti’s underboss, a
criminal as vicious as Gotti himself. In fact, Gravano
had to get on the witness stand and admit to having
committed 19 murders. In the deal Gravano made with
the government, Gravano “walked” while Gotti was
convicted in 1992 and sentenced to life without parole.
For a time Gotti sought to continue to run the family
through his son John Gotti, Jr., but that went awry
when the younger Gotti was indicted on other charges.
Still Gotti appeared to have an influence on his crime
family, even though he was probably now hated as
much as Castellano had been. From the mobsters viewpoint, the main charge against Gotti could be summed
up in one word—stupidity.
Even the boys in the mob could count. In the brief
time before Gotti was tucked away in jail, the membership of the family seemed to have dropped from 250 wise
guys to about 150 (not counting the associates and wise
guy wanna-bes who numbered at least 10 times as
many). With Gotti in charge, the family had gained a reputation for dapperness (by Gotti’s decree), but the boss’s
imposing presence on the TV nightly news exposed many
capos and soldiers to scrutiny by law enforcement officials. Gotti insisted his top guys constantly show up at
the mob’s Ravenite headquarters on Mulberry Street,
even though the FBI had the area blanketed with FBI
cameras. The appearance of these mobsters proved an
incredible boon to law enforcement, allowing them to be
identified. Many of the wise guys knew that quiet discretion was the correct call, but who was going to contradict
Gotti? Failure to show up brought the certain guarantee
of a Gotti hit sentence on them.
Clearly all the Gambinos hated Sammy the Bull for
ratting, but they privately acknowledged Gravano’s
charge that the boss’s arrogance had done much to
bring down not only himself but major portions of the
organization.
Law enforcement officials generally believed that
Gotti’s attitude would eventually make him and his son
less imposing figures in the Gambino family, which
some federal officials had pronounced doomed. By the
very late 1990s, however, it was conceded by much of
the media and a number of prosecutors that the Gambino family was still a power. Indeed, crime would
probably march on with or without the Gotti influence.
See also: PAUL CASTELLANO, “SAMMY THE BULL” GRAVANO, MAFIA, MAFIA AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY.
grabbers 19th-century New York procurer gangs
Grabbers was the popular name given in the 1860s and
1870s to the procurer gangs operating in New York.
The two most important gangs were those headed by
Red Light Lizzie, perhaps the most noted procurer of
the time, and her principal rival, the brazen Hester Jane
Haskins, also known as Jane the Grabber. Both gangs
operated out of business offices and each month sent a
circular out to clients advertising their newest wares.
Procuring was generally tolerated by the police so
long as the grabbers followed the usual procedure of
sending out “talent scouts” to outlying villages upstate
and surrounding states to lure young girls to the
metropolis with promises of high-paying jobs. The girls
were then “broken into the life.”
A “grabber scandal” of sorts erupted in 1875 when
the Haskins woman began specializing in recruiting
girls from good families, the better-paying brothel
clients being much enticed by having the company of
females of refinement. Too many girls disappeared,
however, which created quite a stir. Jane the Grabber
was arrested with a number of her minions and sent to
prison. Upon their release they were “rousted” out of
New York by the police apparently because of intolerance for procurers who could not understand certain
class distinctions.
See also: PROCURING.
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GRAHAM, Barbara
ties. Rand, Pettengill, Ennis and Boston Pet instantly
joined Billy the Kid Burke in wealthy retirement, while
only Travelling Mike continued in the rackets.
Mike did not consider the Lord caper his crowning
achievement. He learned that his archrival, Marm
Mandelbaum, had trailblazed a new business method
in crime by forming a gang whose members were paid
strictly on salary, with all the loot going to her. Travelling Mike, with devious acumen, approached her criminals and purchased much of their loot at extremely low
prices. Since the gangsters would have netted nothing
extra otherwise, both they and Travelling Mike profited. Only Marm was victimized. When she learned of
the plot against her, she dissolved her gang and railed
about the lack of honor among thieves, with Travelling
Mike specifically in mind.
Grady gang 19th-century sneak thief gang
During the 1860s the art of sneak thievery achieved
new heights thanks to a New York gang of thieves masterminded by John D. Grady, better known as Travelling Mike.
Travelling Mike, perhaps the number two fence of
the era, after the infamous Marm Mandelbaum, was a
stooped, dour-faced little man who padded the streets
winter and summer wearing a heavy overcoat and carrying a peddler’s box on his shoulder. Mike’s box did
not contain the standard peddler’s stock of needles and
other small articles, but rather pearls, diamonds and
bonds, all stolen property. He never ventured out with
less than $10,000 with which to make his daily purchases from various criminals. Mike was frequently to
be seen at the notorious Thieves’ Exchange, near
Broadway and Houston Street, where fences and criminals met each night and dickered openly in the buying
and selling of stolen goods.
To drum up more business, Travelling Mike organized his own gang and planned their jobs. His most
famous underling was “Billy the Kid” Burke, a brilliant
sneak thief who was arrested 100 times before his 26th
birthday but was still able to retire, according to legend, a wealthy man. Mike engineered a raid on the
money hoard of Rufus L. Lord, a grasping and penurious financier of the day. Worth $4 million, Lord spent
his time clipping coupons and counting his hoard of
money in a dingy office at 38 Exchange Place. He was
so miserly that he wore tattered and patched clothing
and would not light his office with more than one candle at a time. Yet in business he was extremely cunning
and was supposedly able to milk the last penny out of
any adversary.
In March 1866 Travelling Mike approached Lord
about securing a loan for an alleged business venture,
and long discussions were held about terms. Finally,
on March 7 the fence returned to Lord’s office
accompanied by his minions, Greedy Jake Rand,
Eddie Pettengill, Hod Ennis and Boston Pet Anderson. When Travelling Mike offered to put up highclass security for the loan and suggested an interest
rate of 20 percent, Lord bounded from his chair and
seized him by the lapels, imploring him to close the
deal immediately. While the anxious Lord was thus
distracted, Boston Pet and Pettengill slipped in the
darkness to the huge safe the financier often absentmindedly left open and made off with two tin boxes.
Travelling Mike then agreed to close the deal and said
he would return in an hour to sign the necessary
papers.
When the gang opened the tin boxes, they counted
loot totaling $1.9 million in cash and negotiable securi-
Graham, Barbara (1923–1955) murderess
Barbara Graham was a call girl and murderess who
worked with a California gang of notoriously savage
robbers and killers who often tortured their victims to
extract loot from them. She was subsequently immortalized in I Want to Live!, perhaps the phoniest movie
ever made about a female criminal.
Admittedly, Barbara was the product of an unhappy
childhood. When she was two years old, her mother
was sent to a reformatory for wayward girls, and Barbara was raised in a rather indifferent manner by neighbors. Later, mother and daughter were reunited, but
Barbara ran away at the age of nine. Ironically, she
ended up doing time in the same institution where her
mother had been confined.
Barbara was drawn into organized crime circles in
the 1940s. In 1947 she was a star call girl in San Francisco for Sally Stanford, the city’s most infamous
madam. Following her fourth marriage, to a man
named Henry Graham, she gave birth to her third child
and took up drugs. She also joined a murderous robbery ring headed by Jack Santos. Santos’ gang included
Emmett Perkins, second-in-command, a brute as
vicious as Santos himself; John L. True, a deep-sea
diver who later turned state’s evidence; and Baxter
Shorter, who eventually tried to turn state’s evidence,
was kidnapped and was never seen again.
Among the crimes the gang committed were the
December 1951 torture and robbery of a gold buyer,
Andrew Colner, and his wife; the December 1951 murder of Edmund Hansen, a gold miner; the October
1952 murder of a grocer, Guard Young, his two little
daughters and a neighbor’s child; and the March 1953
brutal beating murder of Mrs. Mabel Monahan, a 63year-old crippled Burbank widow believed to have had
a large amount of jewels.
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GRAHAM, John Gilbert
elderly woman against whom they had nothing, merely
because they wanted money.”
The gang, however, got no money. There was no
large sum in the house and no valuable jewelry. They
had simply been misinformed.
At her trial Barbara tried to prove her innocence by
producing two alibis, both of which were probably
false. Meanwhile, a police officer posing as an underworld agent offered to furnish her another alibi if she
paid $25,000. Barbara agreed, and the plot was then
exposed in court complete with taped recordings. Barbara lost her composure and cried out chokingly: “Oh,
have you ever been desperate? Do you know what it
means not to know what to do?”
On June 3, 1955 Barbara Graham, Santos and
Perkins died in the San Quentin gas chamber. Barbara
asked for a blindfold. “I don’t want to have to look at
people,” she said bitterly.
In 1958 actress Susan Hayward won an Academy
Award for her film portrayal of Barbara Graham.
Of these crimes the only one that Barbara Graham
was definitely tied to, primarily by True’s confession,
was the Monahan killing. She was to get the gang into
the house by asking to use the telephone. According to
True, the original plan called for the four men to crowd
in as soon as the door was opened, tie up, gag and
blindfold Mrs. Monahan and then ransack the house,
grab the treasure and leave. The plan went awry when
Barbara ran amok.
She struck the widow to the ground, seized her by
the hair and began beating her over the head with the
butt of the gun she was carrying. The old woman,
bewildered and in agony, started moaning, “Oh, no,
no, no!” One of the men egged Barbara on, “Give her
more!” She did, cracking her skull and killing her.
Later, a veteran prosecutor was to tell a jury the victim
looked “as if she had been hit with a heavy truck traveling at high speed. The savage brutality of the attack is
like nothing I have seen in 20 years of experience. I can
scarcely believe that human beings could do that to an
Graham, John Gilbert (1932–1957) mass murderer
John Graham was a typical, if awesome, example of the
plane saboteurs most active in the 1950s and 1960s
who placed bombs on airliners to collect the insurance
on a single passenger. He thought nothing of the fact
that he had to kill 43 other persons because he wanted
to murder his mother, Mrs. Daisy King of Denver, Colo.
On November 1, 1955 Graham placed a time bomb
made with 25 sticks of dynamite in his mother’s luggage before she boarded a DC-6B at Stapleton Airport.
The plane was aloft only 10 minutes before it crashed
in flames. When traces of a bomb device were found,
suspicion soon focused on young Graham because he
had attracted so much attention to himself in the terminal before flight time buying insurance policies on his
mother’s life from a vending machine. He had nervously spoiled a number of them and kept buying
more, finally salvaging $37,500 worth.
When the FBI found material used to make bombs in
his home, Graham confessed the plane sabotage. Public
speculation as to how anyone would kill in such a manner and take the lives of so many innocents brought a
simple explanation from a psychologist: “People actually have very few restraints concerning a person they
have no intimate knowledge of. A mine disaster that
claims 120 lives doesn’t really impress many people.
But should a neighbor fall from a ladder and die, the
effect on these same people is tremendous.”
Certainly, Graham showed no remorse about all his
victims, being more concerned about his mother. Mrs.
King had been going to visit her daughter in Alaska
and, planning to go hunting, she had carried a box of
Barbara Graham, on trial for murder, posed for
photographers with her l9-month-old son.
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GRAND Central fruit stand swindle
shotgun shells on board the plane. Graham laughed,
“Can’t you just see Mother when all those shells began
to go off in the plane?”
At his trial Graham, found sane but resentful of his
mother’s neglect when he was a child, recanted his confession but was convicted by the overwhelming evidence. He refused to take any steps to appeal his death
sentence and went silently to the gas chamber on January 11, 1957.
Graham-Tewksbury feud
Graham still tried to stem the violence, another cattleman gunfighter attempted to kill Jim Tewksbury and
paid with his life. When Billy Graham, 18, the youngest
of the family, was gunned down by a deputy sheriff
who sympathized with the Tewksburys, Tom Graham
gave up and personally joined the fight, leading a raid
on the Tewksbury ranch and offering a reward of $500
for every sheepherder and $1,000 for every Tewksbury
killed. In the raid John Tewksbury, Sr. and Jr. and Bill
Jacobs were murdered, but Jim, brother Ed and a number of supporters escaped. The cattlemen then allowed
hogs to feed on two of the corpses.
Although from then on, the Tewksburys were outnumbered, they generally had the best of it, and more
cattlemen than sheepmen died thereafter. In 1888 Jim
Tewksbury died of consumption. Nonetheless, Ed
Tewksbury had enough supporters to fight on until by
1889 only he and Tom Graham were left of their
respective families. The sheep were driven out, but so
was Graham, who remorsefully moved away from the
valley. He returned in 1892 to settle some affairs and
was ambushed and killed, some witnesses said, by Ed
Tewksbury and John Rhodes. The case against Rhodes
was not very strong and he was released, but Ed
Tewksbury, the last survivor of the feud, was charged
with murder. He was convicted but the verdict was
thrown out on a technicality. The second trial ended in
a hung jury, and finally, in 1896 the charges were
dropped.
Until he died in 1904, Ed Tewksbury was a constable in Globe, Arizona Territory and deputy sheriff of
Gila County.
The story of the feud has been told many times in
many ways, including Zane Grey’s rendition in his
novel To the Last Man. But while the personal conflict
of the Grahams and Tewksburys had provoked the war,
the battle between cattlemen and sheepmen was
repeated in many other areas of the country. This ageold conflict only ended when the cattlemen discovered
they could indeed allow sheep to graze on the same
lands with cattle if scientific agricultural techniques
were applied. Then, ironically, the cattlemen began
raising the previously hated “woolies” themselves.
See also: COMMODORE PERRY OWENS.
sheepmen-cattlemen war
Some historians have insisted that the GrahamTewksbury feud, sometimes known as the Pleasant
Valley War, of 1886–92 was nothing more than a
family feud; but the fact remains that it escalated into
a great sheepman-cattleman confrontation that was
to leave Arizona’s Tonto Basin a “dark and bloody
ground.”
The Grahams and Tewksburys were both small-time
ranchers who had built their stock with a “long rope,”
that is stealing their cattle rather than raising it. There
is reason to believe the two neighboring families
engaged in this operation as a joint enterprise, with all
the stolen stock being hidden on Graham land. When it
came time to divide their loot, however, the Tewksburys discovered the Grahams had registered all of
them in their own brand. The Tewksburys were left a
ranch without cattle, while the Grahams suddenly were
able to move in big cattlemen circles.
Not surprisingly, some shooting resulted, but the
leaders of each family, John D. Tewksbury and Tom
Graham, argued for restraint. Still, the Tewksburys
thirsted for revenge and finally came up with a reprisal
that not only enraged the Grahams but all the other
cattlemen in the basin. They made a deal with some big
sheepmen to bring their flocks into Pleasant Valley in a
deliberate effort to ruin the Grahams’ grazing land. The
conflict suddenly was bigger than a family feud, and all
the cattlemen took up arms to drive out the sheepmen.
Gunfighters lent their services to the side that reflected
their economic interest. Not illogically, confirmed cattle
rustlers joined in the fight against the sheep invasion
since their livelihood, as well as that of honest cattlemen, was imperiled.
Initially, the war was limited to the killing of sheep,
which were stampeded over cliffs, burned in the brush
or shot to death by night-riding gunmen. Inevitably,
human life was lost, and the war escalated. Five cowboys called on the Tewksbury ranch in what was later
claimed to be a peaceful visit. As they were leaving, two
of them were shot dead by Jim Tewksbury, the deadliest
of his family. Tewksbury claimed the two were in the
process of turning and drawing on him. While Tom
Grand Central fruit stand swindle
One of the most bald-faced swindles in history
occurred in 1929 when two well-to-do Italian fruit
dealers bought the rights to convert the information
booth at New York’s Grand Central Station into a fruit
stand. It all began when a well-dressed stranger
dropped into their bustling fruit store in midtown and
presented them with his card:
365
GRAND Street School
course, necessary to transform the information booth
into a plush fruit stand. Eager to get started, the brothers ordered the carpenters to start doing the lumber
work outside the booth. The puzzled information
booth clerks wondered what was going on. At exactly 9
o’clock, Tony Fortunato approached the booth and
ordered the clerks out. The clerks then began asking the
questions, with the indignant Fortunatos shouting
answers. Railroad guards appeared, trying to clear
away the carpenters, who were blocking travelers from
getting to the information booth.
Finally, one hour and one melee later, the Fortunatos
were escorted into the administrative offices of the New
York Central Railroad. They flaunted their written contract but were told that there was no such thing as the
Grand Central Holding Corp.
Undaunted, the Fortunato brothers promptly led the
officials to the offices of that firm—or at least where
the offices had been. The officials of the railroad tried
to explain to them that they had been the victims of a
confidence scheme. The brothers were convinced that a
rich American corporation was trying to cheat two foreigners out of $100,000 and then lease the booth to
another fruit dealer. In the end, they were forcibly
ejected from the terminal. The brothers took their complaint to leaders of New York’s Italian community, who
complained to the police. But while the police had
extensive files on confidence game operators, they
could not identify Grenfell or Blodgett. It had been a
perfect crime, one that many in the Italian community
continued to believe had been cooked up by a rich corporation to take advantage of naive Italians. For many
years thereafter, Tony and Nick Fortunato would come
into Grand Central Station and glare at the poor information clerks, hurling insults of shaking their fists at
them, thus becoming, after a fashion, another strange
sight for tourists arriving in Gotham.
T. Remington Grenfell
Vice President
GRAND CENTRAL
HOLDING CORPORATION
Mr. Grenfell told the fruit dealers, Tony and Nick
Fortunato, that they had been selected, after an intensive investigation, to be offered the rights to the information booth. He explained that the railroad was upset
because too many travelers were jamming the big circular booth in the center of the station to ask unnecessary
questions. So, it had decided to let the ticket sellers
answer all questions and this opened up the information booth for commercial use, ideally as a fruit stand.
The rental would be $2,000 a week with the first year’s
rent paid in advance. The $100,000 payment did not
faze the Fortunato brothers—in 25 years in the country
they had amassed a goodly fortune through hard work,
without ever really catching on to the sharp American
ways—but they did ask for time to think it over.
Mr. Grenfell was somewhat curt. He said that
wouldn’t be possible. He mentioned the name of a
nearby competitor of the Fortunato brothers and said
he was to get second option if they refused. Quickly,
the brothers agreed. It seemed like a good opportunity.
While $2,000 a week was certainly high rental, the traffic at Grand Central was enormous. Besides the ordinary fruit sales, travelers would undoubtedly be buying
expensive baskets to give as gifts.
The brothers followed Mr. Grenfell into a building
connected with Grand Central to the door of a suite of
offices that bore the legend:
Wilson A. Blodgett
President
GRAND CENTRAL
HOLDING CORPORATION
They were ushered past a blond secretary into Mr.
Blodgett’s office. Blodgett was a very busy man and
could not spend much time on such a trifling matter.
When the brothers again hesitated, Mr. Blodgett
seemed to take it that they would have trouble raising
the $100,000. Imperiously, he started to dismiss them,
but thanks to Mr. Grenfell’s intercession and the brothers’ hasty assurances, he relented. It was agreed that the
brothers would close the deal the following morning by
presenting a certified check for the full amount.
The next morning the transaction went like clockwork. The check changed hands and the papers were
signed. The brothers were to take possession at 9 A.M.
on April 1, coincidentally April Fool’s Day.
Shortly before the appointed hour, Tony and Nick
Fortunato arrived at the station accompanied by a
small gang of carpenters. Some remodeling was, of
Grand Street School
criminal institution
Operations of Fagin-type schools for crime were common in 19th-century America, but few achieved the
stature of the so-called Grand Street School in New
York City in the 1870s.
Run by the celebrated Marm Mandelbaum, the leading fence and perhaps the greatest criminal organizer of
the era, the establishment was virtually within sight of
police headquarters. Marm’s staff of expert pickpockets
and sneak thieves taught small boys and girls, many
under the age of 10, the secrets of their profession, and
there were also advanced courses in safecracking and
burglars, confidence rackets and blackmail techniques.
No charges were levied for the instructions, but virtually all the income from “class work” went to Marm
366
GRAVANO, Sammy “the Bull”
and her cohorts. Upon completion of the courses, several of the more proficient students were put on
straight salary, binding them to turn in everything they
stole. Marm Mandelbaum abandoned this practice
after she discovered that several of her top employees
were instead selling a considerable portion of their loot
to rival fences while still drawing their regular pay. This
realization that there was no honor among thieves and
Marm’s conclusion that the crime school had become
too blatant when the young son of a prominent police
officer applied for training forced her to cease operations after a half-dozen years.
See also: FREDERICKA “MARM” MANDELBAUM.
he did not exactly behave like a seasoned gunman.
According to the legend, Billy smoothtalked him into
showing him his gun, from which Grant had already
fired a few shots. The Kid admired the .45 and—
unknown to Grant—spun the barrel around to an
empty chamber. When the shooting started, Joe Grant
was embarrassed to hear his gun click on the empty
chamber, but his embarrassment was short lived as the
Kid gunned him down. Writer after writer has embellished the account, but more recently, experts, such as
James D. Horan and Paul Sann, have argued that the
so-called duel might well have been an “invention.”
And it may be that not only was the duel apocryphal,
but so was Joe Grant himself, living—and dying—only
in the legend of Billy the Kid.
Grannan, Riley (1868–1908) gambler and gunfighter
Although he was reputed to be fast on the draw, Riley
Grannan is best remembered as a truly successful
Western gambler, a brilliant student of horse racing
and the inventor of modern form-betting. He once bet
$275,000 on a horse and won.
Born in Paris, Ky. in 1868, Grannan arrived on the
Western scene fairly late and soon grasped that with the
closing of the frontier, the old style of the cheating gambler was outdated. He came up with the idea of establishing a gambling palace that could offer customers
satisfaction for all their desires and, an idea still relatively unique for the West, honest gambling. For the
locale of this great dream, Grannan picked out a plot of
land at Rawhide, Nev. in 1907 and plunked down
$40,000 for its purchase. There were those who considered it a foolish idea to try to build a great gambling
center in the desert, and they appeared to be right.
When Grannan died suddenly in April 1908, he was
flat broke, his dream having drained away virtually all
his funds.
Four decades later, a leading hoodlum named Bugsy
Siegel would come up with the same dream and lose
millions of the crime syndicate’s money building the
Flamingo. Eventually, the gambling paradise of Las
Vegas was to prove that Siegel, and Riley Grannan
before him, were right.
Grant, Ulysses S. (1822–1885) traffic offender
Both before and after he entered the White House,
Ulysses S. Grant was a notorious speedster with horse
and rig. On at least two occasions, Grant, while in
command of the Union armies, was fined $5 in precinct
court. Such an offense was not so readily handled
during Grant’s first presidential term. President Grant
was apprehended in the nation’s capital for racing his
horse and buggy at breakneck speed on M Street
between 11th and 12th. The arresting constable, a man
named William H. West, was dragged some 50 feet
after seizing the horse’s bridle. When Constable West
recognized Grant, he started to apologize, but the
president said, “Officer, do your duty.” The horse and
rig were impounded for a time but finally returned to
Grant when no charges were pressed. A constitutional
dilemma developed, much as it would a century later in
the Watergate scandal, about whether it was possible to
indict a president without first impeaching him.
Gravano, Sammy “the Bull” (1945– ) highestranking Mafia informer
Without doubt, he was the most important Mafia bigwig to turn informer in the entire history of the battle
against organized crime in America. Federal prosecutors were never able to bring down John Gotti, the boss
of the powerful Gambino crime family, until his underboss, Salvatore Gravano, better known as “Sammy the
Bull”“flipped” and testified against Gotti, dubbed by
the media as the “Teflon Don” for his ability to beat
rap after rap.
This time the Feds could be said to have Gotti with
“the meat in his mouth,” doomed by 100 hours of taped
conversations he conducted. Later criticism was raised
that the prosecutors needlessly let Gravano “walk.”
Experts found that prosecutors were “tape-shy,” since
Grant, Joe (?–1880?) Billy the Kid victim
Joe Grant was a mean Texas gunman who “leaned on”
Billy the Kid in a saloon at Fort Sumner, N.M. in January
1880 and was shot dead after falling for a clever ruse by
the Kid. At least, that’s the way the story is told in many
of the more colorful biographies of Billy the Kid.
Over the years Joe Grant was built up from an
unknown to a vicious gunman who drifted up from
Texas for the specific purpose of ridding New Mexico
of the Kid. But when he challenged Billy in that saloon,
367
GRAVANO, Sammy “the Bull”
Gravano enumerated his 19 murders stretching from
1970 to some two decades later. Still the prosecution
had to have him on the stand, immunity for him a small
price to pay for tying Gotti to the curbside murder of
Paul Castellano, the head of the Gambinos whom Gotti
had to eliminate to achieve power.
Gotti went to prison for life with no parole, and
he was to be only one of dozens of mobsters to end
up in prison, as were corrupt union officials, having
been convicted of racketeering. So too fell a crooked
cop who supplied information to Gotti and a corrupt
juror who aided the Gotti cause in a previous prosecution.
Since it was true that Gravano very easily would
have been convicted without testimony from Gotti on
the basis of the taped conversations and gotten at least
50 years, some have argued that obviously Gotti could
have been convicted without Gravano’s testimony. Gravano made it clear he felt Gotti’s “big mouth” on the
tapes was what had doomed him. The fact was that
Gravano probably knew he was in a top-dog position
because the prosecutors knew this was their last chance
to get Gotti on all the charges under the RICO law. If
they lost the case, Gotti could never be charged again
on any of that evidence.
That meant, some legal experts say, Gravano actually was in a position to dictate the terms of his own
treatment. In 1985 he drew a five-year sentence, but
since he had been held for five years, mostly for his
own protection, he went free.
Gravano at first went into the witness protection
program. He was supposed to crawl into the most
remote cave and stay there, fingers firmly crossed and
hoping the mob wouldn’t find him. That was not the
Bull’s way. He left the program and increasingly
appeared in the open. In 1999 he was living in Phoenix,
Ariz., having popped up on television to promote his
1997 biography, Underboss. He also returned to the
construction business, which is where he operated during his crime days, and even talked to a local newspaper as long as it did not reveal his new name.
Apparently, Gravano concluded the Gambinos were
not about to go after him. True, family members all
hated him, but secretly many agreed that Gotti was the
one who had caused their woes, starting by his insistence that all his capos and other underlings appear
regularly at the gang’s Manhattan headquarters, the
Ravenite. This allowed the FBI years of surveillance
that eventually identified them.
As for Gotti himself, it became a fair bet he would
not order the Bull’s murder, if he still maintained the
power to do so. Gotti had come down with cancer,
which might in time allow him his freedom. The killing
of the Bull would certainly “queer” that hope.
FPO
FIG # 70
TO BE
PICKED-UP
FROM
PREVIOUS ED.
Mafia turncoat Sammy “the Bull” Gravano achieved bestseller status with his account of his life in the Mafia.
(Author’s collection)
cases had previously been lost even though there were
plenty of tapes for the government to use. In those cases
Gotti’s lawyers tore into the tapes, saying they were misleading and just plain “garbage.” Jurors seemed to
agree.
Faced with that reality the government decided Gravano was vital to their case. The Bull—so named for his
compact muscular body and thick bovine neck—had
witnessed the events Gotti talked about so damningly
and was able to provide personal corroboration that
prosecutors were never able to come up with before.
That hardly meant that Gravano put a “human face”
on the case. More accurately what made the Bull so fascinating to the authorities, the media and the public
was his very unwholesomeness. Without a qualm or
real note of regret, Gravano confessed to 19 murders,
and a reading of his testimony made a number of
observers conclude that in some cases Gravano pushed
the killings on Gotti rather than the reverse.
368
GRAVES of criminals
About the only ones really after Gravano were the
kin of several of the Bull’s hits. They launched a legal
campaign to deprive him of any financial rewards from
his book and they filed a $25 million suit against him.
Despite his dark past, Gravano was making no deals
and not giving up any of his money, rumored to include
funds he got for his many “legitimate” businesses.
Apparently he felt secure in what the New York
Times called his “all-American sun-belt future.”
Even more amazing was another act of daring. Some
newsmen have been trying to confirm that Sammy the
Bull turned up in 1998 or 1999 walking around the
New York’s Howard Beach section, the heart of Gotti
country. True or not, Sammy the Bull seemed to have a
way about him.
See also: PAUL CASTELLANO, JOHN GOTTI.
covered, one of Mrs. Barnaby’s daughters financed an
autopsy on her body that turned up evidence of poison.
Suspicion soon centered on Dr. Graves, who was much
reviled in the press despite his denials of the crime. But
suspicion was one thing and proof another, and
although Dr. Graves was arrested, he was soon released
on $30,000 bail. The lack of proof of any connection
between the doctor and the poisoned whiskey made it
appear that he would eventually be cleared, and numerous patients continued to visit him, declaring their
belief in his innocence.
However, at Dr. Graves’ trial the prosecution brought
forth a newly discovered witness, a young man named
Joseph Breslyn who told of Dr. Graves approaching him
in November 1890 in the Boston train station and asking him to write a note, claiming he himself could not
write. This was the note pasted on the poisoned whiskey
bottle. Convicted, Graves was awaiting a retrial after a
successful appeal when he committed suicide in April
1893 with poison smuggled into his jail cell.
Graves, Thomas T. (1843–1893) murderer
The murder of a rich elderly lady named Josephine
Barnaby by Dr. Thomas Graves in 1891 ranked as New
England’s second most celebrated mystery during the
1890s, surpassed only by the case of Lizzie Borden.
What especially offended the Victorian mores of the
day was that a physician had done in his patient for
profit. It was something “doctors don’t do,” a contemporary account noted.
The estranged wife of a Providence, R.I. businessman, Mrs. Barnaby inherited a paltry $2,500 upon her
husband’s death. Dr. Graves, who had treated the
woman for a number of years, masterminded Mrs.
Barnaby’s campaign to reverse the will and eventually
succeeded. The grateful widow gave her doctor power
of attorney over her finances, whereupon the good doctor proceeded to loot her assets.
To make the task easier, Dr. Graves prescribed long
trips for his patient’s health. The old woman eventually
grew suspicious, and when she insisted upon returning
home and taking charge of her own affairs, the doctor
warned her that he might have her declared incompetent
and put in a home for the aged. Initially, Mrs. Barnaby
was too petrified to protest any further, but then she let
the doctor know she was returning from California and
planned to take care of her estate personally.
On her trip back home, Mrs. Barnaby stopped off in
Denver, Colo. to visit with a friend, a Mrs. Worrell.
When she arrived there, she was greeted with a package
from the East. It contained a bottle of whiskey on
which was pasted a note reading: “Wish you a Happy
New Year’s. Please accept this fine old whiskey from
your friend in the woods.”
The two women used the whiskey in mixed drinks,
found it rather “vile” but downed it all. Both of them
died six days later. When the gift of whiskey was dis-
graves of criminals
The headstone and marble shaft stands on Plot 48 in
Chicago’s Mount Olivet Cemetery. An inscription reads:
QUI RIPOSA
Alphonse Capone
Nato: Jan. 17, 1899
Morto: Jan. 25, 1947
The tourists still visit the grave, but there is no body.
Even in death, Al Capone continues to be involved in
deceit. When the Capone family realized, after Al’s
death, that the public would keep coming to the grave
site to gawk, they secretly had the caskets of all the
family’s members moved across town to Mount Carmel
Cemetery where the real graves are clustered around a
granite slab, each headstone bearing the words “My
Jesus Mercy.”
A similar deception was practiced two decades earlier by the wife of Chicago gangster Dion O’Banion,
who was murdered by Capone gunners. Originally, he
was buried in November 1924 under a headstone bearing his name, in unconsecrated ground at Mount
Carmel, as directed by Cardinal George Mundelein. A
spokesman for the archdiocese explained: “One who
refuses the ministrations of the Church in life need not
expect them in death. O’Banion was a notorious criminal. The Church did not recognize him in his days of
lawlessness and when he died unrepented in his iniquities, he had no claims to the last rites for the dead.” In
1925 Anna O’Banion had the remains of her husband
disinterred and reburied in consecrated ground under a
granite shaft inscribed, “My Sweetheart.” The cardinal
369
GRAY, Henry Judd
Ironically, both Albert Anastasia, born Anastasio,
(1902–57) and Crazy Joe Gallo (1929–72) lie buried in
Brooklyn’s Greenwood Cemetery, the former’s death
being the result of the latter’s plotting. Guards at the
cemetery will direct visitors to Gallo’s grave. But then,
Crazy Joe was always one of the more exhibitionist
characters in the underworld.
Graves of criminals are probably raided more often
than those of other people. When Billy the Kid was
laid to rest in 1881, after being shot dead by Sheriff
Pat Garrett, he was dressed in a borrowed white shirt
by Deluvina Maxwell, the Indian servant girl who
loved him, and buried under a wooden cross bearing
the legend “Duerme bien. Querido” (“Sleep well,
beloved”). But before long, the cross was carried off by
ardent souvenir hunters. Today, Billy is buried in a
common grave in Old Fort Sumner with two of his fellow outlaws, Tom O’Folliard and Charlie Bowdre. A
stone marker with the inscription “Pals” identifies the
trio and their dates. The grave is surrounded by a highwire fence, the only enclosure to successfully contain
the Kid.
was outraged when he heard of it and ordered the monument removed. He relented, however, about having
O’Banion’s body moved again and allowed it to
remain, marked only by a simple headstone.
Most Mafia big shots, with few exceptions, prefer
the same type of anonimity in death that they seek in
life. The body of Thomas Lucchese reposes in Calvary
Cemetery in Queens, New York City under a headstone
with his name oddly misspelled Luckese, a version
never used by the family. The theory is that it was his or
the family’s way of misdirecting the curious.
Another Queens cemetery, St. John’s, has become
known as the Mafia’s Boot Hill. Charles “Lucky”
Luciano (1897–1962) personally picked out his future
resting place at St. John’s in 1935. His Grecian mausoleum near the entrance (Section 3, Range C) provided
the final resting ground for a number of his family who
died before him. Twenty-five years after selecting the
site, Luciano was fortunate to be able to be interred
there. Since at the time of his death he was in exile in his
native Italy, permission had to be obtained so that his
body could be returned to the United States for burial.
Vito Genovese (1897–1969) also lies buried in St.
John’s. Once an ally of Luciano, he became his mortal
enemy in later years. Now they are closer than ever.
Genovese reposes very near Luciano (Section 11, Range
E, Plot 9) in a simple tomb.
Also near the Luciano mausoleum is the Romanesque tomb of Joseph Profaci (1897–1962), former
head of one of New York’s five crime families. Profaci’s
resting place, another mausoleum, is the largest of all
the dons, located on a circular road fronting the Cloister building that contains the body of Carlo Gambino,
the model for Mario Puzo’s Godfather, in a private
family vault on the fifth floor. Among others buried at
St. John’s in more recent years are Joseph Colombo
(1914–78) and Carmine Galante (1910–79).
Walkie-talkie-equipped keepers guard the privacy of
all the underworld big shots at St. John’s. Picture takers
are given the bum’s rush by guards, especially at the
Luciano and Genovese grave sites, with the explanation
that the families of the deceased do not appreciate such
activities. One crime writer, Philip Nobile, advised
readers recently that if they wished to “shoot” the Profaci grave, “do it from a moving car, a tactic perfected
by the Mafia itself.”
By comparison, it is relatively easy to snap pictures
at other cemeteries, such as St. Michael’s, also in
Queens, where Frank Costello (1891–1973) lies. St.
Michael’s is nonsectarian, which is perhaps most fitting
for Costello, the most “non-Italian” of the syndicate.
Like that of Luciano, Costello’s tomb is positioned just
to the left of the main entrance, almost like a greeting
to visitors.
Gray, Henry Judd
See RUTH SNYDER.
great diamond hoax
In 1872 two seedy prospectors named John Slack and
Philip Arnold pulled off a monumental fraud, fooling
some of the best business brains of this country and the
diamond experts of Tiffany’s.
Slack and Arnold visited the Bank of California in
San Francisco and asked to have a leather pouch
deposited in the vault. After first refusing to say what
it contained, they finally shrugged and spilled out the
pouch’s glittering contents, a hoard of uncut diamonds. By the time they left the bank, the head teller
was already in the office of the bank’s president,
William C. Ralston. A former miner himself, and probably selected by Slack and Arnold for that very reason,
Ralston soon went looking for the two prospectors.
His offer: to form a mining syndicate for harvesting
the diamonds. Slack and Arnold conceded they could
use some help, but they were not about to reveal the
source of the diamonds until they had cash in hand.
The diamonds were sent over to a jeweler’s office in
San Francisco to determine their genuineness and the
answer came back that they were indeed the real thing.
Still, caution prompted Ralston and his associates to
double-check with Tiffany’s in New York. Tiffany’s
proved even more enthusiastic, suggesting the diamonds sent them meant that those in hand were worth
at least $1.5 million.
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GREAT Michigan “free land” swindle
with. Very few reputations came through the scandal
unmarred. Charles Lewis Tiffany had to admit that his
experts, who were the best in America, hadn’t ever
worked with uncut diamonds and thus simply were not
aware how much of a raw stone was lost when fashioned into a jewel. Many of California’s tycoons
dropped huge amounts of money and Ralston’s bank
collapsed. Ralston committed suicide.
Slack and Arnold fared better. Private detectives
found Arnold living quite happily in his original home
in Elizabethtown, Ky. on his $300,000 take. The courts
there did not look kindly on efforts to have him extradited to California. He and Slack were admired, even
lionized, by much of the country. After all, even if they
had taken some supposedly sharp tycoons for
$600,000, hadn’t those greedy men swindled them out
of a “billion dollar” mine? Finally, in return for giving
back $150,000 of his haul, Arnold had all charges
against him dropped. Nothing more was heard of Slack
for many years. Just before leaving California, he had
told his friends that he intended to drink up his
$300,000 or die in the effort. Then years later, he
turned up as a well-to-do coffin maker in White Oaks,
N.M.
Now convinced there was a pot of diamonds at the
end of the rainbow, Ralston & Co.’s next step was to
find a way to separate the diamond find from the grizzled prospectors. Slack and Arnold were first brought
into the mining syndicate and then offered $300,000
apiece for their shares—provided they would reveal the
source of the diamonds. The two prospectors rubbed
their whiskers and said that was a good enough offer
since they weren’t the greedy kind. The fact that the
mining company had in its possession an estimated
$1.5 million in gems made it a very good deal for Ralston and the others, some might even say a swindle.
That, of course, is the secret behind many a great swindle—the cheated must believe they are cheating the
cheaters.
Before the money was turned over to the pair, they
would have to prove the diamond field existed. This
they agreed to provided the man sent with them to
check its authenticity, mining expert John Janin, went
and returned blindfolded. Slack and Arnold stated they
would not reveal the field’s location until they were
paid. They traveled a day and a half by train and then
two days by pack mule with Janin blindfolded all the
way. What the mining expert found at the end of the
trip made him ecstatic. There were diamonds all over
the place, just below the ground, between rocks, in ant
hills! When the three returned to San Francisco, Janin
refused to make his report until he was permitted to
buy into the mining corporation. That ignited the
whole thing. A diamond craze hit the West. Ralston’s
company paid off the prospectors, who headed east,
and then prepared to mine the diamond field before
other fortune hunters found it. The company sent out
phony search groups to mislead other prospectors. At
least 25 expeditions were launched to find diamonds.
However, before the Ralston combine could really get
its operation off the ground (the company first wanted
to set up its own, and the country’s first, diamondcutting industry in San Francisco), the bubble burst. A
prominent geologist, Clarence King and two others set
out to find the field. When they did, King quickly determined it had been “salted.” Some of the diamonds
found by King showed lapidary marks.
The news was electrifying. The San Francisco
Evening Bulletin headlined the story:
Great Michigan “free land” swindle
There have been any number of swindles involving the
sale of vacation or retirement plots, but never has there
been anything to rival the fantastic ripoff worked early
in the 20th century by two colorful rogues, Col. Jim
Porter, a former Mississippi steamboat gambler, and his
young assistant, who over the years would become
famous as Yellow Kid Weil.
Col. Porter had a cousin who was a county recorder
up in Michigan and the owner of several thousand
acres of undesirable or submarginal land. Porter and
his assistant bought a large chunk of this land at $1 an
acre and then set up a Chicago sales office, showing the
usual artist’s concept of a clubhouse, marina and other
features that would be built. However, they said nothing was ready for sale yet. Meanwhile, Porter, posing as
an eccentric millionaire, and Weil started ingratiating
themselves with hundreds of people by giving away free
lots. No one was immune to the offer. Porter on certain
evenings would give away 30 to 40 lots to prostitutes,
madams, waiters and bartenders. Weil even gave some
to Chicago police detectives. But they admonished each
recipient not to mention the gift because then everyone
else would want one. Naturally, they would also inform
the happy recipients that they should immediately write
and have the transaction recorded at the county seat.
The fee for this, it developed, was $30; it had been just
$2 before the swindle, but Porter’s cousin had raised
THE DIAMOND CHIMERA
It Dissolved Like the Baseless
Fabric of a Dream
The Most Dazzling Fraud of the Age
Investigation in Europe revealed that Slack and
Arnold had come to Amsterdam with $25,000 they’d
won gambling and bought up a huge amount of flawed
uncut diamonds. This was what they salted the desert
371
GREEN, Eddie
Green Chair Curse
the fee to $30 with the understanding that $15 of it
would go to Porter and Weil, netting the pair $16,000,
and the rest he would keep for himself. The operation
was entirely legal since all they had done was give away
some valueless land, and not taken a penny from any
recipient.
Green, Eddie
See JUG MARKERS.
Green, Edward (1833–1866) bank robber
In a sense, Edward Green, often mistakenly called
America’s first bank robber, represents a criminal trend
that has come full circle. When Green, who was postmaster of Malden, Mass., robbed that town’s bank on
December 15, 1863, he was an amateur, it was his first
crime and he did it on impulse. Today, that is the
description of the average bank robber, the professionals having long since deserted the field.
Green, a cripple, visited the bank and discovered that
the president’s son, 17-year-old Frank Converse, was
alone there. Green went home, returned to the bank
with his pistol and shot Converse in the head, killing
him. He then scooped up $5,000 in cash and ambled
out. Behaving like the amateur he was, Green, who was
deep in debt, suddenly paid all his bills; a heavy drinker,
he drank even more and spent money lavishly. When
the police brought him in for questioning, Green
quickly confessed the robbery and murder and was duly
hanged on February 27, 1866. Shortly after Green’s
bank robbery, the James and Younger boys, the Missouri badmen, went into the bank-robbing business and
raised the crime to an art form in America.
See also: BANK ROBBERIES.
“Green, Ballad of Baldy”
Chicago underworld superstition
One of the most colorful legends in crime is that of the
Green Chair Curse, also sometimes referred to by the
chroniclers of Chicago crime as the Undertaker’s
Friend. The curse was named after a green leather chair
in the office of William “Shoes” Schoemaker, who
became Chicago’s chief of detectives in 1924. Several of
Chicago’s top gangsters were hauled into Schoemaker’s
office for grilling and ordered to sit in the green chair.
Several of them died violent deaths shortly thereafter.
This could hardly be considered a startling coincidence
in view of the death rate in Chicago’s gang wars during
Prohibition.
The newspapers, however, quickly seized on a great
story and belief in the curse of the green chair began to
grow. In time, Schoemaker started keeping a record of
the criminals who sat in the chair and later died violently. When the “inevitable” event occurred, Shoes
put an X by the gangster’s name. There were the
bloody brothers Genna (Angelo, Tony and Mike),
Porky Lavenuto, Mop Head Russo, Samoots Amatuna, Antonio “the Scourge” Lombardo, John Scalise,
Albert Anselmi, Schemer Drucci, Zippy Zion, Pickle
Puss DePro, Antonio “the Cavalier” Spano. Undoubtedly aprocryphal tales had it that other gangsters,
including Al Capone, absolutely refused to sit down in
the chair.
When Shoes retired in 1934, there were 35 names in
his notebook and 34 had Xs after them. Only one criminal, Red Holden, was still alive and he was doing time in
Alcatraz for train robbery. “My prediction still stands,”
Shoes informed reporters. “He’ll die a violent death.
Maybe it’ll happen in prison. Maybe we’ll have to wait
until he gets out. But, mark my words, it’ll happen.”
Holden, however, outlived Shoes, who died four
years later. The chair passed to Capt. John Warren,
Shoes’ aide, and he continued to seat an occasional
hoodlum in it. By the time Warren died in September
1953, the green chair death rate was said to stand at 56
out of 57. Only Red Holden was still alive. He had
been released from Alcatraz in 1948 and thereafter was
involved in several shoot-outs, which he survived. Then
he was convicted of murder and sent to prison for 25
years. On December 18, 1953, he died in the infirmary
of Illinois’ Statesville Penitentiary. The newspapers
reported he was “smiling” because he had “beaten the
chair”—the green one rather than the electric one.
Holden’s passing set off a newspaper search for the
illustrious green chair that had so cursed the underworld, but alas, it was no more. The chair was traced
to the Chicago Avenue police station, where it had been
confined to the cellar after Capt. Warren’s death. When
it was found to be infested with cockroaches, it was
chopped up and consigned to the furnace before
frontier song
Not too much is known about the life of Baldy Green,
but his accomplishments were, in a manner of speaking, impressive. As a stagecoach whip, Baldy drove the
trails of the Nevada gold camps for Wells Fargo in the
1860s. This was not a safe occupation, considering the
number of highwaymen that plagued Wells Fargo.
Many drivers got shot but never Baldy Green. It was
said that Baldy was just about the most polite victim a
stagecoach robber could wish for, and he became celebrated for his ability to throw his hands up and the
strongbox to the ground in one motion.
According to one story, Wells Fargo finally fired
Baldy while they still had some strongboxes left. While
Baldy’s fate is lost to history, his fame as a Wells Fargo
driver was and is still celebrated in the rollicking “Ballad of Baldy Green.”
372
GREEN Parrot murder
brazenly, the approach would even be made by mail.
One circular issued in 1882 read:
Holden died in his hospital bed. Otherwise, some
claimed, Holden would never have escaped its curse.
Green Corn Rebellion
Dear Sir:
I will confide to you through this circular a secret by
which you can make a speedy fortune. I have on hand a
large amount of counterfeit notes of the following
denominations: $1, $2, $5, $10 and $20. I guarantee
every note to be perfect, as it is examined carefully by
me as soon as finished, and if not strictly perfect is
immediately destroyed. Of course it would be perfectly
foolish to send out poor work, and it would not only
get my customers into trouble, but would break up my
business and ruin me. So for personal safety, I am compelled to issue nothing that will not compare with the
genuine. I furnish you with my goods at the following
low price, which will be found as reasonable as the
nature of my business will allow:
antiwar movement
Antiwar sentiment during World War I was much more
pronounced than it was during the Vietnam conflict,
but it produced only one major and premeditated violent incident: the Green Corn Rebellion of eastern
Oklahoma.
The organization behind the rebellion was the Working Class Union (WCU), a syndicalist movement associated with the Industrial Workers of the World, which
was formed before the beginning of the war. In August
1917 several hundred angry WCU farmers assembled to
march on Washington, take over the government and
end the war. While they awaited the arrival of thousands
of other antiwar, antidraft protestors to swell their
ranks, the farmers subsisted on unripe green corn. They
managed to cut some telegraph wires and tried unsuccessfully to blow up railroad bridges. Before the movement was fully mobilized, they were attacked and
scattered by patriotic posses. A total of 450 farmers
were arrested. Many were released, but the leaders drew
prison sentences of three to 10 years and many lesser
supporters were given 60 days to two years.
There were several shootings and hangings during
the war period, but in all cases save the Green Corn
Rebellion, the violence was initiated by supporters of
the war.
green goods swindle
For $ 1,200 in my goods (assorted) I charge 100
For $ 2,500 in my goods (assorted) I charge 200
For $ 5,000 in my goods (assorted) I charge 350
For $10,000 in my goods (assorted) I charge 600
Faced with the glowing prospect of making a considerable sum of money, very few carefully screened recipients of such letters notified the authorities. In a few
rare cases the sellers of the “counterfeit” money were
seized when they appeared to close the deal, but they
were released when an examination showed their
money was genuine. In one case a fast-talking swindler
convinced a New England police chief that he represented a bank executive who was planning to offer an
important position to a local banker but wanted to test
his honesty first.
Among the swindlers who worked the green goods
game over the years were Reed Waddell, Tom O’Brien,
George Post, Pete Conlish, Yellow Kid Weil and Fred
Buckminster. For a time the New Orleans Mafia pulled
green goods swindles, and even Mafia godfather Carlo
Gambino supposedly worked it several times. Although
most victims never reveal that they have been swindled,
police bunco squads get a few such reports each year.
See also: REED WADDELL.
confidence game
The green goods game is an old swindle by which a victim is sold what he thinks is an extraordinarily wellexecuted set of counterfeit money, only to find out later
he has bought a bundle of worthless paper.
The racket made its first appearance in 1869. The
mark would be shown a batch of genuine bills, told
they were perfect counterfeits and given the chance to
buy them at an extremely reasonable rate. Invariably,
the victim would jump at the opportunity, but just
before the sale was completed, the money package
would be switched for one containing cut-up green
paper.
By the 1880s several green goods gangs flourished in
this country. They set about picking their victims in a
scientific manner. First, a list of people who regularly
bought lottery tickets was compiled and scouts were
sent out to determine whether they were likely to go for
a dishonest scheme and whether they had the funds to
make fleecing them worthwhile. In this fashion quite a
number of small-town bankers and businessmen were
targeted and then caught in the swindlers’ net. Rather
Green Parrot murder
The murder at the Green Parrot Restaurant and Bar on
Third Avenue near 100th Street on July 12, 1942 was a
run-of-the-mill crime, the slaying of the proprietor during an apparent holdup; yet it is remembered today by
New York police as a case with a most unusual solution. Although there had been 20 patrons in the bar at
the time of the shooting, none would admit seeing
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GREEN River Killer
the only bar patron greeted by that name, and it was he
whom the parrot had identified as the murderer.
Indeed, he had not tried to commit a robbery but had
shot Geller in a drunken rage because the bar owner
had refused to serve him, claiming he was intoxicated
when he entered.
On February 10, 1944 the only killer ever convicted
because of a parrot was sentenced to seven to 15 years
in Sing Sing.
anything, insisting they had been at the far end of the
bar or in booths lining the wall.
It was not unusual in this tough section of East
Harlem to find such a group of uncommunicative witnesses. A few acknowledged that they had seen a man
with a gun, heard a shot and ducked. When they lifted
their heads, the patrons said, the man with the gun was
gone, and owner Max Geller was lying on the floor
behind the bar in a pool of blood. Had the man simply
walked in, drawn a gun and shot the bar owner? Or
had it been an attempted robbery? None of the witnesses was certain. Only one of them had yelled “Robber, robber, robber!” And that was the establishment’s
green parrot, kept on a perch behind the bar.
The Green Parrot Bar was actually a community
landmark because of the bird. It was a reason to bring
guests and tourists to the place, for this was no ordinary talking pet with a few limited phrases but a
crotchety old creature with the vocabulary of a longshoreman. An unsuspecting visitor might be told to
offer the parrot a cracker. If he did so and expected a
grateful reaction, he was sadly disillusioned. Such acts
of friendship only provoked outrage from the bird, who
would cut loose with a torrent of sulfurous language.
But the creature was clearly the keen sort. Evidently,
Geller had cried out “robber” during the attack on
him, and the parrot had picked up the cry.
Knowing that a robbery had been attempted and
finding a solution to the case were two separate matters, however. For almost two years the case remained
unsolved, forgotten by almost everyone except Detective John J. Morrisey, who occasionally would return to
the neighborhood in an attempt to dredge a forgotten
fact from the memories of the witnesses. Finally, he
learned that in addition to cursing the bird had been
taught to greet several patrons by name. It was a long,
tedious process but after a number of weeks the bird
would pick up a patron’s name and repeat it, appealing
to the vanity of the customer.
The detective returned to the Green Parrot and tried
to teach the bird his name and some other expressions.
If the bird was smart, it was also stubborn and took
weeks to pick up what the police officer taught it. Suddenly, Morrisey realized it was impossible for the parrot to have picked up the word robber after just hearing
it once. No, the bird hadn’t been saying “robber” but
something else.
A short time later, Morrisey arrested Robert Butler, a
former resident of the area, in Baltimore, Md., where
he was working as a lathe operator. He had vanished
from New York right after the Geller murder. As the
case turned out, the bird had not been shrieking “robber” but had actually been repeating a name he had
learned earlier: “Robert, Robert, Robert!” Butler was
Green River Killer
the one that got away
Quite possibly the most prolific unidentified serial
killer is the “Green River Killer,” so called because the
49 victims attributed to him or her were dumped in or
near Washington State’s Green River. The victims
started appearing on January 21, 1982, when 16-yearold Leann Wilcox of Tacoma was found strangled 8
miles from Seattle. Then in the fall of 1984, the parade
of corpses abruptly stopped. There have been no further attributable Green River killings since then, but a
law enforcement Green River Task Force remained in
place to find the killer. That goal was not achieved, but
over the next several years the force solved seven unrelated murders and three rapes. In what some observers
thought a bizarre development, serial killer Ted Bundy
was used as an adviser to the task force. Bundy was
himself facing conviction and the death penalty. In
point of fact Bundy contributed little to the investigation and clearly was motivated by a desire to postpone
his own death sentence.
Why did the Green River Killer stop? Some have
speculated that he or she died or was in prison or a
mental institution, his or her Green River crimes not
suspected by authorities. Another theory held by some
experts was that the killer had simply left the area.
These experts noted that in 1985, a series of murders
started in San Diego, Cal. that seemed related to the
Green River cases. The number of murders attributed
to the unknown San Diego serial killer ranged from 10
to perhaps 18 by a recent count. This would raise the
combined toll to anywhere from 59 to 67.
Green Tree dance house
The dime-a-dance halls of this century trace back to the
much more bawdy dance houses of the 19th century.
All such dance houses featured three attractions: liquor,
women and, least important, dancing. Most dance
houses would have at least 20 to 30 girls who not only
were unsalaried but indeed had to pay rent for rooms
or cubicles on the upper floors of the building. They
made their living from the customers they could lure to
their room to engage in paid sex or to be robbed. When
374
GREENLEASE, Robert C., Jr.
The last owner of the Green Tree was Tom Pickett, who
saw the place torn apart by Live Oak bullies in 1876.
After brooding about the fact that it would take a fortune to try to refurbish the establishment, Pickett went
out hunting with a revolver. He found several Live Oak
men in a saloon and shot two of them dead. He was
sent to the state penitentiary for life but escaped in
1885 when it caught fire. Pickett was later identified in
New York, but the authorities apparently made no
effort to return him to justice. As for the Green Tree, it
became regarded as a jinx. When the premises next
opened, it was a bakery.
See also: LIVE OAK BOYS.
business was especially good, harlots would be imported
from a nearby brothel. The general rule was that the
nearer the dance house was to the waterfront, the
rougher and meaner it was. The Green Tree on Gallatin
Street in New Orleans was a good example of one of
the more depraved dancehall establishments.
The Green Tree opened its doors in 1850. An old
woman ran the place with a firm hand. The first floor of
the establishment was divided into two rooms. The first
room, much bigger than the second, sported a long bar,
which could accommodate as many as 250 patrons
elbow to elbow. A smaller room in back was for dancing
and featured a piano and a fiddle, occasionally supplemented by a few brass instruments. At times, the bouncers would have to enforce a minimum of decorum on the
dance floor, where some of the girls would try to stimulate business by suddenly whipping off their dresses and
dancing in the nude. The clients would sometimes follow
suit, and the bouncers would have to clear the floor of
couples doing everything else but dancing.
The bouncers, as many as six at a time, were always
armed at least with clubs and brass knuckles. Besides
maintaining order in the back room, they were needed to
handle trouble at the bar. They were not too concerned
with ordinary fights or an occasional knifing, provided
the culprit showed the decency to clean up afterward by
dumping his victim or victims outside the premises. The
bouncers’ main concern was to prevent physical damage
to the house, and they would move in quickly and
viciously the second any furnishings were splintered.
The history of violence at the Green Tree can be
traced through the fate of its various owners. The first
owner, the old woman, disappeared from the scene in
the mid-1850s. Her place was filled by Harry Rice,
who lasted until 1864, when he was almost stoned to
death by a group of Union soldiers objecting to the high
water content of the liquor served. It took a detachment of U.S. cavalrymen to save him, and Rice,
maimed for life, closed shop. The resort was reopened
the following year by Mary Rich, better known as OneLegged Duffy because of her wooden leg. She failed to
last a year, being murdered on the premises by her
lover, Charley Duffy, who not only knifed her to death
but also smashed her skull in with her own wooden leg.
Paddy Welsh, a veteran saloon keeper, took over but
got in trouble with one of the worst criminal gangs of
the district, the Live Oak Boys, who wrecked the dive,
admonishing Welsh not to open up again. Welsh paid
no heed to their warning, however, and a few days later,
his body was found floating in the Mississippi.
William Lee, a former drum major in the U.S. Army,
remained in New Orleans after the Civil War and eventually took charge of the Green Tree. He was stabbed
to death by a gangster in an argument over a woman.
Greenlease, Robert C., Jr. (1947–1953) kidnap-murder
victim
The first major kidnapping of the post–World War II
period was the abduction of six-year-old Bobby Greenlease, Jr., the son of a wealthy Kansas City, Mo. automobile dealer, on September 28, 1953. Using the ruse that
the child’s mother had suffered a heart attack and was
calling for her son, one of the kidnappers, 41-year-old
Bonnie Brown Heady, posed as the boy’s aunt to get him
out of the French Institute of Notre Dame de Scion, one
of the city’s most exclusive schools for small children.
She and her accomplice, Carl Austin Hall, the 34year-old ne’er-do-well son of a respected lawyer and an
alcoholic who had turned to crime, then drove the
Greenlease boy across the state line to Kansas, where
Hall attempted to strangle him in a field. The feisty
youngster fought back fiercely, several times breaking
from Hall’s grasp and striking back. Finally, Hall drew
a revolver from his pocket and shot the child twice.
The kidnappers put the corpse back in their car and
later buried it in the garden of Mrs. Heady’s home in St.
Joseph, Mo. Then, by letter and telephone, they
demanded and received $600,000 in ransom from their
victim’s frantic parents. It took several fouled-up efforts
to get the money to the kidnappers, but the child was not
returned. On October 6, 1953 the two were arrested by
police in St. Louis after they had gone on a drunken
spree and attracted the suspicions of a cab driver.
Justice came swiftly. They were found guilty the following month, and on December 18, 1953 they died
together in the gas chamber. As they were strapped into
their chairs, Bonnie Heady’s main concern was that her
lover not be bound too tightly. “You got plenty of
room, honey?” she asked. Hall replied, “Yes, Mama.”
The gas was turned on and they died.
An unanswered question was what happened to that
part of the ransom money that Hall had placed in two
metal suitcases. After the pair’s arrest the suitcases were
brought to the Eleventh Precinct Station in St. Louis.
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GUADALUPE Canyon massacre
tainly be dropped before he had a chance to squeeze the
trigger a second time.
Only after Guiteau’s second shot did the president’s
guards pin his arms behind him and hustle him off to
jail. It may have been the quietest assassination on
record. But the president did not die immediately, lingering the whole hot summer with a bullet lodged so
deep behind his pancreas that an operation to remove it
was impossible. He finally died, after much suffering,
on September 19, 1881.
“How could anybody be so cold-hearted as to want
to kill my baby?” Garfield’s mother asked.
Guiteau was eager to answer the question. He was
busy in his jail cell writing his memoirs. He had had an
erratic background as a sort of self-styled lawyer. Abandoning his wife, a 16-year-old waif he found in the
streets, he had moved to Washington, D.C., where he
did volunteer work for the Republican Party and
picked up syphilis. When Garfield won the nomination,
Guiteau mailed the candidate a disjointed speech he
had written for Garfield to use and passed printed
copies of it at meetings. Garfield never utilized the
unsolicited speech, but Guiteau became convinced that
his words provided Garfield with his margin of victory
and thereby petitioned the newly elected president for
the post of ambassador to France. He did not get it and
resolved to gain vengeance by shooting Garfield. He
bought a .44-caliber pistol and practiced shooting at
trees along the Potomac. When he considered himself a
credible marksman, he started dogging Garfield. When
he was unsure of the president’s schedule on a certain
day, he simply asked the White House doorman, who
told him. He once got near to Garfield in church but
decided not to shoot because he feared others would be
hit. On another occasion he passed up a golden opportunity to shoot the president because Mrs. Garfield was
present, and Guiteau considered her “a dear soul.”
Shortly before he finally shot Garfield Guiteau visited the District of Columbia jail to see what his future
accommodations would be like and concluded it was
“an excellent jail.”
Brought to trial two months after the president’s
death, Guiteau subjected the courtroom to venomous
outbursts during the 101/2-week trial. He leaped up and
launched into long diatribes against the witnesses and
called them “dirty liars.” The prosecutor was alternately “a low-livered whelp” and an “old hog.” At
other times, he was most civil; after the Christmas and
New Year’s recesses, Guiteau assured the judge that he
“had a very happy holiday.”
When in his cell, Guiteau made a point of strutting
back and forth behind the bars so that visitors and
crowds outside could gawk at him. In his own defense,
he told the jurors that God had told him to kill. “Let
When the money was counted, it totaled only
$295,140. Since the couple had spent just a few thousand dollars, the FBI determined, the missing amount
was $301,960. It was an open secret that the FBI suspected a member or members of the St. Louis police
force, but no charges were ever lodged.
Guadalupe Canyon massacre
Actually, there was not one but two Guadalupe
Canyon massacres, the second of which came close to
being commemorated as a national holiday in Mexican
border towns because so many gringos had been
killed. The first massacre was the work of the notorious Clanton gang. In July 1881 Old Man Clanton, the
leader of the outlaws, learned that a Mexican mule
train was freighting bullion through the Chiricahua
Range. Clanton scouted the area and decided the best
place for his cutthroats to ambush the mule train was
in Guadalupe Canyon. With about 20 men, among
them Curly Bill Brocius, Johnny Ringo and several of
Clanton’s own brood, Old Man Clanton led an attack
on the train when the 19 Mexican muleteers were in an
exposed position. They killed several of the Mexicans
and—on Clanton’s orders—lined up the survivors and
executed them. The gang escaped with $75,000 in loot
and left a large section of the Chiricahua country
mourning their dead.
Less than two weeks later, Old Man Clanton and five
of his men attempted to drive a herd of stolen Mexican
cattle through the same canyon, totally unmindful that
the Mexicans might have learned something from their
ambush. A band of relatives and friends of the massacre
victims ambushed the small Clanton contingent, killing
all but one of them, including Old Man Clanton.
While there was considerable rejoicing in Mexican
adobes after the massacre of the gringos, the joy was
short lived. Later that same month Curly Bill Brocius,
who had taken over the leadership of the gang,
ambushed a Mexican trail herd in the San Luis Pass and
killed six vaqueros. Eight others surrendered and were
tortured to death by Curly Bill and his men.
See also: NEWMAN “OLD MAN” CLANTON.
Guiteau, Charles Julius (1844–1882) assassin of James
A. Garfield
It is generally agreed that no assassin today could kill a
president of the United States with the ease that Charles
J. Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker, shot President
James A. Garfield in a Washington railroad station on
July 2, 1881. First of all, it is doubtful an assassin
could get as close as he got. Moreover, Guiteau fired
and missed on his first shot: now, he would almost cer376
GUNFIGHTING, western
gunfighting, western
your verdict be, it was the Deity’s act, not mine,” he
demanded. When he was found guilty, he shook his finger at the jury box and snarled, “You are all low, consummate jackasses!”
In the days before his scheduled execution, Guiteau
was relaxed and unrepentant during his waking hours,
but his jailers insisted he moaned all night and slept in
terror with his blankets over his head. At dawn on June
30, 1882, the date of his execution, Guiteau insisted on
shining his shoes. He ate a hearty meal and memorized
a poem he had written to recite on the scaffold. Guiteau
went silently to the gallows, but after mounting the
scaffold, he wept for a moment and, as the hangman
came forward, recited his verse. “I am going to the
Lordy,” it started.
Then Guiteau was gone.
It happened just the way good Western gunfights were
supposed to happen. One day in late 1876 Turkey
Creek Jack Johnson got into an argument with a couple
of card-playing miners in Deadwood and invited them
outside to settle matters. The trio headed out to the
cemetery followed by a large crowd. Each of Johnson’s
opponents strapped on an extra gunbelt as Johnson
started toward them from one end of the cemetery. The
pair started from the other end and at 50 yards began
firing at Johnson. Before they had gone 10 yards, each
of Johnson’s foes had finished one six-shooter and
shifted to the other. Johnson had not yet fired a shot.
Finally, at 30 yards Johnson fired his first shot and
killed one of the men. Johnson stopped walking and let
his remaining opponent move closer to him. The man
approached, firing three more shots. Then Johnson
shot him dead. When they rolled the man over, his finger was still on the trigger of his cocked gun. Johnson
had fired just two shots.
That was how gunfights were supposed to be fought
in the Wild West, and once in a rare while, they were.
Turkey Creek Johnson’s feat is notable for its rarity.
Wyatt Earp once expounded that fighting a duel was a
matter of “going into action with the greatest speed of
which a man’s muscles are capable, but mentally
unflustered by an urge to hurry or the need for complicated nervous and muscular actions which trick shooting involves.” Earp’s detractors, on the other hand,
insist the controversial lawman seldom if ever lived up
to those words, engaging instead in what amounted to
cold-blooded murder without giving his opponent a
chance. Few Western “gunfights” really fit the bill;
most consisted of sneaking up behind a man and shooting him or drawing down on him at a bar without giving him the opportunity to go for his gun. Even when
both sides were able to shoot it out fairly, what usually
resulted was a wild shooting spree in which neither
protagonist was hurt, although this was not always the
case with onlookers. Such duels ended when the fighters simply ran out of ammunition. This was even true
in cases where the opponents faced each other at
almost point-blank range. In 1882 Cockeyed Frank
Loving and Jack Allen fought a storied duel in
Trinidad, Colo. in which they fired a total of 16 shots
without drawing blood. The next day, however, Allen
got Loving—coming up behind him and shooting him
down in cold blood, some said.
Few supposedly great gunfighters deserved their reputations. Bat Masterson killed only one man and that
in self-defense after being shot by a drunken, brawling
cavalryman. Jesse James was a notoriously bad shot.
He once fired at a bank cashier at point-blank range
and missed. On another occasion, attempting to kill a
FPO
FIG # 71
TO BE
PICKED-UP
FROM
PREVIOUS ED.
Charles J. Guiteau shoots President Garfield in a
Washington railroad station.
377
GUNNESS, Belle
end when a meat grinder toppled off a shelf. Naturally,
the widow Gunness was believed, children being given
to overactive imaginations.
After that, Belle never bothered going to the trouble
of marrying her mail-order suitors. She’d have them
bring their money with them, and if they didn’t have
enough, she’d send them back home for more. Then she
murdered them and buried them within a day or two
on her farm. Once, according to L’Amphere, Belle got
$20,000 from a victim, but in most other cases it was
around the $1,000 mark. In all, it was estimated she
collected well over $100,000 from 1901 until 1908,
when her murder spree ended. It probably ceased
because a relative or two of the murdered men began
writing in an effort to locate their missing relatives.
Belle must have concluded it was only a matter of time
before the law would close in on her.
On April 28, 1908 the Gunness farmhouse burned
to the ground. Inside were found the bodies of Belle’s
three children, aged 11, nine and five, and Belle herself. Well, it could have been Belle except the woman
was shorter and weighed about 150 pounds while
Belle was a good 250, at least. And to top it off, the
head was missing. The head, of course, would have
contained teeth that could have been traced. Belle was
known to wear a false plate anchored to a tooth, and
this was found in the ashes. The obvious conclusion
was that Belle had even ripped out her anchor tooth
and plate to deceive the law. No one was fooled, but
that didn’t do much good. Belle Gunness had disappeared. It was soon proven that mass murder had
taken place on the Gunness farm. All or parts of the
bodies of at least 14 different men were dug up before
the law stopped looking. It would have been virtually
impossible to unearth completely 40 acres of farmland.
And there was already more than enough evidence to
convict Belle, if she were ever found. She was not.
Over the years various bulky ladies from coast to coast
would be identified as Belle Gunness and then cleared
with the law’s apologies.
L’Amphere was sent to prison in 1909 for his part in
the activities of the Lady Bluebeard of La Porte. He
died there two years later after revealing all he knew
about Belle’s murderous activities. He said Belle was
supposed to get in touch with him after she had settled
elsewhere but she never did. About the only legacy
Belle Gunness left was a bit of bad poetry written about
her. The last stanza went:
train robbery victim, he fired six shots at the man from
a close distance but failed to hit him once. Billy the Kid
certainly did not qualify as a great gunfighter, and there
is no evidence that he ever gave any of his victims, variously estimated from four to 21, any kind of chance to
draw. The Kid also was not much of a two-gun man, as
he is often portrayed. Not many were—since two guns
with belt and cartridges weighed at least 8 pounds.
Even gunfights fought on “fair” terms generally
amounted to little more than murder, since it was usually evident beforehand which man was the better and
quicker shot. A case in point occurred when a cowboy
named Red Ivan dispatched a cardslick named Pedro
Arondondo in Canon City, Colo. in 1889. Ivan accused
the gambler of stacking the deck, which meant an automatic duel. Arondondo asked for a delay long enough
to take care of a few matters. He bought himself a
black suit and ordered a headstone with the inscription
“Pedro Arondondo, born 1857—died 1889, from a
bullet wound between the eyes fired by Red Ivan.”
Which is exactly what happened.
See also: GWIN-MCCORKLE DUEL, COCKEYED FRANK
LOVING.
Gunness, Belle (1859–?) murderess
It would be difficult to estimate whether Belle Gunness
or Jane Tappan holds the record as America’s greatest
murderess. The latter did not keep score, and the former just plain never told. The best estimate on Belle
Gunness was given by Roy L’Amphere, a Canadian
farmhand who became her on-and-off lover. He said
she killed at least 49 persons—42 would-be husbands,
two legal husbands, a young girl left in her care, three
of her own children and an unknown saloon wench
she’d hired as a servant and whose body she used as a
stand-in corpse for herself.
Belle turned up in La Porte, Ind. at the age of 42 as
the Widow Sorenson from Chicago. She was not the
friendly sort and kept neighbors off her property with a
high-wire fence. All the local folks seemed to know
about her was that she slaughtered hogs for a living.
Actually, she also carried on another very profitable
slaughtering business, that of killing off would-be suitors. She would place advertisements in matrimonial
magazines announcing she was seeking a husband with
two fine attributes. He had to be “kind and willing to
help pay off a mortgage.” The first man to answer an
ad was an amiable Norwegian named Peter Gunness.
Belle married him, insured him and then he died. One
of Belle’s children told a schoolmate that her mother
had killed her father. “She hit him with a cleaver.” But
Belle explained her unfortunate husband had met his
There’s red upon the Hoosier moon
For Belle was strong and full of doom;
And think of all them Norska men
Who’ll never see St. Paul again.
378
Gwin-McCorkle duel
Guzik, Jake “Greasy Thumb” (1887–1956) Capone
mob financial manager
Like Capone, Guzik eventually was nailed on tax
charges but handled his few years behind bars with
aplomb and returned ready to take up his money
chores. He was one of the hits, if not a very communicative one, of the Kefauver hearings with his refusal
to answer because any such response might tend to
“discriminate against me.”
Guzik’s position in the mob was never questioned,
and all of Capone’s successors—Nitti, Ricca, Giancana,
Accardo, Battaglia—allowed Jake complete freedom to
make the financial arrangements for the mob. When he
died on February 21, 1956, he was at his table in the
restaurant partaking a simple meal of lamb chops and a
glass of Mosel while making his usual payoffs. He collapsed of a heart attack. During his services there were
more Italians in the temple than ever in its history.
Jake was buried in an ornate bronze coffin that cost
$5,000. “For that money,” one of the hoods said, “we
could have buried him in a Cadillac.”
A pimp in his early teens, Moscow-born Jake “Greasy
Thumb” Guzik rose to become one of the most powerful men in the Chicago syndicate both during Al
Capone’s reign and for a quarter of a century afterward. During all that time, it is believed that Guzik
never carried a gun. He was the trusted treasurer and
financial wizard of the mob and, in the years after
Capone’s fall, was considered the real brains of the
organization, along with Paul “the Waiter” Ricca. The
intense loyalty Jake showed his fellow criminals was
repaid many times over. He was the only man that
Capone ever killed for out of pure friendship.
It happened in 1924, just a few years after Guzik
had joined the mob and was promoted to a high position because (so the story goes) without previously
knowing Capone he had saved the mob leader from an
ambush after accidently overhearing two hit men from
a rival gang talking about the plot. One evening in
May, Guzik got into an argument with a freelance
hijacker named Joe Howard, who slapped and kicked
him around. Incapable of fighting back, Guzik waddled
off to Capone and told him what had happened.
Capone hunted down Howard and found him in Heinie
Jacobs’ saloon on South Wabash Avenue, boasting
about how he had “made the little Jew whine.”
When Howard saw Capone, he extended his hand
and said, “Hello, Al.” Capone seized his shoulders and,
shaking him, demanded to know why he had assaulted
his friend. “Go back to your girls, you dago pimp,”
Howard replied. Without another word Capone put six
bullets in Howard’s head.
After that killing—which required a considerable
amount of fixing—Capone had in Guzik a faithful dog
who remained loyal to him and who, it is said, did
much to support him financially when Capone was in
his deteriorating stage during his final years.
One of Jake Guzik’s most important duties for the
mob was acting as a bagman in payoffs to police and
politicos, hence the origin of the nickname Greasy
Thumb. Actually, the name was first applied to Jake’s
older brother, procurer Harry Guzik, of whom it was
said that his “fingers are always greasy from the money
he counts out for protection.” Later, the title was transferred to Jake, whose thumb was much more greasy
since he handled much more money. One of his chores
was to sit nightly at a table in St. Hubert’s Old English
Grill and Chop House, where district police captains
and the sergeants who collected graft for some of them
could pick up their payoffs. Other visitors to Guzik
included bagmen for various Chicago mayors and their
aides.
Gwin-McCorkle duel
Gun duels in the Old West seldom fit the picture portrayed by Hollywood. An excellent example was the
gunfight between William M. Gwin, a judge, and
Joseph McCorkle in California in 1855. The duel took
place on a marsh north of the Presidio, some miles from
the Gwin home on Jackson Street in San Francisco.
Gwin arranged to have relays of horses ready for a messenger to carry the news of the gunfight to his wife. In
due course, the messenger came riding down Jackson
Street and rushed into the Gwin house reportedly
shouting, “The first fire has been exchanged and no
one is hurt!”
“Thank God!” Mrs. Gwin cried and dropped to her
knees in prayer with the rest of her family.
Sometime later, the messenger dashed into the house
again and yelled, “The second fire has been exchanged
and no one is hurt!”
“Praised be the Lord!” Mrs. Gwin replied.
On the third occasion, the messenger knocked on the
door, tendered his card and was brought into the parlor. When Mrs. Gwin greeted him, he said, “The third
fire has been exchanged and no one is hurt.”
“That’s good,” Mrs. Gwin said.
The next time, the messenger on arriving was asked
to stay for dinner. He did, ate heartily and joined in the
customary dinner table conversation. Then he announced
in passing: “Oh, by the way, the fourth fire has been
exchanged and no one is hurt. What do you think of that,
Mrs. Gwin?”
“I think,” the lady said, “that there has been some
mighty poor shooting!”
379
GYP the Blood
The poor shooting continued and both emerged
unscathed, a fact that, if nothing else, later allowed Mr.
Gwin to become the first U.S. senator from California.
See also: GUNFIGHTING.
The greatest practitioners of the art in the 20th century were two audacious swindlers, Mrs. William
McBride and Edgar Zug, who produced terror in hundreds of people and then bilked them of fortunes.
Dressed in weird ceremonial costumes, the pair told
wealthy victims they, their property and money were
under evil spells. Then they explained that Zug, as the
sole living white witch doctor in the United States, could
be the instrument of their salvation. “The only way to
relieve this deadly spell,” Zug would intone, “is to buy
your way out of it. These evil spirits respect cash.”
In 1902 Zug and Mrs. McBride put the curse on an
elderly rich couple, Mrs. Susan Stambaugh and her
palsy-ridden husband. “I see your profiles on the side
of a distant mountain . . . and through the brains of
these profiles, evil spirits have thrust long needles. This
was done many years ago and the needles are now
rusty. When these needles break, a day not long off,
you both will die.”
Upon hearing this prediction Mrs. Stambaugh
fainted and her husband had a spasmodic fit. When
they came to, Mrs. McBride had some good news;
Edgar Zug could save them from their awful fate.
There was a way Zug could convince the spirits to
withdraw the fatal needles. Zug nodded but warned,
“It will take money, a lot of money.” Within seven days
the scheming pair had stripped the Stambaughs of all
their savings and the deeds to their many properties.
Then Zug had some bad news for them. The spirits
were not satisfied. “You are going to die,” he intoned
with an air of resignation, “unless you can come up
with at least another five thousand.” But there was
then some good news; the Stambaughs would end up
getting more back than they paid in through a hidden
treasure that the spirits would reveal to them.
The now desperate but hopeful couple hysterically
hunted for more money, trying to secure loans from
friends. Finally, one of them revealed the reason for the
cash and the Gypsy Curse swindlers were arrested and
convicted of fraud. As they were being led from the
courtroom, Zug cried, “That’s what I get for being
kind!”
Police report that variations of the Gypsy Curse
swindle are still worked today on the elderly rich in
almost every ethnic community in big cities.
Gyp the Blood (1889–1914) gangster and killer
One of the most vicious gangsters in New York during
the early 1900s, Gyp the Blood (real name Harry Horrowitz) worked on commission for Big Jack Zelig as a
slugger, bomber and killer. He filled in slow periods as a
mugger and, at times, as a bouncer in East Side dance
halls, gaining the reputation as the best bouncer since
Monk Eastman, which was high praise indeed. Having
enormous strength, he boasted he could break a man’s
back by bending him across his knee, and he lived up to
the claim a number of times. Once, he won a $2 bet by
seizing an unfortunate stranger and cracking his spine
in three places. Gyp the Blood truly loved violence;
Gyp’s explanation for his eagerness to take on bombing
assignments was, “I likes to hear de noise.”
When the violence business got a bit slow, Gyp the
Blood formed his own gang, the Lenox Avenuers, who
engaged in muggings, burglaries and stickups around
125th Street. Gyp the Blood and three of his underlings, Whitey Lewis, Dago Frank and Lefty Louie, murdered gambler Herman Rosenthal on July 16, 1912
because he had begun revealing to District Attorney
Charles S. Whitman the tie-ins between gamblers and
the police. All four were apprehended despite a police
slowdown on the investigation. Gyp the Blood, in an
effort to save himself, said they had been hired to do
the killing by Big Jack Zelig at the behest of Lt. Charles
E. Becker. Zelig then talked about Becker, and although
Big Jack was assassinated before he could testify in
court, Becker was convicted and executed. Gyp the
Blood and his three henchmen went to the electric chair
on April 13, 1914.
See also: CHARLES E. BECKER, LENOX AVENUE GANG, BIG
JACK ZELIG.
Gypsy Curse swindle
enduring con game
The Gypsy Curse is a concept that goes back many centuries in Europe and endures to the present in this
country. Witch doctors have gouged the gullible since
colonial times, placing on or removing curses from
believing victims.
gypsy swindles
380
See HANDKERCHIEF SWITCH.
H
Hahn, Anna (1906–1938) mass poisoner
she simply tore up the note and no one was the wiser.
Anna then sold the Hahn house and moved to another
part of the city.
Next on her list was a man named Jacob Wagner,
who left an estate of $17,000 to his “niece” Anna. She
earned another $15,000 taking care of one George
Gsellman for a few months until his demise. One who
escaped her deadly attention was a man named George
Heiss. As he revealed after Anna’s arrest, Heiss became
suspicious when flies sipping the beer she brought him
kept flipping over and dying. He demanded that Anna
share his stein, and when she refused, he ordered her
from his house.
Not quite as careful was Anna’s last victim, George
Obendoerfer. Anna lured him to Colorado with a story
about a ranch she had there. Obendoerfer never made
it to the ranch however, expiring in a Denver hotel. In
the meantime Anna had gained possession of his bankbook and looted it of $5,000. But when it came time to
pay for Obendoerfer’s burial, she refused, claiming she
had just met him on a train and had pretended to be his
wife at his suggestion. Police became suspicious when
they discovered the bank transfer, and an autopsy was
performed, revealing lethal amounts of arsenic in the
dead man’s viscera. Upon her return to Cincinnati,
Anna was arrested. The bodies of four other of Anna’s
old gentlemen were exhumed and post mortems confirmed the presence of arsenic in each case.
After a sensation-packed trial a jury of 11 women
and one man convicted Anna with no recommendation of mercy. She exhibited iron nerve until shortly
before her execution on June 20, 1938. But when
strapped into the electric chair, Anna broke and
The first woman electrocuted in the state of Ohio,
Anna Hahn specialized in being a companion to welloff elderly men who had no relatives, providing them
with tender loving care and a little arsenic. After each
one died, she either produced a will naming her the
beneficiary or simply looted her victim’s bank accounts
before moving on to brighten up the last days of
another old gentleman. Exactly how many men she
killed is not known. Anna was not cooperative on the
subject, and the authorities stopped exhuming bodies
after they found five loaded with arsenic.
Anna Hahn arrived in Cincinnati from her native
Fussen, Germany in 1927, married a young telegraph
operator named Philip Hahn and opened a bakery in
the “Over the Rhine” German district. Then Anna’s
husband became afflicted with a strange illness and
finally was taken to a hospital, where he recovered, by
his mother over Anna’s protests. In retrospect, it
seemed likely that her husband was suffering from
something he ate, but in any event, Anna Hahn took
the opportunity to move in with a septuagenarian
burgher named Ernest Koch, who seemed remarkably
vigorous despite his age. Under Anna’s ministrations
that condition did not continue for long. On May 6,
1932 a much weakened Koch died. When his will was
probated, Anna was bequeathed his house.
Anna’s next victim was Albert Palmer, an aged and
ailing railroad retiree who lasted almost no time at all.
Anna avoided the embarrassing coincidence of twice
being named heir to an old man’s estate by simply borrowing Palmer’s money before he died. She insisted on
giving him an IOU for the money, but after he expired,
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HAIRTRIGGER Block
screamed hysterically. She regained her composure with
the help of a prison chaplain. As she removed her hand
from his, Anna said, “You might be killed, too, Father.”
Hairtrigger Block
Trussell was shot to death by his mistress in 1866;
Hyman went insane and died in 1876.
See also: GEORGE TRUSSELL.
Halberstam, Dr. Michael
Chicago “shoot-out” area
See BERNARD CHARLES
WELCH, JR.
During the Civil War, Chicago gambling thrived as it
probably did in no other city, North or South. In the
gamblers’ vernacular, the city was a “sucker’s paradise,” teeming with army officers and, more important, paymasters, soldiers from the front with many
months pay, speculators rich with war contracts and so
on, all ready and eager to lose their money at cards.
The center of the gambling industry, which was illegal
but well protected through heavy payments to the
police, was on Randolph and Clark Streets, which contained palatial “skinning houses” for trimming the
suckers. Naturally, with fortunes won and lost so easily, shootings and killings were common and probably
far more frequent than could be found in any town of
the Wild West. In fact, Randolph Street between Clark
and State was commonly referred to as Hairtrigger
Block because of the many shootings that took place
there.
Some of the shootings were between professional
gamblers themselves over matters such as possession of
a “mark” or out of just plain nastiness. The most
famous feud on Hairtrigger Block was between two big
gamblers, George Trussell, the dandy of Gambler’s Row,
and Cap Hyman, described as “an insufferable egotist,
an excitable, emotional jack-in-the-box.” They could
barely tolerate each other when sober, but when drunk
they would immediately start shooting at each other;
each probably shot at and was shot at by the other at
least 50 times. Both, especially when intoxicated, were
incredibly bad marksmen, and the usual damage was to
windows, bar mirrors and street signs. So long as the
shooting was confined to Hairtrigger Block, the police
did not intervene; unfortunately, the two gamblers often
staggered off to other areas in search of each other and
continued their shooting sprees, leading the Chicago
Tribune to declare that “the practice is becoming altogether too prevalent in this city.”
In 1862 Hyman once staggered into the lobby of the
Tremont House hunting for Trussell, fired several shots
and allowed no one to leave or enter the hotel for an
hour. Hyman was frequently arrested and fined for his
forays, and after paying the penalty, he would meticulously deduct the amount from his usual police payoffs.
Whenever a Trussell-Hyman duel started, the inhabitants and habitués of Hairtrigger Block immediately
wagered on which one would be killed. As it turned
out, neither of the two ever prevailed over the other.
Hall, Lee (1849–1911) Texas Ranger
One of the most famous Texas Rangers, Lee Hall
started out as a schoolteacher in Texas after relocating
there in 1869 from his native North Carolina. Two
years later, he made the rather unlikely switch to the
post of city marshal of Sherman. He subsequently
served as a deputy sheriff and in 1876 joined the Texas
Rangers. Assigned to clamp down on the brutal TaylorSutton feud, Hall gained wide acclaim for fearlessness,
once entering unarmed into a room full of the feuding
cowboys and marching out seven men wanted for murder. In 1877 Hall was promoted to captain, and within
two years he and his men had made some 400 arrests
and successfully quelled the murderous feud.
Hall ran up an enviable record of capturing lawbreakers; he was involved in tracking down and shooting the noted outlaw Sam Bass. In 1880 Hall resigned
from the Rangers to become a successful rancher. For
two years he harbored an ill young man named Will
Porter on his ranch, where Porter gathered much of the
material for the stories he would write under the name
O. Henry.
In 1885 Hall was made an Indian agent, but he was
removed in 1887 on trumped-up graft charges. It took
him two years to clear his name. Later, Hall held various law enforcement positions and in 1899 served as an
army officer in the Philippines. After contracting
malaria there, he was forced to resign from the army.
Hall died in 1911.
Hall-Mills Murders
unsolved double killing
It was once said that no American murder case had
more words written about it than did the unsolved
Hall-Mills case of 1922. On September 16 the bodies
of a man and woman were found in a lovers lane in
New Brunswick, N.J., with cards and personal letters
strewn around them. The contents of the letters and the
identity of the couple caused a sensation. The man was
Rev. Edward Wheeler Hall, 41, rector of St. John’s
Episcopal Church, and the woman was Mrs. Eleanor
Mills, 34, a member of his flock, a choir singer and the
wife of the church sexton. The letters had been written
by Mrs. Mills to the pastor; they would become some
of the juiciest newspaper reading of the 1920s. Hall
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HAMER, Frank
had been shot with a bullet in the head, and Mrs. Mills
had suffered three such wounds and her throat had
been cut for good measure. Someone had arranged the
bodies in delicate intimacy in keeping with the tone of
the letters.
Nothing much came of the case despite its explosive
nature. The local police insisted they were stumped.
Then in 1926 the New York Daily Mirror uncovered a
secret witness whose testimony resulted in the indictment of Mrs. Frances Stevens Hall, seven years the pastor’s senior and a woman of position and wealth, for the
two murders. Also indicted were Mrs. Hall’s two
devoted brothers, William and Henry Stevens, and her
cousin, Henry de la Bruyere Carpender, a member of the
New York Stock Exchange. According to the Mirror the
four had bribed witnesses and the police and had softsoaped the local prosecutor to avoid arrest in 1922.
When the trial of Mrs. Hall and her brothers began,
300 reporters from around the nation and the world
were on hand. Sixty wires were required to handle the
incredible flow of words going out to a waiting public.
Five million words were transmitted the first 11 days
and a total of 9 million during the 18 days of the trial.
Even the august New York Times had four stenographers on hand so that its readers would not lose a precious syllable of testimony.
In the trial it was alleged that Mrs. Hall had been
trying to catch her husband in a compromising position
with the choir singer. The star prosecution witness was
56-year-old Mrs. Jane Gibson, called the Pig Woman
because she raised Poland China pigs. She was dying of
cancer and testified from a hospital bed with a nurse
and doctor in attendance. Mrs. Gibson said that as she
was passing the murder spot, De Russey’s Lane, she recognized Mrs. Hall and her brother Henry in the bright
moonlight among a group of four figures huddled
around a crab-apple tree, under which the bodies were
later found. She heard snatches of conversation, she testified, such as “explain those letters,” and someone
being hit continuously. “I could hear somebody’s wind
going out, and somebody said, ‘Ugh.’”
Then Mrs. Gibson said a flashlight went on and she
saw two men wrestling. The light went out and she
heard a shot. Had she heard a woman’s voice? “Yes.
One said, ‘Oh, Henry,’ easy, very easy; and the other
began to scream, scream, scream so loud, ‘Oh my, oh
my, oh my.’ so terrible loud.” The Pig Woman testified
she had heard three shots and then mounted her mule
Jenny and rode away as quickly as she could.
Clearly, the main thrust of the prosecution’s case
depended on the credibility of the Pig Woman. All
through her testimony her aged mother sat in a front
row muttering, “She’s a liar, she’s a liar, she’s a liar.”
Mrs. Hall’s defense team, called the Million Dollar
383
Defense (actually their fee came to $400,000), found
small discrepancies between the Pig Woman’s testimony before a grand jury in 1922 and her current testimony. But they impugned her supposedly superior
memory by getting her to testify that she couldn’t
remember when she had married, if she had been
divorced, if she had remarried and if she knew the
names of a number of men.
As the Pig Woman was removed from the courtroom, she shook a finger at Frances Hall and cried,
“I’ve told the truth, so help me God, and you know it,
you know it.”
Henry Stevens presented evidence that he was bluefishing in Barnegat Bay the weekend of the murder and
produced witnesses to back him up. Mrs. Hall took the
stand and testified in an icy calm that earned her the
journalistic sobriquet the Iron Widow. When asked if
Mr. Hall was “a loving, affectionate husband,” she
answered, “Always.” She denied all involvement in the
murders.
After only five hours of deliberations, the jury
acquitted Mrs. Hall. Her brothers were cleared as well
and the indictment against Carpender was thrown out.
Mrs. Hall and her brothers sued the Daily Mirror for
$3 million and accepted an out-of-court settlement.
Hamer, Frank (1884–1955) Texas Ranger and killer of
Bonnie and Clyde
The most legendary Texas Ranger of the 20th century,
one who would have fit the mold even a century earlier,
was Frank Hamer. He is best remembered, if in a distorted fashion, as the killer of Bonnie Parker and Clyde
Barrow. His career started when portions of the West
were still wild, with cattle rustlers, horse thieves, bank
robbers on horseback, six-shooters and “walkdowns”
in dusty cowtown streets. It lasted through the gangster
era of the late 1920s and early 1930s, with speeding
black sedans and chattering tommy guns. Hamer
spanned both eras and remained a top-notch officer
through the 1940s, when the development of sophisticated methods of crime detection began making oldstyle criminal operations all but obsolete. Before his
long and distinguished career ended, he was involved in
more than 50 gunfights, was wounded 20 times and
was ambushed four times. On two occasions he was
shot up so badly that his assailants left him for dead. It
was the criminals who ended up dead—100 of them,
according to some biographers. Others place the estimate lower, anywhere from 40 to 55. Even Hamer
probably didn’t know the exact number.
In 1906 Frank Hamer became a Texas Ranger after
some stints as a cowboy. Although only 22, he soon
demonstrated he could get the job done on lone
HAMER, Frank
assignments, the way the Rangers generally operated. In
1907 he was sent to clean up Doran, Tex. It was typical
of the towns that had sprung up during the turn-of-thecentury oil boom—rough, dirty, jerry-built, boisterous,
with more than its share of toughs, con men, fancy
women, cardsharps and other ruthless characters out for
a dishonest buck. Unlike the other towns, most of the
vice in Doran was controlled by one man, a clever,
vicious operator named Haddon Slade. Criminals who
wanted to “work” in Doran either worked directly for
Slade or kicked in a healthy percentage of their take for
what Slade called “franchise rights.” He was so sure
of himself that he even had his men murder the local
sheriff.
Hamer was sent in to solve that killing and at 23 he
probably looked like easy pickings, although Slade no
doubt knew better than to murder a Ranger unless he
could come up with a good story. Apparently, he tried
his best. There was evidence he planned to shoot
Hamer from ambush, use the Ranger’s gun to kill two
of his own men and then plant the gun he used to
murder Hamer on one of them. This would leave
everything tidy for the law. But the plot backfired
when Hamer spotted Slade and dropped him with
three bullets in the chest. With Slade gone, Doran was
an easy place to tame. Over the years Hamer gained
a reputation for catching bank robbers, once tracking three robbers to a job and killing two of them as
they tried to shoot their way out. Although wounded
in the leg, Hamer marched the surviving bandit to the
local jail before taking what he called a “medical laydown.”
Hamer’s most bizarre case involved one of the state’s
scandals: the killing of innocent men by local Texas law
officers to collect bounties for dead bank robbers. The
bounties were the ill-conceived idea of the Texas
Bankers Association to stop a rising tide of bank thefts.
The bankers group posted the following notice in every
bank in the state:
charges to the newspapers. The resulting stories broke
the scandal wide open and led to the filing of charges
against some of the murder ring leaders. Hamer
arrested them and they subsequently confessed.
In 1934 Hamer resigned from the Texas Rangers
because it was being corrupted by the cronyism of controversial Gov. “Ma” Ferguson, who had just taken
office. He went to work as a plant security specialist at
a salary of $500 a month, a considerable sum at the
time, but he soon left to join the Texas Highway Patrol
at $150 a month. Unlike the Rangers, the Highway
Patrol was not under the governor’s tight control. He
was offered a very special assignment—capture the
notorious outlaws Bonnie and Clyde.
The highly popular movie Bonnie and Clyde portrayed Hamer as a not-too-bright “flatfoot” who
viciously gunned down the handsome, daring Clyde
Barrow and the beautiful Bonnie Parker. Nothing
could have been further from the truth. Hamer took
the assignment because Clyde Barrow had killed a
number of his fellow law officers. Methodically, he
learned all he could about the two desperadoes, from
first-hand sources, from people who knew them and
from newspaper stories of their bloody deeds. In his
own words: “On February 10th, I took the trail and
followed it for exactly 102 days. Like Clyde Barrow, I
used a Ford V-8, and like Clyde, I lived in the car most
of the time.”
Hamer decided that Barrow “played a circle from
Dallas to Joplin, Missouri, to Louisiana and back to
Dallas.” Occasionally, he would leave his beat, but he
would always come back to it, as most criminals do. “It
was necessary for me to make a close study of Barrow’s
habits. I have never seen him and I never saw him until
May 23rd.”
On May 23 Hamer’s persistence finally paid off. An
informer told him the couple, driving a gray Ford
sedan, would travel a certain road. With some other
officers, he set up a secret roadblock, and when the car
appeared, Hamer sprang the trap.
“At the command of ‘stick ’em up,’ both turned,”
Hamer recalled. “But instead of obeying the order . . .
they clutched the weapons which they held in their
hands or in their laps. When the firing started, Barrow’s
foot released the clutch, and the car, in low gear, moved
forward on the decline and turned into the ditch on the
left.”
Before the pair ever got a chance to lift their
weapons, the officers had sent a hail of rifle bullets and
shotgun blasts into the car. Clyde Barrow and Bonnie
Parker were wiped out.
About a year later, Ma Ferguson’s control on the
Texas Rangers having been loosened by the voters,
Hamer returned to the Rangers, serving until his retire-
REWARD
$5,000 for Dead Bank Robbers
Not One Cent For Live Ones
In no time at all, bank robbers started turning up dead
as a result of this throwback to the bounty system of
the Old West. Frank Hamer was appalled at the practice. He started a lone investigation that shocked the
state with the discovery that local lawmen, hungry for
reward money, had actually formed murder combines
and sought out drifters and other homeless men to kill.
Law enforcement officials expressed disbelief over his
findings, and the Texas Bankers Association refused to
withdraw the reward system. Finally, Hamer took his
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HAND, Dora
ment in 1949. He died July 10, 1955 at home in his
bed in Austin.
See also: BANK ROBBERIES—BOUNTIES, BONNIE AND
CLYDE.
Hamilton, Ray (1912–1935) robber and murderer
Remembered best as a part-time accomplice of Bonnie
and Clyde, Hamilton had a career in crime that was in
many respects more spectacular than that of Clyde Barrow, with whom he started off as a juvenile criminal in
the sneak thief Square Root Gang in Houston, Tex.
From that time on, Hamilton would be linked with
Bonnie and Clyde in several short but bloody stints.
In 1932 Hamilton served time with Barrow at the
Eastham Prison Farm in Texas. Two years later, Bonnie
and Clyde broke Hamilton, Henry Methvin and Joe
Palmer out of the prison. However, as a trio, Bonnie,
Clyde and Hamilton could not continue for long. A
major reason was sexual jealousy. When the three traveled together, it was Hamilton who slept with Bonnie
Parker. This was not, as portrayed in the movie Bonnie
and Clyde, because Clyde Barrow was impotent, but
rather because he was homosexual, a preference he
developed at Eastham. At times, Hamilton also slept
with Barrow. Such an arrangement couldn’t last, and
Hamilton would keep dropping in and out of the
ménage.
Hamilton’s crime record, which began in earnest in
January 1932—when he was 19—and lasted a short
three years, was awesome. Alone or with Barrow or
other accomplices, Hamilton held up at least two dozen
places, including seven banks, two oil refineries, a
packing plant, a post office and even the National
Guard Armory at Fort Worth, where he stole boxes of
shotguns, automatic rifles and machine guns. Although
apprehended a number of times, he escaped two road
traps “no human could escape,” as one reporter
described them, including one manned by a posse of
20, all of whom he disarmed and whose leader he took
with him as a hostage. Even when Hamilton was
caught, holding him was another matter. In all, he
escaped four times, and thus, while he had committed
several murders, it took five trials to get him convicted
and sentenced to the chair for just one of them. In 1934
Hamilton broke out of the death house in the state penitentiary at Huntsville, Tex. After a 10-month manhunt
he was recaptured and, on May 10, 1935, executed.
See also: BONNIE AND CLYDE.
hams
smuggling technique
“Hams” were first used during Prohibition by rumrunners bringing their contraband to shore. If they found
385
themselves pursued by the Coast Guard, the smugglers
would jettison gunny sacks, or hams, containing several
bottles of liquor wrapped in straw. Attached to each
ham was a bag of salt and a red marker. Weighted by
the salt, the ham would sink to the bottom. When the
salt melted sometime later, the red marker would float
to the surface. By then the danger above would have
passed, and the smugglers could return to retrieve the
treasured hams. The ham remains a favorite method of
narcotics smugglers.
Hand, Dora (?–1878) murder victim
Dora Hand (also known as Fannie Keenan) was called
the First Lady of Dodge City when it was truly the
Gomorrah of the Plains. Her early life was shrouded in
mystery, although the West had no trouble coming up
with an impressive set of “facts.” She was allegedly
from a most genteel family in Boston, had been educated in Europe and had enjoyed a brilliant operatic
career before coming to Dodge City, where she had
been brought by Mayor James H. “Dog” Kelley to
oversee his whorehouse operations.
Chronicler Stuart Lake described her in these words:
Saint or sinner, Dora Hand was the most graciously
beautiful woman to reach the camp in the heyday of its
iniquity. . . . By night, she was the Queen of the
Fairybelles, as old Dodge termed its dance-hall women,
entertaining drunken cowhands after all the fashions
that her calling demanded. By day, she was the Lady
Bountiful of the prairie settlement, a demurely clad,
generous woman to whom no appeal would go
unheeded.
Once, Dora Hand had been a singer in Grand
Opera. In Dodge, she sang of nights in the bars and
honkey-tonks. On Sundays, clad in simple black, she
crossed the Dead Line to the little church on the North
Side to lead the hymns and anthems in a voice at which
those who heard her forever marvelled. A quick change
of attire after the Sunday evening service, and she was
back at her trade in the dance hall. . . .
At least 12 men supposedly died fighting one
another to win Dora’s heart in Dodge and in her previous ports of call, Abilene and Hays. Her main man in
Dodge was the mayor himself, who exhibited a rather
violent jealousy when other suitors tried to show their
affections. This led to a smoldering feud with young
James Kennedy, son of Mifflin Kennedy of Texas’ King
Ranch. Finally, one night when Kennedy became particularly attentive to Dora in the Alhambra, Dog’s showcase establishment, Kelley tossed him out. Kennedy left
town, vowing revenge. In October 1878 Kennedy
HANDKERCHIEF switch
attempted to make good on his threat, sneaking up on
Dog’s frame house and pumping a couple of shots in
the direction of the mayor’s bedroom. Unfortunately
for Kennedy, Dog Kelley wasn’t even there at the time.
But Dora was asleep in the bed and was killed instantly.
Kennedy rode out of town without knowing the damage done by his bullets.
Sheriff Bat Masterson quickly organized a posse that
included Wyatt Earp, Neal Brown, Bill Tilghman and
Charlie Bassett. The posse ran Kennedy to earth; Masterson put a rifle slug through his right arm, shattering
it, and Earp shot the fugitive’s horse from under him.
Kennedy cursed his captors, swore to get even and then
asked if he had killed Kelley. When told that Dora
Hand had been his victim, he turned morose and said
he wished the posse had killed him.
Dora was given a lavish funeral, some say the best
Dodge ever had. The procession was certainly an
unusual one, consisting of dance hall girls, gunslingers,
saloon keepers, gamblers, cowboys and even some of
the more respectable ladies of the town. Epitomizing
the ways of the frontier, a minister admonished, “He
that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone
at her.”
The overwhelming sentimentality, however, did not
carry over to the cause of justice. While Kennedy’s
remorse had its limits, his wealthy father’s purse had
none. The best lawyers were hired and much was made
of Kennedy’s shattered arm, now 4 inches shorter. The
defendant went free for “lack of evidence,” and a
father took his errant son home.
See also: WILLIAM B. “BAT” MASTERSON.
handkerchief switch
potent bad luck on everything the victim comes in
contact with.
By further prayers, the fortune-teller discovers the
reasons these evil spirits remain in the victim’s body. It
is because of the money the victim has. If he or she gets
rid of the money, the evil spirits will depart. The victim
is then instructed to bring a large sum of money, preferably in big bills. The fortune-teller places the money in
a very large handkerchief, which is then folded up and
sewn together at the ends. In the process, another
stuffed handkerchief is substituted while the victim is
not looking, and the substituted handkerchief is buried
in a cemetery, flushed down a toilet or thrown in a river
or the ocean. Sometimes the victim himself is permitted
to throw the handkerchief in the ocean or to flush it
down the toilet. Occasionally when the money is to be
flushed down a toilet, the use of the handkerchief is discarded, and the victim is permitted to watch the roll of
money flush away. In such cases, the toilet’s plumbing
has been altered so that the money is trapped in the
pipes, to be extracted later.
Hanks, O. C. “Camilla” (1863–1902) train robber
As a member of the Wild Bunch, Camilla, or as he
sometimes was called, Deaf Charley Hanks, was considered to be the best and most fearless train robber of
the gang. As Kid Curry once said, he could rob a train
“as slick as a whistle.” Butch Cassidy would think
nothing of having Hanks cover all the passengers in a
train car alone, feeling certain no one could get the
drop on him. One story tells how a passenger did get
the drop on him, leveling and cocking a derringer at
Hanks as he was going up the aisle collecting loot.
When the passenger ordered Hanks in a low menacing
hiss to drop his piece, the outlaw turned and fired first.
The tale may be a bit overdramatized, since Hanks was
deaf in his right ear and later said he’d heard neither
the command nor the gun being cocked.
In 1892 Hanks was captured after robbing a Northern Pacific train at Big Timber, Mont. and drew a 10year term at Deer Lodge Penitentiary. Released on April
30, 1901, Hanks headed for Hole in the Wall country,
located Butch Cassidy at Brown’s Hole and went back
in the train-robbing business. Hanks took part in every
job the Wild Bunch pulled over the next year and accumulated a big pile of cash. He headed for Texas to do
some wild living. He got into a saloon brawl, and when
the law wondered where his money had come from,
Hanks went for his gun. A lawman named Pink Taylor
was faster, and on October 22, 1902 the slickest of the
train robbers was shot dead.
See also: WILD BUNCH.
gypsy bunco operation
A famous confidence game dating back as far as gypsy
fortune-tellers, palmists and card readers, the handkerchief switch has been used to bilk thousands of gullible
Americans out of millions of dollars annually.
At first, the victim is told his fortune for a small
fee, during which the fortune-teller gauges his or her
gullibility and means. The victim is then told that the
fortune-teller’s power of prayer will solve his or her
problems. The prayer must be accompanied by the
burning of a candle, and the size and price of the candle determine how long these potent prayers will continue. Once a likely prospect has been found, the
fortune-teller informs the victim that evil spirits are
within him or her, and must be routed. The victim may
be asked to bring a raw egg on the next visit, at which
time the fortune-teller, by sleight of hand, breaks the
egg, displaying a black mass inside. This, the victim is
informed, constitutes the evil spirits that transfer their
386
HARDIN, John Wesley
plane hangar. She cried for help with a handcuff still
dangling from one wrist. Hansen quickly confessed his
killing spree and on a flying tour of the wilderness
pointed out the spots where he had buried his victims.
Eleven bodies were recovered in this manner. Some of
the women were never identified, and Hansen had no
idea what their names were. It was assumed that several were among the women listed as missing in police
files.
Hansen was prosecuted for four murders, which
resulted in his receiving a life with 461 additional years
sentence.
Hansen, Robert (1940– ) Alaskan serial killer
It could be said that Robert Hansen came out of Iowa
to open up Alaska for serial killing. This was facilitated
by the immense size of the state and the fact that
Hansen had his own private Piper Super Cub bush
plane. By his own admission he killed 17 women and
consulted his aviation chart to pick out likely burial
spots in forsaken areas of snow and ice.
Hansen came to Alaska at the age of 20 with a brand
new wife and, following his father’s profession,
obtained work as a baker. He prospered at his trade
and soon had his own business. His marriage, however,
ended in six months, but he remarried six years later.
His new wife had no idea of the degree to which her
husband was mad. By the early 1970s he was making
his mark as an outdoorsman and pilot-hunter who
stalked Dahl sheep, wolves and bears with a rifle and
bow and arrow.
Hansen began to send his wife and children to visit
relations in Iowa and also on a European vacation. By
1973 Hansen was killing women in earnest. Over the
next decade, he committed 17 murders and more than
30 rapes. His usual targets were prostitutes, exotic
dancers and those he lured through singles ads. Some
he took into his Anchorage home, pulled a rifle on
them and marched into his trophy room. His usual
practice in such cases was to have sex with his captives
and then kill them, consult his charts and fly off with
the body to be dumped where it was hardly likely to be
found. Others he forced into the plane at gunpoint and
then threatened with death if they did not do as he said.
Many did, and he returned them to town with a warning that if they said anything about what happened he
would have them prosecuted as prostitutes through
connections he had with the police.
The key to the women’s survival was to obey his
every whim, and if they did not displease him they
might be spared. Unfortunately Hansen’s displeasure
was easily aroused. The slightest resistance or a request
for payment was, as far as Hansen was concerned, a
capital offense. If a woman was particularly offensive
to him, he would turn her loose in the wilderness and
stalk her with rifle or bow and arrow. There were no
survivors in that sporting game.
No suspicions fell on Hansen, and indeed it
appeared the authorities had no idea a serial killer was
in their midst for six to seven years. Discovery of a couple of bodies, one in a gravel pit near Seward and
another in a shallow grave along the Knik River where
hunters made the grim find, caused authorities to begin
to suspect the worst.
Hansen was not unmasked until 1983 when a 17year-old captive broke free as he was taking her to his
Hardin, John Wesley (1853–1895) gunfighter and
murderer
John Wesley Hardin was one of the dedicated gunfighters of the West who delighted in showing a gun full of
notches. In his case the boast was deserved. By his own
count Wes Hardin killed 44 men. Some historians
credit him with 40, and even the most skeptical will
grant him 34 or 35.
Hardin started killing in his native Texas in 1868 at
the age of 15. He shot a black who had taken his new
citizenship rights too seriously, a not unpopular crime
of that era. Then he gunned down three Yankee soldiers
who came after him for the shooting. Hardin went on
the run and received the ready assistance of most folks
who knew him. By 1871, at about 18 years of age, he
was a trail cowboy driving cattle from Texas to Kansas,
and his murder toll stood at about a dozen, give or take
a corpse or two. Many of his victims had died in faceto-face confrontations, but Wes was certainly not fussy
about putting a slug in a man’s back. Around Abilene
he knocked off another eight or so and for a time
escaped the wrath of Marshal Wild Bill Hickok, who
clearly wanted no trouble with this fast-drawing young
hellion.
When Hardin killed a man in his hotel, however,
Hickok came after him. Hardin later claimed the man
had tried to knife him because he had made some big
gambling winnings the night before. The other version
was that Hardin had shot him because his snoring in
the next room had disturbed the gunfighter’s sleep.
Fleeing out a second-story window in his long johns,
Hardin avoided being arrested by Hickok. On the trail
he trapped three members of a posse sent out by
Hickok, and in a rare gallant gesture, Hardin refrained
from killing them. Instead, he made them strip off their
pants and sent them back toward Abilene in that condition. Through the years Hardin supported himself
mostly by gambling and only occasionally by punching
cattle. A man who was especially fast on the draw had
387
HARE, Joseph Thompson
a way of facing down an opponent in a disputed hand.
If a man got into a lone game of poker with a young
feller who he later learned was the notorious Wes
Hardin and was then informed that a straight beat a
flush, why that was an unarguable proposition as long
as Hardin had his gun. And Hardin always did, and did
something about it if anyone tried to take it away from
him. In his memoirs he wrote of an incident in Willis,
Tex.: “Some fellows tried to arrest me for carrying a
pistol. They got the contents of it instead.”
In 1874 Wes Hardin celebrated his 21st birthday by
shooting Deputy Sheriff Charley Webb of Brown
County between the eyes. By now his murder toll stood
somewhere between 35 or 36 and 44. Hardin himself
was no authority on the matter, preferring to ignore
some of his back-shooting escapades. With a $4,000
price on his head, the gunfighter decided to head for
points east. He moved through Louisiana to Alabama
and into Florida. He gambled and drank but avoided
killing anyone, so as not to mark his trail. Despite his
care, Hardin was captured by Texas Rangers aboard a
train at Pensacola Junction on August 23, 1877.
Back in Texas, Hardin got only 25 years instead of
the death sentence, a fact that produced a bitter protest
from a condemned gunman, William P. Longley. He
had only killed half as many men as Hardin—at most—
and he was due to be hanged. Where was the justice in
that, Longley demanded in a death cell letter to the governor. The governor didn’t bother to respond, and Longley was hanged, while Hardin went to prison.
Hardin studied law behind bars, and when he was
released in 1894 with a full pardon, he set up a law
office. However, he did most of his lawyering in saloons
and at the gaming tables. In El Paso he gained the
enmity of a nasty old lawman, John Selman, who was a
sterling advocate of the principle that one shot in the
back was worth more than two up front. On August
19, 1895 Hardin was standing at the bar, being his loud
and boisterous self, when Constable Selman walked in
and put a bullet in the back of his head. Selman was
acquitted, claiming self-defense. He said it had been a
fair fight since Hardin had seen him in the mirror. They
might not have bought that one even in Texas had not
Wes Hardin been the notorious character he was.
See also: JACK HELM, JOHN SELMAN, SUTTON-TAYLOR
FEUD.
Further reading: The Life of John Wesley Hardin by
John Wesley Hardin.
Trace and the Wilderness Road for years. Not only was
Hare uncommonly successful, pulling some most lucrative robberies, he was also an elegant dresser and a
dandy who excited the public’s imagination.
Born in Chester, Pa., Hare grew up in the slums of
New York City and Baltimore and then went to sea.
When his windjammer docked in New Orleans, Hare,
never having seen a city at the same time so vile and so
enticing, jumped ship. He soon became an accepted
and successful member of the New Orleans underworld
and in time ventured out on the Natchez Trace, where
he became notorious for his “stand and deliver” escapades. He was a legend on the Trace, a phantom the
Joseph Thompson Hare’s career inspired many literary
efforts, which usually included his advice to others to
avoid the ways of the highwayman “as it is a desperate
life, full of danger, and sooner or later it ends on the
gallows.”
Hare, Joseph Thompson (?–1818) highwayman
At the beginning of the 19th century the most celebrated highwayman in America was Joseph Thompson
Hare, who led a gang of cutthroats along the Natchez
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HARPER, Richard
law could not catch since, despite his fame, there was
no firm description of him. He frequently returned to
New Orleans without hindrance to sample its fleshpots
until the time he once more needed loot to sustain his
life as a rogue and blade.
When he was finally captured in 1813, Hare
expected to be hanged but got off with only a fiveyear prison term. When he was released, he returned
immediately to his highwayman’s career. Robbing the
Baltimore night coach near Havre de Grace, Md., he
netted $16,000, a tremendous haul for the period.
Two days later, he was apprehended in a fashionable
tailor shop in Baltimore while purchasing a coat,
which he described in his memoirs as “in the style of
an officer’s, at the price of $75, very dashy.” Hare was
hanged in Baltimore on September 10, 1818, leaving
his diary in his cell. It ended with a somber warning
for readers not to take to the highway “as it is a desperate life, full of danger, and sooner or later it ends
on the gallows.”
Hargraves, Dick (1824–1882) gambler and killer
Probably the epitome of the Mississippi gambler, Dick
Hargraves cut a dapper and deadly figure on the river
in the 1840s and 1850s.
A fashion plate who ordered boots from Paris and
clothing from his native England, Hargraves came to
New Orleans at the age of 16 and went to work as a
bartender. He turned to professional gambling after winning $30,000 in a legendary poker game. Thereafter, he
was a fixture on the river, where he became famous as an
honest but pitiless gambler. Since at least 90 percent of
all Mississippi gamblers were dishonest operators, Hargraves prided himself on being “square” and always felt
that characteristic made it totally unnecessary for him to
feel any sympathy for those he won money from. He
supposedly shot at least eight or 10 men who sought
vengeance after losing their money and often all their
possessions to him. At the peak of his prosperity, Hargraves was worth an estimated $2 million.
As the best-known gambler in New Orleans, it was
inevitable that women would be attracted to Hargraves. One of his numerous affairs resulted in scandal
and death rivaling a Greek tragedy. Hargraves became
involved with a banker’s wife and was challenged to a
duel by the enraged husband. He killed the banker with
dispatch, and when the dead man’s brother warned he
would shoot the gambler on sight, Hargraves met him
at a Natchez-under-the-Hill gambling den and killed
him in a desperate battle. When Hargraves returned to
New Orleans, the banker’s widow stabbed him and
then committed suicide. He recovered from his wounds
and married a girl whose life he had saved in a fire.
389
Tired of river gambling, he joined a filibustering campaign to Cuba and during the Civil War served as an
officer in the Union Army. After the war Hargraves, a
wealthy but ill man, moved to Denver, where he died of
tuberculosis in 1882.
See also: RIVERBOAT GAMBLERS.
Harpe brothers
18th-century highwaymen
For more than 50 years during the latter part of the
18th century, the Natchez Trace, which was little more
than a narrow path from Natchez to Nashville, was
probably the most crime-infested area in America.
Among the bandits who roamed the Trace and the
Wilderness Road were two brothers, Micajah and
Wiley Harpe, better known as Big and Little Harpe.
There is no accurate record of how many men,
women and children the Harpes butchered in the
1790s, but it was well up in the scores. In 1799 a
large posse of frontiersmen cornered the Harpes in
the Ohio wilds. Little Harpe escaped, but Big Harpe
was shot from his horse and, while still alive, had his
head cut off by a man whose wife and children he had
slaughtered; Big Harpe was 31 at the time. After his
escape Little Harpe, two years his brother’s junior,
joined up with the bandit gang of Samuel Mason, a
strange character who had turned to outlawry in middle age after being a soldier and justice of the peace in
Kentucky. Mason would boastfully carve on a tree at
the scene of one of his many murders, “Done by
Mason of the Woods.”
Late in 1803 Little Harpe, now going under the
name of Setton, and Sam Mays, another member of the
Mason gang, axed their chieftain’s head off. They
packed it in clay and went to Natchez to claim a
reward. Unfortunately, while waiting for their money,
they were accused of stealing horses, and Setton was
identified as Little Harpe. Little Harpe and Mays were
hanged at Greenville, Miss. on February 8, 1804.
Their heads were cut off, and Harpe’s head was stuck
on a pole and displayed on the Trace to the north of the
town. May’s head was placed on view to the south of
town, a warning to other outlaws that the murderous
days of the Natchez Trace were coming to a close.
See also: SAM MASON.
Harper, Richard (?–c. 1839) early Chicago thief
The record is unclear concerning Chicago’s first thief,
or, more correctly, the first to get caught. His name was
listed as Richard Harper, and he was lodged in the city’s
first jail, constructed in 1833 of “logs firmly bolted
together.”
HARRIS, Jean
Various historical accounts differ on Harper’s background and crimes. One describes him as a young
loafer from Maryland, but another relates he was a
young man of considerable education and breeding
who was brought down by a devotion to whiskey. All
sources agree he enjoyed stealing better than working.
In 1833 Harper was put up for sale under the Illinois
vagrancy law, making him the first white man in the
area to be auctioned. That act caused considerable controversy, but despite strong feelings on the subject, no
one in the large crowd would raise the 25¢ bid made by
George White, the Negro town crier, and Harper was
led away by his new owner at the end of a chain. One
historian reported that he escaped that very night and
was never seen again. However, Chicago’s first directory, published in 1839, contained the listing “Harper,
Richard, called ‘Old Vagrant.’”
Harris, Jean (1923– ) “he done her wrong”
Certain cases rise little above the level of the tawdry in
their facts but take on special import because of the
role they play in influencing social attitudes affecting
the American scene. Many crime aficionados would
eschew Jean Harris’ murder of famous “Scarsdale
Diet” doctor Herman Tarnower as a minor event in the
annals of homicide. She shot him, made no real effort
to escape, was easily apprehended and insisted it was
an accident resulting from a lover’s quarrel. However,
the Harris-Tarnower case had an important impact on
the nation’s views, occurring as it did on the tide of rising female expectations and demands for social equality with men. For decades, verdicts delivered in “heat of
the moment” legal cases were seldom harsh. Jean Harris represented fair turnaround, or, as one female put it
in a reversal of a popular refrain, “He done her
wrong.”
On March 10, 1980, Dr. Tarnower, the 69-year-old
cardiologist and author of the best-selling book The
Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet, which brought him
millions, was shot and killed in the bedroom of his luxurious home in Purchase, N. Y. The police were summoned by the Tarnower maid and picked up
56-year-old Jean S. Harris before she drove away.
Harris, a cultured woman and headmistress of the
exclusive Madeira School for Girls in McLean, Va., had
had a love affair with Tarnower for 14 years. Known to
her students as “Integrity Harris,” she had spent many
weekends and vacations with the doctor and had
helped him in the writing of his book. Over the years,
Tarnower had spoken often of marriage to Harris but
had called off an impending wedding on one occasion.
During the years, Harris had shut her eyes to the more
than 30 relationships Tarnower had maintained with
Jean Harris’ murder of the famous “Scarsdale Diet”
doctor, Herman Tarnower, energized many women in
their demands for social equality in court.
other women, and she had tolerated other women’s
nightclothes, underwear, cosmetics, and the like, which
littered the Tarnower bedroom.
But it was Mrs. Lynne Tryforos, 18 years younger
than Harris, whom the headmistress came to regard as
her main threat. The two women carried on a fierce
struggle for the doctor’s affections, cutting up each
other’s clothes, and Harris accusing Tryforos of making
obscene phone calls. Harris contemplated plastic
surgery as a means to regain the doctor’s affections.
Just a few days before Tarnower’s death, Harris
mailed him a letter from Virginia, calling Tryforos a
“dishonest adultress . . . a slut and a psychotic
whore.”
Hoping to spend the weekend with Tarnower, Harris
drove up from Virginia and arrived in advance of her
letter. She and the doctor got into a violent argument in
the bedroom after Harris came across a nightgown and
hair curlers belonging to some other woman. In the
ensuing struggle, Harris pulled a .32-caliber handgun
390
HARRISON, Carter
from her purse, and the doctor began pushing her and
was heard to cry out, “Get out of here. You’re crazy.”
Four shots were fired, and Tarnower keeled over,
bleeding profusely. He died about an hour later in the
hospital. Meanwhile, Harris gave a rambling statement
to the police who apprehended her. “He wanted to
live,” she said. “I wanted to die.” She claimed she had
carried the revolver and a number of amphetamines to
give her courage, saying she had planned to persuade
Tarnower to shoot her and that her shooting of him
(with three hits) had been accidental.
Harris’ three-month-long trial started in November
1980 and was a field day for the tabloid press, as much
testimony centered on Tarnower’s lifestyle and love
affairs. A great deal was made of the intimate clothing so many women had left behind. At one point, even
Harris’ own underwear was introduced as evidence,
much to her discomfort.
Although many women sympathized with Harris
and felt she had been demeaned by Tarnower, the jury
of eight women and four men found that she had deliberately set out to kill the lover who had spurned her.
On March 20, 1981, she was sentenced to a mandatory term of 15 years to life imprisonment. An attempt
to gain clemency, which was supported by many
women, failed, and she was confined at Bedford Hills
Correctional Facility, not eligible for parole until 1996.
Harris became active in prison reform and, in 1988,
wrote a book entitled They Always Call Us Ladies
about her prison experience.
Harris began experiencing heart problems and in
January 1993, Harris, then 69, had her sentence commuted by Gov. Mario Cuomo, after serving not quite
12 years of her minimum 15-year term.
phy describing the Hearst abduction and her later
transformation to a willing member of the SLA, a
development that startled the Harrises. The manuscript
quoted Hearst as labeling her parents racists.
In August 1978 the Harrises pleaded guilty to “simple kidnapping” rather than to the more serious charge
of “kidnapping for ransom and with great bodily
harm.” Before they were sentenced in October, William
Harris accused Patricia Hearst and her family of “lies,
distortions and exaggerations” about her life with the
SLA. He said: “She was not brainwashed, beaten, tortured or raped. She was not coerced into rejecting her
family and remaining with the people of the SLA.” This
had been Hearst’s defense at her own trial on charges of
taking part in a bank robbery with other SLA members.
With credit for time served and good behavior, the
Harrises were released in 1983 and went their separate
ways.
See also: PATRICIA HEARST.
Harrison, Carter (1825–1893) corrupt Chicago mayor
In a city where crooked politicians were the rule,
Chicago mayor Harrison Carter, who served five separate terms in the 19th century, was perhaps the most
audacious of the lot. While newspapers were constantly
exposing Harrison’s involvement in the ownership of
many vice properties and connected him with known
criminals and corrupters, Chicago voters kept right on
electing him to office.
Born in Kentucky in 1825 and a graduate of Yale,
Harrison came to Chicago in 1850 and quickly made a
fortune in real estate, becoming a financial and political
power. Elected mayor, he soon realized he could rent
out a number of his properties for three or four times
their former rental values by giving them over to
saloon, gambling and prostitution enterprises. In 1877
the Chicago Times pointed out that an entire block
occupied by buildings housing every sort of vice activity
was owned by “Our Carter.” Despite this intelligence,
the voters of Chicago promptly reelected Harrison on
his next try for the mayorality.
Harrison’s close connections with the underworld
started in the 1880s, when he formed a working relationship with Mike McDonald, the crime king of
Chicago. McDonald handled the “fix,” charging most
criminals a percentage of their take in exchange for a
guarantee of immunity from official persecution. Gamblers, vice operators, swindlers, pickpockets and other
crooks were allowed to keep from 40 to 65 percent of
their take, with the rest going to McDonald, who in
turn paid off the police, judges, aldermen and other city
officials and supplied bribe money to fix juries.
Describing this arrangement, the famed muckraker
Harris, William and Emily kidnappers of Patricia Hearst
The bizarre hunt for kidnapped heiress Patricia Hearst
ended on September 18, 1975, when Hearst and 32year-old Wendy Yoshimura were captured by the FBI in
an apartment in the Mission District of San Francisco.
About an hour earlier, William and Emily Harris, 30
and 26, respectively, were picked up on a street corner
by FBI agents. The Harrises were considered to be the
last of the Symbionese Liberation Army, a radical terrorist group that had taken Hearst from her Berkeley,
Calif. apartment in February 1974. Some three months
after her abduction, Hearst renounced her parents and
said she was joining her SLA captors.
It appeared the Harrises had been with Hearst during virtually the entire period of her kidnapping and
witnessed her startling behavioral conversion from prisoner to willing partner. In the San Francisco apartment
agents found a portion of William Harris’ autobiogra391
HARRISON, Lester
William T. Steed wrote: “Many people had a finger in
the pie before the residue reached Mr. Harrison. But
however many there were who fingered the profit en
route, there was enough left to make it well worth the
Mayor’s while.”
As part of the agreement between Harrison and
McDonald, the latter retained an important say in the
police department, replacing an honest police chief,
Simon O’Donnell, with the more compliant William J.
McGarigle. In 1882 McGarigle was shifted to the
wardenship of the Cook County Hospital, where he
then hired McDonald’s contracting firm to paint a
public building for $128,500. A number of bribes
were given to aldermen to approve the deal and the
paint job was done—with a mixture of chalk and
water. When the scandal broke, McGarigle left town
without packing a bag, and a number of aldermen
were sent to jail. McDonald and Harrison were
unscathed, however.
Harrison was elected to his fifth term in office by
promising Chicagoans an open town for the
Columbian Exposition of 1893. And he certainly kept
his promise, simultaneously insuring that the public
was fleeced as expeditiously as possible by the underworld with, above all, no scandal to taint the good
name of the fair and the city. Typical of these arrangements was the one made with the pickpockets via
McDonald. Under an agreement reached by the politicians and the pickpockets, whose negotiations were
handled by Eddie Jackson, the dean of the dips, no fair
visitor was to be robbed at the entrance gates, since if
they were, they would have no money to spend inside.
The terms of the agreement required that a pickpocket
seized at the gate return the loot to the victim if he
could be found; if not, the money went to the police.
Regardless of what finally happened to the loot, the
pickpocket would be required to pay the arresting officer $10 for his release. This was a harsh measure, but
as a sop to the pickpockets, they were promised that
any thief arrested in the downtown area between 8 A.M.
and 4 P.M. would be released when brought to the Central Station House.
With such arrangements the fair was a bonanza for
the underworld as well as the business interests of
Chicago. On American Cities Day, October 28, 1893,
three days before the fair closed, Harrison delivered a
speech at the fairgrounds and then returned home ahead
of his family and servants. When he went to answer his
door bell, Harrison was shot dead by a disgruntled
office seeker named Prendergast. The public display of
grief was overwhelming, and Harrison was given a
funeral that rivaled anything since the grand passage of
Abraham Lincoln’s body. Over the next two decades the
late mayor’s son, Carter Harrison II, held sway in
Chicago, much of the time as mayor, while McDonald
and his successors in the underworld noticed little
change in their relationship with City Hall.
See also: BILER AVENUE, MICHAEL CASSIUS “MIKE”
MCDONALD.
Harrison, Lester (1923– ) serial killer with unusual bid
for freedom
Lester Harrison had a long history of killing and a
habit based on his obvious insanity, of never being convicted for his most gruesome murders. While confined
in a state hospital in 1951, Harrison killed another
inmate but was deemed incompetent to stand trial. Two
decades later Harrison was found competent for trial
on robbery counts and was given a term of 18 months.
He served less than that when he was subjected to psychiatric evaluations.
When he was released, he was not even suspected of
beating a woman to death in Chicago’s Park in 1970.
And immediately after his being put back on the streets,
a number of women were murdered, subjected to nightmarish sexual abuse in the process. In one case, Harrison gnawed his victim’s body. In August 1973 Harrison
stabbed to death a 28-year-old woman in a park restroom. The victim’s husband observed Harrison running
from the women’s bathroom, gave chase and apprehended him without knowing his wife had been killed.
Harrison then confessed to at least four murders,
although authorities were sure he had committed many
more in the area. He was found competent to stand
trial, but the defense succeeded in delaying trial for five
years and Harrison was subjected to several psychiatric
examinations.
A jury acquitted Harrison by virtue of insanity, but
authorities then resorted to a special and seldom
invoked measure by which Harrison could be found in
a hearing to be “sexually dangerous” and subject to
confinement as long as he remained a menace.
It was hard to dispute an affirmative verdict, which
resulted, and Harrison was put away. That proved to
be but the prelude to a bizarre occurrence eight years
later. By that time Harrison’s health had deteriorated to
the extent that at age 62 he was now a quadriplegic.
Lawyers taking Harrison’s case insisted he should be
released since he was barely able to move at all and
thus unlikely to do harm to others. The state attorney’s
office fought the claim, a representative stating that if
Harrison “were able to get his hands on any woman
that woman would be in danger of being killed. If he
could use one arm, he would use it to try to beat somebody to death.”
392
HART, Brooke
Hart, Brooke (1911–1933) kidnapping and murder victim
Testimony from guards at Belleville State Hospital
where Harrison was being held indicated that Harrison
could raise his arms. More important testimony was
given that he became what was euphemistically referred
to as “visibly aroused” when nurses he liked entered
the room.
The case failed to become a matter of some special
legal interpretation when the petition for the patient’s
release was withdrawn.
The kidnap-murder of a 22-year-old hotel and department store heir in California in 1933 probably triggered more official approval of vigilantism than any
other crime in this century.
Brooke Hart was seized by two 24-year-old youths
of comfortable middle-class backgrounds, John Maurice Holmes and Thomas H. Thurmond, the latter
having no criminal record at all. The pair abducted
Hart as he left the family’s department store in
San Jose on November 9 and, using the victim’s car,
drove to the San Mateo–Hayward Bridge. Hart was
knocked unconscious and his body, weighted down
with cement blocks, heaved into the bay. Hart
regained consciousness on hitting the water and,
screaming, tried to stay afloat whereupon Thurmond
shot him several times until his body disappeared. An
hour later, the kidnappers were on the telephone to
the victim’s father, Alex Hart, demanding a ransom of
$40,000 for the safe return of his son. Several more
calls were necessary to arrange a pickup spot for the
money, and on November 15 police traced a call to a
San Jose garage and arrested Thurmond while he was
still on the phone with the elder Hart. Thurmond confessed and named Holmes as his accomplice, each
man accusing the other of devising the plot and committing the murder.
On November 24, young Hart’s body washed
ashore and the San Jose community, especially the college students who knew Hart as a recent graduate,
were enraged. By that evening, a crowd of 15,000 had
gathered outside the jail where the two quarreling
killers were being held in separate cells. The college
students took up a cry of “We want a touchdown,” a
chant that chilled not only the prisoners but Sheriff
William Emig as well. He called Gov. James “Sunny
Jim” Rolfe requesting troops, but his plea was
rejected. Gov. Rolfe insisted there was no need. For the
next several hours local and state police held off the
crowd, which was growing bigger and more ugly by
the minute. They held them back with high-powered
hoses and tear gas but the mob continued to surge
toward the jail. Alex Hart appeared on the scene and
begged the would-be vigilantes to leave, but he was
ignored. Not long before midnight, the mob moved in,
battered down the jail door and poured past the handful of police guards. Holmes was attacked in his cell,
stripped of his clothes and beaten so badly an eyeball
dangled from its socket. When the mob located Thurmond’s cell, they found it empty. Then while everyone
grew silent, they could hear labored breathing and
spotted him hiding in the pipes over the cell’s toilet.
Thurmond was beaten badly, dragged outside to a
Harsh, George S. (1907–1980) murderer and war hero
Once sentenced to death for a senseless “thrill killing,”
George S. Harsh went on to become a much storied
World War II hero and an author and spokesman
against capital punishment.
In 1929 Harsh and Richard G. Gallory confessed to
the shooting of a drugstore clerk during an Atlanta
holdup that the newspapers called a thrill killing. The
two were also charged in six other robberies and the
killing of another clerk. Both defendants came from
wealthy and socially prominent families. Harsh’s family put up an elaborate and expensive defense, including testimony from 12 psychiatrists that he suffered
from “psychological irresponsibility and hereditary
taints.” Harsh was nonetheless found guilty and sentenced to die in the electric chair, but this was later
commuted to life imprisonment on a Georgia work
gang. In 1940 he was granted a parole after helping to
save a fellow inmate’s life by performing an appendectomy on him.
Harsh joined the Royal Canadian Air Force. Shot
down by the Germans, he was captured and sent to a
Nazi prison camp. He played a key role in the tunnel
breakout of 126 Allied soldiers from the camp, 50 of
whom were later apprehended and executed. The
movie entitled The Great Escape was based on this
incident. Harsh was eventually freed from captivity,
and after the war he turned to writing about his life
and his moral redemption, relating his experiences in a
book entitled A Lonesome Road. He also crusaded
against capital punishment, writing in 1972: “Capital
punishment is a law zeroed in on the poor, the underprivileged, the friendless, the uneducated and the ignorant. I was convicted of a senseless crime and
sentenced to die in the electric chair. This sentence
would have been carried out had I not come from a
white, wealthy and influential family. This Mosaic law
of death is drawn from the worst of all human
motives, revenge.”
Harsh died on January 25, 1980 in Toronto,
Canada.
393
HART, Gene Leroy
Thomas Thurmond’s body dangled from a tree after he was dragged from his cell by angry Californians and hanged. Gov.
Sunny Jim Rolfe called the lynching “the best lesson ever given the country.”
140 years for rape, kidnapping and burglary, Hart
escaped from the Mayes County, Okla. jail in 1973. He
was still at large on June 13, 1977 when three Girl
Scouts—Lori Lee Farmer, Michele Guse and Doris
Denise Milner, aged 8, 9 and 10—were sexually
assaulted and beaten to death at a camp near Pryor.
Within two weeks of the crime, law enforcement officials announced that Hart was their principal suspect.
Many local people believed in Hart’s innocence, and
they helped him to continue to hide out from the law.
Finally, after a 10-month manhunt that attracted a
small army of police officers and civilian volunteers,
Hart was caught.
Brought to trial for the murders, Hart had to defend
himself against a case that was both highly technical
and circumstantial. During his trial, Oklahoma’s
longest, his family and friends held support meetings
for him and raised money for his defense by selling chili
suppers. After a former jailer testified that some of the
state’s evidence against the popular Indian had been in
park and hanged from a tree. A pleading Holmes was
hanged next, while the crowd chanted, “Get that
ball!”
Authorities never charged anyone in the lynchings,
although many identifications could have been made.
Newspapers in California and the rest of the nation
condemned the lynchings, but it was clear the popular
and official California reaction approved of the acts.
Gov. Rolfe described the lynchings as “the best lesson
ever given the country. I would pardon those fellows if
they were charged. I would like to parole all kidnappers
in San Quentin and Folsom to the fine patriotic citizens
of San Jose.”
Hart, Gene Leroy (1944–1979) wrong man
A full-blooded Cherokee Indian and an escaped convict, Gene Leroy Hart became an Oklahoma folk hero
in his successful battle against charges that he killed
three Girl Scouts in 1977. Serving sentences totaling
394
HARVEY, Donald
the officials’ possession up to three years before the
crime was committed and other Girl Scouts identified
photographs of a convicted Kansas rapist as looking
like the murderer, Hart was acquitted in March 1979.
While he went back to prison, his supporters held a
champagne celebration. On June 4, 1979 the 35-yearold Cherokee died of a heart attack after jogging in the
prison yard. An estimated 1,000 mourners attended the
funeral of the man whose case was said to have done
much to further the cause of Indian rights. However,
even as Hart was being buried, officials insisted they
had new evidence that proved his guilt.
Mexico Territory for conspiring to rob a train.
Released for lack of evidence, she dropped out of sight.
In 1924 Pearl, now a white-haired little woman in her
late forties, turned up at the Pima County Courthouse
and asked to be allowed to look around for old time’s
sake. Treated as a celebrity, Pearl Hart got the grand
tour and then vanished again, this time for good.
Hartley Mob
19th-century New York gang
Probably the most colorful of New York’s 19th-century
gangs was the Hartley Mob, which dominated an area
around Broadway and Houston Street. Numbering in
its membership some of the city’s most cunning thieves
and vicious killers, the Hartley Mob thrived in the 1870s.
Even the contemporary Whyos, probably the worst gang
of the century and often described as the forerunners of
Murder, Inc., made it a practice of not tangling with the
Hartley Mob.
The gang’s criminal technique was daring and original. While an obliging traffic officer would hold up the
flow of other vehicles, the very well-armed gangsters,
dressed in solemn black, would transport their stolen
goods hidden behind the drapes of a hearse and on
the floors of accompanying funeral carriages. The
Hartleys discovered the combat uses of the hearse in a
noted battle with a vicious Five Points Gang, which had
been encroaching on their territory. The Five Pointers
stationed themselves on Mulberry Street to take the
onslaught of the Hartleys but respectfully parted ranks
to allow a hearse and some funeral carriages to pass.
They were then overwhelmed from behind by two
dozen Hartley Mob battlers who swarmed out of the
vehicles.
The Hartley Mob was too mean and deadly a gang
to last. Unlike other gangs, the mob saw no need to
seek political protection, and within a few years most
of the members were imprisoned.
Hart, Pearl (1878–?) last stagecoach robber
Pearl Hart was a failure at stagecoach robbing, but she
did have the distinction of taking part in the last stage
robbery in the United States.
Pearl, who described herself as “slightly married,”
had left her husband in her native Canada and headed
for the Wild West at the age of 20, having devoured all
the tales about Jesse James and Butch Cassidy. She was
determined to become the greatest woman outlaw in
history. Slinging hash in an Arizona mining camp, she
met up with Joe Boot, a cash-short miner, and convinced him there was more money in robbing stage
coaches than in mining. Apparently, Pearl didn’t even
know that Wells Fargo had by that date stopped shipping money in stage strongboxes. On May 30, 1899
Pearl and Boot held up the Benson-Globe stage. As Joe
Boot collected the loot from the three passengers—a
traveling salesman, $390, an Eastern dude, $36 and a
Chinese man, $5—Pearl, her long brunette locks
stuffed under a hat, trained a six-gun on the driver and
the victims. As the pair took off, Pearl, elated at their
magnificent take of $431, broke into song, her spirits
undampened by a sudden rain squall. Then the last of
the stagecoach robbers got lost. After traveling three
days and nights in the rain, they finally lay down to
sleep, and that was how the law found them. Taken to
Florence by Sheriff William Truman, they were greeted
by a large crowd. A reporter asked Pearl, “Would you
do it again?” Giving him a “savage look,” she snarled
“Damn right, podner.”
Joe Boot was sentenced to 35 years. Being a woman,
Pearl got only five years. She was the only female
inmate at the Yuma Territorial Prison and became quite
an attraction. Sunday visitors often asked her to pose
for pictures in the jail yard and she always obliged.
Released after doing almost two and a half years, Pearl
toured theaters billed as the Arizona Bandit, with her
record somewhat embellished. Pearl’s footlight glory
lasted about a year, and then nothing was heard of her
until 1905, when she was arrested in Deming, New
Harvey, Donald (1952– ) medical serial killer
While any attempt to catalog the full extent of nurse’s
aide Donald Harvey’s brutality results in a mindboggling numbers game, there is little doubt that he
was easily the most lethal medical serial killer of the
20th century.
At 18 Harvey became an orderly at a hospital in London, Ky. in May 1970. He stayed on the job 10 months
and later confessed to killing about 12 patients. He
would reveal he had smothered two with pillows and
hooked another 10 to virtually empty oxygen tanks
because he wanted to “ease their suffering.” He left the
job after being arrested for burglary and got away with
only a small fine from a judge who recommended he get
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HARVEY, Captain Julian
psychiatric treatment. Instead, Harvey joined the air
force but was discharged ahead of time for unstated reasons. He was committed a couple of times to a Veteran’s
Administration medical center suffering from mental
disorders, which may have included a suicide attempt.
He got a number of electroshock treatments but was
released with no obvious improvement.
Despite this, he served as a nurse’s aide in two hospitals at the same time in Lexington. After holding clerical jobs at another hospital, he then moved on to the
Cincinnati V.A. Medical Center, holding nursing positions, including that of an autopsy assistant. In that job
he sometimes smuggled out tissue samples to take home
to “study.”
He did not ignore his “mercy murders” and disposed
of some 15 patients by his former methods as well as by
poison. Now that he was playing God, Harvey took to
putting people who weren’t hospitalized out of their
misery, apparently deciding that anyone who annoyed
him was clearly in misery. Angered by a neighbor, he
gave her hepatitis serum to drink. By the heroic efforts
of doctors the woman was saved.
In July 1985 Harvey was forced to resign his job
after he was found leaving work with hypodermic needles and other medical gear as well as a cocaine spoon.
In February 1986 he turned up as a part-time nurse’s
aide in another Cincinnati hospital and was soon
promoted to full time. During a period of just over a
year, 23 patients fell victim to his murderous rampage.
Some had their life support system disconnected or
were injected with mixtures of cyanide, arsenic and a
petroleum-based cleanser.
In addition, he poisoned his live-in lover, Carl
Hoeweler, after a dispute and then nursed him back to
health. Harvey also poisoned Carl’s parents; Hoeweler’s mother died.
But 23 murders in a hospital were too many to get
away with. Patient John Powell was given an autopsy
and found to have lethal doses of cyanide in his body.
Charged with murder in the case, Harvey pleaded not
guilty by reason of insanity. Over the next few months
Harvey confessed to a total of 33 murders. Harvey kept
adding victims to his list until it climbed to 52. Subjected to a number of psychiatric examinations, Harvey
nonetheless was found to be sane and competent
although a compulsive killer.
In August 1987 Harvey pleaded guilty to 25 counts
of aggravated murder and sundry other charges. He
was given four consecutive life sentences with no eligibility for parole for 80 years. Kentucky tacked on nine
counts of murder in November. That got him eight
more life terms plus 20 years. In February the following
year he got three more homicide convictions as well as
convictions on other charges. It was said that Harvey
was impressed that he had surpassed John Wayne Gacy
in total murders committed.
Harvey, Captain Julian (1916–1961) mass murderer
At first regarded as the fortunate sole survivor of a
cruising yacht that had sunk, a 45-year-old adventurer,
Capt. Julian Harvey, was later unmasked as the perpetrator of one of this country’s worst mass murders at
sea.
On November 13, 1961 Harvey was rescued from a
dinghy, which also contained the drowned body of a little girl. Harvey explained he was the skipper of the
ketch Bluebelle, which had caught fire and sunk the
day before some 50 miles from Nassau. He said that
because of the flames he had been unable to save any of
his passengers, Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Dupperrault, their
14-year-old son Brian, their 11-year-old daughter
Terry Jo, their seven-year-old daughter Renee or his
own 34-year-old wife Mary, although he was able to
fish Renee’s dead body from the water.
There seemed little reason to doubt the captain’s
story, despite the fact that he had taken out a $20,000
double-indemnity life insurance policy on his wife
shortly before the Bluebelle sailed from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. on November 8 with the Dupperrault family as passengers. Then, three and a half days after
Harvey was rescued, 11-year-old Terry Jo Dupperrault
was found floating on a cork raft. The story she told
was far different from Harvey’s tale. She revealed that
Harvey had slaughtered her parents and brother and
his own wife. She saw the bodies of her mother and
brother covered with blood “all over.” Harvey had left
her on the deck of the sinking ketch after opening the
sea cocks, but she managed to escape on a raft before
the craft went down.
Harvey was attending a Coast Guard hearing into
the sinking when word came that the girl had been
rescued. He walked from the room, shaking his head.
He went back to a Miami motel and killed himself
by slashing his veins with a razor blade. Subsequent
inquiry revealed Mary Harvey had been the second
wife of Julian Harvey to die in a violent accident. In
1949, while he was an air force lieutenant colonel,
Harvey crashed the car he was driving through a
bridge railing into a Florida bayou. He told investigators he was thrown free but his wife, Joan, and
her mother, Mrs. Myrtle Boylen, were trapped and
drowned.
As he had requested in a suicide note, Harvey was
buried at sea by friends. A blue ribbon emblazoned
with gold letters read, “Bon voyage, Julian.”
396
HATE crimes
Hastings, Mary (1863–?) madam
Hatcher, Charles (1929–1984) serial child killer
A young prostitute from Brussels, Belgium with previous experience in Paris, Toronto, British Columbia, San
Francisco, Portland and Denver, Mary Hastings arrived
in Chicago at the age of 25 and immediately set about
earning her reputation as the worst madam in the city’s
history. She boasted that her first bordello at 144 Custom House Place contained only harlots who were
thrown out of “decent houses.” To satisfy some customers’ desires, however, she hired procurers to kidnap
girls as young as 13 from other cities. Frequently, she
would go on such forays herself, returning with girls
between 13 and 17, whom she had lured to Chicago
with the promise of jobs. Once the girls were safely
confined in one of her houses, they would be subjected
to a process of brutalization and rape to introduce
them to “the life.” In one typical case, three young girls
were locked in a room overnight with six men. Those
girls Madam Hastings had no need for in her own
houses she would sell to other establishments for sums
varying from $50 to $300, depending on their age and
beauty.
Madam Hastings bought police protection by paying
cops on the beat $2.50 a week plus free drinks, meals
and girls whenever they desired. Naturally, the payoffs
to ward politicians and the higher brass at the Harrison
Street police station were much higher. When she once
complained that the charges were excessive, a police
captain stormed back, “Why, damn you, what are you
made for but to be plundered?”
While virtually all the police accepted bribes for
overlooking mere prostitution, many refused to be
bought when the offense involved was the forceful
procuring of young girls. In 1895 hard evidence
against her was finally supplied by four girls from
Cleveland who had escaped a Hastings house by
climbing down a rope made of sheets and reached a
police station. A raiding party crashed into the house
and freed five other girls. After bail was posted by her
“solid man,” Tom Gaynor, Madam Hastings was
indicted. She promptly fled to Canada, and the bail
was forfeited. When she returned, however, strings
were pulled, and the funds were returned to Gaynor.
Then Madam Hastings decamped again for Canada,
this time signing over all her property to Gaynor
so that it could not be seized by the courts. By mid1897 she was able to return once more because the
witnesses against her had scattered. However, when
she tried to reclaim her brothels, Gaynor threw her
out on the street, to the cheers of the inmates. Finally,
he let her have $200, and Mary Hastings left the city
for good.
When serial child killer Charles Hatcher was brought
to justice in the early 1980s and started making wholesale confessions, there was at least one fortunate consequence. Melvin Reynolds, serving a life sentence for the
sex murder of four-year-old Eric Christgen, was freed
when Hatcher was discovered to have been the actual
murderer.
From 1969 onward Hatcher confessed to some 16
child murders, the first being that of 12-year-old
William Freeman, who vanished in Antioch, Cal., in
August of 1969. Ironically the day after the Freeman
murder, Hatcher was charged in a child molestation
case in San Francisco. In the aftermath of the Freeman
disappearance Hatcher was later convicted in California and several Midwest states several times in cases
involving sexual assaults and kidnappings of children.
What the law was unaware of was that there were
intervening murders of children.
Early in 1982 Hatcher was committed to a state
mental institution for the abduction of a young boy.
After psychiatrists studied Hatcher for two months
they sent him free. Then on July 29 the nude, violated
body of 11-year-old Michelle Steele turned up on a
bank by the Missouri River outside St. Louis. Hatcher
was taken into custody the following day when he
attempted to check in at the St. Joseph State Hospital.
It was in this period that Hatcher began confessing to
his cross-country child murders, which proved eminently verifiable. Using a rough map drawn by Hatcher,
searchers found the body of James Churchill on the
grounds of an army arsenal near Davenport, Iowa.
Hatcher was at first tried only for the Christgen
killing for which Reynolds had previously been convicted. He was given a life sentence with no parole for a
minimum of 50 years. In 1984, tried and convicted for
the Steele killing in Missouri, Hatcher asked for the
death penalty, but the jury declined, recommending life.
Four days after that sentence was imposed, Hatcher
was found hanged in his prison cell. Prison authorities
in Jefferson City were satisfied that the child killer had
committed suicide and that it was not a case of murder.
But why had Hatcher killed himself? Remorse? A
desire to avoid a life sentence that he regarded as worse
than execution? Or was there recognition on his part
that he faced years of torment from fellow inmates in
an institution where child killers can be subjected to
extreme violence at any moment?
hate crimes
A part of American culture
Hate crimes have always been part of the fabric of
America, sometimes fueled by Old World hatreds.
397
HATE crimes
American man in Texas and faced the death penalty,
with much support from whites. In fact, such dragging
deaths were a killing method of choice in previous years
especially in southern states and probably occurred
dozens of times in Tulsa alone.
Nevertheless hate crimes remain a “sport” in the United States. Feelings of jealousy, greed, desperation and
stoked hatred can be the hallmarks of such crimes. Officially when bias is directed against another person’s religion, race, disability, sexual orientation or ethnicity, the
offense is classified under the 1990 Hate Crime Statistics
Act, with the FBI charged with determining such facts.
The agency’s 1997 statistical report, the most recent
available, demonstrates some revealing—to some very
startling—facts. Hate crimes of course remain a mostly
white offense, in every category studied. In the matter
of single-bias incidents, fully 80 percent are anti-Jewish
out of a total of 1,483. By contrast anti-Catholic acts
amount to only 2 percent, about the same figure for
anti-Islamic attacks. Among the incidents where the
suspected offender’s race was known, whites committed 240 anti-Jewish attacks as opposed to only 30 perpetrated by blacks, a figure probably surprising to the
victims themselves.
On the matter of ethnicity or national origin, whites
were known to have committed 544 offenses, mostly
against Hispanics, in comparison to 73 such offenses by
blacks.
When sexual orientation is considered, 701 offenses
are attributed to whites and 154 to blacks.
On race, as always, the chief victims remained
African Americans. The offenders were mainly white
(2,336 among suspected offenders), while blacks were
involved in 718 offenses against whites. Whites also
were known to have committed 214 racial attacks on
whites and 200 against Asians and Pacific Islanders,
compared to 41 in total committed by blacks.
In the late 1990s coverage of hate crimes in the
media became a staple in the news, far different from
years earlier when such offenses drew less—and sometimes scant—attention. Typical of the more notorious
cases was the random shooting of Sasezley Richardson,
a 19-year-old black, by two whites, aged 18 and 19, in
Elkhart County, Ind. The authorities said the alleged
killers had confessed the murder. A local newspaper
reported that one of the whites told friends that he
hoped the killing would earn him membership in the
Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist prison gang
so that he would be able to wear the gang’s spiderweb
tattoo. Elkhart County police estimated that the Aryan
Brotherhood had just under 100 members in the area.
Looking for group approval is sometimes a hallmark of the hate criminal. Benjamin N. Smith, a former
student at first the University of Illinois and then the
Among the early Irish-American criminal elements,
attacks, robberies and murders of Englishmen hardly
seemed a crime at all. And newcomers had no qualms
at all of nurturing new hatreds. It was easy enough to
hate the red man, the black man, the Spanish-speaking
elements, some of whom were the first to settle in this
new world.
The history of hate in America constantly exploded
in eras of unspeakable violence, such as the antiChinese riots, the Civil War Draft Riots, which were
soon translated in New York beyond protests against
the draft into an anti-black pogrom. In the South, but
certainly in the North and West as well, lynching of
blacks became a monotonous norm. In 1923 it was said
that 59 blacks were lynched in southern and neighboring states. Actually the figure was much higher, when
riotous bloodletting was included. Certainly the figures
for 1921, for example, numbered in the hundreds, with
the inclusion of the terrible Tulsa riots, details of which
have only been explored in the 1990s. White invasions
of black areas produced mass killings; of past estimates
of about 125 dying and 1,000 more wounded in the
riot in Tulsa, Okla., virtually all the victims were black.
The 125 figure is no longer taken seriously. The Tulsa
Race Riot Commission set up in 1997, with its work
hardly completed, drew a picture far more devastating.
What has been learned was that hundreds of African
Americans were shot, tied to cars and dragged to death
or burned alive. There were recent reports of corpses
stacked at street corners like cordwood, and dead bodies loaded on wagons, in dump trucks and along railroad sidings. A report indicated that some 123 blacks
were clubbed to death in a tunnel and buried there.
Many bodies were dumped into the Arkansas River and
washed away.
An even more graphic example occurred in 1923 in
Rosewood, Fla., a community that sported a number of
blacks living in relatively middle-class circumstances. A
riot in Rosewood was triggered by a white woman’s lie
about being attacked by blacks (the same thing that
had happened in Tulsa), but the real cause of the explosion was the festering jealousy of whites fearing some
blacks’ becoming their social equals. Armed with the
lie, a white “army” moved into Rosewood, determined
to wipe out the entire settlement. The death toll was
less than in Tulsa, simply because the population was
less, but the end result was even better from the rioters’
view. It was said that 40 to 150 men, women and children died in the attack, and that virtually all who survived fled forever. The community of Rosewood in
effect disappeared overnight.
It may indicate a measure of changing attitudes
when in 1999 three whites were convicted of firstdegree murder for the dragging death of an African
398
HATE crimes—homosexual attacks
hate crimes—homosexual attacks
University of Indiana, was known to espouse the views
of the White Nationalist Party and the Church of the
Creator, an anti-black, anti-Christian, anti-Jewish organization based in East Peoria, Ill. He was to become a
hate murderer.
He was known to have been very close to Matthew
F. Hale, the leader of the Church of the Creator, which
did not worship any God, was opposed to other organized religions and had faith only in the white race.
After Smith turned killer, Hale insisted his group did
not advocate killing non-whites and Jews, proposing
rather to “crowd them off the planet in self-defense,”
and at the same time “straightening out the thinking of
white people.” Hale described the church as supporting
the views of Hitler in many respects, but differing on a
few. The church’s Golden Rule was: “That which is
good for the White Race is the highest virtue. That
which is bad for the White Race is the ultimate sin.”
Smith, who went under the name of August rather
than Benjamin because it sounded “too Jewish,” moved
on from violent talk to murderous violence on July 2,
1999, when a state administrative board turned down
Hale’s appeal after being denied a law license because
of his racial views.
That same night Smith went on a shooting rampage.
Around 8:30 P.M. he started shooting at Orthodox Jews
in Northern Chicago sometimes on foot and sometimes
from his car. Six were wounded, but not seriously.
The first fatality occurred in Skokie, just north of
Chicago. Ricky Birdsong, a 43-year-old black, the former coach of the Northwestern Wildcats, and previously at five other schools, was walking with his son
and daughter near their home. Smith opened up with
one of his two handguns, missing the children but hitting Birdsong in the back.
The shooting spree continued as Smith continued
firing one handgun and then another at Jews, blacks
and Asians. Some were hit but not seriously until the
following morning, July 4, when Smith fired four
shots into a group of people leaving the Korean
United Methodist Church in Bloomington. Won-Joon
Yoon, a 26-year-old University of Indiana student,
was shot twice in the back and killed. Witnesses said
the killer had sped off in a blue Taurus, running several traffic lights. Police were aware of Smith’s antiSemitic and anti-black activities and issued a warrant
for him.
After 10 P.M. that evening police received a report of
a stolen van. The police picked up the trail for the vehicle and after an hourlong chase, ran Smith down in
Salem, Ill. Smith then shot himself and crashed the van.
He was rushed to the hospital but died, the hate finally
draining out of Benjamin “August” Smith.
See also: HATE CRIMES—HOMOSEXUAL ATTACKS.
Like all hate crimes, those against homosexuals are
basically carried out by whites. In an FBI breakdown of
such crimes for 1997, the latest available figures with
the race of the perpetrator known, there were 714 sexual bias incidents by whites and 160 by blacks. Only a
handful of cases represent attacks the FBI referred to as
“Anti-Heterosexual” or “Anti-Bisexual,” and they
were statistically too little to be considered, although
virtually all of these were also carried out by whites as
well.
Among the more prominent cases of violence against
homosexuals in the last two years of the 20th century
was that of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old student at
the University of Wyoming, who was lured from a bar
near campus to an isolated area by three young men
who robbed and blugeoned him, subjected him to awesome abuse and then left him trussed up to die a slow
agonizing death there. In two other cases in 1999 gay
haters slashed Billy Jack Gaither’s throat, smashed his
head open with an ax handle, planted him on top of
some kerosene-soaked tires and set him ablaze. And
another victim was decapitated and his head carried a
mile away from the body and deposited on a busy footbridge known as a gay cruising area.
Some experts find there has been a marked increase
in the number of extremely vicious attacks and killings
of homosexuals. Veteran police, used to such brutal
crimes, still suspect many cases start out as robbery
attempts that escalate to vile practices as though the
perpetrators can later claim their actions were caused
by a frenzy or panic rather than premeditated brutality.
Gay bashings can frequently occur in localities with
a large homosexual community, but it is also true that
homophobes do operate in surroundings that are more
“heterosexual friendly,” such as university areas and
very frequently in the armed services. Critics have
insisted such codes as “don’t ask, don’t tell” have
proven a disaster and have actually created a climate
that incites more violence against those the policy
allegedly attempts to aid.
In 1999 the murder of a gay soldier, Pfc. Barry
Winchell, created a firestorm of protest that the “don’t
ask, don’t tell” policy was a failure without strong
enforcement from higher brass. In the case, an 18-yearold private, Calvin Glover, crept up on a sleeping
Winchell in a barracks in Fort Campbell, Ky. and beat
him to death with a baseball bat, egged on by a buddy.
The investigation and court-martial record showed
that Glover and many other GIs habitually harassed
Winchell for his sexual preference, which he never
apparently stated. Such activities were unaccompanied
by any superiors’ reprimands of notice. Testimony indicated all such regulations were ignored—as was a com399
HATFIELDS and McCoys
plaint about a master sergeant who referred to Private
Winchell as “that faggot”—and that harassment complaints were positively discouraged. In fact, the trial
indicated that army authorities did not begin to hold
sessions down the ranks on gay policy until after
Winchell was killed, other than a brief parody of activity. An army private told CBS news program 60 Minutes that a superior said with obvious disgust, “This is
a meeting about fags. Don’t bother them; they won’t
bother you.” The same private told of his drill sergeant
keeping homophobic cadence in a 5-mile run: “Faggot,
faggot down the street/ Shoot him, shoot ‘til he retreats.
While Pvt. Glover drew a life sentence for the crime
and investigation continued concerning an accomplice
or accomplices, the Winchell case indicated how deeply
ingrained homophobic attitudes would probably remain
in the military under “don’t tell, don’t ask.”
See also: MATTHEW SHEPARD.
Hatfields and McCoys
lated. When Ellison Hatfield, a brother of Devil Anse,
was shot by McCoys in an election day dispute in 1882,
the Hatfields took three McCoy brothers hostage and
warned them they would die if Ellison died. Two days
later, Ellison died and the three McCoy brothers were
tied to papaw bushes along a stream and shot to death.
Word about the various murders seeped out to the
cities of Kentucky, and the governor of the state finally
posted rewards for the capture of any Hatfields. Since
the majority of the Hatfields and their supporters lived
in West Virginia, and the McCoys and their followers
mostly resided in Kentucky, the matter soon flared into
a dispute between the two states. In 1888 the Hatfields,
who resented the fact that the McCoys kept trying to
bring in the law, decided a major drive was necessary to
eliminate their foe. A large Hatfield contingent attacked
the home of Randolph McCoy. Wearing masks, they
yelled out, “Come out, you McCoys, and surrender as prisoners of war!” When the call went unanswered (Randolph McCoy was not present), they shot in the windows and set fire to the house. Randolph’s young
daughter ran out and was slain. Then his son Calvin
emerged and went down in a fusillade. Old Mrs.
McCoy tried to run to her daughter and was clubbed
over the head and left for dead. This would be the last
great reprisal in the feud.
Newspapers all over the country reported the atrocity.
Kentucky law officers made several raids into West Virginia, and at least two Hatfield clansmen were killed and
nine others captured. West Virginia appealed to the
Supreme Court to have the captives returned. The High
Court handed down a quick decision stating the law provided no method of compelling one state to return parties
wrongfully abducted from another state. Of the nine, two
were executed and the others sent to state prison.
By 1890 the feud was about over. A year later, Cap
Hatfield wrote a letter to a local newspaper stating the
Hatfields were declaring a general amnesty and that
“the war spirit in me has abated.” Shortly thereafter,
Devil Anse came out of hiding, finally sure no Kentucky lawmen would be waiting to apprehend him.
By the time Devil Anse died in 1921 at about 100
years of age, the two clans had intermarried frequently.
In the younger generations the feud was nothing more
than ancient history, like the Civil War itself.
mountaineer feud
America’s classic mountain feud between the Hatfields
in West Virginia and the McCoys in Kentucky was in
many respects an extension of the Civil War. The Hatfields, under the leadership of young Anderson “Devil
Anse” Hatfield, had sided with the South, while the
family of Randolph McCoy took up the Union cause.
Both families rode with border guerrilla bands and
built up a hatred that would long outlive the war.
After the war, although relations were strained, there
was no important confrontation until 1873, when Randolph McCoy accused Floyd Hatfield of stealing a hog.
The case finally came for adjudication before Parson Anse, a Baptist minister who dispensed justice in
the backcountry. Mountaineers streamed to the trial, all
armed with long knives, or “toothpicks,” and longbarreled rifles. Supporting the Hatfields were the
Mahons, Vances, Ferrels, Statons and Chafins. On the
McCoy side were the Sowards, Stuarts, Gateses, Colemans, Normans and Rutherfords. Six supporters of
each side were placed on a jury, and it appeared matters
would be deadlocked. However, one of the jurors,
Selkirk McCoy, who was married to a Hatfield, voted
in favor of the Hatfields, breaking the tie. He pointed
out that both men had presented sound arguments, but
in the final analysis possession was what counted and
there did not seem to be enough grounds to take the
hog away from Floyd Hatfield.
The decision ended the legal battle but ill feelings festered. It was only a matter of time before violence
erupted. The first to die was Bill Staton, a Hatfield supporter who had vowed to kill McCoys. How many died
after that was never accurately counted; both clans were
close-mouthed on such matters, but the bloodbath esca-
Haun’s Mill Massacre
anti-Mormon killings
For about three decades from the time of the establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
by Joseph Smith in 1830, the history of Mormonism was
one of persecution and murder, first in New York State,
then in Ohio and later in Missouri. It was common for
Mormons to be beaten, robbed, tarred and feathered,
400
HAVANA Convention
whipped and killed. On October 30, 1838 a group of
200 Missourians under the leadership of Nehemiah
Comstock attacked an encampment of Mormons at
Haun’s Mill. The death toll was about 20, with many
more seriously wounded. Men, women and children
were among the victims. One victim was a small boy
who had sought refuge with other children in a blacksmith shop. When he was found, the child begged for his
life. But a gun was placed to his temple and his brains
blown out; the killer bragged of his deed long after. The
attackers threw the corpses down a well and then plundered the camp. Not only were there no prosecutions
following these killings, but Gov. Lillburn W. Boggs
shortly thereafter announced, “The Mormons must be
treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven
from the state for the public peace.” The Haun’s Mill
Massacre, as well as the murder of Joseph Smith, set the
precedent for the 1857 slaughter of more than 120
wagon train emigrants by a Mormon attacking party in
the Mountain Meadows Valley, Utah Territory.
See also: MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE, JOSEPH
SMITH.
Hauptmann, Bruno Richard
from Florida; and Tony Accardo and Charlie and
Rocco Fischetti, from Chicago. Also present, although
in nonvoting roles (this was essentially an Italian Mafia
conference), were Meyer Lansky and the syndicate’s
partner in New Orleans, Dandy Phil Kastel, both Jews.
Another attendee was a popular young singer, an Italian American from New Jersey named Frank Sinatra,
whom Luciano would describe as “a good kid and we
was all proud of him.”
Sinatra was not there to take part in the deliberations. He had come with his friends the Fischetti brothers to be the guest of honor at a gala party. As such, he
provided good cover for the many Italian mobsters in
attendance, giving them an alibi, if necessary, for being
in Havana.
The conference proved less than a total success for
Luciano in many respects. Genovese actually had the
nerve to suggest privately to Luciano that he “retire”
from the syndicate. Luciano handled this effrontery by
easily facing down Genovese, but he soon learned his
word was no longer law.
Luciano effectively blocked Genovese from taking
more power and stifled Genovese-inspired complaints
about Albert Anastasia, the Lord High Executioner of
the mob, who was accused of becoming kill crazy.
Anastasia apparently was advocating the assassination
of Bureau of Narcotics director Harry Anslinger.
Luciano evidently curbed Anastasia but did not
“defang” him, realizing he would be a valuable weapon
in any future war with Genovese.
However, Luciano lost on another important issue:
narcotics. Like Lansky, Costello, Magaddino and a few
others, Luciano wanted to take the syndicate out of the
narcotics business, but the profits were so enormous
that many important crime chiefs would not or, perhaps because of opposition from their own underlings,
could not give up the trade. Luciano was forced to
leave the decision up to the individual crime families.
Another serious matter of business for the convention was the passing of the death sentence on Bugsy
Siegel. A longtime underworld partner of Luciano and,
in particular, of Lansky, Siegel had squandered huge
sums of money building a great financial lemon, a Las
Vegas gambling casino–hotel called the Flamingo.
Besides being a bad businessman, Siegel was suspected
of also being a crook, skimming off money the mob
had put up to construct the hotel. It was Lansky’s
motion that sealed Siegel’s doom: “There’s only one
thing to do with a thief who steals from his friends.
Benny’s got to be hit.”
In due course, Siegel was hit.
Luciano had taken up residence in Cuba with two
passports (the extra was in case one was taken from
him) made out in his real name, Salvatore Lucania, but
See LINDBERGH
KIDNAPPING.
Havana Convention
underworld conference
Probably the most important underworld conference in
the post–World War II period was the Havana meeting
in December 1946, convened to heal the rifts that were
appearing in the national crime syndicate. With Lucky
Luciano in exile in Italy, serious rivalries developed as
Vito Genovese attempted to extend his power over the
New York crime families. Luciano had left Frank
Costello in charge of his crime family, just as he had
been during the period when he was serving time in
American prisons. Genovese, who had recently been
returned to the United States from his self-imposed
exile in Italy to face a murder charge (which he had
beaten), was attempting to fill the Luciano vacuum.
The Luciano–Meyer Lansky combination had called
the meeting to bring about order and to reassert the
former’s position of control. Luciano clearly felt he
could bide his time in Havana for a couple of years
while he waited for the proper political strings to be
pulled so that he could come back to the United States.
Among those present at the conclave were Costello,
Tommy Lucchese, Joe Profaci, Genovese, Joe Bananas
Bonanno, Willie Moretti, Augie Pisano, Joe Adonis,
Giuseppe Magliocco and Mike Miranda, all from New
York–New Jersey; Steve Magaddino, from Buffalo;
Carlos Marcello, from New Orleans; Santo Trafficante,
401
HAWTHORNE Inn
his presence in Cuba could not be kept secret for long
and he was soon found out. It was Luciano’s belief that
Genovese had tipped off the U.S. government. Finally,
the Cuban government, despite its gambling operation
arrangements with the mob, was forced to make
Luciano return to Italy. The crime leader’s dream of
returning to the United States was permanently shattered, and slowly over the years his influence over criminal matters in America waned.
Hawthorne Inn
demn police brutality and protest the killing of a
worker four days earlier in a strike-breaking battle at
the McCormick-Harvester plant. Suddenly, as Samuel
Fielden, a 40-year-old teamster who had immigrated to
the United States from England, was speaking, 180
police officers appeared and one of the officers in
charge said, “In the name of the people of the State of
Illinois, I command this meeting immediately and
peaceably to disperse.”
Fielden responded, “We are peaceable.”
As he and other speakers began to descend from the
truck wagon being used as a podium, a dynamite bomb
flew through the air and exploded in front of the police.
Several fell. The police re-formed and started firing.
Those workers who had guns fired back. In all, seven
policemen and two civilians died, and 130 others were
wounded.
The public uproar against anarchists and Reds was
instant and widespread. The color red was cut out of
street signs, and the press all around the country
attacked anarchists, socialists and aliens, especially
Germans since most of the speakers were German.
Nine men, most of them speakers at the rally, were
indicted for murder; they were Albert Parsons, Samuel
Fielden, Michael Schwab, August Spies, Adolph Fischer,
Oscar Neebe, George Engel, Louis Lingg, who was
charged with making the bomb, and Rudolph
Schnaubelt, who was reported to have thrown it. Parsons and Schnaubelt disappeared before the trial opened;
the latter was believed to have gone back to his native
Germany.
When the trial began on June 21, 1886, Parsons,
who had been in hiding in Wisconsin, walked into the
courtroom and sat down with the other defendants. A
veteran of the Confederate Army from Alabama, he
had long alienated his socially prominent family by
embracing radical causes. He later explained his reappearance by saying, “They will kill me, but I could not
bear to be at liberty, knowing that my comrades were
here and were to suffer for something of which they
were as innocent as I.”
With the aid of the prosecution, Judge Joseph Eaton
Gary refused to bar from the jury one individual who
had a relative among the dead policeman and another
who had been a close friend of one of the officers. The
strategy was to force the defense to use up its challenges
on such potential jurors and then it would be forced to
take whomever was offered. The jurors selected were
all either businessmen or white-collar workers; none
was an industrial worker.
The prosecution’s case was exceptionally weak. It
presented no evidence concerning who had thrown the
bomb, nor did it connect the unknown bomb thrower
to any of the speakers at the rally. Amazingly, Judge
Capone’s Cicero headquarters
Located at 4833 22nd Street, the Hawthorne Inn was
the Capone headquarters in Cicero, Ill. A two-story
structure of brown brick with white tiles set in the
upper face, it was completely redone on Capone’s
orders. Bulletproof steel shutters were affixed to every
window, armed guards were posted at every entrance
and the entire second floor was refurbished for
Capone’s private use. Eventually, the Hawthorne Inn
was a regular stop for sightseeing buses, whose conductors referred to it as the Capone Castle.
On September 20, 1926 it almost became Capone’s
tomb. Eleven automobiles packed with gangsters loyal
to Hymie Weiss, the successor to Capone’s late rival
and assassination victim Dion O’Banion, drove slowly
past the inn and fired more than 1,000 bullets at the
building, as shoppers and lunch-tour promenaders
screamed and ducked for cover. Capone, eating in the
restaurant on the ground floor, was raising a cup of coffee to his lips when the Thompson submachine guns
began blasting. He was saved by a quick-thinking
bodyguard, Frankie Rio, who knocked him to the floor.
After the attack bullet holes were found in 35 automobiles parked at the curb. Inside the inn, doors and
woodwork were splintered, plate glass and mirrors
shattered, plaster torn from the walls and office, and
lobby furniture ripped apart.
Mrs. Clyde Freeman, sitting with her infant son in a
car that took 30 bullets, was hit by a shot that plowed
a furrow across her forehead and injured her eyes.
Capone paid doctors $5,000 to save the woman’s
sight.
Capone refused to name any suspects in the shooting, but he told reporters: “Watch the morgue. They’ll
show up there.” Twenty days later Hymie Weiss turned
up at the morgue.
Haymarket affair
terrorist bombing
One of the most tragic instances of labor turmoil in this
country was the Haymarket affair in Chicago on May
4, 1886. Fifteen thousand workers jammed Haymarket
Square in a rally to demand shorter work hours, con402
HAYNES, Richard “Racehorse”
Gary ruled that it was not necessary for the prosecution
to identify the bomb-thrower or even to prove that the
murderer had been influenced by the anarchist beliefs
of the defendants.
All the defendants were found guilty. Neebe was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment and the remaining
eight, including the disappeared Schnaubelt, were sentenced to death. The verdict was hailed throughout
Chicago and the nation, although not in foreign countries and U.S. labor circles. But with delays in the execution, public opinion started to shift and pressures for a
commutation began building. Finally, Fielden and
Schwab’s sentences were reduced to life imprisonment,
but the other five were still scheduled to hang.
The day before the executions Louis Lingg placed a
small bomb in his mouth and blew off half his face,
dying six and a half hours later. The next day the
remaining four, Parsons, Engel, Fischer and Spies, died
on the scaffold. They shouted anarchist slogans, and
Parsons said: “Will I be allowed to speak, O men of
America? Let me speak, Sheriff Matson! Let the voice
of the people be heard!” The executioner at that
moment sprang the trap.
In 1892 John P. Altgeld, a wealthy property owner,
was elected governor of Illinois. He ordered a complete
study made of the Haymarket affair and trial and then
condemned Judge Gary for unfairness. He pardoned
the three defendants still alive, Fielden, Schwab and
Neebe, declaring them and their executed comrades
innocent. Altgeld was severely criticized for his act by
most newspapers, many of which pointed to his own
German birth. Earning the sobriquet of John “Pardon”
Altgeld, his political career was wrecked.
Perhaps the real vindication of the wrongfully
hanged men came in the next century, when labor
finally achieved the prime objective of the Haymarket
rally—the eight-hour day.
See also: JOHN P. ALTGELD.
Haynes, Richard “Racehorse” (1923– ) defense
attorney
Without a doubt, the most colorful defense lawyer practicing today is a square-jawed Texan named Richard
“Racehorse” Haynes. Nothing quite like him has been
seen in a courtroom since the days of such legendary figures as Bill Fallon, Clarence Darrow or Moman Pruiett.
If anything, he may be more successful than all of them.
Noted for his lurid defenses in murder trials, which are
generally marked by some very rich defendants on one
side and some very damning evidence on the other,
Racehorse, who was given the nickname by his high
school football coach for his moves on the field, is now
regarded by many as America’s premier criminal
403
defender. In any event, he may well be the highest paid.
Based in Houston, Haynes does not reveal his fees, but
at least two of his cases supposedly commanded milliondollar sums. Randolph Hearst for a time considered
employing Haynes to defend his daughter Patty but settled on F. Lee Bailey, in part, it is believed, because Bailey’s charges were much lower.
Haynes insists he is “worth every dollar” he charges.
With a smile he says, “What’s money when you’re
faced with spending 25 years to life in the Crossbar
Hotel?”
Few deny that Haynes is now “the best lawyer
money can buy,” but a prosecutor who has dueled with
him in the courtroom is less than enthused, commenting: “He’s good, he’s very good. But on account of him,
there are a couple dozen people walking free in Texas
who wouldn’t blink before blowing somebody’s head
off. He’s a menace to society.”
Haynes’ response is the one always used by defense
attorneys: “I sleep fine at night. It isn’t my job to be
judge and jury, but to do the best I can on behalf of the
citizen accused.”
Texas citizens successfully defended by him have
included the late Dr. John Hill, the defendant in the
Houston case made famous by the best-selling book
Blood and Money, and oilman T. Cullen Davis, the
richest man in America ever tried for murder. Davis
was charged with staging a shooting spree in his $6 million family mansion during which his 12-year-old stepdaughter and his wife’s lover were killed, his estranged
wife was severely wounded and a family friend was
crippled. Despite the fact that three eyewitnesses named
Davis as the killer, Haynes won an acquittal for him,
with the jury deliberating a mere four hours. Later,
Haynes’ client beat additional charges, considered ironclad by the prosecution, and left court a free man.
While Haynes is regarded as a master of the theatrical defense, the fact is he solidly grounds his cases in
scientific analysis and often can pick apart prosecution
testimony on ballistics, pathology, stains, hair and
other supposedly damning evidence. Haynes was
involved in the first case allegedly solved by the use of
nuclear techniques. In that case scientists had analyzed
the hairs of a dead woman by nuclear activation and
linked the victim’s strangle murder to an aircraft
mechanic. The scientists were awarded medals for their
accomplishment, but at the subsequent trial Haynes
proceeded to debunk their findings and got the judge to
bar the evidence as failing to meet the court’s standards
for scientific proof. As a result, the jury ended up voting nine to three for acquittal.
Another Haynes’ feat still commands awe in Texas
legal circles. He defended a man accused of battering a
woman to death with a replica of a sword and spiked-
HAYNES, Richard “Racehorse”
had that case won when we seated the last bigot on the
jury,” he told a reporter at the end of the trial.
Haynes takes no more than 15 percent of the cases
brought to him, often basing his selection on the degree
of challenge they offer. The high fees he commands
allow him to take other cases at no charge. He once
won freedom for a motorcycle gang accused of punishing an errant female member by nailing her to a tree. A
typical Haynes case is far from the Perry Mason variety,
in which a dramatic last-minute act of deduction frees
the defendant. “My clients admit they pulled the trigger, plunged the knife, swung the club,” he says. “I
have to show why, because sometimes the pulling, plugging or swinging was justified. When all else fails, I just
ask the jury for mercy. They usually oblige me.”
A Haynes defense seldom relies on a single factor to
sway a jury. He tends to develop several possible scenarios for a jury to pick from, and in his summation he
follows the argument he feels has the best chance of
ball and chain. Although his client had confessed and
signed a statement and blood on his clothes matched
the type of the victim, Haynes produced a hung jury at
the first trial and won an acquittal at the second.
The key to most of Haynes’ defenses revolves
around jury selection. “I can usually raise real doubt in
the minds of at least a couple of jurors if I’ve picked the
jury right.” Haynes uses social scientists and psychologists to profile the ideal juror in any given case. In the
first Cullen Davis trial, he spent $30,000 for a jury
study and utilized the services of a Ph.D. in psychology
when making the actual jury selections.
In 1971 Haynes won freedom for two Houston
police officers accused of violating the civil rights of a
black man by kicking him to death in the station house.
They had arrested the man for “stealing” a car that
turned out to be his own. The lawyer got the trial
moved out of Houston to New Braunfels, Tex., a conservative German-American community. “I knew we
FPO
FIG# 75
TO BE
PICKED-UP
FROM
PREVIOUS ED.
Charles Moyers, Big Bill Haywood and George Pettibone (left to right) were acquitted of conspiracy in the bomb
assassination of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg.
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HEARST, Patricia
Hearst, Patricia (1955– ) kidnap victim
working. Haynes once outlined his defense strategy for
an American Bar Association seminar in New York.
“Say you sue me because you say my dog bit you. Well,
now this is my defense: my dog doesn’t bite. And second, in the alternative, my dog was tied up that night.
And third, I don’t believe you really got bit. And
fourth, I don’t have a dog.”
Few crimes in recent history were as sensational and
involved as many bizarre twists as the kidnapping of
Patricia Hearst, who was taken from her Berkeley,
Calif. apartment on February 5, 1974 by members of
the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a radical terrorist organization.
At first, the kidnappers offered to return the 19year-old heiress if her father, newspaper publisher Randolph Hearst, would start a food program for the poor
in the San Francisco Bay area. Later, however, a taperecorded message from Patty said she had “chosen to
stay and fight” with the SLA for the “freedom of the
oppressed people.” She adopted the SLA name of
“Tania” and was subsequently linked to the armed robbery of a San Francisco bank on April 15. Hearst
refused to believe his daughter was acting of her own
free will, but photographs of the bank robbery and
reports by eyewitnesses indicated she “absolutely was a
participant.” In later tapes sent by the SLA, Patty
ridiculed the idea that she had been brainwashed.
Meanwhile, law enforcement authorities pressed
their hunt for the handful of SLA members and cornered six of them in a Los Angeles hideout on May 17.
All six including Donald DeFreeze, alias “Field Marshal Cinque,” the alleged leader of the group died in an
ensuing gun battle and fire. Actually, subsequent evidence indicated the real leaders were a dynamic female
trio Patricia Soltysik, Nancy Ling Perry and Camilla
Hall, all of whom perished with guns in their hands
during the desperate shoot-out. Fears that Patty was
among the dead proved unfounded, and although she
was still missing, she was indicted on a charge of bank
robbery.
Finally, 19 months after her original kidnapping,
Patty Hearst was captured in a hideout in San Francisco. With her was 32-year-old Wendy Yoshimura,
who had joined her after she had gone into hiding. The
hunt ended with Patty telling FBI agents, “Don’t
shoot. I’ll go with you.” Just an hour earlier agents
had arrested William and Emily Harris, the last
remaining members of the SLA group that originally
seized Patty.
At Patty’s trial, defense attorney F. Lee Bailey
stressed the brutality of the kidnapping by the SLA and
claimed she had endured hardships and constant terrorization during her captivity. He argued the bank
robbery had been staged by the SLA just to make Patty
believe she could not return to society. The lawyer also
said that DeFreeze had familiarity with brainwashing
techniques and “knew just enough about this process
to start it moving” on “a particularly vulnerable,
frightened 19-year-old girl.”
Haywood, William D. “Big Bill” (1869–1928) radical
and labor leader
Big Bill Haywood, a leader of the radical labor movement during the most turbulent era in the history of
American unions, was tried for murder in a case considered to be the most important judicial confrontation
between capital and labor in this country.
Haywood, a miner, cowboy and homesteader in
his youth, joined the Western Federation of Miners
in 1896 and quickly rose to position among the
nation’s union leaders. In 1905 former governor Frank
Steunenberg was assassinated by a bomb. The confessed assassin, Harry Orchard, insisted he was carrying out Haywood’s orders, as he said he had done in
many previous acts of terrorism and murder. In a
1906–07 trial Haywood was charged with two others,
Charles H. Moyers and George A. Pettibone, of conspiring in the bomb assassination. The 78-day courtroom drama had numerous stars: besides Haywood
and Orchard, there were Clarence Darrow, the defense
attorney, and future Senator William E. Borah, prosecutor. The state’s case was that Steunenberg had been
murdered in retaliation for his antilabor actions during
a strike in the Coeur d’Alene mines. Considered a classic today, Darrow’s defense shredded the prosecution’s
case of any supporting evidence other than Orchard’s
confession, which had been written with the assistance
of the Pinkertons. In his summary, Darrow conducted a
eulogy on the righteousness of labor as opposed to the
evils of capitalism. The defendants were acquitted.
From 1905 to 1917 Haywood remained the most
charismatic labor leader in America and had a devoted
following. He was arrested in the 1917 Palmer Raids
and convicted of sedition, a vague charge most legal
scholars agree would never be upheld today. He was
sentenced to Leavenworth Penitentiary but on appeal
was released on $30,000 bail. Haywood jumped bail
and fled to Soviet Russia in 1921. He spent his last few
years lonely and sick in Moscow, where on May 18,
1928, after a party at the home of foreign correspondent Eugene Lyons, he died.
See also: CLARENCE DARROW, JAMES MCPARLAND,
HARRY ORCHARD, PALMER RAIDS, PINKERTON’S NATIONAL
DETECTIVE AGENCY, FRANK STEUNENBERG.
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HEATH, John
In her own testimony Patty said her early treatment
by her abductors had included a number of death
threats. She insisted she had been forced to have sexual
intercourse with DeFreeze and another SLA member,
William Wolfe. The prosecution presented psychiatric
testimony to refute any contention that Patty had been
anything but a “voluntary member of the SLA.” Dr. Joel
Fort cast doubt on her tale of sexual abuse while with
the SLA, noting that she had been “sexually active at
age 15,” and Dr. Harry Kozol described her at the time
of her kidnapping as a “rebel in search of a cause.”
Patty Hearst was found guilty of the bank robbery
charge and sentenced to seven years imprisonment. She
served a total of 28 months, including time in prison
before and after her trial. William and Emily Harris
were given 10 years to life for the kidnapping.
When Patty Hearst was released, she married and
settled into what was described as a very establishment
lifestyle.
See also: DOROTHY ALLISON, F. LEE BAILEY, WILLIAM
AND EMILY HARRIS.
Heath, John
total of 14 shots were fired, and when the smoke
cleared, Mrs. Wanderer was dead and so was the
ragged stranger. Only Carl Wanderer was unscathed.
Wanderer was celebrated in the press and by a public
fearful about the rise in violent crime. But Hecht and
MacArthur both were skeptical. MacArthur traced the
gun found on the ragged stranger back to a relative of
Carl Wanderer’s. That man, a cousin, had given it to
Wanderer. Hecht in the meantime befriended Wanderer
and learned much of his private life, including that he
was a homosexual who was appalled at the thought of
being father to a woman’s baby. When Hecht found letters Wanderer had written to a male lover, the husband
confessed he had tricked an unidentified stranger,
whom he had met in a skid row bar, into waiting in the
vestibule for him. When he and his wife arrived, Wanderer pulled two guns and opened up on both his wife
and the stranger.
Ironically, the two reporters spent much time with
Wanderer in the death house at the Cook County Jail,
playing cards with him (and winning his money), and
prevailed upon him to read attacks on their city editors
as his last words on the gallows. The reporters forgot
that a condemned man is bound hand and foot when
hanged. At his execution Wanderer could only glance
unavailing at the speeches strapped to his side. Shrugging at the reporters, he did the next best thing he could
think of, bursting forth in a rollicking version of “Dear
Old Pal O’ Mine.”
After the trap was sprung, MacArthur turned to
Hecht and said, “You know, Ben, that son of a bitch
should have been a song plugger.”
Even after Hecht went on to bigger and better things
as an author, playwright and screenwriter, his Chicago
crime-writing days came back to haunt him. In Hollywood during the early 1930s Hecht wrote the screenplay for Scarface, starring Paul Muni, for Howard
Hughes’ studio. One night there was a knock at his hotel room in Los Angeles, and two sinister-looking gentlemen confronted him with a copy of the screenplay.
“You the guy who wrote this?” one said, brandishing the script.
Hecht couldn’t deny it.
“Is this stuff about Al Capone?”
“God, no!” Hecht assured them. “I don’t even know
Al.” He rattled off the names of Chicago underworld
characters he had known—Big Jim Colosimo, Dion
O’Banion, Hymie Weiss.
His visitors seemed satisfied, one saying: “O.K.
then. We’ll tell Al this stuff you wrote is about them
other guys.” As they started to leave, however, the
other one had a thought. “If this stuff isn’t about Al
Capone, why are you calling it Scarface? Everybody’ll
think it’s him.”
See BISBEE MASSACRE.
Hecht, Ben (1894–1964) crime reporter
Many of the fascinating facts that typified novelist and
playwright Ben Hecht’s writing were drawn from his
earlier experiences as a Chicago crime reporter. He
started out as what was called a “picture chaser” for
the Chicago Journal, assigned to acquire, by any means
possible, photographs of ax murderers and the like and
their victims, sometimes pilfering them from the family
mantelpiece. Before long he advanced to reporter,
which in the Chicago journalism of the day did not
require an undue concern for accuracy.
Hecht became expert at writing stories that began,
e.g., “If Fred Ludwig is hanged for the murder of his
wife, Irma, it will be because of the little gold band he
slipped on her finger on his wedding day, inscribed with
the tender words, ‘Irma—Love Forever—Fred.’”
If Hecht and his favorite crony, Charles MacArthur
of the rival Examiner and later the Daily News, sometimes purpled their facts, they also solved many a case
that had the police stumped. It was basically Hecht
who cracked Chicago’s famed Case of the Ragged
Stranger, in which a pregnant woman named Mrs. Ruth
Wanderer was shot by a ragged stranger as she and her
husband were returning from a movie the night of June
21, 1920. At the time, her husband, Carl, according to
his statement, was carrying the Colt .45 service automatic that he had kept upon discharge from the army
after World War I, and he blazed back at the attacker. A
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HEINRICH, Edward Oscar
“That’s the reason. Al is one of the most famous and
fascinating men of our time. If you call the movie Scarface, everybody will want to see it, figuring it’s about
Al. That’s part of the racket we call showmanship.”
“I’ll tell Al. Who’s this fella Howard Hughes?”
“He got nothing to do with it. He’s the sucker with
the money.”
“O.K. The hell with him.” And Capone’s men left
placated.
obtaining the dowries of many of them. Holmes offered
Hedgepeth $500 if he could put him in touch with a
“shrewd lawyer.” Hedgepeth did and Holmes was
eventually sprung from jail, but not before he had made
some incriminating statements to Hedgepeth. The outlaw might have kept Holmes’ secrets had he gotten the
$500 promised him, but Holmes, no spendthrift, never
paid him the money. Hedgepeth wrote a letter to the St.
Louis police chief in which he exposed an insurance
plot in Philadelphia that Holmes was involved in. The
authorities checked on it and discovered Holmes had
killed a man named Herman Pitezel there. They took
Holmes into custody and then discovered his wholesale
murders in Chicago.
Meanwhile, Hedgepeth was sent to the pentitentiary.
For 12 years committees, most composed of women,
mounted efforts to win his freedom, pointing out he
was a “friend of society” because his actions had
resulted in the capture of the terrible woman killer
Holmes. Finally, Hedgepeth was pardoned in 1906.
A happy Hedgepeth said he was going to live an
honest life thereafter and went to Nebraska, where he
immediately started blowing safes. He was caught in
1907 and got 10 years but was released after doing less
than two. In late 1908 he formed a new gang, but they
were a pale imitation of the old Hedgepeth Four. After
a few minor jobs the outlaw pulled out and went on his
own. By this time he was suffering from the ravages of
tuberculosis, however, and no longer resembled the old
bandit dandy. On January 1, 1910 he walked into a
bar in Chicago and threatened the bartender with a sixgun while he proceeded to clean out the cash register. A
passing policeman saw him through the window and
rushed in with pistol drawn.
The officer shouted, “Surrender!”
Hedgepeth coughed and replied, “Never!”
Both fired at the same time. Hedgepeth, weakened
by his illness, missed, probably for the first time in his
life. The policeman’s shot caught Hedgepeth in the
chest and spun him around. Hedgepeth fell to his
knees, raised his gun by instinct and, holding it with
both hands, fired again. A bullet went through the officer’s coat. Hedgepeth died still firing his weapon.
See also: H. H. HOLMES.
Hedgepeth, Marion (?–1910) outlaw
Marion Hedgepeth did not have the look, or the name,
of a Western outlaw, but, as Robert Pinkerton noted,
“He was one of the really bad men of the West.”
Immaculately dressed (his “Wanted” posters observed
that his shoes were usually well polished) in a well-cut
suit and topcoat with his hair slicked down under a
bowler hat, Hedgepeth often looked like easy pickings
to other gunfighters. But he was exceedingly fast on the
draw, once killing a foe who already had his gun out
before Hedgepeth even started to draw.
Not much is known about Hedgepeth’s early life
except that he ran away from his Missouri home in his
mid-teens and became a cowboy in Wyoming and a
holdup man in Colorado during the 1880s. He killed
men in both states. By 1890 he was the leader of a
small band of train robbers known as the Hedgepeth
Four. The other members of the group, all daring and
cunning killers, were Albert D. Sly, Lucius Wilson and
James Francis, better known as “Illinois Jimmy.” They
pulled their first train job in Nebraska, netting only
$1,000, but a week later, they knocked off a train in
Wisconsin and got away with $5,000. Eventually, the
gang made its biggest score in a train robbery at Glendale, Mo., making off with $50,000. Hedgepeth
became something of a new folk hero in the area, which
was Jesse James’ old stamping grounds.
The gang scattered after that hit, but the Pinkertons
eventually ran Hedgepeth to earth in San Francisco in
1893 and brought him back to Missouri for trial. The
dapper outlaw became the toast of St. Louis, and dourfaced lawmen were forced to fill his cell with flowers
sent by feminine well-wishers. His popularity with
women did not prevent him from being found guilty
and drawing a 25-year prison term.
While awaiting transfer to the penitentiary,
Hedgepeth shared a cell with a man called H. H.
Holmes, whose real name was Herman Webster Mudgett. Holmes was being held on a swindling charge, but
what was not known then was that he was also the
worst killer of women in America’s history. In his
“murder castle” in Chicago he may well have killed
200 women, collecting on the insurance policies and
Heinrich, Edward Oscar (1881–1953) criminologist
Known by the press as the “Edison of crime detection,”
Edward O. Heinrich trailblazed in the use of scientific
methods in criminal detection. A criminologist in private practice and a lecturer on the subject at the University of California at Berkeley, he was utilized by police
departments all over the country. Over a 45-year career,
he was credited with solving 2,000 major and minor
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HEINRICH, Edward Oscar
The first thing he discovered was that the garage
mechanic should be released. “The stains are not auto
grease,” he said, referring to the overalls from the scene
of the crime. “They’re pitch from fir trees.” Then he
went on to stun detectives with a full description of the
man they sought: he was a left-handed lumberjack
who’d worked the logging camps of the Pacific Northwest. He was thin, had light brown hair, rolled his own
cigarettes and was fussy about his appearance. He was
5 feet 10 and was in his early twenties.
All of Heinrich’s conclusions were backed up with
solid evidence that he had “properly interpreted.” He
had quickly identified the grease as being fir stains, and
in the pockets of the overalls he had found bits of Douglas fir needles, common to the forests of the Pacific
Northwest. The pockets on the left side of the overalls
were more heavily worn than those on the right. In addition, the garment was regularly buttoned from the left
side. Therefore, the wearer obviously was left-handed.
From the hem of a pocket, Heinrich extracted several
carefully cut fingernail trimmings. Such manicuring was
somewhat incongruous for a lumberjack unless he was
fastidious about his appearance. The scientist found a
single strand of light brown hair clinging to one button.
More than merely determining the suspect’s hair coloring, however, Heinrich used his own techniques to make
a close estimate of the man’s age. Heinrich also found
one other clue, which other investigators had totally
overlooked. Using a delicate forceps, he was able to dig
out from the hem of the narrow pencil pocket a tiny wad
of paper, apparently rammed down inadvertently with a
pencil. The paper appeared to have gone through a number of washings with the overalls and was blurred
beyond all legibility, but by treating it with iodine vapor,
Heinrich was able to identify it as a registered-mail
receipt and establish its number.
The receipt was traced to one Roy d’Autremont of
Eugene, Ore. In Eugene authorities found Roy’s father,
who, it turned out, was worried about his twin sons,
Roy and Ray, and another son, Hugh, who had all disappeared on October 11, the date of the train holdup.
Inquiries about Roy showed he was left-handed, rolled
his own tobacco (confirming Heinrich’s findings of
tobacco samples) and was known to be fussy about his
appearance. Authorities later said Heinrich had virtually furnished them with a photograph of the suspect.
Following Heinrich’s cracking of the mystery, one of
the most intensive manhunts in American history was
launched. Circulars were printed in 100 languages and
sent to police departments throughout the world.
Records of the men’s medical histories, dental charts
and eye prescriptions were supplied to doctors, dentists
and oculists. Finally, three years and six months after
the crime, Hugh d’Autremont was captured in Manila,
mysteries. He did so by being a master of all trades; he
was a geologist, a physicist, a handwriting expert, an
authority on inks and papers, and a biochemist. He was
fond of saying that no criminal ever departs the scene
of his crime without leaving several clues and that it
was up to a scientific investigator to find and interpret
them correctly. He proved a number of alleged suicides
to be murders and a number of suspected murders to be
suicides or accidents. His work in the investigation of
the 1916 Black Tom explosion, which he was able to
lay at the door of a German sabotage ring, brought him
considerable fame, as did his presentation of scientific
evidence in the bestial sex murder involved in the Fatty
Arbuckle case.
Probably his most famous case, because it demonstrated his deductive powers so well, was the attempted
robbery of a 1923 Southern Pacific Railroad mail train
and the resultant quadruple murders. On October 11
the train with its coaches filled with passengers was
moving slowly through a tunnel in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon when two men armed with
shotguns climbed over the tender and ordered the engineer and fireman to halt as soon as the engine, tender
and next car, the mail car, cleared the tunnel. They followed instructions and watched helplessly as a third
man appeared outside the tunnel with a bulky package,
which he carried to the side of the mail car. Running
back to a detonator, the man set off an enormous
explosion. The mail car and its contents were consumed in flames, which obviously ruined the robbery
attempt. It also incinerated the lone mail clerk inside
the car. Before the trio left, they cold-bloodedly shot
down the engineer, fireman and a brakeman who had
come forward through the tunnel to investigate the
explosion.
The attempted train robbery, reminiscent of the Wild
West days, became front-page news as railroad police,
postal detectives, sheriff’s deputies and other lawmen
converged on the scene. Posses set out to track the bandits but came up empty. All that was found was a detonator with batteries, a revolver, a pair of well-worn and
greasy blue denim overalls and some shoe covers made
of gunnysack soaked in creosote, apparently to keep
pursuing dogs off the criminals’ scent.
As days and weeks passed with no discernible leads,
the authorities asked Heinrich to help. He was sent the
overalls for examination with information that a
garage mechanic who worked not far from the tunnel
had been taken into custody because his work clothes
appeared to have the same greasy stains. Heinrich
started out with a magnifying glass and microcopic
examination of the garment and its “contents,” such as
scrapings of the grease stains and lint and other tiny
items from the pockets.
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HEITLER, Mike “de Pike”
the Philippines. In April the twins were found working
in a steel mill in Steubenville, Ohio under the name of
Goodwin. All three were convicted and given life
imprisonment.
Edward Heinrich returned to his laboratory, where
he continued to supply his expertise to police forces
faced with baffling crimes until his death in 1953.
Heirens, William (1929– ) murderer
Beginning at the age of nine, William Heirens committed hundreds of thefts, most often slipping into
women’s bedrooms and stealing their underthings,
which he would later fondle in his room. He dressed in
women’s clothing and stared at pictures of Nazi leaders
for hours. At the age of 13 he was arrested on a charge
of carrying a loaded pistol. In his home police found an
impressive arsenal of weapons. Heirens was sent to private corrections home. Since he was an above-average
student, he was enrolled in Chicago University at the
age of 16. But he continued to commit burglaries.
In March 1945 he disturbed a sleeping woman, Mrs.
Josephine Ross, slit her throat and stabbed her several
times. Three months later, another victim saw him, but
he merely knocked her out. In October he killed Frances
Brown, shooting her twice and stabbing her. Her body
was draped over the tub in the bathroom; the top part
of her pajamas was around her neck and a long breadknife was stuck in her neck just below the left ear.
Young Heirens knew he was being overwhelmed by
madness. On the wall of Miss Brown’s living room, he
scrawled in bright red lipstick: “For heavens sake catch
me before I kill more I cannot control myself.”
Unfortunately, the police did not catch William
Heirens until after he committed his most shocking
crime, kidnapping six-year-old Suzanne Degnan from
her home and slaughtering her in January 1946. He dismembered the body and scattered the parts in Chicago
sewers.
While his killings were gory almost beyond description, he had always cleaned the blood off his victim’s
body. Both Miss Brown and Mrs. Ross had been
washed clean. The parts of the child, which were found
inside bags, had also been immaculately washed.
Heirens was caught the following June 26 by a caretaker and a tenant in an apartment complex he was trying to enter. For a time he denied the killings, insisting
they had been done by one George Murman, who psychiatrists discovered was his alter ego. Even when
Heirens made a full confession, he seemed less remorseful about the murders than the fact that his school
grades were only average. “I should have been a ‘B’
level student,” he said, “but my grades slipped due to
my messing around and cutting up.”
409
Judged insane, Heirens was sentenced to three consecutive life terms with a provision that he never be
paroled.
Heitler, Mike “de Pike” (?–1931) brothel keeper and
murder victim
A wizened, ageless brothel keeper who looked something like a Surinam toad, Mike “de Pike” Heitler
could be described as Chicago’s “grand old man” of
merchandised vice, with a career that spanned about
half a century.
Heitler got his nickname de Pike, from the fact that
he ran the cheapest fancy house in Illinois and hence
was a piker. But Mike actually prided himself on being
the first to introduce modern assembly line methods in
the world’s oldest profession. He operated a 50¢ house
at Peoria and West Madison. The customers stood in
line at the foot of the stairs and handed Mike half a
dollar, which he rang up on a cash register. When a girl
came downstairs with a satisfied customer, Mike gave
her a brass check that she could redeem for two bits,
and then the man at the head of the line took her back
upstairs.
Helping de Pike keep the traffic moving was another
quaint character, Charlie “Monkey Face” Genker.
Monkey Face would scurry up the doors of Heitler’s
houses and poke his homely face through the transom
to urge the prostitute and her customer to hurry up.
The sudden appearance of that monkey face proved
disconcerting to many customers, and the more knowledgeable regulars would go through their paces quickly
in hope of beating Genker to the punch.
Heitler operated with certain peacefulness for many
years, aside from an occasional arrest and conviction
for white slavery, but he lost much of his personal clout
when Al Capone tightened his hold on the entire prostitution racket in Chicago and the surrounding area.
Heitler’s choice was either to come in as a paid
employee or simply be declared “out.” Through the
1920s his position continued to deteriorate as Capone
turned more to Harry Guzik to look after prostitution
operations. Smarting over this lack of respect, which he
considered his due, Heitler took to informing on other
Capone activities.
He told Judge John H. Lyle about the mob’s parttime headquarters in a resort called the Four Deuces.
As recounted in The Dry and Lawless Years, Heitler
told the judge:
They snatch guys they want information from and take
them to the cellar. They’re tortured until they talk.
Then they’re rubbed out. The bodies are hauled
through a tunnel into a trap door opening in the back
HELLIER, Thomas
of the building. Capone and his boys put the bodies in
cars and then they’re dumped out on a country road, or
maybe in a clay hole or rock quarry.
Street west of Eighth Avenue. The dominant gang of the
area was the original Hell’s Kitchen Gang, bossed by
one of the true ruffians of the late 1860s and 1870s,
Dutch Heinrichs. According to one contemporary
account, Heinrichs and his toughs exacted tribute from
every merchant and factory owner in the district. The
gang thought nothing of breaking into private houses in
broad daylight and beating and robbing pedestrians at
will. About 1870 Heinrichs absorbed the Tenth Avenue
Gang led by Ike Marsh, the mastermind of New York
City’s first train robbery, and quickly grasped the wisdom of raiding the railroads. Thereafter, much of the
gang’s activities focused on looting the Hudson River
Railroad yards and depot on 30th Street.
The railroad hired its own detectives to try to curb
the gang’s activities. When that action proved insufficient, it began to pay bounties to police officers for
each arrest of a Hell’s Kitchen gangster. Under this
steady harassment, Heinrichs was finally sent to prison
for five years. Even though the power of the original
Hell’s Kitchen Gang eventually waned, the area
remained a stronghold of other gangs well into the 20th
century. Only the advent of Prohibition caused these
gangs to lose their distinctive neighborhood character,
as they spread their activities over more of the city.
See also: TENTH AVENUE GANG.
Heitler made the mistake of passing on information
to others who evidently were not as hostile toward
Capone as he assumed. He wrote an anonymous letter
to the state attorney’s office revealing many secrets
about the Capone brothel empire. Not long afterward,
the letter turned up on Capone’s desk. Heitler was summoned to appear before the mob leader at his office in
the Lexington Hotel. Capone insisted only Heitler
could have imparted the specific information and told
him, “You’re through.”
Still, Heitler continued to write letters. In one,
which he gave to his daughter, he named eight Capone
figures as being responsible for the murder of Chicago
Tribune reporter Jake Lingle. Unfortunately for Heitler,
he apparently gave another copy of the letter to the
wrong people and on April 30, 1931 his charred
remains were found in the smoldering wreckage of a
suburban house.
Hellier, Thomas (?–1678) murderer
Long before Nat Turner’s 1831 slave uprising, a
bonded white man struck fear into the hearts of Virginians by killing his masters. Because of his act, he
later became, in a manner of speaking, a local tourist
attraction.
A lifelong troublemaker and thief, Hellier was finally
sold into bondage in early 1678. He passed from one
owner to the other, eventually becoming the property of
a gentleman farmer named Cutbeard Williamson, who
had a plantation appropriately dubbed Hard Labour.
The place was true to its name, Hellier discovered, and
in a fit of vengeance he entered his master’s mansion
late one night and axed to death Williamson and his
wife and the couple’s maid.
Hellier fled but was soon captured by other farmers.
He was hanged on August 5, 1678 at Westover, Va.,
and his body was chained to a giant tree that overlooked the James River, to be viewed not only by all
travelers on the waterway but, most important, by
other bonded servants being barged upriver. The body
remained a gruesome sight for a number of years until
it deteriorated completely.
Hell’s Kitchen
Helm, Boone (1824–1864) killer and vigilante victim
The tales told about Boone Helm describe him as one
of the grisliest and most depraved killers ever to set foot
on the Western scene. Among his multitude of crimes,
he once killed a companion as they crossed the mountains in deep snow and then ate his flesh. When drunk
he could be coaxed to talk about it and he would freely
admit the act. “You don’t think I was damned fool
enough to starve to death, do you?” he would snarl.
While the vigilantes of the 1860s would later receive
considerable criticism for being “excessive” in their
hanging, there was never a harsh word said about their
elimination of Helm.
A vacant-faced Missourian who somehow inspired
fear just by the way he could look at a person, Helm
committed his first murder at the age of 27, stabbing a
man to death in a drunken dispute. Deserting his wife
and young daughter, Helm fled to Indian Territory in the
vicinity of what is now Oklahoma, where he was captured and returned to Missouri. His trial was postponed
three times because of the difficulty of finding material
witnesses. Helm claimed he had acted in self-defense and
wondered out loud how the witnesses against him would
feel when he was acquitted. The three main witnesses
apparently gave some thought to this prospect and
finally decided that they hadn’t seen a thing.
New York crime area
Hell’s Kitchen, known for a time as New York City’s
most crime-ridden area, was originally a notorious
pre–Civil War dive, but after that conflict the name was
applied to a large area to the north and south of 34th
410
HELTER Skelter
Deserting his family a second time, Helm next
turned up in Oregon, where, despite an unsavory
record of violence, he was hired by Elijah Burton to
guide a small party through the mountains to Salt Lake
City. The trek was disastrous, as Helm was anything
but a competent guide. Along the way, members of the
group dropped out to await warmer weather, but Burton himself pressed on with Helm, not realizing he
would be killed and eaten by his scout. When Helm
arrived in Salt Lake City, he looked rather well fed. He
did not remain there long enough for firm suspicion to
be established against him, however. After killing a
gambler in a particularly brutal fashion, he was driven
out of town.
Nothing was heard from Helm until he turned up on
San Francisco, where he slaughtered a customer in a
brothel parlor who had insisted he should be served
before Helm. The eager lover was hacked to death with a
variety of hatchet and bowie knife blows, causing the
establishment’s madam to complain that her parlor
looked like a butcher shop. Helm committed his next
murder in Idaho and then drifted into Canada, where the
law became suspicious of him after he had gone trapping
with a man named Angus McPherson and returned alone
with a rich load of furs. However, since nobody could be
found, the authorities were forced to release him. Helm
was then escorted to the Montana border.
In Montana he joined up with Henry Plummer’s
murderous gang of road agent killers known as the
Innocents. Helm became one of Sheriff Plummer’s
deadliest gunmen and was probably responsible for a
dozen slayings. When the vigilantes finally rode against
the Innocents, one of their main targets was, of course,
Helm. Captured on the morning of January 14, 1864,
he was hanged along with four others that same afternoon. Helm had never shown any pity for his victims
and showed none for himself. “I have looked at death
in all forms and I am not afraid to die,” he said. He
scorned those of his companions who pleaded for
mercy. As George Lane swung from the gallows, he
commented, “There’s one gone to hell.” When Jack
Gallagher strangled to death, he called out: “Kick
away, old fellow. My turn next. I’ll be in hell with you
in a minute!”
conflict, killed a black man on the spot for whistling a
Yankee tune. In the early 1870s Helm was a captain in
the Texas state police and commanded a force, official
and unofficial, of 200 men, whom he involved on the
side of the Suttons in the bloody Sutton-Taylor feud
that engulfed DeWitt County. In 1873 Helm’s men
arrested two Taylor supporters, brothers Bill and Henry
Kelley, on a minor charge of disturbing the peace, but
the two captives never reached town. Their bodies, riddled with bullets, were found in a clearing near their
ranch. Helm’s deputies said they had been shot trying
to escape, while Helm said he hadn’t seen a thing.
Because of the furor the newspapers raised, Gov. E. J.
Davis dismissed Helm from the state police force, but
he remained sheriff of DeWitt County.
Helm might have continued as the biggest gun in the
Sutton-Taylor feud but for the appearance in 1873 of
John Wesley Hardin. Wes Hardin was distantly related
to the Taylor clan but close enough to join in the
killing. He shot down Helm’s deputy and almost got
Helm on a couple of occasions. The sheriff apparently
saw the handwriting on the wall and tried to negotiate
a truce. One armistice meeting ended in a free-for-all
that left two Sutton men dead. In another one, held in
a saloon, Hardin drew his guns and backed out on
Helm simply because he didn’t trust him. The final
confrontation occurred in a blacksmith’s shop. There
are many versions of what happened: according to
one, it was to be an unarmed truce meeting. In any
event, the three participants, Helm, Hardin and Jim
Taylor were all armed to the teeth. Helm apparently
pulled a knife and stabbed Taylor, and then Hardin
produced a hidden shotgun and cut Helm to the floor
with a double blast. Taylor then produced a six-gun
and finished off the dying sheriff with three shots to
the head.
Thus, as Hardin stated later in his memoirs, died a
man “whose name was a horror to all law-abiding citizens.” The authorship of this statement was rather
ironic, but the sentiment was not entirely inaccurate.
See also: JOHN WESLEY HARDIN, SUTTON-TAYLOR FEUD.
Helter Skelter
Manson murder code
Originally the title of a rock song by the Beatles, “Helter Skelter” took on a grim meaning within the notorious Charles Manson “family.” In August 1969 the
words were found printed in blood outside the home of
two of the Manson family’s murder victims, Leno and
Rosemary LaBianca. The words meant, according to
Manson, that blacks were destined to rise up and wipe
out the entire white race, with only Manson and his
family permitted to survive.
See also: CHARLES MANSON.
Helm, Jack (c. 1838–1873) lawman and murderer
A captain of the Texas state police and sheriff of
DeWitt County, Jack Helm has been called “the most
cold-blooded murderer ever to wear a badge.” The contention is debatable, but there is no question that
killings happened fast when he was around.
The facts about Helm’s early life are hazy, but he
fought on the side of the Confederacy and, during that
411
HENDRICK’S Lake
Hendrick’s Lake
pirate treasure trove
use of what was at the time a little-known vegetable poison, aconitine, to get rid of his young wife in 1853.
John Hendrickson had married his 19-year-old fiancée Maria and taken her to live with the other seven
members of his family in Bethlehem, N.Y. In almost no
time, Maria was ordering not only John but the rest of
the family about. Members of the Hendrickson family
told John he would have to get rid of her. Whether they
meant murder can be disputed, but that is what young
John did. The family thereafter tried to cover up the
poisoning but authorities ordered an examination of
the body and found evidence of the substance. Because
it was doubted that a dimwit like John could have carried out such a plot on his own, all the Hendricksons
came under suspicion and talk pervaded the community of a family of poisoners. In the end, however, only
John was prosecuted, and on March 6, 1853 he was
hanged.
Of all the tales about buried or lost pirate treasure, perhaps the most dependable is one that claims $2 million in
silver lies somewhere at the bottom of Hendrick’s Lake
in Texas. It was the loot of Jean Lafitte, the French pirate
who ravaged the Gulf of Mexico in the early 1800s. In
his last apparent act of piracy before settling down to the
staid business of smuggling and slave trading, Lafitte
seized the silver aboard the Spanish brig Santa Rosa. He
then had it transported to what is now Galveston and
there loaded onto wagons to be sent to St. Louis for disposal. Lafitte entrusted this task to Gaspar Trammell, an
aide who generally handled fencing operations.
The silver convoy made it as far as Hendrick’s Lake,
a small body of water fed by the Sabine River, when
200 Mexican troops searching for the loot cut the
pirates off. Trammell knew he and his men faced certain death but resolved at least to prevent the enemy
from getting the silver. Under cover of night he had the
heavily ladened wagons shoved into the lake, where
they sank quickly in some 50 feet of water with a 15foot mud bottom. In the ensuing battle Trammell and
all but two of his men apparently were killed. These
two, a man named Robert Dawson and another who
remains unidentified, escaped being slaughtered by the
cavalrymen by slipping into the cold water of the lake
and breathing through reeds. The troops made a halfhearted effort to retrieve the silver and then pulled out.
Robert Dawson reached St. Louis and related what
had happened to the loot, and the other man returned
to Lafitte with the same intelligence. Lafitte reportedly
made an effort to salvage the treasure but gave it up as
a hopeless task. The Mexican government also tried
until they became involved in other troubles with
Americans who had settled in Texas. Thereafter, nothing was done about the lost silver for perhaps half a
century, when treasure hunters again took up the hunt.
In 1927 a fisherman snagged his line on something in
the lake and pulled a silver ingot to the surface. In all,
he salvaged four bars of the Spanish silver. Each year
thereafter, fortune seekers have continued to search,
but the only thing found since then was an iron rim
believed to have been one of Trammell’s wagon wheels.
Lafitte’s loot is still in the lake, now more valuable
than ever since the value of silver has increased to the
point that the treasure would be worth, depending on
the fluctuation of price, somewhere between $20 million and $50 million.
See also: JEAN LAFITTE.
Henley, Elmer Wayne, Jr.
Henry Street Gang
See DEAN CORLL.
Chicago gang
The most prosperous and vicious of the criminal gangs in
Chicago during the last two decades of the 19th century
was the Henry Street Gang, bossed by Chris Merry, who
was finally hanged in the 1890s for kicking his invalid
wife to death. The Chicago Tribune labeled Merry “one
of the worst criminals that ever lived in Chicago.”
Merry was ostensibly a peddler but his wagon was
little more than a ready container for stolen goods.
The Henry Street Gang would simply ride along
Maxwell and Halstead Streets in broad daylight taking
anything they wanted from stores and outside stands.
Eventually, the gang moved on to bigger things and
developed the “kick in.” With a half-dozen thieves in
his wagon, Merry would drive to a store selected for a
robbery. One man would stay in the wagon holding
the reins while two others stood on the sidewalk brandishing revolvers, threatening passersby and looking
out for police. Meanwhile, Merry and the other gangsters would kick in the door of the store and cart off
the loot, holding the store employees at bay with their
guns until ready to take off at breakneck speed in the
wagon.
Merry was a huge bull of a man with enormously
long arms and huge hands and feet. He was usually
sullen and morose but was given to terrible fits of
anger. At such times, as the Tribune described him, he
was “a demon unleashed, and acted more like a mad
animal than like a human being.” When Merry
engaged in physical combat, he used his teeth, fists,
feet and any weapon that was handy. He permanently
Hendrickson, John, Jr. (1833–1853) poisoner
A lame-brained youth, John Hendrickson, Jr. is nonetheless given credit as the first American murderer to make
412
HICKMAN, Edward
maimed or disfigured many men who had dared to
challenge him. The police generally left Merry alone,
although they frequently suspected him of specific
crimes. When it became necessary to bring Merry in, a
squad of at least six or eight men was sent on the difficult mission.
With Merry’s trial and ultimate execution, the Henry
Street Gang broke up and, oddly, the kick-in technique
more or less disappeared for better than a quarter of a
century. It was reintroduced with the automobile by
John Dillinger and other gangsters.
Herrin Massacre
Baker ranged as far north as Montana in his search
for Herring but couldn’t resist such distractions as
horse stealing and was shot dead during one such misdeed. Six Toes also met an untimely end when he tried
to break out of a jail where he was being held for a
minor offense. All of which calmed Herring’s nerves
enough for him to return to Texas. He settled down in
Dallas, sure that the otherwise anonymous Buck was
no longer tracking him. Buck wasn’t, but a few years
later, in 1899, Buck and Herring bumped into each
other in Dallas. During a rather heated argument, Herring offered to take Buck to the hidden loot in Oklahoma. Apparently, Buck did not relish the thought of
many nights sleeping on the trail with Herring and
decided he’d just as soon have his revenge. In the shooting melee that followed, Buck was killed. It is entirely
possible that Herring could have successfully pleaded
self-defense but for the fact that he also had killed two
innocent bystanders in the battle. Herring was sentenced to 35 years, talking for years afterwards about
getting out and retrieving his buried loot. However, he
never had the chance, dying in prison in 1930, his 30th
year behind bars. The secret of the “traitor’s gold” died
with him.
labor dispute
The Herrin Massacre gave Williamson County, Ill. its
nickname Bloody Williamson. On June 22, 1922, 47
nonunion scabs brought in to operate a strip mine during a coal strike were besieged by several hundred
union men and surrendered under a promise of safe
conduct. Instead, they were herded to an area outside
Herrin and told to run for their lives under a fusillade
of fire. Twenty-one of the scabs were killed and many
others wounded: many women and children allegedly
took part in the slaughter. A large number of arrests
were made and several accused strikers were tried on
charges of murder and other crimes. After a five-month
trial all were acquitted. It was apparent that because of
public opinion in the county no guilty verdicts would
ever be returned, and the charges against all the other
indicted individuals were dropped.
Hickman, Edward (1904–1928) kidnapper and murderer
In the years before the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped,
the abduction of 12-year-old Marion Parker was considered the most heinous. Little Marion was kidnapped
near her Los Angeles suburb home on December 15,
1927 by Edward Hickman, a 23-year-old college student who later claimed he did it to cover his tuition
costs. Hickman then sent Perry Parker, the girl’s businessman father, a ransom note demanding $7,500. The
note was signed, “The Fox.” Several other notes followed, with “DEATH” elaborately scrawled across the
top of them. There was also a letter written by little
Marion that read:
Herring, Robert (1870–1930) outlaw
To this day in the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma,
treasure seekers still hunt for the “traitor’s gold.” The
traitor was Bob Herring, a Texas outlaw with an incorrigible habit of betraying his accomplices. While still a
teenager, Herring and two other youngsters once
robbed a herd of Mexican horses and drove them to
New Mexico for quick sale. Along the way, he kept cutting horses from the pack and trying them out, saying
he wanted to keep the fastest one for himself. His reason became clear when the trio sold the herd. Herring
simply grabbed the money, hopped on his fast horse
and galloped off into the sunset.
In 1894 Herring hooked up with Joe Baker, an active
outlaw on the Texas trail, and two of his sidekicks,
known only as Six Toes and Buck. The quartet pulled a
number of minor jobs and a major one that netted them
$35,000 in gold. Herring put the gold in his saddlebags
and rode off once more. Joe Baker was enraged and
swore he would catch up with the dishonest crook, a
chase that became known in Texas as the “Herring
hunt.”
Dear Daddy and Mother:
I wish I could come home. I think I’ll die if I
have to be like this much longer. Won’t somebody tell
me why all this had to happen to me? Daddy please do
what the man tells you or he’ll kill me if you don’t.
Your loving daughter,
Marion Parker
P.S. Please Daddy, I want to come home tonight.
The first effort by Perry Parker to pay the ransom
failed because of the kidnapper’s caution, and there followed another letter from the child.
413
HICKOK, James Butler “Wild Bill”
Dear Daddy and Mother:
Daddy please don’t bring anyone with you today.
I am sorry for what happened last night. We drove
right by the house and I cryed all the time last night. If
you don’t meet us this morning, you’ll never see me
again.
Love to All,
scout, were probably false. Sifting out the truth from
Hickok’s tall tales could occupy a lifetime. As a scout in
1868, he saved 34 men in an Indian siege in the Colorado Territory by riding through the attackers’ ranks
to get help. But he did not, as he boasted to the Eastern
press, knock off 50 Confederate soldiers with 50 bullets
fired from a new-fangled rifle.
Born in Troy Grove, Ill. in 1837, Hickok was originally called “Duck Bill” because of a long nose and
protruding lip. Once he had demonstrated his great
ability with a gun, however, the other young blades
thought it wiser to call him Wild Bill.
The Hickok legend began in 1861, when, as was
described later in a ridiculous profile in Harpers
Monthly, he wiped out the so-called McCanles Gang of
nine “desperadoes, horse-thieves, murderers and regular cutthroats” in “the greatest one-man gunfight in
history.” In fact, there was no McCanles gang. Dave
McCanles was a rancher who was owed money by a
freighting company for which Hickok was working.
Marion Parker
Accompanying this note was one from the kidnapper
that advised, “If you want aid against me, ask God, not
man.”
By the time Parker received the notes it was too late
to receive aid from any quarter. Hickman had strangled
Marion immediately after she wrote the letter and
then, inexplicably, cut off her limbs and almost severed
her head. The following morning Parker drove to
an appointed rendezvous on the outskirts of Los Angeles to exchange the money for his daughter. Hickman
drove his car up next to Parker’s and, holding a
blanket-wrapped figure, said he would take the money
and then leave the girl farther along the road. Parker
threw the money into the kidnapper’s car and after a
moment’s delay proceeded up the road until he saw the
blanket-wrapped bundle. He jumped from his auto and
anxiously unwrapped the blanket to find the grisly
remains of his daughter.
Hickman was not able to enjoy the fruits of his gruesome crime for long. He drove to Seattle, Wash. where
local police, armed with a description of the kidnapper
given by Parker and flashed across the country, noticed
his free-spending activities and arrested him. Hickman
did not deny the crime and was put on a train for the
trip back to Los Angeles. Thousands of curious onlookers gathered at each station stop to catch a glimpse of
the vicious murderer. Hickman waved to them. Some
simply gawked, but others waved back.
Along the way, Hickman made two superficial
attempts to take his own life in the train’s washroom,
which authorities later insisted were merely efforts to
lay the groundwork for a plea of insanity. That was
how Hickman pleaded, but he failed to convince a jury.
He was hanged at San Quentin on October 19, 1928.
Hickok, James Butler “Wild Bill” (1837–1876)
gunfighter and lawman
In some respects James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok was
a genuine Western hero despite the fact that he was a
master of the art of back-shooting as he demonstrated
in his great gun battle with the “McCanles Gang” in
1861. However, most of his so-called great accomplishments, except for those during his tour as an army
Wild Bill Hickok’s reputation as a fearless lawman was
built on the numerous ridiculous stories told of him by
dime novel writers who overlooked his many less laudable
traits.
414
HICKS, Albert E.
The remaining five years of Hickok’s life were pretty
much downhill. He joined Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild
West Show for a time but found the work both tiresome and degrading. He quit and tried his hand at
prospecting and gambling, not having too much success
in either. He was arrested several times in the Wyoming
Territory, said a newspaper report, “as a vagrant, having no visible means of support.”
In June 1876 Hickok turned up in Deadwood,
Dakota Territory with Calamity Jane, an amazon
whore. Hickok, who had accumulated a spot of cash,
ensconced himself at Mann’s Saloon Number 10 along
the main street. On August 2, 1876 Wild Bill was playing poker and mulling over what to do with his hand—
two pairs, aces and eights—when a saddlebum named
Jack McCall slipped up behind him and shot him
through the brain. Thereafter, the hand of aces and
eights became known as a “dead man’s hand.” McCall
claimed he was avenging his brother, whom he said
Hickok had killed. Asked why he hadn’t met Hickok
face to face, McCall shrugged. “I didn’t want to commit
suicide,” he said.
See also: PHIL COE, DEAD MAN’S HAND, JACK MCCALL,
MCCANLES GANG, SHAME OF ABILENE, SAMUEL STRAWAN.
With his 12-year-old son in tow, McCanles, probably
unarmed, came to the branch office at Rock Creek Station, Neb. for his money. Two of his ranch hands, most
certainly unarmed, waited outside. An argument
ensued inside the building between the manager and
McCanles; Hickok, hiding behind a calico curtain, shot
the rancher dead. The two ranch hands outside the
building were then killed by other members of the
depot crew; one possibly was shot by the depot manager’s wife. McCanles’ 12-year-old son survived only by
running away. Hickok was charged with murder, but
the boy was not permitted to testify and the charge got
lost in the shuffle.
A few years later, Hickok demonstrated he did have
great shooting ability by gunning down Dave Tutt in a
face-to-face duel at a distance of 75 yards. As his fame
in that exploit spread, the Hickok legend grew and was
expanded on with every retelling. Tutt, like McCanles,
became a savage outlaw, when in fact he and Hickok
had been friends since youth and their quarrel was over
a girl.
In 1869 Hickok was elected sheriff of Ellis County
and promptly killed two men in Hays City, the county
seat. One of these killings was a remarkable performance. He had his back turned on a troublemaker
named Sam Strawan when the latter started to draw.
Hickok whirled, drew and shot first, killing Strawan.
That November, in spite of these accomplishments,
Hickok was voted out of office, apparently for taking
more graft from brothels and gaming saloons than the
average sheriff.
Hickok left town but returned in July 1880 and
promptly got into a drunken brawl with five cavalry
troopers. He shot two, one fatally; the others backed
off. Hickok fled town again.
In April 1871 he was hired as city marshal of Abilene, Kan. with orders from the city fathers to clean up
the town. Wild Bill did some shooting, but basically, he
found it more gratifying to take protection money from
gamblers and pimps rather than to interfere with their
business. He spent his afternoons at the card table and
almost every night in the town’s red-light district.
In October 1871 Wild Bill got into a gunfight with a
gambler named Phil Coe and mortally wounded him. As
Coe fell, Hickok’s deputy, Mike Williams, came rushing
through the crowd, guns drawn, to help Hickok. Hearing Williams’ footsteps, the marshal whirled and fired
off two quick shots before he saw who it was. Williams
died instantly of two bullets in the head. That was all
the citizens of Abilene could take, and within a few
weeks Wild Bill was fired and forced to leave town.
Although his record in Abilene actually was a sorry one,
it is still sighted today as one of the greatest reigns by a
lawman in the history of the West.
Hickok, Richard E.
See CLUTTER FAMILY MURDERS.
Hicks, Albert E. (?–1860) gangster and murderer
One of New York’s most legendary thugs in the 1850s
was Albert Hicks, a freelance gangster who eschewed
working with any of the great gangs of the period
because he felt he could fare better as a lone wolf criminal. The record bears out his judgment; he lived a carefree existence and never appeared to worry about
money. The police suspected Hicksie, as he was called,
of a number of robberies and possibly a dozen murders
but, as he often said, “suspecting it and proving it are
two different things.” His reputation was such that
when he was working a certain street along the waterfront, gangs of footpads knew they would be wise to
move elsewhere.
Remarkably, Hicksie’s downfall came about simply
because he was not recognized by a Cherry Street
shanghaier in whose establishment he had wandered
dead drunk. The crimp operator put laudanum in his
rum, and when Hicksie awakened the next morning, he
was aboard the sloop E. A. Johnson, headed for Deep
Creek, Va. on an oyster run. After ascertaining that the
captain, named Burr, had a money bag along to pay for
his cargo, the unwilling sailor resolved to murder the
skipper and the other crewmen, two brothers named
Smith and Oliver Watts. He did so in particularly
415
HICKS, Jeffrey Joe
gling the entire day, Hicksie agreed to pose for $25 and
two boxes of 5¢ cigars. After the cast was made, the
magnanimous Barnum returned with a new suit of
clothes, which he traded to Hicks for his old suit, with
which he wished to adorn a display dummy. Later,
Hicks complained to the warden that Barnum had
cheated him, that the new suit was shoddy and inferior
to his old one.
Hicks was to be hanged on Bedloe’s Island. He was
ushered from the Tombs to the mainland dock by a fife
and drum corps and a procession of carriages full of
dignitaries. Thousands lined the procession route and
cheered Hicksie, who graciously waved back to them.
His only protest was that his suit did not fit, for which
he cursed Barnum, but the warden informed him there
was no time for alterations.
It was estimated that at least 10,000 persons witnessed the execution on Bedloe’s Island. The scaffold
was positioned only 30 feet from the water and hundreds of boats, from small craft to large excursion vessels, formed a solid line offshore. Hicksie’s body was
left suspended for half an hour and then cut down and
transported back to Manhattan. His corpse was buried
in Calvary Cemetery, but within a matter of days it was
stolen by ghouls, who sold it to medical students more
than willing to pay a premium for the chance to study
the brain of such a notorious and bloodthirsty criminal.
bloody fashion, decapitating two of them and dazing
the other and then chopping off that victim’s fingers
and hands as he clutched the rail in a futile attempt to
avoid being thrown overboard.
After looting the sloop and letting it drift off, Hicksie returned to Manhattan with quite a substantial
booty. Soon, he fled the city for Providence, R.I. with
his wife and child. But he left a trail. Having flashed
large sums of money, he came under suspicion when
the bloodstained Johnson was discovered and put
under tow five days after the murders. Hicksie was
located in Providence and found in possession of the
personal belongings of the captain and one of the
Watts brothers.
He was tried for piracy and murder on the high seas
and sentenced to be hanged on July 13, 1860. About a
week before his scheduled execution, he made a full
confession to the warden of the Tombs. Hicks was certainly one of the most celebrated villains of the day and
his confession made him all the more infamous. There
was a steady stream of visitors to the Tombs to see the
noted blackguard shackled to the floor of his cell. For a
small fee paid to the jailers, a visitor was permitted to
speak a few words with the murderer.
Among those calling on Hicksie was Phineas T. Barnum, the great showman, whose American Museum
enjoyed enormous popularity. Barnum told the flattered villain that he wished to obtain a plaster cast of
his head and bust for display in the museum. After hag-
Hicks, Jeffrey Joe (1959– ) sex murderer and prison
snitch
Much is made that imprisoned sex murderers, especially
those whose victims are children, are among the most
hated by other inmates. Compounding that hatred,
however, is a genuine fear that such a vulnerable prisoner could be forced by his keepers to turn snitch. In
Hicks’ case it was not illogical that he should be suspected of snitching on an elaborate escape plan worked
out by his cellmate. According to the plan Hicks and the
cellmate were to be rescued from Leavenworth Penitentiary by a helicopter pilot who would swoop down in
the prison yard and pick up the two of them. Negotiations were said to be going on for hiring a pilot when
suddenly prison officials swept down on the pair.
As punishment for having conceived the plot—
which obviously never got off the ground—the cellmate
was sent to the federal penitentiary in Marion, Ill.,
where he would be locked up in an individual cell 23
hours a day and denied virtually all privileges. Hicks
was moved to an isolation cell in Leavenworth for a
time. The thought of many inmates was that Hicks had
snitched.
Still no retribution was taken on Hicks since it was
not absolutely certain that he had snitched—or had a
“Hicksie” was a freelance killer whom even the organized
waterfront gangs steered clear of.
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HIGHBINDER societies
reason to snitch. Hicks had been an inmate in a Michigan state prison when suddenly he was transferred to
Leavenworth. In general there were only two reasons
for that to have happened: he was a problem prisoner
Michigan couldn’t control or he was in personal danger.
The truth surfaced when a prisoner came across an
issue of Inside Detective that reported on the case of a
sexual sadist who had snatched a 13-year-old boy off
his bicycle in Green Oak Township, Mich., in October
1986 and driven away in his jeep. The boy’s naked
body was found in the woods a few days later. He had
been molested and strangled. The magazine referred to
other kidnappings and molestation to which he had
subjected other young boys.
Hicks was sentenced to life plus 65 to 100 years and
was serving his time in state prison. It was obvious to
Leavenworth convicts that Hicks had to be transferred
to Leavenworth for his own protection, and according
to accepted criminal protocol, such a prisoner is
accepted only when it is made clear to him that in
return for “sanctuary,” he must turn informer. Naturally in such cases prison authorities deny any such deal
has taken place.
In Hicks’ case the harassment became so intense that
it was only a matter of time before he would be murdered. He disappeared from Leavenworth, undoubtedly
transferred to a much lower-security federal prison in
another state where he could hope no one would learn
of his past so that he might live to serve his sentence
without constant fear.
he started his own ranch, he was brutal in his treatment
of rustlers or those he considered rustlers. Pink also
was the key figure in the bloody Horrell-Higgins feud
that shook Lampasas County in the 1870s. On the surface, the feud started after the owners of a huge neighboring spread, the Horrells, killed three lawmen,
including one of Pink’s kin. But the real reason was the
disappearance of cattle. When the fighting broke out,
Pink took up his Winchester without hesitation. He
gunned down Zeke Terrell, a rider for the Horrells, and
then gave him the cow-birth treatment. Next, he shot
Ike Lantier, another Horrell cowboy, for having the
temerity to use the same water hole for watering his
stock. Higgins’ most callous act in the feud was the
murder of Merritt Horrell as he sat in a saloon. Horrell
was unarmed when Higgins marched in through the
back door and pumped four slugs into him without giving his foe a fighting chance.
Lampasas became a regular battleground for the
feudists, with Higgins and his men ambushing the Horrells as they rode in. A major shoot-out occurred in the
town on June 14, 1877, when Higgins and three of his
men took on seven of the Horrells. The gunfight lasted
for several hours. It finally ended when the townsfolk
convinced both sides to stop shooting and ride out their
separate ways, but not before Higgins’ brother-in-law
died in the fighting. The following month Higgins led
all his riders in an attack on the Horrell ranch. The
siege ended after 48 hours, as the Higgins men started
running low on ammunition.
The Texas Rangers arrived in the region in July and
prevailed upon Higgins and the Horrells to sign a
treaty, bringing peace to the county. Despite his
excesses, Higgins did not suffer any major loss of popularity, since the Horrells were not exactly models of
virtue. Two of the brothers, Mart and Tom Horrell
were lynched the year after the truce for some other
indiscretions they were suspected of having committed.
Higgins’ last known killing, one of his fairest,
occurred in 1903, when Pink met up with Bill Standifer,
a longtime opponent of his. Both expert riflemen, they
exchanged shots at a distance of 60 yards. Standifer hit
Higgins’ horse, but Pink put a Winchester bullet
through his foe’s heart. Higgins died of a heart attack in
1914.
See also: HORRELL-HIGGINS FEUD.
Higgins, John Calhoun Pinckney “Pink”
(1848–1914) rancher and gunfighter
A fiery Texas rancher of the “I am the law” school,
John Calhoun Pinckney “Pink” Higgins was probably
as mean and sadistic as Print Olive, perhaps the West’s
most notorious big-spread owner. Higgins had the good
sense to confine his excesses to Texas, which tolerated a
lot from the high and mighty. Olive, also a Texan, made
the mistake of shifting his operations, including his
practice of “man burning,” to Nebraska, a state that
eventually sided with the homesteaders.
In the art of killing, Higgins was cut from the Olive
mold. Typical was his treatment of a cowboy he caught
butchering one of his cows just after he had shot it.
Higgins gunned him down with a Winchester at 90
yards, disemboweled the dead animal and stuffed the
would-be rustler’s corpse inside. He then rode to town
and informed authorities of a miracle he had just witnessed: a cow giving birth to a man.
From the time he was a young man, Pink exhibited a
penchant for direct action. He was twice wounded by
Indians and was an officer in the Ku Klux Klan. When
highbinder societies
Chinese gangs
Highbinder societies were strong-arm groups that
engaged in blackmail, kidnapping and murder on
assignment. These gangs never achieved the power or
influence of the Chinese tongs, although their hatchet
men were often hired by the tongs. Little Pete, the infa417
HIJACK
mous Chinese tong warrior, started his career as a
member of the Gin Sin Seer highbinders, but because of
his cunning and ability, he soon moved up to the Sum
Yop tong.
See also: LITTLE PETE, TONG WARS.
hijack
truck that the driver has had to park and leave for some
reason. The switch man generally likes to see the driver
go into a luncheonette where he will be sure to stay for
several minutes. While the driver is gone, the switch
man and a helper or two will clean the truck out in a
matter of minutes and load the contents in their own
truck. The switch man, of course, does not operate like
the sophisticated crook of the more traditional hijacking gangs, but he does get the job done.
Another approach has been perfected in recent years
by a New York area crook who takes jobs with parcel
delivery companies under assumed names. His first day
on the job, he is given a truck full of merchandise and
sent out on his assigned rounds. It is the last the delivery service sees of the driver or the merchandise. All
that is ever recovered is an abandoned delivery truck.
Overall figures on hijacking indicate it is a relatively
“low incidence, high profit” crime. Losses, according
to insurance officials, probably exceed $100 million a
year, but estimates are inexact because of the difficulty
of determining whether an actual hijacking or a case of
employee theft has occurred. When an area experiences
a sudden increase in hijackings, insurance firms and
associations may send in undercover agents who use
trucks as bait. A single arrest can cause hijacking in an
area to cease for a considerable time, as apparently the
news spreads rapidly. Similarly, insurance groups sometimes pass the word among truckers that an area is
under surveillance, and as a result complaints of hijackings usually decrease. In such cases it is suspected that
the drivers themselves are doing the looting and decide
to “cool it” for a while.
Probably the greatest hijacking gang in history was
Detroit’s Purple Gang, which during Prohibition sent
convoys of liquor from Canada across the border into
the United States and hijacked the trucks of rival shippers to augment their supply. Police believe that remnants of the old Purples are still responsible for much of
the hijackings in Michigan and neighboring states.
word origin
During Prohibition, when the commandeering of trucks
loaded with illegal booze became a common occurrence, the usual greeting given by an armed gunman
sticking up was a terse “High, Jack”—meaning raise
your hands high, Jack; hence hijack.
hijacking
In its various forms, hijacking goes back to early colonial times, but it hit a peak during Prohibition, when
the stealing of liquor shipments by one gang from
another reached bloody and epidemic proportions.
Today, hijacking is a highly professional art committed
by gangs that limit their criminal activities to this one
lucrative field. The theft of entire shipments of television sets, refrigerators, furs, clothing, cigarettes, drugs,
oil and liquor is handled with smooth efficiency based
on precise advance planning. By surveillance or bribery,
a hijack gang will learn a truck’s schedule and type of
cargo and plan exactly when and how to steal that
cargo. One Chicago gang had special “scouts” to tip
them off about valuable shipments, and its “work cars”
were equipped with high-powered engines, police
radios and switches to extinguish rear lights when
desired. A special “crash car” was utilized to cut off the
arrival of police during the operations.
Usually, hijackers are thought to work on lonely
stretches of road in the middle of the night, but some of
the lushest operating areas for these thieves are
crowded business centers in broad daylight, a typical
example being New York’s garment district. Two members of a hijacking mob will climb up to the cab of a
truck, perhaps when it is halted at a red light or still
parked at the curb on a side street, and force the driver
and his helper to get out at gunpoint. They will be
ordered to walk quietly to a car right behind the truck.
Inside the car, the driver and helper are bound and
blindfolded. They are then driven off to some quiet
spot to cool their heels for three or four hours while
one of the hijackers drives the truck away, empties its
load into another truck—or a warehouse—and finally
disposes of it. Once the job is over, the driver and
helper are released.
A particularly daring breed of hijacker is the socalled switch man. This operator drives through the
garment district in his own truck looking for another
Hill, Joan Robinson (1930–1969) alleged murder victim
One of the most notorious, headline-provoking murder
cases in modern American history was the alleged
“murder by omission” of beautiful and wealthy Joan
Robinson Hill by her husband, a leading plastic surgeon in Houston, Tex. After he walked out free as a
result of a mistrial, he was assassinated by a paid gunman, which kept the case boiling for years.
Joan Robinson was the daughter of oil multimillionaire Ash Robinson, a man who epitomized Texas-style
money and power. Robinson was highly influential in
state politics and had the ability to get what he wanted.
But few things meant as much to him as Joan. She had
418
HILL, Joe
been through a couple of marriages when she met Dr.
John Hill in 1957. The two were married in a mammoth, Texas-sized wedding paid for by Ash Robinson.
Hill’s career kept him away from his wife a good deal,
but Joan, an accomplished horsewoman, didn’t seem to
mind and old Ash was perfectly happy because he still
had his daughter around so much of the time.
By 1968, however, the marriage was breaking up.
Joan became aware that Hill was seeing other women.
They argued often. In March 1969 Joan grew ill, and
after considerable delay her husband put her in a small
hospital, which didn’t have the facilities to handle what
developed into a very serious condition. During the
course of her treatment, she had a sudden heart failure
and died. The following morning a most peculiar event
occurred. When doctors arrived to perform an autopsy,
they found the body had been sent to a funeral home
“by accident.” Upon reaching the funeral home, they
discovered the body had already been drained of fluids
and was partly embalmed, making a really thorough
autopsy most difficult. Back at the hospital a brain said
to be Joan Hill’s showed signs of meningitis, but there
was some reason to suspect it was not Joan’s brain
since the brain stem in the body failed to produce the
same symptoms.
From the time of Joan’s funeral, old Ash Robinson
pressured the district attorney to get a murder charge
brought against Hill. In addition, Robinson had a
parade of his important friends approach the DA with
the same demand. Then, three months after the death
of his first wife, John Hill married a woman with
whom he had been linked while his marriage to Joan
was disintegrating. That galvanized Robinson to further action. He hired detectives to follow Hill and lined
up medical testimony, even bringing in the New York
City medical examiner to reexamine the body. Two
grand juries were convened but both refused to indict
Hill. A third grand jury, however, received some additional material. By that time, Hill’s second wife, Ann,
had divorced him and testified Hill had confessed to
her that he had killed Joan. Moreover, she claimed Hill
had tried to kill her on more than one occasion. Hill
was indicted for murder by neglect, technically “murder by omission,” in that he willfully denied his wife
adequate medical attention.
Hill’s murder trial ended in a mistrial when his second wife blurted out that Hill had told her he had
killed Joan. Such a statement could not be permitted in
court, since under the law she could only testify about
the period before she married Hill.
Before a new trial could be held, Dr. Hill married a
third time. Just after returning from his honeymoon in
September 1972, he was shot and killed by an assassin
wearing a Halloween mask. The murderer was identi-
fied as a young Houston hood, Bobby Vandiver, who
had brought along a prostitute to keep him company
while he waited to ambush Hill in the latter’s home.
Vandiver confessed he had gotten $5,000 for the job,
and his story implicated a number of people, among
them Ash Robinson. The killer said that Ash had let it
be known he would pay for the execution of his ex-sonin-law and that his intermediary in the hit contract was
a Houston woman named Lilla Paulus, a former prostitute and madam. The Paulus woman was indicted, but
before her trial began, Bobby Vandiver was killed while
attempting to escape jail. Despite this development,
Paulus was convicted on the testimony of the young
prostitute who had accompanied Vandiver. The prostitute, however, could produce no admissible evidence
linking anyone else to the crime. Lilla Paulus was sentenced to life imprisonment but refused to implicate
anyone else in the murder.
Following the verdict, Ash Robinson continued to
deny to the press any involvement in Hill’s murder. He
successfully fended off a civil suit against him by the
Hill family, and it appeared that with Joan Robinson
dead, John Hill dead and Ash Robinson growing old,
the Hill-Robinson murders were destined to remain one
of the most bizarre mysteries of modern times. In 1981
a four-hour miniseries dramatization of the case was
shown on television; it had already been the subject of a
best-selling book, Blood and Money by Thomas
Thompson. Joan Robinson was played by Farrah Fawcett, and the actress, or her publicity agent, took special
pains to let it be known that Ash Robinson, the surviving principal in the case and then 84 years old, had
voiced his “casting approval” of Farrah as the “ideal
choice” to play his deceased daughter. Rumor also had
it that Robinson had suggested he portray himself in
the film.
Hill, Joe (1879–1915) labor organizer and alleged murderer
A handsome Swedish immigrant, Joel Hagglund
became the troubadour of the Industrial Workers of the
World, a radical labor union founded in 1905. Soon the
songs of “Joe Hill” were known throughout America.
He composed many of the Wobblies’ favorite songs and
is perhaps most famous for the refrain of “pie in the
sky” in “The Preacher and the Slave.”
In 1915 two Salt Lake City policemen were shot in a
grocery store holdup. Hill was charged with the crime,
convicted and sentenced to die. The verdict was most
controversial and the IWW and the rest of the American left considered it a frame-up. Just before he was
executed by a Utah firing squad, Hill wired Big Bill
Haywood, the head of the IWW: “Don’t waste any time
in mourning. Organize.”
419
HILL, Virginia
Hill, Virginia (1918–1966) syndicate girlfriend and
bagwoman
She provided the Kefauver hearings with one of its
high points as she parried questions about why so
many gangsters gave her money. (It was strictly because
of her personal charms, she said.) She also added some
off-the-stand excitement by tossing a right cross to the
jaw of reporter Marjorie Farnsworth of the New York
Journal American and screaming at other reporters:
“You goddamn bastards. I hope an atom bomb falls on
all of you.”
After that dramatic peak in her life, Virginia took a
new husband and wandered the pleasure spots of
Europe. According to some, she oversaw the Swiss
bank accounts of several mobsters. It is generally
believed that Hill supplied much of the funds that
allowed Lucky Luciano to live out his exile in Italy in
comfort.
But Hill missed the action of the old mob days and
hated growing old. She attempted suicide a number of
times, and finally, in March 1966 she swallowed a large
number of sleeping pills and lay down in the snow outside Salzburg, Austria to watch the clouds as death
closed in on her.
See also: BAGMAN, FLAMINGO HOTEL, KEFAUVER INVESTIGATION, BENJAMIN “BUGSY” SIEGEL.
Mistakenly dubbed the Queen of the Mob by newspapers in the early 1950s during the Kefauver Committee
hearings into organized crime, Virginia Hill was no more
than a trusted bedmate to many of the syndicate’s top
gangsters and a bagwoman for the mob, delivering funds
to secret Swiss bank accounts or elsewhere as instructed.
From the time she arrived in Chicago to be a cooch
dancer in the 1934 World’s Fair Hill took a series of husbands and lovers. First came Joe Epstein, the bookmaking king and tax expert for the Capone mob, followed by
the brothers Fischetti, Tony Accardo, Murray
Humphreys, Frank Nitti, Joe Adonis, Frank Costello,
and lastly her true love, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel.
Hill was truly in love with Siegel, yet was conveniently away in Europe when the Bug was shot to death
in her living room by an underworld assassin in 1947.
After his death she still spoke lovingly of Siegel (he had
named the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas in honor of her
nickname) without being critical of the syndicate,
which had ordered his execution because his Las Vegas
deals had cost them a fortune.
“Hillside Strangler” duo
Bianchi and Buono
In addition to being more adept than other serial
killers, the so-called Hillside Strangler eluded apprehension for some time due to the fact that the law
enforcement authorities were not suspecting two perpetrators of the crimes. The Strangler’s modus operandi was readily recognizable: it started out in
imitation of that of Caryl Chessman, California’s notorious “Red Light Bandit” of the 1940s. Chessman
would approach parked couples in lonely spots, flashing a red light resembling that on a police car. He
robbed the drivers and sometimes took off with their
female companions and forced them to perform sexual
acts with him.
Chessman never killed his victims, but the Hillside
Strangler murdered at least 10 women, starting in
1977. What prevented the police from catching him
sooner was, again, the fact that the Hillside Strangler
was not one man but two—cousins Kenneth Bianchi,
born in 1952, and Angelo Buono, Jr., born in 1935. At
times, the cousins killed together. They first planned
their murder rampage after a long drinking bout in
which they speculated how it would feel to kill someone. (This statement may be giving them the benefit of
the doubt. It is still not clear whether one or both had
previously committed murders on their own.) Both
decided that Chessman’s method of pretending to be a
law officer was the perfect way to grab women.
Virginia Hill, the so-called Queen of the Mob, added a
touch of glamour and, at one point, violence to the
Kefauver hearings.
420
HINCKLEY, John W., Jr.
Their technique was to stop women motorists or
streetwalkers, flash badges, demand identification, and
force them into their car, supposedly an undercover
police vehicle. The women were invariably raped,
sodomized, then strangled to death. Most of the bodies
were left in spots where they were certain to be found.
The bodies were generally washed clean—apparently at
Buono’s suggestion—so as to leave no clues for the
police to follow.
After a while, Bianchi decided a change of scene was
called for, and he moved to the state of Washington,
where, in Bellingham, he found work as a security
guard. Eventually, he was linked to the murder of two
young women who had been lured by him to investigate a nonexistent house-sitting job. A search of
Bianchi’s home turned up evidence tying him to the
killings, and cooperation with California authorities
linked him to at least five Hillside Strangler slayings.
Fearful of a possible death penalty in Washington State,
Bianchi offered to identify his cousin as the “real” Hillside Strangler. Based on Bianchi’s evidence, Buono was
convicted in 1983 of nine murders. Despite Buono’s
care in always fixing up the death scene after one of the
pair’s murders—he always cleaned his home after
Bianchi left so that no fingerprints of any victims were
found—a meticulous scientific search turned up a single
eyelash from one of the murder victims. Also, some
strands of fiber from a chair in Buono’s home were discovered on one body.
One witness in the Buono trial was 27-year-old
Catherine Lorre, who identified the two cousins as the
men who had stopped her on a Hollywood street in the
late 1970s and demanded identification. She had produced her driver’s license, next to which was a picture
of herself as a little girl sitting on the lap of her proud
father, actor Peter Lorre. Bianchi testified that he
decided not to ensnare her, for fear that murdering the
daughter of a celebrity might put too much heat on the
homicidal partners.
Buono was sentenced to nine terms of life imprisonment without parole, while Bianchi was returned to
Washington to a life sentence with no possibility of
parole before 2005.
Like several other serial murderers, the Hillside
Strangler—or at least Bianchi—maintained a romantic
liaison, with a woman drawn to him because of his
crimes as Carol Bundy was to Douglas Clark. While
Bianchi was in California prior to Buono’s trial, a 23year-old poet and aspiring playwright named Veronica
Lynn Compton sought Bianchi’s opinion of her new
play about a female serial killer. Correspondence and
conversations followed, which reveal how close Veronica’s tastes came to serial killing. Bianchi then concocted a plan to spring him from his own guilty verdict
in the Bellingham murders by having Veronica strangle
a woman and leave specimens of Bianchi’s semen at the
scene to convince authorities that the real killer was
still at large.
Compton visited Bianchi in prison and got from him
a book in which he had hidden part of a rubber glove
containing his semen. Compton went to Bellingham and
attempted a murder but botched the job. She was convicted and was sent to prison with no hope of parole
before 1994. For a time, she continued to correspond
with Bianchi, but finally her ardor for him cooled, and
she shifted to corresponding with Douglas Clark, then
in San Quentin waiting execution as the Sunset Slayer. A
typical ghoulish passage in one letter to Clark read:
“Our humor is unusual. I wonder why others don’t see
the necrophilic aspects of existence as we do.”
In 1988 Compton escaped from prison and disappeared.
See also: DOUGLAS CLARK, SERIAL KILLERS.
Hinckley, John W., Jr. (1955– ) accused assailant of
Ronald Reagan
On March 30, 1981 Ronald Reagan became the eighth
sitting president of the United States to be subjected to
an assassination attempt and the fourth—after Andrew
Jackson, Harry Truman and Gerald Ford—to survive.
Reagan was shot by a 25-year-old drifter, John W.
Hinckley of Evergreen, Colo., as he left the Washington
Hilton Hotel, where he had addressed a labor audience.
The assailant was seized immediately after having fired
four to six shots from a .22-caliber revolver, a type
known popularly as a Saturday Night Special. The
president was hit by a bullet that entered under the left
armpit, pierced the chest, bounced off the seventh rib
and plowed into the left lower lobe of the lung. Reagan
froze for a moment at the door of his limousine and
then was brusquely pushed inside the car by a Secret
Service agent. Remarkably, the president did not realize
he had been shot but thought he had simply been
injured when shoved into the car. Only upon arrival at
the hospital was it determined that he had been shot.
Also wounded were three others: the president’s
press secretary, James S. Brady; a Secret Service agent,
Timothy J. McCarthy; and a District of Columbia
police officer, Thomas K. Delahanty. All three survived,
although Brady remained hospitalized for many
months after the assassination attempt.
Hinckley turned out to be the son of an oil executive
who had grown up in affluence in Dallas and moved with
his family to Colorado in 1974. He had attended Texas
Tech University on and off through 1980 but never graduated. At times he had traveled across the country, and in
1978 he had enrolled himself in the National Socialist
421
HITE, Wood
In August 1981 Hinckley was indicted by a federal
grand jury in Washington, D.C. on charges of attempting to kill President Reagan as well as the other three
men. The FBI reportedly concluded that Hinckley had
acted alone. In a verdict that shocked the nation, he
was acquitted by a jury on grounds of insanity. He was
then committed to a mental institution.
Party of America, generally known as the Nazi Party of
America. A spokesman for that organization said the
group had not renewed Hinckley’s membership the following year because of his “violent nature.”
Hinckley had evidently flown from Denver to Los
Angeles on March 25 and then boarded a Greyhound
bus for Washington the following day, arriving March
29, the day before the attack. Following Hinckley’s
arrest for the attack on President Reagan, it was discovered that he had been in Nashville, Tenn. on October
9, 1980, when then-President Jimmy Carter was there.
Hinckley was arrested at the airport in Nashville when
X-ray equipment disclosed he had three handguns and
some ammunition in his carry-on bag. The weapons
were confiscated, and he paid a fine of $62.50. Despite
his arrest, federal authorities did not place Hinckley
under security surveillance thereafter. Four days after
his release, Hinckley turned up in Dallas, where he purchased two .22-caliber handguns in a pawnshop. One
of these weapons was alleged to have been used in the
attack on Reagan.
A bizarre sidelight to the case was the discovery that
Hinckley had been infatuated with movie star Jodie
Foster, then a student at Yale University. He had written her several letters, and an unmailed letter dated
March 30, 1981, 12:45 P.M.—one and three-quarter
hours before the attack—was found in his Washington
hotel room. It read:
Hite, Wood (1848–1881) James gang outlaw
A cousin of Jesse and Frank James, Wood Hite was
shot and killed in 1881 in what has been characterized
by some as a “dress rehearsal” for Jesse James’ murder
some four months later.
Born in Logan County, Ky. in 1848, Hite rode with
the James gang from 1870 until 1881. By that year the
gang was in disarray. Many of its key members had been
killed or imprisoned while others had apparently contacted law enforcement officials about betraying Jesse
James in return for leniency. In 1881 Hite had the misfortune to choose the home of a relative of Bob Ford,
James’ eventual assassin, as a hideout. Also seeking
refuge there was Dick Little, another gang member who
like the Fords, was seeking to turn traitor. According to
certain accounts Hite somehow got wind of the plot or
came to suspect that the Fords and Little were planning
to turn him in. He accused them of it and died in a blazing gun battle in the kitchen. Other accounts, such as
that of contemporary James biographer Frank Triplett,
insist the killing was more dastardly: “Creeping one
night lightly to his room, Dick and Bob Ford put a pistol
to his head, and he was soon weltering in his gore.”
Jesse James partisans have since maintained that had
Hite managed to get his information to Jesse, the latter
would have trusted the Ford brothers even less than he
already did and thus might have saved his own life.
See also: JAMES BROTHERS, DICK LITTLE.
Dear Jody,
There is a definite possibility that I will be killed
in my attempt to get Reagan. It is for this very reason
that I am writing to you now.
Hinckley went on to say he loved her and that
although we talked on the phone a couple of times, I
never had the nerve to simply approach you and introduce myself . . . Jody, I would abandon this idea of
getting Reagan in a second if I could only win your
heart and live out the rest of my life with you, whether
it be in total obscurity or whatever. I will admit to you
that the reason I’m going ahead with this attempt now
is because I just cannot wait any longer to impress you.
I’ve got to do something now to make you understand
in no uncertain terms that I am doing all this for your
sake. By sacrificing my freedom and possibly my life, I
hope to change your mind about me.
Hobbs, James (1819–1879) scalp hunter
Together with James Kirker, James Hobbs was a partner in America’s most lethal scalp-hunting team.
As a boy Hobbs was taken prisoner by Indians and
instead of being killed was adopted by them. Thereafter, he seems to have had a love-hate relationship
with the Indians, living with them, marrying them,
deserting them, scalping them for bounties and aiding
them against other white men. Hobbs had the same
sort of attitude toward whites. He might help them
against Indians, or if they happened to be dark-skinned
and dark-haired, he was just as likely to scalp them
since their hair would be indistinguishable from that of
an Indian and would bring the same bounty.
It appeared that Hinckley had been influenced in his
alleged actions by the film Taxi Driver, in which Foster
had played a child prostitute. At one point in the film,
the protagonist, a taxi driver, is planning to assassinate
a presidential candidate.
422
HODGES,Thomas
Hobbs left his original tribe, the Comanche, in 1839
and became a trapper and hunter of both buffalo and
scalps. He formed an alliance with another scalp
hunter, James Kirker, and together they took scalps by
the hundreds. In one Indian village, aided by Shawnee
friendly to Hobbs, they lifted 300 scalps. Eventually
they accumulated an extremely valuable load, which
they took to Mexico to turn in for a bounty. Kirker
stole the down payment they received for the scalps and
deserted Hobbs, but in time Hobbs received the balance
of the money due from the Mexican authorities, which
made him a wealthy man. He also gained added fame
when he started killing Navajo, much to the Mexicans’
delight. Later though, Hobbs joined the American
cause in the war against Mexico and came out of the
conflict a captain. He then headed for the gold fields of
California, getting as far as Yuma Indian country. He
settled with the tribe for a while, and in 1850 he even
helped them to dispose of a vicious scalp hunter named
John Glanton. Hobbs lived out his life in this contradictory fashion, sometimes scalping Indians and sometimes joining their cause, until his death in Grass Valley,
Calif. in 1879.
See also: JOHN GLANTON, JAMES KIRKER, SCALP HUNTING.
WIDOWER, quiet and home-loving, with comfortable
income and well-furnished house wishes acquaintance
of congenial widow without children. Object, matrimony. Write Box B-103.
Mrs. Walcker did write and within days became
Mrs. Hoch. She managed to live only a month following the wedding, taken mysteriously ill shortly after
she’d transferred all her life savings to her husband. In
keeping with Hoch’s record of the most marriages in
the shortest period of time, he promptly married his
widow’s sister four days later. He did not kill her, but
instead took her money and ran. Unaware of his intentions, Hoch’s new wife reported him missing. In the
ensuing police hunt, Hoch’s picture appeared in newspapers around the country, and woman after woman
came forward to say he, under the name of Hoch or
various other aliases, was her husband as well. Other
persons came forward to identify Hoch as the shortterm husband of a departed member of their family.
Hoch was finally located in New York City as he was
popping his favorite question to the landlady of a
boardinghouse.
By this time, authorities were convinced they had a
monstrous mass murderer on their hands. The newspapers named him Stockyard Bluebeard, a reference to his
sometime work in Chicago packinghouses. Arsenic
traces were found in a number of Hoch’s dead wives,
and he was returned to Chicago to be tried for Marie
Walcker’s death. It was a prudent choice, the one case
in which Hoch could not use his pat defense that the
traces of arsenic in the dead body came from the
embalming fluid. By this time science had made
advances in the undertaking field, and the newest
embalming agents contained no arsenic. The undertaker who’d embalmed Marie Walcker had switched to
one of the new fluids just two weeks before. That fact
and the testimony of several of Hoch’s wives about how
he had absconded with their money—one told of him
stealing off in the night, even taking the gold bridgework she had left in a water glass beside her bed—
sealed the verdict against the defendant. He was hanged
on February 23, 1906 before 100 witnesses at the
Cook County Jail.
Forty-nine years later, some very old human bones
were found in the wall of a cottage where Hoch had
lived. The police had searched the premises at the time
hoping to find evidence of additional killings by Hoch
but had discovered nothing.
Hoch, Johann (1855–1906) mass murderer
In 1905 Chicago police inspector labeled a Chicago
packinghouse employee named Johann Hoch “the
greatest mass murderer in the history of the United
States.” No accurate list of victims could ever be compiled, so the claim cannot be verified statistically, but
Hoch’s record was certainly formidable in many
respects. From about 1890 until 1905 it was estimated
that he married bigamously as many as 55 women. The
lucky ones he robbed of all their possessions and
deserted; the unlucky ones he not only robbed but poisoned as well. While the more sensationalist newspapers placed his murder toll at about 25, diligent police
work determined the number to be about 15. He was
convicted of only one homicide, however, that of his
next-to-last known bride, 46-year-old Marie Walcker,
the owner of a small candy shop. His other 14 unfortunate spouses all died rather quickly after exchanging
vows with him. All their bodies were found to contain
traces of arsenic, but virtually all embalming fluid at
the time contained some arsenic, and Hoch always saw
to it that each of his dearly departed was very heavily
embalmed.
Hoch located his victims by simply advertising in
German-language newspapers. The ad that attracted
Mrs. Walcker read:
Hodges, Thomas See TOM BELL.
423
HOFFA, James R.
Hoffa, James R. (1913–1975?) labor leader and alleged
murder victim
Bufalino, Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano and two of
his underlings, Gabriel Briguglio and Thomas Andretta.
Another suspect, Gabriel’s brother, Salvatore Briguglio,
was reported to be talking to the FBI when he was shot
to death in front of a New York City restaurant in
March 1978. According to the FBI scenario, Tony Pro
set up the so-called peace meeting with Hoffa and
instead ordered him murdered. Provenzano denied even
being in Detroit on the date of the Hoffa disappearance
and produced an alibi that placed him in Hoboken
N.J., visiting various union locals.
One of the more curious aspects of the case is the
question of why, if he had ordered Hoffa’s execution,
would Tony Pro link himself to the murder by setting
up a meeting with the victim, a fact that Hoffa had
made known to a number of individuals. Even more
confusing is why Hoffa’s killers would pick him up
some 45 minutes late, an unlikely display of tardiness
for mob hit men. However, the FBI’s theory, backed up
by such facts as the finding of traces of Hoffa’s blood
and hair in the back seat of the abduction car, appears
more convincing than any other plausible explanation.
One Teamster foe of Hoffa under suspicion told investigators, with a perfectly straight face, he had it on good
authority that the missing union leader “ran off to
Brazil with a black go-go dancer.”
Since the former union leader’s disappearance, those
suspects mentioned most often have either started serving sentences or been convicted of other crimes, some
on evidence uncovered during the Hoffa investigation.
But convictions in the Hoffa case clearly will depend
on the authorities’ ability to get some lower-level
hoodlum in organized crime to talk or the possibility
that one of the conspirators will say the wrong thing to
the wrong person. Otherwise, the authorities have no
court case. “We all know who did it,” one unidentified
Teamster vice president has been quoted as saying. “It
was Tony with those guys of his from New Jersey. It’s
common knowledge. But the cops need a corroborating witness, and it doesn’t look like they’re about to
get one, does it?”
Theoretically, the disappearance in 1975 of former
Teamster labor boss James R. Hoffa is still under investigation by federal and local law enforcement agencies
in Michigan. Actually, the handful of FBI agents still
assigned to the Hoffa case do little more than check out
an occasional lead. In fact, the FBI considers the case—
one of murder—solved.
Hoffa had for decades been a controversial union
leader, one with established links to organized crime.
Yet despite his underworld connections and a long list
of nefarious dealings, he remained immune to prosecution until he became the target of Robert F. Kennedy,
first as chief counsel to the Senate Select Committee on
Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field,
more popularly known as the McClellan Committee,
and later as attorney general.
Subjected to a persistent “Get Hoffa” campaign by
Kennedy, the labor leader was finally brought to trial in
1962 for demanding and receiving illegal payments
from a firm employing Teamsters. The result was a
hung jury, but Hoffa was later convicted of attempting
to bribe one of the jurors and sentenced to eight years.
In 1964 he was also convicted of misappropriating $1.7
million in Teamster pension funds. Finally entering
prison in 1967, Hoffa served a total of 58 months.
In 1975 Hoffa was in the midst of a struggle to
retake control of the union from his former protégé,
Frank Fitzsimmons. His sentence had been commuted
in 1971 by President Richard Nixon with the provision
that he stay out of union politics for 10 years. He was
challenging that legal stipulation and, perhaps more
critically, the will of various organized crime fiefdoms
within the Teamsters whose leaders did not want a
strongman like Hoffa back in power, fearing he would
upset or take over their operations.
On July 30, 1975 the 62-year-old Hoffa left his suburban Detroit home and drove to a restaurant,
Manchus Red Fox, allegedly to meet a member of the
Detroit underworld, a Detroit labor leader and a power
in New Jersey Teamster affairs. Hoffa arrived for the
meeting at 2 P.M.; at 2:30 P.M. he called his wife to tell
her the others had not yet shown up. That was the last
ever heard from him. He was seen getting into a car
with several other men in the restaurant parking lot
about 2:45. According to the most popular police theory, he was garroted and then his body was run
through a mob controlled fat-rendering plant that was
later destroyed by fire.
The government’s list of suspects, gathered through
information received from underworld characters and
convicts seeking to reduce their own sentences, has long
included reputed Pennsylvania crime kingpin Russell
Hoffman, Harold Giles (1896–1954) governor and
embezzler
One of the most flamboyant politicians in recent American history, Harold G. Hoffman lived a double life,
that of an elected public official and an embezzler,
whose total depredations remain undetermined. At the
high point of his career, in 1936, he was groomed by
New Jersey Republicans for president of the United
States. At the low point in his life, in 1954, investigators closed in on him and he became an almost certain
candidate for prison.
424
HOLE, the
financial irregularities in his department. Exorbitant
rentals were apparently being paid for some department offices, and the state’s attorney general subsequently found that favored groups stood to make
nearly $2 million from a modest investment of
$86,854. Other irregularities appeared in the purchase
of supplies.
Hoffman put up a joyous front. The day following
his suspension he appeared before the Circus Saints and
Sinners. Harry Hershfield, the famous wit, cracked, “I
knew you’d get into trouble in Jersey, fooling with a
Meyner.” Hoffman answered, “I can’t even laugh.”
And he broke into raucous laughter.
The next two months, however, were lonely ones for
Hoffman as he waited for the ax to fall. One morning
in June he got up in the two-room Manhattan hotel
suite provided by the Saints and keeled over with a fatal
heart attack.
Later, more and more facts came out. The state
became concerned when they discovered Hoffman had
deposited $300,000 of public money in his own bank
in a non-interest-bearing account. Officials then
learned that not only was the interest missing but so
was the principal.
Hoffman had written a confession to one of his
daughters to be opened only upon his death. It said,
“. . . until rather recently I have always lived in hope
that I would somehow be able to make good, to get
everything straight.”
See also: LINDBERGH KIDNAPPING, ELLIS PARKER.
Hoffman was an army captain in World War I, a
small-town banker, mayor of South Amboy, assemblyman, congressman, state commissioner of motor vehicles and, lastly, governor of New Jersey. At the age of
33, he began looting money. By the time he left the governorship in 1937, he had stolen at least $300,000, a
considerable sum in Depression dollars. He spent the
last 18 years of his life juggling monies in order to
cover his embezzlements.
As near as could be determined, Hoffman started
stealing from his South Amboy bank, dipping into dormant accounts to keep up his free-spending ways.
Whenever an inactive account became active, Hoffman
was able to shift money from another quiet account to
cover his looting. Some of Hoffman’s stolen funds went
to promote his political career. Eventually, he reached
Congress. Happily, Washington was not too far away
from South Amboy, so he could keep a lid on things at
the bank. When Hoffman suddenly left Congress to
take the post of state commissioner of motor vehicles,
which to many seemed a political step-down, some
observers theorized that the move was part of Hoffman’s plan to eventually run for governor, but the real
reason was that he needed access to public funds.
Sooner or later, an examiner might discover the shortages at the bank, so it was extremely advantageous for
Hoffman to be able to juggle the funds of the motor
vehicle department. When money had to be at the
bank, it was there; when it had to be in the state coffers, it was there. In the process, more and more stuck
to Hoffman’s fingers.
When Hoffman won the governorship at the age of
39, he enjoyed wide popularity in his state and grew to
be a national political power. However, he became a
center of controversy in the sensational Lindbergh kidnapping case. His interference and attempts to reopen
the investigation after Bruno Richard Hauptmann was
convicted brought him widespread criticism. When he
granted Hauptmann a few months’ reprieve, he provoked a storm of criticism. He would never again be
elected to any public office. Upon completing his term,
Hoffman was named director of the unemployment
compensation commission, an agency with a budget of
$600 million, and he was able to continue his moneyjuggling operations.
While still governor, Hoffman had become president
of the Circus Saints and Sinners, a group devoted to the
twin duties of providing help to old circus folk and providing themselves with a good time. Hoffman became
known as a boisterous buffoon, but inside he must have
been a frightened, lonely man trying to keep his crimes
hidden.
In 1954 newly elected Gov. Robert B. Meyner suspended Hoffman pending investigation of alleged
Holdberg Technicality
legal technicality
Much has been made of criminal cases being thrown
out on technicalities, sometimes with sound legal justification but sometimes for what seem the most absurd
of reasons. Probably the leading example of the latter
was a criminal case in Illinois in 1919 in which a man
named Goldberg was indicted on 50 criminal counts
and convicted on all of them. However, the conviction
was reversed on appeal and the case remanded because
on one of the 50 court documents, the defendant’s
name was spelled Holdberg instead of Goldberg, a simple typographical error. To this day a discussion of the
Holdberg Technicality is part of the regular course
work at a number of law schools.
hole, the
prison punishment cell
Known by various names in different penal institutions,
the hole is reserved for “incorrigible inmates.” Few persons have ever understood the horrors the hole represented until the courts in recent years started taking up
the question of whether such cells were unconstitutional.
425
HOLE in the Wall
cially after the drought of 1883. For a while, it
appeared that Hole in the Wall was getting bigger and
badder, but in reality, it was being civilized. Some of
the cowboys did pilfer a cow or two, but they were
homesteading the land and slowly pushing the badmen
out. Still, people spoke of something called the Hole in
the Wall Gang, a band that never existed. There were
many gangs that periodically headquartered at Hole in
the Wall, but the concept of a specific “gang” was an
oversimplification. Certainly, there was little loyalty
among the resident thieves, as full-time and part-time
bandits shifted allegiance from one outfit to another
whenever a new leader looked like he was about to
produce something worthwhile. In time, Butch Cassidy
lost his taste for Hole in the Wall and hid out thereafter in Brown’s Hole or Robber’s Roost. When the
Hole in the Wall Gang is mentioned, what is meant is
the Wild Bunch, of which Cassidy was the acknowledged leader. Other Hole-in-the-Wallers included the
Black Jack Ketchum gang and the Laughing Sam Carey
gang.
Laughing Sam might well be considered the founder
of the outlaw community at Hole in the Wall, turning
up there some time before 1880. Carey, a meanstreaked bank robber and train robber who killed a
number of men, fled to the Hole whenever a posse was
closing in on him. Somehow he never had trouble
recruiting renegades and cowboys to follow him on forays, even though he was not really a very successful
bandit. Once when he and his gang attempted to hold
up the Spearfish Bank in South Dakota, Laughing Sam
was the only one to get away alive, and he was badly
shot up. He struggled back to Hole in the Wall, where a
cowboy took three slugs out of him. Ten days later, he
was off again with a full complement of men to hold up
a train. As Butch Cassidy is supposed to have said to
the Sundance Kid, “Kid, there’s a lot of dummies at
Hole in the Wall.”
See also: BROWN’S HOLE, ROBBER’S ROOST, WILD
BUNCH.
They have steadily rejected the claims of prison administrators that such cells are a necessary part of institutional
discipline.
The strip cell at California’s Soledad Prison was one
that the courts have closed down. Each such cell measured 8 feet 4 inches by 6 feet, with side and rear walls
and floor of solid concrete. One prisoner, cited in a
court case, spent his first eight days totally naked,
sleeping on the floor with only a stiff canvas mat that
“could not be folded to cover the inmate.” The only
other furnishing was a toilet which was flushed by a
guard outside the cell, once in the morning and once at
night. The cell was without light or heat and was never
cleaned, so that the floors and walls were “covered
with the bodily wastes of previous inhabitants.”
A federal court found solitary confinement cells at
New York’s Dannemora Prison little different, although
the cells did have sinks (“encrusted with slime, dirt, and
human excremental residue”). The court also found
that the prisoners were kept entirely nude for days
while the windows just across from the cell were left
wide open during the night—even in subfreezing temperatures.
A University of Connecticut professor of law,
Leonard Orland, has a program in which his students
are sent to prison for a weekend as part of their class
work. He himself once spent 24 hours in the hole in a
Connecticut institution. His cell was a windowless 4 by
8 foot steel box, with a single lightbulb and a small
peephole controlled from outside. He was not alone in
the cell—there were three cockroaches in the sink. In
his book Prisons: Houses of Darkness, Orland
described his experience as being confined in a “very
small stalled elevator.” And he added:
Its effect on me was devastating: I was terrified; I hallucinated; I was cold (I was nude and the temperature
was in the low 60’s). When the time came for my disciplinary hearing, I was prepared to say or do anything
not to return to the hole. And yet I could not have
experienced a tenth of the desperation of those men for
whom the situation is a genuine one.
Hole-In-The-Wall Saloon
Hole in the Wall
19th-century New York dive
One of the toughest saloons in New York City
between the 1850s and the 1870s was the legendary
Hole-In-The-Wall, located at Dover and Water Streets
in the heart of the crime-ridden Fourth Ward. A
stranger happening into the Hole-In-The-Wall, operated by One-Armed Charley Monell, could be mugged
while standing at the bar. If he survived, he was tossed
out into the street; if he was wise, he dusted himself
off and left without further protest. When such an
assault proved fatal, the mugger was expected to
Western outlaw stronghold
Probably the best known of all the Western badman
hideouts, Hole in the Wall was located in Wyoming
some 50 miles south of Buffalo and about a day’s ride
from Casper. East of the Hole lay the lush grazing lands
of the Powder River country.
At first strictly a refuge for outlaws, particularly
horse thieves and renegade Indians, Hole in the Wall
soon became a haven for unemployed cowboys, espe-
426
HOLLIDAY, John Henry “Doc”
Holliday, John Henry “Doc” (1852–1887) gunfighter
and dentist
bring a cart to the side door after dark and carry the
corpse away.
The dive was famous for its two women bouncers,
Gallus Mag and Kate Flannery. Gallus Mag would have
been enough on her own. A 6-foot Englishwoman of
indeterminate age, she earned her nickname because
she wore galluses, or suspenders, to hold her skirt up.
She always carried a pistol in her belt and a bludgeon
strapped to her wrist. While she was expert with either
weapon, Gallus Mag’s routine method for maintaining
order in the dive was to beat a troublesome customer to
the floor, grab his ear with her teeth and drag him to
the door. If the man still resisted, Gallus Mag would
bite his ear off. She kept these trophies in a jar of alcohol behind the bar.
It was at the Hole-In-The-Wall that one of the
underworld’s most infamous duels was fought in 1855
by Slobbery Jim and Patsy the Barber, two vicious
members of the violent Daybreak Boys. The pair had
mugged a portly immigrant by the seawall at the Battery, knocking him unconscious and relieving him of all
his wealth, 12¢. Then Slobbery Jim lifted the unconscious victim over the wall and deposited him in the
harbor, where he drowned. The two killers adjourned
to the Hole-In-The-Wall to divide their loot, such as it
was. Since he had done the heavy labor of lifting
the victim over the wall, Jim insisted he should get 8¢.
Certainly, he would not settle for less than 7¢. Patsy the
Barber was furious, pointing out that he had done the
original clubbing of the victim and was thus entitled to
an equal share.
The dispute turned violent when Slobbery Jim bit
down and chewed on Patsy the Barber’s nose. Patsy
promptly drew a knife and stuck it in Jim’s ribs. The
blow had no effect on Jim, however, and the pair wrestled on the floor. The fight went on, incredibly, for
some 30 minutes without interference from Monell or
Gallus Mag or anyone else, since this, after all, was no
drunken brawl but a professional dispute. The battle
finally ended in Slobbery Jim’s favor when he got hold
of the knife and slashed his opponent’s throat. As the
blood gushed from the wound, Jim proceeded to kick
the Barber to death. It was the last seen of Slobbery
Jim, who fled the city and was not heard of again until
the Civil War, when some New York soldiers insisted
they’d seen him in the uniform of a Confederate Army
captain.
The Hole-In-The-Wall was too deadly a place even
for the Fourth Ward and it was finally shut down by
the police in 1871 after the occurrence of seven murders in two months; no one knew how many other
unreported slayings had happened there.
See also: GALLUS MAG.
Suffering from tuberculosis, John Henry “Doc” Holliday, an Atlanta, Ga. dentist, came west in 1873 seeking
to extend his life span after being given no more than a
year or two to live. He practiced dentistry now and
then when he could be coaxed out of a saloon but spent
most of his time gambling, usually as a house gambler,
and gunning men down. Of the so-called Dodge City
Gang, Doc Holliday was one of the few genuine killers,
unlike Wyatt Earp, who exaggerated his kill record,
and Bat Masterson, who only killed once. Doc killed
often and cruelly. During the infamous gunfight at the
O.K. Corral, in which he stood with the Earps, Holliday pulled a shotgun out from under his long coat and
blasted Tom McLowery, who stood by his horse
unarmed except for a rifle in his saddle scabbard.
Friends of the Earps never approved of their association with Holliday, whom they considered a pathological killer, but the Earps appreciated a man who was
always there when they needed him. Holliday first met
Wyatt Earp during the latter’s days as a lawman in
Dodge City, and Earp credited Doc with saving his life
once when he was surrounded by a bunch of gunslinging Texas cowboys. From then on, the friendship was
never to be broken. In 1879 Holliday left Dodge at
about the same time as Earp departed. He ran a saloon
for a time in Las Vegas, New Mexico Territory by the
rule of the gun. When a love-struck former army scout
named Mike Gordon tried to lure one of the saloon’s
prostitutes away to a better life, Holliday shot him
dead.
When Wyatt Earp located in Tombstone, Doc Holliday drifted in and took a job as a gambler-bouncer at
the Oriental Saloon, a lavish gambling joint in which
Earp had an interest. Holliday rode out of town a lot—
coincidentally while he was out riding, stagecoaches
seemed to get robbed quite frequently. In March 1881
the Kinnear and Co. stage was held up near Conception. Holliday was suspected of having pulled the job,
and the Earps were suspected of having planned it. The
charge may have been false and spread by the Earp-hating Clanton gang, but it was indicative of Holliday’s
low esteem among the public.
In Griffin, Tex., Holliday got into an argument over
cards with a man named Edward Bailey and killed him
with a bowie knife. Doc was arrested by the town marshal. The town of Griffin having no jail available, he
was locked up in a hotel room. By early evening the
locals were getting liquored up and talking about a
lynching. Big Nose Kate Elder, a prostitute and longtime girlfriend of Holliday, heard the rumblings and
distracted the forming mob by setting fire to a shack.
427
HOLMES, Alexander William
The two boats drifted together for a while until
Capt. George L. Harris cut the jolly loose, saying he
was going to try to make Newfoundland. He ignored
pleas from Rhodes to take a few more from the longboat aboard the jolly. Instead he told Rhodes he was in
charge and to do whatever he had to do but “only as a
last resort.”
At dusk it started to rain and the seas began to rise.
Finally, giant waves battered the longboat. All aboard
bailed water, which rose steadily to within 4 or 5 inches
of the gunwales. It was soon evident that another giant
wave would capsize the boat. Rhodes, who seemed
about to collapse, said to Holmes, “We must go to
work.” Holmes looked away. Another wave slapped at
the boat. “Men, fall to work or we will all perish,”
Rhodes screamed hysterically. This time Holmes
motioned to another seaman and together they seized a
passenger, Owen Riley, and heaved him overboard.
Then a second man went. A third asked to be allowed
to pray first and then let himself be thrown over the
side. Several women clawed their way to the far end of
the boat to get further away from Holmes. Even though
the craft had been lightened by some 500 pounds, it
still sat perilously low in the water. A man named
Frank Askins was heaved overboard, and immediately,
his two screaming sisters followed him. Later, there
would be a dispute about whether Holmes had ordered
them cast overboard or whether they had hysterically
jumped after their brother. In the next 10 minutes, eight
more men were jettisoned.
By morning the longboat was riding easier, now
weighing a full ton less. Then crewmen found two more
male passengers hiding under women’s skirts. Holmes
ordered them forward to bail. After a while, the sea
grew rough again and the danger of sinking returned.
Without a word, Holmes and three sailors seized the
two men and cast them over the side. “How cruel, how
cruel!” a voice moaned. It was Rhodes. He was no
longer capable of clear thought after nine hours of
killing. It was obvious that Seaman Holmes was in
charge of the craft. Some sailors wanted to throw some
of the women over, but Rhodes stopped them, saying,
“No, we will go before the women.”
A little after 9 o’clock, the sun appeared in brightening skies, and Holmes said to the passengers, who
still eyed him warily: “Be of good cheer. There will be
no more killing. We will all live or perish together.” An
hour later, they were picked up by a passing schooner
bound for Le Havre. After reaching Le Havre, the survivors were put on another vessel and sent to New
York. When they got there, they discovered that Capt.
Harris and the jolly boat had made it safely and the
news of their survival and the ordeal had preceded
them. Public debate was raging over whether or not
While the crowd was busy with the fire, Kate helped
her lover escape.
Kate’s devotion to Holliday rose and fell depending
on how much he beat her. At the time of the Kinnear
stagecoach robbery, Doc had been particularly unkind
to her, so she signed a statement that he had pulled the
job and committed the murders involved. After the
Earps got her away from their enemy, Sheriff John
Behan, and put her in a cell in Tombstone to sober up,
she retracted her statement and said her fancy man was
innocent. Later, Holliday reputedly married her, a fortuitous arrangement since a wife could not testify
against her husband.
After the O.K. Corral battle, Virgil Earp was injured
and Morgan Earp killed by Clanton men. Holliday
rode with Wyatt Earp to gun down the suspected assassins. In the Hollywood version of what followed, one
Clanton supporter is depicted sneaking up on Earp in
the train yard at Tucson to shoot him in the back. In
truth, Earp, Holliday and three other horsemen ran the
Clanton supporter down in the Southern Pacific yards
and pumped 30 bullets into him. Two days later, Holliday helped corner another Clanton follower, Florentino
Cruz, and executed him with 10 or 12 shots.
Over the next few years Holliday drifted around the
West gambling and gunfighting, but it was apparent he
was losing his big battle in life. He entered a sanatorium at Glenwood Springs, Colo. in the spring of 1887
and lasted another six months. Just before he died, on
November 8, 1887, he downed a large glass of
whiskey, looked at his bootless feet and said, “I’ll be
damned!” He had fully expected—and perhaps
hoped—to die with his boots on. He was 35.
See also: DODGE CITY PEACE COMMISSION, WYATT EARP,
O.K. CORRAL, ORIENTAL SALOON AND GAMBLING HOUSE.
Holmes, Alexander William (1812–?) sailor accused
of murder
Alexander Holmes was a robust, handsome Finnish
seaman who became involved in one of the greatest
legal decisions in American history.
Holmes’ ship, William Brown, hit an iceberg in
April 1841 on its voyage from Liverpool to Philadelphia. In the rush for the two lifeboats, far fewer than
could accommodate all those on board, the captain
and eight seamen took refuge in one, a jolly boat,
while First Mate Francis Rhodes, Holmes and seven
other sailors crammed 32 passengers and themselves
into the other, a longboat designed to carry 20 persons. The survivors then watched the William Brown
go under, as they listened to the pitiful cries from the
four men, eight women and 19 children stranded on
board.
428
HOLMES, H. H.
the frightful events aboard the longboat had been justified.
Newspapers throughout the country demanded murder trials be held. The New York Courier wrote, “Every
soul aboard that boat had the same right to such protection as she afforded as the mate and the seamen and
until a fair and equal chance was given by lot for a
decision as to who should be sacrificed, no man could
throw his fellow man overboard without committing
murder.” And the Philadelphia Public Ledger declared,
“No human being is authorized to kill another in selfpreservation unless against an attempt of that other to
kill.”
U.S. attorney William Meredith brought murder
indictments against Rhodes and Holmes in Philadelphia. Capt. Harris was allowed to leave and immediately shipped out. Rhodes disappeared and was
believed to have left with Capt. Harris. Only Holmes
surrendered to face trial. The prosecution, aided by the
testimony of three women, hammered away at the
point that no seaman had died and no lots had been
drawn. However, most of the survivors testified in
Holmes’ behalf. The defense was headed by David Paul
Brown, the Clarence Darrow of his day, who was hired
to represent Holmes by the Female Seamen’s Friend
Society. Brown hit hard at the prosecution charges:
Holmes got six months and was fined $20, and even
this light sentence brought many protests. He served his
time and then disappeared back to sea. His six-month
punishment established the precedent that a sailor “is
bound to set a greater value on the life of others than
on his own.”
Holmes, H. H. (1858–1896) mass murderer
His real name was Herman Webster Mudgett, but he
became infamous as H. H. Holmes—probably the
greatest mass killer in American history. At various
times, he admitted killing anywhere from 20 to 27 persons, being a master of inconsistency, and undoubtedly
he murdered many more. Some wild-eyed biographers
credit him with killing 200 women in his “murder castle” in Chicago during the 1890s, while a more reasonable count would fall somewhere between 40 and 100.
If there was any question about his arithmetic, there
was none about his dedication. Holmes killed with a
bizarre fervor to make the last possible cent out of his
victims, mostly marriage-starved women whom he
murdered for their money. He kept a keen eye out for
newspaper ads requesting skeletons, and when he
found such an ad, he would scrape his latest victim’s
bones clean and sell the skeleton to an interested medical student or institution.
As a medical school student, Herman Mudgett had
always shown the greatest interest in bodies, more so in
those of women than those of men. However, he lost
interest in his studies of female anatomy and in time,
despite a marriage before he was 20 and a second bigamous one before he was 30, became adept at such additional careers as horse thieving, forging and swindling.
He finally went into murder in a big way. With the proceeds from his various crimes, he built a massive
“hotel” in 1892 at Sixty-third and Wallace, in anticipation of the Columbian Exposition the following year.
The first floor consisted of stores and the second and
third floors of about 100 rooms. Holmes used several
as his office and his living quarters. The remaining
rooms were for guests, many of whom were never seen
alive again. A newspaper subsequently described one of
the rooms as an “asphyxiation chamber” with “no
light—with gas connections.” The room had no windows; the door was equipped with stout bolts; and the
walls were padded with asbestos. All Holmes had to do
was get a victim in the room and turn on the gas. Most
of the rooms featured these gas connections and certain
ones had false-bottom floors, which covered small airless chambers. Some of the rooms were lined with iron
plates and some had blowtorchlike appliances. Various
rooms had chutes that carried human cargo to the basement. Here, Holmes maintained a crematory, complete
Whoever heard of casting lots at midnight in a sinking
boat, in the midst of darkness, of rain, of terror, and of
confusion. This case, in order to embrace all its horrible
relations, ought to be decided in a longboat, hundreds
of leagues from shore, loaded to the very gunwales with
41 half-naked victims, with provision only sufficient to
prolong the agonies of famine and of thirst, with all the
elements combined against her, leaking from below, filling also from above, surrounded by ice, unmanageable
from her condition and subject to destruction from the
least change of wind and the waves—most variable and
most terrible of all elements. Decided at such a tribunal, nature would at once pronounce a verdict not
only of acquittal but of commendation.
Following an eight-day trial, the case went to the
jury. After 16 hours the jury advised the court it couldn’t agree and was sent back for more deliberations. Ten
hours later, the jury returned a verdict of guilty, with a
recommendation of mercy. By this time, public opinion
had shifted entirely in Holmes’ favor. Before he was
sentenced, even the Philadelphia Public Ledger—the
very newspaper that had once said, “An act of greater
atrocity could scarcely be conceived of”—now warned
that an effort would “be made to have him pardoned
by the President if anything more than a nominal sentence be passed upon him.”
429
HONEYMOON Gang
with vats of corrosive acid and quicklime pits. The pits
later yielded up bone and skull fragments of many
women he had held prisoner and killed. All the
“prison” rooms had an alarm that buzzed in Holmes’
quarters if a victim attempted to break out. The evidence indicated that he kept many of the women prisoners for months before he decided to dispose of them.
Holmes obtained most of his victims through ads
offering good jobs in a big city or through offers of
marriage. If the offer was for a job, he would describe
several in detail, and a young woman on her first visit
would select the one she wanted. Holmes then sent her
home to pack her things and withdraw all her money
from the bank since she would need the money to get
set up. He would require that the woman not reveal
his name to anyone and he would not tell her where
the job was until she returned with her money, claiming he had business competitors who were trying to
steal his clients. When the woman returned and
Holmes was satisfied she had revealed nothing about
him, he would take her prisoner. If he was not satisfied, he would say the job had been canceled and send
her away. Those whom he offered to marry got the
same sort of line. If they came back with less than all
their worldly goods, Holmes would use various types
of torture apparatuses to make them reveal the whereabouts of their remaining valuables. He then would
imprison the women while he went to get their property.
Amazingly, Holmes was able to keep his wholesale
murder operation secret for four years. His trouble
started when he got involved in an insurance swindle
with a shady character named Benjamin F. Pitzel. To
pull it off, they both traveled around the country, and
in the process Holmes was arrested in St. Louis. He
revealed part of the insurance scam to a cell mate, a
notorious bank robber named Marion Hedgepeth.
Holmes offered Hedgepeth money to put him in
touch with a good lawyer. Hedgepeth obliged and
Holmes got out, promptly forgetting to pay Hedgepeth. He went to Philadelphia and met up with Pitzel.
The two had a falling out, and Holmes killed his
partner in crime. About this time, Hedgepeth decided
his former cell mate had stiffed him and told the
authorities what he knew. Holmes was captured and
the Pitzel murder discovered. When Chicago police
searched his “hotel,” the results were awesome.
Before he was hanged in Philadelphia on May 7,
1896, for the Pitzel murder, since that city refused to
surrender him to Chicago for his more gruesome deeds,
Holmes made a number of confessions concerning the
women he had killed. He accepted an offer of $5,000
from a Chicago newspaper for his story and then perversely concocted a death list that included several
women who were still alive and omitted others who
had been identified among his victims.
See also: MARION HEDGEPETH.
Honeymoon Gang
19th-century New York gang
One of the most brutal New York gangs in the mid1800s was the Honeymoon Gang, whose members
were considered so beyond the pale that they were
denied protection by the politicians who took care of
most other organized gangsters because of their value
as electoral enforcers.
By 1853 the Honeymooners had so terrorized the
East Side’s 18th Ward that it became literally unsafe to
walk there. Every evening the gang would place their
men at each corner of Madison Avenue and 29th Street
and attack every well-dressed citizen who came along.
At midnight the Honeymooners’ “basher patrol”
would adjourn to a drinking establishment to spend a
portion of the night’s ill-gotten gains.
The Honeymooners were not molested by police
until George W. Walling was appointed captain of the
district in late 1853. Organizing the city’s first Strong
Arm Squad, he picked out his six burliest men, put
them in plain clothes and sent them into the Honeymooners’ turf armed with locust clubs. The beefy officers simply walked right up to the gangsters and
battered them senseless before they could bring their
own bludgeons and brass knuckles into play. A few
nights of this treatment convinced the Honeymooners
to evacuate their ambush posts. But this did not satisfy
Walling, who then provided every policeman on his
roster with the identifications of all the Honeymooners.
Whenever one was sighted, he was attacked and beaten
mercilessly. Within two weeks the Honeymoon Gang
vanished, its members scattering to other wards where
police tactics were not so rough.
See also: STRONG ARM SQUAD.
hoodlum
Hoodlum is as American as apple pie. The word
refers to a member of any gang of thugs. The explanations for its origin are varied and many, but there is
no doubt that the term was first applied to the San
Francisco underworld in the late 1860s. One theory
holds that the term was initially used to describe several vicious brothers whose name was Hoodler and
that the name was corrupted into “hoodlum” with
the passage of time. Another explanation is that it
arose from the street thugs’ practice of turning up the
collar and lapels of their jackets to act, as much as
possible, as a hood while they stalked and molested
their victims.
430
HOOVER, Herbert Clark
The Los Angeles Express of August 25, 1877,
seemed to offer the most plausible theory:
deck of a schooner at Pike Street and attempted singlehandedly to overpower the crew of six. He had downed
three before he was stopped; he ended up with a long
sentence at Auburn Prison for this crime. On more than
one occasion, the Hookers would pull a number of
wagons up to a likely boat in dock and, after simply
cordoning off the street, loot it at their leisure. Once, an
officer a few blocks away saw their barricades and,
thinking there was some authorized work going on,
helpfully diverted traffic onto a side street.
In a manner of speaking, the Hookers had no one to
blame but themselves for their eventual demise. It all
started when one of their number, Nigger Wallace, tried
to rob three men in a rowboat. They turned out to be
three detectives taking the sun on their day off, and
Wallace ended up dunked and towed off to jail. This
started the police thinking that if they had some decoy
craft on the river, they could catch the pirates in their
act. Thus, in 1876 the Steamboat Squad was organized.
By the end of the decade, the police had cleared the
Corlears’ Hook area. Many of the Hookers were
imprisoned, others scattered and the rest shifted their
activities to safer, onshore thefts and burglaries.
See also: SUDS MERRICK, STEAMBOAT SQUAD.
A gang of bad boys from fourteen to nineteen years of
age were associated for the purpose of stealing. These
boys had a rendezvous, and when danger threatened
them their words of warning were ‘Huddle ’em! Huddle ‘em!’ An article headed ‘Huddle ‘Em’ describing the
gang and their plans of operation, was published in the
San Francisco Times. The name applied to them was
soon contracted to hoodlum.
Hoodoo War
Hook Gang
See MASON COUNTY WAR.
19th-century New York waterfront gang
The Hook Gang was composed of thugs who worked
the East River area around the Corlears’ Hook section
of New York from the late 1860s to the late 1870s.
Known as the daffiest of all river pirates, the Hookers were captained by Terry Le Strange, James Coffee,
Tommy Shay and Suds Merrick. Neither the gang nor
its individual members thought any job was too big for
them. Coffee and Shay once rowed up to the boat of an
eight-man rowing club and, with guns leveled, ordered
them to head for the Brooklyn shore. When they got
within 50 yards of shore, they forced the rowers to
jump and swim for it and headed back to Manhattan
with their prize boat. Long before the rowers got back
to sound the alarm, the pair had transported the outsized craft to the Hudson docks and sold it to the skipper of a canal boat.
Another gang member, the redoubtable Slipsey
Ward, finally overstepped himself when he mounted the
Hoover, Herbert Clark (1874–1964)
nemesis
Al Capone’s
“That bastard,” Al Capone was to repeat many times
after his conviction on income tax charges. “That bastard got me.” He was referring to President Herbert
Hoover; underworld opinion held that Capone had
been railroaded because of the personal vindictiveness
of a bitter president of the United States. According to
mob legend, Hoover had come to hate Capone for
either of two reasons or both. One was that shortly
after his victory over Al Smith in the 1928 election,
Hoover had visited the J. C. Penney estate on Belle Isle
in Florida, not far from the Capone retreat on Palm
Island. As the story went, there was so much shouting,
females screaming and shooting during the night from
the Capone compound that Hoover could not fall
asleep, and he vowed to crush the mobster once he took
office. According to the second story, Hoover watched
in chagrin as a crowd of newsmen in a Miami hotel
lobby deserted the president-elect for what they
regarded as a more important interviewee, Capone.
In fact, both stories are apocryphal, but it is true that
Hoover had determined to bring down Capone, whom
he regarded as a blot on the national honor. The
method used was suggested to Hoover by Col. Frank
Knox, publisher of the Chicago Daily News, who came
to him in despair over the unwillingness or inability of
local and state authorities to jail Capone. He suggested
The Hook Gang, 19th-century river pirates, fought pitched
battles with police for more than a decade before finally
being driven from the East River.
431
HOOVER, J. Edgar
to Hoover that the best way to catch the mobster was
to charge him with two federal offenses: bootlegging
and income tax evasion.
Thereafter, Hoover hounded the Treasury Department to eliminate Capone. Andrew Mellon, who was
secretary of the treasury at the time, later recalled the
activities of Hoover’s so-called Medicine Cabinet, a
small group of high officials the president invited to the
White House each morning to toss around a medicine
ball. “Every morning when the exercising started, Mr.
Hoover would bring up the subject,” Mellon said.
“He’d ask me, ‘Have you got that fellow Al Capone
yet?’ And at the end of the session, he’d tell me,
‘Remember now, I want that Capone in jail.’”
In another era, or in another economic climate, Herbert Hoover might well have won the reelection just for
successfully putting Capone behind bars. But not in the
early 1930s. The public clearly agreed with a minor
Capone follower quoted by the press as saying, “President Hoover should be worrying more about putting people to work than sending a simple bootlegger to prison.”
Despite his later denials, Hoover played a vital role in
the Palmer Raids inspired by the postwar Red Scare.
He planned and executed mass raids against aliens,
built up a card file on 450,000 radicals and organized
his first informer network, a technique Hoover developed to the level of a science, far better than any other
American law official.
By 1924 the Bureau of Investigation was mired in
scandal, much like the late Harding administration.
Hoover was named to head the agency and cleanse it.
To his credit, he did so with ruthless efficiency, forcing
out scores of incompetents and cheats and establishing professional standards for agents, such as the
requirement that new recruits have training as either
lawyers or accountants. During the 1930s Hoover
toughened the FBI into a highly mobile crime-busting
organization. He laid heavy emphasis on scientific
detection methods and established the FBI Laboratory. The FBI National Academy was formed to train
local police officers in the newest law enforcement
techniques.
In 1933 Hoover launched a highly publicized war on
the so-called public enemies—Dillinger, the Barkers,
Alvin Karpis, Pretty Boy Floyd, Baby Face Nelson,
Machine Gun Kelly and others of their ilk, all 20thcentury versions of the desperadoes of the Old West.
They were relatively easy targets, certainly compared to
the Mafia and the emerging national crime syndicate
formed by the great ex-bootlegging gangs of the Prohibition era. Since he was a Republican holdover in a
Democratic administration, Hoover needed some sort
of spectacular display. Speaking of the campaign years
later, a high ex-FBI official, William C. Sullivan, said,
“The whole of the FBI’s main thrust was not investigation but public relations and propaganda to glorify its
director.”
Hoover needed all the public relations he could get
in the 1930s. When John Dillinger was killed, a conservative Virginia newspaper editor assailed the FBI’s
work on the case. “Any brave man,” he editorialized,
“would have walked down the aisle and arrested
Dillinger . . . why were there so many cowards afraid
of this one man? The answer is that the federal agents
are mostly cowards.”
Later it was revealed that the Secret Service was
secretly investigating the conduct of FBI agents in the
Dillinger case and the case of another gang member,
Eddie Green, who had been described as shot while
attempting an armed escape from FBI custody. Green
was found to be unarmed, however. Clearly, the Secret
Service was trying to show that the G-men were triggerhappy amateurs at best. In 1936 Hoover himself came
under rigorous attack in Congress. Sen. Kenneth D.
McKellar of Tennessee grilled him at an appropriations
Hoover, J. Edgar (1895–1972) FBI director
For better or worse, the history of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation can be told in the life of its longtime
director, J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover more than typified
the agency, he was in a very real sense the FBI. The
agency’s successes were attributable to him, just as its
excesses and abuses often resulted from his personal
failings. Despite scandals that were revealed after
Hoover’s death, such as the agency’s deliberate
attempts to destroy individuals not accused of crimes
by leaking damaging information—sometimes true,
often false—about them, the FBI is recognized as one of
the most brilliant and efficient investigative forces in
any country.
It was not always that way, especially when Hoover
joined the U.S. Department of Justice in 1917 as a
young attorney. The agency, then known as the Bureau
of Investigation, was a disorganized body of about 200
poorly supervised agents, some political hacks, others
outright crooks. The agency was virtually worthless in
any battle against crime and proved totally incapable of
preventing sabotage during World War I. The great sabotage and espionage ring organized by German ambassador Johann von Bernstorff had almost a free hand to
operate in this country. Defense plants were wrecked
and wheat fields in the West set afire. The great “Black
Tom” explosion in New York Harbor destroyed the
nation’s biggest arsenal, producing a tremendous roar
heard more than 100 miles away.
Hoover rose rapidly in the ranks and became special
assistant to Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer.
432
HOOVER, J. Edgar
hearing about his background and experience, bringing
out the fact that Hoover had never personally handled
an investigation or made an arrest.
Hoover reacted to this attack on his courage and
competence the following month by personally arresting public enemy Alvin “Creepy” Karpis in New
Orleans. Karpis was later to insist that Hoover had hidden out of sight until after other agents had seized him
in a car and called to Hoover that it was safe to
approach. On the other hand, Don Whitehead in The
FBI Story credited Hoover as having “reached into the
car and grabbed Karpis before he could reach for a rifle
on the back seat.” There is some question about this
accomplishment, since the car had no back seat. The
arrest proved to be a bit of a fiasco when none of the
dozens of agents present could carry out Hoover’s
orders to “put the handcuffs on him.” None of them
had thought to bring along handcuffs.
In 1939 Hoover’s FBI was handed the responsibility
of guarding the nation against sabotage and subversion. It was these wartime duties, carried out with efficiency, that did the most to upgrade Hoover’s image to
one of unquestioned authority and wisdom. By 1943
Sen. McKellar was calling him a “grand man.”
In the post-1945 cold war years, Hoover rediscovered the Red Menace that had launched his career. The
FBI’s war on the Communist Party reached the stage of
the ridiculous when agency informers in the organization probably outnumbered bona fide members. As the
party dropped in size and influence, Hoover assured
conservatives this merely indicated that the members
were going underground and that more concentrated
efforts—and larger budgets—were needed to combat
the remaining threat. Hoover long ago had discovered
that while conservatives might bewail the crime menace, their hold on the purse strings did not loosen much
to combat such danger. However, given a good Red
Scare, the money simply gushed forth.
In all, Hoover served under eight presidents, none
of whom dared take the political consequences of
attempting to oust him. Few attorneys general, technically his superiors, countered his views, especially in the
1940s and 1950s. The first to give Hoover genuine
orders was Robert Kennedy in 1961, when he insisted
the FBI concentrate on battling organized crime, truly
an affront to its director, who for years had denied the
existence of organized crime and the Mafia. Critics of
Hoover said he took this tack because fighting the syndicate was not an easy matter, certainly more difficult
than battling the great threat to the Republic posed by
car thieves, probably 90 percent of whom were joyriding teenagers.
In the early 1960s it was clear that President John
Kennedy wished to replace Hoover, who had reached
retirement age, but having been elected by a thin
majority, he felt incapable of withstanding the political
repercussions. Undoubtedly, though, Kennedy planned
to oust him if reelected to a second term. After Kennedy’s assassination Lyndon Johnson is said to have
exploited his power to force Hoover to step down by
demanding the director perform illegal political investigations for him. According to ex-FBI official Sullivan,
“There was absolutely nothing Johnson wouldn’t ask
of the FBI, and Hoover hotfooted it to Johnson’s
demands.”
By the time he reached his late sixties, Hoover had
turned crotchety and vindictive, launching secret operations against real and perceived personal enemies,
including a particularly vicious campaign to discredit
Martin Luther King based on sexual misbehavior. A
lifelong bachelor, Hoover was never tainted by any
innuendos of sexual improprieties.
Perhaps the best example of the tenor within the FBI
in this period occurred during a top-level FBI meeting
in 1968 presided over by Clyde Tolson, the number two
man in the agency and Hoover’s alter ego. When
Robert Kennedy’s name came up, Tolson declared, “I
hope someone shoots and kills the son of a bitch.”
Shortly thereafter, someone did.
By 1970 President Richard Nixon had resolved to
get rid of Hoover. The president invited him to the Oval
Office to inform him that his tenure was at an end. Sullivan, who obviously was Nixon’s man within the FBI,
wrote in his book The Bureau—My Thirty Years in
Hoover’s FBI that Hoover “started talking non-stop. It
was his usual line of conversation, starring Dillinger,
Ma Barker and a cast of thousands, and he kept talking
until the President ended the interview.
“Assistant Attorney General Robert Mardian called
me later and said: ‘Christ almighty, Nixon lost his guts.
He had Hoover there in his office, he knew what he
was supposed to tell him, but he got cold feet. He
couldn’t go through with it.’”
Later, when Hoover forced Sullivan out of the FBI,
Nixon, Mardian, John Mitchell, John Ehrlichman and
Bob Haldeman determined that Hoover would go after
Nixon’s reelection. Hoover died, however, in May
1972, six months before the election. Had he lived, he
undoubtedly would have survived this new threat to his
reign, as his would-be purgers became immersed in the
Watergate scandal, from which none would survive
politically. They would have needed Hoover more than
he would have needed them.
After Hoover’s death and especially after the disclosure of his latter-day excesses, such as the notorious
COINTELPRO program aimed at punishing Hoover
targets who were neither convicted nor even suspected
of illegal activities, some of his critics demanded
433
HOPE, Jimmy
Horn, Tom (1860–1903) hired killer
Hoover’s name be taken off the new FBI headquarters
building. It was a senseless exercise. To separate
Hoover from the FBI in such fashion would be a silly
attempt to rewrite history. The FBI itself, not the building, was Hoover’s monument. The agency in 1972 was
and, indeed, still is—“warts and all”—the embodiment
of J. Edgar Hoover.
See also: BRIEFCASE AGENTS, COSA NOSTRA, ALVIN
“CREEPY” KARPIS, GASTON BULLOCK MEANS, PALMER
RAIDS, MELVIN PURVIS, CLYDE A. TOLSON.
In recent years there have been efforts by some writers
and even by Hollywood—in a 1980 movie—to “rehabilitate” Tom Horn, probably the most callous hired
gun and bushwacker the Old West ever saw. Much is
made of Horn’s early years and his heroism as an army
scout under the celebrated Al Sieber and as a lawman
and cowboy. Some of the more unquestioning also
applaud his four years as a Pinkerton, although during
that period he can only be described as a roving gun for
the agency, with a toll of victims reputedly amounting
to 17. Horn quit the Pinkertons, announcing he “had
no more stomach for it.” Agency apologists said that
indicated he found the job too boring; others thought it
meant Horn felt he was underpaid for the work. Immediately thereafter, he offered his lethal services to
Wyoming cattlemen. There was no one Tom Horn
wouldn’t kill for $500. “Killing men is my specialty,”
he once remarked. “I look at it as a business proposition and I think I have a corner on the market.”
Born in Missouri in 1860, he left home at about age
13, after an altercation with his father, and headed
west. A tough, headstrong youth, he is believed to have
had a row with Billy the Kid and slapped his face. No
one was ever to accuse Horn of lacking guts. At 15 he
was a stagecoach driver and from 1875 to 1886 he
worked off and on for Al Sieber, chief army scout at the
San Carlos Indian Reservation. It was Horn who
arranged the final surrender of Geronimo to Gen. Nelson Miles in 1886. After that, he became a deputy sheriff in the Arizona Territory.
By the time he went to work for the Pinkertons, he
had quite a reputation, one that only worsened while
he served in the agency. He ached with the desire for
big money, but his only real talent was his skill with
guns. The law paid peanuts, the Pinks somewhat more.
The real money lay in working directly for the big cattlemen, settling old scores for them and eliminating
small ranchers and rustlers (in Cheyenne’s cattle baron
circles the two terms were used interchangeably). Members of the Wyoming Cattlemen’s Association bid high
for Horn’s services and Horn gloried in their attentions.
He smoked their cigars, drank their liquor, backslapped
with them and murdered for them.
Horn was a tidy butcher and regarded his assassinations as works of art. Testimony at his later trial would
reveal how even in a driving rain, he waited for hours
chewing on cuds of raw bacon, to get the one sure shot
at a victim. After the kill he always left behind his
trademark, a small rock under the victim’s head, so that
there could be no argument over who had carried out
the assignment.
Horn once even offered his deadly services to Gov.
W. A. Richards of Wyoming. The governor, who owned
Hope, Jimmy (1840–?) police fixer and bank burglar
One of the most important underworld figures of the
19th century, Jimmy Hope was a crooked ex-cop in
New York who handled “the fix” for the Shang
Draper–George Leonidas Leslie mob of bank burglars.
Maintaining a fifth column of crooked officers
within the New York Police Department, Hope could
get the law to do anything he wanted, an ability he
demonstrated stunningly in the great $2,747,000 looting of the Manhattan Savings Institution in 1878. In
preparation for that job, he paid off many of the officers in the Detective Bureau just as he had in the past.
Ordered to ensure the bank watchman would not interfere, Hope determined that the man could not be
bribed. He solved the dilemma by having him hired
away to a better-paying job on the recommendation of
several police officers. When Manhattan Savings officials asked the police department to suggest a replacement, Hope saw to it that a 60-year-old Irishman
named Patty Shevlin got the job. Shevlin was perfect.
Whenever safecracker George Leonidas Leslie wanted
to study the layout of the bank or the safe, Shevlin was
told to take a nap in the basement and stay there until
morning.
Hope also arranged that on the day of the burglary,
Sunday morning, October 27, the policeman on the
beat, John Nugent, would remain at a suitable distance
away from the bank, yet close enough to guard the
retreat of the burglars and, if necessary, to delay or mislead pursuit. As it was, the mob had so much loot
packed in their small satchels that Nugent had to be
summoned to carry one of them.
It took almost a year for the police to make arrests in
this case. Two of the gang, Abe Coakley and Banjo Pete
Emerson, were acquitted, but Bill Kelly and, ironically,
Jimmy Hope were convicted. Patrolman Nugent was
said to have won his freedom by bribing a juror, but
within a few months he was convicted and sent to
prison for highway robbery. Kelly and Hope got long
prison terms. When the ex-fixer was set free near the
turn of the century, he quickly disappeared.
See also: GEORGE LEONIDAS LESLIE.
434
HORRELL-Higgins feud
ever, and spent much of the rest of his time hurriedly
penning his memoirs, leaving out, of course, all references to his murderous “range detecting.” With the
streets of Cheyenne patrolled by militiamen, Tom Horn
was hanged on November 20, 1903, his lips still sealed.
A Wyoming cattleman was to recall, “He died without ‘squealing,’ to the great relief of many very respectable citizens of the West.”
In recent years some effort has been made to discredit the Lefors testimony. Dean Krakel, Horn’s chief
biographer and author of The Saga of Tom Horn,
insists the Horn confession was a frame-up and would
be inadmissible in modern courts and that Horn was
innocent of the Nickell shooting.
See also: RANGE DETECTIVES.
a large ranch in the Big Horn country, was fearful of
having the gunman seen at his office in the state capital,
so he used the premises of the state Board of Livestock
Commissioners. Another big stockman, William Irvine,
who took part in the meeting, later recollected:
The Governor was quite nervous, so was I, Horn perfectly cool; told the Governor he would either drive
every rustler out of the Big Horn County, or take no
pay other than $350 advanced to buy two horses and a
pack outfit; that when he had finished the job to the
Governor’s satisfaction he should receive $5,000
because, he said in conclusion, “Whenever everything
else fails, I have a system which never does.” He placed
no limit on the number of men to be gotten rid of.
Irvine said the governor clearly got cold feet when
Horn matter-of-factly made his murder proposition.
The killer saw this immediately and tactfully ended the
discussion by saying: “I presume that is about all you
wanted to know, Sir. I shall be glad to hear from you at
any time I can be of service.”
Horn’s murder dealing became so well known that
rustlers and other desperadoes often cleared out of an
area when he appeared on the scene. But the small
rancher, his entire life tied up in his meager holdings,
could not. And if a big cattleman said a small rancher
was rustling his cattle, that was good enough for
Horn.
Because of his powerful connections, Horn was
considered immune from the law. But in 1901 he murdered a 14-year-old boy, Willie Nickell, from ambush.
Hired to shoot the boy’s sheepman father, Horn mistook the youth for the father in the early dawn light.
The case remained unsolved until Joe Lefors, a deputy
U.S. marshal who led the famous posse that chased
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, took over the
investigation. He wormed his way into Horn’s confidence, and when the latter was drinking heavily, he
got him to boast of his killings, including the Nickell
affair, while hidden witnesses and a stenographer listened.
Horn was thrown in jail. When he sobered up, he
insisted he had merely been telling tall tales and accused
the stenographer of adding statements he had not made.
Horn had brilliant legal talent defending him at his trial,
with some $5,000 donated to his defense fund by an
unknown “admirer.” However, the case against him was
overwhelming and he was sentenced to hang.
While he awaited execution, people wondered if
Horn would start naming all his powerful employers,
and it appears that employers wondered too. In August
1903 someone smuggled a pistol to him, and he escaped
with another prisoner. He was quickly recaptured, how-
Horrell-Higgins feud
One of Texas’ bloodiest feuds, the Horrell-Higgins conflict broke out in central Texas in 1873 over charges of
cattle rustling around the frontier town of Lampasas,
northwest of Austin. Suspicion centered on the men of
the Horrell spread. When the sheriff attempted to arrest
one of the Horrell men, he was promptly killed. A
squad of state officers were dispatched to Lampasas to
take care of the Horrells, once again with fatal consequences for the law officers. A group of Horrells were
found in the Gem Saloon and ordered to give up their
guns and surrender. Shooting broke out immediately.
When the gunsmoke cleared, four officers lay dead or
dying. Only Mart Horrell, who was wounded, was
arrested. However, when he was placed in the jail at
Georgetown, his friends and brothers broke in and
freed him. The Horrells then moved their herds into
New Mexico to avoid further problems with the Texas
authorities.
Finding themselves ensnarled in similar rustling disputes in New Mexico, the Horrells returned to Texas,
where two of them were tried and acquitted in the
killing of the four law officers. Meanwhile, new suspicions about the Horrells rustling cattle were voiced,
especially by the Higgins clan, which had lost a considerable amount of stock. Pink Higgins led his family in a
war against the Horrells. Higgins, a fiery gunfighter,
threatened to wipe out every Horrell. In January 1877
Pink killed Merritt Horrell at the Gem.
With all sorts of legal charges against both clans,
someone broke into the courthouse one night in July
1877 and removed the records of all pending criminal cases. The families then prepared to settle the
matter between themselves. Later that same month the
two factions fought a bitter gun battle for several hours
in the streets of Lampasas. At least one innocent
bystander was among those killed.
435
HORSE poisoners
find elsewhere. Since many gangsters at the time hired
out to do a murder for as little as $10 to $20, it was not
surprising that most of the trio’s business was limited to
horses. Yet the horse poisoners were hated by other
gangsters who had no qualms about shooting humans
but found the poisoning of dumb beasts despicable.
Eventually, the three poisoners felt the full wrath of
the law when a chicken dealer named Barnett Baff was
shot to death in 1914. According to the police theory,
Baff’s competitors had paid the staggering sum of
$4,200 for his violent demise. This money, was supposedly given to Levinsky, Yoske Nigger and Charley
the Cripple, who divided it up after paying a mere $50
to the actual hit man. Under close surveillance and
harassment by the police, the trio abandoned their poisoning practices and retired to reputable business lives
in the wilds of Brooklyn, remaining honest, it was said,
until the bootlegging era beckoned them back to criminality.
Finally, in July the Texas Rangers moved into the
area in force. A detachment under Sgt. N. O. Reynolds
entered the Horrell ranch house before dawn and captured the family and its supporters without a fight.
Other Rangers simultaneously captured the Higgins
clan. Realizing that a few prison sentences would
hardly end the shooting, the Rangers had long discussions with each group. Eventually, members of both
families signed a formal peace treaty. Such agreements
had been tried in other feuds without success, but in
this case all the participants faithfully observed the
treaty and the Horrell-Higgins feud ended.
See also: JOHN CALHOUN PINCKNEY “PINK” HIGGINS.
horse poisoners
Common during the early decades of this century in
New York, horse poisoning was one of the most
detested of all crimes, viewed with horror by the public,
the police and even much of the underworld. The horse
was the lifeline of many businesses, such as the produce,
ice cream, beer and seltzer trades. Businessmen faced
with stiff competition would often hire gangsters to
destroy the competition’s trade. The simplest way to do
this was to poison a rival’s horses, thus destroying his
distribution system. It was a common sight on the
Lower East Side to see a produce seller with two dead
horses desperately trying to sell his stock at half price to
clamoring housewives before it was all ruined.
By 1913 three gangs of horse poisoners under the
leaderships of Yoske Nigger, whose real name was
Joseph Toplinsky, Charley the Cripple, whose real
name was Charles Vitoffsky, and Johnny Levinsky
dominated the field. They would steal or poison horses
to order. Unlike their clients, these three did not engage
in cutthroat competition among themselves. Instead
they divided the field into separate monopolies, with
Yoske Nigger handling the produce markets, truckmen
and livery stables; Charley the Cripple the seltzer and
soda water dealers and manufacturers; and Levinsky
the ice cream trade. Whenever an order came in from
some area not covered by this jurisdictional agreement,
the three handled the matter jointly.
A defecting member of one of the gangs finally
revealed to the police the trio’s scale of fees:
Shooting, fatal
Shooting, not fatal
Poisoning a team
Poisoning one horse
Stealing a horse and rig
horse stealing
As an old quip has it, “One day the first man tamed the
first horse; the next day another man stole it.” Certainly, horse stealing was one of the most prevalent
crimes in colonial America, and horse thieves flourished during the Revolution, selling animals to both
sides and often the same beasts at that. However, horse
stealing in America is most often associated with the
West, where it was considered a crime without equal.
Stealing horses was regarded as murder, and indeed, it
often amounted to as much since a man without his
horse in open spaces was at the mercy of the elements
or of Indian raiders as well as vulnerable to death by
starvation or thirst.
T. A. McNeal in When Kansas Was Young summed
up the utter necessity of a horse:
A horse was about the only means of conveyance, and
in the cattle business it was essential. It was necessary,
too, to let the horses run on the range unguarded. The
cattlemen reasoned that unless the men who lusted for
the possession of good horses were restrained by fear of
prompt and violent death, no man would be sure that
when he turned his horses out at night he would be able
to gather any of them in the morning.
$500
$100
$50
$35
$25
In 1878 a Houston, Tex. newspaper bemoaned the
fact that 100,000 horses had been stolen in the state
during the preceding three years.
It further estimated that 750 men are regularly engaged
in this business and that not more than one in ten is
ever captured and brought to justice. By common prac-
The first two items, of course, referred to human victims and were much higher than the rates a client could
436
HOUNDS
Hot Corn Girls
tice in the rural districts, every man caught is either
shot on the spot or hanged to the nearest tree. No
instance is yet recorded where the law paid the slightest
attention to lynchers of this kind. It is conceded that
the man who steals a horse forfeits his life to the owner.
It is a game of life and death. Men will pursue these
thieves for 500 miles, go any length, spend any amount
of money to capture them, and fight them to the death
when overtaken. That they will be totally exterminated
admits of no doubt. The poor scoundrels cannot last
long when the feeling of all civilization is so much
aroused against them as it now is in Texas.
See EDWARD COLEMAN.
Hot Springs, Arkansas
See WHITE FRONT CIGAR
STORE.
Hotsy Totsy Club
New York speakeasy
Among all the notorious New York speakeasies that
thrived during Prohibition, none had a worse reputation than the Hotsy Totsy Club, a second-floor joint on
Broadway between 54th and 55th Streets. Although
Hymie Cohen fronted as the proprietor, a big chunk of
the place was owned by gangster Legs Diamond. Diamond utilized the club to hold court and directed several rackets from there. He also used it as an execution
site. Many crime figures whom Diamond wished to
prevail upon would be invited there for some revelry
and a business discussion. If they failed to go along
with Diamond’s view of things, they were murdered in
a back room and later carried out “drunk.”
The Hotsy Totsy’s bloodiest claim to fame came in
1929, when Diamond and sidekick Charles Entratta
gunned down a hoodlum named Red Cassidy. Also
killed in the wild shoot-out at the bar was an innocent
bystander, Simon Walker, who nonetheless happened to
be wearing two loaded revolvers in his belt. Unlike the
pair’s other murders in the club, a great number of witnesses were present during the shooting causing Diamond and Entratta to flee.
From hiding, Diamond directed a reign of killings to
clear his name. That meant the bartender had to be
rubbed out, along with three customers who had seen
what had happened. The cashier, a waiter, the hat check
girl and another club, hanger-on disappeared, although
their fate was not entirely a mystery to police or the
newspapers. But suspicions meant little. Diamond and
Entratta surrendered and were charged with the killings
at the club. But they were soon freed because the authorities had no witnesses to present evidence against them.
See also: JACK “LEGS” DIAMOND.
When vigilantes in Fort Griffin hanged a horse thief
from a pecan tree and put a pick and shovel there for
anyone with a mind to bury him, a correspondent for
the Dallas Herald recorded the event and added: “So
far, so good. As long as the committee strings up the
right parties, it has the well wishes of every lover of
tranquility.”
Lynching of horse thieves became common throughout the entire West, but it was not a very effective deterrent. The horse thieves thrived. One, Dutch Henry,
known as the King of the Horse Thieves, had some 300
men working during one period for him. Because
horses could easily be recognized on sight by former
owners, thieves would often drive them hundreds, even
a thousand miles, to sell them. The famed Horse-Thief
Trail ran from Salt Lake City in the north to the
Mexican border in the south without ever once following the frequently used commercial trails. Horse thieves
worked both ends of their run: a gang stealing horses in
Texas would drive them to Kansas and in Kansas collar
a herd and drive it back to Texas.
Perhaps the futility of using the death penalty as a
deterrent is illustrated by the history of this crime. Even
the threat of hangings on the spot did not deter horse
thieves from stealing thousands of horses each year.
Their ranks were slowly thinned only after the development of efficient range detective methods and, more
important, after the invention of the horseless carriage.
See also: DUTCH HENRY, HORSE-THIEF TRAIL, HENRY
TUFTS.
Hounds
19th-century San Francisco anti-foreigner gang
Officially bearing the high-sounding title of the San
Francisco Society of Regulators, the Hounds, as they
were more commonly called, were a collection of young
thugs organized to contain the peril to Anglo-Americans
presented by Spanish Americans in San Francisco in
1849.
Under the pretense of a fiery patriotism, flamed by
the influence of the Know Nothings, the Hounds set
about driving the foreigners out of the gold fields, a
goal that had a good deal of public support. They
Horse-Thief Trail
In the post–Civil War West it was possible for outlaws
to drive stolen horses all the way from Salt Lake City,
Utah through Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to
Mexico without once running into the law or an honest
rider. The route they followed was the famous but
unmarked Horse-Thief Trail, and any man who knew
the entire route had his fortune made, the only source
of danger being other horse thieves.
437
HOUSE of All Nations
beat, stabbed and shot helpless Mexicans and
Chileans whenever they had the chance and extorted
money and gold from those few who had managed to
accumulate any wealth. Officials made no effort to
stop these outrages until the Hounds got the idea that
the good people of San Francisco should pay them for
their protection of the community. Then no man’s
property or life—be he Spanish or Anglo-American—
was safe. The Hounds roamed the streets in bands,
robbing stores and pedestrians in broad daylight.
Merchants trying to stop them were stabbed. The
gang victimized saloons, gorging themselves on the
best of food and drink and telling the proprietor to
collect from the city as they walked out. If there were
objections, the building was set on fire. The Hounds
increased their atrocities against the “greasers” and
blacks. They cut off the ears of a black man who had
accidentally brushed a Hound in passing. A Mexican
who talked back to a Hound had his tongue ripped
out by the roots.
In the summer of 1849 the Hounds, in full battle
array—almost all were veterans of the Mexican War—
made their most violent onslaught against the Mexican
tents and shanties. The authors of a contemporary
account wrote:
Using a patriotic pretense, the Hounds first attacked
Hispanics in San Francisco and then turned their violence
on whites as well.
ried out. However, the Hounds were too frightened
ever to reorganize and within a short time virtually all
of them left the area.
These they violently tore down, plundering them of
money and valuables, which they carried away, and
totally destroying on the spot such articles as they did
not think it worth while to seize. Without provocation,
and in cold blood, they barbarously beat with sticks
and stones, and cuffed and kicked the offending foreigners. Not content with that, they repeatedly and
wantonly fired among the injured people, and amid the
shrieks of terrified women and the groans of wounded
men, recklessly continued their terrible course in different quarters, wherever in fact malice or thirst for plunder led them. . . . There were no individuals brave or
foolhardy enough to resist the progress of such a savage
mob, whose exact force was unknown, but who were
believed to be both numerous and desperate.
House of All Nations
celebrated brothel
While the Everleigh Club was undoubtedly Chicago’s,
America’s and perhaps the world’s most famous
brothel, another much more reasonably priced contemporary at the turn of the century was almost as
well known in the Windy City. It was the celebrated
House of All Nations, a bordello on Armour Avenue
that was considered a must-stop for on-the-town
sports.
The House of All Nations was famed for two qualities: its employees allegedly came from all parts of the
globe (or at least could affect the proper accents) and
they came in different price ranges. There was both a
$2 and a $5 entrance, and in typical whoredom flimflammery, the ladies of the house all worked both
entrances, dispensing the same services for either price
tag. One commonly held belief in Chicago was that
Asian prostitutes working in the house plied their profession during the winter months clad in long underwear because they were unable to take the chilly
Chicago climate. The practice gave the Oriental harlots
an added “exotic” quality that made them even more
popular, but it should be noted that for a small additional fee they would strip down to the skin and brave
the elements.
This outrage at last galvanized the whole town.
Money was collected for the relief of the destitute Spanish-Americans and 230 volunteers were deputized to
round up the Hounds. Many of the gang immediately
fled the city, but 20-odd Hounds, including one of their
leaders, Sam Roberts, were taken. Several witnesses,
including a number of injured Spanish-Americans who
later died, testified against the prisoners. Roberts and a
man named Saunders were sentenced to 10 years at
hard labor, while others drew shorter punishments. But
within a few days political supporters of the gang won
their release and none of the sentences were ever car438
HOWE and Hummel
The House of All Nations was shuttered prior to the
start of World War I, a victim of the great vice cleanup
of the notorious Levee section on Chicago’s South Side.
1906, they made a mockery of the law. Rotund, walrusmustached William F. Howe was a great courtroom
pleader who could bring sobs to any jury. Young Abe
Hummel was a little man who was marvelously adept
at ferreting out loopholes in the law, to the extent that
once he almost succeeded in making murder legal.
At the age of 32, Howe came to America from England, where his career as a medical practitioner had
terminated in a prison term for performing an illegal
operation on a woman patient. He studied law and
within three years he opened up shop on New York’s
Centre (later called Center) Street. Howe was an instant
success because of his resonant voice and a face that
could turn on and off any emotion he wished to display
for a jury. Years later, David Belasco, the theatrical producer, watched Howe’s tearful performance winning an
acquittal for a woman who had shot her lover full of
holes. “That man,” he said, “would make a Broadway
star.”
In the late 1860s Howe hired young Abe Hummel as
his law clerk and in almost no time promoted him to
partner. Anyone so adept at finding holes in the law
was too good to lose. One case that illustrated Hummel’s ability involved a professional arsonist named
Owen Reilly. Hummel suggested they save the prosecution the trouble of a trial by pleading Reilly guilty to
attempted arson. Only after the plea was accepted did
anyone notice that there was no penalty for the crime
of attempted arson. However, the statutes did say that
the sentence for any crime attempted but not actually
committed was to be one-half of the maximum allowable for the actual commission of the crime. Since the
penalty for arson at the time was life imprisonment,
obviously the defendant’s sentence had to be half a life.
Howe made nonsense of that standard.
“Scripture tells us that we knoweth not the day nor
the hour of our departure,” he told the judge. “Can this
court sentence the prisoner at the bar to half of his natural life? Will it, then, sentence him to half a minute or
to half the days of Methuselah?” The judge gave up
and set Reilly free; the state legislature rushed to revise
the arson statutes shortly thereafter.
On another occasion the pair almost managed to
make murder legal in New York State. It happened in
November 1888, when a client named Handsome
Harry Carlton was convicted of having killed a cop.
Since the jury failed to recommend mercy, the death
penalty was mandatory. Little Abe studied the statutes
very carefully and pointed out to Howe that in the
month of November there was no death penalty for
murder on the books, the state having abolished hanging the previous June, with the provision that it be
replaced by the electric chair. The new death-dealing
apparatus was to start functioning on the following
Houston, Temple L. (1860–1905) criminal lawyer
The son of Texas patriot Sam Houston, Temple Houston became one of the West’s most colorful lawyers.
Tall, with hair down to his shoulders, he cut a flamboyant figure in long Prince Albert coats, white sombreros
and ties fashioned out of rattlesnake skin.
As a courtroom orator, Houston had few equals.
Defending a prostitute named Millie Stacy for plying
her trade in 1899, he mesmerized the jury with oratory.
Proclaiming that, “where the star of purity once glittered on her girlish brow, burning shame has set its seal
forever,” he begged the all-male jury to let Millie “go in
peace.” They did.
Some of his tactics were most unusual. Representing
a man who had shot first when facing a skilled gunfighter, Houston, in an effort to demonstrate the speed
the victim possessed, whipped out a pair of Colt .45s
and blazed away at the judge and jury. When peace was
restored, the lawyer got around to mentioning that the
guns had been loaded with blanks. It was an effective
demonstration, but the jury still convicted his client.
Undismayed, Houston argued for a new trial on the
grounds that when the jurors had scattered after he
started shooting they had mingled with the courtroom
crowd and therefore could no longer be considered
sequestered. The lawyer won his appeal and the eventual freedom of his client.
Houston was himself an expert gunman and easily
outpointed Bat Masterson in a shooting contest.
Besides being called on many times to lead posses after
criminals, he fought several duels and never sustained a
wound. Once, he got into a saloon shoot-out with
another lawyer at the conclusion of a trial and killed his
opponent. He then defended himself successfully in
court, pleading self-defense.
Temple Houston died of a stroke in Woodward,
Okla. A newspaper called him “a mingling of nettles
and flowers” and observed that the Southwest “probably will never see his counterpart.”
Howard, Joseph
See CIVIL WAR GOLD HOAX.
Howe and Hummel
shyster lawyers
Howe and Hummel were easily the grandest shysters
ever to seek out a loophole, suborn a witness or free
a guilty man. Practicing in New York from 1869 to
439
HOYT, George
No one ever computed exactly what percentage of
murderers Howe and Hummel got off scot-free, but a
prosecutor once estimated it was at least 70 percent,
and “90 percent of them were guilty.”
Whenever they had a client who was obviously as
guilty as could be, the pair went into their bandage routine, having the defendant appear swathed in yards of
white bandage, as though to suggest so frail a mind that
his brains might fall out at any moment. One contemporary account tells of a Howe and Hummel client who
simulated a village idiot’s tic by “twitching the right
corner of the mouth and simultaneously blinking the
left eye.” As soon as he was cleared, the defendant’s
face “resumed its normal composure, except for the
large grin that covered it as he lightly removed the
cloths from about his forehead.” Another client, whose
supposedly blithering insanity was accompanied by
muteness and an ability to communicate only by sign
language, seized Howe’s hand gratefully when the verdict was announced in his favor and boomed, “Silence
is golden.”
The pair did not always resort to such trickery.
When it was more convenient, they simply bribed witnesses and appropriate officials to get records changed,
yet somehow they never ran into deep trouble until
after Howe died in 1906. The following year Hummel
was caught paying $1,000 to facilitate a divorce action.
He was sentenced to two years in prison. Released at
the age of 60, Hummel retired to Europe and died in
London in January 1926, a regular to the end in the visitors’ section during trials at the Old Bailey.
See also: HANDSOME HARRY CARLTON, IN DANGER,
FREDERICKA “MARM” MANDELBAUM.
January 1, and as Hummel noted, the law specifically
said that electrocution should apply to all convictions
punishable by death on and after January 1.
When Carlton came up for sentencing, early in
December, Howe objected as the judge prepared to pronounce the death penalty. In fact, he objected to any
sentence being passed on Carlton. If the jury had recommended mercy, Carlton could be sentenced to life
imprisonment, the lawyer noted. “However, my client
has been convicted of first-degree murder with no recommendation of mercy and there is no law on the
books covering such a crime.
He then read the precise language in the new law
and concluded that all the judge could do was turn his
client free. Nonplussed, the judge delayed sentencing
while the case moved to the state supreme court. Quite
naturally, Howe and Hummel’s contention made headlines across the country. In New York the public reaction was one of utter shock. According to the lawyers’
contention, anyone committing murder between June
and the new year could not be executed. Other murderers confined in death cells clamored to be released on
the ground that they were being wrongfully held and
could not be executed.
The district attorney’s office vowed to fight the matter, and Inspector Thomas Byrnes of the New York
Police Department’s Detective Bureau pledged to the
public that his men would continue to clap murderers
behind bars, law or no law.
In the end, Howe and Hummel lost out on their
interpretation; the high court ruled that no slip in syntax could be used as an excuse to legalize murder.
Harry Carlton swung from the gallows two days after
Christmas, a nick-of-time execution. However, if Carlton had lost out, Howe and Hummel did not; their
crafty efforts brought many felons and murderers to
their office door.
Buoyed by the publicity, the two shysters coauthored
a book entitled In Danger, or Life in New York: A True
History of the Great City’s Wiles and Temptations.
They explained in the preface that it was published in
the interest of justice and to protect the innocent from
the guilty, but what they actually turned out was a
primer on every type of crime—blackmail, house burglary, card sharping, safecracking, shoplifting, jewel
thievery and, of course, murder.
It became an immediate best-seller, with bookstore
owners noticing a lot of traffic in their shops by persons
who did not appear to be frequent book buyers. The
book became required reading for every professional or
would-be lawbreaker, from streetwalkers to killers.
More and more when Howe and Hummel asked a new
client, “Who sent you?” the stock reply was, “I read
about you in the book.”
Hoyt, George (?–1877) Wyatt Earp victim
George Hoyt, a Texas cowboy and alleged outlaw, was
killed by Wyatt Earp in Dodge City, which in itself was
a distinction. Despite the reputation he gained there as a
gun-toting lawman, Earp killed only one man in Dodge
City, and his chief deputy, Bat Masterson, killed none.
The fact that Earp and Masterson were nicknamed the
Fighting Pimps perhaps indicates what they meant by
“cleaning up” the town. Not that Earp’s brand of justice didn’t include plenty of violence, especially against
cowboys, for whom he always showed considerable
contempt. Earp proudly recalled, “As practically every
prisoner heaved into the calaboose was thoroughly buffaloed (crowned with a revolver barrel) in the process,
we made quite a dent in cowboy conceit.”
One cattleman subjected to this treatment was Tobe
Driskill. Following his experience Driskill supposedly
put, in true Texas style, a $1,000 reward on Earp’s
head. There was some indication that a couple of
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HURRAHING the town
drunken cowboys tried to collect that reward, but they
missed Earp and he missed them. Finally, George Hoyt
gave it a try. Hoyt was allegedly a wanted outlaw in
Texas, and as a further inducement to kill Earp,
Driskill is said to have promised to use his influence in
order to get the charges against Hoyt dropped. On
July 26, 1877 Hoyt rode into the town’s plaza and
fired six shots at Earp, who was standing in front of
the Comique Theater, where Eddie Foy was at the
moment singing “Kalamazoo in Michigan.” Three of
the bullets whizzed by Earp and plowed through the
door of the theater and into the audience section, hitting nobody but causing Foy to drop flat on his face.
Hoyt’s mount bucked furiously, making him a poor
target, but Earp still spilled the cowboy in the dirt
with his third shot. Hoyt lingered a month before
dying and never told Earp who had hired him to do
the job.
Bloody riots at the Oregon State Prison at Salem
during World War I were in large measure aimed at
eliminating this cruel instrument of torture. Needless to
say, the leaders of riots were subjected to the humming
bird, although its use in Oregon prisons was discontinued shortly thereafter.
Hunt, Sam “Golf Bag” (?–1956) Capone mob enforcer
Together with Machine Gun McGurn, Sam “Golf Bag”
Hunt was perhaps the toughest of the Capone mob
enforcers, or “blazers,” as they were more commonly
called. Placed on the Chicago Crime Commission’s list
of the city’s public enemies, Hunt was often described
as the killer of no less than 20 men. He got his nickname as a result of one of his more colorful assassinations, the victim of which remains a mystery.
One day in 1927 a Chicagoan was taking an early
morning stroll along Lake Michigan’s beautiful South
Shore when the boom of shotgun blasts disturbed
the tranquil air. He hurried in the direction of the
shots and found a corpse, so recently rendered dead
that blood was still oozing forth. The morning stroller rushed to a telephone and informed the police.
The officers who responded came across Hunt and
McGurn less than a half mile away. When asked about
the golf bag he was carrying, Hunt gave a reasonable
explanation: “Jack and I were going out to play a little
golf.”
This answer, however, did not prevent the policemen
from peering into the bag and finding among the golf
clubs a semiautomatic shotgun. The weapon was still
warm, a fact that convinced the police they had a hot
clue. But it didn’t turn out that way. The good citizen
led them to the spot where he had found the body, but
it was no longer there. Either the dead man had walked
away or he had been carted away, and all that
remained was a splatter of blood on the dewy grass.
In any event, there was nothing to link Hunt to a
crime, and the only thing he was tagged with was a permanent nickname. The athletically inclined assassin
outlived his mentor Capone and most of the other blazers, dying in 1956 in his late fifties.
Hughes, John R. (1855–1946) Texas Ranger
Illinois-born John Hughes was one of the most productive of all Texas Rangers. He compiled an outstanding record of captures, even crossing the Rio
Grande, with or without permission, to bring back an
outlaw. In 1877 Hughes gave up running his Texas
horse ranch after he had been forced to go after a
gang of six rustlers who had taken his stock. He killed
four of them and captured the other two, but he also
realized that as the sole operator of his ranch, he
would continue to suffer losses from his herd. Hughes
eventually decided that if he had to chase rustlers, he
might as well get paid for it, and he joined the
Rangers.
By 1883 Hughes had risen to captain, a high rank in
the law organization, and single-handedly had brought
in the notorious outlaw Juan Perales. Over the years he
was also responsible for wiping out such gangs as the
Ybarras, Friars and Massays. Hughes ended his career
in 1915 at the age of 60 and died in 1946.
humming bird, the
prison torture
It is perhaps futile to attempt to single out the most
hideous and brutal torture ever practiced on the
inmates of prisons in the United States, but “the hummingbird” was certainly among the worst. This innocuous-sounding name was applied to a technique that
involved placing a prisoner, chained hand and foot, in a
steel bathtub filled with water. He was then rubbed
down with a sponge attached to an electric battery.
According to one description of the torture’s agonizing
effects, “Two or three minutes and the victim is ready
for the grave or the mad house.”
hurrahing the town
cowboy custom
In the quiet lives of Western town dwellers, one of the
most disruptive events was when the cowboys came
into town, “yippeeing” their ponies along the plank
walks and into the saloons. These “ruffians” on horseback would later ride out of town firing their six-shooters
in the air. Undeniably there was gunplay, drunken
brawling and wanton vandalism, the same that existed back east in the infamous dives of New York,
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HYPNOTISM and crime
Cincinnati and Chicago, where huge street gangs literally would take apart a saloon or a whole row of
saloons when the notion struck them. Indeed, Western
cowboys, even when “hurrahing the town,” were
restrained by comparison.
Historian Ramon F. Adams describes the practice
from the cowhand’s perspective:
their usual control over themselves. Writing in the Journal of Criminal Law, he quoted findings of some psychologists that “a hypnotist who really wished a
murder could almost certainly get it.”
Of course, it has never been proven that a hypnotist
can actually get another person to commit a murder for
him, since such a test, obviously, cannot be carried out.
Yet numerous stage hypnotists have demonstrated the
ability to get people to commit other crimes against
their conscience. In a well-publicized demonstration at
New York City’s Carnegie Hall, one hypnotist called
several people to the stage and induced them to rob
members of the audience when they returned to their
seats. He did so by hypnotizing them and giving them
cards that read: “You must raise money for a charity
that will save hundreds of children from starvation.
The people from whom you are taking things are
wicked and do not deserve their ill-gotten gains. You
cannot possibly be caught.”
The hypnotized persons returned to their seats without the audience being informed about what they had
been instructed to do. When they were told to return to
the stage, they had with them a number of wallets and
a woman’s handbag, all stolen without the victims’
knowledge.
The note, according to student of hypnotism, had
broken down all mental resistance by the subjects.
While no one can be forced to perform an act that he
knows is wrong, they say, he can be induced to commit
an illegal act if he is convinced it is right. The note had
the added value of assuring the subjects they would not
be caught, thus overcoming any fear factor. Similarly, in
tests at various universities hypnotized subjects threw
sulfuric acid into a person’s face, which unknown to
them, was protected by an invisible sheet of glass. Some
subjects threw the acid with an obvious pleasurable display of violence, while others shuddered and only
threw it after considerable hesitation.
Disbelievers say such experiments prove nothing
because the subject, although in a trance, is still aware
that the experiments are being conducted in a laboratory or entertainment atmosphere and thus knows he
will not be permitted to do anything wrong. Since a
hypnotized person “knows” he won’t be called upon to
commit murder, he will pick up a gun and fire it, reasoning the weapon will be loaded with blanks. Assistant District Attorney Levy countered this view by
pointing out that all a hypnotist bent on homicide
would have to do was convince a person that he was
merely undergoing a psychological test and that the gun
contained blanks and then substitute real bullets.
Occasionally newspaper stories report a person’s
claim that he or she was hypnotized into committing a
crime, but there is no recent record of any such story
Let’s follow a newly paid-off puncher with $100—
three or four months’ pay—burning a hole in his
pocket. First he visits a barber, has a tangle of beard
removed and his hair cut. Then he drops into a dry
goods store and buys himself a new outfit. Now he is
ready to celebrate. The saloon men, the gamblers, the
pimps, are all waiting to filch his hard-earned pay. The
bartender sets out a bottle of cheap frontier whiskey,
“two bits a throw.” A little heady after a few drinks,
the puncher heads for the poker table, where a flashy
gambler is waiting with his marked cards. Our puncher
watches the dealer’s pile of chips grow and his own
melt away. Convinced he is being robbed, he can’t
prove it. Finally, pockets empty, he pulls away from the
table, mounts his pony, races up and down the street
and blazes a few indignant shots at the stars. Then,
with a yell, he spurs the pony and gallops out of town,
heading for the security of his cow camp. And yet,
because of this type of conduct, he became known to
the Easterner as a bloodthirsty demon, reckless and
rowdy, weighted down with guns and itching to use
them.
Writers of the day insisted the cowboys were
semisavages and lionized the likes of Hickok, Earp,
Masterson and Holliday—the men who regarded the
gamblers, whoremasters and saloonkeepers as clients
and the cowboys as foes. Wyatt Earp especially held the
cowboy in contempt. For some time he operated a con
game with Mysterious Dave Mather in Mobeetie, Tex.
selling phony gold bricks to gullible trail hands.
See also: WYATT EARP, GOLD BRICK SWINDLE.
hypnotism and crime
Can a person under hypnosis be made to commit murder or another crime? For years the possible use of hypnotism in murders and other crimes has been a subject
of debate in scientific circles, with the weight of opinion apparently slowly shifting to the side of those who
think it possible. Even legal authorities have admitted
the need to deal with the problem. In the 1950s a New
York prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Sheldon S.
Levy, raised the possibility of law-abiding citizens being
hypnotized against their will and made, by various
means, to commit acts they would not do if they had
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HYPNOTISM and detection
being accepted. Indeed, the California Supreme Court
once said that “the law of the United States does not
recognize hypnotism.”
One classic murder case that seems to come closest
to proving the murder by hypnosis theory occurred in
Minnesota in 1894. Harry Hayward was a young blade
about Minneapolis who was known as a lady’s man as
well as a hard-drinking, heavy-gambling, all-around
sport. He was also a student of hypnotism, having
taken a course on the subject. Some students of crime
are convinced that he used this power to win the favors
and money of Katherine Ging and to get her to assign
her insurance—$10,000 worth—over to him.
Hayward was also practicing his power of hypnosis
on a local handyman named Claus Blixt, whom he convinced to carry out relatively minor crimes, such as
burning down a small factory on which Kitty Ging held
a mortgage. Kitty collected the insurance money, and
Hayward collected from her. Soon, the lady was down
to no assets but her life insurance. For days Hayward
talked to the handyman, always making him look into
his eyes as he spoke. Hayward later confessed, “I
would repeat over a few times how easy it was to kill
someone, and pretty soon he would be saying right
after me, ‘Sure, that’s easy; nothing to that.’”
Whether the handyman was actually under hypnosis
at the time he murdered Katherine Ging or whether his
will to resist the idea had simply been broken by suggestions made during earlier trances was never made
clear. But either way, Blixt committed the murder while
Hayward was miles away establishing an alibi. Hayward was later hanged for the killing, but the handyman, a relatively pathetic character, was allowed to
plead guilty and drew a lesser sentence.
Another supposed hypnotic murderer, convicted in
1894, was Dr. Henry Meyer, who left a string of
corpses from New York to Chicago. Before setting himself up as a doctor in the Midwest, Meyer had studied
hypnotism in Leipzig, Germany under Professor Herbert Flint, one of the celebrated mesmerists of the era.
Meyer murdered several persons to collect on their
insurance polices. He killed his first wife and then the
husband of another woman so that he could marry her.
When he saw a chance to kill his second wife for
$75,000, he conceived a murder plan involving hypnosis. Meyer chose as the tool of his plot a plumber
named Peter Bretz, an ideal hypnotic subject who soon
fell under his spell. He convinced the plumber that he
was in love with Mrs. Meyer, who apparently was
ready herself for an affair of the heart, and should run
away with her. Bretz was to take the second Mrs.
Meyer to Arizona, offer to show her the Grand Canyon
and, when nobody was around, shove her over the
canyon lip. The plumber and the intended victim had
actually reached the Grand Canyon when he broke out
of the spell. The couple then returned to Chicago and
revealed the plot to authorities. But since the authorities at that time could not possibly get a grand jury to
swallow such a tale, Meyer went free to commit
another murder before being brought to justice. Students of hypnotic crime insist the Meyer case deserves
closer study. Basically, despite the claims of some
believers in the feasibility of hypnotic murder, the justice system continues to ignore the question.
See also: KATHERINE “KITTY” GING.
hypnotism and detection
Experts agree that hypnotism, if properly used, can
play an important role in fighting crime, far greater
than the potential danger that it may be when
employed in the commission of crimes. In the 1976 kidnapping of 26 children in a school bus in Chowchilla,
Calif. hypnosis helped the bus driver remember part of
the license plate number of a van used in the kidnapping so that the police were able to trace the vehicle to
the criminals. New York police made an arrest in the
murder of a young female cellist at the Metropolitan
Opera House after a ballerina who had seen a man
with the musician was enabled by hypnosis to give a
description for a police sketch. Part of what convinced
police that Albert DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler
was his description under hypnosis of gory details concerning the sex murders and the tortured thoughts that
made him commit his terrible crimes.
Similarly, hypnotic examination of a young man,
Allen Curtis Lewis, who had admitted to pushing a
young woman, Renee Katz, onto the New York City
subway tracks in 1979, as well as of a Connecticut
teenager, Peter Reilly, who had confessed murdering his
mother, helped clear them, revealing, among other
things, how their confessions had been produced by
subtle coercion.
There are, however, a number of obstacles to widespread police use of hypnosis. One is that attempts
have been made to interrogate suspects under hypnosis
against their will. The second objection is that hypnotized persons do not necessarily give reliable information. In the $2.7 million Brinks robbery during the
1950s, police traced a license plate number furnished
under hypnosis only to find it belonged to a college
president who had an iron-clad alibi not only for himself but for his car as well. In another case a man
charged with the murder of a child supplied “hypnotized” evidence that indicated his wife, rather than he,
was the guilty party. However, discrepancies turned up
indicating that the suspect had used the opportunity to
try to shift the guilt away from himself.
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HYPNOTISM and detection
defendant. . . . It seems quite probable that the police
and the District Attorney, relying too heavily on the
confessions that they had obtained . . . failed to do the
essential careful and intensive investigation that should
be done before a defendant is charged with a crime, certainly one as serious as murder.
A classic example of the perils of accepting as legal
evidence a confession obtained by hypnosis is the case
of Camilo W. Leyra, Jr., who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1950 hammer slaying of his 74year-old father and 80-year-old mother. He was
released from the death house in 1956 after an appeals
court overturned his conviction for a third time because
the only evidence against him was his original confession obtained through hypnosis. Stated the New York
Court of Appeals:
Despite the dangers of misuse, there is little doubt
that the practice of hypnosis will continue to grow. The
New York Police Department has firm rules against
using the method on any person even slightly suspected
of being guilty of the crime. At one time Los Angeles
police had 11 officers trained in hypnosis and have
used the method in 600 cases. In 90 percent of the cases
the hypnotic probes were said to have provided information that led to an arrest.
The prosecution has produced not a single trustworthy
bit of affirmative, independent evidence connecting the
defendant with the crime. Under the circumstances, a
regard for the fundamental concept of justice and fairness, if not due process, imposes upon the court the
duty to write finis to further prosecution against the
444
I
Ice Cream Bar Robbery
that the normally meticulous execution proved impossible and the victim was simply ice-picked to death.
minor crime, major sentence
Few minor crime convictions in the 1990s provoked
more nationwide anger than what was facetiously
dubbed in the media “The Great Ice Cream Bar Robbery.” A black teenager, Dehundra Caldwell, a first
offender, was convicted in 1992 for stealing ice cream
bars from the cafeteria of a Thomaston, Ga., middle
school.
White superior court judge Andrew Whalen sentenced the 17-year-old to three years in prison. Following outcries throughout the country that the judge had
been racist and unfair, Caldwell was released after serving 10 days of his sentence. The board of pardons then
put Caldwell on two years’ probation.
ice pick kill
Ida the Goose War
New York underworld feud
If Homeric Greece had its Helen of Troy, the New York
underworld had its Ida the Goose. Despite her rather
unromantic name, the only one that has come down
through posterity, Ida the Goose was a noted beauty, a
maiden whose favors were traditionally reserved for the
leaders of the notorious Gopher Gang of Hell’s
Kitchen. Ida was the last woman, so far as is known, to
have caused a full-scale gang war over an affair of the
heart.
In the early 1900s the Gophers were one of the most
prominent gangs of the city, especially following the
fractionalization of the powerful and bloody Eastman
gang as a result of the imprisonment of their leader,
Monk Eastman. One group of Eastmans, perhaps 400
to 500 strong, rallied to the banner of Chick Tricker,
who maintained his headquarters at his own Cafe
Maryland on West 28th Street. The Tricker gangsters
engaged in all sorts of criminality from robbery to
homicide. Their main battles generally were fought
against other former members of the Eastman gang
who had joined up with Big Jack Zelig or Jack Sirocco.
Tricker hardly wanted an additional war with the
Gophers, but he proved powerless against the momentum of events that bore down on him.
It started when a tough Tricker gangster, Irish Tom
Riley, who, despite his name, was probably a Spanish
Jew, won the heart of Ida the Goose and lured her from
the bosom of the Gophers to the Cafe Maryland. The
murder technique
Long a favorite rub-out method of Mafia hit men, the
so-called ice pick kill is employed to make a murder
victim’s death appear to be the result of natural causes.
Generally, the victim is forced into a men’s room or
some isolated place, and while two or three of the hit
men hold him still, the killer wielding the ice pick jams
the weapon through his eardrum into the brain. The
pick produces only a tiny hole in the ear and only a
small amount of bleeding, which is carefully wiped
clean, but massive bleeding occurs in the brain, causing
death. Examination of the victim by a doctor generally
results in a finding that the person has died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Only expert medical examiners are
capable of uncovering murder. When a gangland murder victim is found with numerous ice pick wounds,
police generally theorize the victim struggled so much
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IMMIGRATION, illegal
enraged Gophers sent a delegation to retrieve their lost
princess, but both she and her new lover refused to
agree to her return to Hell’s Kitchen. Tricker merely
shrugged. He would not order the surrender of Ida,
since that would represent a loss of face. Over the next
several weeks the Gophers and the Trickers had numerous hand-to-hand confrontations, including a few nonfatal stabbings, but after a while finally it appeared the
Gophers had lost interest in launching a total war to
regain Ida the Goose.
Thus, it was a surprise when on a snowy night in
October 1909 four Gophers brazenly strolled into the
Maryland and ordered beer at the bar. About a halfdozen Trickers, their noted leader absent, sat at tables
eyeing the intrusion with both shock and disbelief. Had
Tricker himself been present, he probably would have
ordered an immediate attack on the hated intruders. As
it was, only Ida the Goose spoke up with indignation.
“Say! Youse guys got a nerve!”
The Gophers silently drained their mugs and then
one said, “Well, let’s get at it!”
They whirled around, each man holding two
revolvers, and opened fire. Five of the surprised Trickers went down, several mortally wounded. Only Ida’s
lover was unscathed, and he scrambled across the floor
and dove under his lady’s voluminous skirts. The
Gophers made no move to shoot him, instead watching
Ida the Goose to see what she would do.
The lady surveyed the scene a moment, shrugged
and contemptuously raised her skirts. “Say, youse!” she
said. “Come out and take it!”
Trembling on his hands and knees, her lover crawled
out to the middle of the floor. Four revolvers barked,
and he fell dead with four slugs in him. One of the
Gophers strode forward and put another bullet in his
brain. The four assassins then turned and walked out to
the street, followed at a respectful distance by Ida the
Goose. She fully understood the honor bestowed on her
by having been the cause of such a great battle, and it
was said that she nevermore strayed from her place of
adornment in Hell’s Kitchen.
See also: KISS OF DEATH GIRLS.
immigration, illegal
In Danger
indeed were celebrated attorneys and probably the
most corrupt New York has ever seen. As they declared
in a moral-toned preface, the two wrote the book after
being moved by a clergyman’s sermon in which he had
declared, “It had been well for many an honest lad and
unsuspecting country girl that they had never turned
their steps cityward nor turned them from the simplicity of their country home toward the snares and pitfalls
of crime and vice that await the unwary in New York.”
That was the last piece of high-minded drivel to appear
in the book, the rest of which was given over to a
detailed guide on what to steal and how.
By way of invitation, Howe and Hummell wrote of
“elegant storehouses, crowded with the choicest and
most costly goods, great banks whose vaults and safes
contain more bullion than could be transported by the
largest ships, colossal establishments teeming with diamonds, jewelry, and precious stones gathered from all
the known and uncivilized portions of the globe—all this
countless wealth, in some cases so insecurely guarded.”
Having thus whetted the appetites of novice and
would-be criminals, they hastened to add that “all the
latest developments in science and skill are being successfully pressed into the service of the modern criminal.” The ever-helpful authors went into detailed
technical descriptions of various devices used by jewel
thieves and shoplifters, such as “the traveling bag with
false, quick-opening sides . . . the shoplifter’s muff . . .
the lady thieves’ corsets.” There were instructions for
making one’s own burglar tools and descriptions of the
methods used in various skin games and the mathematical formulas used for rigging cards. And did crime
pay? Howe and Hummel never said so in so many
words, but, e.g., of shoplifting they stated, “In no
particular can the female shiplifter be distinguished
from other members of her sex except perhaps that in
most cases she is rather more richly and attractively
dressed.”
The great shysters also touted certain legal services
available at “what we may be pardoned for designating
the best-known criminal law offices in America.”
In Danger was severely criticized by the police and
denounced from the pulpits, but each fresh denunciation merely produced more sales of the book.
See also: HOWE AND HUMMEL.
See POLLOS.
Indian police
primer for criminals
One of the few techniques of self-government introduced
by the white man to the Indian that had a modicum of
success was the Indian police force and court system. The
system proved popular with the Indians themselves
because it took them away from the white man’s justice,
which for the red man simply did not exist.
Probably no book ever published in America was more
blatantly an instruction guide to criminality than In
Danger, or Life in New York: A True History of a
Great City’s Wiles and Temptations, which appeared in
1888. The book was signed, “Howe and Hummel, the
Celebrated Criminal Lawyers.” Howe and Hummel
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INFANTICIDE
The first to experiment with the concept of Indian
police were Gen. George Crook and Indian agent John
P. Clum, both of whom persisted despite being called
the “Indian lovers.” Even the anti-Indian Interior
Department saw that the Indian police had value
because they relieved the government of the need and
expense of supplying troops to preserve peace on the
reservations. Indians charged with committing crimes
against other Indians were brought to Indian courts for
trial and given justice that average Indians would
accept as valid.
Clum made the most effective use of Indian police,
and with their aid he brought in Geronimo in April
1877, scoring a great coup. Shortly thereafter, he
informed the government he was prepared to supervise all the Apache in Arizona without the help of
army troops provided he be allowed to raise two companies of Indian police. The government, however,
would not accept the proposal because it was assuming a more restrictive policy, including forced migration of the Indians. During those later migrations the
loyal Indian police were treated as roughly and
unfairly as any other Indians. By then Indian police
were hated by most other Indians. From a certain perspective, they played the same sort of role performed
by the police of the Warsaw ghetto during World War
II. Certainly, the murder of Sitting Bull in 1890 by a
number of Indian police was done at the instigation
of white men wishing to avoid any direct involvement.
See also: JOHN P. CLUM.
Judith Catchpole may or may not have been the first
woman tried for infanticide in America, but she did
establish a first of a kind. While surviving details of the
case are somewhat sketchy, it is known that in September 1656 the first all-female jury in the colonies was
empaneled in the General Provincial Court at Patuxent,
Md. to hear evidence concerning the charge that she
had murdered her child. Catchpole claimed she had
never even been pregnant, and after hearing her evidence, the jury acquitted her.
In a bizarre case in Maryland in 1976, a 19-year-old
mother killed her baby boy as she was dressing him to
go to church service, while a young woman friend
watched in horror. The mother started screaming she
could see the devil trying to enter her baby and she
tried to stop him by slapping the child and scratching
at his navel—while he screamed in agony—and,
finally, wringing the baby’s neck. When the mother
appeared in court five months later, all the parties—
prosecution defense and psychiatrists—agreed she had
been insane at the time of the act, and an insanity plea
of not guilty was accepted. However, when the judge
asked for testimony on her current condition, psychiatrists would not certify her as insane, and she was
freed. Yet, the horror of society toward the crime of
infanticide was exhibited in the legal treatment
accorded to the woman friend who had watched the
killing. Because she had not attempted to stop the
mother’s insane acts, for whatever reason, she was sentenced to a seven-year prison term.
When fathers do commit infanticide, the victim is
almost always a boy, rarely either a daughter or a baby.
The underlying motive may be an attempt to gain
supremacy in the household, but occasionally, the
motive has been monetary. On Halloween night 1974,
in Pasadena, Tex. Ronald O’Bryan poisoned his eightyear-old son, Tim, with cyanide to collect the boy’s
$65,000 life insurance policy. O’Bryan was sentenced
to the electric chair.
Because of the close-knit relationships involved and
the horror of the crime, experts agree that a large number of infanticide cases are hushed up by families that,
having one loss, see nothing to be gained from having
another. Thus, it is generally believed that the rate of
infanticide is greatly understated. Society also simply
ignores other forms of infanticide. In a classic study of
the subject, Infanticide: Past and Present, Maria W.
Piers refers to babies who are “forgotten,” or left
behind, by their young mothers immediately after delivery. This happens especially in impoverished sections.
Piers states: “Many of them probably assume that their
babies will survive, but the assumption is incorrect.
Because of insufficient hospital staff and the inefficiency of adoption procedures, human babies die in
infanticide
Next to spouse slaying, the most common type of murders within families is infanticide. It is estimated that
parents kill about 600 or 700 children a year, or about
3 percent of the total murder toll. However, if killings
not reported as murders could be counted, the infanticide rate would probably be much higher.
Very few cases of infanticide are committed by
fathers, but experts agree this is simply because they
have far less contact with babies than mothers have.
Mothers who murder their offspring usually suffer
from emotional disturbances and build up to the deed
over a long period of time. Generally, less severe forms
of child abuse provide warning signals of the impending tragedy. Some mothers become fearful of the possibility of what they might do to their children and have
themselves committed. A California mother recently
signed herself into Napa Hospital after trying to kill her
two tiny sons. She received some therapy and was sent
home. Later she killed both boys and then failed in a
suicide attempt.
447
INFORMER
and the “Rose of Cimarron,” who supposedly had
saved his life.
See also: BILL DOOLIN, GEORGE “BITTER CREEK” NEWCOMB, ROSE OF CIMARRON.
misery from sheer neglect, while authorities avert their
eyes.”
informer
See SQUEALER.
Innocents
Ingalls, Oklahoma Territory, Battle of
western outlaws
A particularly inappropriate name, the Innocents were
members of the most efficient gang of the frontier West,
bossed by a magnetic personality, Henry Plummer, doubling as the Montana sheriff whose duty it was to contain the sudden rampage of criminality. The full story
of the Innocents can never be told since it is impossible
to pinpoint each of the hundreds of crimes they committed; the murders attributed to the band have been
fixed by most historians at 102.
In 1862 Plummer, a lawman in California until he
got into trouble because of a couple of messy murders
and other, lesser infractions, drifted into what is now
southwest Montana, where gold had been discovered.
He assembled a large group of outlaws, including a
number he had used in previous criminal endeavors in
Idaho. Most were in their teens or early twenties. Plummer himself, a handsome rogue who had a way with
women, was only 25 or so. Some historians have
insisted that the Plummer gang was composed of murderous juvenile delinquents. But this overlooks the fact
that it was traditional in the West for men to hit the
outlaw trail at an extremely young age.
The Innocents operated with a certain childlike fervor and enthusiasm, terrorizing stagecoaches and miners hauling ore in and out of Bannack. Since at one time
the Innocents totaled over 100 men, they needed secret
ways of identifying themselves to one another and thus
wore red bandanas with special sailor knots. They used
a secret handclasp and the password innocent when
meeting, under the assumption that saying such a word
could hardly imply any kind of guilt.
The only recourse for the victims of the Innocents
was the local sheriff, Henry Plummer, who, while sympathetic, seemed incapable of stemming the criminal
tide. The Innocents, however, were too vast an organization not to spring leaks, and in time, suspicion spread
to Plummer himself. A Montana vigilante movement
sprang up, and in a six-week period in late 1863 and
early 1864, they hung no less than 26 outlaws, including Plummer, who met his doom on a scaffold he had
built himself as part of his legal duties. The rest of the
gang scattered, although some others were to receive
the same rough-hewn justice throughout the rest of the
year.
Over the years Henry Plummer and his Innocents
became the inspiration of a near-endless string of stories, books and movies depicting the nefarious activities
One of the great gunfights of the West, the Battle of
Ingalls on September 1, 1893 added significantly to the
folklore of a dying era. The battle resulted from a disastrous effort by the law to capture the Bill Doolin gang,
a hell-for-leather outfit that probably enjoyed greater
down-home esteem than was ever achieved by the
James gang or Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch.
One of the gang’s many headquarters was the clapboard town of Ingalls, some 10 miles east of Stillwater.
In Ingalls they felt safe because the locals were friendly
and sympathizers would hurry in with reports whenever a posse approached.
On the night of August 31, the U.S. marshal’s office
in Guthrie got a tip that the Doolin gang was carousing
in Ingalls, and the following day a posse of marshals
slipped into town in a covered wagon to wipe out the
gang in one swoop. The lawmen might have succeeded
in their mission had not one of the gang, Bitter Creek
Newcomb, spotted them as he came out of Murray’s
Saloon. There is some indication that Newcomb had
been tipped off. What followed was the celebrated Battle of Ingalls, which proved to be a resounding triumph
for the outlaws. Three deputy marshals were killed,
while all of the gang survived and only one of them,
Arkansas Tom, who was asleep in his hotel room at the
time, was captured as the rest were escaping. Bill Dalton’s horse went down. Bill Doolin rode back for him,
and the two of them shared the same mount in a daring
dash to freedom. The most amazing escape of all, however, was Bitter Creek Newcomb’s, who for a time was
literally enveloped in mushrooming dust caused by the
posse’s bullets. He was wounded but survived to get
away, an accomplishment so incredible that a very special savior was invented for him. The legend developed
that Newcomb had lived through the battle because a
daring young lass who loved him came charging to his
rescue with an extra gunbelt of ammunition, that she
shielded him with her own body and that she even provided protective fire for him. The best evidence is that
there was no girl involved in any way in the fighting,
but the myth grew nonetheless.
The Battle of Ingalls became the Doolin gang’s greatest feat, the lore of it persisting even after the outfit had
disbanded and each member had been blasted into
extinction. They sang praises of the great fight, and
song and story recorded the heroic love of Newcomb
448
INSANITY defense
of a crooked sheriff unmasked in the dramatic denouement.
See also: BANNACK, MONTANA; THOMAS J. DIMSDALE;
BOONE HELM; HAZE LYONS; HENRY PLUMMER; CYRUS SKINNER; VIGILANTES OF MONTANA; ERASTUS “RED” YAGER.
If it were merely a simple choice of finding a murderer,
for instance, either guilty and sending him to prison or
finding him insane and sending him to a mental institution, such criticism would be muted. However, the decision is not always so clear-cut. A not unusual case,
which occurred in California in 1976, involved a
mother who had killed her baby in a religious frenzy.
She pleaded guilty on the ground of insanity, a contention of considerable merit considering her many previous acts of crazed violence. It appeared logical that she
would simply be sent to a mental institution when the
judge accepted her plea. However, while a number of
mental experts agreed the woman had been of unsound
mind when she killed her infant, the preponderance of
opinion on her “current condition” was that she was
not certifiably insane. Under the circumstances, the
judge was forced to release her and, legally, could not
even require her to undergo psychiatric treatment.
Because of numerous publicized cases of this type,
jurors have developed a form of “sophistication,”
rightly or wrongly, leading to their refusal in many
cases to bring in a verdict of insanity for fear the defendant might at some later date be inflicted upon society
again. As a result, several observers agree, obviously
insane persons are being convicted and placed in
prison, a terrible ordeal both for the person and the
institution.
A typical example of this sort was mass murderer
Herbert William Mullin, who, between October 1972
and February 1973, killed at least 13 persons. Mullin
called his victims “sacrifices” and killed them because
he was convinced their deaths were necessary to ward
off a predicted cataclysmic earthquake in California.
Mullin’s record showed five previous hospital releases
after he had voluntarily committed himself each time.
The jurors were described as fearful of what would
happen if they judged him insane and he was later discharged from the hospital for the sixth time. Consequently, they were said to have ignored all the evidence
concerning his mental condition when they brought in
a guilty verdict, requiring him to be sent to prison.
Perhaps because of this trend, the courts in recent
years have become more concerned with protecting the
rights of allegedly insane persons charged with crimes.
Juan Corona was convicted in 1972 for the murders of
25 itinerant farm workers, whose mutilated bodies had
been found in shallow graves in the peach orchards
around Yuba City, Calif. However, in 1978 the courts
ordered a new trial for Corona on the ground that his
attorney had failed to provide him with proper representation. Corona had a history of hallucinations and
mental illness, but his lawyer had refused a psychiatric
examination for him and presented no witnesses on the
subject of his mental state. The appeal judges made it
insanity defense
Most jurisdictions have statutes that protect insane or
incompetent persons from criminal prosecution, but the
legal responsibility of such persons varies considerably
from place to place. Courts recognize that a person
afflicted with insanity or a mental disorder may not be
responsible for his actions and therefore not liable to
prosecution. However, the legal tests for insanity have
long been the subject of much confusion. Some states
apply the “wild beast test,” which requires that to be
judged insane, the defendant must be so devoid of reason that he no more knows what he is doing than
would an infant, a brute or a wild beast. Others call for
a “delusion test,” whereby an accused criminal must be
shown to have been suffering from delusions before
he can be cleared of responsibility. A little over half
the states abide by M’Naghten Rules, which hold an
accused not responsible if he “was laboring under such
a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to
know the nature and the quality of the act he was
doing, or if he did know it, that he did not know he
was doing what was wrong.”
Some states adhere to the “right and wrong test,”
which centers on a defendant’s ability to tell right from
wrong. Another standard used is the “irresistible
impulse test,” which requires that in order to be considered sane there needs to exist, in addition to the capacity for intellectual judgment, the possibility of doing
what is considered right and to refrain from doing what
is thought to be wrong.
A striking case was that of William Milligan who
was charged in 1977 with raping four Ohio State University coeds. Milligan was found to have 10 distinct
personalities, only one of which was criminal. The four
coeds had the misfortune of meeting the wrong one of
the 10. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity
and shipped off to a mental institution. Similarly,
Howard Unruh, the New Jersey mass murderer who
killed 13 neighbors and strangers in the streets of Camden in 1949 never faced trial for his crimes. Instead, he
was sent to the Trenton State Hospital where some
three decades later he was described as quiet and withdrawn, a man in his late fifties who mostly read or sat
around.
The law’s treatment of insane persons charged with
crimes has been the subject of much criticism because
such persons are frequently released from confinement.
449
INSULL, Samuel
clear they did not doubt the evidence against Corona,
but ruled he was entitled to mental competency hearings. At the time of the ruling, a number of California
legal authorities predicted Corona would never be
returned to prison. He was sent to a mental institution
but then retried, convicted and sent back to prison to
serve 25 life sentences. Because of the state of the law
on insanity questions, a number of new causes célèbres
will no doubt emerge in the coming years.
that Insull had done it all with mirrors. The swindler
spent $60 million in the battle and won, but his financial empire was now so weak the bubble had to burst.
The collapse came in June 1932, with investor losses
estimated at $750 million.
Broke at the age of 72, Insull fled to Paris, where he
lived on a yearly pension of $21,000 from a few companies of his that hadn’t gone under. Facing extradition
back to the United States on embezzlement and mail
fraud charges, the old man left France and went to
Greece. The Greek government let him stay a year but
then bowed to U.S. pressure and ordered him out. For a
time Insull drifted about the Mediterranean in a leased
tramp steamer, but he finally had to put in at Instanbul
for supplies. The Turks arrested him and shipped him
back home for trial.
Because Insull’s financial capers were so involved
and often fell into areas where the law was not really
clear, the government failed to prove its charges and he
was able to go back to Paris. He dropped dead on a
street there at the age of 78. At the time, he had assets
of $1,000 cash and debts of $14 million.
Insull, Samuel (1860–1938) stock manipulator
Among the most grandiose swindlers of the 20th century, Samuel Insull built up a multibillion-dollar Midwest utility empire, one of the great financial marvels of
the 1920s, by merging troubled small electric companies into an apparently smooth-running combine. He
was hailed by the nation’s press as the financial genius
of the age, and lucky was the banker from whom Mr.
Insull deigned to borrow money.
Clearly outdoing even Horatio Alger, Insull began
his career as a 14-year-old dropout in his native London and rose to the pinnacle of high finance. He first
worked as an office boy for $1.25 a week and later
became a clerk for Thomas A. Edison’s London agent.
He was so impressive that he was recommended to Edison as a youth worth bringing to America, and the
great inventor made him his secretary in 1881; Insull
was 21 at the time.
Soon, Insull was handling the organization of several
Edison companies, and by 1902 he was president of
Chicago Edison. In 1907 he merged all the electric
companies there into Commonwealth Edison. He then
struck out on his own, joining small, often poorly run
utilities into one operation. By the 1920s he was among
the nation’s richest men, worth $100 million, and people felt they were making the smartest investment in
America when they purchased his stock.
The secret of Insull’s success was to have one of his
electric companies sell properties to another of his companies at a handsome profit over the original cost. The
second company would not be hurt because it would
later sell other properties to yet another Insull company. Thus, even in 1931, at the depths of the Depression, Insull’s Middle West Utilities group reported the
second most profitable year in its history. Of course, by
this time Insull had to do more than sell properties to
himself. He started cutting depreciation allowances in
his various utilities or eliminating them entirely.
Then Insull had to spend huge sums—which he took
in from gullible investors—to fight off takeover bids
from other Wall Street operators eager to latch onto a
strong financial organization. The problem was that if
a takeover occurred the buyers would soon discover
insurance frauds—faked deaths
Cases of “dead men” turning up alive are common in
insurance company fraud files, although the industry
has never seen the virtue of publishing any statistics on
the subject. There is, of course, even less information
on those who have gotten away with such fraud. One
of the most publicized disappearance frauds of all was
perpetrated in the 1930s by John H. Smith, who had
once run for governor of Iowa. Smith made it look as if
he had been burned to death in an auto accident, substituting an embalmed body in his fire-gutted car. Mrs.
Smith later confessed her husband had faked his own
death to fleece an insurance firm out of $60,000 stating, “Under our plan, I was to collect the insurance or
accept it when the insurance company paid it to me,
and then meet John when he got in communication
with me, which might be from one to two years.”
Smith might have gotten away with his plot had he
not developed a roving eye. He committed bigamy during his disappearance by marrying an 18-year-old
Kansas farm girl. That was something Mrs. Smith hadn’t agreed to, and since her wounded pride meant more
to her than $60,000, she screamed for the law as soon
as she learned what her husband had done.
Probably the longest successful insurance disappearance was pulled off by socially prominent Thomas C.
Buntin of Nashville, Tenn. who vanished in 1931.
Shortly thereafter, Buntin’s 22-year-old secretary also
disappeared. Buntin had $50,000 in insurance, and
after waiting the customary seven years, the insurance
450
INTERNET crime
company paid off the claim. However, the firm, New
York Life, did not close the case. It kept up a search for
Buntin, and in 1953—some 22 years after he vanished—the company found him living in Orange, Tex.
with his ex-secretary under the name Thomas D.
Palmer. For 22 years the couple had posed as Mr. and
Mrs. Palmer and had even raised a family.
A trust fund had been established with the money
from Buntin’s insurance policy, and there was still
$31,000 left when he turned up alive. The insurance
company immediately launched legal action to get the
money. As for Buntin, he obviously had not benefitted
personally from the fraud. What was the reason? Very
often a husband wishing to leave his wife and knowing
he cannot expect a divorce will use a disappearing act
to get out from under. Along with acquiring his freedom, the man can feel he has discharged all his duties
as a husband and father by defrauding an insurance
company into providing for his family. In the end,
Buntin and his former secretary suffered no penalties
from the law. In fact, after they were exposed, their
neighbors sent them flowers.
Of course, producing a dead body will make a faked
death even more convincing, but this often entails murder. In the 1930s Philadelphia’s notorious BolberPetrillo murder ring specialized in killing off husbands
so their wives could claim the insurance. Occasionally,
they worked with a loving couple who wanted to enjoy
the fruits of the husband’s life insurance policy while he
was still alive. In such cases the ring would kill an itinerant stranger and use him as a stand-in corpse for the
husband.
Another famous insurance fraud murderer was
Charles Henry Schwartz, a sort of mad scientist. When
Schwartz ran his business into the ground in the 1920s,
he looked for someone to use as a substitute corpse so
that he could collect $200,000 in insurance. He settled
on a traveling evangelist, Warren Gilbert Barbe, and
murdered him in his Berkeley, Calif. laboratory. Since
Barbe didn’t look much like him, Schwartz worked
hard on his substitute. Because Schwartz had a scar on
his own chest, he burned away a section of Barbe’s
chest. He pulled out two teeth from the murdered
man’s upper jaw to match his own missing teeth. To
take care of the difference in eye color between the two,
Schwartz punctured his victim’s eyeballs, and then for
added protection, he blew up the laboratory. Despite all
this, the corpse was soon identified as someone other
than Schwartz and the latter was exposed. To avoid
imprisonment he committed suicide.
Beyond doubt the prize victim of all insurance
swindles was a beautiful but gullible model named
Marie Defenbach. She was persuaded by a Dr. August
M. Unger to join him and two accomplices in a fraud
in which she was to take out $70,000 worth of life
insurance and then fake her own death. The men were
to be her beneficiaries and were to give her half the
money. Dr. Unger assured Marie he would personally
handle her “demise.” He would give her a special
medicine of his own that would induce a deathlike
sleep. Later, the doctor convinced her, she would be
revived in the back room of an undertaking establishment and spirited away, with an unclaimed body left
in her place for cremation. If Marie had had any
sense, she would have realized that it would save the
man a lot of bother and money if they just fed her
some old-fashioned poison. But Marie was already
mentally counting her loot.
On the evening of August 25, 1900, Marie blithely
informed her Chicago landlady she was feeling ill, and
she sent a messenger to get her some medicine. Fifteen
minutes after taking it, she died in terrible agony. In
due course, the true nature of Marie’s death was uncovered by a suspicious uncle, whose investigation finally
led to the arrest and conviction of the culprits.
In a curious sidelight to insurance frauds, the man
responsible for the fact that few insurance company
investigators carry weapons while on the job was a
New Jersey man named J. R. Barlow, who had a wife
and a $200,000 life insurance policy. One day he swam
out from a beach and never swam back. His wife
reported him as missing and applied for the insurance.
The insurance company was suspicious, however, and
after an intensive investigation traced Barlow to Mexico. When he was confronted by an insurance agent,
Barlow turned violent, and in the ensuing struggle the
investigator was forced to shoot him. Ironically, the
insurance company was then compelled to pay off on
his death. Soon after, the company issued a rule forbidding investigators to carry weapons.
See also: WARREN GILBERT BARBE, BOLBER-PETRILLO
MURDER RING, MARIE DEFENBACH.
Internet crime
keyboards beat guns
A 28-year-old Los Gatos, Calif. woman suddenly discovered she was much “richer” than she thought. She
possessed a new $22,000 Jeep, five credit cards, an
apartment and a $3,000 loan listed in her name. The
trouble was she never asked for any of it. It turned out
the woman had been a victim of “identity theft” via the
Internet.
Another woman was impersonating her. All the second woman needed was to get hold of the woman’s
employee-benefits form and it was shopping time. The
victim spent months and months straightening out the
mess. There were scores of angry phone calls, court
appearances and lots of legal expenses. And she con451
INTERROGATION methods
stantly had to demonstrate she was the real her, rather
than her impersonator!
Internet identity theft is getting to be a very common
crime, committed by very sophisticated swindlers. One
expert calls it “the next growth industry in crime.” All
a crook has to do is have a keyboard—no guns necessary. All he or she needs is your full name or Social
Security number to access Internet databases that spew
out your address, phone number, name of employer or
driver’s license. Then they use your good name to get
great credit, and leave you to explain later if you can.
Everyone notes how amazingly the Internet is growing. Well so is Internet fraud. The Internet Fraud
Watch, operated by the National Consumers League,
reports that complaints from 1997 to early 1999 shot
up by an astonishing 600 percent. The number one
complaint involves auctions. In 1997 auctions made up
26 percent of the total frauds reported, and the following year increased to 68 percent. The top auction companies work with authorities to try to cut auction
scams, but the fact is as a Internet Fraud Watch
spokesperson notes, “More people are online, and
more people are being scammed. Consumers need to
remember that con artists are everywhere—even in
cyberspace.”
While most frauds on the Internet are in auctions,
many consumers do well in auctions, but with the traffic soaring the need for consumer protection and
increased education is a must.
The top 10 scams on the Internet in order are auctions, general merchandise sales, computer equipment
and software, Internet services, work-at-home, business
opportunities and franchises, multilevel marketing and
pyramids, credit card offers, advance fee loans and
employment offers.
Anyone can be a target for Internet frauds, even
those who don’t have a computer. Hacker programs
have turned up on the Web allowing people to generate
credit card numbers using the same algorithms as the
ones used by banks. Crooks open accounts with created
numbers and then order products on-line—without
even having the plastic.
In some cases consumers using auto-buying services
have paid money on the assumption the service will
search auctions looking for the car they want. Result:
no car and no money back.
interrogation methods
20th century when he swindled the McGraw-Hill Book
Co. out of $765,000 for a fake autobiography of billionaire recluse Howard R. Hughes. Irving also conned
Life magazine, which planned to print excerpts of the
book with 20 pages of handwritten letters by Hughes.
After examining the letters, a number of handwriting
experts had declared all of them to be genuine.
Together with a friend who was a children’s book
author, Richard Suskind, Irving wrote an engrossing
1,200 page book, which veteran newsmen who had
long covered the enigmatic Hughes found to be most
“authentic.” The scheme was so daring and so outrageous it was widely accepted even after Hughes said in
a telephone call from his hideaway in the Bahamas
that he had never met with Irving and that the work
was “totally fantastic fiction.” Irving’s hoax was
finally wrecked when a Swiss bank broke its vow of
secrecy to reveal that a $650,000 check from the book
publisher to Hughes had been cashed in one Swiss
bank by “H. R. Hughes” and deposited in another
under the name “Helga R. Hughes”—actually Irving’s
wife.
FPO
FIG # 81
TO BE
PICKED-UP
FROM
PREVIOUS ED.
See CONFESSIONS.
Irving, Clifford (1930– ) Howard Hughes book forger
Clifford Irving’s phony biography of Howard Hughes
earned him a dubious distinction from Time magazine.
In 1971 writer Clifford Irving pulled off what was
undoubtedly the most celebrated literary hoax of the
452
ITALIAN Dave gang
On March 13, 1972 Irving pleaded guilty to federal
conspiracy charges. He was forced to return what was
left of the publisher’s money and was sentenced to two
and a half years in prison. He served 17 months.
In 1977 Irving was asked by the editors of the Book
of Lists to compile a list of the 10 best forgers of all
time. He listed Clifford Irving as number nine.
work. All six agreed that Israel’s gun had not fired the
fatal bullet.
When Israel’s case came to trial, Cummings made an
opening presentation outlining the findings that had
weakened the prosecution’s case. He then calmly proceeded to load the so-called murder gun. He aimed it
downward at a 45º angle—the position the murder gun
had been in—and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.
The gun, Cummings explained, had a defective firing
pin and would not fire when held in that particular
position.
On Cummings’ motion, Israel was released. The
prosecutor personally escorted the happy youth to the
train station and saw him off to his home in Pennsylvania. It’s possible that Cummings felt his presence was
necessary to keep the police from rearresting Israel.
Years later, the Israel case was made into a movie
called Boomerang. While Cummings won considerable
praise in many circles for his work in the case, he did
not get quite as much as he deserved in his native state.
When Israel was cleared, Cummings’ chance for the
governorship fizzled. In 1933, however, he was named
by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to be attorney general. As for Israel himself, he faded into obscurity, to
which Cummings felt he was entitled. Still, Cummings
wondered if his clearing of the young man had paid off
and in the late 1930s he ordered the FBI to make a
secret check on him. The agency reported that Israel
was a respectable miner in Pennsylvania, a married
man, the father of two children and a pillar of the
Methodist Church.
Israel, Harold (1901–?) wrong man
One of America’s most famous “wrong man” murder
cases wrecked the elective political career of a prosecutor named Homer S. Cummings in the 1920s. The case
was the murder of a popular minister in Bridgeport,
Conn.
In 1924 an unidentified person shot Father Hubert
Dahme, pastor of St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church, in the
back of the head, throwing the city into an uproar. Both
the city government and a local newspaper offered
rewards, and the public demanded the police come up
with a solution to the crime. This they appeared to do
by arresting an itinerant young man, 23-year-old
Harold Israel. After many hours of questioning, Israel
made a confession. He later tried to retract it, but there
was no denying that when apprehended, he had been
carrying a gun of the same caliber as the murder
weapon. In addition, police had the testimony of a ballistic expert that Israel’s gun had been the murder
weapon.
Since Father Dahme was one of Bridgeport’s most
popular citizens, the pressure on prosecutor Cummings
was enormous. There was press speculation that a conviction in the case would earn the state’s attorney a sure
nomination for governor. Cummings was a former
chairman of the Democratic National Committee,
keynote speaker at the 1920 national convention in San
Francisco and, indeed, Connecticut’s favorite son for
the presidential nomination. Under the circumstances,
it would have been quite logical for Cummings to have
accepted the sure conviction handed him. Amazingly,
he did not.
Even though the public defender announced that
Israel would plead guilty by reason of insanity, Cummings had strong misgivings about the case. The prosecution regarded some of the witnesses who had sworn
Israel was the priest’s killer as less than reliable. When
he checked the area where the murder had occurred
and where the witnesses said they had been standing,
he determined it would have been too dark for them to
recognize anyone. Cummings also had his doubts about
the ballistics expert, who struck him as overly anxious
to help the police solve the crime. He asked six other
experts in the field to make their own findings without
telling any of them that others were doing the same
Italian Dave gang
gang
19th-century New York pickpocket
From the 1840s to the 1860s the most notorious Fagin
in America was the New York criminal mastermind
named Italian Dave. He always had some 40 or so boys
aged nine to 15 whom he instructed in the art of pickpocketing and sneak thievery. He provided the boys
with room and board in an old tenement on Paradise
Square and conducted daily classes in various techniques of theft. They were shown how to pinch articles
from store windows and counters, how to beg and, with
the aid of fully dressed dummies of men and women in
various positions, how to pick pockets and snatch
purses and muffs. Whenever a boy fumbled his assignment, Italian Dave would ceremoniously dress himself
in a policeman’s uniform and work him over with a
nightstick. Other thieves and gangs would rent out
squads of boys for specific criminal assignments such as
lookouts, with all money paid directly to Italian Dave.
Dave took advanced students out into the streets
himself and would point out victims to be robbed,
453
IVERS, Alice
observing his pupils’ modus operandi with a most critical eye. When a student failed to use a club on a mugging victim with sufficient stunning effect, Italian Dave
would step forward and demonstrate how to do it
properly. His most apt pupils deserted him within a
couple of years because he was so miserly, giving them
only pennies out of what they stole. However, long
after Italian Dave passed from the scene, his pupils continued to benefit from his harsh lessons; among his students were master pickpockets Blind Mahoney and
Jimmy Dunnigan and the redoubtable gang leader Jack
Mahaney, who later became known as the American
version of Jack Sheppard, the famous British escape
artist, because of his ability to escape from custody.
See also: JACK MAHANEY.
Ivers, Alice
See POKER ALICE.
Izzy and Moe
revenue agents
Prohibition brought many things to the American
scene: speakeasies, rot-gut liquor, gangsters, hijacking
and “the ride.” But Prohibition had its comic side as
well, as demonstrated by the merry antics of those dry
clowns Izzy and Moe. They were the greatest and
wackiest Prohibition agents of all time and they fit right
into the Roaring Twenties. The newspapers gave frontpage coverage to their capers, one joyously announcing, “IZZY IS BIZZY AND SO IS MOE.” Hundreds of
hilarious newspaper stories were written about the pair,
and a great many of them were no doubt true.
In 1920 Isadore Einstein was a short, smiling cherub
of 225 pounds who worked as a clerk for the New
York Post Office. Previously, he had been a dry goods
salesman. One day Izzy showed up at the Federal Prohibition Bureau headquarters and announced his availability. That got a laugh. “Izzy,” one official said, “you
don’t even look like a Prohibition agent.” On reflection, it was decided that Izzy might thus be handy to
have around, and he got the job. A product of the polyglot Lower East Side, he could speak fluent Yiddish,
Hungarian, Polish, German and Italian.
Bureau officials figured the worst that could happen
was that a few tough assignments would send Izzy in
hasty retreat back to the post office. They decided to
send him out to hit a 52nd Street speakeasy. A dozen
agents had previously tried and failed to bust the place.
A few had gotten past the front door, but they were
served nothing stronger than beer because they couldn’t
produce a regular customer as a sponsor.
Izzy talked his way into the speakeasy, waddled up
to the bar, plunked down his newly acquired badge and
Bizzy Izzy and Moe, as the newspapers dubbed them,
were the clown princes of Prohibition enforcement, using
many disguises to make their busts.
said to the bartender, ‘How about a good stiff drink for
a thirsty revenue agent?”
The bartender nearly doubled up with laughter. “Get
a load of this funny fat man!” he called to his customers. Then, fingering Izzy’s badge, he asked, “Where
did you buy this?”
“Give me a drink and I’ll take you to the place sometime,” Izzy replied.
The bartender obliged. So did Izzy. He took the man
down to the Revenue Office.
Izzy’s superiors were stunned . . . and immediately
assigned him to another tough case. Izzy made that
pinch as well.
After a few weeks on the job, Izzy started to miss his
old coffeehouse buddy, Moe Smith. He asked if they
had a job for Moe as well. The only trouble was, Izzy
noted, that Moe didn’t look like an agent either; he was
fat like Izzy. Moe got the job, and the pair worked as a
team, a sort of Laurel and Hardy of the Revenuers—
except both were Hardy. They were so effective that
some speakeasies posted pictures of the two, but that
proved futile. The pair disguised themselves with false
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IZZY and Moe
whiskers and noses. On occasion they wore blackface.
Once, they donned football uniforms to bust a joint
serving the thirsty athletes playing in Van Cortlandt
Park in the Bronx. To crack a Coney Island speakeasy
in midwinter, Izzy went swimming with a polar bear
cub and was then carried quivering into the establishment by a solicitous Moe. “Quick,” Moe cried, “some
liquor before he freezes to death.” A tenderhearted bartender complied and was arrested.
Another time, the pair marched into a speakeasy
arguing loudly about the name of a particular revenue
sleuth. Was it Einstein or Epstein? The bartender
agreed it was Einstein. Nonsense, said Izzy, and bet the
bartender double the price for two drinks. The bartender won the bet and got pinched.
Because they needed to produce liquor served them
as proof of a crime, Izzy and Moe designed special funnels to be strapped inside their vests. One time, they
started out at 5 A.M. and made 24 arrests by 9 A.M.,
just working up an appetite for breakfast. The pair’s
all-time record was 65 raids in one day. Their standard
line when making a pinch was “Dere’s sad news here.”
Over a five-year period their combined score was 5
million bottles of liquor confiscated, 4,392 persons
arrested and convictions achieved in 95 percent of
their cases, which was 20 percent of all the successful
illegal liquor prosecutions in the New York district.
Everybody loved Izzy-and-Moe stories. Stanley Walker
once said, “Izzy and Moe almost made prohibition
popular.”
Once Izzy met his namesake—Albert Einstein. He
asked him what he did for a living. “I discover stars in
the sky,” the scientist replied. “I’m a discoverer too,”
Izzy said, “only I discover in the basements.”
Izzy and Moe became so famous that other bureaus
began asking for the pair’s help in busting some problem spots in their cities. In Pittsburgh they made a
pinch within 11 minutes of leaving the train depot. In
Atlanta it took 17 minutes, and Chicago and St. Louis,
21. They set their record in New Orleans: 35 seconds.
Unfortunately, Izzy and Moe were called on the
carpet often because of their penchant for publicity.
They were warned that the service had to be dignified
in its procedures. Finally, in November 1925 the boys
turned in their badges. Izzy explained, “I fired myself,”
because they were to be transferred away from their
beloved New York to the wilds of Chicago. Bureau officials insisted they had been dismissed “for the good of
the service.”
Both men went into the insurance business and soon
numbered among their clients many of the people they
had arrested for liquor violations. Izzy even published an
autobiography, Prohibition Agent Number 1, which didn’t
sell very well. It seemed the public had had enough of Prohibition.
See also: PROHIBITION.
455
J
On January 3, 1835 the first attempt on the life of a
United States president took place when Andrew Jackson was attacked in the rotunda of the Capitol while
attending the funeral of a South Carolina congressman,
Warren Ransom Davis. A house painter named Richard
Lawrence stepped up to President Jackson and, at a distance of 6 feet, fired two pistols at him. Both misfired
and Jackson’s would-be slayer was seized. Lawrence,
who believed he was the rightful heir to the English
throne, was committed to an insane asylum.
working, they would report to Horton every hour.
Whenever they failed to report, Horton immediately
hurried to the police station with bail money and a writ
of habeas corpus. Over a career that spanned 40 years,
Jackson was arrested some 2,000 times. Pickpockets
are subject to frequent arrests, especially on loitering
charges but he generally avoided prosecution by giving
back a portion of his loot. He was only convicted twice,
sentenced once to 10 days and another time to a year.
In later years the “Jackson touch” abandoned him, and
he died a pauper in 1932.
Jackson, Eddie (1873–1932) pickpocket
Jackson, Frank (1856–?) Texas outlaw
Among authorities on the subject, there are those who
say that Eddie Jackson was the most proficient pickpocket America has ever produced. Jackson lifted his
first poke when he was 14 and is said to have been the
greatest “kiss-the-sucker” operator of all times. Kissing
the sucker is walking right up to the victim, bumping
him in front and lifting his wallet from his inside coat
pocket in one quick motion. It is not a technique that
many pickpockets, or “dips,” like to employ since there
are far easier and safer methods. Of course, Jackson
used other techniques as well. Generally operating with
three or four accomplices, he would use his nimble fingers to lift a victim’s money while the others jostled him
and diverted his attention. He usually worked
Chicago’s Loop district, often making as much as
$1,500 a week, an incredible sum for the 1890s and
early 1900s.
Jackson kept a famous lawyer and politician, Black
Horton, on retainer, and when he and his mob were
In the folklore of Texas outlaws, Frank Jackson is
remembered for his refusal to betray his legendary outlaw chief, Sam Bass, and perhaps more important, as a
man whose loyalty was probably rewarded with the
secret of Bass’ hidden treasure troves.
Born in Llano County, Texas, in 1856 and orphaned
when he was seven, Jackson grew up with relatives,
training as a tinsmith. The occupation held little attraction for the youth, and by 1876 he was working as a
cowhand at the Murphy Ranch in Denton County.
From time to time, the Murphys harbored the notorious outlaw Sam Bass. Making the outlaw’s acquaintance, Jackson quickly enlisted in the gang, thereafter
taking part in all the gang’s Texas train robberies.
Bass accumulated a considerable amount of his
loot in the form of $20 gold pieces and buried it in several places in the hills and hollows northwest of Dallas.
Frank Jackson’s last ride with Sam Bass occurred
in July 1878, when he, Bass and Seaborn Barnes
Jackson, Andrew
victim of assassination attempt
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JACKSON, Humpty
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Andrew Jackson remained convinced that the attempt on his life by an insane house painter was inspired by his
political foes.
gang’s accumulated loot had been buried. Jackson was
presumed to have retired from the outlaw trail a
wealthy man.
See also: SAM BASS, JIM MURPHY.
attempted to hold up a small bank in Round Rock.
They were betrayed by another gang member, Jim Murphy of the ranching family. Barnes was killed and Bass
badly wounded in the ensuing gun battle. With Jackson’s help Bass was able to ride out of town. The next
day trackers found Bass dying in a woodland. For 24
hours lawmen questioned the outlaw, trying to get him
to reveal his accomplices on various robberies and the
hiding places of his loot before he died. Bass kept his
silence to the end, and Frank Jackson was never seen
again. The circumstances fueled speculation in Texas
cow country that Bass must have encouraged the steadfast Jackson to leave him to die and told him where the
Jackson, Humpty (?–1914) New York gang leader and
murderer
One of New York’s most feared gang leaders at the
turn of the century, Humpty Jackson was an odd combination of cold-blooded murderer and bibliophile. A
man with a superior education, although a hazy past,
457
JACKSON, Mary Jane “Bricktop”
he bossed some 50 gangsters, many of whom later
became notorious in their own right. Among them were
Spanish Louie, Nigger Ruhl, the Grabber and the Lobster Kid.
Humpty was never without a book on his person.
His favorite writers were Voltaire, Darwin, Huxley and
Spencer, and he often read various tomes in Greek and
Latin. His scholarly pursuits, however, did not carry
over into his professional life, which was thoroughly
dedicated to crime. He always carried three revolvers
on his person—one in his pocket, another slung under
his hunchback, which is why he was called Humpty,
and the third in a special holder in his derby hat.
Jackson’s headquarters was an old graveyard between First and Second Avenues bound by 12th and
13th Streets. Sitting on a tombstone, he would dispense
criminal assignments to his thugs. If a customer wanted
someone blackjacked or otherwise assaulted, he or she
simply approached Humpty, and for $100, in the case
of blackjacking, he would see the job was done. Naturally, Jackson never soiled his own hands on such
chores but merely handed them out to one of his men.
Similarly, he would plan burglaries or warehouse lootings but seldom lead the forays himself. Nevertheless,
Jackson was a man with a volatile temper who committed many acts of violence, which earned him more than
20 arrests and convictions. In 1909 he was sentenced to
20 years for ordering the execution of a man he’d never
met. He died behind bars in 1914.
See also: SPANISH LOUIE.
customers, she terrified the other girls. She was turned
out of the Dauphine Street establishment and subsequently, several other brothels. Bricktop was headed for
the dance halls of New Orleans’ toughest thoroughfare,
Gallatin Street, and got a job with the redoubtable
Archie Murphy in his notorious Dance-House. Nothing
was considered too rough for Murphy’s place, but
Bricktop Jackson proved the exception to the rule. She
had to be forcibly evicted from there as well as many
other tough dance houses, whose owners had foolishly
thought they could control her. Bricktop finally became
a freelance prostitute and street mugger. In 1856 she
killed her first man and in 1857 her second; one had
called her a “whore” and gotten clubbed to death for
the insult, and the other, Long Charley, had been cut
down with Bricktop’s made-to-order knife following an
argument over which way he would fall if stabbed (the
nearly 7-foot-tall Charley was reported to have fallen
forward when Bricktop tested her hypothesis).
One of Bricktop’s more famous murders occurred
on November 7, 1859, when she visited a beer garden
with two other vicious vixens, America Williams and
Ellen Collins. A man at the next table, Laurent Fleury,
objected to Bricktop’s language and told her to shut
up. Bricktop cursed even more and threatened to cut
Fleury’s heart out. Fleury, who had not recognized the
scourge of Gallatin Street, slapped her. In a second the
three women were all over him, and the luckless Fleury
disappeared in a mass of flailing hands, swirling skirts
and flashing knives. Joe Seidensahl, the owner of the
beer garden, tried to come to his rescue but was driven
back, severely cut up. A Seidensahl employee shot at
the women from a second-floor window, but they
drove him off with a barrage of bricks. By the time the
police arrived, they found Fleury dead and his pants
pocket cut out. The pocket, with money still inside,
was found tucked under Bricktop’s skirt. She was
locked up in Parish Prison but eventually freed when
an autopsy failed to show the victim’s cause of death.
Bricktop’s lawyer contended he had died of heart disease.
It was in Parish Prison that Bricktop Jackson met a
man who was, for the time, the love of her life, a jailer
and ex-criminal named John Miller. The pair became a
colorful item, even by Gallatin Street standards. Miller
had lost an arm in a previous escapade and now walked
about with a chain and iron ball attached to his stump,
which made an awesome weapon. The couple supported themselves by close teamwork based on their
respective skills. Bricktop would start up a romance
with a stranger in a French Quarter dive and repair to
the back streets with him. The man would end up with
a very sore skull, no recollection of what happened and
empty pockets.
Jackson, Mary Jane “Bricktop” (1836–?) female
ruffian and murderess
Nicknamed Bricktop because of her flaming red hair,
Mary Jane Jackson was reputedly the most vicious
street criminal, male or female, New Orleans has ever
produced. Any number of the Live Oak gangsters, the
city’s toughest gang, backed off from confrontations
with her. In about a decade of battling, Bricktop Jackson never lost a fight, killed four men and sent at least
two dozen more to the hospital, from which many
emerged permanently maimed. When she took up living with a notorious criminal named John Miller, the
pair became known as New Orleans’ toughest couple.
Born on Girod Street in 1836, Bricktop, a husky,
well-endowed girl, became a prostitute at age 13. The
next year she attained a measure of security when a
saloon keeper took her as his mistress. When he tired of
her after three years and threw her out, she charged
into his saloon and gave him a fearsome beating, sending him to the hospital minus an ear and most of his
nose. Bricktop then entered a Dauphine Street whorehouse, where, while she gained a following with the
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JAMES brothers
The romance between Bricktop and Miller was
marred by a dispute over who was the master of their
nest. One day in 1861 Miller came home and decided to
bullwhip Bricktop into subservience. She snatched the
whip away from him, however, and gave him a bloody
beating. He lashed out with his iron ball but she seized
the chain in midair and began dragging him around the
room. Miller pulled out a knife and slashed at Bricktop,
who bit the knife free, grabbed it and then stabbed her
lover five times. It was a fatal end to their relationship
and one that caused Bricktop to be sent to prison for 10
years. She was released after only nine months when
Gen. George F. Shepley, the military governor of the
state, practically emptied the penitentiary with blanket
pardons. Upon her release, Bricktop Jackson disappeared from New Orleans, a loss that went totally unlamented by honest and dishonest citizens alike.
See also: JOHN MILLER.
What Ferris did was simply order all sorts of merchandise over the telephone and steal an estimated $2
million in that fashion. It turned out that Ferris’ accomplices on the outside provided him with hundreds of
credit card numbers (retrieved from hotel dumpsters
and the like), and the convict in turn used the numbers
to order from catalogs by telephone. He arranged to
have the goods delivered overnight to his accomplices
who then sold the goods and split the profits with Ferris. Ferris ordered incredible numbers of video camcorders, Rolex watches, champagne, gourmet gift
baskets and gold and silver coins and raked in a fortune.
Later he admitted to interviewers, “I split right half
with everybody. I mean, I never took more than half. I
got robbed a lot, but, again, you kind of take it on the
chin. You know what I mean? It was like you said,
‘Heck, it was all free.’”
When at last Ferris was exposed, jail officials found
they could not legally deprive him of his phone rights.
They did, however, raid his cell and confiscate hundreds of credit card numbers.
That failed to knock Ferris out of business, as he
managed to salvage a single number and used it to
order a newspaper ad and a telephone answering service. He ran the ad in USA Today offering, “Cosmetics
package, $89.95 value for only $19.95. All major credit
cards accepted. Please call Regina Donovan Cosmetics.” Danny supplied a 1-800 number but never sold
any cosmetics. But he got what he really was after—a
brand new batch of credit card numbers.
Eventually Danny Ferris was sentenced to five years
for credit card fraud. Since that was in addition to the
life sentence he was already serving, that hardly upset
him. However, he was transferred to a tougher Florida
state prison, where more stringent controls were placed
on telephone calls. Meanwhile, back at Dade County
jail it was discovered that other inmates were pulling
Danny’s surefire scam, one con even operated in the
departed Danny’s personal cell. Finally after the CBS
television program 60 Minutes featured the case, Dade
County jail officials removed the in-cell telephones,
requiring prisoners to make their calls in open corridors
and the like, figuring that would put a serious crimp in
their operations.
Without the old master’s tutelage, the restrictions
appeared to work.
Jackson-Dickinson duel
In the famous, or infamous, duel between Andrew
Jackson and Charles Dickinson in 1806, there was no
quarter given. Although Dickinson was considered to
be the best shot in Tennessee, Jackson had challenged
him after he had made disparaging remarks about Jackson’s wife, Rachel. The duel was fought at a range of 24
feet. Dickinson got off the first shot, which crashed into
Jackson’s chest, missing his heart by only an inch.
Blood gushed through his clothes, but Jackson managed to keep his feet, though unsteadily. He took dead
aim at Dickinson, who broke and ran from the line of
fire. The seconds ordered Dickinson back to his previous position, as the dueling code required, and he stood
awaiting Jackson’s shot with his arms crossed to protect his heart. Jackson aimed a bit lower at his target
and fired, hitting Dickinson in the groin. Death came
slowly and excruciatingly to Dickinson. Jackson carried
the lead ball he had received until the end of his days, it
being too close to the heart to be removed.
jailhouse shopping network
convict’s credit card con
Credit card fraud is a billion-dollar business, but there
are some frauds, in a manner of speaking, more fraudulent than others. That is perhaps the only way to
describe the scam that became known as the “nationwide jailhouse shopping network” in the early 1990s. It
was conceived in Miami’s Dade County jail, where
there was a legal requirement that inmates be provided
with access to telephones. The scam was thought up
by Danny Ferris, a shrewd con man convicted of murder who, for more than four years, made local calls and
1-800 calls free of charge.
James brothers
The James brothers, especially Jesse, who was born in
1847, were probably the best-known outlaws in America, leading a gang of robbers from 1866 to 1882,
when Jesse was assassinated for the reward on his head.
Since then his niche in American folklore has remained
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JAMES brothers
secure, perhaps typified by a ballad that surfaced
instantly after his death. It started:
Jesse became a hero to the defeated Rebels and those
who had sympathized with the South and was invariably described as having been driven to his crimes
because of persecution of Northerners, particularly
businessmen. Ex-Unionists and abolitionists called the
Jameses and their frequent allies, the Youngers, murderers and thieves and said they were deserving of hanging.
The James boys were born in Clay County, Mo., the
sons of a preacher, the Rev. Robert James, who died
when Jesse was three. During the Civil War, Frank
joined Quantrill’s Raiders and continued to ride with
him even after it became apparent he was nothing more
than a plunderer and butcher. In 1864, at the age of 17,
Jesse hooked up with Confederate guerrillas under
Bloody Bill Anderson and took part in the Centralia
massacre that year, in which he is reputed to have brutally murdered a Union officer.
Jesse came out of the war badly wounded and was
nursed back to health by a cousin, Zerelda Mimms,
whom he would eventually marry. Even though the
conflict was over, neither the James boys nor Cole
Younger and his brothers saw any reason to stop their
looting. They formed a gang and robbed $17,000 from
a bank in Liberty, Mo. on February 13, 1866, killing a
bystander in the process. It is known that they committed a number of additional bank robberies, but later
practically every bank job in Missouri from 1866 to
1869 was attributed to them. There is no doubt that the
James-Younger gang robbed the bank at Gallatin in
1869, since all of them were well identified. After that,
they ranged as far afield as Alabama and Iowa. Jesse
often provided a touch of verve to the capers. Once,
they hit a bank while a political rally was taking place,
and Jesse, on the way out, stopped in front of the
crowd and earnestly informed them he thought there
might be something wrong back at the bank. Perhaps
their most audacious outing occurred at a fair in
Kansas City where Jesse and his men rode right up into
a crowd of 10,000 people and robbed the box office of
$10,000. Many persons thought it was all part of the
show until a little girl was shot.
What made the James boys popular in much of Missouri was their harassment of railroad officials, perhaps
the most hated group in the state because of their
seizure of private lands under condemnation orders, for
which they paid a mere pittance. The gang’s first
known train robbery was in 1873, when they derailed
the Chicago and Rock Island express near Adair, Iowa.
As happened during many of their jobs, someone died
during the holdup, in this case the engineer when the
train derailed.
The James-Younger move into train robberies put
them in the big time and the Pinkertons on their trail.
In January 1875, the Pinkertons were convinced the
Jesse James was a lad who killed many a man.
He robbed the Glendale train.
He stole from the rich and he gave to the poor.
He’d a hand and a heart and a brain.
Jesse James was the American version of Robin
Hood, as the loving tales told about him reveal. He was
the holdup man who stole money from the wicked
banker about to foreclose and gave it to the poor widow
to pay off her mortgage (and then—perhaps to embellish the fantasy—he restole the money from the banker).
He fought for the oppressed, saved the frail from the
bully and so on. But the truth is that he and his brother
Frank, four years his elder, never once gave a penny to
the poor. What they stole they kept. They were ruthless,
desperate men who killed anyone who got in their way.
Yet they were popular. Reflecting the political alignment of a border state in the aftermath of the Civil War,
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The alliance between the James brothers and the
Youngers eventually foundered over Jesse’s readiness to
sacrifice any member of the gang as the price for
escape.
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JAMES, Jesse—impostors
James brothers were holed up in their mother’s home
and laid siege to it. In an effort to flush them out, the
detectives threw in a bomb—the agency later insisted it
was only a flare—and when the smoke cleared, Frank
and Jesse’s nine-year-old brother, Archie, was dead and
their mother, Mrs. Zerelda Samuels, had had most of
her right arm blown off. The incident stoked great
resentment toward the Pinkertons and brought forth a
rash of sympathy for the James boys, not only in Missouri but throughout the country. Lost in the shuffle of
support for the outlaws was any recollection of their
own long list of victims. The bungling Pinkertons had
done as much as anybody to make them respectable.
In 1876 disaster struck the gang when they
attempted to rob the First National Bank of Northfield,
Minn. Of the eight gang members, including the James
brothers and three Younger brothers, only Jesse and
Frank escaped when things went wrong and the citizenry came out shooting. The rest were either killed or
captured there or in the ensuing chase.
For the next three years the James boys were relatively inactive, living off accumulated loot, but in 1879
Jesse reconstituted the gang. Although he didn’t feel
comfortable with some of the new men, including Bob
and Charles Ford, he made do. After two more murders
by the gang in 1881, the state of Missouri posted
$5,000 rewards on each of the James brothers. The
Fords then made a deal with Gov. Thomas Crittenden
to assassinate Jesse James for a $10,000 reward.
On April 3, 1882 Jesse summoned the Fords to his
home in St. Joseph, where he was living under the name
of Howard, to plan their next job. When Jesse climbed
up on a chair to straighten a picture, Bob Ford shot him
dead.
The James legend didn’t die with Jesse. He was lionized by much of the press. The Kansas City Journal
headlined his death with a mournful farewell: “GOODBYE JESSE.”
He was buried in a corner of his mother’s yard and
later an inscription was put on the marker:
train platforms during a trip back to Clay County to
stand trial for a couple of murders. The authorities
were wasting their time; there was no way Frank James
was going to be convicted. He was then shipped to
Alabama to stand trial for a robbery charge but was
found not guilty. Missouri tried again on another robbery count. Again he went free.
Thereafter Frank James lived in retirement from
crime, working at a number of jobs, such as a horse
race starter, shoe salesman and farmer. He died in
1915, a much respected citizen.
See also: THOMAS T. CRITTENDEN; CHARLES FORD;
ROBERT NEWTON FORD; WOOD HITE; JESSE JAMES—IMPOSTORS; NORTHFIELD, MINNESOTA BANK RAID; ALLAN
PINKERTON; YOUNGER BROTHERS.
James, Jesse—impostors
Almost from the time Jesse James was laid in his grave,
impostors came forth claiming to be the real Jesse
James, insisting he hadn’t been shot at all. Most were
proven liars and disappeared. Oddly, the last one
seemed to be the most convincing. In 1948 a man
named J. Frank Dalton, citing his age at 101, claimed
to be the real Jesse James. At the time he was bedridden
in Lawton, Okla.
Rudy Turilli, a noted authority on Jesse James,
asserted that Bob Ford hadn’t killed Jesse but rather
another member of the gang, Charlie Bigelow. According to this theory, Bigelow looked like Jesse, having
often passed himself off as the famous outlaw. He was
due for extinction anyway because he was suspected of
being an informer. Among those involved in the hoax,
said Turilli, were James’ mother and wife, the Ford
brothers, and even Gov. Thomas Crittenden, who, he
alleged, was a longtime friend of the James family.
In 1966 Turilli published a booklet, in cooperation
with the Jesse James Museum of Stanton, Mo. entitled I
Knew Jesse James, relating how he had found Dalton in
Oklahoma through a tip. Turilli rounded up two of
Jesse’s old cronies: 108-year-old James R. Davis, a former U.S. marshal, and 111-year-old John Trammell, a
black who had cooked for the James gang. Both men
identified Dalton as Jesse James. Dalton was interviewed by dozens of reporters; writer Robert Ruark
spent three days with Dalton and the other old-timers
and was absolutely convinced that Dalton was no
hoaxer.
One of those not convinced was Homer Croy,
among the more reliable Jesse James’ biographers. He
visited Dalton before the old man had a chance to
school himself on all the details of Jesse’s life that unbelievers might ask about. When Croy asked him who or
what was Red Fox, Dalton identified the name as that
Jesse W. James,
Died April 3, 1882.
Aged 34 years, six months, 28 days.
Murdered by a coward whose name is not worthy
to appear here.
Of course, few killers ever get their names inscribed on
the headstones of their victims. But no matter, a legend
was being constructed, one that continues to the present day.
In October 1882 Frank James, tired of running,
walked into Gov. Crittenden’s office and surrendered
his guns. He too was now part of the legend, and he
was treated like one. Mobs cheered him as he stood on
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JENNINGS, Al
of a scout for Quantrill, a part Indian. Actually, Red
Fox was Jesse’s race horse.
The real stumbling block, however, was the fact
that the tip of Dalton’s left-hand middle finger was
intact. Supposedly, Jesse accidentally had blown part
of that finger off while cleaning his pistol during the
period in the Civil War when he rode with Bloody Bill
Anderson, though some experts are unsure whether
the fingertip was really shot off or not. Turilli challenged anyone to produce a photo of Jesse showing a
missing fingertip. Probably because of the dearth of
photographs of Jesse James, the challenge went unanswered. However, at the coroner’s inquest into Jesse
James’ death, several witnesses testified they recognized the dead man as James, including Sheriff James
H. Timberlake of Clay County, who knew well what
Jesse looked like. Timberlake, who had last seen the
outlaw in 1870, said he recognized Jesse’s face. And
he stated, “He had the second joint of his third finger
shot off, by which I also recognize him.” Other witnesses besides Timberlake mentioned the missing part
of the finger.
J. Frank Dalton died on August 16, 1951, just short
of Jesse James’ 104th birthday.
See also: AL JENNINGS.
Jennings, Al (1864–1961) alleged outlaw
One of the classic frauds in American crime writing is
the effort to paint Al Jennings as the “last of the Western outlaws.” He was not, despite a famous lurid article on his career in the Saturday Evening Post and a
Hollywood movie about him and the so-called Al Jennings gang, whose rampage one authority described as
“the shortest and funniest on record.”
Jennings grew up one of the four sons of a frontier
judge in the Oklahoma Territory. In later years he said
he began his life of crime at the age of 16, but we have
only his word for it. No court or law enforcement
records list any charges against him or against his
brothers, who, he stated were his partners in crime. The
fact that all four were admitted to the bar tends to cast
suspicion on Jennings’ later claims. Two of his brothers
did end up in a murderous affair, but as victims rather
than perpetrators. Ed and John Jennings got into a
saloon dispute with flamboyant lawman-gunman Temple Houston in 1894. Ed was shot dead while John was
badly wounded and died a short time later.
People who didn’t know Al Jennings—and thus
were unaware that he was a notoriously poor shot—
expected him to go after Houston. He never did.
Instead, he and brother Frank hit the outlaw trail
together with three stumblebums. The road agents
“ran riot” for 109 days, during which they abandoned
two efforts to hold up trains before finally robbing a
Rock Island train on October 1, 1897. This achievement, on which Jennings subsequently built his reputation, netted the five outlaws $60 apiece. Four of the
gang, including Al and Frank Jennings, were arrested
single-handedly by lawman Bud Ledbetter without firing a shot. When he cornered the two brothers, he told
them to drop their guns and tie themselves up. They
did.
For their trivial crime the Jennings brothers got life
sentences, this was a period when long sentences were
meted out and later reduced (the pardon business was
thriving and lucrative). Al did five years and Frank
seven. After that, both returned to the straight life, Al
even running unsuccessfully for governor of Oklahoma.
He also hit the lecture circuit, far from Oklahoma,
where folks knew better about his wild and wooly past.
The Post article eased his way into Hollywood, where
FPO
FIG # 85
TO BE
PICKED-UP
FROM
PREVIOUS ED.
Much of the speculation that Jesse James was not killed
by Bob Ford stemmed from the fact that the only known
photograph taken after his death failed to show that the
tip of his left-hand middle finger was missing.
462
JEWETT, Helen
filmmakers and afterward, the filmgoers simply ate up
the tales of his fanciful life of crime. Highly intelligent,
Jennings proved a huge success as both an author and a
film producer.
In 1948 Jennings was able to carry his outlaw hoax
a little further. In that year 101-year-old J. Frank Dalton turned up, announcing he was the real Jesse James.
He was brought together with 85-year-old Jennings,
who said: “Boys, there isn’t a bit of doubt on earth. It’s
him. It’s Jesse James.” Of course, Jennings had never
even met Jesse James. It was the reverse side of the pot
calling the kettle black. When he died in 1961, the obituary writers paid due tribute to Al Jennings, “last of the
Western outlaws.”
See also: JESSE JAMES—IMPOSTORS.
In 1834 Helen enticed a young rake named Richard
P. Robinson into her regular army of admirers. Like
many other blades of the day, he conducted much of his
nightlife under an alias, that of Frank Rivers, but as his
affair with Helen bloomed, he readily revealed to her
his true identity. Robinson also developed a jealous
streak, the thought of her having an interest, other than
financial, in any other man obsessed him. Of course,
Robinson never gave a thought to marrying Helen, and
when he decided to wed a respectable young lady of
considerable means, a second note of friction entered
his relationship with the haughty harlot.
For whatever reason, at 3 o’clock on Sunday morning April 10, 1836, Robinson entered Mrs. Rosina
Townsend’s famed brothel, where Helen Jewett was in
residence. He was wearing his usual flashy visored cap
and billowing Spanish cloak so that Madam Townsend
and another prostitute readily recognized him. What
they didn’t know was that Robinson carried a hatchet
under the cloak. Helen Jewett was found brutally murdered several hours later, her skull savagely hacked in.
Helen Jewett’s death exposed New York’s false
morality. At first, the newspapers treated the murder as
a sensational affair, but it soon became evident that
nobody wanted Robinson arrested, including the police
and several important protectors of Madam Townsend.
Robinson apparently felt so safe that he did not bother
to flee the city. Finally, after what can only be described
as a lethargic investigation, he was arrested.
A public cry of sympathy went up, with one newspaper regretting that so young a person as Robinson
should be sacrificed for “ridding the city of so great a
disgrace to her sex.” A Methodist minister pleaded
from the pulpit for mercy for him, and young rakes
adopted a new heroic dress, striding up Broadway in
“Frank Rivers” caps and “Robinson” cloaks and
chanting, “No man should hang for the murder of a
whore.”
No man did. Robinson’s trial was a five-day farce,
with most newspapers printing nothing but laudatory
comments about the accused and somber warnings to
prostitutes to stay away from the City Hall area
because of threats of violence. By his attitude, it was
clear Mayor Philip Hone considered the accused innocent; he later wrote in his diary, “He certainly looks as
little like a murderer as any person I ever saw.”
During the trial prosecution witnesses who had furnished damaging evidence against Robinson, both
regarding the murder and his general dissolute life,
became shaky in their testimony. A grocer named
Robert Furlong gave the defendant a dubious alibi, but
his subsequent suicide somewhat spoiled the effect. Just
to make sure nothing went wrong, a few of Robinson’s
more ardent supporters bribed at least one juror. The
Jewett, Helen (1813–1836) murder victim
The murder of Helen Jewett in 1836 remains one of
New York’s most infamous unsolved cases, particularly
since it was all too evident that the public didn’t want
the case solved. Helen Jewett at the time was the city’s
most desirable and most sought-after prostitute, always
the “star woman” in whatever scarlet establishment she
deigned to grace, and she was, according to one contemporary biographer, “kind to excess to all who
required her assistance.” However, she did have a troubling side to her nature, being quick to defend her
rights whatever the consequences.
When a drunken British naval officer ripped up all
her dresses and drowned her pet canary, she hauled him
into court and collected damages. And when a wealthy
rake got annoyed with her and knocked her down in a
theater, she promptly had him arrested for assault and
battery, charges ladies of her profession seldom
brought, regarding such affronts as one of the perils of
the profession.
Raised in a New England foster home under the
tutelage of a kindly judge, she had grown up in an
atmosphere of music, literature and the social graces
that undoubtedly put her a cultural cut above most of
her customers. Helen handpicked many of her lovers. If
a man proved attractive to her, she would attempt to
seduce him by missive. Taking a liking to an actor she
had seen in Othello, she wrote:
Othello is in my opinion a great lout and a great fool,
and has not one half so much to cry about as Iago. . . .
I should like to see you in Damon or in Romeo. I
should like above all things to be your Juliet, or to
rehearse the character with you in private, at any rate. I
have some notions on the philosophy of her character
and likewise on that of Romeo, which would perhaps
amuse you.
463
JEWISH Mafia
months earlier, Lucky Luciano had effectively seized
control of the Italian underworld by the assassination
of Salvatore Maranzano, the so-called boss of bosses.
Luciano’s plan, which was at least 50 percent Lansky’s
idea was to establish a new “combination,” or national
crime syndicate. Lansky’s job was to bring in the Jewish
mobsters, and the final scene in that act was the Franconia conference, which established the firm rule that
“the yids and dagos would no longer fight each other.”
The new “interfaith” combination was to be paramount. If there were any doubters, they were converted
when one of the Franconia participants, Big Greenie,
was eliminated by Bugsy Siegel, filling a contract that
came down from the national board of the syndicate.
When Siegel was later erased for defying the same
board, his erstwhile tutor and partner Lansky would
simply say with a shrug, “I had no choice.”
effort proved unnecessary, as a not-guilty verdict was
quickly brought in. That evening Robinson was honored at a great celebration.
Obviously, good had triumphed over evil, although
James Gordon Bennett’s Herald, which alone held
Robinson guilty wrote:
The evidence in this trial and the remarkable disclosure
of the manners and morals of New York form one of
those events that must make philosophy pause, religion
stand aghast, morals weep in the dust, and female
virtue droop her head in sorrow.
A number of young men, clerks in fashionable stores,
are dragged up to the witness stand, but where are the
married men, where the rich merchants, where the
devoted church members who were caught in their
shirts and drawers on that awful night? The publication and perusal of the evidence in this trial will kindle
up fires that nothing can quench.
Joe the Boss
Nonetheless, the good burghers of New York had an
unsolved mystery on their hands and obviously preferred it that way. After Richard Robinson was freed
and left the city, rumor had it that he became a desperado along the Mississippi.
See GIUSEPPE “JOE THE BOSS” MASSERIA.
Johnny Behind the Deuce (1862–1882) gambler and
killer
One of the West’s most colorful and deadly gamblers,
Johnny Behind the Deuce won a fortune at cards, killed
several men, was saved from a lynch mob by Wyatt
Earp and went to his own reward in a blazing gunfight—all before he reached his 21st birthday.
Nothing is known of his early life, but Johnny
turned up in Tucson, Arizona Territory in early 1878 at
the age of 16, giving his surname, at various times, as
O’Rourke and his Christian name as either Michael or
John. He worked as a hotel porter and seemed to spend
all his free moments learning to manipulate a gun and a
deck of cards. By 1880 he was famous throughout the
territory as Johnny Behind the Deuce, a hard man to
beat at any game of cards. In time, a suspicion developed that as he sat in the saloon gambling, Johnny
would watch for a man passing out from drink and
then leave the table for a short period. When the drunk
sobered up the next day, he would find his belongings
had been burglarized. Hardly anyone accused Johnny
Behind the Deuce of such crimes, since he had already
demonstrated a deadly knack for dealing with critics.
In January 1881 in Charleston a miner named
Henry Schneider dared to call Johnny a thief when he
found his poke had disappeared from his shack. He
died with a bullet between the eyes after, Johnny
Behind the Deuce alleged, drawing a knife. Marshal
George McKelvey hustled the gambler off to Tombstone before the miners could start thinking of a lynching. Upon his arrival in Tombstone a crowd quickly
gathered but a shotgun-armed Wyatt Earp held them
Jewish Mafia
There has been a long-standing argument over whether
or not the Mafia, Italian style, exists. Of course, the
real argument lies in the definition of the term Mafia
and how close a relationship can be assumed to exist
among various “crime families.” Certainly, in a looser
context, there is an Italian Mafia, and years ago there
was a Jewish Mafia. Like the Italian Mafia, there were
Jewish gangs that cooperated with one another, and
this did not change just because a Monk Eastman or a
Jack Zelig, to name two brutes, or an Arnold Rothstein, to name a brain, were removed from the scene.
Meyer Lansky was able to put the pieces back together
again and lead a new Jewish Mafia in cooperation with
the Italian Mafia. Lansky first did some missionary
work around the country, bringing in the Moe Dalitz
forces from Cleveland and the Purple Gang from
Detroit, among others. Then he organized a convention
of East Coast forces at the Franconia Hotel in New
York City on November 11, 1931. Those attending
included Bugsy Siegel, Joseph “Doc” Stacher, Louis
“Lepke” Buchalter, Hyman “Curly” Holtz, Jacob
“Gurah” Shapiro, Philip “Little Farvel” Kovalick,
Louis “Shadows” Kravitz, Harry Tietlebaum and
Harry “Big Greenie” Greenberg.
The conference closely followed a revolutionary
change in the operation of the Italian Mafia. Just two
464
JOHNSON, Hushmouth
suffered a heart attack and died when the stagecoach
was stopped. George Johnson had not killed anyone; he
hadn’t even robbed anyone. Under the circumstances a
necktie party did seem somewhat extreme. Business in
the saloons and brothels reportedly was a bit subdued
that night. Conscience finally got the better of folks and
a collection was taken up. The sum of $800 was presented to Johnson’s widow to ease her loss. In addition,
the words “Hanged By Mistake” were put on his tombstone.
off long enough for the prisoner to be moved to Tucson, where he was able to break out of jail. Since
Johnny Behind the Deuce often dealt in the Oriental
Saloon, of which Earp owned a piece, it is very likely
that the latter felt he owed the young gambler something.
What happened next is guesswork, but a popular
theory that summer was that the fugitive gambler came
across the notorious Johnny Ringo, Wyatt Earp’s mortal enemy, sleeping off a powerful drunk under a
gnarled oak in Turkey Creek Canyon. Johnny Behind
the Deuce supposedly figured he owed Earp one, so he
shot the outlaw through the head. Whether true or not,
the story was generally believed by Ringo’s gunfighter
friends. One of these, Pony Deal, got into a card game
with Johnny Behind the Deuce in Sulphur Springs Valley. After a few hands Deal called Johnny a four-flusher,
cheater and murderer. Angered, the gambler went for
his gun, but Deal outdrew him and shot him dead.
See also: JOHNNY RINGO.
Johnson, John (?–1824) murderer
John Johnson’s crime in 1824 was in many respects a
most pedestrian murder; at the same time it was probably
the most publicized homicide in New York City’s history.
When Johnson’s roommate, James Murray, collected
his pay, Johnson decided to appropriate it. Splitting
Murray’s skull with an ax he packed the dead man in a
blanket and lugged his grim load toward the harbor to
dispose of it. On the way he was challenged by a suspicious police officer. Johnson dropped his gory bundle
and ran, managing to elude capture.
Stuck with a corpse they could not identify, officials
ordered the dead man put on display at City Hall Park
in the hope that someone would recognize it. For days
an estimated 50,000 persons made the trek to view the
body, many of them using the occasion as an excuse for
a picnic in the area. Finally, a neighbor identified Murray, and the police quickly arrested Johnson. His execution was held at Second Avenue and 13th Street on April
2, 1824. Due to the previous publicity the murder had
attracted, the execution drew a crowd of 50,000.
Johnson, George (?–1882) lynch victim
Since George Johnson was lynched for a murder that
didn’t happen, his case pricked the conscience of Tombstone, Ariz. Not that Johnson didn’t deserve hanging,
as old-timers would relate years later, but it didn’t seem
quite just.
In October 1882 Johnson held up, or at least
attempted to hold up, the Tombstone-Bisbee stage, firing a shot to bring it to a halt. Inside the coach one of
the two passengers, Mrs. M. E. Kellogg, felt her husband slump down beside her when the shot was fired.
He was dead. The woman screamed, and that frightened the would-be bandit’s horse, which then bolted,
unseating its rider. Johnson lost his weapon on hitting
the ground and then did the only thing he could do
under the circumstances: he ran off on foot.
The stage driver jumped down and seeing that Mr.
Kellog was dead, unhitched two horses. He put the new
widow on one horse and sent her back to Tombstone to
request aid while he took off after the bandit on the
other. Mrs. Kellogg got back to Tombstone in hysterical
shape but was able to tell the sheriff what had happened. He and a doctor headed for the scene of the
crime. Meanwhile, the stage driver ran Johnson to
earth and brought him back to town. Unfortunately for
Johnson, they came back by a different road and
missed the sheriff.
By the time the sheriff, the doctor and the corpse
returned, they found Tombstone justice had been done.
Johnson had been strung up by a lyncher mob. The
sheriff was angry and the doctor upset, and for good
reason. The dead man had not been shot at all. He had
Johnson, Mushmouth (?–1907) gambler
Perhaps the most successful black gambler in America,
John V. “Mushmouth” Johnson dominated black gambling enterprises in Chicago from the mid-1880s until
his death in 1907. Johnson, a flamboyant man with the
obligatory cigar in mouth, controlled the city’s policy
racket, as well as scores of faro, poker and crap games
in the black sections. His influence also extended over
the Chinese quarter, where he charged all gambling
enterprises a fee for protection. Mushmouth had considerable clout with the law as a result of his ability to
deliver large blocks of black votes in elections.
Generally believed to have been a native of St. Louis,
Mushmouth Johnson first appeared on the Chicago
scene as a waiter at the Palmer House in the 1870s. In
the early 1880s Andy Scott hired him as a floor man in
his gambling emporium on South Clark Street and soon
became so impressed with Mushmouth’s abilities that he
gave him a small interest in the operation. Mushmouth
465
JOHNSON County War
decided that what Chicago needed was a good nickel
gambling house. A few years later, he opened his own
place at 311 South Clark and did a thriving business
with tables that catered to all races, offering bets as low
as 5¢ in any of the games. Mushmouth sold off his interest in the place in 1890 and opened a saloon and gambling hall at 464 State Street, which operated without
interruption for the next 17 years despite reform waves
that shut down other gambling resorts at various times.
Together with two other big-time gamblers, Bill
Lewis and Tom McGinnis, Mushmouth opened the
Frontenac Club on 22nd Street. The club catered
strictly to whites, and to be admitted, one was required
to display a certain amount of cash. The fact that the
Frontenac excluded blacks did not hurt Mushmouth’s
standing with his fellows; on the contrary, his success in
the white world was a matter of black pride.
A total nongambler himself, Mushmouth is generally
believed to have accumulated a quarter of a million
dollars, a sizable sum for any man in that day and a
colossal sum for a black man. Yet, shortly before his
death in 1907, Johnson told a friend he had only
$15,000, all the proceeds of his saloon business, and
that he had lost money on his gambling ventures
through the years. He said that he had spent $100,000
on fines and that police protection had always drained
him, claiming, “I have had to pay out four dollars for
every one I took in at the game.” Johnson also implied
he had been forced to pay more than his white counterparts because of the color of his skin.
When the claim gained currency following Mushmouth’s death, an unnamed police official was outraged, denouncing Mushmouth Johnson as a “whiner”
and a “damnable liar.” It was unclear whether the official objected to Johnson’s statement that he had paid
for protection or, simply, that he had been discriminated against in the rates charged.
Johnson County War
tionally too, many foremen on absentee-owner ranches
built up small herds of their own and blamed the shortages on outside rustlers.
The stockmen followed the usual procedure of sending in “range detectives” to kill a few rustlers but found
the results in Johnson County unsatisfactory. Whenever
a small rancher or homesteader was arrested on
rustling charges, a friendly jury of homesteaders invariably released him. The stockmen soon discovered, however, they could control not only the state
administration, which they already owned, but the
press as well. Their newfound power came about after
a posse of cattlemen lynched a prostitute named Cattle
Kate because she apparently had accepted beef from
cowboys in payment for services rendered, and the beef
the stockmen alleged, was stolen. To avoid any legal
repercussions as a result of the lynching, they claimed
Cattle Kate was a “bandit queen” who had masterminded a vast rustling operation. The press eagerly
accepted the story and printed ridiculous accounts
about the depredations of Cattle Kate. Encouraged by
the public relations coup, the cattle barons decided to
launch a full-scale war of extermination by going into
the county in force with an army of gunmen to wipe
out their arch enemies, one or two at a time.
For a period of a few months, members of the
Wyoming Stock Growers’ Association were invited to
forward the names of deserving victims to the secretary
of the organization. The executive committee then
selected who would go on the death list (it was later
estimated that a total of 70 victims were chosen), and
sent 46 “regulators” under command of Col. Frank
Wolcott and Frank H. Canton, a wanted murderer, into
the county on a brutal murder mission.
Their first victims were two small ranchers, Nick
Ray and Nate Champion who were killed in cold
blood. Sickened by the murders, a doctor and one of
the reporters accompanying the invaders left the expedition. But the shootings delayed the murder army and
word spread of their presence. They soon found themselves besieged by a posse of 200 county residents.
The stockmen’s army was forced to seek refuge in a
ranch 13 miles south of Buffalo. They faced certain
extinction until the U.S. Cavalry rode to their rescue.
The killers then laid down their arms, surrendered to
the army and were escorted back to Cheyenne. The
local sheriff, Red Angus, unsuccessfully requested that
the invaders be turned over to his custody. Had they
been, there undoubtedly would have been 40-odd
lynchings that evening.
The Johnson County “war” ended in a total disaster
for the stockmen, who spent the next few years
attempting to conceal their culpability. When a muckraker of the period, Asa Mercer published The Banditti
range conflict
In 1892, under the guise of driving out “rustlers,” the
great cattle barons of Johnson County, Wyo. waged a
war of extermination against small ranchers and homesteaders. There is no question that the big stockmen,
mostly absentee owners residing in Cheyenne and
members of the Wyoming Stock Growers’ Association,
had been losing cattle and that some had been taken by
the “long rope,” which was the traditional way most
ranchers got started, picking up mavericks on the open
range, and, indeed, the way most of the big stockmen
themselves had gotten started. However, there were
other reasons for the losses, including poor management and overstocking of the ranges, prairie fires,
grass-destroying grasshoppers and bad weather. Tradi466
JOHNSTOWN flood looting
of the Plains the following year, the cattle barons used
their power to have the book suppressed; its plates
were destroyed and Mercer was even jailed for a time
for sending “obscene matter” through the mails.
Copies of the book were torn up and burned and even
the Library of Congress copy vanished.
While the stockmen had failed to exterminate the
homesteaders of Johnson County, none were ever prosecuted for their offenses.
See also: JAMES AVERILL, THE BANDITTI OF THE PLAINS,
FRANK M. CANTON, CATTLE KATE, NATHAN D. CHAMPION,
RED SASH GANG.
During the so-called Alcatraz Prison Rebellion of
1946, really just an escape attempt by six convicts, Johnston proposed an all-out attack on the cell blocks by
armed guards and grenade-tossing marines. When his
superior in Washington, Bureau of Prisons head James
Bennett, said he was worried about “what public reaction will be if a large number of innocent inmates were
unnecessarily killed,” Johnston responded rather stiffly,
“Mr. Director, there are no innocent inmates in here.”
The investigation following the 1946 rebellion revealed
that one prisoner had been held in total isolation for
more than seven years. Johnston bristled when asked
how much longer the man would remain there and said,
“As long as necessary for discipline.” The warden insisted that the FBI agents preparing a murder case against
three members of the six-man escape team interview
them in the dungeon, relenting only when the officers
explained that any statements they got from the prisoners
under those conditions might not be admitted in court.
There is little doubt that Johnston was personally
brave. Even in periods of unrest—and Alcatraz was
almost constantly beset by strikes, sit-ins and riots—
Johnston always entered the dining hall alone and
unarmed; of course, machine-gun toting guards
patrolled the catwalk outside. He would taste the soup
and then take his position by the door, exposing his
back to the convicts marching out. During a strike in
September 1937, a young convict known to be mentally
deficient attacked the 61-year-old warden, battering his
face in, knocking out several teeth and stomping on his
chest before guards could tear him away. It was a week
before Johnston could get out of bed. His assailant
went to the hole for a long stay. As a lifer, he faced
death for attacking a prison officer, but the warden
never brought charges.
Johnston retired as warden in 1948, a man who had
believed in rehabilitation but who had during 14 years
molded a prison incapable of rehabilitating anyone.
Summing up his tenure, he said: “Atlanta and Leavenworth had sent me their worst. I had done my best with
them.” Johnston died at the age of 82, having outlived
many a younger con who had sworn to celebrate on the
day the warden died.
See also: ALCATRAZ PRISON, ALCATRAZ PRISON REBELLION, ATLANTA BOYS CONVOY, RUFUS “WHITEY” FRANKLIN, RULE OF SILENCE, ROBERT STROUD.
Johnston, James A. (1876–1958) warden of Alcatraz
In 1934 James A. Johnston, a veteran penologist, was
appointed by the U.S. Department of Justice to be the
first warden of a new maximum-security, minimumprivilege federal prison on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. Johnston had previously served as warden of
both Folsom and San Quentin prisons, California’s
toughest, but he had a reputation as a reformer. As
such, his appointment caused something of a surprise.
Old prison hands wanted someone tougher in the job,
and many of Johnston’s supporters were perplexed that
he had accepted the post, which by the nature of the
prison, had to be a repressive one.
From the beginning, Alcatraz was Johnston’s creation; he personally designed the cell blocks and composed the most restrictive regulations ever used in a
federal prison in the United States. In the popular press,
Johnston was referred to as being “tough but kindly.”
The convicts thought differently, however, calling him
Saltwater Johnston because they considered him as bitter as saltwater.
The rules that Johnston laid down were so severe
that they are credited with having driven any number
of convicts “stir crazy.” For the first four years a rigid
“rule of silence” prohibited the convicts from speaking a word in the cell blocks, in the mess hall or at
work. A single word uttered without permission
meant instant punishment, often in solitary confinement for periods up to several months. It was an
abrupt change for a warden who in a dozen years had
reformed San Quentin in more ways than had been
accomplished in the previous 50. There, he had introduced individual treatment of convicts, established
honor camps, abolished corporal punishment and did
away with the ugly striped prison uniform. At Alcatraz the hole became a standard punishment. In the
cramped space a convict slept on concrete and
received only water and four slices of bread a day.
Solitary was a little better, since the prisoner got a
bunk and one regular meal a day.
Johnstown flood looting
The flood that struck Johnstown, Pa., in 1889 was
easily the worst disaster to occur in the United States
during the late 19th century. When a 100-foot-high
earthen dam broke, the resulting cataclysm killed at
least 2,000 people—an average of about one out of
467
JON, Gee
frenzy of catching looters. A publication of the period
reported:
A trap was laid for a crook undertaker, who was robbing the bodies in the Fourth Ward morgue. A female
was brought in, and before it was dressed for burial a
diamond ring was placed upon one of her fingers, and
the pseudo undertaker was assigned to take charge of
the body. He was detected in the act of stealing the jewelry, and was promptly arrested by the chief of police.
Jon, Gee (?–1924) first gas chamber victim
In 1924 Gee Jon became the first man to die in the gas
chamber in Carson City, Nev. Reformers in that state
were sure they had come up with a humane execution
method when they pushed through a bill to have condemned men killed by poison gas that would be piped
into their cells. The idea was that the execution would
take place while the prisoner was asleep so that no prior
notice would have to be given. Jon, the first man facing
such a fate, would thus be spared the macabre preparations for the execution as well as having to await a
preestablished time of death. However, these well-laid
plans had to be scrapped because prison officials couldn’t figure out how to carry out such an execution without having the gas spread and kill off a considerable
number of the prison population. An airtight chamber
was then constructed, and Jon had to endure all the
frightful preparations the reformers had hoped to spare
him. He was led into the chamber with a stethoscope
attached to his chest and strapped into a chair under
which cyanide pellets tied in a gauze sack hung on a
hook. The chamber was cleared and a lever was pulled
allowing the cyanide “eggs” to drop into a pan filled
with a mixture of water and sulfuric acid. Within a matter of seconds, deadly fumes rose and, in a short time,
the condemned man’s heartbeat stopped. An effusive
Carson City reporter informed his readers that Nevada
had moved “one step further from the savage state.”
See also: EXECUTION, METHODS OF.
“DEATH TO THE FIENDS!” A contemporary sketch revealed
the swift justice meted out to looters and mutilators of
the dead at Johnstown in the aftermath of the great
flood there.
every 10 persons living in the way of the flood—and
bodies were still being found as late as 1906. However,
much as the public was upset by the tragedy and the
almost certain criminal negligence in the construction
and supervision of the dam, it became more outraged
by the looting, especially of the bodies of dead victims,
that took place in the aftermath of the disaster.
As soon as the waters started to settle, hordes of
looters descended on the scene to pillage business establishments and to strip the dead of cash, watches, wedding rings and the like. Dozens of looters were arrested,
but they were the lucky ones. Outraged citizens killed
others on the spot.
A Miss Wayne from Altoona, Pa. reported she was
swept off a ferryboat by the rampaging waters and
ended up on a beach, where she awakened to find herself stripped naked by looters. She feigned death and
watched bands of thieves “slice off with wicked knives”
the fingers of women to get their rings.
So outraged was the citizenry over this story that
many persons lost interest in rescue work and set out in
vigilante style to hunt for looters. One looter captured
with a ring-bearing severed finger in his pocket was
summarily drowned. Others were shot. Even the police,
overburdened with rescue work, were caught up in the
Jones, Frank (1856–1893) Texas Ranger
One of the most colorful and storied Texas Rangers,
Frank Jones had become a Ranger in his native Texas at
the age of 17 and a hero in the organization at 18. Sent
after a gang of Mexican horse thieves, Jones saw the
two Rangers accompanying him cut down in an
ambush. Carrying on alone, he killed two of the enemy
and took one prisoner. Later, as a sergeant, he led a
seven-man force after a group of rustlers. In a bitter
gunfight three Rangers were killed, and Jones and three
others were captured. Then, in an act of heroism befit468
JONES,William “Canada Bill”
ting the storybook reputation of the Texas Rangers,
Jones managed to seize the rifle of one of the rustlers
and shoot his five captors dead. In 1880, as a captain,
Jones was sent out with a murder warrant to arrest the
notorious Scott Cooley, the instigator of the Mason
County War of 1875. In a rare failure, Jones did not
find Cooley (no one ever did and there is some reason
to believe Cooley was dead at the time), but he did turn
up three other desperadoes, one of whom he gunned
down, the others he captured. After a while, Jones
killed a rustler in a stand-up gun duel in a saloon, and
in another barroom shoot-out he wounded and captured a notorious gunman named Tex Murietta. The
list of Jones’ daring accomplishments lengthened until
June 29, 1893, when he went after a father-son outlaw
team named Olguin. In a withering gun battle Jones,
long regarded as “unkillable,” was riddled with bullets.
Ironically, the gunfight took place on an island in the
Rio Grande that was actually on the Mexican side of
the border, where the Olguins were immune to Texas
justice.
See also: SCOTT COOLEY, MASON COUNTY WAR.
Normally, three-card monte favored the dealer twoto-one, but Canada Bill seldom gave a sucker such a
decent break. He was probably the century’s greatest
manipulator of cards and could show a victim two aces
and a queen and then, virtually in the act of throwing
the cards, palm the queen and introduce a third ace so
that the sucker could never find the queen. About 1850
Canada Bill formed a partnership with Devol and two
other talented gamblers, Tom Brown and Hally Chappell. The larcenous quartet operated on the Mississippi
and Ohio and other navigable streams for close to a
decade. When the partnership dissolved, each man’s
share of the profits was more than $200,000.
As quickly as both he and Devol made their money,
however, they squandered it, both being suckers for
faro. Canada Bill, who truly loved gambling for its own
sake, was the originator of what was to become a classic gamblers’ comment. He and a partner were killing
time between boats in a small Mississippi River town
when Bill found a faro game and started to lose consistently. His partner, tugging at his sleeve, said, “Bill,
don’t you know the game’s crooked!”
“I know it,” Bill replied, “but it’s the only game in
town!”
When river traffic dwindled and then virtually disappeared by the start of the Civil War, Canada Bill shifted
his operations to the rails. The railroads, however, did
not always exhibit the same tolerance for gamblers that
the riverboats had, and three-card monte players were
ejected when spotted. In 1867 Canada Bill wrote to one
of the Southern lines offering $25,000 a year in
exchange for the right to operate without being
molested. He promised to give the railroad an additional percentage of the profits and said he would limit
his victims to very rich men and preachers. Alas, his
offer was refused.
Alternately flush and broke Canada Bill continued his
itinerant gambling style until 1874, when he settled in
Chicago and, with Jimmy Porter and Charlie Starr, established some very lucrative and dishonest gambling dens.
Within six months he was able to pull out with $150,000,
but in a short time, he lost his entire poke at faro. Canada
Bill worked Cleveland a bit, winning and then losing, and
in 1877 he wound up in Reading, Pa., an area noted as a
refuge for gamblers. While down on funds he was committed to Charity Hospital and died there in 1877. He
was buried by the mayor of the city, who was later reimbursed by Chicago gamblers for the cost. As two old
gambling buddies watched Canada Bill’s coffin being
lowered into the grave, one offered to bet $1,000 to $500
that the notorious cheat was not in the box.
“Not with me,” the other gambler said. “I’ve known
Bill to squeeze out of tighter holes than that.”
See also: GEORGE DEVOL.
Jones, William “Canada Bill” (?–1877) gambler
Probably the greatest three-card monte cheater this
country has ever produced and a fine all-round gambler, Canada Bill Jones cut a mangy figure along the
Mississippi in the middle of the 19th century. In his
autobiography Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi, George Devol, another legendary gambler,
described Canada Bill as
a character one might travel the length and breadth of
the land and never find his match, or run across his
equal. Imagine a medium-sized, chicken-headed, towhaired sort of a man with mild blue eyes, and a mouth
nearly from ear to ear, who walked with a shuffling,
half-apologetic sort of a gait, and who, when his countenance was in repose, resembled an idiot. His clothes
were always several sizes too large, and his face was as
smooth as a woman’s and never had a particle of hair
on it.
Canada was a slick one. He had a squeaking,
boyish voice, and awkward gawky manners, and a way
of asking fool questions and putting on a good natured
sort of a grin, that led everybody to believe that he was
the rankest kind of sucker—the greenest sort of country
jake. Woe to the man who picked him up, though.
Canada was, under all his hypocritical appearance, a
regular card shark, and could turn monte with the best
of them. He was my partner for a number of years, and
many are the suckers we roped in, and many the huge
roll of bills we corralled.
469
JUANITA
Juanita (1828–1851) first woman hanged in California
Juanita was dragged back to her cabin and given an
hour to prepare for her fate, while a crowd gathered
outside the cabin and started shouting curses at her and
stoning the flimsy structure. A priest was not allowed
to go to her. After the hour was up, Juanita was
marched to Durgan Bridge, from which a noose hung
out over the wide Yuba. Extending from the bridge was
a 6-foot plank, on which the condemned woman was
to stand. As she took her position, Juanita was silent,
unlike during her courtroom appearance when she
voluably had attacked the kangaroo proceedings in
Spanish. Now she merely observed the crowd and
smiled in contempt. When she spotted a friendly face,
she called out, “Adiós, amigo, adiós.” Then the plank
was kicked out from under her.
When news of the execution reached the outside
world, the press from one end of the country to the
other condemned the bloodthirsty affair. Even the
Times of London printed severe and caustic criticism of
the manner in which border justice had been dispensed.
Juanita was described as the first and only woman ever
hanged in California, which was not true. Many Mexican and Indian women had been hanged, but hers was
the first to follow a “trial.”
The hanging of a Mexican woman named Juanita, who
comes down through history by that name alone, in the
town of Downieville, Calif. in 1851 brought denunciations of American border justice from as far away as
England.
Downieville was at the time a mining camp full of
violent miners and harlots of all ages and hues, but
Juanita was unquestionably the prize beauty. One
account testifies: “Her dusky hair, long and glossy, was
pulled low over delicate olive features and knotted
loosely at the nape of her graceful neck. It gave her a
Madonna-like expression. No doubt, many a rough
miner stood in awe of her beauty and bared his head in
reverence mingled with a certain human admiration.”
But she also had some faults, being described as, among
other things, “a live volcano, an enraged lioness, a
fighting wildcat.”
In mid-1851 Juanita found true love with a young
Mexican miner and set up housekeeping. She was
henceforth not available as in the past. On the Fourth
of July a celebrating miner named Jack Cannon came
knocking on Juanita’s door, brandishing a bag of gold
dust. Juanita screamed at him in Spanish to let her
alone. Cannon ignored her protestations and forced his
way into the cabin, actually smashing the cabin door
from its hinges. A knife flashed in the Mexican girl’s
hand, and Cannon fell bleeding to death on the floor.
Cannon was known in the camp as a rowdy, but he
was a popular one, and an angry crowd soon gathered
and began talk of lynching. Juanita was dragged to
Craycroft’s saloon for what was supposed to be a trial,
but in the meantime some of her clothing had been
dipped in Cannon’s blood so that her crime would be
more evident. A “prosecutor” was appointed to present
the case, and a young unidentified lawyer who had
journeyed over the mountains from Nevada to hear the
Fourth of July speeches in Downieville was permitted
to defend Juanita. While the “trial” proceeded, a number of miners argued over whose rope should be used
for the girl’s execution. When the young attorney
started making a strong case of self-defense, he was
knocked off the barrel he was standing on and flung
out to the street. The jury then was ready to bring in a
verdict, which, of course, turned out to be guilty.
Then a Dr. C. D. Aikin, who had come to the camp
only weeks before, interrupted the proceedings to
declare he was treating Juanita for pregnancy. An angry
murmur arose in the crowd, which numbered in the
hundreds. Three other local medical men were charged
with examining the girl and came back to announce the
claim was a hoax. Dr. Aiken quickly was held in contempt for his humane effort to save the girl and was
given 24 hours to get out of town or be hanged himself.
Judd, Winnie Ruth (1909–1993) murderess
Winnie Judd was called the Tiger Woman by a devoted
press, which kept her supplied with clippings for 40
years after her conviction in the trunk murders of two
young women in Phoenix, Ariz.
Winnie had been friendly with 27-year-old Agnes
LeRoi, a nurse who worked at the same medical clinic
as herself, and Hedvig Samuelson, with whom Agnes
shared an apartment, and often stayed with them. On
October 16, 1931, screams were heard coming from
the apartment. The next day Winnie showed up for
work but Agnes did not. On October 18 Winnie went
by train to Los Angeles with a large trunk and a small
one. Upon her arrival she asked a baggage room
employee to help her load them in her car. The
employee noticed a dark red fluid dripping from a corner of one of them and demanded to know what was
inside, suspecting the trunks might contain contraband
deer meat. Winnie said the keys were in the car and
went to get them. She drove off, but the baggage clerk
managed to write down her license number.
When authorities opened the trunks, they found the
body of Agnes LeRoi in the large one and most of the
dismembered body of Hedvig in the smaller one. She
had been cut up to make her fit. An alarm went out for
Winnie, who finally surrendered five days later after an
appeal from her Los Angeles husband, from whom she
had been separated for some time.
470
JUDICIAL corruption
The public was enthralled by the trunk murderess,
but it was difficult to tell whether people were more
taken by the grisliness of the crime or letters that
Winnie had written but never sent to her husband,
which revealed strange heterosexual, bisexual and
homosexual activities that were common at the LeRoiSamuelson apartment.
Winnie insisted she had killed in self-defense after
Hedvig pulled out a gun and shot her in the hand following a bitter argument. She said she had struggled for the
gun, managed to wrest it from Hedvig and in the ensuing
melee shot both women. At her trial the prosecution
made the point that no one had noticed the gun wound
in Winnie’s hand until two days after the killings.
Winnie was found guilty and sentenced to hang.
Pressure around the country built up for Winnie to be
spared the death penalty in light of her claims of selfdefense and her lawyer’s insistence that she was mentally ill. Thirty state legislators and 34 priests and
ministers signed a petition, and thousands of letters
poured in on her behalf, including from Mrs. Eleanor
Roosevelt.
The governor granted her a stay and a sanity hearing
72 hours before her scheduled execution. At the hearing the Tiger Woman put on a show that delighted the
newspapers. She clapped, laughed and yelled at the
jury. She got up once and told her husband she was
“going out the window.” Winnie’s mother testified that
she herself was feeble-minded and that her daughter
had “been more or less insane all her life.” Her father
produced a family tree that traced insanity back 125
years to Scotland. Winnie emphasized the point by ripping at her hair and trying to pull off her clothes. She
finally had to be removed from the hearing room and
ultimately was judged insane and sentenced to life
imprisonment in the state mental institution.
When she arrived at the institution Winnie no longer
acted crazy. She was quiet, helpful and plotting. She
fashioned a dummy of herself, put it in her bed and
escaped. She was found some days later, and it was discovered that strangers had helped her on a number of
occasions.
Winnie was brought back and tightly confined. It
did no good. Over the years she escaped seven times,
each time sparking headlines. One of her escapes lasted
six years. It got so that in newsrooms on dull news days
an editor would say, “Well, maybe Winnie Ruth Judd
will escape again.” One of the more sensational crime
publications warned its readers. “When you read this
story, the country’s cleverest maniac may be at large
again, perhaps walking down your street, or sitting
next to you!”
In 1969, after one of her long-term escapes, attorney
Melvin Belli fought Winnie’s extradition from Califor-
Winnie Ruth Judd (center), the trunk murderess, being
returned to prison after one of her many escapes.
nia to Arizona, but Gov. Ronald Reagan ordered her
returned. Doctors then ruled Winnie was perfectly sane
and she was sent to prison. In 1971 Winnie won a
parole. She was then in her 60s and no one seemed to
be upset about the Tiger Woman being on the loose,
possibly because she had had so much free time before.
judicial corruption
The roster of corrupt judges in the American judicial
system is, sadly, a long one. It is least serious in the federal judiciary. As Donald Dale Jackson states in Judges
(1974), “Manton, Kerner, Ritter, perhaps three dozen
others in the history of the republic is not bad.” But
Jackson goes on to add: “Corruption in state courts is
oceanic in comparison to federal courts. Salaries are
lower, prestige is lower, and inevitably the quality
declines. Most important, the state courts are too often
havens for failed politicians and mediocre lawyers.
Character, given these limitations, is a sometime
thing.”
Unscrupulous judges have for generations taken
advantage of the opportunity to milk estates through
their authority to appoint special guardians and
appraisers. This practice can profit a judge’s political
allies, personal friends, members of his family and others. Some have believed in garnering the rewards more
directly. Clem McClelland, a probate judge in Harris
County, Tex. even went so far as to set up a dummy
corporation, the Tierra Grande Corp. in which his
appointees could buy stock and thereby contribute to
his personal fortune. The judge was finally convicted of
stealing $2,500 from an estate in his court and in 1965
was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.
471
JUDSON, Edward Z. C.
About the same time as the McClelland affair broke,
the judicial system of Oklahoma was rocked by a scandal involving four justices of the state’s nine-man
Supreme Court. In his confession one of the jurists,
Nelson S. Corn, said he and three other members of the
court had shared $150,000 for reversing a tax decision
against an investment company. Corn and Justice Earl
Welch avoided impeachment by resigning. Another
judge died before the plot was revealed and the fourth,
Justice Napoleon Bonaparte Johnson, a part-Cherokee
honored as Indian of the Year in 1964, was impeached
by the state senate. Perhaps the most sordid testimony
of the investigation occurred when Corn was asked if
there had been any year during his 24 on the bench
when he had failed to take a bribe. He answered,
“Well, I don’t know.”
Perhaps the most prolific fixer ever to preside over a
court was the late New York Circuit judge Martin T.
Manton. Manton’s method of trying a lawsuit was to
decide in favor of the highest bidder. He told one
prospective victim, “While I’m sitting on the bench, I
have my right and my left hand.” This particular victim, who happened to be as underhanded as Manton
himself had the judge’s fix offer wire-recorded. After
Manton heard the recording, he rushed back to court
and handed down the required verdict for not so much
as a thin dime. Manton was not caught on that particular caper, but he was on some 17 others. He served a
prison term, was disbarred and died in disgrace.
The last federal judge impeached and removed from
office by the U.S. Congress was Halsted L. Ritter in
1936. Among other charges brought against him were
continuing to practice law while serving on the federal
bench and giving his former law partner an excessive
$75,000 fee as receiver of a Palm Beach hotel and taking in exchange a kickback of $4,500. He also accepted
a number of other kickbacks and appointed his sisterin-law manager of a bankrupt hotel where he then
received free room and board and other services. Ritter
had failed to report any of these items on his income
tax returns.
Removed from office, Ritter ignored the removal
order of the Senate and refused to leave his office until
forcefully ejected by a U.S. marshal.
See also: MARTIN T. MANTON, HALSTED RITTER.
witness stand by his victim’s brother, narrowly escaped
a lynching and was imprisoned for his part in inciting
New York’s notorious Astor Place Riots of 1849.
Born in Stamford, N.Y. in 1823, he went to sea at the
age of 10 as a cabin boy after quarreling with his father,
a minor writer named Levi C. Judson. He returned to
land at the age of 20 and, almost overnight, became a
writer. By late 1843 he was publishing a gutter journal
in Nashville, Tenn. called Ned Buntline’s Own.
In Nashville, Judson had an affair with a married
woman whose husband, Robert Porterfield, came after
him with a gun. While he was testifying at a hearing
into the killing in magistrate’s court, the dead man’s
brother fired three shots at him, all of which gave him
skin burns but did no other damage. Judson was
released, but the local citizenry felt that justice had not
been done and pursued him to his hotel. He was forced
to jump from a third-floor window to escape his pursuers, a leap that gave him a permanent limp. Judson
was then put in jail for his own protection until the
lynch mood subsided. Later on, he wrote that lynchers
took him from his cell and actually strung him up, leaving him for dead, and that some friends cut him down
before he expired. This, however, might well be taken
with the same skepticism due when reading his writings
on the heroics of Cody and Hickok. Lynchers seldom
left a body before it was stone-cold dead, and sporting
bets were usually made over when the victim would
twitch his last twitch.
A few years later, Judson moved to New York City,
where he became a writer and henchman for the notorious political leader and rogue Capt. Isaiah Rynders. In
1849 Judson was sent to prison for his part in the Astor
Place Riots, in which 23 persons had been killed mainly
because of the anti-British hysteria whipped up by Rynders and Judson. When Judson came out of Blackwell’s
Island after serving his one-year term, he published a
book called The Convict’s Return or Innocence Vindicated. After that, the rest of Judson’s life was free of
rascality and criminality—except for the hyperbole of
his dime-novel writings.
See also: ASTOR PLACE RIOTS.
jug markers
When the desperadoes of the 1920s and 1930s turned
to bank robbing as a major occupation, a need developed for the services of a “jug marker,” a caser who
would know which bank to rob and when. The great
bank robber Baron Lamm, who first organized bank
gangs into specialized, militarylike units, was his own
jug marker, considering it the most important role in
the operation. A good jug marker not only learned the
particulars of a bank’s security system but also ascer-
Judson, Edward Z. C. (1823–1886) writer and rioter
While Edward Judson is best remembered as Ned Buntline, the author of those hokey, bloodcurdling dime
novels that brought fame to Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild
Bill Hickok, he also had a long record in the annals of
crime. Among other things, he killed a cuckolded husband in a messy love triangle, was shot at while on the
472
JULIAN Street
tained who had responsibility to open which safe and
when, as well as what day of the week the most money
would be on hand.
John Dillinger’s favorite jug marker was Eddie
Green, although he sometimes utilized the brash Harry
Pierpont who once cased a bank by interviewing the
president in the guise of a newsman. Green was perhaps the most thorough at his trade. He kept an “active
list” of banks and checked back on them to see if anything had changed since his last go-round. Even while
in jail he was able to sell his information to bankrobbing gangs and to receive a share in the profits.
When he joined the Dillinger gang, Dillinger asked him
to name a good bank. Green cited one in Sioux Falls,
S.D. and started rattling off details. The gang then went
out and robbed it.
On some jobs Green went so far as to find a reason
for visiting bank officials in their homes just to study
them more carefully, to be able to judge how they
would act under stress. Green found the First National
Bank of Mason City, Iowa for the Dillinger mob and
discovered the bank’s vault contained more than
$240,000. Through no fault of Green’s the gang
botched the operation and got only $52,000. Green
was shot dead by FBI agents in St. Paul, Minn. in April
1934. His death put a considerable crimp in Dillinger’s
short-lived operations thereafter.
With Dillinger’s demise, Baby Face Nelson emerged
as the great bank-robbing public enemy. Nelson’s idea
of jug marking was to charge through a bank’s front
door blazing away. Obviously, an era in bank robbing
was ending. Following Green’s death probably the
greatest jug marker, and some say the only really good
one, to appear on the scene was Slick Willie Sutton. In
the late 1960s and through the 1970s, the impulsive
amateurs took over and, as Sutton noted, “jug marking
plain went to hell.”
Jukes
one of these sisters, “Margaret, mother of criminals”
and indicted her as “the progenitor of the distinctly
criminal line of the family.”
Dugdale traced 540 “blood relatives” and 169 others related by marriage or cohabitation. Of these, 140
were criminals and offenders of various stripes, almost
300 were wards of the state and the remainder generally a debased, foul and diseased lot. Dugdale enraged
his readers by estimating that the price of imprisonment, public assistance and the like had cost the taxpayers something like $1.3 million.
During the early 20th century, critics began to question Dugdale’s research methods and findings. The
famous prison reformer Thomas Mott Osborne marveled at Dugdale’s supposed ability to trace family
bloodlines among the illegitimately born. Not a scientific researcher but merely a functionary of the Prison
Association of New York, Dugdale seemed to rely very
heavily on reciting the criminal backgrounds of various
unnamed wretches who, he was satisfied, were related
to the original Margaret. Osborne soon became convinced that Dugdale had simply operated under the
assumption that every criminal he happened upon must
have been a Juke and every Juke was probably a criminal. The shoddiness of Dugdale’s research was shown
by some of the “criminals” he unearthed: “a reputed
sheep-stealer”; a man “supposed to have attempted
rape”; an “unpunished and cautious thief”; “a petty
thief but never convicted”; and a particularly offensive
lad about whom it was “impossible to get any reliable
information, but it is evident that at nineteen he was a
leader in crime.”
Many sociologists attacked the Juke thesis, but it
received a new lease on life when in 1916 Arthur H.
Estabrook took up the Dugdale mantle, claiming that
since the 1870s the Jukes had continued to spawn more
criminals and unworthiness. Estabrook admitted there
was a lot of “good” Jukes around but insisted that
since in recent years the Jukes had taken to marrying
outside the breed, the theory of hereditary criminality
and immorality was not weakened. Today, Dugdale and
Estabrook alike enjoy little support because of their
failure to give any weight to the influence of cultural
and environmental factors on the development of criminal behavior.
alleged criminal clan
For many years the Juke clan of New York State was
regarded as the most depraved family in America, having
produced, from the mid-1700s to the 1870s, seven generations of rapists, thieves, prostitutes, disease carriers and
murderers. Begun in the 1870s, a criminal-genealogical
study—The Jukes, A Study in Crime, Pauperism, Disease
and Heredity by Richard L. Dugdale—established, to the
author’s satisfaction, that criminal traits could be inherited just as much as hair coloring.
Dugdale started his study with a mid-18th century
Dutch tavern keeper he called Max, who was well
known as a gambler and drinker and was the father of
two sons. The sons in turn married two illegitimate sisters, whom Dugdale described as harlots. He dubbed
Julian Street
Cripple Creek, Colorado vice center
Cripple Creek, the last of the Colorado gold towns,
was as wicked as any of its predecessors and perhaps
even a bit more open about it. Train travelers passing
through the town were treated to a full view of Myers
Avenue and its “line,” replete with such signs as “MEN
TAKEN IN AND DONE FOR.” A leading turn-of-the473
JUMP, John
century journalist, Julian Street, exposed the shame of
Myers Avenue to a national audience in a searing article
in Colliers magazine, calling the thoroughfare a disgrace to the entire country. The outraged city fathers of
Cripple Creek fought back by bestowing a special
honor on the journalist: they renamed Myers Avenue
“Julian Street.”
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Jump, John (?–1943) murder victim
When one December morning in 1943 the dismembered body of John Jump was found on the train tracks
near Fort Valley, Ga., the authorities’ first theory was
that the man had obviously been drunk and fallen in
front of the train. However, the police soon discarded
this theory and began looking for a murderer.
Inspection of the Jump home showed that the
kitchen walls had recently been washed halfway to
the ceiling and chemical tests revealed blood stains on
the walls. Finally, Jump’s young widow admitted killing
him, claiming self-defense. After splitting the victim’s
head open with an ax, she cut the body in three parts
and in two trips in the dark, carried the pieces to a desolate section of train tracks.
Given a long prison term for second-degree murder,
she might well have gotten away with the crime but for
one glaring miscalculation. There were three sets of
tracks on the right-of-way where the body was found,
but she had chosen to place its parts on the one set of
tracks over which no train had run for eight months.
An early 19th-century woodcut depicts Boston authorities
in pursuit of suspected youthful thieves who flooded the
town. Not even the sight of a hanging figure (in background) could deter the juvenile criminals, many of
whom were homeless.
War period. The Society for the Prevention of Pauperism was established in New York in 1817 to improve
the lot of “those unfortunate children from 10 to 18
years of age, who from neglect of parents, from idleness
and misfortune have . . . contravened some penal
statute without reflecting on the consequences, and for
hasty violations, been doomed to the penitentiary by
the condemnation of the law.” Funded by private donations, the House of Refuge was established in 1825 in
New York to admit children convicted of crimes and
those so destitute or neglected that they were in imminent danger of becoming delinquent. This marked the
first time that children and adults were jailed separately.
By today’s standards, the House of Refuge was a
harsh institution, but it merely reflected the general
practices of the day, when children were often put in
irons, whipped, placed in solitary confinement, forced
to survive on a reduced food supply and subjected to
the silent treatment. The institution had the right to act
as a parent for neglected or criminal children, and parents who objected were generally unable to win the
release of their offspring. Houses of refuge were set up
in Boston and Philadelphia, and both instituted reforms
in treating juveniles. Boston prohibited corporal punishment; Philadelphia housed each child in a cell of his
own. By 1834 the New York house took the revolutionary step of accepting black children. In 1856 the first
girls’ reformatory, the Massachusetts State Industrial
School for Girls, opened.
juvenile delinquency
In one sense, juvenile delinquency was not a problem in
early colonial times. Until the Revolution settlers in this
land lived under English common law, which held that
juvenile offenders from the age of seven were accountable for their acts and could face the same penalties
imposed on adults for various offenses. While a judge
had discretion to determine the culpability of children
between seven and 14 years of age, there were numerous executions of children as young as one eight-yearold hanged for burning a barn with “malice, revenge,
craft and cunning.” One well-known case was that of
12-year-old Hannah Ocuish, hanged for the murder of
a six-year-old child. A contemporary account, which in
tone approved of the execution, did comment that “she
said very little and appeared greatly afraid, and seemed
to want somebody to help her.” Protests that she was
too young to die drew very little public support.
Still, the punishment of juveniles was much more
lenient in the colonies than in England. Corporal punishment and incarceration were gradually replacing the
hangman’s rope, especially in the post–Revolutionary
474
JUVENILE delinquency
In the 1860s, an ill-fated experiment was attempted
with “ship schools,” whereby young offenders were sent
to sea on special vessels. Disciplinary problems, heavy
operating expenses and protests from adult seamen fearful of losing jobs dealt the ship schools a quick death. In
the 1870s and 1880s the so-called child-saving movement started under the leadership of a number of
women’s clubs. As a result of such efforts, separate
courts for juveniles were established in 1899 in the states
of Illinois and Rhode Island and the city of Denver, Colo.
The first federal effort to combat juvenile delinquency came with the establishment of the Children’s
Bureau in 1912. Under federal encouragement many
states and large cities opened special reformatories for
juveniles. These institutions did not solve the juvenile
delinquency problem or clarify how juveniles could be
rehabilitated through confinement. To this day, brutality, homosexuality and rioting remain ever present
problems. Following the new approaches to aiding
troubled juveniles expounded by John Dewey, Karen
Horney, Carl Rogers, Erich Fromm and others, a new
era of get-tough approaches to juvenile delinquency
began in the 1970s.
The new public attitude was bolstered by such horrors
as New York City’s “laugh killing” in July 1978, the
senseless slaying of a 16-year-old seminary student by a
13-year-old boy, a tragedy some experts say will have as
great an impact on America’s attitude toward juvenile
crime as any offense has ever had. The killing took place
in front of Teachers College at Columbia University
when the 13-year-old and a 15-year-old companion came
up to the seminary student, Hugh McEvoy, and a friend,
Peter Mahar, 15, who were sitting on a railing. According to later testimony, the 13-year-old boy asked
McEvoy, “What are you laughing at?”
Mahar replied, “We’re not laughing at anything.”
With that, the 13-year-old pulled out a .22-caliber
pistol, placed it to McEvoy’s head and pulled the trigger. McEvoy was fatally wounded.
Under the existing law, the 13-year-old, who had a
record of 10 arrests, nine within the previous 18
months, could only be tried in family court and receive
a maximum sentence of 18 months in a “secure facility,” with the option that his sentence could be
renewed. After the first 18 months the 13-year-old
would automatically be able to receive home passes and
furloughs. The uproar over the laugh killing brought
speedy passage of what some reporters called “Carey’s
law,” named after New York governor Hugh L. Carey,
which allowed juveniles to be tried for murder like
adults and to be sentenced to life in prison. It was predicted that the laugh-killing law would spread throughout the country.
The chief deficiency in any serious study of juvenile
delinquency (as pointed out in the entry on Age and
Crime) is the absence of reliable statistics concerning
juvenile crime in the 19th century, or even the first
three decades of the 20th until the first appearance of
the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports. Even use of the Uniform Crime Reports is not that helpful and can cause
misleading conclusions about a “juvenile crime wave”
based on increase in juvenile arrests. Certain types of
crimes both violent and nonviolent, are typically juvenile offenses and explode upward when a crop of baby
boom youths hits the crime-prone ages.
See also: AGE AND CRIME, SHIP SCHOOLS, WALSH
SCHOOL FEUD.
475
K
Kaczynski, Theodore
degree murder, second-degree attempted murder, aggravated assault of a police officer, second-degree assault,
three counts of criminal possession of a weapon, reckless endangerment and coercion. Investigators also
warned six prominent New York City Jews that their
names appeared on a list held by Nosair, but at the time
nothing developed to prove he had ties to Palestinian
groups or international terrorists.
As a matter of fact, officials were going to have great
difficulty tying Nosair to the murder, even though they
felt their case was overwhelming and the press openly
described Nosair as Kahane’s murderer. On December
21, 1991, Nosair was acquitted of the main charges
against him, those of killing Kahane and shooting the
post office policeman Acosta.
Later it was determined the jury felt the prosecution
had not presented sufficient evidence to prove that
Nosair had shot Kahane, and in interviews some noted
no one testified to seeing Nosair firing a shot. All one
witness testified to was to seeing Nosair pointing a gun
at Kahane moments after the shooting. Jurors also said
the state did not prove that the gun found in the street
near Nosair was the one that had been used in the murder.
The noted defense attorney William M. Kunstler
insisted Kahane had been killed by a dissident member
of the JDL in a financial dispute. After the verdict several newspaper accounts noted that Kunstler seemed
quite stunned that he had basically won his case.
Nosair did not go free, however, and in 1995 he was
tried with a number of defendants in the World Trade
Center bombing and was also convicted on federal
charges for the Kahane murder.
See UNABOMBER.
Kahane, Rabbi Meir (1932–1990) murder victim
It was a November 5, 1990, meeting for the supporters of Rabbi Meir Kahane in the conference room of a
Midtown New York hotel. The turnout was approximately 70 persons who generally agreed with the
extremist founder of the Jewish Defense League in the
United States and the anti-Arab Kach Party in Israel.
Kahane outlined his proposal for the “transfer” or
expulsion of Arabs from Israel and the occupied territories.
Just as Kahane finished his speech, a shot rang out
and a bullet hit him in the neck that then exited
through his cheek. It was a fatal shot.
A member of the audience ran from the room, gun
in hand. According to police, the gun-toting man shot
and wounded an elderly bystander as he fled the room.
Out on the street he commandeered a taxi at gunpoint.
A block later he jumped out of the cab and came faceto-face with an on-duty Postal Service policeman, Carlos Acosta. The police said the gunman fired a shot
that bounced off the officer’s bulletproof vest and
wounded the policeman in the arm. Acosta returned
fire and his bullet hit the gunman in the neck and
lodged in his chin.
The alleged assailant was identified by police as
Sayyid A. Nosair, an Egyptian immigrant who had
become a U.S. citizen the previous year and at present
worked for a city agency. Nosair was hospitalized in
serious condition, but recovered. On November 20
Nosair was charged with multiple crimes: second477
KANSAS City Massacre
As the officers and Nash piled into a car at Union
Station, a large man carrying a machine gun
appeared—it wasn’t clear from where—and yelled,
“Get ’em up!” Two other gunmen showed up and,
for a moment, Nash thought his deliverance was at
hand. Suddenly, the trio cut loose a fusillade of bullets, spraying the car and Nash. The supposed object
of a rescue died screaming: “For God’s sake! Don’t
shoot me.”
With Nash died four lawmen, and two others were
wounded. One FBI agent survived by feigning death.
The identities of the murderous threesome became a
matter of some dispute. Several witnesses thought the
machine gunner was Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd, but
during this period every machine-gunning was thought
to be Floyd’s. It was firmly established that one of the
trio was Vern Miller. If another was in fact Pretty Boy
Floyd, then the third had to be his sidekick Adam
Richetti. That was the FBI’s position.
Floyd, a fugitive on the run, was furious over this
charge against him and wrote indignant letters to
authorities and the newspapers vehemently denying any
involvement. The fact that he never showed such indignation over other crimes ascribed to him led some to
think he might be innocent. Certainly, he was not worried that the crime would send him to the gas chamber;
the law already had enough on him to execute him several times over.
Five months later, Miller’s bullet-riddled and mangled nude body was found on the outskirts of Detroit.
Speculation arose that he had been punished for botching the Nash rescue or, after having murdered Nash
intentionally, had been killed to prevent him from ever
revealing who had ordered the attack. Floyd was killed
by FBI agents in October 1934, and Richetti was captured that same month. With his dying breath Floyd
refused to admit involvement in the Kansas City Massacre, and Richetti continued to deny it until his execution in 1938. In addition, most of the witnesses failed
to identify him as one of the gunners.
In 1954 an underworld informer named Blackie
Audett presented a new theory—or facts, as he insisted.
Audett said he himself had seen the killers escape and
he identified them as Miller, Maurice Denning and
William “Solly” Weisman. It developed that two weeks
after Miller’s corpse had been discovered, the body of
Weissman also had been found on the outskirts of
Chicago. He had been murdered in the same fashion as
Miller. Denning was never seen again after the massacre
either dead or alive and could be assumed to have been
murdered. Audett added a bizarre fillip. He claimed
everyone in the Kansas City power structure seemed to
know about the impending killings. He said he had
been invited by City Manager Henry McElroy’s daugh-
Rabbi Meir Kahane, extremist founder of the Jewish
Defense League in the United States, was shot dead
before 70 persons at a conference in a New York hotel
after he outlined his proposal for the “transfer,” or
expulsion, of Arabs from Israel and the occupied
territories.
Kansas City Massacre
Just as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929
marked the turning point in the public’s tolerance of Al
Capone, so too did the Kansas City Massacre signal the
beginning of the end to the public’s glorification of the
early 1930s gangsters. Ironically, while the massacre
was considered a gangland depredation perpetrated by
public enemies, it may well have been something
entirely different—a political rub-out.
Ostensibly, the crime was an effort to free a federal
prisoner, gangster Frank “Jelly” Nash, whom FBI
agents had captured in Hot Springs, Ark. and were
escorting to Kansas City, Mo. on June 17, 1933. Nash
knew a lot about instances of corruption, certainly
about political-criminal relationships in Hot Springs
and more importantly, in Kansas City, where the Boss
Pendergast machine’s ties with the underworld had
reached shocking proportions. There were powerful
forces who wished Nash out of the law’s hands—one
way or another. That was accomplished in particularly
bloody fashion.
478
KEARNEY, Patrick
ter to come down to the station with her to witness the
event. McElroy was Pendergast’s “front man” in
Kansas City.
“Me and Mary McElroy watched the whole thing
from less than fifty yards away,” Audett claimed. If
true, Audett’s charges give a distinct political flavor to
the massacre. They also show that Floyd and Richetti
were innocent and that more shocking things than a
mere underworld massacre happened in the Kansas
City of that era.
See also: CHARLES ARTHUR “PRETTY BOY” FLOYD,
FRANK “JELLY” NASH.
her at home when we were arranging a job, or we’d
send her to a movie. Ma saw a lot of movies.”
When Freddie Barker, along with Ma, was fatally
shot in 1935, the Barker-Karpis mob was finished. Doc
Barker had been captured shortly before and was
already in Alcatraz. Karpis carried on with minor criminals, robbing a train that was supposed to have a
$200,000 payroll on board but had only $34,000.
During a Senate committee hearing in April 1936,
Sen. Kenneth D. McKellar of Tennessee subjected
Hoover to a savage grilling about the performance of
the FBI and the director’s own competence, stressing
the point that Hoover had never made an arrest. After
the hearing Hoover vowed to take Karpis personally.
When word was received the following month that
Karpis was holed up in New Orleans, Hoover flew to
the scene to be in on the arrest. FBI agents swarmed all
over Karpis’ car and captured him as he was about to
drive away from the house. Hoover himself announced
that he was under arrest. “Put the handcuffs on him,”
Hoover snapped, but among the horde of agents not
one had remembered to bring handcuffs. An agent had
to pull off his necktie to tie Karpis’ hands.
According to Karpis’ memoirs, published in 1971, his
arrest, which had made Hoover a national hero, was not
quite as heroic as it was made to appear. In The FBI
Story, which is at least a semiofficial history of the
agency, author Don Whitehead states that Hoover
grabbed Karpis before he could reach for a rifle on the
backseat. Yet the car Karpis was captured in was a 1936
Plymouth coupe, which, as he asserted, had no backseat.
“The most obvious flaw in the FBI story, though,”
Karpis wrote, “lies in Hoover’s own character. He didn’t lead the attack on me. He hid until I was safely covered by many guns. He waited until he was told the
coast was clear. Then he came out to reap the glory. . . .
That May day in 1936, I made Hoover’s reputation as a
fearless lawman. It’s a reputation he doesn’t deserve.”
Sentenced to life imprisonment, Karpis entered Alcatraz in 1936 and remained there until transferred to the
McNeil Island Penitentiary in Washington in 1962.
When transferred he had served more time on the Rock
than any other inmate. In January 1969, after doing
almost 33 years, Karpis was released on parole and
deported to his native Canada. His book appeared in
1971. In the late 1970s he lived in quiet retirement in
Spain.
See also: ARIZONA CLARK “KATE” OR “MA” BARKER,
BARKER BROTHERS, J. EDGAR HOOVER.
Further reading: The Alvin Karpis Story by Alvin
Karpis with Bill Trent.
Karpis, Alvin “Creepy” (1907–1979) public enemy
None of the public enemies of the 1930s upset FBI
Director J. Edgar Hoover more than did Alvin
“Creepy” Karpis. Hoover always referred to him as a
“rat,” and Karpis sent word to the head G-Man that
he intended to kill him the way his agents had killed
Freddie Barker and his mother Ma Barker, during a
famous shoot-out in Florida in 1935. According to
Karpis, Ma Barker was never a criminal mastermind
but just a dumpy little middle-aged woman trying to
take care of her wild—and murderous—boys as well as
she could. That same year Karpis resurrected the virtually defunct art of train robbery, holding up a train in
Garrettsville, Ohio, partly because he knew it would
be regarded by Hoover as a personal affront. Once a
crime had been wiped out, no one was supposed to
bring it back.
A Montreal-born, Kansas-raised gangster, Karpis
met Freddie Barker in prison, where the former was
doing a term for safecracking. Barker brought him
home to Ma Barker, who took an instant liking to the
sallow, dour-faced, “creepy”-looking Karpis, and
treated him like another son, probably because Freddie
was the only one not imprisoned or dead at the time.
As some of the other sons came back from prison,
the Barkers and Karpis organized a formidable gang.
They robbed a number of banks and in 1933 kidnapped a St. Paul brewery millionaire, William Hamm,
for whom they got $100,000 in ransom. Six months
later, the gang abducted a Minneapolis banker, Edward
Bremer, and netted $200,000. The FBI fostered a myth
that Ma Barker was the brains of the gang, a claim for
which there is no evidence whatsoever. It is also doubtful any criminal as capable as Karpis would have taken
orders from a middle-aged woman. Karpis’ version of
the real Ma Barker was that she “just didn’t have the
brains or know-how to direct us on a robbery. It
wouldn’t have occurred to her to get involved in our
business, and we always made a point of only discussing our scores when Ma wasn’t around. We’d leave
Kearney, Patrick
479
See TRASH BAG MURDERS.
KEATING, Charles H., Jr.
Keating, Charles H., Jr. (1923– ) savings and loan
scandal figure
Throughout the entire savings and loan (S&L) scandal,
which rocked American finance in the late 1980s,
Charles H. Keating Jr. remained the most blatant participant. Keating’s case—estimated to have cost U.S.
taxpayers some $2.6 billion—even jeopardized the reputation of the U.S. Senate because of the actions of the
so-called Keating Five. It was a prime example of unfettered S&L officials living high on the hog and playing
fast and loose with depositors’ and investors’ money.
The Keating story can be told in the form of a
chronology:
February 1984—American Continental Corp.,
formed by Keating, buys the Lincoln Savings and
Loan of California for $51 million.
March 1986—The Federal Home Loan Bank in San
Francisco starts an examination of Lincoln’s rapid
growth and hectic investment activities.
Mid-1986—San Francisco bank examiners urge
Washington officials to come down hard on Lincoln
for questionable accounting and loan procedures.
November 1986—Five U.S. Senators—Alan
Cranston of California, John Glenn of Ohio, Donald
W. Riegle of Michigan and Dennis DeConcini (all
Democrats) and Republican John McCain of Arizona—meet with examiners on behalf of Keating,
who has made large political contributions to them.
May 1987—Examiners recommend that Lincoln be
seized for operating in an unsound manner and dissipating its assets. Nothing happens.
April 12, 1989—American Continental files for
bankruptcy protection, making its junk bonds
worthless.
April 14, 1989—The government now takes control
of Lincoln and puts the bailout at an eventual cost of
$2.6 million, the most expensive in history.
September 1990—A California grand jury charges
Keating and three others with securities fraud, saying they had deceived investors into buying junk
bonds without telling them the risk. Many Lincoln
investors thought they were buying governmentinsured bonds.
February 1991—After a three-and-a-half month
investigation, the Senate Ethics Committee renders a
verdict in the case of the Keating Five. It declares
there was “substantial credible evidence” of misconduct by Senator Cranston (leading to a severe rebuke
from the Senate in November). Riegle and
480
DeConcini are described as giving the appearance of
impropriety, but no further action is taken against
them. Glenn and McCain are criticized less severely.
December 4, 1991—After a four-month court case,
Keating is convicted of securities fraud and sentenced to a 10-year state jail term in California. He
still faces federal charges.
July 3, 1993—Keating, convicted of federal charges
of fraud, is sentenced to 12 years and seven months,
the sentence to run concurrently with the state sentence.
The S&L scandal provoked a tightening of regulations against such institutions, which took their investments far afield. The impact on politics was immense
so that by 1999 only John McCain of the Keating Five
still was in the Senate.
Keating-Holden Gang
1930s St. Paul gang
Perhaps the most brutal gang of kidnappers, bank robbers and murderers to operate during the 1920s and
early 1930s was the Keating-Holden mob, sometimes
called the St. Paul Outfit.
Longtime holdup men in Chicago before moving to
St. Paul, Minn., Francis Keating and Tommy Holden
had a habit of surrounding themselves with criminals
who were considered flaky—and thus more likely to
be feared by helpless victims. The gang was forced
into temporary retirement in the late 1920s, when
Keating and Holden were sentenced to 25 years at
Leavenworth for a $135,000 mail robbery. By using
stolen trustee passes, the pair escaped on February
28, 1930. They may have been supplied the passes by
a minor criminal named George Kelly, later famous as
Machine Gun Kelly, eager to do a favor for a couple
of big-timers. Keating and Holden promptly returned
to St. Paul and reorganized their old gang. Among its
members were the likes of Frank “Jelly” Nash, who
was to die in the Kansas City Massacre, Alvin
“Creepy” Karpis, Harvey Bailey, Shotgun George
Zeigler, Verne Miller and Freddie Barker. For sheer
flakiness the last three could hardly be surpassed.
According to underworld legend, Keating and Holden
were suspicious when considering Miller for membership since he had once been a sheriff. As a test of his
trustworthiness, Miller was told to work over a hood
whom the gang leaders did not particularly like.
Miller promptly kidnapped the hood, drove him out
to the country and broke all of his fingers. Then he let
the man go. Keating and Holden were duly impressed
that Miller was a “nut” and deserving of membership
in the gang.
KEELY, John E.W
Keely, John E. W. (1827–1898) swindler
The reconstituted gang terrorized parts of the Midwest for about a year and a half until Keating, Holden
and Bailey were captured on July 7, 1932, while playing golf at the Old Mission Golf Course in Kansas
City. But what the arresting team of FBI agents and
city police didn’t realize was that the trio had teed off
as a foursome. Jelly Nash, a terrible golfer, was trailing far behind. By the time he played through 18
holes, he could only wonder what had happened to
his comrades.
Holden and Keating returned to prison under life
sentences and their gang disintegrated, but three
surviving members—Alvin Karpis, Freddie Barker and
Shotgun Ziegler—went on to form the infamous
Barker-Karpis gang of bank robbers and kidnappers.
Few swindlers have ever deceived their victims and the
public longer than ex-carnival pitchman John Keely of
Philadelphia. In 1874, he convinced four top
financiers, Charles B. Franklyn, an official of the
Cunard steamship line, Henry S. Sergeant, president
of the Ingersoll Rock Drill Co., John J. Cisco, a leading banker, and Charles B. Collier, a lawyer, that he
could convert a quart of water into enough fuel to
power a 30-car train a mile a minute for 75 minutes.
Over the next 24 years he held frequent demonstrations in his workshop that seemed to confirm he was
about to revolutionize the entire field of energy. The
previously mentioned foursome organized the Keely
Motor Co. and over the years advanced him large
sums of money for his research. Company stock was
traded on exchanges in this country and Europe and
Keely proved adept at getting money out of people
besides his primary backers. Clara Jessup Moore, a
wealthy widow, not only invested an estimated halfmillion dollars in Keely’s so-called invention but also
authored a book entitled Keely and His Discoveries.
At one stage, John Jacob Astor “wanted in” to the
tune of $2 million.
The Scientific American attacked Keely’s claims as
ridiculous, but this did nothing to cool the ardor of
thousands of investors. Finally, after Keely’s death in
1898, investigators dismantled his house and found
Keely’s mysterious force was nothing more than compressed air. Buried under the kitchen floor of the
house was what The Scientific American in its February 4, 1899 issue described as “a steel sphere forty
inches in diameter, weighing 6,625 pounds.” This
sphere was “an ideal storage reservoir for air . . . at
great pressure.” The compressed air traveled upward
to a second-floor workshop, where Keely gave his
demonstrations, through steel and brass tubes nine
inches in diameter with a three-inch bore, strong
enough to withstand the tremendous pressure.
Between the ceiling of the room on the first floor and
the floor of the workshop was a 16-inch space “well
calculated to hide the necessary tubes for conveying
the compressed air to the different motors with which
Keely produced his results.” It was a setting in which
“for a quarter of a century the prince of humbugs
played his part.” Concealed in the walls and floor of
the workshop were spring valves that could be operated by foot or elbow to “run” a motor whenever
desired. Clearly, the whole setup was similar to the
fun and mystery houses Keely had seen during his carnival days.
Keeler, Leonarde (1903–1949) lie detector expert
The father of the polygraph, Leonarde Keeler was considered the nation’s foremost authority on deception
tests. His version of the lie detector was developed in
collaboration with Dr. John A. Larson, a pioneering
criminologist who was once a policeman in Berkeley,
Calif. and later assistant state criminologist of Illinois.
The pair met when Keeler was a student at Stanford
University working on a machine of his own. Keeler
gladly became Larson’s junior partner and the two
developed a lie detector that was embraced by August
Vollmer, the founder and chief of Berkeley’s celebrated
“scientific police department.”
Their first lie detector used pens to record on a moving strip of graph paper the variations of a suspect’s
blood pressure, pulse and respiration. Keeler later
added galvanic skin response, measured by electrodes
attached to the fingertips, which are said to show evidence of perspiration when a person is answering
falsely or is under emotional stress.
Keeler’s record of success as a lie detector expert was
probably unequaled. In many cases his expert testimony led to the freeing of defendants either already
convicted or facing certain guilty verdicts.
Keeler, like many other supporters of the polygraph,
insisted that when the testing was done by skilled
interrogators, his method of detecting lies was far
more reliable than the testimony of eyewitnesses. At
the time of his death he was bitterly disappointed that
the polygraph had failed to gain widespread judicial
recognition, although he himself was frequently called
to testify as an expert witness. Unlike certain other
exponents of the polygraph, Keeler did admit the
machine could be “beaten” and that he himself could
do so.
See also: LIE DETECTOR.
481
KEENE, John
Keene, John (?–1865) murderer
had far greater impact than other such probes. Scores
of crime figures and politicians came under the camera’s gaze as the hearings moved from one major city to
another. Headed by Democratic Sen. Estes Kefauver of
Tennessee, the five-man panel included fellow Democrats Herbert O’Conor of Maryland and Lester C. Hunt
of Wyoming and Republicans Alexander Wiley of Wisconsin and Charles W. Tobey of New Hampshire.
Brought before them by chief counsel Rudolph Halley
were more than 600 witnesses, including underworld
figures from minor hoods to major racketeers and public servants from policemen to mayors.
The Kefauver Committee hearings made the phrase
“taking the Fifth” part of the American vernacular, as
many witnesses invoked the constitutional right against
self-incrimination, although not always eloquently.
Gambler Frank Erickson took the Fifth “on the
grounds it might intend to criminate me” and Jake
“Greasy Thumb” Guzik of the Chicago syndicate felt
that his replies could well “discriminate against me.”
In Chicago viewers watched police Capt. Dan
Gilbert, chief investigator for the state attorney’s office
in Cook County and often referred to as “the world’s
richest cop,” admit his office had not raided Chicago
bookie joints since 1939. In the New York area the
cameras focused on New Jersey top underworld fixer
Longie Zwillman, from whom former Republican Gov.
Harold G. Hoffman had personally solicited support in
1946. Three years later, Zwillman had offered to give
$300,000 to the Democratic candidate for governor,
Elmer Wene, in exchange for letting him name the
state’s attorney general. The offer had been refused.
In Louisiana the committee turned up county sheriffs
and other lawmen who refused to enforce gambling
laws because they insisted their communities would die
without gambling revenues and that thousands of people, many old and underprivileged, would lose their jobs
in the illegal casinos. By coincidence, these same sheriffs
and marshals somehow had gotten very rich, as had the
New Orleans chief of detectives, who—on a salary of
$186 a month—managed to squirrel away some
$150,000 in a safe-deposit box. In Detroit the committee found some important mob figures, such as Joe Adonis and Anthony D’Anna, maintained important
business concessions with the Ford Motor Co. despite
their notorious backgrounds. The panel charged that a
meeting between D’Anna and Harry Bennett, at the time
Henry Ford’s chief aide, was held at the latter’s request
Had there been a 10 Most Wanted List during the Civil
War, John Keene most likely would have made both the
Union and Confederate rosters, each for a different set
of crimes.
Keene’s early background is unknown, but before
the outbreak of hostilities he was working in Memphis,
Tenn. Immediately after Fort Sumter, he joined the
Confederate Navy and was assigned to a ram. Hardly
the material with which wars are won, Keene’s first
hostile action was directed against his own captain,
whom he brained with a marlinespike.
Viewing his act as a sort of informal resignation,
Keene went on the run. While being hunted by the
Southern authorities, Keene allegedly killed a man or
two along the way. He eventually made his way back to
Memphis, which at the time was in the hands of the
Union. This circumstance provided Keene with a new
lease on life, but in almost no time, he killed a man
named Dolan and was again forced to flee. Changing
his name to Bob Black, Keene organized a gang of highway robbers and terrorized the Tennessee countryside,
with Union troops in constant pursuit.
Finally captured by Union forces, Keene broke out
of the guardroom and headed north. For a while,
Keene-Black ran a saloon in St. Paul, Minn. which was
little more than a cover for fencing and other criminal
activities. When the law closed in on him, he took the
only escape path open to him—west. Not surprisingly,
he fell in with the wrong sort of people, got in trouble
in Salt Lake City and had to make for Montana. There
he had a minor association with those notorious outlaws the Innocents, but the Montana Vigilantes soon
ordered him out of the territory.
Instead of leaving Montana directly, he headed for
Helena, where a short time later he spotted a former
acquaintance named Harry Slater sleeping off a jug or
two outside a saloon. Back in Salt Lake City, Slater had
made it clear that he disliked Keene and intended to do
something about it. Keene, a man who always believed
in seizing an opportunity, shot the sleeping Slater dead.
He was apprehended for the crime and brought before
a miners court, which dispensed justice with lightning
rapidity. They gave him an hour’s grace and then
hanged him high from a giant pine.
Kefauver investigation
organized crime hearings
Probably the most important probe of organized crime
in America was that conducted by the 1950–51 Senate
Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate
Commerce, more commonly known as the Kefauver
investigation. Because the hearings appeared on television, the investigation drew more public attention and
to instruct him [D’Anna] not to murder Joseph Tocco,
who had a food concession at a Ford plant. . . . Bennett entered into an agreement that D’Anna would
refrain from murdering Tocco for five years in return
for the Ford agency at Wyandotte. As a matter of
482
KEFAUVER investigation
mony, it was obvious that he would never return to his
high position in the underworld syndicate. He had been
too badly damaged by evidence presented in the probe
and was faced with constant legal battles. He was sentenced to 18 months for contempt and later did another
term for income tax evasion.
Probably even more damaged by the hearings was former New York City Mayor William O’Dwyer, who came
out of the inquiry a symbol of civic corruption. Accommodation with organized crime was a hallmark of O’Dwyer’s reign both as mayor and earlier as district attorney
in Brooklyn. Indeed, even before the hearings the revelations concerning O’Dwyer’s association with criminal
elements forced him to resign the mayoralty to seek the
relative sanctuary of the ambassadorship to Mexico.
The committee produced evidence that O’Dwyer
was friendly with top mobsters Joe Adonis and Costello
and had often visited the latter’s home. Sworn testimony that envelopes of money were passed to O’Dwyer
by leaders of city unions brought hazy or contradictory
recollections from the ex-mayor. In its report the panel
excoriated O’Dwyer:
record, Tocco was not murdered until seven years after
this meeting. Also as a matter of record, D’Anna did
become a 50 percent owner in the Ford agency at
Wyandotte within a matter of weeks after the meeting.
The highest entertainment point of the hearings
occurred in New York City, where Virginia Hill, the lady
friend of a number of top mobsters and reputed bag lady
for the mob, provided a bit of comic relief as she denied
any knowledge of the mobsters’ business. She also contributed a touch of violence when, leaving the hearings,
she threw a right cross to the jaw of reporter Marjorie
Farnsworth. Turning to the remaining horde of reporters
and photographers, she screamed: “You goddamn bastards. I hope an atom bomb falls on all of you.”
Frank Costello added to the drama at the hearings
when he refused to give testimony before the television
cameras and threatened to walk out. He finally testified
after it was agreed his face would not be shown: the
cameras instead focused on his hands, making them the
most famous pair of hands on television. The committee
looked closely into Costello’s far-flung criminal activities: his interests in gambling rackets and casinos in
Louisiana, his connection with a harness racing track,
from which he received an annual stipend to keep bookies off the premises; and his power in Manhattan politics, which included the ability to name judges to the
bench. When asked why Tammany boss Hugo Rogers
had once said, “If Costello wanted me, he would send
for me,” Costello stated he was totally mystified.
When the questioning got too tough, Costello staged
a famous walkout, and by the conclusion of his testi-
A single pattern of conduct emerges from O’Dwyer’s
official activities in regard to the gambling and waterfront rackets, murders and police corruption, from his
days as district attorney through his term as mayor. No
matter what the motivation of his choice, action or
inaction, it often seemed to result favorably for men
suspected of being high up in the rackets. . . . His
actions impeded promising investigations. . . . His
defense of public officials who were derelict in their
duties and his actions in investigations of corruption,
and his failure to follow up concrete evidence of organized crime . . . have contributed to the growth of
organized crime, racketeering and gangsterism in New
York City.
When the investigation ended, the Kefauver Committee offered a number of suggestions to tighten up
the laws against racketeers and crooked politicians.
Among the recommendations adopted were the formation of a racket squad in the Justice Department,
increased penalties for the sale of narcotics, various
curbs on gambling and the dissemination of gambling
information and increased efforts to deport gangsters. Cynics claimed that within a few months the
syndicate was running as smoothly as ever, but this
was not so. There were several far-reaching changes.
Costello’s power was broken; Adonis was deported
(voluntarily to avoid prison); gambler Willie Moretti
was executed by his comrades, who feared his bantering testimony indicated that mental illness was loosening his tongue; and reform movements gained in a
The most famous television view of the Kefauver
Committee hearings into organized crime was that of
Frank Costello’s hands. The underworld boss refused to
allow his face to be shown on camera when he testified.
483
KEHOE, Andrew
number of cities. While the underworld was hardly
destroyed, it was badly wounded. Furthermore, the
FBI, which had for years denied the existence of a
“Mafia” or of “organized crime” at last joined the
battle against them.
Kehoe, Andrew
him into something supposedly big in big-time crime,
but the fact is that Kelly never fired a shot at anyone
and he certainly never killed anyone, a remarkable statistic for a public enemy dubbed Machine Gun.
Kelly met Kathryn in Oklahoma City, where he was
already out of his element just trying to make it as a
simple bootlegger. She had excellent underworld connections thanks to a “fugitive farm” her parents ran on
their small Texas ranch, where criminals on the run
could hide out for a price. Determined to make Kelly
into a fearless crook, Kathryn gave him a machine gun
as a gift and had him practice shooting walnuts off
fence posts. It must have been exciting for Kelly, who
already had a “bum ticker.” Kathryn passed out cartridge cases in underworld dives, remarking, “Have a
souvenir of my husband, Machine Gun Kelly.”
Machine Gun, she would say, was at the moment
“away robbing banks.”
Machine Gun did break in with a few small bank
holdup gangs and took part in some capers in Mississippi and Texas. Fortunately for Kelly, he never had to
prove his mettle under fire, since the jobs went off
smoothly. Soon, Kathryn insisted they go big time like
some other mobs and get into kidnapping. They formed
a kidnap gang with a rather mild-mannered middle-aged
crook named Albert Bates. The two men, armed with
machine guns, broke into the home of millionaire oil
man Charley Urschel in Oklahoma City. The Urschels
were playing cards with a neighboring couple. Kelly, not
exactly a master at planning a job, hadn’t the least idea
which one was Urschel, never having seen or even
obtained a picture of him. When no one would say who
Urschel was, the kidnappers were forced to take the two
men. After they drove for a while, Kelly had both men
produce their wallets and identified Urschel. He tossed
the other, Walter Jarrett, out on an empty road.
After a number of false steps and missed signals, the
kidnappers collected $200,000 in ransom. Once they
had the money, Kathryn demanded they protect themselves by “killing the bastard,” but Kelly, in the one
time he stood up to his wife, convinced the others in the
gang that their victim should be freed or it would “be
bad for future business.”
The FBI ran the gang to earth thanks to victim
Urschel, who turned out to have a brilliant memory.
Although he had been kept blindfolded throughout his
ordeal of several days, he was able to remember so
many details that the agents soon identified the place
where he had been held as the ranch of Kathryn’s parents in Texas. Once the gang members were identified,
they were readily captured. Bates was picked up in
Denver. Kelly and Kathryn were cornered a little later
in a hideout in Memphis. According to the version later
given by Hoover, Kelly cringed in a corner of the room,
See BATH, MICHIGAN SCHOOL
BOMBING.
Kehoe, Jack
See JAMES MCPARLAND, MOLLIE
MAGUIRES.
Kelley, Daniel (?–1884) western outlaw
Daniel Kelley was a Western outlaw who was captured
in a standoff with a barber.
Kelley was one of five holdup men who staged Arizona’s infamous Bisbee Massacre, a robbery in 1883 in
which four innocent bystanders, three men and a
woman, were killed. The massacre sparked one of the
West’s greatest manhunts, with each of the five men
eventually tracked down. Kelley got as far as Deming,
N.M., by then sporting a heavy beard. He visited a barber shop to have his heavy stubble removed, not knowing that he had been identified as one of the murderers
and his identity telegraphed throughout the Southwest.
When the barber, Augustin Salas, set about shaving off
the beard, he recognized Kelley and immediately
planted the razor across his throat and yelled out for a
passersby to go for help. For several minutes the two
waged a strange duel, with the barber holding the razor
to Kelley’s Adam’s apple and the latter fingering his
revolver, until the outlaw was taken into custody.
It is a part of western folklore that the circumstance
of Kelley’s capture spawned the term “close shave,” but
the claim is probably disputable. In any event, Kelley
was hanged on March 8, 1884.
See also: BISBEE MASSACRE.
Kelly, George R. “Machine Gun” (1895–1954) public
enemy
Of all the public enemies of the 1930s, George
“Machine Gun” Kelly enjoyed the best press. Everyone
insisted he was a very bad man, especially his wife
Kathryn and the FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover, but calling
Kelly Public Enemy No. 1 was an insult to hundreds of
far more dangerous criminals. One candid profiler
called him “a good-natured slob, a bootlegger who
spilled more than he delivered,” referring to his criminal activities before he met and married the flamboyant
Kathryn Shannon. She gave him his reputation, making
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KELLY, Joseph “Bunco”
hands upraised, and pleaded: “Don’t shoot, G-men,—
don’t shoot.” This dramatic incident supposedly gave
the FBI agents their popular name. The tale was sheer
hogwash, however. The name “G-men” had been used
years earlier to describe government workers and
agents, and Kelly was actually captured by Detective
Sgt. W. J. Raney and Detectives A. O. Clark and Floyd
Wiebenga of the Memphis Police. After the three broke
down the bedroom door, Raney shoved a shotgun into
Kelly’s paunch, and Kelly said, “I’ve been waiting for
you all night.”
Shipped off to Alcatraz under a life sentence, Kelly
soon became known as the easygoing man he always
had been (Pop Gun Kelly to some) and was eventually
transferred out of that prison of toughs to Leavenworth, where he died of a heart attack in 1954.
Kathryn Kelly was released from her life sentence in
1958 and faded into oblivion with her aged mother.
See also: G-MEN.
it through trapdoors from other buildings, but further
police raids never uncovered any gambling. In the
early 1920s Honest John sold the building to a
Republican Party organization and relocated to Palm
Beach, Fla. where he operated a place with only limited success because of his refusal to pay protection.
He died on March 28, 1926.
Kelly, Joseph “Bunco” (1838–1934) shanghaier and
murderer
Oddly, the two greatest shanghaiers in America were
named Kelly—Shanghai Kelly and Joseph “Bunco”
Kelly. At age 26, Joseph Kelly of Liverpool, England set
up in Portland, Ore. in 1859 and for the next 35 years
made thousands of men into unwilling seamen, filling
orders from crew-short sea captains. Totally without
conscience, he hesitated at sending no one to sea,
recruiting his victims from anywhere along the waterfront. He often used two doxies, Liverpool Liz and
Esmeralda, as sex lures to coax drunks from Erickson’s
Saloon, where it took 15 men to tend the block-long
bar, or from the Paris House, the city’s biggest brothel,
or from Mark Cook’s Saloon. If such tactics failed, he
simply bludgeoned hapless passersby and carted them
off to a ship ready to sail.
Kelly sometimes had trouble acquiring accomplices,
and for good reason. After once receiving an order for
10 men, he and two assistants deposited eight drunks
into a ship’s hold. “Here,” said the skipper, “I need ten
men, I told you.”
Kelly nodded, battered his two aides senseless and
collected for a full consignment. The profitability of the
procedure was unassailable: in addition to collecting a
fee for his assistants—as well as the other shanghai victims—he also saved the money he would otherwise
have had to pay them.
Kelly picked up his nickname Bunco for another of
his double-dealing deeds. He would bring an apparent
victim wrapped in a blanket aboardship and deposit
him directly in a bunk, telling the captain, “drunkenest
sailor I ever seen.” Kelly would collect his $50 stipend
as the ship set sail. Not until the next morning would
the angered captain discover Kelly had slipped him a
cigar store Indian instead of a drunken sailor.
Bunco’s biggest coup occurred when he came across
24 waterfront bums either dead or dying in the basement of an undertaking establishment, where they had
partaken of barrels filled with embalming fluid under
the illusion they were inside the next building, which
was a saloon. At the time Bunco found them, he had an
order outstanding for 22 shanghai victims at $30 a
head. The master of the craft was extremely pleased
when Kelly oversupplied the order by two, and grate-
Kelly, Honest John (1856–1926) gambler
For a quarter century beginning in the late 1890s, John
Kelly was known as the most honest gambling house
operator in the country, an attribute that did not stand
him well with the police, since he was famous for refusing to pay for protection.
Honest John earned his sobriquet when he was a
baseball umpire. In 1888 he refused a $10,000 bribe
to favor Boston in an important game with Providence. Thereafter, he became the darling of the big
gamblers and was trusted to be the dealer in games
where tens of thousands of dollars were riding on a
turn of a card. In the late 1890s Honest John opened
his own gambling house in New York City and
became so prosperous that he soon had operations at
several locations, all renowned for being totally honest. His best-known house was a brownstone at 156
West 44th Street, where he fought many battles with
the police, boasting he constantly had to buy new
doors and windows to replace those smashed by
indignant detectives. The worst raid occurred in 1912,
when the police descended on the gambling house
with crow bars and fire axes and smashed doors, windows, gambling equipment and furniture. The raid
succeeded only in making Kelly a hero to the public,
and when he opened the Vendome Club on West
141st Street, his business boomed. After Kelly closed
the West 44th Street brownstone, the police remained
convinced he was still operating it for gambling purposes and stationed an officer at the front door. Sightseeing buses took visitors past the brownstone, and
guides pointed out the gambling house that wouldn’t
pay off the police. The guides insisted patrons entered
485
KELLY, Shanghai
men in various degrees of stupor, it is easy to see how a
captain might not discover he had been “stiffed with a
stiff,” as the saying went, until he was well out into the
Pacific. Police could only wonder how many murder
victims were turned over to Kelly to be disposed of for
a price, thus providing him with a double fee. The master shanghaier knew that such a corpse would receive a
quick and unrecorded burial far out at sea.
Feared as he was, Kelly still had no trouble keeping
his boardinghouse stocked with sailors, many of
whom knew the fate that lay in store for them. The
popularity of Kelly’s place rested on his reputation of
providing free women to go along with his free liquor.
To many a sailor the price of their next voyage was little enough to pay. Once, in the 1870s, though Kelly
received an order for 90 sailors at a time when he was
understocked. Chartering a paddle-wheel steamer, he
announced he would celebrate his birthday with a picnic at which there would be all the liquor a celebrant
could drink. Naturally, there was an admission charge,
since Kelly firmly believed in getting all he could out of
any deal. He kept a close count of the willing celebrants clamoring aboard and as soon as the number
reached 90 the gangplank was pulled up and the
steamer paddled off. Barrels of beer and whiskey were
opened and the happy picnickers toasted Kelly’s
health. Of course, all the drink was heavily drugged
and within a couple of hours everyone aboard except
Kelly and his men was sound asleep. The paddle
steamer pulled up to the two ships that had ordered
crews, and Kelly handed over the agreed-on number to
each and collected his pay. On his way back, he rescued survivors from the Yankee Blade which had sunk
off Santa Barbara. Luckily for Kelly, the landing of the
rescued men caused great stir and nobody noticed that
his picnic guests were missing. Of course, he would
have felt even luckier if he had been able to sell the rescued seamen as well.
Kelly was active in his trade till near the end of the
19th century, when he faded from sight.
See also: JOSEPH “BUNCO” KELLY, SHANGHAIING.
fully handed him $720 for the bunch. The next day the
redfaced captain had to dock in order to unload 14
corpses and another 10 men whose lives could be saved
only by energetic stomach pumping. The captain
vowed never again to do business with Bunco Kelly, but
he probably broke his resolutions, since in Portland a
ship’s master almost had to deal with Kelly, even if wisdom required a close inspection of any goods purchased from him.
Despite actions by the police, which varied from
largely indifferent to modestly determined, Kelly continued his nefarious trade until 1894, when he was
apprehended for murdering a retired saloon keeper, 73year-old George Washington Sayres. Kelly denied the
charge, claiming it was a frame-up by competitors who
wanted to take over his business. “I am being tried not
as the person who killed poor old George Sayres,”
Bunco said in a statement. “I am being tried for all the
crimes ever committed in the North End. I am on trial
because I am operating a successful sailor’s boardinghouse—the finest on this coast. I am being tried
because I have no influence with the city’s politicians. I
had nothing against George Sayres.”
That last statement, at least, was accurate. The jury
concluded Kelly had committed the murder for $2,000
given him by Sayres’ enemies.
Kelly did 13 years in the Oregon State Penitentiary
and was released in 1907. He got a newspaperman
named John Kelly, no relation, to help him write a book,
Thirteen Years in the Oregon Pen, in which he continued to proclaim his innocence. Kelly left Portland in
1909 and eventually was said to have ended up in South
America, where, as proof of the adage that only the
good die young, he lived until the ripe old age of 96.
See also: SHANGHAIING, SHANGHAI KELLY.
Kelly, Shanghai (1835–?) shanghaier
Without doubt the most-feared name wherever Pacific
sailors gathered in the 19th century was that of Shanghai Kelly, a stubby, red-bearded Irishman who became
the most prodigious shanghaier on San Francisco’s Barbary Coast.
Kelly maintained a saloon and boardinghouse at 33
Pacific Street. There is no way to precisely estimate
how many men passed through his notorious shanghai
pipelines but it was at least 10,000. He got the best deal
from shipmasters because he generally provided bona
fide sailors rather than unsuspecting landlubbers who
happened to stumble along. Not that Kelly didn’t turn a
dishonest dollar in his shanghai operations whenever
he could. Occasionally, among a boatload of drugged
victims, Kelly would toss in a corpse or two. Since the
usual transaction only allowed time for a head count of
Kemmler, William (1861–1890) first victim of electric
chair
The first man to die in the electric chair, William
Kemmler was an illiterate Buffalo, N.Y. huckster who
took an ax to his mistress, Tillie Ziegler. His case
became a cause celebre only because of the novel
method of execution ordered for him.
On death row Kemmler became a minor pawn in a
major economic battle between two industrial giants,
Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse. Edison had
developed the first electric power system through the
486
KERRYONIANS
Apparently free of antisocial tendencies, Kemper
expended considerable effort to have the record of his
earlier murder sealed and convinced four psychiatric
specialists to support him in court. During his last two
psychiatric interviews, the head of his most recent victim was in the trunk of his car parked just outside the
psychiatrist’s office.
Because Kemper’s mother worked for the university,
Kemper was able to obtain a school parking sticker,
which allayed any suspicions of hitchhiking coeds when
he offered them a ride. Kemper always kept large cellophane bags in his car so that if he killed and dismembered a girl, the upholstery would not be stained. He
safely delivered many more girls than he actually killed,
making certain not to harm any who had been seen getting into his car. Kemper generally decapitated the victims with a power saw and kept some of the bodies in
his room for a day or two before disposing of them.
On April 20, 1973 Kemper bludgeoned his mother
to death as she slept and dismembered her body, severing her hands and throwing them into the garbage disposal. He shoved the headless torso into a closet and
then invited over a woman neighbor, his mother’s best
friend, and strangled her also. He threw her body in
with his mother’s and went to a local bar called the Jury
Room, where he often drank with a number of off-duty
police officers. After a time, Kemper got in his car and
drove off. Three days later, in Pueblo, Colo., he called
Santa Cruz police, who still knew nothing of the murderers, and gave himself up, warning he might kill more
unless he was taken.
Convicted of eight counts of first-degree murder,
Kemper was asked what he considered to be a fit punishment. He replied, “Death by torture.” He was sentenced to life imprisonment and first became eligible for
parole in 1980.
use of low-tension direct current (DC). Westinghouse
then devised his alternating current (AC) system, which
was much superior because it was easier and less costly
to install. Edison sought to discourage the use of AC by
pointing out its death-dealing potential. His arguments
were so telling that Westinghouse’s system was adapted
for use in the new electric chair. Fearful that the use of
AC for executions would affect its general acceptance
by the public, Westinghouse waged a long, expensive
campaign to save Kemmler from death. He hired top
legal talent, including Bourke Cochran, then considered
the leading lawyer in the country, and spent well over
$100,000 in a losing cause.
While an appeal was sent to the Supreme Court for a
ruling on the constitutionality of the punishment,
Edwin F. Davis, the electrician at Auburn Prison,
started building the chair in the institution’s woodworking shop. Although authorities tried to keep the
work a secret, newspapers presented diagrams that
closely resembled what the real chair looked like. The
papers also hastened to inform their apprehensive readers that the contraption “was not at all uncomfortable
to sit in.” Finally, on August 6, 1890, Kemmler went
to the chair. As one observer wrote later, “His manner
indicated a state of subdued elation, as if he were gratified at being the central figure of the occasion.” The
execution was botched badly. After the current was
turned off, Kemmler’s body moved and frantic officials
rushed to apply more current. Newspaper comment on
the execution was universally unfavorable. The Buffalo
Express predicted in an editorial, “Kemmler will be the
last man executed in such a manner.”
See also: EXECUTION, METHODS OF.
Kemper, Edmund Emil, III (1948– ) California’s
“coed killer”
In 1972 and 1973, 25-year-old Edmund Kemper, a
280-pound, six-foot-nine giant, terrorized Santa Cruz
County, Calif., particularly female students at the
Santa Cruz campus of the University of California.
Kemper killed six women, decapitating them and performing sex acts that could not be fully reported in the
newspapers.
Kemper had an earlier history of murder. In 1964, at
the age of 16, he was living with his grandparents when
he started wondering what it would be like to shoot his
grandmother. So he did. Then he shot his grandfather
and called his mother to inform her that both her parents were dead. Judged insane, Kemper was confined at
the Atacadero State Hospital. In 1969 the medical
board at the institution found him “fully recovered,”
and he was released over the strenuous objection of the
prosecuting attorney in his case.
Kennedy, John F. See LEE HARVEY OSWALD, JACK RUBY.
Kennedy, Robert F.
Kerryonians
See SIRHAN BISHARA SIRHAN.
19th-century New York Irish gang
Among the gangs of the Five Points, the worst crime district in 19th-century New York City, were the Kerryonians, who were organized around 1825. A collection of
thugs, pickpockets, thieves and murderers no better than
the Plug Uglies, Chichesters, Roach Guards or Dead
Rabbits, the Kerryonians, natives of County Kerry, Ireland, had one distinction: they made it a rule only to victimize Englishmen, or at least individuals who looked
English. Eventually, absorbed into other gangs, the aging
487
KETCHUM,“Black Jack” Tom
Kerryonians had their last hurrah during the infamous
Astor Place Riots of 1849 protesting an appearance by
the eminent British actor William C. Macready.
See also: ASTOR PLACE RIOTS.
Ketchum, “Black Jack” Tom (1862–1901) train
robber and murderer
Black Jack Ketchum and his brother Sam were Butch
Cassidy’s chief rivals as leaders of the various Hole in
the Wall gangs in the 1890s. It was a situation that
bewildered Cassidy, since he regarded the Ketchums
as about the most stupid outlaws he’d ever met. And
it was hard to fault his logic: after all Black Jack often
beat himself over the head with his own six-shooter
when things went wrong. Yet somehow Ketchum
managed to blast his way into prominence in the
annals of outlawry, so that when he was hanged even
the New York Times felt the event deserved special
coverage, a fortuitous decision since the affair proved
memorable.
Tom and brother Sam rode out of their native Texas
Panhandle in the early 1880s and made their way north,
punching cattle and doing various odd jobs, until they
reached New Mexico, where the brothers turned to
crime. They held up a store-post office in Tucumcari,
and when the angry owner, Levi Herzstein, took up their
trail, they murdered him. The Ketchums next turned up
in Hole in the Wall country in Wyoming and soon led a
number of other outlaws on various robbery sprees.
Late in 1898 Black Jack and his men robbed a train, the
Twin Flyer, near Twin Mountains, New Mexico Territory of less than $500. If the robbery hadn’t exactly
been lucrative it had at least worked. Convinced he had
a winning formula, Black Jack stuck up the same train
at the same spot three more times, the last on July 11,
1899. But on that day the law was ready. A posse captured most of the robbers at Turkey Canyon, near
Cimarron. During the gun battle Sheriff Edward Farr of
Huerfano County, Colo. and W. H. Love of Cimarron
were killed. Although shot through the shoulder
Ketchum escaped capture, but only for a few days. He
was caught and brought to trial in Santa Fe.
The apprehension of the most-wanted man in the
Southwest aside from Butch Cassidy caused a sensation, and newspapers from coast to coast covered
Ketchum’s trial. He was found guilty of “attempted
train robbery.” Since the penalty for that offense was
death, indicting him for murder had been considered
unnecessary. Delays in the case put off Black Jack’s
hanging until April 26, 1901. Ketchum watched the
building of the scaffold for his hanging outside his cell
window. “Very good, boys,” he yelled to the workmen
when it was completed, “but why don’t you tear down
that stockade so the boys can see a man hang who
never killed anyone.”
On the day of his execution, the condemned man
“leaped” up the gallows steps, the Times correspondent
reported. Black Jack helped in adjusting the noose
around his neck and said cheerfully, “I’ll be in Hell
before you start breakfast.” After the black cap was
placed over his head, Ketchum called out “Let ’er go.”
The trap was sprung, but the weights had been amateurishly adjusted and Ketchum’s head was torn from
his shoulders. Later, some writers found it necessary to
improve on the ghoulish story, so they changed Black
Jack’s last words to “Let her rip!”
See also: SAM KETCHUM.
Ketchum, Sam (1860–1899) train robber and murderer
Sam Ketchum, the brother of the infamous “Black
Jack” Tom Ketchum, basked in his younger brother’s
glory and, in fact, was considered by some lawmen to
be the real Black Jack. Actually, he was little more than
a follower of his brother, as he demonstrated after
Black Jack’s capture in July 1899. Black Jack had daringly and stupidly held up Train No. 1 at Twin Moun-
The execution of western outlaw Black Jack Ketchum
achieved a particularly awesome climax.
488
KID Curry
tains, N.M. four different times. He was finally
caught. That left Sam in charge of the gang back in
Hole in the Wall. It was an awesome responsibility for
him since he had to plan a robbery without his
brother’s guidance. In what stands as a monument to
outlaw obtuseness, Sam Ketchum came up with a
grand scheme: the gang would hold up Train No. 1 at
Twin Mountains. On August 16, 1899 the last of the
Ketchum gang staged the suicidal undertaking. Sam
Ketchum was shot by conductor Frank Harrington.
With pursuers hot on his trail, he made it to a ranch,
where a cowboy amputated his shotgun-shattered arm.
It was a botched job and his captors could not save
him from dying of blood poisoning.
See also: “BLACK JACK” TOM KETCHUM.
key racket
open. For a time, watching the “key men” became a
slumming sport for those San Franciscans who were
rather proud of their city’s reputation as the vilest this
side of decadent Paris. The lucrative practice continued
for about a year until the police cracked down on it as a
result of newspaper exposés that published hundreds of
complaints from reputable householders plagued by
drunks trying to unlock their doors.
“kicking the habit”
The term kicking the habit refers to the process drug
addicts undergo to conquer their addiction to narcotics.
In the first days of withdrawal, an addict suffers only
minor symptoms, such as yawning, watery eyes, running nose and sweating. During the peak period of
withdrawal, which starts 48 to 72 hours after the last
dose, the addict becomes irritable and restless. He is
unable to sleep and has no desire to eat. He suffers
gooseflesh, tremors and severe sneezing and yawning.
Then he is wracked by nausea and vomiting and often
suffers stomach cramps and diarrhea. The addict alternately feels flush and chilled and enormous pain builds
up in the bones and muscles of the back and in the
extremities. Usually, he will experience muscle spasms
and kicking movements, hence the expression kicking
the habit. Even when this period of suffering subsides,
there is no guarantee that the addict is cured, as
restoration of physiological and psychological equilibrium vary in individual cases.
B-girl swindle
The so-called key racket, where a bar-girl gives a customer the supposed key to her apartment in exchange
for cash, is still practiced.
Shortly after its birth in San Francisco, it reached
the proportions of a minor industry in that city. The
practice began in the Seattle Saloon and Dance Hall,
perhaps the lowest dive on San Francisco’s Barbary
Coast after the earthquake of 1906. The second floor
of the Seattle was an assignation floor, where the 20odd “waiter girls” could adjourn with customers. The
ladies developed a lucrative sideline making dates to
meet drunken customers after the Seattle closed at 3
A.M. In this scam a woman would promise to spend the
night with a customer but only if the meeting were
kept secret from her boyfriend, who met her each night
after the saloon closed and escorted her home. It
would therefore be impossible for the customer and
the woman to leave the resort together. Instead, she
would offer to sell the man a key to her flat for a price
ranging from $1 to $5, depending on what she thought
the traffic would bear, so that he could join her an
hour after closing. If the customer objected that he was
paying for a pig in a poke, the woman would counter
that since she did not know him, she would be stuck
with the expense of changing the lock on her door if he
didn’t show up. To a man with a liquor-logged brain,
the argument often made sense. After handing over the
cash, the customer would write down the woman’s
address, which would be some nearby building but, of
course, not the one where she really lived.
Some popular waiter-girls at the Seattle often sold a
dozen keys a night. The custom was soon picked up in
most of the other Barbary Coast resorts, so that on a
typical night, long after the dance halls closed, scores of
furtive figures would be seen staggering through the
streets, key in hand, trying to find a door that would
Kid Curry (1865–1904) robber and murderer
Perhaps the most feared of the Wild Bunch, Harvey
Logan, better known as Kid Curry, probably killed
more lawmen than any other Western outlaw. He killed
and wounded several law officers in the Wyoming, Arizona and Utah territories. Before he joined the Wild
Bunch he had killed eight men in street gunfights. As a
Buncher, he had to be contained by Butch Cassidy or
his murder toll would have been much higher.
One of four Logan brothers, Harvey hailed from
Missouri. At 19, he and two younger brothers and a
cousin headed for Wyoming, where the four became
rustlers, soon gathering enough stock to start their own
ranch. Harvey learned the art of rustling from Big Nose
George Curry, who was the top stock thief in
Wyoming’s Powder River region during the 1870s.
Harvey so admired Big Nose that upon his lynching in 1882, he adopted the older man’s surname as
his own, becoming known as Kid Curry. In the mid1890s Kid Curry turned up at Hole in the Wall, the
notorious outlaw hideout, and hooked up with the
Wild Bunch. Cassidy liked Curry’s raw nerve and
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KID Dropper
dependability, but he often found it necessary to put
himself between the Kid and train guards to prevent
needless slaughter.
When Cassidy and the Sundance Kid decided in
1901 that the West was getting too hot and opted for
South America, Kid Curry promised to join them but
instead went on robbing banks and trains to become
the most-hunted outlaw in the country. He worked his
way east as far as Knoxville, Tenn. where he got
involved in a shoot-out with the police, wounding three
of them, and although wounded himself, he managed
to escape. Tracked by a posse using bloodhounds, he
was captured 20 miles outside the city.
Placed in the Knoxville Jail pending transfer to an
“escape-proof” prison in Columbus, Ohio, he executed
one of the most sensational jail breaks in criminal history. He used a noose he made of wire from a broom to
strangle a jail guard, tied up two others, and forced
another to saddle him up a horse, on which he made his
escape. Where Curry went is a matter of some dispute.
Some say he went on to South America and joined up
with Cassidy and Sundance. Others, including the
Pinkertons, insisted he returned to the West and formed
up a new gang in Colorado. According to this theory,
over a period of 12 days he traveled 1,400 miles,
hooked on as a ranch hand with a brand new identity,
formed a gang, robbed a train and spent two days on
the run before being trapped by the law.
Curry was cornered near Glenwood Springs.
Rather than be captured again, he put a bullet
through his head. The Pinkertons identified the dead
man as Kid Curry. Others, including a number of
deputies and chief agent Canada of the Union Pacific,
objected. The dead man’s picture was taken back to
the jail in Knoxville, where those guards who had
been in daily contact with the jail’s most famous prisoner unanimously agreed it was a photo of Kid Curry.
A federal court ordered the case “closed by virtue of
suicide.”
See also: BIG NOSE GEORGE CURRY, WILD BUNCH.
discovery and, claiming to be in a great hurry, offer to
sell it to the mark, who in turn would be able to return
it to its rightful owner for a reward to keep it.
As late as 1911, when he was sentenced to seven
years in prison for robbery, Kid Dropper was not considered a major criminal. When he came out, however,
there was a void in the labor slugging field left by the
passage from the scene of Dopey Benny Fein and Joe
the Greaser Rosensweig. Kid Dropper organized a gang
with another Five Pointers alumnus, young Johnny
Spanish, a vicious killer with perhaps more nerve than
the Dropper. Previously, they had had a falling out over
a woman and Spanish had done seven years for shooting her. That rift indicated the two could not work
together for long, especially since each obviously
intended to become “top dog.”
Soon, a war broke out between the two rivals, and
both fielded platoons of killers. Bullet-ridden corpses
became commonplace, particularly in the garment district. The war was concluded on July 29, 1919, when
three men, one always presumed to have been the
Dropper, walked up behind Johnny Spanish as he left a
Second Avenue restaurant and emptied their revolvers
into his body.
Thereafter, the Kid headed all the important labor
slugging rackets in the city, working either for the
unions or the employers or both. Between 1920 and
1923 the Dropper was responsible for at least an estimated 20 murders. He became a notorious sight along
Broadway in his belted check suit of extreme cut, narrow pointed shoes, and stylish derby or straw hat
slanted rakishly over one eye, and at all times he was
surrounded by a bevy of gunmen.
By 1923 the Dropper was beset by new and even
tougher opponents than the late unlamented Johnny
Spanish. They were headed by Jacob “Little Augie”
Orgen, a bloodthirsty gangster with such supporters
and “comers” as Jack “Legs” Diamond, Louis
“Lepke” Buchalter and Gurrah Shapiro. The Dropper’s men and Little Augie’s followers began open warfare over control of the wet wash laundry workers and
were soon involved in wholesale shoot-outs all around
the town.
Finally, in August 1923 Kid Dropper was picked up
on a charge of carrying a concealed weapon and hauled
into Essex Market Court. The arrest of the great gang
leader attracted a large number of newsmen and
onlookers. When the Kid’s arraignment was transferred
to another court, he was led to the street by a phalanx
of policemen. As he was entering the car, a minor and
particularly lamebrained hoodlum named Louis Kushner jumped forward and shot him through the windshield. Kushner had been properly “stroked” by the
Little Augies gang into believing that such a daring act
Kid Dropper (1891–1923) New York gangster chief
For a time in the early 1920s, the premier gangster in
New York City was Kid Dropper, born Nathan Kaplan,
who literally murdered his way into the position of top
labor slugger-extortionist during the post-World War I
period. He had come a long way from his lowly position
as a minor ally of the last great New York criminal gang
before the advent of Prohibition, the Five Pointers.
In his youth he earned the sobriquet Kid Dropper
from his scam of dropping a wallet filled with counterfeit money on the street. He would then pick it up in
front of a potential victim, pretend it was an accidental
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KIDD, Captain William
would make him an important gangster and member of
their outfit.
The Dropper crumpled up inside the car, while his
wife fought her way through the police guards
wrestling with Kushner. “Nate! Nate!” she cried. “Tell
me that you were not what they say you were!”
Instead, the Kid managed only to moan, “They got
me!” and died.
Kushner in the meantime announced triumphantly:
“I got him. I’d like a cigarette.”
In due course, Kushner got 20 years and Little Augie
absorbed the Dropper’s illicit enterprises. He held them
only until 1927, when he too was violently removed
from power, apparently by Lepke and Shapiro, who
then took over the union rackets.
See also: DROP SWINDLE, LABOR SLUGGERS WAR, JACOB
“LITTLE AUGIE” ORGEN, JOHNNY SPANISH.
took time out from the systematic murder of Fitzpatrick’s top supporters to fall in love with Carroll
Terry, a Coney Island dance hall girl of striking beauty.
It so happened that Carroll was also being pursued by
Louis Pioggi, better known as Louie the Lump, one of
the Five Pointers’ more vicious killers.
Since Louie the Lump was rather undersized, Kid
Twist took to battering him around at times when
Louie could not draw his gun because of the number of
Eastmans on hand to blast him. The rivalry between
the two reached a climax on May 14, 1908, when the
Kid found the Lump in a second-floor Coney Island
dive. He decided to torment Louie. “Carroll says you is
an active little cuss, always jumpin’ around,” the Kid
remarked. “Let’s see how active youse is, kid. Take a
jump out of the window!”
When Louie the Lump hesitated, Kid Twist and his
companion, Cyclone Louie, a local strongman and
hired killer, moved menacingly toward their weapons.
Louie jumped and landed on all fours, avoiding serious
injury. Determined to exact vengeance, he hurried to a
telephone and called Five Pointer headquarters to
report Kid Twist was about with only one companion
for protection. Within the hour, 20 Five Pointer gunmen appeared on the scene. Given the honor of gunning down the hated foe, Louie the Lump shot Kid
Twist through the brain when he eventually came out
of the dive. Cyclone Louie tried to run, but a hail of
Five Pointer bullets sent him spinning down atop his
fallen chief. Just then Carroll Terry came rushing out
and the love-thwarted Louie shot her in the shoulder
and watched her collapse next to her dead lover.
The death of Kid Twist was to have profound effects
on the New York underworld over the next few years
as the Eastman gang broke into factions. Ethnically, the
top position in the underworld would pass to the Italian gangsters and to the next generation of Jewish
gangsters, such as the 1920 Bug and Meyer gang,
headed by Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky, who found
it more profitable to work in concert with other ethnic
groups than to oppose them. None of this was foreseen
in 1908, however, when New York City seemed
delighted to have the likes of Kid Twist depart the
scene, a sentiment expressed rather obviously by Louie
the Lump’s punishment for two counts of manslaughter: 11 months in the Elmira Reformatory.
See also: CYCLONE LOUIE, RICHIE FITZPATRICK.
Kid Twist (1882–1908) New York gang leader
Long the right-hand man of Monk Eastman, perhaps
the most notable Jewish gangster in American history,
Kid Twist succeeded to the leadership of the Eastmans
when the Monk was sent to prison in 1904. The Eastmans were the last Jewish gang to dominate crime in
New York City. Eastman showed great pride in the
Twist because he never failed to carry out a murder
assignment, the total variously estimated at between 10
and 20, and could be counted on to perform any other
important job.
Born Max Zweiback, or Zwerbach, he was aptly
nicknamed Kid Twist because of his treacherous nature,
which he demonstrated in dealing with another Eastman
lieutenant, Richie Fitzpatrick, in the struggle for the
Eastman throne. Fitzpatrick was an accomplished killer
in his own right and was not prepared to settle the question of succession by any method other than a test of
arms. The Kid suggested a conference to settle all differences, and Fitzpatrick agreed to a meeting in a Chrystie
Street dive. The talks had barely begun when the lights
went out and a revolver blazed. When the police arrived,
no one was in the place save Fitzpatrick, who lay dead
on the floor with a bullet in his heart and his arms
folded on his chest. Kid Twist sent flowers to the funeral
and wore a mourning band on his sleeve for months
thereafter. The underworld toasted the Kid’s finesse and
acknowledged his leadership of the Eastmans.
Had a matter of the heart not distracted him, Kid
Twist’s savage cunning probably would have maintained the 1,200-man Eastman gang’s supremacy over
the various Irish gangs, the new Italian Mafia gangs
and Paul Kelly’s Five Pointers, which already included
the likes of Johnny Torrio and would soon add such
luminaries as Al Capone and Lucky Luciano. The Twist
Kidd, Captain William (1645?–1701) pirate
Probably more songs, legends and ballads have been
composed about Capt. William Kidd than any other
villain on land or sea, but more recently, some biographers have attempted to paint him as more sinned
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KIDNAPPING
kidnapping
against than sinning, a man virtually forced into piracy.
The facts are that Capt. Kidd was indeed a pirate and
that he killed ruthlessly in the course of his criminal
pursuits.
Born in Scotland sometime around 1645, Kidd
started out as a peaceful trader and shipowner. After
settling in America in 1690, he distinguished himself
routing French privateers marauding the coast in the
New York area. For this the state assembly awarded
him a citation and a cash bounty of 150 pounds. Capt.
Kidd settled down in New York, marrying a wealthy
widow and becoming a leading citizen and church
member.
In 1695 a private syndicate authorized by King
William III of England and several leading Whigs commissioned Kidd as a privateer to run down pirates
preying on British shipping and to attack French vessels of commerce, with the prizes going to the syndicate. Capt. Kidd set sail for the East Indies in 1696
aboard his Adventure Galley, but he was stymied by a
severe shortage of enemy shipping. According to some
historians, his crew, composed mostly of wastrels, sea
rats and cutthroats, virtually forced him into attacking
friendly ships. Kidd did indeed attack his own nation’s
shipping and kept the lion’s share of the booty for himself.
Kidd returned to New York in 1698 with a shipload
of gold, jewels and silks, some of which he buried on
Gardiners Island, off Long Island.
Kidd was confident that his privateer’s commission
would shield him from a charge of piracy, but news of
his acts reached London and charges were lodged
against him, partly at the instigation of the Tories, who
were eager to find fault with their Whig enemies. Kidd
was sent back to England, where he probably could
have gotten off lightly and perhaps even scot free if he
had agreed to implicate his Whig associates. Instead, he
insisted on both their innocence and his own. Numerous deserters from his crew were brought forth to testify against him, no doubt embellishing their testimony
with fanciful accounts of his cruelty. At his trial Kidd
declared: “I am the innocentest person of them all.
Only I have been sworn against by perjured persons.”
He was hanged on May 23, 1701.
Part of Capt. Kidd’s booty was found on Gardiners
Island, but treasure hunters have continued to hunt
there ever since. Legend has it that more of Captain
Kidd’s treasure is still buried in such places as Deer Isle,
Maine: Clarke’s Island in the Connecticut River; Stratford Point, Conn.; Rye Beach, Fishers Island and Capt.
Kidd’s cave on the lower Hudson River, all in New
York; and Block Island, R.I., where through the years
some old coins have been found.
See also PIRACY.
Kidnapping for ransom was hardly an American invention, the practice dating back to ancient times. However, probably nowhere else was the crime committed
as frequently as it was in the United States during the
early 1930s, typified best by the Lindbergh baby kidnapping in 1932.
Although there were many early kidnappings in
America, especially of children—girls for the purposes
of prostitution—and free blacks, the first major kidnapping for ransom case in this country is generally
regarded to have been that of four-year-old Charley
Ross, who was abducted on July 1, 1874. Technically,
the case was never solved and “little Charley Ross,”
which became a household phrase, was never found. It
is almost certain that he was murdered by his kidnappers, two notorious criminals named William Mosher
and Joey Douglass and an ex-policeman named
William Westervelt.
The question kidnappers always face is whether or
not to kill the victim. When the victim is murdered
the crime usually occurs immediately after the abduction. Conversely, the victim’s family must decide
whether or not to pay the ransom, since paying may
only lead to the killing of the victim. A general rule of
thumb is that a so-called amateur kidnapper will tend
to kill the victim, but a true professional will let him
or her live, realizing that murdering the victim lessens
the chance of collecting a ransom for the next kidnapping. This perspective evolved in the 1920s, when
organized criminals were kidnapped by other organized criminals and held for ransom. Killing the victims under such circumstances would have eliminated
the “goose that lays the golden eggs.” Underworld
ransom kidnappings were very profitable because the
racketeer-victims seldom were able to appeal to the
law for assistance. Equally important, such victims
hardly wished to let it be known that they had been
unable to defend themselves. As a result, their kidnappers received scant public attention. Around 1930
organized kidnap rings started to victimize private citizens, and the public not only grew aware of kidnappings but demanded the authorities put a halt to
them. The FBI’s success in smashing several kidnapping gangs did much to alter that agency’s tarnished
image.
Major Kidnappings in American History
1900: Edward A. Cudahy, Jr., 16, in Omaha, Neb.
Released after $25,000 ransom paid. Pat Crowe confessed but acquitted.
1927: Marion Parker, 12, in Los Angeles, Calif.
$7,500 ransom paid but victim had already been
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KILPATRICK, Ben
murdered and dismembered. Edward Hickman convicted and executed.
1976: 26 children and bus driver in Chowchilla,
Calif. Ransom demanded but victims escaped. Frederick Newhall Woods, IV, James Schoenfeld and
Richard Allen Schoenfeld convicted and sentenced to
life.
1932: Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., 20 months, in
Hopewell, N.J. $50,000 ransom paid but victim had
already been murdered. Bruno Richard Hauptmann
convicted and executed.
1992: Sidney J. Reso, oil company executive, seized
April 29; dies May 3. Arthur Seale and his wife,
Irene, arrested June 19. Seale pleads guilty and is
sentenced to life; Irene Seale gets 20-year prison
term.
1933: William A. Hamm, Jr., 39, in St. Paul, Minn.
Released after $100,000 paid. Alvin “Creepy”
Karpis convicted and sentenced to life.
1933: Charles F. Urschel, in his forties, in Oklahoma
City, Okla. Released after $200,000 paid. Kathryn
and George “Machine Gun” Kelly and four accomplices convicted and sentenced to life.
1996: Marshall J. Wais, 79, owner of two San Francisco steel companies, kidnapped from his home and
released unharmed the same day after half-million
dollar ransom paid. Thomas Taylor and Michael
Robinson arrested the same day.
1936: Charles Mattson, 10, in Tacoma, Wash.
$28,000 ransom demanded but never collected. Victim found dead. Case remains unsolved.
See also:
COLLEGE KIDNAPPERS; INDIVIDUAL LISTINGS
UNDER NAMES OF VICTIMS OR KIDNAPPERS EXCEPT FRANK
1937: Charles S. Ross, 72, in Franklin Park, Ill.
$50,000 ransom paid but victim then murdered.
John Henry Seadlund convicted and executed.
SINATRA, JR., AND PETER WEINBERGER.
1953: Robert C. Greenlease, six, in Kansas City, Mo.
$600,000 ransom paid but victim had already been
murdered. Carl A. Hall and Bonnie Brown Heady
convicted and executed.
kidnapping of free blacks
Throughout the decades preceding the Civil War, kidnapping of free blacks in the North and shipping them
to the South to be sold as slaves was a thriving criminal
enterprise. Kidnapping rings operated with impunity
despite laws in Southern states prohibiting the practice.
Such laws were mere shams since blacks were disqualified as witnesses and thus could not incriminate their
captors. Entire families were abducted but many kidnap rings preferred dealing only in children and young
women because such captives could be more easily contained. Some enterprising kidnappers used the ruse of
marrying mulatto women and then selling them off as
slaves at the first opportunity. Unscrupulous federal
magistrates cooperated in schemes to seize blacks and
transport them to the South under the pretext of
enforcing the fugitive slave laws.
1956: Peter Weinberger, 32 days old, in Westbury,
N.Y. $2,000 ransom demanded but not paid. Victim
found dead. Angelo John LaMarca convicted and
executed.
1963: Frank Sinatra, Jr., 19, in Lake Tahoe, Calif.
Released after $240,000 ransom paid by father. John
W. Irwin, Joseph C. Amsler and Barry W. Keenan
convicted and sentenced to prison.
1968: Barbara Jane Mackle, 20, in Atlanta, Ga.
Released after $500,000 paid. Gary Steven Krist and
Ruth Eisemann-Schier convicted and sentenced to
prison.
1974: Patricia Hearst, 19, in Berkeley, Calif. $2 million ransom paid but victim not released and later
charged with joining her captors. Except for William
and Emily Harris, all of victim’s kidnappers killed in
gun battle with police. Harrises convicted and sentenced to 10 years to life.
Kilpatrick, Ben (1865?–1912) last of the Wild Bunch
In addition to being the handsomest of the Wild
Bunch and a ladies’ man, Ben Kilpatrick, known as
the Tall Texan, was lightning quick on the draw and,
as Butch Cassidy said, absolutely fearless. He was also
to meet an ignoble end because he tried to carry on a
form of outlawry whose day had past, when all the
other Bunchers were dead, imprisoned or wisely
retired.
Kilpatrick rode into the famous outlaw hideout Hole
in the Wall about 1890. Thereafter, he scourged the
Southwest, often with fellow Texans the Ketchum
brothers and then more and more with Cassidy’s Wild
1974: E. B. Reville of Hepzikbah, Ga. and wife,
Jean, kidnapped; $30,000 ransom paid. E. B. found
alive; Jean Reville found dead.
1974: J. Reginald Murphy, 40, an editor of Atlanta
Constitution, freed two days later after $700,000
ransom paid. William A. H. Williams arrested and
most of the money recovered.
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KING, Dot
Pinkertons crashed into their hotel room and found
$7,000 from the Wagner job. Kilpatrick confessed to
taking part in the train robbery and was sent to the federal penitentiary at Atlanta, Ga. Della Rose got five
years as an accomplice of the gang.
As Kilpatrick left the penitentiary on June 11, 1911,
he told prison mates he intended to resume his outlaw
ways. But the Wild Bunch was gone. Cassidy and Sundance had vanished, apparently in South America; Kid
Curry was dead; Elzy Lay had reformed; and Matt
Warner had even turned lawman. In addition, his
woman Della had disappeared. The days of the Wild
Bunch were over, and the West was no longer the place
it had been.
Nonetheless, the Tall Texan teamed up with
another outlaw, Ed Welch, alias Howard Benson, and
set out to bring back the good old days. They pulled
a couple of minor stickups just to get in shape. Then
on March 14, 1912 they boarded the express car of
the Southern Pacific’s Sunset Limited and quickly got
the drop on the Wells Fargo messenger, David Truesdale. In the old days express guards were generally
cowed by bandits and offered no resistance, but times
had changed. When Welch moved into the baggage
car for a moment and Kilpatrick turned his gaze for a
split second, the guard picked up an ice mallet and
slammed Kilpatrick in the head, killing him with one
blow. He then picked up Kilpatrick’s rifle and when
Welch stepped back into the car, he shot him dead. For
a time Truesdale enjoyed great national notoriety and
newspaper cartoonists reveled in caricaturing Kilpatrick’s humiliating end.
See also: BUTCH CASSIDY, DAVID A. TRUESDALE, WILD
BUNCH.
An 1851 proclamation warned free blacks of the activities
of “slave catchers.”
King, Dot (1894–1923) murder victim
The murder of playgirl Dot King in New York in 1923
was the classic Broadway drama which, as Russel
Crouse wrote, “might easily be credited to a hack and
his typewriter. Its characters are creations at a penny a
word—the Broadway butterfly, the ‘heavy sugar
daddy,’ the dark, sinister lover, the broken-hearted
mother, and even the Negro maid, for comedy.” Countless books on the “sins of New York” have described
the Dot King case with varying degrees of accuracy.
Born into an Irish family living in an uptown slum,
Anna Marie Keenan married a chauffeur when she was
18 but dumped him shortly afterwards as she began
making it big as a model. To fit her new image, she
changed her name to Dot King and, with her stunning
looks, natural blonde hair and sparkling blue eyes,
became a hostess in a plush speakeasy. It was here that
she met “Mr. Marshall,” the sugar daddy who made
Bunch. When at times he suddenly would disappear, his
fellow outlaws knew he had lost himself in the fleshpots of the West and would return only when his
money ran out. Usually, he came back with a mistress
in tow. His last was the celebrated Laura Bullion, alias
Della Rose, the Rose of the Bunch.
During a bank or train robbery, Cassidy always preferred to station Kilpatrick at his back, knowing he
could be counted on to carry out his assignment and
stick to his post no matter what complications arose.
His steel nerve was not necessarily matched by his
brainpower, however; in November 1901, after taking
part in the robbery of a train at Wagner, Mont., Kilpatrick took the Rose to St. Louis on a spree, expending Bank of Helena (Mont.) currency, which was very
uncommon in Missouri, like water. Local police and
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KIRKBUZZER
her the envy of her nightclub coworkers. Within a year
after she met Mr. Marshall, he had showered some
$30,000 in cash and jewelry on her.
On March 15, 1923 Dot King was found dead on
her bed, at first glance an apparent suicide. An empty
bottle of chloroform lay nearby, and the telephone had
been shifted away from the bed as far as the cord
would stretch. On closer inspection, the police noticed
Dot’s arm was twisted behind her back as if it had been
put in a hammer lock, and the suicide theory was discarded for one of murder. But who had done it? There
were many suspects, but the most logical one was the
missing Mr. Marshall, whom the victim’s maid
described and who had written scores of “spicy” letters. One, which the newspapers delighted in publishing, read: “Darling Dottie: Only two days before I will
be in your arms. I want to see you, O, so much, and to
kiss your pretty pink toes.”
And there was Dot’s “kept” man, a Latin named
Alberto Santos Guimares, upon whom the Broadway
butterfly seemed to bestow gifts with almost the same
frequency as she received them from Mr. Marshall.
Police soon had evidence that Guimares, who apparently survived by petty swindling and exploitation of
women, repaid Dot for her generosity by beating her up
regularly. As a suspect, however, Guimares had drawbacks. He claimed that at the time of the murder he
was in the arms of another woman, a leading socialite
who backed up his story. If the tabloid readers suffered
any disappointment over that development, they were
overwhelmingly compensated by the identification of
Mr. Marshall, who had already revealed his identity to
the police. They had tried to shield him because they
accepted his word that he had nothing to do with the
murder—and because he was someone worth protecting. However, an enterprising newspaper reporter
learned who he was.
His name was J. Kearsley Mitchell, the wealthy son-inlaw of E. T. Stotesbury, the most prominent millionaire
on Philadelphia’s Main Line. Gossip writers ran amok
with tales of twisted passions and plots of blackmail. Had
Kearsley wanted to leave Dot and was she blackmailing
him? The police said no, but their theories weren’t
respected since they had admitted attempting to hide
Kearsley’s identity to protect the millionaire’s socially
prominent wife and their three children from scandal.
Eventually, the police fell back to a theory that was
safest of all, although devoid of social scandal, lurid
romance and the like. It was that Dot had been the victim of robbers who had chloroformed her a bit too
thoroughly. About a year later, another Broadway butterfly, Louise Lawson, suffered the same kind of death.
Police learned that Louise, whose apartment, like Dot’s,
was stuffed with cash and baubles from an admirer,
had opened the door to two men who said they had a
package for her.
Undoubtedly, a woman—like Dot King—who had a
sugar daddy would almost certainly open her door for
someone saying he was bearing gifts. Of course, the
public did not like the robbery theory. They much preferred a story of Main Line society, twisted and violent
jealousy, and since the Dot King case remained
unsolved, they never had to abandon that version.
See also: CHARLES NORRIS.
King, Kate (1842–?) Quantrill’s mistress and madam
The young woman who was soon to become the mistress of Confederate guerilla leader William C.
Quantrill was about 20 when she was kidnapped by the
Raiders in Missouri. The facts of her life and even her
identity are uncertain; her name was either Kate Clarke
or Kate King, the name she was to use later in life.
Young Kate willingly became Quantrill’s lover, living in
the brush with him. When the rebel raider was taken
prisoner by Union forces in May 1865, he made out a
will that gave Kate half his estate, mostly the loot from
the war.
Kate took her good fortune to St. Louis and opened
a fashionable brothel. According to a piece of the folklore passed on about Kate, she allegedly shot a client
who had referred to the late Quantrill as a butcher.
Kate is said to have attended a number of annual
reunions of veterans of Quantrill’s Raiders, where she
would hand out her business card, before she married a
man named Woods and passed into obscurity.
King, Martin Luther, Jr.
kirkbuzzer
See JAMES EARL RAY.
pickpocket
Nineteenth-century America produced a special breed
of pickpocket called a kirkbuzzer, whose modus
operandi was picking pockets in church. Andy Craig, a
noteworthy Chicago pickpocket, was considered a past
master of the art. In his somber Sunday best, he would
go through a church crowd, psalm book in hand,
relieving at least a half dozen of the worshipers of their
money purses. For a time Craig organized a group of
kirkbuzzers, but in 1893 he gave up this racket as
part of a deal between the underworld and the city’s
politicians that gave certain dips the pickpocketing
rights to the World’s Fair of 1893 in return for their
promise that they would no longer victimize churchgoers. Soon kirkbuzzers around the country were forced
to give up their church beats once police came to regard
their activities as exceeding normal criminality and
495
KIRKER, James
because all it accomplished was to alert the potential
victim; the practical American Mafia found that symbolism had little to recommend it. The kiss of death
was given occasionally, however, when the real purpose
was to demonstrate the power of the one either doing
the killing or ordering the killing. Vito Genovese used
the kiss of death while behind bars in the federal penitentiary at Atlanta to prove that he was still the “boss
of bosses.” That strategem backfired when Genovese
told another prisoner and soldier in the Mafia, Joe
Valachi, that he wanted to give him a kiss for “old
time’s sake.” All the convicts took that for what it was,
a death sentence, because Valachi was widely suspected
of being an informer for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. Valachi was not, or so the official record states,
but, realizing that Genovese was marking him for
death, he took refuge in solitary confinement and there,
supposedly for the first time, considered becoming an
informer. When he finally did, Valachi rocked the criminal structure of the country.
See also: VITO GENOVESE, JOSEPH VALACHI.
verging on blasphemy. According to some old-time
pickpockets, the first “BEWARE OF PICKPOCKETS”
signs appeared on church fronts.
Kirker, James (1810–1852) gunrunner and scalp hunter
In the history of scalp hunting, James Kirker stands as
one of America’s greatest mass murderers, taking an
estimated 300 scalps personally and a great number
more in alliance with another Indian killer, James
Hobbs. There was perhaps some mitigating explanation for Kirker’s crimes in that his parents had been
killed by the Apaches in what is now Arizona while he
was in his teens; he spent the decade in a private war
with them. When in 1837 Kirker heard about scalp
hunters killing 400 Mimbreno Apaches in one swoop
and taking a fortune in scalps, he realized he wasn’t
getting full mileage out of his scalp taking. In 1842 he
teamed up with James Hobbs to lift scalps on a wholesale basis but left the partnership to run guns to Chief
Mangus Colorado of the Apaches. That activity ended
when the Mexican governors of Sonora and Chihuahua
placed a reward of 10,000 pesos on his head. Deciding
that scalp hunting was safer, Kirker again hooked up
with Hobbs, who had been living with the Shawnees
and had recruited a band of these Indians to help him
take Apache and Navaho scalps. In one village alone,
the Kirker-Hobbs forces took 300 scalps. The partners
then hauled the scalps to Chihuahua to collect the
bounty. To hide his identity, Kirker shaved off his beard
and dressed differently. The total reward came to some
23,000 gold pesos. Since the local treasury at that
moment held only 2,000 pesos, they were given a written receipt for the balance. Kirker seemed nervous
about the arrangement, no doubt realizing that Hobbs
could turn him in and take the whole 23,000 pesos, a
kingly sum, for himself. So he slipped off to California
with the 2,000 pesos, which was more than enough
money to allow him to retire from running guns and
lifting scalps. Kirker settled down near Mount Diablo
and proceeded to drink himself to death, dying of alcohol poisoning in 1852.
See also: JAMES HOBBS, SCALP HUNTING.
kiss of death
kiss of death girls
underworld jinxes
A traditional underworld archetype is the kiss of death
girl, a sobriquet newspapers apply to women whose
lovers seem to die at a much more frequent rate than
the mortality tables and laws of chance would allow.
The origin of the term “kiss of death” girl is not
clear. There is some indication that the first such female
was Ida the Goose, an inamorata of the New York City
underworld in the early part of this century who provoked the 1909 Ida the Goose War between the
Gophers and the equally murderous Chick Tricker
gang. Ida the Goose, a noted beauty despite her rather
unromantic name, was the plaything of one Gopher
Gang captain after another, generally upon the demise
of a prior lover. Her crowning kiss of death caper
occurred when, after defecting to the Tricker ranks, she
was reclaimed by the Gophers after they assassinated
her Tricker gang lover along with several of his fellow
gang members in a celebrated cafe shoot-out.
Another famous lady who jinxed her lovers was
Mary Margaret Collings, dubbed Kiss of Death Maggie
by an appreciative Chicago press during the Capone
era. The lady had the misfortune of losing no less than
six husbands, underworld characters all, either in gang
battles or confrontations with the police. It got so that
guests at her weddings made wagers on how long her
newest spouse would last. One reporter calculated that
“six months was about par for the course.”
The most famous of the breed was Evelyn Mittleman, who was labeled the Kiss of Death Girl of Murder, Inc. because of her love affair with Pittsburgh Phil
Mafia execution signal
The kiss was always important in the Mafia. During
the old days in New York, it was considered a form of
greeting whenever one member met another. The custom was ordered stopped by Lucky Luciano on his
ascendency to power in 1931. “After all,” he is alleged
to have declared, “we would stick out kissing each
other in restaurants and places like that.” The kiss of
death, however, was never too popular in this country
496
KITTY and Jennie Gang
Strauss, the organization’s most-dedicated killer. Actually, Evelyn just seemed to be a luscious blonde who
attracted men who were equally attracted by violence.
At an early age, Evelyn, who came from the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York City, attracted the
attention of newsmen covering the breeding spots of
criminality. When the Murder, Inc. investigation broke
in 1940, Eddie Zeltner, a columnist for the New York
Daily Mirror, wrote: “I knew Evelyn ten years ago,
when she was barely sixteen, a gorgeous blonde who
used to come from Williamsburg to Coney Island to
swim, and dance in the cellar clubs which are grammar
schools for gangsters.”
When she was 18, Evelyn was in California with a
fellow named Hy Miller, who was enamored of her.
One night at a dance another man was struck by her
looks. A violent disagreement ensued between him and
Miller, who lost Evelyn and his life that very night. The
same sort of thing happened a couple of years later
back in Brooklyn. She was then dating one Robert
Feurer when she caught the eye of Jack Goldstein, a
Brownsville gangster involved in the wholesale fish
market racket. Goldstein promptly killed Feurer when
the latter objected to his attention to Evelyn. Thereafter, Goldstein proudly paraded around with Evelyn in
tow until one day they happened to pass a Brownsville
poolhall and were seen by Pittsburgh Phil. Phil liked
what he saw and said so. Goldstein took exception to
the remark and complained about his behavior. Phil
quickly went back inside the pool hall and emerged
with a billiard cue. He gave Goldstein a vicious going
over, completely altering his features and his romantic
notions about Evelyn.
Goldstein did not come around much after that, but
it was not until four years later that he succumbed to
the kiss of death curse. He was murdered by Pittsburgh
Phil, but it was not over Evelyn’s affections. A contract
was put out on him because of his racket activities, and
a number of killers headed by Phil, were assigned to the
hit. The hit men were ordered to hammer Goldstein
into unconsciousness, but not to kill him, and to bring
him directly to Phil, who insisted on drowning Goldstein personally.
Pittsburgh Phil proved to be Kiss of Death Evelyn’s
last victim. She was the final visitor in his death cell
before he was executed in 1941. Thereafter, Evelyn, the
greatest of the kiss of death girls, faded into obscurity.
See also: IDA THE GOOSE WAR.
nefarious practice. Thus, in Indiana it is illegal for a
man with a mustache to “habitually kiss human
beings” and in Cedar Rapids, Iowa the kissing of a
stranger is clearly a crime. A health ordinance in Riverside, Calif. bars kissing on the lips unless both parties
first wipe their lips with carbolized rosewater.
These legal restrictions on kissing have long been
thought humorous since the mores of the country
changed and attitudes on kissing altered. All of which
no doubt would be of small comfort to a Captain
Kemble, who was placed in the public stocks in
Boston in 1656 for kissing his wife in public on the
Sabbath. The only extenuating circumstance the captain could present, which was promptly rejected by
the law, was that he had returned from a three-year
voyage at sea.
Kitty and Jennie Gang
Chicago two-woman gang
From 1886 until the turn of the century, Chicago men
were menaced by what the police called the Kitty and
Jennie Gang. Actually, the “gang” consisted of only
two members, Kitty Adams and Jennie Clark, but
their depredations befitted a criminal combine much
larger in size. Kitty Adams first appeared in Chicago
around 1880. She was the wife of a noted pickpocket,
George Shine, but soon tossed him over and won a
reputation of her own as the Terror of State Street.
Although white, she did a short stint in a black
brothel and there mastered the use of the razor, a
weapon she always hid in the bosom of her dress and
used when the need arose. Once when a lover of hers
became overbearing, she whipped out her razor and
sliced off both his ears.
About 1886 she set up a streetwalker’s crib in the
Levee, Chicago’s segregated vice area, but really supported herself as a footpad. She started working with a
very attractive young woman named Jennie Clark, who
would pick up men on the streets and lead them into
alleys. Here, Kitty Adams would seize the victim and put
a razor to his throat while Jennie took his valuables.
Between 1886 and 1893, Kitty and Jennie staged, at a
minimum, 100 such robberies a year. Finally, in 1893 a
victim was able to shake off enough of his fright to testify
against Kitty Adams and she was sent to Joliet Prison.
Jennie Clark instantly petitioned Gov. John P. Altgeld for a pardon on the ground that Kitty was dying of
tuberculosis. Altgeld ordered an investigation, and
when Kitty appeared before the Board of Pardons, she
had cut her gums with a toothpick so badly that she
spat and coughed blood at a rate that convinced the
board’s members she would soon die. The pardon was
forthcoming and Kitty returned to Jennie. The pair
were soon back in action.
kissing
From time to time, kissing has been considered a crime
in certain jurisdictions of the United States and there
are still various laws on the books forbidding this
497
KLUTAS, Theodore “Big Jack”
In 1896 they were both arrested for robbing a man.
Kitty jumped bail, but Jennie appeared for trial before
Judge James Goggin, a jurist noted for making astounding decisions. In the Jennie Clark case, Judge Goggin
made his celebrated ruling that a man who went to the
Levee deserved to get himself robbed. Jennie was
released and the fugitive warrant against Kitty was
withdrawn. Two years later, Kitty was caught again
and this time a more tradition-bound jurist sent her
back to Joliet, where ironically, she died of tuberculosis. Without Kitty Adams as a confederate, Jennie Clark
faded from the crime records.
Klutas, Theodore “Big Jack”
out his brother’s testimony, it was vindictive to prosecute Joseph.
Knapp Commission
investigation
New York police corruption
Like earlier investigations of the New York City police,
the Knapp Commission (1970–72), appointed by
Mayor John Lindsay, found corruption and bribe taking
in the department. Police officers had accepted bribes,
the commission reported, from organized crime, particularly for narcotics and prostitution violations. Even
building contractors declared that bribes to police added
a full five percent to construction costs. Testimony was
given that one policeman had held out $80,000 worth
of heroin and $127,000 in currency when he seized a
large amount of the drug. A rogue cop, William Phillips,
who had been caught accepting bribes and trying to fix
court cases, was recruited by the commission and supplied with a tape recorder; the evidence collected by
Phillips indicated that New York police officers took at
least $4 million in bribes annually.
The Knapp Commission did not win unanimous
approval, however. Some civil libertarians attacked it,
charging that much of the testimony was tainted by use
of methods that violated the privacy and rights of the
persons being investigated. Many hours of the hearings
were wasted on debates over the “rotten apple” defense
offered by the police establishment. Police Commissioner Patrick V. Murphy, who had been outspoken in
opposition to police corruption, insisted the commission had gone too far and was ruining the reputation of
thousands of honest officers. He attacked the use of
Phillips as a witness, denouncing him as a rogue cop
caught in the act and “squirming to get off the hook.”
The same criticisms, however, certainly did not apply to
two honest officers, Sergeant David Durk and Detective
Frank Serpico, who gained considerable recognition for
their roles in the investigations.
It is difficult to gauge the work of the Knapp Commission based on indictments of police officers because
the police department and various New York district
attorneys moved at about the same time, often claiming
their actions were based on independent investigations.
However, 37 Brooklyn plainclothesmen were indicted
by the Kings County district attorney, and 19 officers in
the Bronx were indicted or brought up on criminal
charges for operating a “pad,” through which regular
payments were received from area gambling establishments and divided into a monthly “nut” of $800 per
officer. Within two days of the opening of the commission’s hearings, 113 plainclothesmen were transferred.
However, more important than the number of convictions is the ultimate effect of the commission’s
See COLLEGE
KIDNAPPERS.
Knapp, Captain Joseph (c. 1770–1830) murderer
The conviction and execution of Captain Joseph Knapp
in Massachusetts in 1830, following a trial in which
Daniel Webster personally led the prosecution, deeply
divided public opinion. Although there was no doubt
about Knapp’s guilt, he could have gone free had he not
refused to testify against his brother. As it was, both
brothers were executed.
Joseph Knapp, his brother John Francis Knapp,
Richard Crowinshield and, most likely, his brother
George Crowinshield had conspired to rob a retired
sea captain, Joseph White, of his hoarded wealth. One
or more of the four entered the old man’s bedroom and
clubbed and stabbed him to death. The Crowinshield
brothers, who both had unsavory reputations, were
immediately suspected and taken into custody. While
in jail, they revealed their part in the crime to another
prisoner, who, upon his release wrote a letter to the
Knapp brothers, demanding money from them. The
authorities, watching the released convict, seized the
letter and, in time, got Joseph Knapp to confess under
a promise of immunity provided he would testify
against the others. Learning of this development,
Richard Crowinshield, the main culprit and the actual
murderer, hanged himself in his cell. George Crowinshield went free despite Joseph Knapp’s testimony, at
which point the authorities insisted Joseph testify
against his brother John. Joseph refused to do so, but
his brother was found guilty and hanged anyway. Webster then declared that Joseph Knapp had lost his
immunity because he had failed to aid in the conviction of his brother. He therefore prosecuted Joseph
Knapp, and he too was convicted and hanged, despite
considerable outcry from those who felt that since
John Knapp had been found guilty and executed with498
KOEHLER, Arthur
efforts to promote honesty and counter graft within the
police department. In its final report, made public in
1972, the commission stated:
The present situation is quite like that existing at
the close of previous investigations. A considerable
momentum for reform has been generated, but not
enough time has elapsed to reverse attitudes that have
been solidifying for many years in the minds of both the
public and the police.
After previous investigations, the momentum
was allowed to evaporate.
The question now is: Will history repeat itself?
Or does society finally realize that police corruption is
a problem that must be dealt with and not just talked
about once every 20 years?
2
3
4
5
1
A
B
C
D
E
2
F
G
H
I
J
3
K
L
M
N
O
4
P
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R
S
T
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V
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X
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Z
Morrell needed several months to teach the system
to Jake Oppenheimer, who was the only other man in
the history of San Quentin to be sentenced to life
imprisonment in solitary confinement. Oppenheimer
was 13 cells away from Morrell in the dungeon and at
first could neither grasp what the tappings meant nor
understand the code. Finally, after many months, he
solved the puzzle and the two rapped away to each
other. It was years before the guards realized the men
were communicating, assuming instead that both of
them had simply gone crazy.
When Morrell was later freed from solitary confinement
and returned to the general prison population, he taught
the knuckle voice code to other convicts, and the system
quickly spread to virtually every prison in the country.
See also: ED MORRELL.
Not expectedly, newspapers conducting surveys about a year after the hearings reported plenty
of quotes from cabdrivers, small businessmen and
the like that indicated little had changed. That sentiment could in part be attributed to the general
cynicism of the average New Yorker about any kind
of official honesty. About a decade later, knowledge-able newsmen more or less agreed that while
cor-ruption and graft still existed, abuses definitely
had not reached pre-Knapp Commission levels and
that in terms of big-city police corruption, New York
City was probably cleaner than other metropolitan
forces.
See also: ROTTEN APPLE THEORY.
knuckle voice
1
Koehler, Arthur (1885–1967) wood detective
Shortly after Bruno Richard Hauptmann was convicted
in the 1932 kidnap murder of the Lindbergh baby,
Edward J. Reilly, the chief defense counsel, told an
interviewer: “We would have won an acquittal if it hadn’t been for that guy Koehler. What a witness to ring in
on us—somebody they plucked out of a forest. Do you
know what he is? He’s a—a xylotomist.” While the dictionary defines a xylotomist as one who studies wood
anatomy and is proficient in the art of preparing wood
for microscopic examination, the lawyer said the word
as if he were mouthing an obscenity.
Arthur Koehler was not an obscenity but the
nation’s foremost wood detective. Until his retirement
in 1948 Koehler spent 36 years with the U.S. Forest
Service including 34 years at the famous Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisc., where he was the
chief wood identification expert for the government.
While Hauptmann’s counsel had not heard of him, law
officials in the Midwest had long relied on Koehler to
crack perplexing criminal cases. His evidence was vital
in convicting a Wisconsin farmer named John Magnuson for the 1922 dynamite-by-mail murder of Mrs.
James A. Chapman and the crippling of her wealthy
farmer husband. Fragments of the wood portions of the
bomb were given to Koehler, who identified the pieces
as elm. Although the suspect denied he had elm lumber
convict communication system
A sound language now used in nearly all jails of the
world, the “knuckle voice” was introduced in America
late in the 19th century in the dungeon at San Quentin
Prison by Ed Morell, generally considered to be one of
the most remarkable prisoners in the history of the
United States. Morrell, sentenced to life in solitary confinement in the dungeon, did not invent the system,
having learned it from an escaped convict from Russia,
where it was first used by Nihilist prisoners being held
in the St. Peter and Paul fortress in St. Petersburg. The
code used in the knuckle voice was based on a pattern
called the Siberian Square.
The vertical numbers indicate the number of knuckle
raps that precede a short pause, the horizontal numbers
indicate the number of raps that follow this pause.
Thus, the code for letter A is one rap, pause, one rap.
Letter B is one rap, pause, two raps. Letter F is two
raps, pause, one rap. Letter O is three raps, pause, five
raps. Letter Z is five raps, pause, six raps.
499
KORETZ, Leo
on his farm, the police swept up wood shavings from
the floor of his workshop. Koehler identified the sweepings as particles of elm and matched up their cellular
structure with the wood used in the construction of the
bomb. Magnuson was convicted.
Koehler’s reputation in the Midwest became so great
that on one occasion the mere mention that he was
being brought into an investigation caused an arsonist to confess. In another case his testimony trapped a
tree rustler who had made off with a huge amount of
choice logs. Koehler traced the logs back to a certain
valuable timberland and even identified which log was
cut from which tree by matching saw cuts and the
structure of the annual rings to the tree stumps. He also
was instrumental in convicting Michael Fugmann, a
triple murderer whose bomb packages had terrorized a
Pennsylvania coal mining town during a union dispute
in 1936.
In the Lindbergh case Koehler presented the damning evidence that one of Hauptmann’s tools had been
used to construct the kidnap ladder and that one of the
ladder’s rails came from Hauptmann’s home. Despite
many subsequent attempts by certain writers to prove
Hauptmann’s innocence, Koehler’s expert evidence has
never been successfully challenged.
Koehler had spent 18 months tracing the wood used
in the kidnap ladder. At one point, about six months
before Hauptmann’s capture, he was so close on the
trail of the culprit that the two men were in the same
lumberyard at the same time. Hauptmann, apparently
warned by instinct, had fled the yard, leaving behind a
40¢ plywood panel he had paid for. If one of the yard
employees had mentioned the matter to Koehler, it is
conceivable that the Lindbergh case would have closed
six months earlier in a most dramatic fashion.
See also: MRS. JAMES A. CHAPMAN, MICHAEL FUGMANN,
LINDBERGH KIDNAPPING.
Koretz, Leo (1881–1925) swindler
A contemporary of Charles Ponzi, Leo Koretz is not as
well remembered today as a notorious swindler, certainly not as well as he should be. True, Ponzi is
believed to have netted something like $7 million while
Koretz appears to have stolen a mere $5 million. But
Koretz carried off his scheme for much longer and,
unlike Ponzi, who preyed to a great extent on unsuspecting immigrants, Koretz robbed the elite of the
Chicago business world. In fact, Koretz’ depredations
may well have been greater than Ponzi’s since a number
of businessmen were known to have taken their losses
in silence, fearing that any revelation that they had
been swindled would damage their reputations as
shrewd businessmen.
500
Koretz’ scam was based on stock in the Bayano Timber Syndicate of Panama, which had supposedly garnered a fortune in mahogany from its vast land
holdings and then discovered oil on its property. Koretz
started selling stock in Bayano in 1917. Within no time
at all the company was rewarding its stockholders with
a quarterly dividend of 5 percent on their original
investment. In reality, there was no Bayano Timber
Syndicate. The swamp land it allegedly held was owned
by the Panamanian government, since no one had any
interest in mining or having anything to do with its
only known commodity, mosquitoes.
Koretz’ ignorant stockholders were happy with their
dividends. Of course, in theory, he had to pay the
investors their dividends out of their original investments, creating the same kind of impossible pyramid
structure that eventually brought Ponzi to grief. The
more cunning Koretz solved that troublesome matter
by encouraging his investors to take their dividends in
additional stock, each certificate as worthless as the
originals.
The stockholders adored Koretz, even as the news
of Ponzi’s fraud was breaking; in fact, they started calling him “Lovable Lou . . . Our Ponzi.” They regarded
him as the first true financial genius to come down the
pike since John D. Rockefeller. Once, Koretz was feted
at a sumptuous dinner at Chicago’s Congress Hotel.
Sitting next to him was Arthur Brisbane, William Randolph Hearst’s top editorialist and himself a big Koretz
sucker. During the dessert, newsboys broke into the hall
with an extra announcing, “Leo Koretz’ oil swindle.”
For a moment everyone was stunned. Then Brisbane
rose laughing. He had had phony newspapers printed
up as part of the evening’s entertainment. Then, embracing Koretz, he shouted, “Mr. Koretz is a great and
honorable financier!” Everyone learned differently at
the end of 1923, when his great hoax was exposed.
In 1922 a large group of happy stockholders thought
it was about time that they visited the company’s vast
holdings. Koretz succeeded in stalling them for almost a
year, but when they sailed from New York in November 1923, Koretz knew his time had run out. Taking $5
million with him, he fled to Canada and assumed an
identity he had established there years ago as Lou
Keyte. What brought Koretz down was his diabetes, for
which he had to take insulin, then a rare and expensive
commodity. He was traced thanks to his dependency on
the drug and finally arrested in Halifax.
In the ensuing investigation, it was found that his
elderly mother had invested $50,000 in his scheme and
his brother $140,000. Even his secretary had parted
with $3,000. Koretz said he had accepted the investments because he didn’t know how to turn them down
without arousing suspicion.
KU Klux Klan
Koretz spent only about a month behind bars for his
crimes. He induced a lady friend to bring him a fivepound box of chocolates. He ate the entire box on January 9, 1925 and promptly keeled over dead, certainly
one of the most bizarre prison suicides in history.
in the history of American crime. Her kidnappers, Gary
Steven Krist and Ruth Eisemann Schier, buried her alive
in a nine-foot pit inside an elaborate coffinlike box for
three days while they negotiated a $500,000 ransom.
The woman’s prison box was equipped with light, a fan
and two flexible tubes extending to the surface that
allowed her to breathe. She was also supplied with a
small amount of food and water. After 83 hours the
ransom was paid and agents in Atlanta were notified
the victim could be found in a box in a pine forest in
Gwinnett County, Ga. By the time Mackle was rescued,
the light had failed and her food and water were about
gone.
The kidnappers had dropped a suitcase and abandoned a blue 1966 Volvo near the first spot where the
ransom money was to be picked up. The car and the
suitcase were traced to George C. Deacon, which
turned out to be an alias for Gary Steven Krist, an
escaped convict from California. The FBI also ascertained that Krist was associating with 26-year-old Ruth
Eisemann Schier, and both were put on the FBI’s 10
Most Wanted list, making Eisemann Schier the first
woman fugitive to gain that distinction. Krist was
apprehended in an alligator-infested Florida swamp
with almost all of the ransom money still intact. Eisemann Schier was caught when her fingerprints were
sent to the FBI for a routine check after she had applied
for a nursing service job.
Eisemann Schier was sentenced to seven years in
prison and Krist was given life. In May 1979 he was
granted a parole which drew considerable adverse criticism from the press as well as the judge and prosecutor
in the case. Under the conditions of his parole, Krist
had to live in Alaska, where his family ran a fishing village at Sitka. Krist praised the parole board’s
“courage” in releasing him, saying they recognized the
remorse he had felt during his 10 years behind bars.
“I’ve learned that a conscience can be a bigger burden
than anything anyone else can put on you,” he said. He
also made a public statement to Barbara Mackle:
“Thank you for not opposing my parole and having the
Christian charity to forgive me for something I did that
was unforgivable.”
Kosterlitzky, Colonel Emilio (c. 1853–1928) Mexican
police official
Although Col. Emilio Kosterlitzky was only a Mexican
police official he had an important effect on MexicanU.S. relations. Born in Russia, Kosterlitzky emigrated
to the United States to join the army. By 1873 he had
moved on to Mexico, where he enlisted in the cavalry
as a private. A soldier of exceptional ability, he rose
rapidly to become the commander of the dreaded la
cordada, an elite cavalry unit that patrolled the Arizona
and New Mexico borders. He worked closely with various American law officers and especially the Arizona
Rangers, helping them to round up a great many
wanted renegades.
Kosterlitzky commanded the buckskin-clad rurales,
cutthroat troops many of whom were ex-bandits,
welding them into the only effective police force on
the Mexican border. The colorful colonel, noted for
leading his troops on a striking white charger, ruthlessly enforced the federal policy of Porfirio Díaz, not
only doing battle with bandits and Indians but suppressing the peons. Kosterlitzky endeared himself to
American peace officers by often arranging to hand
over wanted men without protracted legal hearings. It
is suspected that he often exported some of Díaz’
political problems by turning over revolutionary
peons to American lawmen as supposed transnational
bandits.
After the fall of Díaz in 1911, the rurales became an
isolated force without government approval, but
Kosterlitzky maintained order among them for a number of months until it became apparent they could not
stand against the nation’s social revolution. Finally, he
fled across the border at Nogales, placing himself under
American protection. Because of his strong support
among U.S. lawmen, there was no chance that Kosterlitzky would be returned to the Mexicans, and in fact,
he worked several years for the Department of Justice
in Los Angeles up to his death in 1928. During those
years he remained a thorn in relations between the two
countries.
Ku Klux Klan
As a movement, or more correctly, three different
movements, the Ku Klux Klan dates back to 1866,
when it was organized in Pulaski, Tenn., in response to
radical Reconstruction. By their night-riding tactics
against blacks, the white-hooded Klansmen did much
to bring about the “redemption” of Southern state governments by white conservatives. Officially, the original
Klan disbanded in 1869, but it did not die in most areas
Krist, Gary Steven (1945– ) kidnapper
The kidnapping of 20-year-old Barbara Jane Mackle,
the daughter of a Florida real estate developer, on
December 17, 1968 was one of the most bizarre plots
501
KU Klux Klan
Despite continuing instances of violence and killings, by the 1950s the Ku Klux Klan had lost some of its former
fearsomeness, as some blacks in the South showed up at rallies to watch the festivities.
“Klan men.” Many of their administrations, especially
in Indiana, proved unusually corrupt and did much to
discredit the movement. By 1928, when the Klan abandoned its secrecy, the organization’s power was in rapid
decline.
The third Klan was born in the 1950s in response to
the civil rights movement. It was actually a proliferation of competing Klans that independently engaged in
a certain amount of unrestrained terrorism in the rural
and small-town Black Belt South. By the mid-1960s
many of these Klans had been brought more or less
under control without ever having achieved anywhere
near the murderous impact of their predecessors.
In 1969 seven Klan leaders were jailed for contempt
of Congress for refusing to bare details about membership. In 1978 and 1979 there was a resurgence of violent-type Klan activities in the northeastern states as
well as the South.
The modern Klan is divided into three main groups:
Robert Shelton’s United Klans of America, headed by
Robert Shelton, which is believed to be the largest of the
three groups and the most secretive of the hooded orga-
until years later, when this recapture of political power
was completed.
The second and largest Klan was formed in Atlanta,
Ga. in 1915 by Colonel William J. Simmons. It
remained largely a local antiblack movement until
1920, when two professional publicity agents, or hustlers, Edward Y. Clarke and Mrs. Elizabeth Tyler,
launched a nationwide membership drive under the slogan of “native, white, Protestant”—an effective rallying
cry during a period of rampant nationalism, red-baiting
and xenophobia. By 1925 total Klan membership stood
between four and five million and fiery crosses, the
symbol of the movement, appeared in every part of the
country. So did the whip and the rope, by which the
Klan’s moral position was enforced with floggings and
lynchings. Among those facing the often fatal wrath of
the hooded terrorists were blacks, Jews, Catholics,
bootleggers, pacifists, Bolshevists, internationalists and
evolutionists. Despite numerous exposés, the Klan
became a potent political force and in many states, such
as Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Maine, Kansas and
Indiana, unscrupulous politicians rose to power as
502
KUSZ, Charles
nizations; David Duke’s Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,
which is reportedly the fastest-growing organization; and
Bill Wilkerson’s Invisible Empire, Knights of the Ku Klux
Klan, the most violent of the three. While there is intense
rivalry between the Klan leaders and a lack of cohesive
ideologies, the trinity still maintains a certain bond
because of the unifying belief in white supremacy.
Wilkinson, a 37-year-old former electrical contractor
and a onetime associate of David Duke, runs his Invisible Empire out of Denham Springs, La. He flies his private plane from state to state to appear on radio shows,
organize demonstrations and recruit new members. A
former navy man, Wilkinson has spearheaded drives to
recruit members among U.S. Navy personnel and he
claims that a KKK incident aboard the U.S.S. Concord
involved sailors who were “and still are my men.” In
Decatur, Ga. about 100 Wilkinson men disrupted a
parade sponsored by the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference and it was at an Invisible Empire rally in
Plains, Ga. that a drunken opponent of the Klan drove
a car through the demonstrators, injuring several.
See also: LEO FRANK, MADGE OBERHOLTZER.
sonal reporting and a readership who took things personally indeed. In that context it was perhaps amazing
that Charles Kusz, a rabble-rousing bigot, lived as long
as he did.
A native New Yorker, Kusz came west at the age of
26 to strike it rich. Within five years, he made
$150,000 mining in Colorado. Kusz then moved on to
Manzano, New Mexico Territory, where he founded a
newspaper. It was an extraordinary publication even
for the West. Perhaps its title, The Gringo and the
Greaser, tells it all, but it should be noted that in addition to a strong dislike for many cowboys and all Mexicans, Kusz also passionately hated Roman Catholics,
rustlers and the educational structure of the area. He
constantly exercised his First Amendment rights to
express his hatreds in diatribes published in the paper,
which incidentally was printed entirely in italics.
Kusz’ journalistic efforts lasted for about four years
until he was assassinated on March 26, 1884 by two
rifle shots through a window of his home while he was
eating dinner. Motive became a key factor in the Kusz
murder, but when the law got around to eliminating
those not likely to have a motive, they still had enough
of the community left to constitute a fairly complete
census. Not surprisingly, the case was never solved.
Kusz, Charles (1849–1884) murder victim
Journalism in the Old West was without doubt one of
the more dangerous professions, given as it was to per-
503
L
labor sluggers war
was possible to see their men in one district supporting
the union while those in another engaged in antilabor
skull bashing.
In the process of establishing their monopoly, Dopey
Benny and Joe the Greaser froze several rival gangs out
of working for the unions. Finally, the leaders of these
gangs, including Billy Lustig, Pinchey Paul, Little
Rhody, Punk Madden, Moe Jewbach, and others,
banded together to declare war and establish their right
to support unionism. In late 1913 the two sides staged
a running gun battle at Grand and Forsyth streets. Surprisingly, no one was killed, although many store windows were shot to pieces and business was generally
brought to a halt.
Later battles resulted in fatalities and, more commonly, maimings. Eventually, one of the dissident leaders, Pinchey Paul, was murdered and Nigger Benny
Snyder, a Fein-Rosensweig henchman, was accused of
the killing. While in jail Nigger Benny concluded that
he was being abandoned by the Fein-Rosensweig forces
and confessed to the murder, saying it had been
assigned to him by Joe the Greaser, who had tipped him
$5 upon its successful completion.
In time, the dissidents were wiped out in a series of
gunfights outside of various factories, but the victors
had their own problems. Dopey Benny was arrested on
a murder charge, and Joe the Greaser got sent away for
10 years. Benny recognized his predicament and
decided to make a pitch for leniency by informing on
his labor connections and fellow sluggers. On the basis
of Dopey Benny’s statements, 11 gangsters and 23
union officers were indicted, but in the end, none were
convicted. Under his deal with the law, Benny was tried
thug rivalry
About 1911, as unionization efforts in New York intensified, especially in the needle and allied garment industry trades, both labor and management started utilizing
thugs to achieve their goals, providing the underworld
with a lucrative source of income. This produced a
strange underworld conflict rooted as much in class
loyalties and political philosophy as in the desire for
illicit revenues. Union leaders hired thugs to blackjack
and murder strikebreakers and to convince recalcitrant
workers to join the unions. Employers hired the gangsters to guard strikebreakers, slug union pickets and
raid union meetings.
A number of gangs vied for the labor slugging business, but all clearly preferred working for the unions
rather than the employers. In some cases this was
undoubtedly because the unions often paid better than
the employers, but it was also due to the fact that
most of these labor sluggers were Jews and Italians,
just as were the workers of the area. There was an
inclination to help your own as long as it wasn’t too
unprofitable.
By about 1912–13 the labor slugging trade was
dominated by an alliance of gangs headed by Dopey
Benny Fein and Joe the Greaser Rosensweig. So feared
was Dopey Benny that some employers once offered
him $15,000 to remain neutral in a strike. Deeply
offended, he replied he would accept no offer from
them and stood ready to provide his gangsters to the
union because his heart was always with the workingman. In fact, this was not always the case. Dopey
Benny and Joe the Greaser divided up lower Manhattan
into districts and assigned a vassal gang to each, and it
504
LAFITTE, Jean
on only one murder charge and was released when the
jury failed to reach a verdict.
However, Dopey Benny’s power was broken, as was
that of his rivals. Because of the disclosures, a number
of unions thereafter refused to hire sluggers. As a result,
the New York labor scene was relatively peaceful
through the war years until about 1920, when the
notorious Kid Dropper, formerly Nathan Kaplan, reorganized the slugger trade with those unions still willing
to use such methods. In 1923 the Kid’s power was disrupted by a challenge from forces aligned with Jacob
“Little Augie” Orgen.
Little Augie won this second sluggers war by arranging the assassination of Kid Dropper while he himself
was under police guard, thereby becoming the new king
of the labor sluggers. Two other men allied with Little
Augie at this time were Louis “Lepke” Buchalter and
Gurrah Shapiro, both would rise high in the ranks of
the national crime syndicate established in the 1930s.
Lepke, in fact, became head of that organization’s
enforcement arm, Murder, Inc.
Little Augie milked the labor slugging racket as well
as he could, although fewer unions were willing to
resort to his organizing tactics, until he began shifting
his operations into bootlegging. He rejected a suggestion from Lepke that if the unions would not use sluggers, then the gangsters should move and physically
take over union locals, milk the members with heavy
dues and extort tribute from employers to insure
against strikes. Little Augie, faced with tightened police
surveillance, looked upon this as a high-risk operation.
Besides, he saw he could earn enough from bootlegging
to retire a rich man in a few years. So he ordered Lepke
to cease such activities.
In 1927 Little Augie was machine-gunned to death
either by Lepke and Shapiro or by bootlegging rivals
whose customers he had stolen. Lepke soon became the
king of the labor extortion racket in New York.
See also: KID DROPPER, NOBLES, JACOB “LITTLE AUGIE”
ORGEN.
Lady Gophers
strong. In many respects, she was much smarter than
her male counterparts. Known as the Queen of Hell’s
Kitchen, Battle Annie soon saw the special uses for an
army of gangster women. She approached both labor
unions and employers who had started to hire gangsters
and explained the value of utilizing women sluggers.
Thereafter, for a number of years Battle Annie enjoyed
a handsome living supplying female warriors to either
side in local industrial disputes. Her women might
appear on the scene posing as either the enraged wives
of the strikers or as the wives of the strikebreakers—
sometimes even playing both roles—and end up
scratching, biting and clawing the picketers, the strikebreakers or both.
The Lady Gophers failed to survive, however, when the
male Gopher Gang disintegrated between 1910 and 1912.
See also: GOPHERS.
Lafitte, Jean (1780–1826) pirate
Probably no man in the annals of American crime is
more controversial than Jean Lafitte. He can and has
been described as a villain, pirate and murderer, yet
there are others who have portrayed him as a much
misunderstood man, a true patriot, a gentleman-smuggler, in an era when such a combination was possible a
legally sanctioned privateer. At the far end of his spectrum of admirers was a former president of the
Louisiana Historical Society who insisted “there is no
character to compare him with except that of Robin
Hood, whom he surpassed in audacity and success.”
No one is certain of Lafitte’s birthplace, but the present consensus is that he was born in 1780 in Bordeaux, France. It is still in dispute whether his father
was a footloose sea dog or a titled aristocrat. There is
also a wide discrepancy about Lafitte’s appearance.
One historian insists he wore a beard clean shaven
from the front of his face, i.e., no mustache; another
pictures him as a tall, handsome man with a mustache.
He is also depicted as rather slight of build with almost
feminine hands and feet or as a huge man with an
appearance most harsh.
One certainty is that Jean and his brother, Pierre,
turned up in New Orleans in 1806, after having accumulated considerable funds (preying on ships in the
Indian Ocean or, again according to another version,
pimping for a number of years in Paris). The brothers
Lafitte opened a large mercantile establishment that
was rather obviously devoted to the sale of smuggled
goods. They had as partners some of the most prominent millionaires in the city, and Lafitte maintained
close connections with the “privateers” sailing under
the commission of the so-called Republic of Cartagena,
which the Spaniards still considered a part of the Span-
New York female gang
Often referred to by the press as the ladies auxiliary of
the Gophers, an early 20th century gang that controlled
Hell’s Kitchen in New York City, the Lady Gophers
were officially known as the Battle Row Ladies’ Social
and Athletic Club. Its members were the first organized
gang of women to engage in what may be called the
“social crimes” of the 20th century.
The Lady Gophers fought side by side with the
Gophers in many battles against the police. Their
leader, Battle Annie, was said to have been the sweetheart of practically the entire Gopher Gang, 500
505
LAGER Beer Riot
ton, Tex. Resuming his privateering against the Spanish, Lafitte seized $2 million in silver from the brig
Santa Rosa. It was a colossal haul and Lafitte’s last act
of piracy. Unfortunately some of his associates were to
lose the silver hoard in a lake during a confrontation
with Mexican troops.
Lafitte continued his career as a smuggler, mostly
bringing in slaves to Louisiana, by then against the law
but still a thriving business in the south. He seldom
bought his slaves at the markets in Cuba, preferring to
steal them from Spanish ships. By 1819 Lafitte had lost
control of some of the pirates, who started attacking
American shipping, and a large number of them were
caught and hanged that year in New Orleans despite
his intercession. After two more years of depredations,
the Americans became exasperated with the pirates,
and U.S. naval forces dispersed the Galveztown colony.
Lafitte was still considered a hero in New Orleans and
could have returned there, as did some of his men, but
he sailed off in search of a site for yet another colony
further down the Mexican coast. With his ship Pride,
he continued smuggling but the facts about the last few
years of his life are hazy. He was perhaps murdered by
his own men or was killed in a sea battle with a British
man-of-war or died of fever somewhere in the West
Indies. The most meticulous research indicates he probably passed away alone, forgotten and bitter in the
Yucatan village of Teljas in 1826.
Lafitte could have died an honored and revered hero
in New Orleans. His aide Captain Dominique lived out
his remaining years in that city, a popular figure in the
cafes and coffeehouses. Although he died poor in 1830
at the age of 55, on the day of his death the city’s flags
were lowered to half-staff and all business places were
shut. Dominique’s funeral was given full military honors. New Orleans honored its pirate heroes and has
lionized Lafitte ever since.
See also: VINCENT GAMBI, HENDRICK’S LAKE, PIRACY,
PIRATES’ HOME.
ish Empire. About 1809 Lafitte went to sea, taking a
commission as a privateer from Cartagena; his brother
was left in charge of operations in New Orleans. Lafitte
took charge, by both persuasion and raw power, of all
the privateering vessels operating out of Barataria Bay
and the island of Grand Terre off the Louisiana coast.
Among those privateers or pirates who fell under his
sway were Captain Dominique, Rene Beluche, Cut
Nose Chighizola and Vincent Gambi, the mad killer of
the Gulf whose allegiance to Lafitte was often tenuous
and stormy.
Under Lafitte’s command, the pirates thrived as
never before. Grand Terre, the home of some 500 ruffians and perhaps another 200 whores who catered to
them when they came ashore, became a great trading
center. Merchants from New Orleans and other southern cities flocked there, via a tortuous two-day journey
by pirogue and barge through marshes and bayous, to
buy goods stripped from the holds of plundered Spanish merchantmen. Soon, more cargo came into New
Orleans from Grand Terre than from any other source.
For a time the U.S. authorities allowed the trade, which
was certainly good business for the Louisiana merchants, but the government eventually came to realize
that the illicit trade was greatly reducing the tax revenues from incoming goods that would normally go to
national and local coffers. In late 1813 the government
served notice on Lafitte that the pirates would have to
leave. He gave some thought to resistance, but he faced
a major problem with his men: many of his captains
wanted to strike at all shipping, including that owned
by Americans. Lafitte had to use brute force to suppress
such sentiments, publicly shooting down Vincent
Gambi’s top lieutenant for questioning his orders.
When U.S. troops moved into the Baratarian islands in
1814, Lafitte wisely ordered his men to flee without
shooting back.
Lafitte returned to New Orleans, spurning the
courtship of the British, then at war with the United
States. Instead, he brought Gen. Andrew Jackson intelligence about the British plans to attack New Orleans
and offered his services and those of pirates in fighting
them off. With considerable doubts, Jackson accepted
the offer and Lafitte and his crews performed in the victory over the British. In the aftermath of the war,
Lafitte and his Baratarian crews won full pardons and
the opportunity to remain in the United States with all
the rights of citizenship.
Lafitte stayed ashore about a year, but wearying of a
land existence he and most of his old comrades sailed
off to start a new pirates’ colony along the shore of
what was then northeastern Mexico. In 1816 Lafitte
and 1,000 followers set up a colony on a small island
they called Galveztown, which was to become Galves-
Lager Beer Riot
The so-called Lager Beer Riot, also known as the German Riot, in Chicago in 1855 was that city’s first great
mob disturbance. The cause of the riot was the city’s
attempt to enforce the Sunday closing law for saloons
and increase their license fees from $50 to $300 a year,
exacerbated by an antiforeign attitude, which in
Chicago at the time meant anti-German. The Germans,
clannishly isolated on the North Side, stuck to their
own language, maintained their own schools and newspapers and, of course, had hundreds of their own beer
gardens. The Sunday closings and fee increases were
but a prelude to a vote that summer on a drastic prohi506
LAHEY-Claffey feud
century historian summed up the public reaction: “It
seemed little less than a travesty on justice that in a
sedition notoriously German, the only victims should
be two Irishmen.” The two men were granted new trials but they were never held. By then the powerful prohibition forces no longer cared. The temperance
movement was gaining around the country, and an easy
victory was expected in the Chicago balloting. Instead,
the vote went antiprohibition by a huge margin. Many
voters said they had been fearful of lawless German
reaction to a “yes” vote, but Chicago was apparently
thoroughly “wet” in sympathy. In any event, the Lager
Beer rioters had won.
bition law. The German populace, especially the saloon
keepers, saw the moves as an effort to destroy their
rights. “The excitement throughout the city ran high,”
a contemporary historian wrote, “but the Nord Seite
was in a perfect ferment. Meetings were held, speeches
made, resolutions adopted, and pledges registered that
the Germans of Chicago would die, if need be, rather
than submit to this outrage upon their rights.” Because
they were likewise affected, the Scandinavians and Irish
residents joined the German protest. The first Sunday
the closing law was enforced, the German beer gardens
and saloons were shut down tight by the police but
American-owned bars on the South Side were allowed
to carry on business via their side and back doors. The
following Sunday the German saloon keepers opened
for business and refused to shut down; 200 of them
were immediately arrested. Later, they were freed on
bail and representatives of the city and the German district agreed to a single test case that would be binding
on both sides. The trial opened on the morning of April
21, 1855. As the contemporary account continues:
Lahey-Claffey feud
New Orleans family rivalry
Rivaling in many ways the more famous feud of the
Hatfields and McCoys, two clans, the Laheys and the
Claffeys, each composed of several families, kept the
so-called Irish Channel, the district where Irish immigrants concentrated in New Orleans in the 1840s, in
turmoil for more than two decades.
The newspapers of the day reported several alleged
causes of the feud, but simply stated, it was bad blood
that led to the many killings and maimings. When violence broke out between the clans, who both lived on
Corduroy Alley, no one was safe. In 1861 the True
Delta described the area:
The liberated saloon-keepers had collected their friends
on the North Side, and, preceded by a fife and drum,
the mob, about five hundred strong, had marched in
solid phalanx upon the justice shop, as many as could
entering the sacred precincts. After making themselves
understood that the decision of the court must be in
their favor if the town didn’t want a taste of war, they
retired and formed at the intersection of Clark and
Randolph Streets, and held possession of these thoroughfares to the exclusion of all traffic. Crowds gathered from all sections of the city, friends and enemies,
and the uproar was deafening.
St. Thomas Street is keeping up with its ancient reputation, especially that portion of it which boasts of Corduroy Alley. The inhabitants of the Alley appear for the
most part to be an intemperate and bloodthirsty set,
who are never contented unless engaged in broils, foreign or domestic, such as the breaking of a stranger’s
pate or the blacking of a loving spouse’s eye. These are
the ordinary amusements of the Alley. . . . Honest
people, doubtless, live on St. Thomas Street, but they
must have a hard time of it if they manage to keep their
skulls uncracked and their reputations unstained.
The mob retreated after a brief but bloody fight with
a score of police that left nine prisoners in custody. By 3
o’clock the protesting mob had reached 1,000 men,
armed with rifles, shotguns, knives and clubs, and they
advanced again, this time to be met by 200 police, who
had formed a solid line across Clark Street. Amidst
cries of “Shoot the police!” the mob attacked, firing
guns, and the police returned the fire. Officially, only
one German was killed, a police officer had his arm
blown off by a shotgun and perhaps 20 others were
seriously wounded. The mob carried off many of their
own injured and the Chicago Times reported, “A few
days later there were several mysterious funerals on the
North Side, and it was generally believed that the rioters gave certain victims secret burial.”
In all, 60 prisoners were taken by the police in what
came to be called the Lager Beer Riot. Of these, 14
were brought to trial. Eventually, two Irishmen named
Halleman and Farrell were convicted of rioting. A 19th
On July 4 of that year, Bill Claffey, the leading thug
of his clan, decided to wipe out the Laheys in one
drunken onslaught. He stabbed several Laheys as well
as a half-dozen innocent bystanders with a long razorsharp knife before being shot by a policeman whom he
had attacked. It was said that several of the wounded
Laheys died later, but the clans were generally closemouthed about such matters. The Civil War effectively
ended the feud, as several of the most aggressive young
men on both sides entered the Confederate army.
Apparently, the police then launched a crackdown on
both clans, making arrests for the slightest provocation,
with the result that many of the families moved from
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LAKE, Leonard, and Ng, Charles Chitat
the area. Corduroy Alley was not completely tamed,
but it was possible for a stranger to make it through
without being caught in a flurry of brickbats.
cabin, and his neighbors actually helped him build his
bunker, which he alleged was to be fortified solely in
preparation for a potential foreign invasion.
Lake and Ng stockpiled a huge store of illegal
weapons and stolen video equipment that could presumably warn them of a surprise attack. The bunker,
they said, could survive a nuclear holocaust. Actually it
was set up to hold prisoners, both men and women,
until the duo got around to killing them.
How many victims did the pair dispatch? No one
will ever know the exact tally. The authorities dug up
about a dozen complete or partial skeletons in the
woods near the bunker, but eventually they retrieved 50
shopping bags of broken human bones as well as infant
teeth. It proved to be a nightmare to try to identify all
of these ghoulish remains. Eventually police felt that
Lake and Ng were responsible for the disappearance of
at least 25 people.
Authorities found a considerable number of videotapes and diaries that indicated some of the frightening
practices that were carried out in the bunker. Some
would qualify as “snuff tapes,” involving sadistic rapes
of several women who were then murdered—to accommodate new victims.
Lake left written entries in various diaries of his
opinion of the women and how they were to be converted to sex slaves, which he thought would be a vital
need if there were to be a nuclear holocaust. He wrote,
“God meant women for cooking, cleaning house and
sex. And when they are not in use, they should be
locked up.” Even before he started imprisoning
women, he recorded his plans. The female captives
were to be brainwashed in order to submit to sexual
servitude. Their babies, husbands or boyfriends were
also to be held captive and threatened with death if the
women did not comply. If the women showed any hesitation of submitting to complete depersonalization
their families would be killed. (In actuality, killing of
the families of female victims was carried out immediately without the women knowing. Ng was known to
have killed two babies in such a manner.) One tape
records a woman being forced to undress while pleading for her baby to be returned to her. Her pleas produced only laughter. The baby had undoubtedly been
killed, and the woman would suffer the same fate.
In a short time Lake and Ng dispatched a dozen victims, some of them neighbors, without arousing suspicion. One neighbor who got suspicious was Brenda
O’Connor, who lived in a nearby cabin. She told friends
she saw Lake in the woods burying what she thought
was a woman’s body. Rather than inform the police,
her husband invited a Guardian Angel named Robin
Stapely to move in with the couple and their infant son.
That proved no impediment to Lake and Ng. In May
Lake, Leonard (1946–1985), and Ng, Charles
Chitat (1961– ) serial killer duo
It is understood in law enforcement circles that when a
serial killer links up with a like-minded individual, the
horror of their predations becomes especially gruesome, each killer feeding off the other’s pathological
behavior. This was especially true in the case of
Leonard Lake and Charles Chitat Ng.
Lake was a veteran who served for two years in Vietnam as a marine spotter for air strikes and returned to
the States to what had previously been a rather bizarre
lifestyle. At a young age he was bent on photographing
nude girls, which soon degenerated into an obsession
for pornography. He frequently spoke of the joys of
collecting sex “slaves,” and apparently he did so during
his military service, which might explain why, following his two-year stint in Vietnam, he underwent two
years of psychiatric therapy at Camp Pendleton for
unspecified mental problems.
Lake was discharged in 1971 and proceeded to participate in a strange series of activities. He became
known to others as a gun buff, “survivalist,” and sex
freak with a passion for making bondage films. He
spoke constantly of impending war and acknowledged
keeping a cyanide capsule with him so that he could
commit suicide if he was ever taken by the enemy; this
proved not to be an idle comment. Lake also spent
some time in offbeat communal groups, including one
that was engaged in collecting unicorns, or, rather, surgically altered young goats, that they could worship.
Lake liked the group but in the end was kicked out for
being too strange for the other members.
Charles Ng, born of wealthy parents from Hong
Kong, was seemingly always in trouble. Sent off to England by his exasperated parents, he attended Oxford
for a time until his family disowned him for unspecified
reasons. Ng headed for the United States and contacted
Lake through an ad the latter had apparently placed in
a soldier-of-fortune–type publication. This occurred
after Ng had joined the marines and was confined to
prison at Leavenworth. The pair corresponded while
Ng was still confined. Lake liked what he knew about
Ng. He was looking for someone who could help him
with his future murderous plans.
When they got together in 1984 the pair went on a
monumental kidnap-murder spree, much of which
occurred at a cinderblock bunker that Lake constructed
on two-and-one-half acres of woodland near Wilseyville,
California, in Calaveras County. Lake lived in a wooden
508
LAMM, Herman K.“Baron”
1985 all four disappeared (Brenda ended up in a snuff
videotape).
Another family that came to a frightful end was Harvey and Deborah Dubs. Dubs was a San Francisco photographer who disappeared in 1984 with his wife and
infant son. Dubs’ equipment ended up being used for
some of the snuff tapes, including one of Deborah Dubs.
Almost anyone coming in contact with the serial
killer duo could end up dead. In November 1984 a car
dealer named Paul Cosner left his San Francisco home
saying he was going to sell his car to “a weird guy.”
Weird-guy Lake ended up with Cosner’s car and Cosner
ended up among the permanently missing.
A stranger fate awaited 23-year-old Mike Carroll,
who had done time with Ng in Leavenworth and had
come west to join him. Carroll sought to ingratiate
himself with Ng and Lake by offering to dress up in
“fruity” clothes and lure homosexuals who the pair
could rob and kill. The duo liked the idea and the trio
carried out a few such killings, but Lake and Ng tired
of the routine and pulled the plug on the operation by
dispatching Mike Carroll.
That left the matter of 18-year-old Kathleen Allen,
who had become Carroll’s girlfriend. Lake got her to
quit her job in a supermarket and go to Carroll who
had supposedly been shot and wounded near Lake
Tahoe. Actually Carroll was no longer in this world
and Kathleen ended up as yet another snuff-tape
“actress.”
Other victims had only the most tenuous connection
to their murderers. One, a 25-year-old man, simply
made the mistake of offering to help Ng move some
furniture. For that act of kindness he ended up dead.
By contrast, at least six girls who had been taped by
the duo were released rather than killed. However,
none of them ever went to the authorities, so terrified
were they of the cruel pair.
As a matter of fact, none of their murders led to
Lake and Ng’s exposure, but rather an almost silly burglary of a south San Francisco lumberyard. Ng grabbed
the loot and flipped it into a car that Lake was driving.
He was observed and Lake was apprehended, although
Ng got away. Unfortunately for Lake the car he was
driving was the one taken from Paul Cosner, who was a
missing person. Inevitably, Lake realized, police would
check out his cabin and discover the bunker and its
gruesome secrets.
Brought in for questioning, Lake realized this was
the “enemy attack” he had long awaited. He asked for
a glass of water, slipped his cyanide capsule in his
mouth and lapsed into a coma, dying four days later.
Now the Lake-Ng atrocities were discovered and the
hunt was on for Charles Ng. Ng had flown to Chicago
and made it into Canada. He was arrested in Calgary,
Alberta. Ng fought being returned to the United States
but in 1989 the courts ruled he could be extradited to
California. It was not until mid-1999 that Ng was convicted of a number of murders that prosecutors could
prove he had committed, that of six men, three women
and two baby boys. He was sentenced to death.
Lamm, Herman K. “Baron” (1890?–1930) bank
robber tactician
America’s most brilliant bank robbery planner, one
whose technique John Dillinger studied intently, was a
young ex-German army officer, Herman K. Lamm, who
brought Prussian precision and discipline to the art.
Shortly before World War I, Lamm was caught cheating at cards and forced out of his regiment. Emigrating
to the United States, he put his military training and
study of tactics to the best possible use as a holdup man
in Utah. He was caught in 1917 and sent to prison for a
short stretch. In prison he worked up what became
known as the Baron Lamm technique of bank robbery.
It was Lamm’s belief that a bank job required all the
planning of a military campaign, with a full range of
options to allow for unforeseen developments. When
he got out of prison, Lamm organized a bank robbery
gang and drilled the members in a fashion that would
have done a Prussian sergeant proud. He always spent
many hours in a bank before robbing it, drawing up a
detailed floor plan, noting the location of the safes and
whose duty it was to open them. Then the Baron put
his men through a complete series of rehearsals, sometimes even using a full mock-up of the bank’s interior.
Each man was given a specific assignment, a zone of the
bank to survey for possible trouble and an exact time
schedule for his duties. Lamm’s cardinal rule was that
the job had to performed on schedule and the gang had
to leave the bank at the specified time no matter how
little or how much loot had been collected.
The next phase of the operation, the getaway,
received meticulous attention from the Baron. He
always obtained a nondescript model car with a highpowered engine and his driver was usually a veteran of
the racetracks. Lamm pasted a chart on the dashboard
for the driver to follow. The escape route, with alternate turns and speedometer readings, was marked
block by block. Before the robbery Lamm and the driver clocked the route to the second under various
weather conditions.
From the end of World War I until 1930, Baron
Lamm’s men were the most efficient gang of bank robbers in the business, pulling dozens of jobs without a
hitch. Finally, things went wrong during the robbery of
the Citizens State Bank of Clinton, Ind. on December
16, 1930. The gang successfully robbed the bank of over
509
LAND frauds
gon. Sen. Mitchell appealed his conviction but he died
in 1905 before his case was reviewed by a higher court.
The Senate departed from custom and did not adjourn
its session or send a delegation to Mitchell’s funeral.
In later years some of the prosecutions were found to
be politically tainted and corrupt. Many charges were
brought against Burns, among them that witnesses had
been intimidated into providing perjured testimony. In
1911 a report made to President William Howard Taft
by Attorney General George W. Wickersham said there
was no doubt that Burns had stage-managed the selection of jurors. Although the same accusation was made
against the flamboyant Burns in numerous cases over
the years, there is little doubt about the guilt of most of
those charged in the land frauds.
See also: WILLIAM J. BURNS.
$15,000, but when they got to the getaway car, the driver noticed the local barber approaching the bank with
a shotgun. The barber, who was one of thousands of
Indiana vigilantes organized to help police fight the
growing number of bank holdups, was coming to investigate the presence of four strangers in the bank. The
driver panicked and pulled a quick U-turn that caused
the car to jump a curb and blow a tire. Lamm and his
men were forced to seize another car, which, unfortunately for them, had a secret governor installed by a
man to prevent his elderly father from driving recklessly.
They switched to a truck but it had very little water
in the radiator; so they commandeered another car,
which happened to be down to just one gallon of gas.
The gang was cornered in Illinois by a horde of 200
police officers and vigilantes. In the wild gun battle that
ensued, Lamm and the driver were killed. Another
member of the gang, 71-year-old Dad Landy shot himself rather than spend his final years in prison. Two
others, Walter Dietrich and Oklahoma Jack Clark,
were caught and sent to prison.
In prison the two were permitted to join the
Dillinger mob and escape with them under one proviso:
they had to provide the details of Baron Lamm’s technique. It was a system Dillinger used extensively
throughout his career.
See also: JOHN DILLINGER.
Lansky, Meyer (1902–1983) syndicate leader
Despite a rash of publicity before his death, Meyer Lansky remained the most shadowy of the organized crime
leaders. Yet he was, next to Lucky Luciano and perhaps
even ahead of him, the godfather of the national crime
syndicate that emerged in the early 1930s as the successor of the warring Prohibition gangs as well as of the
old-line Mafia, headed by the so-called Mustache Petes,
particularly Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano. Of course, the Mafia still exists
today but its present shape and prosperity were as
much influenced by Lansky, a Jew from Grodno,
Poland, as by the Sicilian Luciano.
They made a perfect pairing: the well-read, studious
Lansky, who could survey all the angles of any situation, and the less-than-erudite Luciano, who nonetheless possessed a magnificent flair for organization and
the brutal character to put any plan into operation.
Not that Lansky was less given to violence. Together
with “Bugsy” Siegel, he formed the Bug and Meyer
gang, the most vicious of the Prohibition mobs, working alternately as booze hijackers and protectors of
liquor shipments for bootleggers who were willing to
meet their price. The Bug and Meyer boys were also
available for “slammings” and rubouts for a fee and
were the forerunners of Murder, Inc., the enforcement
arm of the syndicate. Indeed, Lansky probably had as
much to do with forming Murder, Inc. as anyone,
proposing the enforcers to be put under the command
of a triumvirate composed of Louis Lepke, Albert
Anastasia and Bugsy Siegel. Other leaders of the emerging national crime syndicate objected to the kill-crazy
Siegel, feeling he would be too loyal to Lansky and
more likely give the latter too powerful a weapon
should the confederation fall apart in a war of extermination. Bugsy was removed from the murder combine,
land frauds
The Western land frauds of the late 19th and early 20th
century remain one of the great raids on the public
purse in the history of the United States. Almost 40 million acres of valuable public land were set aside as forest reserves and the General Land Office was put in
charge of protecting this natural treasure. Almost
immediately, land office agents began peddling the rich
forest acreages to private parties, who then turned
around and made a quick killing reselling the property
to lumber companies.
By the time of Theodore Roosevelt’s administration,
these land looters had become so influential in Congress that they were able to strip the Department of Justice of an investigative force charged with collecting
evidence against the wholesale frauds. Finally, however,
an investigation launched by Secretary of the Interior
Ethan A. Hitchcock uncovered the manipulations carried out by members of the General Land Office,
including the agency’s own detectives. Much of the evidence in the land frauds cases were gathered by William
J. Burns, then the star agent of the Secret Service, and in
a total of 34 cases that went to trial, 33 ended in conviction. Among those convicted were U.S. Sen. John H.
Mitchell and Rep. John N. Williamson, both of Ore510
LANSKY, Meyer
“the barrel of his gun was curved,” i.e., he knew how
to keep himself out of the line of fire. Through the
years these were Lansky traits.
He never begrudged Luciano the top role, realizing
that with it went the obvious dangers of notoriety, such
as losing one’s cover and becoming an inviting target
for the law. Lansky preferred the safety of the shadows
and for years avoided almost all publicity. As late as
1951, when his name popped up during the investigation of bookmaking czar Frank Erickson, the New
York Times, despite one of the best news libraries in the
world, did not know who he was, identifying him in
print as “Meyer (Socks) Lansky,” mistaking him for
Joseph (Socks) Lanza, a waterfront gangster. During
the Kefauver Investigation, Lansky was considered so
unimportant that he was not even called to testify. Nor
was he mentioned in the committee’s first two interim
reports. Only in the final report did the Senate investigators correct their oversight and declare: “Evidence of
the Costello-Adonis-Lansky operations was found in
New York City, Saratoga, Bergen County, N.J. New
Orleans, Miami, Las Vegas, the west coast, and
Havana, Cuba.”
Finally, Lansky’s role as “the brains of the combination” became known. The “little man,” as he was
called by his underworld associates, held together
Luciano’s crime empire when he went to prison in the
late 1930s. Lansky was the money man trusted to hide
or invest millions for the syndicate, and he saw to it
that Luciano got his share of the profits even after he
was deported to Italy. It was Lansky who opened up
what was for a time the syndicate’s greatest source of
income, gambling in Havana. He alone handled negotiations with dictator Fulgencio Batista for a complete
monopoly of gambling in Cuba. Lansky was said to
have personally deposited $3 million in a Zurich,
Switzerland bank for Batista and arranged to pay the
ruling military junta, namely Batista, 50 percent of the
profits thereafter.
In the rise and fall of underworld fortunes, Lansky
survived because he was considered too valuable to
lose. Thus, he could agree with Vito Genovese that
Albert Anastasia should die and later take part in an
incredible conspiracy that would deliver Genovese to
the Feds and still enjoy immunity from retribution.
Lansky’s arrest record over the years was minorleague stuff. It was not until 1970 that the federal
government made a concerted effort to get him on
income tax charges and deport him as an undesirable
alien. In 1970 Lansky fled to Israel, settling in the
plush Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv and claiming Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return which offers citizenship to anyone born of a Jewish mother. Lansky
but Lansky’s influence was not lessened. It is said no
major assignment for Murder, Inc. was ever approved
without consulting him, including the elimination of
Siegel in 1947 for spending too much of the syndicate’s
money on his Las Vegas hotel operation. “I had no
choice,” Lansky reportedly told friends. Other versions
say he pushed hard for a vote to kill his former partner,
although he did suggest the mob hold execution of the
verdict in abeyance while pressure was put on Siegel to
produce profits from his Las Vegas ventures.
Luciano and Lansky together had planned the formation of a new syndicate as early as 1920, when
Luciano was in his early 20s and Lansky was only 18.
Together they survived the crime wars of the 1920s by
shrewd alliances, eliminating one foe after another,
even though they lacked the firepower of other gangs.
When Luciano-Lansky effected the assassination of
Masseria and Maranzano, they stood at the pinnacle of
power in the underworld. Not even Al Capone thought
of challenging them.
As Luciano later said, “I learned a long time before
that Meyer Lansky understood the Italian brain almost
better than I did. That’s why I picked him to be my consigliere. . . . I used to tell Lansky that he may’ve had a
Jewish mother, but someplace he must’ve been wetnursed by a Sicilian.” Luciana often said that Lansky
“could look around corners,” i.e., anticipate what
would happen next in underworld intrigues, and that
Although forced to return to the United States after being
denied permanent sanctuary in Israel, Meyer Lansky,
aging and ill, successfully fought off several legal efforts
in the 1970s to jail him.
511
LARN, John M.
Larn was arrested by his successor in office, Sheriff
William Cruger, and placed in a flimsy jail in Albany.
Because of rumors that his supporters intended to break
him out, the sheriff had the local blacksmith shackle the
prisoner’s legs to the cell floor. The Fort Griffin vigilantes did not think the peril of Larn’s possible escape
had been sufficiently eliminated, however; just before
midnight on June 23, 1877, they overpowered the jail
guards. But the shackles frustrated their plan to string
Larn up. So instead, they finished off the outlaw lawman with a firing squad execution in the jail cell.
invested millions of dollars in the country to win public support, but he proved an embarrassment to the
Israeli government. After a long battle in the courts
and intense debate by the public, Lansky was forced
to leave Israel.
In 1973, after undergoing open heart surgery, Lansky was brought up on income tax charges in Miami,
Fla. but, much to the government’s chagrin, was acquitted. In December 1974 the federal government abandoned its efforts to put the then 72-year-old organized
crime legend behind bars. Although he faced other
charges for violations of state laws, it was generally
conceded he would never go to prison.
After a lifetime in crime, Lansky was the last major
figure left of the original syndicate. David Harrop,
author of America’s Paychecks: Who Makes What
(1980), placed Lansky’s personal wealth at somewhere
between $100 million and $300 million. No wonder
Lansky could once say of the crime syndicate he had
helped found, “We’re bigger than U.S. Steel.”
See also: FRANK COSTELLO, THOMAS E. DEWEY, JEWISH
MAFIA, LAS VEGAS, CHARLES “LUCKY” LUCIANO, BENJAMIN
“BUGSY” SIEGEL.
Las Vegas
Las Vegas was built on mob money. During World War
II it was a jerkwater town with a few greasy spoons,
filling stations and some slot machine emporiums.
Gangster Bugsy Siegel first conjured up the idea of Las
Vegas as a glittering gambling mecca in the desert.
Using $6 million in mob funds, he built the Flamingo
Hotel, which was initially a bust, largely because it
took time to build up public interest. The mob was
upset with Siegel due to the lack of return on its investment, and when it learned that Bugsy had pocketed
some of the construction money, he was killed.
Nonetheless, the Bug’s idea still made sense. Slowly,
the Flamingo began to flourish and once the public
accepted the idea of trekking through the desert to dice
and roulette tables, one casino after another sprang
up. State authorities adopted strict oversight measures
to ensure the new casinos would not fall under mob
domination, but to little avail. Syndicate money was
traced directly to many major gambling establishments. Meyer Lansky financed much of the Thunderbird. Although some others fronted as its proprietors,
the Desert Inn was largely owned by Moe Dalitz, head
of the syndicate’s Cleveland branch. The Sands was
controlled—from behind the scenes—by Lansky, Joe
Adonis, Frank Costello and Joseph “Doc” Stacher. The
Sahara was launched by the Chicago mob—the Fischetti brothers, Tony Accardo and Sam Giancana. The
Dunes was a goldmine for New England mafioso Raymond Patriarca.
When Frank Costello was shot in 1957, police
found tallies in his coat pockets that matched the revenues of the Tropicana for a 24-day period. Up until
then, presumably only the Nevada Gaming Control
Board was unaware that the Tropicana provided a
great source of income for Costello and his New
Orleans partner, Dandy Phil Kastel. The word on Caesar’s Palace was that almost everyone in the mob had
a piece of it. Comedian Alan King said of its decor: “I
Larn, John M. (?–1877) crooked sheriff
A man with a murky past, John M. Larn showed up in
Fort Griffin, Tex. about 1870 and went on to become
famous as that state’s notorious “outlaw lawman.”
Larn didn’t talk much about his previous history
when he signed on as a cow puncher. He prospered in
Fort Griffin, eventually marrying his boss’ daughter. By
early 1876 Larn was regarded as one of the more substantial citizens of Shackelford County and, as such,
rode with other men of property in Texas’ most active
and effective vigilance committee. He is believed to
have been the man in charge of a vigilante group who
strung up a horse thief from a pecan tree and then left a
pick and shovel underneath the swaying corpse for anyone who might want to dig his grave.
In April 1876 Larn was elected county sheriff and
for a time he seemed to do a good job. Meanwhile, his
ranching enterprise thrived, especially after he signed a
contract to deliver three steers a day to the military garrison at the fort. Neighboring ranchers noticed their
herds dwindling while Larn’s seemed to stay as large as
ever. He resigned from office under pressure, but the
cattle disappearances continued. Vigilantes began
watching the Larn ranch, and finally, in June 1877 a
nester found a water hole near Larn’s slaughter pens
where the former lawman was dumping the branded
hides of the stolen cattle. Larn shot the nester but the
man escaped.
512
LATEMPA, Peter
wouldn’t say it was exactly Roman—more kind of
early Sicilian.”
The value of Las Vegas to organized crime is difficult
to measure. Its casino-hotels made huge profits, and
when some of the revenues were skimmed off the top so
that taxes would not have to be paid on them, the take
was much greater. It was later alleged that in an eightyear period Lansky and some of his associates skimmed
$36 million from the Flamingo alone. In addition, the
vast exchange of money across the gaming tables
offered a perfect opportunity to launder funds from
other, illegal enterprises. Jimmy Hoffa invested Teamsters’ pension funds in the hotels in the form of interestfree “loans” that were never paid back, providing the
mob with additional capital.
One thing Vegas proved was that given the opportunity to run a gambling setup honestly, the mob would
still operate it dishonestly. Despite the huge profits, by
the mid-1950s the mob had started selling off some of
its properties to individuals and corporations. In the
1960s billionaire Howard Hughes started buying one
casino after another.
In the early 1970s the mob’s interest in Vegas was
reportedly at a low point, but by the close of the
decade, many observers concluded, mobsters were
returning to the scene.
See also: FLAMINGO HOTEL, BENJAMIN “BUGSY” SIEGEL.
prints on plastic electrician’s tape in a bomb threat case
and another on the plastic stock of a sawed-off shotgun.
Perhaps an even more exotic use of laser light was
involved in the Case of the Purloined Bicentennial Coin
Collection. A rare silver certificate in the middle of the
coin collection had been taken along with the coins. No
fingerprints were found but the laser brought out the
outline of the missing bill and was even able to “read”
the shadows of the serial numbers. With that information the bill was traced and recovered along with the
stolen coins.
Although the laser has been used regularly as a clue
detector since the mid-1970s, it has never been tested by
the judicial process, because there has never been need
for a test. All of the suspects identified by use of the
laser have confessed to their crimes and pleaded guilty.
LaTempa, Peter (1904–1945) Vito Genovese murder
victim
The death of Peter LaTempa in 1945 ranks second only
to the demise of Abe Reles, the Murder, Inc. informer,
in 1941 as an example of the long reach of the Mafia.
Crime kingpin Vito Genovese had fled from New York
to Europe in 1937 to avoid being charged with the
murder of Ferdinand Boccia. He was finally returned in
1945, after he was found working for the U.S. Army in
Italy. The key witness linking him to Boccia’s murder
was Ernest “the Hawk” Rupolo, who had gone to the
authorities with the story because he was in trouble for
other offenses. However, lacking supporting circumstantial evidence, the law needed at least one other witness. That man was Peter LaTempa, a small-time
hoodlum who had witnessed the Boccia killing. Under
pressure, LaTempa finally implicated Genovese, but
only after he knew that the crime leader had left the
country and was unlikely ever to be prosecuted.
With Genovese’s unexpected return, LaTempa, figuring the best place to be was in jail, asked to be placed in
protective custody. He was lodged in a Brooklyn
prison. On the evening of January 15, 1945 LaTempa
swallowed some of the painkilling tablets he regularly
took for a stomach disorder and went to sleep. He died
in his sleep. An autopsy revealed he had taken enough
poison “to kill eight horses.” It was never established
who had arranged to put the poison in the bottle of
tablets, but logic pointed to Genovese. Without
LaTempa’s testimony, the evidence against him was
insufficient to warrant a trial. Not only had the government obligingly brought him back to the United States
but now it had to release him, setting the stage for his
eventual emergence as the top figure in the Mafia.
See also: VITO GENOVESE.
laser detection
Probably the most striking advances in criminal investigation methods until the year 2000 will come from
laser technology, which has already helped solve a
number of crimes. Laser light can pick up fingerprints
that chemical powders can’t. Two men who recently
robbed a New York City bank wore ski masks to hide
their faces and plastic gloves to prevent fingerprint
identification. Nonetheless, their prints were identified
by use of a laser beam. In 1980 the FBI used laser beam
technology to find 215 sets of fingerprints that standard methods of detection had failed to reveal.
When the two New York bank robbers fled with
their loot, they used a stolen car for the getaway and
then transferred to a second car. In the process one of
the robbers discarded his plastic gloves on the floor of
the first car figuring the static electricity on the gloves
would prevent the detection of any fingerprints. But
that was before the era of the laser. Light directed inside
the fingers of the gloves revealed a perfect set of prints
and subsequently led to the robbers’ apprehension and
conviction.
The FBI’s 215 fingerprint findings by laser led to positive identifications in 45 cases. One suspect left his
513
LATIMER, Robert Irving
Latimer, Robert Irving (1866–1946) murderer
guard; under the law, he could only be given yet
another life term.
However, the death penalty storm passed, and
Latimer went back to being a model prisoner. Ironically, he was popular with the guards, who felt he had
simply made a miscalculation. By 1907 he had been
made a trusty again and put in charge of landscaping
the prison grounds. In the mid-1920s Latimer, who had
progressed to the position of “senior con,” often was
interviewed by the press about his two murders and his
attitude toward the newer convicts, who, he said,
lacked the class and style of the old boys. Later on,
when the prison was to be moved to a new location, he
protested having to leave. His cell, fixed up as a library
with many plants and a desk, was his home. He asked
to be permitted to stay. Considered harmless, Latimer
was appointed a watchman for the deserted prison.
Finally, after spending 46 years in prison, Latimer was
released in 1935. Picked up as a vagrant a few times, he
was taken into a state home for the aged and died there
in 1946.
It was hardly surprising that after Robert Irving Latimer
murdered his 60-year-old mother on the family estate in
Jackson, Mich., the newspapers in due course would
refer to him as Bungling Latimer. Latimer had constructed what he considered a brilliant murder plot so
that he could inherit the family fortune and collect this
insurance. On the morning of January 25, 1889,
Latimer was seen, as per plan, leaving Jackson on his
way to Detroit. Later that night he slipped back into
Jackson, murdered his mother and returned to Detroit. It
was a simple enough alibi: he couldn’t possibly kill his
mother if he was in Detroit at the time of her death. That
was the plan, but Latimer bungled it from start to finish.
Shortly after he checked into a hotel in Detroit, a
porter saw him slipping out a back door, which struck
the man as a strange move for a newly arrived guest.
Then Latimer took a Michigan Central train to Ypsilanti, where he caught another train to Jackson. By not
taking a direct train to Jackson, Latimer risked being
remembered by not one but two conductors. (And both
did.) After locking up the small family dog in a room,
something only a nonstranger could have done without
causing the dog to bark, Latimer killed his mother and
slipped back to the train station under cover of darkness. On the return trip to Detroit the bungling murderer got into a shouting match with a conductor
because at first he was unable to get a sleeper. The following morning Latimer went to a barber shop next to
his hotel. The barber noticed that his shirt cuffs were
missing and that there was blood on his coat. Furthermore, the chamber maid had found Latimer’s bed
unslept in; he had not even thought to rumple it.
Latimer was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, still proclaiming his innocence for years afterward. A cartoonist aptly characterized Latimer painting
a sign reading, “I WENT THIS WAY.”
Latimer was doing life in the Michigan State Prison
when he became a cause celebre for those who wanted
to introduce the death penalty in Michigan. A model
prisoner, he became a trusty and was put in charge of
the prison pharmacy. On the night of March 26, 1893,
he served a couple of guards a midnight lunch of sardines and lemonade. To the lemonade he had added
prussic acid and opium, obtained from the pharmacy.
Within 20 minutes one guard was unconscious and the
other, George Haight, dead. Latimer escaped and went
to the home of relatives expecting to be hidden, only to
be turned away. Recaptured a few days later, he insisted
that he had not meant to kill the guard, that he had
unwittingly put too much prussic acid in the drink.
Latimer was saddled with another life sentence, which
capital punishment proponents thought insufficient.
They asked what would happen if he murdered another
Lawes, Kathryn (1885–1937) Angel of Sing Sing
No fiction writer would ever dare to invent a character
like Kathryn Lawes, the so-called Angel of Sing Sing
and pass off as plausible the tear-jerking story of her
death. It simply would not be believed.
The first wife of Sing Sing Warden Lewis E. Lawes,
Kathryn was the mistress of the prison on the Hudson
for 17 years after Lawes took over. She was known to
the prisoners as a kind, understanding woman who
wrote letters for them, helped many of their families and
cared for them in the prison hospital. Her deeds became
so legendary that she was considered an angel of mercy.
In 1937 Kathryn Lawes was killed in an automobile
accident. The prisoners of Sing Sing were stunned, and
their grief was real. There was genuine anguish among
them when it was announced her funeral would take
place in a church outside the prison walls. A committee
of prisoners went to Warden Lawes to protest and insist
on the convicts’ right to pay their last respects.
Lawes was willing to gamble on his men. He had in
the past allowed many prisoners to go home on emergency visits without escorts, a practice that had left
him open to possibly ruinous criticism if anything had
gone wrong. The warden took a much greater risk
now by declaring he would comply with the prisoners’
request.
The night before the funeral, the south gate of Sing
Sing swung open and out trudged a silent procession of
murderers, swindlers, thieves and crooks of all kinds—
marching out of the prison to the warden’s house, a
quarter of a mile away. There were no guns trained on
514
LAWYERS, dishonest
leave to visit home for a funeral or to go to the bedside of
a dying relative. They were honor-bound to return, and
they did. Lawes often loaned money to prisoners being
discharged, and almost always they would return it, some
coming to the prison gate years later with the money.
Lawes could thus dedicate one of his books “to those
tens of thousand of my former wards who have justified
my faith in human nature.”
Although he was forced to officiate at many executions, Lawes was a bitter foe of capital punishment and
toured the country campaigning to abolish it. He
opposed the death penalty because of the infrequency
and the inequity of its application and martyrdom it
provided a convicted murderer. He felt all these problems weakened the entire structure of social control and
actually encouraged the desperate criminal toward the
extreme penalty. “He knows,” Lawes said, “that his
gamble with the death penalty is safer than with a long
term in prison for a lesser offense.”
When Lawes retired in 1941, he had held the post
for 21 years, longer than any other warden. His predecessor had lasted only six weeks.
See also: FRANCIS “TWO GUN” CROWLEY, KATHRYN
LAWES.
them and not a single guard accompanied them; yet not
one man strayed from line, nor looked for the chance to
escape. When the men entered the house, they silently
passed the bier, many uttering a short word of prayer,
and then walked outside, reformed their ranks and
marched silently back to their prison.
See also: LEWIS EDWARD LAWES.
Lawes, Lewis Edward (1883–1947) warden of Sing Sing
Probably the most reform-minded and certainly the
best known of all prison wardens in America, Lewis E.
Lawes was in charge of Sing Sing Prison in Ossining,
N.Y. for 21 years, where he became a strong voice for
the philosophy that prisons should try to rehabilitate
prisoners.
The son of a prison guard, Lawes became one himself at the age of 22, but unlike the old-time guards and
most of the new ones, he viewed and studied penology
as a science and soon rose through the system building
a reputation as a realistic reformer. In 1915 he became
superintendent of the New York City Reformatory, and
in 1919 Gov. Alfred E. Smith named him to the difficult
position of warden of Sing Sing.
Within a short time, Lawes accomplished the near
impossible in penology, gaining the respect of both the
guards and the convicts. He rapidly reduced the incidence of corporal punishment. Lawes once said:
lawyers, dishonest
robbing their clients
Not long ago a crooked Otsego County, New York,
lawyer tacked a nonexistent heiress onto a late client’s
will. He then proceeded to construct a paper trail for
her by dressing in drag and checking into a Little Falls
motel under her name. At a later probate hearing the
judge did not buy the masquerade after a clerk from the
motel described the previously unknown woman as
being 6 feet tall, weighing 200 pounds and being “a Bea
Arthur look-alike.”
The attorney was only one of a long list of New
York lawyers who had ripped off their clients in recent
years. There was Robert B. Anderson, a former U.S.
secretary of the Treasury, who stole a widow’s retirement money. There was also Jack B. Siolerwiz, whose
86 victims cost the state’s Lawyers Fund for Client Protection the sum of $3 million.
Almost every state has some sort of fund established
to protect clients from thieving lawyers. By the early
1990s it became clear that lawyer scams looting clients’
funds had skyrocketed. The North Dakota fund, faced
with a boom in claims, went bankrupt. In one year in
Florida payouts by the Client Security Fund quadrupled
over the rate of previous years, with the result that the
fund was forced to reduce the size of all repayments so
that all claimants would get at least some money. New
York, which had had a $100,000 cap, reduced it to
$50,000.
It became quickly apparent to me that under conditions as they were, the prison warden, to be effective,
would have to constitute himself not as an instrument
of punishment but a firm, frank friend in need. He
would have to stretch humanitarianism to the limits of
the law, with a stiff punch always in reserve. I have
been charged, since my incumbency, with being too
kind. I wish I could plead guilty to the accusation, but
my sense of duty will not permit it. My job is to hold
my men and, as far as possible, to win them over to
sane, social thinking. And I judge the effectiveness of
that job not so much by obedience to rule, for rules can
be enforced, but by the humor of the general prison
population.
Lawes set up a system for prisoner self-government
which for him had a very precise meaning—the government of self. Under Lawes, the prisoners’ Mutual Welfare
League was charged with regulating the leisure hours of
the inmates, subject only to the warden’s approval. But
unlike methods used in other prisons, the prisoners did
not have power over other prisoners, a sure way to create
friction. Machinery was established whereby a convict
with a pressing problem could get to see him. Lawes
placed great trust in the convicts, often allowing them
515
LAY, Elza, or Elzy
The causes of the rise in lawyer scams are at least
threefold: (1) hard economic times (for the lawyer); (2)
drug and alcohol abuse; and (3), perhaps most important, the ease with which cheating lawyers can get away
with their crimes.
A New York lawyer, Sergio Taub, was unmasked in
1991 only after he had been murdered in an unrelated
love triangle plot. When officials sifted through his
estate, they found about $200,000 missing from his
clients’ trust accounts, with most of those funds going
for down payments of about $3,000 each on a number
of homes in Queens.
When North Dakota’s fund went belly up, there
were six unpaid claims, all against lawyers who were
satisfying their cocaine habits.
A New York lawyer, Steven Winston, declared: “I
can tell you as an addict, all that matters is your drugs.
You don’t think of your wife or kids, so the last thing
you think about is your career or your clients.” The
New York fund paid a Winston client $12,500, which
Winston repaid. He then became general counsel for
Daytop Village Inc., where he had undergone drug
treatment himself.
Actually, very few lawyers steal, or at least are
caught at it. A survey of 45,000 lawyers in New Jersey
has shown that only one half of 1 percent are ever
involved—or at least known to be involved. And of 126
claims of theft in one year, 36 lawyers were responsible.
Still, the fact remains, few persons can break the
law quite like a lawyer. There is the New York career
of Jerome Spiegelman, who secretly settled dozens of
personal injury cases and simply pocketed all the
money, leaving clients without a penny. Because of the
Spiegelman cases, the law since 1988 has required
insurance companies to notify clients whenever they
send a settlement check to their lawyers. In many
states trustees of clients’ security funds are pushing
for various changes, such as requiring banks to report
when checks bounce against attorney trust or escrow
accounts. Without that, a fast-moving crook can shift
funds from another trust account and continue to
cover his tracks.
most episodes in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid really involved Lay rather than Sundance.
But, she asked, “who would go to a movie entitled
Butch Cassidy and Elzy Lay?”
Lay was born in MacArthur, Ohio and was not
“Boston-educated,” as many writers have stated. In
fact, there is no record of his ever having been to
Boston. Furthermore, it has never really been established whether he went to college or was merely
smarter than the rest of the Wild Bunch. Of all the
members of the Bunch, it was always evident that neither Cassidy nor Lay were killers by nature. They had
met while doing ranch work in Wyoming. Both were
looking for excitement and became lifelong friends.
They pulled many two-man holdups. Whenever they
separated, Lay would team up with the Black Jack
Ketchum gang and pull other jobs, although Ketchum
never really appreciated that Lay would be considered
the mastermind of the band.
Lay’s last holdup with the Wild Bunch was the robbery of a Union Pacific train at Wilcox, Wyo. on June
2, 1899. On July 11, 1899, Lay, as part of the
Ketchum gang, robbed the Texas Flyer at Twin Mountains, N.M. They were pursued by a posse headed by
Sheriff Ed Farr, who was killed in a gun fight at Turkey
Creek Canyon, N.M., with the fatal shot attributed to
Lay. The Ketchum gang then split up, and Lay headed
south. On August 17, 1899 he was cornered by
another posse near Carlsbad, N.M. and captured following a spirited battle. He was sentenced to life
imprisonment at New Mexico State Penitentiary. In
prison he underwent a complete reformation and won a
governor’s pardon in 1906.
After his release Lay went straight. For a while, he
operated a ranch for the father of a girl he married and
then became interested in oil geology. He found what
he thought was a large oil deposit and claimed the land,
but he eventually had to give it up because of the high
production costs involved. Standard Oil of California
took over the claim and struck oil.
There has been considerable speculation about
whether Butch Cassidy ever visited Lay after his
return from South America (many historians now
doubt the story of his and the Sundance Kid’s death in
Bolivia in 1909) and several persons in Baggs, Wyo.
insisted they saw Cassidy and Lay together on many
occasions in 1929–30. Lay refused to admit anything,
even under the coaxing of Western novelist Zane
Grey. Just before Lay died on November 10, 1934,
however, he told his wife, “Mary, get hold of Zane
because I’m not going to live much longer.” He died
before Grey reached him.
See also: BUTCH CASSIDY, WILD BUNCH.
Lay, Elza, or Elzy (1868–1934) Wild Bunch outlaw
Called “the educated member of the Wild Bunch” by
Butch Cassidy, slim, handsome, “Boston-educated”
Elzy Lay was the man responsible for planning the
most successful of the gang’s bank and train robberies.
He was the outlaw closest to Cassidy, far closer than
was the Sundance Kid, despite popular legend. In fact,
in a 1975 book, Butch Cassidy, My Brother, Cassidy’s
last surviving sister, Lula Parker Betenson, insisted that
516
LECHLER, John
Le Roy, Kitty (1850–1878) woman gambler
They were, in fact, very prone to sleeping on duty, and
it was a favorite sport of the roisterers of the era to
hunt for one dozing in his sentry box, lasso the box and
drag it through the streets, whooping over the plight of
their trapped victim.
While such antics were often the worst lawlessness
to be reported on many evenings, New York in that era
was not entirely crime-free. There were hangings
enough for drunken murderers, forgers, counterfeiters
and others found guilty of the long list of capital
crimes, including church robbery. But the fact remained
that New York was a sleepy little town, only reaching
50,000 inhabitants in 1799. The crime pace quickened
early in the next century with the appearance of the
great criminal gangs, and a more professional police
force than the leatherheads was needed to cope with
the new lawlessness.
Along with Madame Moustache, Kitty Le Roy represented the best of the West’s woman gamblers. Texasborn Kitty first came to public attention as a jug dancer
in Dallas at the age of 10. Over the next decade her
beauty bloomed, and she became the toast of Dallas.
Her attractiveness and personality helped her win a role
in local society comparable to that played by Lily
Langtry in Victorian London. Kitty also took up a theatrical career but eventually gave up the stage in favor
of working as a faro dealer, an occupation in which she
became most proficient. As the profession demanded,
Kitty became accomplished at pistol shooting and
scored many a deliberate near-miss to settle disputes at
the gambling table. She reportedly was always armed
with several bowie knives and revolvers and, in fact,
had an arsenal of 12 knives and seven guns. By the time
she was 26, Kitty had run through four husbands. She
married the first because he was the only man in town
sporting enough to let her shoot apples off his head as
she galloped by on horseback. She supposedly ran him
out in favor of a wealthy German; she chased the latter
away when he ran out of funds. Sometime later, Kitty
shot up an admirer who annoyed her with his persistence. Fickle or guilt-stricken, she married her victim a
few hours before he died of his wounds.
In 1876 Kitty moved to Deadwood, Dakota Territory with another spouse and opened the Mint Gambling Saloon. The Mint was known to be a regular
calling point for the likes of outlaw Sam Bass and Wild
Bill Hickok, both of whom Kitty is said to have entertained on a number of occasions. Kitty’s husband killed
her and himself in 1878, presumably out of jealousy.
leatherheads
LeBlanc, Antoine (?–1833) murderer
Although the claim may be dubious, Antoine LeBlanc is
generally known as the fastest murderer in America.
LeBlanc arrived from France on April 26, 1833, and
by May 2, 1833 he had committed three murders.
Upon his arrival he had gone to work on the estate of
the Sayre family in rural New Jersey and apparently
could not cope with his lowly position which required
him to sleep in the woodshed. On May 2 LeBlanc crept
up on Mr. and Mrs. Sayre, battered them to death with
a shovel and buried their bodies under a pile of manure.
LeBlanc thought the Sayre’s black maid was away, but
when he discovered her presence in the attic of the
house, he murdered her as well. He did not immediately flee the area, believing he could remain a while
and say that his employers had gone away for a short
time. The more scandalous purveyors of the news in
that era later reported that LeBlanc, a tall, handsome
rogue, entertained a number of young ladies in the
Sayre home. In any event, friends of the missing couple
found the bodies and captured the Frenchman. He was
quickly tried and convicted and hanged on September
6, 1833 on the Morristown green before a crowd of
12,000. It is unclear how many were attracted by his
savage crimes and how many by his romantic reputation since, as one historian of the day related, of those
in attendance “the majority were females.”
first New York police
The first policemen of post-Dutch New York City were
little more than watchmen. Called leatherheads because
of their heavy leather helmets, which were rather similar to those of today’s firemen, they patrolled the streets
at night to enforce a rigorous curfew. After 9 o’clock
anyone caught outside his house without a plausible
reason automatically was considered to be of “bad
morals” and locked up until daylight on general principle. In fact the main duty of the watch was to sing out
each hour that all was well, for the most part, which it
was in 18th century New York.
There were a few watch houses that served as area
headquarters and some sentry boxes that provided shelter from time to time during the long cold nights. The
leatherheads, of which there were no more than 30 or
40, supervised by a high constable, were never accused
of being overly bright, overly sober or overly alert.
Lechler, John (?–1822) murderer
As the odd man out in a tawdry love triangle, John
Lechler of Lancaster, Pa. killed his wife, Mary, and her
lover’s wife, Mrs. John Haag, in 1822. He would not be
worthy of note save that the facts in the case were so
517
LEE, John D.
floor was wet and he didn’t have any footing. I always
go to the shower barefoot.”
bizarre the area’s newspapers conducted what was
apparently the first “poll” ever taken on the public’s
reaction to a trial verdict.
Mary Lechler’s morals were never too high. When
John Lechler returned home and found her in bed
with neighbor Haag, he threatened to kill the two of
them. The shaking Haag offered to buy him off with
a promissory note. After some haggling over the
amount, Lechler accepted the settlement but flew into
a rage some days later when Haag refused to honor
his commitment. Lechler rushed home and strangled
his wife until she was unconscious and then hanged
her in the attic. Armed with two pistols, the doubly
cheated husband went to Haag’s home and called on
him to come out. When Haag refused, Lechler fired
through the door, fatally wounding the cowering
Mrs. Haag rather than her husband. Lechler was convicted and hanged in Lancaster on October 25,
1822.
The sentence in the case evoked considerable public
debate. Readers of several publications cast a divided
vote on the appropriateness of the death penalty.
Although the farming community strongly believed in
the sanctity of written contracts, and many of its members were sympathetic to Lechler’s outrage a majority
of the readers questioned favored his execution. Their
attitude probably was best summed up by a farmer
who said, “If he’d killed Mr. Haag instead of the missus, I would say he would have deserved a less severe
sentence.”
Lee, John D.
leg in, leg out
Leibowitz, Samuel S. (1893–1978) defense attorney and
judge
A flamboyant lawyer who built his reputation with
highly remunerative defenses of gangsters, Samuel S.
Leibowitz ran up an amazing record: he represented
140 persons charged with murder and lost only one to
the electric chair. However, he won international fame
for his defense of the Scottsboro Boys, nine young
blacks charged with the rape of two “Southern
ladies”—actually hobo-style prostitutes—aboard a
freight train in Alabama in 1931. In a total of 10 trials
and retrials, the stirring defenses by the “New York Jew
nigger lover,” as he was called by many citizens and
much of the press in the South, resulted in the dropping
of charges against four of the nine and played a huge
part in winning paroles for four others; the last, Haywood Patterson, the alleged ringleader, escaped but
eventually was captured and sent to prison for another
crime. One of Leibowitz’ most important accomplishments was winning a Supreme Court decision that the
exclusion of blacks from jury service was unconstitutional, a finding that over the years was to have a profound effect on the administration of justice in the
South.
Leibowitz was born in Romania and came to the
United States at the age of four. He worked his way
through law school and became a lawyer in 1916.
Within a few years he established himself among criminal defendants as a miracle lawyer, with a knack for
assembling “friendly juries” and an ability to demolish
eyewitness testimony.
Leibowitz firmly believed in prescreening jurors, an
entirely legal procedure few defense lawyers bother
with because of the expense and tediousness of the
research involved. Leibowitz wanted to know how
many times each prospective member of the panel had
served on a criminal case jury, how they had voted and
much about their personal life and beliefs, and he was
usually blessed with high-paying clients who had no
trouble financing such research. The prosecution, aided
by the vast investigative machinery at its disposal has
always engaged in the screening of potential jurors,
often to a far greater extent. Once Leibowitz had the
background information, picked jurors whom he felt
would be sympathetic to the defense and disposed of
those more likely to vote for conviction. Even district
attorneys admitted no lawyer could pick a more
“friendly” panel than Leibowitz.
Leibowitz generally had contempt for eyewitness testimony, knowing how faulty it could be. He firmly
See MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE.
prison protection method
There is a certain ritual to a prison inmate using the toilet in his cell. He is supposed to sit with one leg out of
his pants and one leg in. This “leg in, leg out” precaution can be a life saver.
As related by one convict in Pete Earley’s The Hot
House, perhaps the definitive book on life in an American prison, “. . . two dudes busted in on this guy in
the cell next to mine and stuck him twenty-six times
with shanks. He was sitting on the crapper when they
killed him, and he couldn’t fight back because his pants
were wrapped around his legs. Stupid bastard. Anyone
who don’t know better than to take a leg out of his
pants in prison before he sits down on a toilet deserves
to die.”
There are other protective strategies required behind
bars. This same con noted, “I saw a guy get stuck while
he was walking out of the shower wearing those rubber
thongs. Soon as they hit ’im, he fell over ’cause the
518
LENOX Avenue Gang
$250,000 fee to defend Louis Lepke when that investigation was breaking in 1939. By that time Leibowitz
had tired of the role of defense attorney and was seeking appointment to a judgeship.
When in 1940 the Democratic Party of Brooklyn
proposed him for judge of the King’s County Court, his
nomination brought forth vigorous opposition. “Elect
Leibowitz and he’ll open the doors of the jails,” his
political opponents cried. “He’ll turn loose every crook
who comes before him.”
It was a fear never realized. He turned out to be
what is known as a “hanging judge,” meting out
extremely harsh sentences to professional criminals. On
his retirement from the bench in 1970, eight years
before his death, he observed, “I was tough with hardened criminals, toughness is all they understand.”
Still, Leibowitz remained true to his belief in the
right of every defendant to proper counsel.
In a typical scene in his court, a defendant would be
brought up on robbery and assault charges.
“Let’s see now,” the judge would say. “You first
appeared in juvenile court when you were fifteen. Since
then you’ve been charged with crime, twelve times;
everything from petty larceny to manslaughter. You’ve
been convicted four times, and you’ve spent ten years
behind bars. Bail is fixed at fifty thousand dollars.
Have you got a lawyer?”
“I got no money to pay a lawyer,” the defendant
would reply.
“You need a good lawyer,” Leibowitz would declare.
“I’m going to appoint the best defense lawyer I know to
represent you, without pay.”
That was the law, according to Sam Leibowitz.
See also: VINCENT “MAD DOG” COLL, DR. FRITZ GEBHARDT, MISTAKEN IDENTITY, SCOTTSBORO BOYS.
believed circumstantial evidence was, on the whole,
more dependable. Out of court, Leibowitz delighted in
exposing the unreliability of eyewitness evidence, staging events to show the contradictory stories told by witnesses. In one classic demonstration he performed at
legal seminars and at law school lectures, Leibowitz
would ask regular smokers of Camel cigarettes, “Is the
man leading the camel or sitting on its back?” In one
typical result, two out of five said the man was leading
the camel, two out of five that he was sitting on the
camel and only one in five correctly stated there was no
man in the picture.
In his famous defense of Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll, a
gangster who had gunned down five children on a
Manhattan street, one of them fatally, Leibowitz got his
client off by shifting the focus of the trial to eyewitnesses of the tragedy until it almost seemed as if they
were the defendants.
Leibowitz successfully represented many of the top
mobsters of the day, once rather easily getting Al
Capone acquitted of a murder charge. He secured
acquittals for Pittsburgh Phil Strauss, Abe Reles, Buggsy Goldstein and Bugsy Siegel, admittedly before the
existence of Murder, Inc. and he turned down a
Lennon, John
See MARK DAVID CHAPMAN.
Lenox Avenue Gang
killers
New York gang of burglars and
One of the most ferocious New York City gangs of this
century was the Lenox Avenue Gang, formed as an independent venture by Gyp the Blood, the chief underling of
Jack Zelig. They operated around 125th Street, terrorizing the neighborhood with daytime muggings, nighttime
burglaries and killings-for-pay around the clock.
As the gang’s chief, Gyp the Blood was a natural at
his calling and could bring out the worst in any recruit.
Jacob “Whitey Lewis” Seidenshner had been a thirdrate boxer, but under Gyp the Blood’s patient instructions, he became a master of the blackjack, neatly
denting a skull without causing fatal results when they
Attorney Samuel Leibowitz (left), shown with one of the
Scottsboro Boys, was famous for losing only one client to
the electric chair out of 140.
519
LEOPOLD and Loeb
sure he was dead, they poured hydrochloric acid on his
face to complicate identification and then stuffed the
body in a drain pipe.
Satisfied with their work, the pair repaired to
Leopold’s home, where they played cards and drank
liquor. At midnight they called the elder Franks and
informed him he would receive instructions on how to
ransom his missing son. By the time their typewritten
note demanding $10,000 was received, workmen had
found the boy’s body. Despite their self-proclaimed
mental abilities, the two young killers weren’t very
good criminals. They were easily caught. Leopold had
dropped his eyeglasses near the spot where the body
was hidden and police checked the prescription until it
led back to him. Furthermore, the ransom note was
traced to Leopold’s typewriter.
Dickie Loeb broke first, and then Leopold confessed
as well. A shocked city and nation fully demanded and
expected that the pair would be executed.
The parents of the two called in famous lawyer
Clarence Darrow to defend them. For a fee of
$100,000 Darrow agreed to seek to win the best possible verdict, one that would find them guilty but save
them from execution. The trial began in August. Both
sides produced psychiatrists to prove or disprove their
mental competence. Darrow had less trouble with the
opposing psychiatrists than he did with his clients, who
turned the court proceedings into a circus. They
clowned and hammed through the sessions, and the
newspapers caught their frequent smirks in page-one
pictures. The public, always against the two “poor little
rich boys,” became even more hostile.
Still Darrow prevailed. He put the human brain on
trial and presented evidence that Leopold was a paranoiac with a severe manic drive; Loeb was pictured as a
dangerous schizophrenic. He derided their supernormal
intelligences and portrayed them as having the emotional capacities of seven-year-olds. For two days Darrow talked. “Do you think you can cure the hatreds
and the maladjustments of the world by hanging
them?” he asked the prosecution before Judge John R.
Caverly, chief justice of the Criminal Court of Cook
County, who was hearing the case without a jury. “You
simply show your ignorance and your hate when you
say it. You may heal and cure hatred with love and
understanding, but you can only add fuel to the flames
with cruelty and hating.”
Then Darrow wept. In macabre detail he described
how the state planned to hang the defendants. He
invited the prosecution to perform the execution. Even
the defendants were gripped by Darrow’s presentation.
Loeb shuddered, and Leopold got hysterical and had to
be taken from the courtroom for a time. The lawyer
refused to let up. He wept for the victims and he wept
were unwanted or unpaid for. Louis “Lefty Louie”
Rosenberg was mainly a pickpocket but with Gyp’s
guidance, became renowned as an expert gunman.
Francesco “Dago Frank” Cirofisi was the meanest of
the mob, more vicious than even Gyp the Blood himself, which was saying a lot. Dago Frank sneered at any
job that didn’t promise at least some likelihood of
shooting. Val O’Farrell, one of the city’s most famous
police detectives, labeled Dago Frank “the toughest
man in the world.” Police laid six killings directly to
Frank but could prove none of them in court, and had
no idea how many others he had committed. Dutch
Sadie, Dago Frank’s girlfriend, was the main female
member of the Lenox Avenuers. She carried a large
butcher knife in her muff and would come howling to
help Dago Frank whenever an intended mugging victim
offered serious resistance. Her bloodcurdling shrieks
were enough to freeze most men into total inaction.
The Lenox Avenue Gang came to an abrupt end in
1914, when Gyp the Blood, Lefty Louie, Dago Frank
and Whitey Lewis all went to the electric chair as the
triggermen in the murder of gambler Herman Rosenthal.
See also: CHARLES E. BECKER, GYP THE BLOOD, JACK
ZELIG.
Leopold and Loeb
thrill murderers
One day in May 1924 two youths, the sons of two of
Chicago’s wealthiest and most illustrious families,
drove to the Harvard School for Boys in the suburb of
Kenwood, Ill. to carry out what they regarded as the
“perfect murder.” Eighteen-year-old Richard “Dickie”
Loeb, the youngest graduate of the University of Michigan, was a postgraduate student at the University of
Chicago, and 19-year-old Nathan “Babe” Leopold, a
Phi Beta Kappa from Chicago, was taking a law course
there. The pair had perpetrated several minor crimes
before they decided to commit the perfect murder. The
killing, they felt, would be fun and an intellectual challenge, one worthy of their superior mental abilities.
Working out their plot for seven months, they picked
as their victim 14-year-old Bobby Franks, the son of
millionaire businessman Jacob Franks and a distant
cousin of Loeb. The Franks boy, who was always flattered when the pair took note of him, happily hopped
into their car when they pulled up in front of his
school. They drove the boy to within a few blocks of
the Franks residence in fashionable Hyde Park and then
grabbed him, stuffed a gag in his mouth and smashed
his skull four times with a heavy chisel. Following the
murderous assault Leopold and Loeb casually motored
to some marshy wasteland and carried the body to a
culvert along tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad. After
dunking the boy’s head under swamp water to make
520
LESLIE, Frank “Buckskin”
Thrill killers (at left) Richard Loeb (left), who would later be killed in prison, and Nathan Leopold were saved from
execution by the efforts of defense attorney Clarence Darrow. Leopold (at right) in 1957 shortly before he won parole.
for the defendants and he wept for all other victims and
defendants. In the end, Darrow won. Sentenced on September 10, the defendants got life for the murder of
Bobby Franks plus 99 years for kidnapping him. Ironically, Darrow was paid only $40,000 of the much
larger fee due him, and most of that only after he had
dunned the two families a number of times.
The public was not through with Leopold and Loeb,
however. There were subsequent exposés of the favored
treatment they received in prison. Unlike many other
prisoners at Joliet, each was put in a separate cell. They
were provided with books, desks and filing cabinets.
Loeb kept two canaries. They ate in the officers’
lounge, away from the other prisoners, and had their
meals cooked to order. They freely visited one another
and they were allowed to keep their own garden.
Over the years Loeb became an aggressive homosexual, noted for pursuit of other convicts. In January
1936 he was slashed to death in a brawl.
Leopold, on the other hand, made tremendous
adjustments in his behavior. Nevertheless, his appeals
for parole were rejected three times. During his fourth
appeal poet Carl Sandburg pleaded his case, saying he
would be willing to allow Leopold to live in his home.
Finally, in March 1958 Leopold was paroled. He said:
“I am a broken old man. I want a chance to find
redemption for myself and to help others.” He published a book, Life Plus 99 Years, and went to Puerto
Rico to work among the poor as a $10-a-month hospital technician. Three years later, he married a widow.
Leopold died of a heart ailment in 1971.
See also: CLARENCE DARROW.
Lepke, Louis
See LOUIS “LEPKE” BUCHALTER.
Leslie, Frank “Buckskin” (1842–?) gunfighter
The prototype western gunfighter who took his calling
seriously, paying loving care to his guns and always practicing his aim, Frank “Buckskin” Leslie, was a pitiless
gunslinger officially credited with some 10 to 14 kills.
A mystique has developed around Leslie. He has
been described as a man who was never crossed twice
by the same person. When the much-feared Johnny
Ringo impertinently asked Leslie, “Did you ever shoot
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anybody in front?” Leslie had nothing to say. He still
had nothing to say when they found Johnny Ringo
resting under a tree with a bullet in his head, and
nobody asked him any impertinent questions about
that, although he remains the only suspect in Ringo’s
murder.
Little is known of Leslie’s early life because of his
habit of telling contradictory stories about himself—
he was born in Kentucky or he was born in Texas; he
studied pharmacy or he studied medicine in Europe.
In the 1870s Leslie served as an army scout in several
Indian campaigns, and in 1880 he turned up in
Tombstone, Ariz. with enough funds to open the
Cosmopolitan Hotel. He had a reputation as a gunfighter and in June he demonstrated his prowess by
killing a man named Mike Killeen in a dispute over
Killeen’s wife. A few months later, Leslie married the
widow.
At this time, Tombstone was immersed in the EarpClanton feud. Leslie’s position in the matter is unclear.
More often than not he appears to have sided with the
Clantons, but according to the record, he shot up
more Clantons than Earps. One Clanton gunner who
made the mistake of crossing Leslie was Billy Claiborne. Claiborne, a survivor of the gunfight at the
O.K. Corral, had been insisting everyone call him
Billy the Kid, in honor of that late lamented outlaw,
and had gunned down three men for laughing when
he demanded they address him this way. In November
1882 Leslie was working at the Oriental Saloon as a
barman-bouncer when Claiborne walked in one day
and told him what he wanted to be called. Leslie just
gave him a sour look. Claiborne then ordered him to
step outside. Leslie did, shot Claiborne dead and
returned to the bar.
Leslie was a maverick in the Earp-Clanton disputes
and a gunfighter pure and simple. He strode the streets
with his pistol lodged in a quick-fire rig, attached by a
stud to a slotted plate on his gun belt so that it could be
fired by swiveling it from the hip. He also used his wife
for target practice, tracing her outline with bullets
along a wall in their home. This may explain why the
marriage didn’t last. Leslie formed a relationship with
one of the town’s leading whores, Mollie Williams, but
that affair didn’t survive either. He shot her dead in
1889.
Leslie was sent to prison for killing Mollie but was
paroled in 1896. After that, he traveled to the
Klondike, and when he showed up in California in
1904, he had quite a poke. He apparently drank up
most of that money and then worked as a bartender in
a number of saloons. From 1913 to 1922 he operated a
pool hall in Oakland, but thereafter, Leslie fades into
obscurity. Some say he ended up working as a janitor,
and there were many reports that he committed suicide,
but the facts are not clear one way or the other.
See also: BILLY CLAIBORNE, ORIENTAL SALOON, JOHNNY
RINGO.
Leslie, George Leonidas (1838–1884) King of the
Bank Robbers
Unquestionably, the greatest bank robber (although,
strictly speaking, most of his capers were burglaries)
of the 19th century, notwithstanding the likes of Mark
Shinburn, George Bliss and other notables, was
George Leonidas Leslie, who New York Superintendent of Police George W. Walling held to be the mastermind of 80 percent of all bank thefts in America
from 1865 until his violent death in 1884. Leslie’s
gang, according to Walling, stole somewhere between
$7 and $12 million. In addition, this criminal genius
was called in as a consultant on bank jobs by underworld gangs all over the country. His consultation fees
ranged from $5,000 to $20,000, payable in advance
regardless of the take.
Leslie was contemptuous of most criminals, regarding them as too stupid to make crime pay to its full
potential. Typical was the Ace Marvin gang in San
Francisco. In late 1880 they gave him $20,000 to help
plan a bank job. The plan was to rob a bank over the
weekend so that the theft would not be discovered until
Monday; that was the only part of the caper Leslie
liked. All the rest was awful. Ace Marvin was not a
bank man but rather a jack of all crimes who thought a
bank job would be a great way to make a big score.
Leslie shook his head at such amateurism. Then too,
Ace’s “pete” man if allowed to follow his blasting technique, probably would blow half the town into the Bay.
And Marvin didn’t even have a fix in with the law.
Leslie generally preferred to have a police license before
he staged a heist. It made things simpler for everybody,
and besides, the law came rather cheap. Finally, Marvin
had not adequately planned the getaway. Leslie liked
things laid out so that the escape route went down a
narrow street where a carriage could be pulled out at
just the right time and left in the way of any pursuers.
After listening to Ace’s exposition of the robbery,
Leslie junked the whole thing. He conceived a plan that
called for the thieves to enter the bank not once but
twice.
One night Leslie, Ace and six henchmen, including a
skilled locksmith, forced the lock on the bank’s side
door and entered. The locksmith immediately set about
replacing the lock on the door with a duplicate so that
there would be no evidence of any forced entry. Meanwhile, Leslie carefully pried the dial off the safe lock
with a small file. It was difficult work because he had
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to avoid leaving any marks or scratches. At last, the
dial popped off. Then Leslie drew out a weird-looking
instrument made of thin steel wire, arranged it inside
the surface of the dial and then replaced the knob
securely on the safe.
Even Ace Marvin understood. “Well, I’ll be,” he
said. “That wire is going to cut out grooves under the
dial every time the combination is worked!”
Leslie nodded pridefully. He explained the device
was called the little joker. If Leslie had not invented it,
he certainly refined it and used it to perfection. “The
deepest cuts will indicate the numbers of the combination. You just won’t know which order the numbers are
in and will have to try all the various possibilities, but
there can only be a few dozen, so you’ll have the right
combination in a matter of minutes.”
The next morning Leslie hopped a train back to New
York. When he got home, he read in the newspapers
about a $173,000 burglary of a bank in San Francisco.
Leslie shook his head in disgust. Everyone had estimated the loot would be well over $200,000. If he had
run the job, he would have counted the money on the
spot and finding it short, he would have left it in the
safe and returned another time, especially since it was
only a few weeks until Christmas. If Marvin had waited
a while bank deposits by businessmen would have
soared. In fact, Leslie might have broken in three or
four times before making the haul. But Ace Marvin was
not George Leslie; he just wasn’t in the same class.
That year, 1880, Leslie was at the height of his fabulous career. He had come a long way since graduating
from the University of Cincinnati with high honors.
Everyone knew he would go far but they assumed it
would be in architecture, the field in which he had
earned his degree. He was born in 1838, the son of a
well-to-do Toledo brewer who put him through college
and set him up in an office in Cincinnati. In 1865 both
Leslie’s mother and father died, and he closed his office
in Cincinnati, perhaps because of the resentment there
by people who considered him a war slacker, and went
to New York.
With his experience and background, Leslie could
have walked into almost any architect’s office and
secured a good position. Instead, in almost no time at
all, he was knee-deep in crime. Demonstrating a
remarkable knack for pulling bank capers, he soon
gathered around him such desperate and cunning criminals as Gilbert Yost, Jimmy Brady, Abe Coakley, Red
Leary, Shang Draper, Johnny Dobbs, Worcester Sam
Perris, Banjo Pete Emerson and Jimmy Hope. He pulled
off bank jobs of an unprecedented magnitude, among
them the theft of $786,879 from the Ocean National
Bank at Greenwich and Fulton streets and $2,747,000
from the Manhattan Savings Institution at Bleecker
Street and Broadway. The take in the Ocean Bank robbery would have been even higher had not his men left
almost $2 million in cash and securities on the floor
beside the vault. The gang also wandered afield to pull
off such lucrative capers as the burglaries of the South
Kensington National Bank in Philadelphia, the Third
National Bank of Baltimore, the Wellsbro Bank of
Philadelphia and the Saratoga County Bank of Waterford, N.Y.
Despite all his jobs, Leslie never spent a day behind
bars. When in trouble, he was represented by Howe
and Hummel, the notorious criminal lawyers, to whom
he once paid $90,000 to square a charge. His fame
spread, both in police circles and in the underworld,
and he sat in the place of honor at the dinner parties
given by Marm Mandelbaum, America’s most notorious fence, through whom Leslie laundered great sums
of cash and securities. At the same time, Leslie led a
double life, posing as a man of inherited means who,
with his family background and education, was readily
accepted in New York society. He held memberships in
prestigious clubs and was known as a bon vivant and
man about town. He could be seen at openings of art
exhibits and theater first nights and gained quite a reputation as a bibliophile, possessing an excellent collection of first editions and being frequently consulted by
other collectors.
Leslie seldom associated with fellow criminals except
when planning jobs or visiting the Mandelbaum mansion, but he did have a way with their women. With his
wife ensconced in Philadelphia, he carried on numerous
affairs in New York with women belonging, in one way
or another, to other criminals, most notably Babe Irving,
the sister of Johnny Irving, and Shang Draper’s wife,
and lavished much time and money on them.
It was probably his amatory activities that proved to
be the death of him, although some of Leslie’s capers
started going awry about a year before he was killed. He
was known to have become quite rattled after J. W. Barron, cashier of the Dexter Savings Bank of Dexter, Maine,
was killed in one of his ill-fated schemes. When several
criminals were arrested for the Manhattan Bank job and
police gained knowledge about the Dexter matter, many
felt Leslie had arranged the leaks to protect himself.
Early in May 1884 Leslie returned to Philadelphia
and told his wife he planned to get out of crime and
that they would move elsewhere to start a new life. He
admitted he was worried about being assassinated.
Against his wife’s protests, however, he returned to
New York City. She would never again see him alive.
During the last week of his life, Leslie was seen on a
number of occasions in different locations. He seemed
to make a point of never sleeping two nights at the
same place.
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LEVINE, Dennis
I realize that I was sick, that it became an addiction, that
I lived for the high of making those trades, of doing the
next deal, making the bigger deal.”
After he was caught, Levine pleaded guilty to securities fraud, perjury and tax evasion, and cut a deal for
himself by exposing Boesky and his own circle of
wheeler-dealers. Levine gave up $11.6 million in illegal
profits and served 15 months in the federal penitentiary
in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. He was released in 1988
and thereafter claimed to have turned his life around,
lecturing college students around the country about
what he’d learned from his past mistakes and operating
his own financial consulting firm.
Some questioned how much Levine had changed.
Since that time Levine was involved in a number of
dubious “up-front” deals, bringing together struggling
businesspeople needing financing and supposed financial institutions willing to make money available in
exchange for an up-front commission. For his part
Levine also received thousands of dollars in fees. The
only trouble was no monies were ever advanced and
some Levine clients said they were out almost
$200,000. One Levine client said he had been told by
Levine that a person named Jim Massaro could help
out on the deal. The client said Levine described Massaro as a friend he’d done business with during his days
at Drexel. Levine actually met him at Lewisburg where
they had been jailmates.
Levine insisted he had exercised the required “due
diligence” in all cases and that it was not accurate for
him to be described as the consummate con man. He
insisted, “I have never conned anybody in my life. . . .
People are entitled to their own opinions, but it’s not
true. I have to live with myself. I don’t think I’ve done
anything wrong.”
On May 29 Leslie stopped in Murphy’s Saloon on
Grand Street and was given a letter addressed in a
woman’s handwriting. He read it and said something
about doing an errand “over the water,” meaning
Brooklyn. On June 4 his decomposing body was found
at the base of Tramps’ Rock, near the dividing line
between Westchester and New York counties. He had
been shot in the head.
The murder was never officially solved, although the
accepted theory is that he was killed by Shang Draper,
Johnny Dobbs, Worcester Sam Perris and Billy Porter,
all residents of the Williamsburg section. Furthermore,
it seems probable that Draper’s woman was forced to
write the letter that lured Leslie to his death. Clearly
Leslie had gone off in expectations of a pleasant tryst.
There were no bloodstains on his clothing when his
body was found, and he had apparently been dressed
after his death. The King of the Bank Robbers, the man
who had stolen millions, was buried in a $10 plot in
Cypress Hill Cemetery, a fate little better than that of
the city’s paupers.
See also: BANK ROBBERIES, JOHNNY DOBBS, JIMMY
HOPE, LITTLE JOKER, FREDERICKA “MARM” MANDELBAUM.
Levine, Dennis (1953– ) Wall Street inside trader
It was the “singing” of Dennis Levine that broke open
the 1986 Ivan Boesky scandal that exposed the boundless avarice existing on Wall Street. The Securities and
Exchange Commission discovered that Boesky, a millionaire hard-ball stock trader and arbitrager, had
agreed to pay Levine a total of $2.4 million for his illegal tips. But Levine was also an illegal stock trader in
his own right.
Over a period of five years Levine illegally traded in
at least 54 stocks and stashed away $12.6 million in
profits. At the time he was unmasked, Levine was a
hotshot managing director of the investment banking
firm of Drexel Burnham Lambert. He conducted his
personal trading through a secret bank account in the
Bahamas.
Using his Wall Street position, Levine profited from
information about various companies’ dealings before
that information reached the public. The extent of
Levine’s ease in making illegal profits was typified by his
1985 activities in Nabisco stock. With inside information he had obtained, Levine made two phone calls on
the stock and walked away with almost $3 million in
illicit profits. Later Levine would tell the CBS news show
60 Minutes: “It was this incredible feeling of invulnerability. . . . That was the insanity of it all. It wasn’t that
hard. . . . You get bolder and bolder and bolder, and it
gets easier, and you make more money and more money,
and it feeds upon itself. And looking back, looking back
Levine, Peter (1926–1938) kidnap-murder victim
The second oldest unsolved kidnapping—after the
Charles Mattson abduction—carried in the FBI’s files,
the Peter Levine case began in New Rochelle, N.Y.
about 3:30 P.M. on February 24, 1938, when the 12year-old boy left school and started home. At 5 o’clock
his mother received a telephone call informing her that
her son had been kidnapped and that she should go to a
vacant house in town for further instructions. Under
the front door of the house, the distraught mother
found a note that said her son was safe and demanded
a ransom of $60,000.
Four days later, the Levines received a letter telling
them the money was wanted quickly. A penciled note
on the back of the letter in Peter’s identifiable scrawl
read: “Dear Dad, Please pay, I want to come home. I
have a cold. Your son, Peter.” After two more days a
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third note, reducing the demand to $30,000, directed
that someone other than the parents should bring the
ransom money to a certain spot in nearby Mamaroneck. Two intermediaries made four trips with the
money along the route indicated but they were never
met by the kidnapper.
The boy’s father made several appeals over the radio
and in the newspapers to the kidnapper for additional
communications, but there was no further word. After
three months the headless body of a boy floated ashore
in New Rochelle from Long Island Sound. It was identified as that of Peter Levine.
A team of 30 FBI agents closely investigated dozens
of suspects. Nine persons were convicted of attempted
extortion, posing as the kidnappers and promising to
return the boy if money was paid. But the real perpetrator was never caught. The closest identification the
authorities ever made was the kidnapper was likely to
be a man with an Italian or German accent.
Lewis, Vach
patrolman or detective-collector got 20 percent; the
precinct commander pocketed 35 to 50 percent and the
inspector took the balance. Appointments to the police
force did not come cheaply, especially considering the
value of the 19th century dollar. Becoming a patrolman
cost $300 and an equal sum was necessary to be promoted to roundsman; making sergeant cost $1,600;
and reaching the heights of captaincy required as much
as $15,000.
While the head of the Lexow Committee was State
Sen. Clarence Lexow, a Republican, the general success
of the group was attributed to the work of its counsel,
John W. Goff, a Democrat. The following November
the Republicans, out of office for many years, were
swept into full power in both the city and state because
of public revulsion over the disclosures. Inspector
Alexander “Clubber” Williams, often called the most
dishonest cop in America (he insisted he became
wealthy by speculating in real estate in Japan), was
eventually forced out. Many reforms were instituted,
but it soon became obvious that although camouflaged,
the system continued, subsequently as revealed by the
Charles Becker-Herman Rosenthal murder case of
1912, the Seabury Investigation of the 1930s and the
Knapp Commission of the early 1970s.
See also: ALEXANDER S. “CLUBBER” WILLIAMS.
See CYCLONE LOUIE.
Lexow Committee
investigation
New York police corruption
In the first major investigation of a police department
in the United States, the Lexow Committee of 1894
uncovered mass corruption in New York City. Later
inquiries in that city as well as in other major cities
proved this to be the norm rather than the exception.
Corruption in the New York Police Department was
revealed to be handled by a highly organized machine
called the system. The study showed the system flourished under both parties but had become most blatant
under the Tammany Hall reign of Richard Croker. Anyone opposing the system—businessman, private citizen
or honest policeman—was “abused, clubbed and
imprisoned, and even convicted of crime on false testimony by policemen and their accomplices.” Great
steamship companies and even lowly pushcart peddlers
were required to pay graft.
Naturally, the underworld was a prime source of
funds; the committee set the figure at $7 million annually. By allowing streetwalkers and thieves to operate
on their beat, crooked patrolmen and detectives earned
more in graft than in salary, and the revenue dishonest
officials received from gamblers, illegal liquor dealers
and brothel keepers produced a corps of millionaires.
Fixed set monthly levies ran as follows: saloons, $2 to
$20; poolrooms (actually horsebetting parlors), $200;
policy shops, $20 on each of the 1,000 in operation;
brothels, a minimum of $5 per prostitute; new brothels,
$500 to open. The graft was broken down so that the
lie detector
The lie detector dates back to 1921, although man’s
effort to expose liars is centuries old. Some ancient peoples used tests based on principles that are considered
at least somewhat sound even today, and that, indeed,
provide the basis for the modern lie detector. In parts of
the Orient a suspect was given a handful of rice to
chew. If he could spit it out, he was innocent. If it
remained dry and he could not spit it out, he was guilty.
The reasoning was that fear caused by guilt would dry
up his flow of saliva.
The technique Solomon used when two women
claimed the same child would be hard to beat. He reasoned that the real mother would rather deny her
claim than have her child killed. But most other tests
of long ago were brutal and senseless. Tibet had a
quaint custom of detecting liars in cases where two
individuals made conflicting claims. Two stones, one
white and one black, were put in a pot of boiling
water. The two disputants plunged their arms in, and
the individual who got the white stone was declared
the honest one. If nothing else, the system probably cut
down the number of lawsuits. Medieval methods were
as brutal and relied even more on chance. In the trial
by water, the suspect, tied with rope, was thrown in a
vat of holy water. If he sank, he was innocent. If he
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the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, put the
accuracy figure at 70 percent.
The lie detector does not blow a gasket or flash “tilt”
when a suspect is caught in an untruth. It isn’t that simple. Leaders in the field, like John Reid, operator of the
nation’s largest commercial polygraph agency, had long
regarded the machine itself as only one component of
three needed to get at the truth: the polygraph, an operator who can interpret it correctly and a foolproof questioning technique. The importance of this last point has
been shown often in cases where a rapist was asked if he
had raped the victim and was able to deny it successfully, having rationalized in his own mind that all he had
used was “excessive persuasion.” Polygraph experts say
the question in such cases should be worded to ask if the
suspect has had “sexual intercourse” with the victim,
since the machine merely records whether the suspect
thinks he’s lying. However, even this formulation of the
question may not be sufficient. Some men do not consider themselves to have had sexual relations if they
have failed to achieve an orgasm.
Similarly, a farmer once “beat” the machine by
denying that he had stolen some barbed wire. What
had happened was that the roll of barbed wire had been
lying around unused for months, and when the farmer
appropriated it, he was, in his own mind, merely
putting it to good use instead of letting it rust.
Many guilty parties have been able to beat the
machine through a concerted effort. The late polygraph
expert Leonarde Keeler admitted he could beat his own
machine. Lesser intellects than Keeler have also been
successful. Gerald Thompson, who confessed to and
floated, it was reasoned that the holy water had
refused to receive him, and he was declared guilty.
Trial by fire took a little longer. The suspect, after
appropriate church rituals, either drew a stone from a
pot of boiling water or carried a hot stone for a prescribed number of feet. After the ordeal his hand was
bandaged by a priest, and if after ten days the wound
was healing cleanly, he was declared innocent. If the
wound festered, he was guilty. One wonders how
many germs convicted innocent men in those unhygienic days.
By these standards, the present-day lie detector is a
scientific marvel. Much scientific research on the detection of lying was carried out both in Europe and the
United States by scientists and criminologists, such as
the Italians Cesare Lombroso and Vittorio Benussi and
Americans William Moulton Marston and Fr. Walter
G. Summers of Fordham University. The first practical
lie detector fashioned for police work was ordered by
August Vollmer, the legendary police chief of Berkeley,
Calif. In 1921 he assigned a colleague, John A. Larson,
followed later by Leonarde Keeler, to develop what has
become known as the polygraph, a machine that measures various bodily reactions to questions requiring a
yes or no answer. Among the measurements graphed
were variations in blood pressure, breathing, pulse and
electrodermal response, a minute electrical discharge
from the skin. Simply stated, changes in the norm of
these indicators show a subject is lying, according to
the test.
Lie detector experts like to cite the many instances
when a lie detector test ferreted out a guilty man and
produced a confession. They are somewhat more reticent about discussing well-known failures. A case in
point was Paul Joseph Altheide, age 26, who was
charged with murdering a tailor in Phoenix, Ariz. in
the 1950s. Altheide claimed to have been 500 miles
away in Texas at the time. A lie detector test indicated
he was lying when denying his guilt. This more than
satisfied the law but did not satisfy a reporter, Gene
McLain of the Arizona Republic, who went to Texas
and eventually turned up witnesses who proved
Altheide’s innocence. He was released after spending
137 days in jail for a crime he had not committed. His
incriminating polygraph test had clearly dissuaded the
law from making further efforts to clear him. In a
number of other cases, suspects have been cleared by
lie detector tests only to be proved guilty later by
other evidence.
Lie detector proponents like to proclaim their tests
are 97 percent accurate with a three percent “gray
area,” in which the operator cannot form a definite
conclusion. However, at least two independent studies,
one by the Stanford Research Institute and the other by
Chart of a lie detector test demonstrates why a trained
expert is needed to interpret polygraph results.
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LIGHTFOOT, Captain
was later executed for the murder of Mildred Hallmark, passed a lie detector test with flying colors.
When his questioner specifically asked him, “Did you
kill Mildred?” he just concentrated on another Mildred
and denied it.
Another murderer, Chester Weger, who killed three
wealthy matrons in Starved Rock State Park, Ill. in
1960, later claimed he had twice passed polygraph tests
by first swallowing a lot of aspirin and washing them
down with Coca-Cola. The late director of the FBI, J.
Edgar Hoover, frequently denounced the lie detector
(although the agency now relies on it to an increasing
extent), once commenting: “The name lie detector is a
complete misnomer. The machine used is not a lie
detector. The person who operates the machine is the
lie detector by reason of his interpretation. Whenever
the human element enters into an interpretation of anything, there is always a possibility of error.”
No more than a handful of states have laws requiring the licensing of polygraph operators. In most states
a person can become an “expert” by buying a machine
and a handbook telling him how to use it. There are no
accurate estimates of how many persons in the country
regularly give lie detector examinations, but the figures
are well into the hundreds, perhaps thousands. It has
been estimated that at least 80 percent of these are
“unqualified.” An acknowledged leader in the field
grudgingly concedes that competent operators probably comprise anywhere from 10 to 40 percent of the
total. Most unqualified operators, who don’t know
how to interpret a chart and really don’t care, are what
is known in the trade as “sandbaggers,” relying on
coercion and bluster to get a confession. “I know you
done it,” they say. “The machine says so, so come
clean, you sonovabitch!”
One prominent lie detector operator tells of another
“expert” who worked for several Midwestern police
departments. He was called in to doublecheck the other
man’s findings and came to the exact opposite conclusions in 12 cases. This writer once interviewed a socalled expert who was often consulted by police
departments in the East. He sported a business card
that showed he was a man of many talents. The card
read: “Hypnotist —Relieve Insomnia—Stop Smoking—
Stop Drinking—Many Other Benefits.” And in addition to his lie detector work, he was also licensed as a
private eye.
Generally, lie detector findings have not been admitted, save in rare instances, as evidence in trials. Objecting to this practice, lie detector proponents cite the
1920 landmark murder case of a Washington, D.C.
physician that resulted in the conviction of a young
black, James Alphonse Frye, despite attempts by the
defense to present testimony by Dr. William Marston
about findings of a polygraph test given to Frye.
Marston’s findings indicated Frye was innocent, but the
test results were barred as evidence and he was convicted. Later on, another man was found to be the real
murderer and Frye was freed. The ruling barring lie
detector evidence in the Frye case stood, however, and
since then courts have repeatedly refused to admit polygraph findings. An exception was a 1972 case in California in which a judge permitted lie test evidence that
a man accused of possession of marijuana had refused
police permission to search his suitcase. The judge
declared that lie detector equipment and techniques
had improved so much that rules against the use of evidence obtained by polygraph should be changed. The
ruling, however, proved to be an isolated one and
gained little acceptance.
See also: CUTLER LIE DETECTOR DECISION, FRYE V.
UNITED STATES, LEONARDE KEELER, CHESTER WEGER.
Lightfoot, Captain (1775–1822) Irish and American
highwayman
Michael Martin was only 17 in his native Ireland when
he ran away from home and turned to a life of crime,
becoming the infamous Captain Lightfoot. After fleeing
he made an attempt at reform but soon resumed his
criminal career, becoming the most-hunted outlaw of
the post-Revolutionary period.
Following a 16-year career in Ireland and Scotland
as Captain Lightfoot, Martin found the countryside
teeming with troops determined to put an end to highway robbery. On April 12, 1818 he made it aboard the
brig Maria shortly before he would have been cornered
by pursuers. On June 17 Lightfoot landed in Salem,
Mass., where he decided to live out his days in honest
toil. However, efforts to make a go of it working a farm
and, later, operating a small brewery failed, thanks to
what he later told a biographer was the sharpness of
Yankee tradespeople.
Following an unhappy love affair, Lightfoot returned
to his former occupation as a highwayman. Over the
next three years he became the scourge of all New England, committing one holdup after another. No traveler
was safe anywhere in New England and even far into
Canada. Indians too fell victim to Lightfoot’s call to
“stand and deliver.” On the road to Boston, he committed his most famous crime. When a young woman passenger on a coach tried to hide her watch, Lightfoot
doffed his hat and said, “Ma’am I do not rob ladies,”
making him a Robin Hood figure in the storytelling at
country taverns. In time, it finally dawned on authorities that the scoundrel was Europe’s notorious Captain
Lightfoot, and efforts to catch him intensified. The
highwayman was finally captured in a stable near
527
LIME cell
Springfield by a slow-closing ring of posses. In October
1821 Lightfoot was sentenced to death, but the next
day he escaped by sawing through his chains with a file
supplied by a friend. However, he was quickly recaptured, and this time the chains were forged to his ankles
and wrists and attached to his cell floor.
Lightfoot was now a national legend. In interviews
his jailers praised his quiet bravery, and the balladmakers were composing tributes to the “brave Captain
Lightfoot” even before he was dead. A writer, Frederick
W. Waldo, was permitted to stay with him long enough
to gather material for a full-length biography, Captain
Lightfoot, the Last of the New England Highwaymen.
He was described as “calm and serene” at his execution
on December 22, 1822; when the hangman fumbled
with the noose, he gallantly assisted by putting the rope
around his own neck. He also relieved the sheriff of the
task of dropping the handkerchief as a signal to the
hangman. Captain Lightfoot held the handkerchief
aloft in his hand and, as the crowd hushed, let it flutter
free. Before it came to earth, Lightfoot had swung to
his death.
lime cell
prison torture
One of the most hellish tortures ever used in American
prisons was the so-called lime cell, which remained
quite popular in a number of institutions well into the
20th century. A prisoner would be led to a cell where
the white coating of lime was some three inches thick.
A guard would sprinkle the cell with a hose, resulting
in a white mist from the exploding chloride of lime
filling the cell, and then the prisoner would be shoved
inside.
The convict would clutch his burning throat with
both hands, reeling and toppling to the floor. He would
claw at the walls, trying to struggle back to his feet.
One convict who underwent this ordeal graphically
described it as feeling as if he were in the middle of a
volcano. Cramping pains tore at his bowels and his
breath seemed to sizzle. When he was pulled from the
cell, he had to be hosed down to stifle the burning
fumes. The misery never lasted more than five or six
minutes, but sometimes a severely punished convict
would be given the lime cell treatment for as many as
10 days in a row. At the end of this ordeal, the mucous
membranes of his mouth, nose and throat would be
seared, his voice reduced to a whisper and his eyebrows
and eyelashes completely burned off.
Despite official denials, the lime cell remained a
favored form of punishment in a great number of prisons until recent years, when nationwide prison reform
supposedly ended the inhuman practice. Yet reports
indicate it is still practiced in isolated instances.
528
Lincoln, Abraham (1809–1865) assassination victim
By present-day standards, the protection of Abraham
Lincoln at the time of his assassination in 1865 bordered on the criminally negligent. On the night of April
14 President and Mrs. Abraham Lincoln attended the
performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. Attending with them as substitutes for Gen. and Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant, who had
canceled (because Mrs. Grant could not abide Mrs.
Lincoln), were the daughter of Sen. Ira Harris and his
stepson, Maj. Henry Rathbone. Earlier that day the
president had asked the War Department to provide a
special guard. Oddly, the request was refused, a matter
of considerable puzzlement to historians. The only
presidential bodyguard that night was a shiftless member of the Washington police force, who after the start
of the performance, incredibly left his post outside the
flag-draped presidential box to adjourn to nearby Taltavul’s tavern for a drink.
While there, he may well have rubbed elbows with
another imbiber, John Wilkes Booth, who had been
drinking heavily for several hours, determined that
tonight he would kill Lincoln. At 26 Booth, a noted
Shakespearean actor, had long made no secret of his
Southern sympathies. The War Department undoubtedly knew of his drunken boasting about a plot to kidnap Lincoln and drag him in chains to Richmond,
where he would be held until the Union armies laid
down their arms. As a matter of fact, Booth and a small
group of conspirators had waited in ambush about
three weeks earlier to attack the Lincoln carriage outside the city limits but were thwarted by the president’s
change of plans.
After that failure Booth shifted to the assassination
attempt. The plan called for him to kill Lincoln while
other members of the group simultaneously attacked
Vice President Andrew Johnson and various Cabinet
members.
At 10 o’clock Booth left the bar and went to the theater, pausing long enough to bum a chew of tobacco
from a ticket taker he knew. In the foyer of the theater
Booth caught the eye of actress Jennie Gourlay, who
later recalled he had appeared pale and ill and distraught with “a wild look in his eyes.”
Booth entered Lincoln’s unguarded box, leveled
his one-shot Derringer behind the president’s left
ear and pulled the trigger. As Lincoln slumped, Booth
cried out, “Sic semper tyrannis” (“Ever thus to
tyrants”), dropped his gun and pulled a dagger. He
slashed Maj. Rathbone as the officer lunged for him.
Booth hurdled the rail of the box in what he undoubtedly visualized as a dramatic appearance on the stage,
shouting, “The South is avenged.” However, his spur
caught in the flag outside the box and he almost fell on
LINCOLN,Abraham
FPO
FIG #98
TO BE
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Four of those charged with the crime, Mrs. Mary Surratt, Lewis Paine, David Herold and George Atzerodt, were hanged,
although to the end most people expected Mrs. Surratt’s death sentence to be commuted.
The commander of the Union troops, a Lt. Baker,
ordered the pair to surrender or the building would be
set on fire. Booth called out, “Let us have a little time
to consider it.”
Five minutes later Booth declared: “Captain, I know
you to be a brave man, and I believe you to be honorable; I am a cripple. I have got but one leg; if you withdraw your men in one line one hundred yards from the
door, I will come out and fight you.”
Baker rejected the offer and Booth then shouted,
“Well, my brave boys, prepare a stretcher for me.”
Then the soldiers heard loud voices from the shed
and Booth’s voice could be heard saying: “You damned
coward, will you leave me now? Go, go; I would not
have you stay with me.” Then Booth yelled, “There’s a
man in here who wants to come out.”
A trembling Herold surrendered himself.
The structure was set afire, and the troopers could
see a dark figure hobbling about. Suddenly, there was a
his face. Somehow he kept his footing and limped on a
fractured left leg across the stage and out into the
street. There he mounted his horse and rode off.
Were it not for his leg injury, Booth might have made
good his escape, crossing the Potomac and losing himself
among the soldiers being demobilized following Lee’s
surrender. But the pain slowed his flight. He met up in
Maryland with David Herold, another of the conspirators, who had failed in a simultaneous attempt on the life
of Secretary of State William Seward, and the pair
located Dr. Samuel Mudd. After Mudd set Booth’s leg the
two left the doctor’s home and made it to the Potomac
River awaiting an opportunity to cross into Virginia.
Meanwhile, the hunt for the assassin was pressed,
some observers said later with considerable incompetence. Certainly, greed for the reward money being
offered and hysteria hindered the search, and it was not
until April 26 that the fugitives were cornered in a
tobacco shed on a farm near Port Royal, Va.
529
LINCOLN,Abraham
shot—possibly by Booth himself and possibly by a
Union zealot, a soldier named Boston Corbett—and
Booth fell. Soldiers rushed into the barn and pulled
Booth outside.
“Tell mother I die for my country,” Booth whispered
before breathing his last.
Even before Booth’s death, the government had
implicated eight other persons in the assassination—
Herold, George A. Atzerodt, Lewis Paine, Mary E. Surratt, her son John H. Surratt, Edward Spangler, Dr.
Mudd and Michael O’Laughlin. All except John H.
Surratt, who eluded capture, were tried before a military commission, on the ground that Lincoln was the
commander in chief and had fallen “in actual service in
time of war.” The trial, which ran from May 9 to June
30, was a bizarre spectacle conducted under decidedly
unfair conditions and amidst postwar hysteria. Somehow the defendants were linked to the deeds of the
Confederate government and Jefferson Davis. Many of
the charges dealt with such irrelevancies as starvation
of Union prisoners in notorious Andersonville Prison
and the plot to burn New York City.
At the same time, important witnesses were never
called to testify. John F. Parker, who negligently left
Lincoln unguarded, was not summoned (nor was he
dismissed from the police force or even reprimanded).
Even men who had harbored Booth for a week after the
assassination were not forced to appear. Most
observers felt that the case against Mrs. Mary Surratt
was singularly weak, depending largely on the word of
a known liar and an infamous drunkard. Her sole
offense seems to have been owning the rooming house
where much of the plotting had taken place.
Nonetheless, Mrs. Surratt was sentenced to hang
along with Paine, Herold and Atzerodt. Mudd, Arnold
and O’Laughlin received life sentences and Spangler got
six years. The executions were carried out on July 7,
1865, ironically with umbrellas held over the prisoners’
heads on the gallows to protect them from the sweltering sun. To the very end, it was thought that Mrs. Surratt would be pardoned. Paine told the executioner: “If
I had two lives to give, I’d give one gladly to save Mrs.
Surratt. I know that she is innocent, and would never
die in this way if I hadn’t been found at her house. She
knew nothing about the conspiracy at all. . . .” However, there was no last-minute reprieve and the four
were executed at the same moment.
The hunt for John Surratt became a world chase and
he was finally located in Italy serving in the Swiss
Guards. Brought back to trial in 1867, when the hysteria had died down, Surratt went free when the jury
could not agree on his guilt.
The weakness of the case against the imprisoned men
also became apparent in time, and by March 4, 1869
530
President Andrew Johnson had pardoned all of them
except O’Laughlin, who had died in prison in 1867.
See also: BOSTON CORBETT, DR. SAMUEL A. MUDD.
Lincoln, Abraham
defense attorney
Attorney Abraham Lincoln of Illinois “rode the circuit”
around Springfield in the practice of his profession.
While most of his cases were civil, involving land disputes, livestock claims and financial matters, he also
defended a number of clients on criminal charges. Most
of these cases involved prosaic allegations, such as
theft, drunkenness and the like, but he conducted a
murder defense that brought him statewide fame.
William “Duff” Armstrong was accused along with
James Norris of killing James “Pres” Metzker in a
drunken brawl near Havana, on August 29, 1857. It
was established beyond doubt that Norris had hit Metzker with an ox-yoke. Tried separately, he was convicted and given eight years in the penitentiary.
However, young Armstrong denied he had struck the
\“Riding the circuit” made young Abraham Lincoln one of
the best-known lawyers in downstate Illinois.
LINCOLN,Warren
making it illegal to steal a dead body, not even that of a
martyred president. However, all the gang members
were convicted and given the maximum sentence, one
year in prison, for attempting to steal a coffin.
For the next two years the casket remained hidden
under a pile of scrap lumber until it was moved again.
Finally in 1901, it was locked in a steel cage and
buried 10 feet below the floor of a national shrine in
Springfield.
victim another deadly blow with a slung shot, insisting
he had done all his fighting with his fists.
Lincoln took the case without fee because, as he
would tell the jury, the defendant was the son of Jack
and Hannah Armstrong, who had provided the nowfamous lawyer with a home when he was “penniless,
homeless, and alone.” The inference Lincoln would
make was that such a fine couple could not possibly
have raised a killer.
The trial opened in Beardstown, Ill. on May 7,
1858. The prosecution’s case was based primarily on
the testimony of a housepainter named Charles Allen,
who said he had seen every detail of the murder, which
had occurred at 9:30 in the brilliant light of a full
moon. Lincoln took Allen over the details of the crime
several times, drawing from the witness again and
again a description of the brilliant moonlight that had
enabled him to see the events so clearly. Then Lincoln
produced a farmer’s almanac and turned to the page for
August 29, the day of the murder. It showed that the
moon had been just past its first quarter, providing little
help for the witness. In addition to discrediting Allen’s
testimony, Lincoln stressed that the mark on Metzker
attributed to Armstrong’s lethal blow could have been
caused by the victim falling to the ground after being
struck by Norris.
As the jury filed from the courtroom, Lincoln is
reported to have turned to Mrs. Armstrong and said,
“Aunt Hannah, your son will be free before sundown.”
The acquittal came quickly. When it did, Lincoln said
thoughtfully, “I pray to God that this lesson may prove
in the end a good lesson to him and to all.”
Lincoln, Abraham
Lincoln, Warren (1870–1941) murderer
When Chicago defense lawyer Warren Lincoln retired
to the pleasant surroundings of Aurora, Ill. just after
reaching 50, he was anticipating a happy existence. But
the faults of his wife, Lena, which Lincoln had ignored
as long as he had the hustle and bustle of criminal court
life to distract him, now became his obsession in the
solitude of Aurora. She opposed, not necessarily in
order, liquor, tobacco and sex. In short, she was a bore.
Adding to his misery was Byron Shoup, his brother-inlaw, who moved in as something of a permanent guest.
Since Lincoln was used to the workings of a criminal
mind, it was perhaps inevitable that he should come to
think of murdering the two of them. No doubt, he felt
he could get away with it. In Chicago he had once won
acquittals for five very guilty murderers in a row. One
day both Lena and Shoup were missing. Lincoln sadly
told friends that his wife had left a letter saying she was
running off with another man. That being the case, Lincoln said, he had ordered Shoup out of the house. Lincoln then went back to tending his garden. He used lots
of fertilizer much of which he mixed himself. His special mixture contained a great deal of ashes, including
those of Lena and Shoup.
In time, suspicions were voiced and Lincoln was
caught in a number of lies concerning his missing wife
and brother-in-law. Police dug up his garden searching
for their bodies but found nothing.
The only parts of Lincoln’s victims that he hadn’t
burned were their heads, which he’d planted in flower
boxes on his porch and later covered with cement. But
Lincoln wasn’t worried about any trace of the heads,
since he had covered them with quicklime. Eventually,
the police dug up the flower boxes and found two perfectly preserved heads. Unfortunately for Lincoln, he
once had employed a rather dimwitted greenhouse
helper who had mistakenly transposed a barrel of
quicklime with a barrel of slaked lime. Instead of covering the heads with quicklime, which would have disintegrated them quickly, Lincoln had covered them
with slaked lime, which acted as a preservative. He
was sentenced to life in Joliet Prison and died there in
1941.
target of body snatchers
After Abraham Lincoln was buried in 1865, authorities
found it necessary to move his casket 17 times, mainly
to prevent it from being stolen and held for ransom.
That feat was almost achieved in 1876 by Big Jim
Kenealy and his gang of counterfeiters. They concocted
a weird plot to steal the body, rebury it elsewhere and
then return it in exchange for money and the release of
the outfit’s master engraver, Ben Boyd, then doing 10
years in prison. Their plot was foiled when an informer
working on counterfeiting matters infiltrated the gang
and tipped off the Secret Service.
The would-be body snatchers were thwarted just as
they were moving the casket, then kept in a mausoleum
in a lonely section of forest two miles outside of Springfield, Ill. Nevertheless, the gang succeeded in eluding
the Secret Service agents who swooped down on them.
After 10 days all were rounded up, but Kenealy suddenly had a surprise for the authorities. He had previously determined that there was no law on the books
531
LINCOLN County War
Lincoln County War
barons with innumerable offenses. Tunstall countered
by opening a rival store in Lincoln that offered better
terms to farmers and small ranchers, so that more of
them rallied to the Chisum-McSween-Tunstall banner.
In early 1878 Sheriff Brady was ordered to execute an
arrest warrant against Tunstall. He handed the job over
to a posse of hastily deputized gunmen, remaining conveniently in the background. The posse rode out to the
Tunstall spread and, catching the Englishman helpless
on foot, shot him to death.
Much has been made of Tunstall’s death turning
Billy the Kid into a killer. Such a conclusion, of course,
ignores the fact that Billy was already a murderer, but
after the Tunstall slaying his homicidal activities had a
“purpose.” The Kid pledged to avenge Tunstall’s death.
The two members of the posse who had done the actual
shooting, William Morton and Frank Baker, were
caught by a rival posse of “regulators,” which included
Billy the Kid. The pair surrendered on the posse leader’s
promise that they would be returned to Lincoln alive.
Along the way, Morton was allowed to mail a letter to
a relative in Virginia. It said in part, “There was one
man who wanted to kill me after I had surrendered and
was restrained with the greatest difficulty by others.”
That man was Billy the Kid, and he wasn’t about to
keep his guns holstered through the long trip. On the
third day the Kid shot down both Morton and Baker as
well as a member of the posse who evidently had tried
to protect the prisoners.
With Tunstall dead, Billy the Kid transferred his loyalties to McSween and became the gunfighting leader of
the faction. In the spring, he led his forces in a memorable battle against Brady and his men at Tunstall’s
store and killed the sheriff. In July the two factions
fought a four-day pitched battle, with the Kid and his
forces barricaded in McSween’s adobe house in the center of Lincoln. On the fifth day most of them escaped,
but lawyer McSween was shot dead.
With the death of McSween, the owners of The
House and the Santa Fe Ring won the Lincoln County
War. Chisum remained a powerful cattle baron but
never achieved the complete domination of the Pecos
Valley he so desired. With the end of the war, Billy the
Kid lost his “purpose” but went right on killing.
See also: BILLY THE KID, JOHN TUNSTALL.
While the Lincoln County War is most remembered
because of the prominence it provided to Billy the
Kid, the conflict itself had much greater significance.
Indeed, it was a full-scale war conducted by rival
banking, mercantile and ranching interests with
insignificant cowboys comprising most of the casualties. There were passions and personal hatreds
involved that gave it aspects of a blood feud: such was
the case for Billy the Kid as the result of the coldblooded murder of his adopted father, a newcomer
from England who had joined one side in a quest for
the wealth of the county and indeed much of the New
Mexico Territory.
Lincoln County was a remote and extremely lawless
section of the territory when one of the West’s greatest
cattlemen, John Chisum, pushed his herds into the area
in the early 1870s and preempted huge sections of government land. At the time, the area was economically
dominated by a hard-nosed businessman named
Lawrence G. Murphy, who ran a huge mercantile store
in Lincoln called The House. Because of the economic
importance of his store, Murphy virtually named public
officials and lawmen. He later sold his business to two
tough Irishmen James J. Doland and James H. Riley,
who forcefully increased The House’s predominance in
the county.
The key to power in the county lay in control of government contracts for supplying beef to army posts and
Indian reservations. Through The House’s close ties
with influential territorial officials in the capital—the
notorious Santa Fe Ring—the profits on such contracts
were kept at enormous levels. The Santa Fe Ring was
comprised of corrupt Republican officeholders, while
the owners of The House, Dolan and Riley, headed a
county Democratic machine. Their alliance was probably the first proof that Republicans and Democrats
could work together if there were profits to be gained.
John Chisum resented this control of the cattle marketing business by mere merchants and formed an
opposing alliance with lawyer Alexander McSween, a
former Murphy adherent, and John Tunstall, a young,
ambitious Englishman who had established a large
ranch. It was Tunstall who recruited Billy the Kid as a
cowboy and gunman. In the ensuing conflict a number
of small ranchers were caught in the middle. Many
resented Chisum for seizing public lands and thus lined
up with The House, but others who detested the businessmen, to whom they sold their cattle at low prices
and under harsh credit terms, sided with Chisum and
the insurgents.
The owners of The House held most of the trump
cards, including Sheriff William Brady, a puppet who
willingly harrassed their opponents, charging the cattle
Lindbergh kidnapping
No kidnapping in American history achieved more
notoriety or produced more public clamor than the
abduction of the Lindbergh baby in 1932. By its very
nature, the crime inspired an incredible array of swindles, hoaxes and controversies. At the time, the depths
of the Depression, Charles A. Lindbergh—Lucky
532
LINDBERGH kidnapping
Lindy—was a hero in an era of few heroes. He had
enjoyed that stature since his epic flight from New York
to Paris in May 1927. “Lindbergh,” Frederick Lewis
Allen was to write in his book Only Yesterday, “was a
god”—and indeed he was. Consequently, the kidnapping of 20-month-old Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., from
the family’s home near Hopewell, N.J. was little short of
sacrilege, a crime that outraged the public far more than
even the Leopold-Loeb case of the previous decade.
The night of the crime, March 1, was particularly
windy, and after Mrs. Lindbergh and the baby’s nurse,
Betty Gow, put the child to bed, the nurse remained
with him until he was asleep. A short while later, Lindbergh heard a noise, but not hearing it again, he and his
wife dismissed the sound as the wind. At about 10 p.m.
the nurse, making her customary check, found the
baby’s bed empty. Searching around the house, Lindbergh discovered a homemade wooden ladder with a
broken rung outside the nursery window, and he called
the police.
Near the window sill he found a note written in broken English that indicated the writer might be German.
Have fifty thousand dollars ready, 25,000 in twentydollar bills, 15,000 in ten-dollar bills, and 10,000 in
five-dollar bills. In 4-5 days we will inform you where
to deliver the money. We warn you for making anyding
public or for notify the police. The child is in gut care.
Indication for all letters are signature and three holes.
But by that time the authorities had already been
called in, and inevitably, the press and the nation soon
learned of the crime. From then on, the case was nothing short of a three-ring circus. Everyone from the
well-intended to a legion of crackpots and hoaxers got
into the act. Police on various levels jockeyed for position in the investigative process. No one was clearly in
charge, except possibly Lindbergh himself, who was
impressed by certain investigators and unimpressed by
others.
Initial theories about the crime revolved, quite naturally, around the possibility that the underworld was
responsible for the kidnapping. Hearst columnist
Arthur Brisbane championed the idea of releasing the
notorious gangster Al Capone from prison to help find
Symbols show location of the Lindbergh baby’s room (A) and areas where kidnapper’s ladder (B) and baby’s bedding (C)
were abandoned.
533
LINDBERGH kidnapping
At another meeting, with Lindbergh on hand, Jafsie
handed over the money; all the bills had been marked,
including $20,000 in gold certificates. The kidnapper
said the baby could be found on a boat at Martha’s
Vineyard, Mass. A frantic Lindbergh rushed there but
found no boat and no child. He had been duped.
On May 12, 1932 the body of a baby, identified by
Lindbergh as his child, was found in a shallow grave
just a few miles from the Lindbergh home. The ransom
money eventually trapped the kidnapper, Bruno
Richard Hauptmann, in September 1934, when an alert
filling station attendant recognized a gold certificate
given him by a customer as one of the marked bills and
noted down the man’s car license number. Hauptmann
was traced through the license and over $11,000 of the
ransom money was found in his garage. A U.S. Forestry
Service “wood detective,” Arthur Koehler, eventually
identified the lumber yard that had cut the wood used
to make the kidnap ladder and matched a rung of the
ladder to a board in Hauptmann’s attic.
Hauptmann’s trial was held in January 1935 in Flemington, N.J., amidst a carnival atmosphere. Crowds
stayed up all night to get seats in the courtroom, vendors sold Lindbergh baby dolls. During the trial Jafsie
Condon identified Hauptmann as Cemetery John, and
Lindbergh, who had been present at the second meeting
with the kidnapper, identified the voice. A number of
handwriting experts linked the kidnap notes to the
defendant, and wood expert Koehler’s testimony proved
unshakable.
Hauptmann was convicted despite his continued
pleas of innocence. Yet there were many who felt
Hauptmann had not been the only one involved in the
plot. Among those dissatisfied with the verdict was
New Jersey Gov. Harold Hoffman, whom others
would accuse of using the case as a launching pad for
a possible presidential bid. Gov. Hoffman clearly had
need to move up higher in government so that he
would have greater authority to conceal his current
and past embezzlements of public funds. Gov. Hoffman stayed Hauptmann’s execution to hear what was
considered evidence of a new solution, but nothing
developed. He also fired H. Norman Schwarzkopf as
superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, calling
the Lindbergh case “the most bungled police job in
history.” That assessment was not shared by many
others, including Lindbergh, who remained a firm
friend of the lawman.
For a time, until Hauptmann’s capture, Dr. Condon
was suspected of being a confidence operator who had
swindled Lindbergh out of the $50,000 ransom money.
Gaston B. Means, a notorious political rogue who had
for years operated in the shadowy fringes of law
After he was taken into custody, Bruno Hauptmann
consistently maintained he was innocent of the
kidnapping.
the child and return him to the Lindberghs. Since Brisbane had only a short time before he had to square a
$250,000 tax claim, he quite possibly felt a sort of kinship with another man convicted on income tax
charges. Within federal law enforcement circles, it was
suggested that the aid of Lucky Luciano should be
sought. Officially at least, nothing became of these
proposals, although there is considerable reason to
believe that the Capone mob had set about framing an
ex-convict, Robert Conroy, who had labored on the
fringe of the outfit. He was found shot dead in August
and there was later speculation that the mob had
intended to pin the kidnapping on Conroy with manufactured evidence.
About a month after the abduction, a retired school
principal, Dr. John F. “Jafsie” Condon, published a letter in the Bronx Home News in New York City offering to act as go-between in the return of the missing
baby. Probably much to his surprise and that of the editor, the offer was accepted. A letter from a man who
became known as Cemetery John provided facts that
only the kidnapper could have known. A meeting was
held in a cemetery between Jafsie and John, who raised
the ransom demand to $70,000. John promised to send
the baby’s night clothes to prove he was the real kidnapper. Further negotiations dropped the ransom back
down to $50,000.
534
LINGLE, Alfred “Jake”
thesis, police faked evidence against Hauptmann, and
prosecution witnesses, state attorneys and even Hauptmann’s own defense lawyers took part in distorting or
suppressing evidence. However, despite the unearthing
of considerable discrepancies, Scaduto failed to present
solid proof that Hauptmann was the victim of a miscarriage of justice. Similarly, recent efforts to prove a New
England man to be the “real” Lindbergh child—not at
all an uncommon occurrence in celebrated cases of this
type—have foundered.
See also: HAROLD GILES HOFFMAN, LINDBERGH LAW,
GASTON BULLOCK MEANS, ELLIS PARKER.
Lindbergh Law
The Federal Kidnapping Statute, enacted in June 1932
as a reaction to the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby
and popularly known as the Lindbergh Law, declares
it a federal offense to take a kidnapped person across
a state line for the purpose of ransom, reward “or
otherwise.” In the 1930s the last stipulation proved to
be a powerful weapon against bank robbers and
escaped convicts because they often took hostages
with them. By treating the hostages well, however, the
outlaws frequently defused much of the public’s outrage, and the locally directed hunts for them were
often ineffective.
Twenty-four hours after a kidnapping, a legal presumption is made that the victim has been transported
out of the state, permitting the FBI to enter the case.
However, if it becomes apparent that no state line has
been crossed, the FBI will drop its active involvement.
An amendment to the Lindbergh Law states that it is a
federal offense to kidnap a foreign official or an official
guest of the United States whether or not the victim has
been taken across a state line.
See also: ARTHUR GOOCH.
A crowd stayed up all night to get seats in the morning at
the Hauptmann trial.
enforcement agencies in the federal government, swindled a scatterbrained socialite, Mrs. Evalyn Walsh
McLean of Washington, D.C., out of $104,000 on the
premise that he would use his underworld connections
to retrieve the missing child. In another bizarre episode,
one of the most-fabled detectives of the era, Ellis Parker,
was convicted of kidnapping and torturing a disbarred
lawyer, Paul H. Wendel, and of forcing him to confess
that he and others and not Hauptmann were involved in
the kidnapping. Both Means and Parker died in prison
on charges arising out of the Lindbergh case.
Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of the case was the
long hours before Hauptmann’s execution on April 3,
1936. A leading news commentator of the day, Gabriel
Heatter, offered a play-by-play, minute-by-minute
radio commentary to a public eager to hear about the
final act in the drama and to learn whether Hauptmann would talk and implicate others during his final
minutes. Hauptmann did not, denying his own guilt to
the end.
Over the years many efforts have been made to shed
more light on the case, including numerous attempts to
portray Hauptmann as a mere scapegoat. The most formidable effort was a 1976 book by Anthony Scaduto,
Scapegoat, The Lonesome Death of Bruno Richard
Hauptmann, in which the author presents many contradictions in the evidence. According to the Scaduto
Lingle, Alfred “Jake” (1892–1930) reporter and murder
victim
When Alfred “Jake” Lingle, a police reporter for the
Chicago Tribune, was murdered on June 9, 1930, it
became one of the city’s most sensational crimes, uniting the local newspapers in a joint denunciation of the
murder of a courageous reporter who had waged a
relentless battle against the underworld. But this unity
soon fell apart as the newspapers turned on each other.
The cause of this dissension was the double life of
Jake Lingle, whose peculiar style of living somehow
had never provoked the suspicion of his employers.
Despite the fact that his highest salary as a legman was
only $65 a week, Lingle owned both a house in
535
LITTLE, Dick
Chicago and a summer bungalow in Indiana. He wintered with his family in Florida or Cuba and owned a
Lincoln, for which he employed a chauffeur. He kept a
room for himself in the Stevens Hotel on Michigan
Avenue and was an inveterate gambler, sometimes betting as much as $1,000 on a single horse race.
Lingle’s explanation for his lifestyle was that he had
inherited $50,000 or $160,000 (his stories varied) and
that before the market crashed he had sold a lot of
stocks for triple the price he had paid for them in 1928.
Lingle’s value as a Chicago Tribune reporter lay in
his friendship with both the underworld and the law.
He could get stories from the Bugs Moran North
Siders, from the Capone people and from the police. He
was especially close to Police Commissioner William P.
Russell, their friendship dating back to Russell’s days as
a patrolman. He and Lingle went to sporting events
and the theater together; they golfed together; they borrowed money from each other. Later on, people began
to speak of Lingle as “Chicago’s unofficial chief of
police.”
On June 9, 1930 Lingle left the Tribune city room
after informing his editor he was going to try to contact
Bugs Moran about a gang war story. A few minutes
later, he was seen at “the corner,” the intersection of
Randolph and Clark streets, a meeting place for gamblers, mobsters and racetrack touts. Then he headed
down Randolph to catch a train to the track. He
stopped to buy a racing form and headed through the
pedestrian street tunnel, carrying the paper under his
arm and puffing on a cigar. Suddenly, a nattily dressed
young man pushed through pedestrians and got behind
Lingle. Coolly, he took a revolver from his pocket, leveled it at the reporter’s head and pulled the trigger. Lingle pitched forward dead, still clutching the paper and
the glowing cigar.
Immediately after the murder, Lingle became a
national hero. Harry Chandler of the Los Angeles
Times, president of the American Newspaper Publishers’ Association, eulogized him as a “first line soldier,”
and Chicago newspapers and other civic groups posted
rewards totaling $55,725.
However, almost immediately upon the launching of
an investigation, Lingle’s image began to tarnish. Evidence showed that he was a fixer of enormous power
who could barter gambling and liquor-selling rights
because of his police connections. “I fix the price of beer
in this town,” he boasted. He not only knew the Moran
forces well, he had secret partnerships with some of the
local brothel keepers, shaking them down, nonetheless.
At the time of his murder, Lingle was wearing an expensive diamond belt buckle presented to him by Al
Capone. But the evidence showed he had doublecrossed Capone on various deals and had shaken down
a number of Capone’s followers. He also had promised
favors to several political leaders, presumably for handsome payoffs, and then failed to deliver.
It developed that almost anybody who was anybody
in the Chicago underworld hated Jake Lingle. When the
facts about Lingle started to emerge, the Tribune’s publisher Colonel Robert McCormick, was stunned, and
then, reacting to taunts from other papers, he editorialized, “There are weak men on other newspapers.” The
Tribune ran a 10-part series by a St. Louis reporter,
Harry T. Brundige, that named some of these errants of
the competition. There was Julius Rosenheim, a legman
for the Chicago Daily News who had been hit by gangsters a few months earlier. He had blackmailed bootleggers, brothel keepers and gamblers by threatening to
expose them in his newspaper. And there were many
others, some working closely with the North Side
Gang, others running their own rackets in league with
gangsters, still others who junketed to Miami and
Havana with Capone and so on.
McCormick had his men dig desperately into probate court records to prove that Lingle had inherited
much of the wealth he had spent so lavishly. But it
turned out that what he had inherited from his father
was not $50,000 or $160,000 but a mere $500.
Four months later the newspapers reported, almost
with relief, that police had charged one Leo V. Brothers
with the murder. A 21-year-old St. Louis labor terrorist
and gangster, Brothers previously had been arrested on
arson, bombing, robbery, and murder charges. He was
convicted on the basis of eyewitness identifications by
four persons and was sentenced to 14 years, which
most newspapers denounced as a ridiculously light sentence, insisting that powerful forces had been operating
in Brothers’ behalf. Certainly, Brothers, although penniless, had mounted a high-pressure and high-priced
defense with a staff of five legal experts. There were
even hints that Brothers was not the guilty party but
had been paid to take the fall thereby diffusing public
concern over the case. When Brothers heard the sentence, he smirked, “I can do that standing on my
head.”
As it turned out, he only had to do eight years before
his release, after which he faded into obscurity. Right
up until his death in 1951 he refused to say who had
paid for his legal defense and, indeed, who had hired
him to kill Chicago’s tainted knight of the press.
Little, Dick (1852–?) James gang outlaw
In the betrayal of Jesse James, Dick Little played
almost as important a role as the Ford brothers did.
Shortly before Jesse’s assassination, Little sent his mistress to Gov. Thomas T. Crittenden to negotiate his
536
LITTLE Joker
surrender. There is no question that the discussion
included a bargain to involve the Fords in betraying
Jesse James.
Little, whose real name was reported as Liddil or
Liddell, was born in Jackson County, Mo. in 1852. He
joined the James gang late, after the disastrous Northfield, Minn. bank raid had decimated the band’s original ranks. Following that debacle James was forced to
work with “second-raters,” such as the Fords and Little, men who felt no great devotion to him. When
Wood Hite, another member of the gang, became suspicious of the loyalty of Bob Ford and Dick Little, Little murdered him, later explaining to James that there
had been an argument about the division of the proceeds from a small robbery they had pulled together.
When Little surrendered to the law, the story made
news throughout Missouri, but it was nothing compared to the headlines a few days later when Jesse
James was shot. The James family never had any
doubts about the role Little had played in Jesse’s
assassination. At the inquest into James’ death, newspapers reported, the moment of highest drama came
when Jesse’s mother, Mrs. Zerelda Samuel, confronted
Little.
“Oh you coward, you did all this,” she was quoted
as crying. “You brought it all about. Look upon me,
you traitor. Look upon me, the broken-down mother,
and this poor wife and these children. Ah, you traitor,
better for you that you were in the cooler where my
boy is than here, looking at me. Coward, that you are,
God will swear vengeance upon you.” While listening
to this diatribe, Little covered his face with his hat.
After the James killing, Little was sent to an
Alabama prison for eight months, as much for safekeeping as anything else. In 1883 he was brought back
to Missouri to testify in the trial of Frank James, who
had since surrendered. By that time public sentiment
was so much against Gov. Crittenden, the Fords and
Little that the jury acquitted Frank James on all
counts.
A short time later, Little and Bob Ford bought a
saloon in Las Vegas, N.M. Business was bad, however,
since as one historian observed, “Even the rough frontier town objected to a Judas drawing its beer or pouring its shots of whiskey.” Bob Ford went on from there
to meet his own assassination, but Dick Little’s trail
simply disappears.
See also: THOMAS T. CRITTENDEN, CHARLES FORD,
WOOD HITE, JAMES BROTHERS.
Joan Little, a young black woman convict, was acquitted by a jury in North Carolina of charges that she had
murdered her jailer, 62-year-old Clarence T. Alligood,
on August 27, 1974.
During her trial, which attracted international attention, Little graphically described an oral sex act she said
Alligood had forced her to perform while he held an ice
pick to her face in her cell at the Beaufort County Jail.
She stated that she had been able to seize the ice pick
when the jailer’s grip loosened on it and that she had
stabbed him with it 11 times when he tried to get up
from the bunk where he had been sitting, with Little on
her knees before him. She then escaped from the jail,
where she had been serving seven to ten years for breaking and entering, and surrendered eight days later to the
state Bureau of Investigation with the stipulation that
she not be returned to Beaufort County. The prosecution
insisted she had lured the jailer into her cell and killed
him in an escape plot, but the jury of six whites and six
blacks returned a not-guilty verdict in just 78 minutes.
Sent back to serve her original sentence, Little
escaped from a prison for women in Raleigh in 1978
and fled to New York. Before being apprehended and
extradited to North Carolina she worked for the
National Council of Black Lawyers. Civil rights advocates opposed her return to North Carolina, fearing
that she would suffer mistreatment. In June 1979 Joan
Little was paroled and returned to New York to work
as a file clerk in a law firm.
Little Joker
safecracking device
Perhaps the most amazing gadget used by 19th century
bank thieves was the little joker, invented by either of
two of the most-esteemed criminals of the day, George
Bliss or George Leonidas Leslie.
According to Bliss, he designed a steel wire contraption that could be fitted inside the combination knob of
a bank safe. He related that after breaking into the
bank,
All I had to do was to take off the dial knob of a lock,
adjust the wire on the inside surface of the dial, and
replace the knob; returning later to the bank. The lock
in the meantime having been used by the bank people
to open the vault or safe, I had only to remove the
knob and examine the marks made by the wire, and I
had the combination numbers. All that remained
between me and the right combination was to figure
out the order in which the numbers were used, and that
was not difficult.
Little, Joan (1954– ) accused murderer
In a murder case that indicated the profound changes
occurring in the administration of justice in the South,
It took almost 10 years before the police and the safe
manufacturers discovered the technique and new dial
537
LITTLE Pete
knobs were designed. For many years Bliss and Leslie
engaged in a feud over who had invented the joker. The
dispute remains unresolved, neither of them having
patented the invention.
See also: SAFECRACKING.
The last one fled. Following the attempted assassination, word quickly spread that Little Pete was indestructible. In fact, he wore a coat of chain mail and
inside his hat was a curved sheet of steel fitted around
his head.
By the time he was 25, Little Pete controlled the Sum
Yop Tong, bringing it immense wealth, much at the
expense of the Sue Yop Tong, which had previously
been the major power in Chinatown. This brought
about one of San Francisco’s bloodiest tong wars, in
which Little Pete directed his forces with the genius of a
Napoleon. He is believed to have been responsible for
the death of at least 50 rival hatchet men.
Little Pete slept in a windowless room, and on each
side of his bolted door was chained a vicious dog. In
addition, a minimum of six heavily armed hatchet men
were nearby at all times. When he went out, he wore
his suit of chain mail and employed a bodyguard of
three white men, one in front, one beside him and one
bringing up the rear. The whites were symbols Little
Pete found useful. It implied to his enemies that he had
great influence with white law authorities, which
indeed he had. His payoffs to the political leaders of
San Francisco, especially to Christopher A. Buckley,
the blind political boss of the city, were said to be
enormous.
Little Pete’s end came in a moment of carelessness.
On the evening of January 23, 1897, he went to a barber shop. He had left his home hurriedly with only one
bodyguard and then sent this man to buy him a newspaper. Two hired killers, Lem Jung and Chew Tin Gop,
entered the shop as Little Pete was bending his head
under a faucet so the barber could wet his hair properly
for plaiting. Lem Jung shoved the barber aside, grabbed
Little Pete by the hair and jammed the muzzle of his
revolver down the back of the tong leader’s neck, inside
the coat of mail. He pulled the trigger five times, and
Little Pete hit the floor dead, with five bullets in his
spine. His murderers fled to Portland, Ore., where they
were greeted as great warriors, and then went back to
China to live out their lives in luxury on the blood
money they had received.
See also: TONG WARS.
Little Pete (1864–1897) tong warrior
With the possible exception of Mock Duck, the
resourceful tong warrior who dominated the West
Coast, Fung Jing Toy, or Little Pete, as the English-language press dubbed him, may have been the greatest
fighter in America’s Tong wars. Coming to the United
States at the age of five, he was raised in the tong way
of life and death. From the balcony of his San Francisco
home at Washington Street and Waverly Place, he
watched the great fight between the Suey Sings and the
Kwong Docks in 1875. He is said to have plotted then
how the tide of battle could have gone differently; at
the time he was 10.
By 1885 Fung Jing Toy was Little Pete, a man of
considerable wealth accumulated by peddling opium,
dealing in female slaves, running gambling enterprises
and filling murder contracts. He soon became the
owner of a shoe factory on Washington Street, which
gave him honest cover in the eyes of the law. Meanwhile, he had become a legend in San Francisco’s Chinatown. On contract, he once chopped down a
high-ranking member of the Suey On Tong. Immediately, the Suey Ons sent three warriors after him to
avenge the killing. They cornered him in an alley and
one swung a hatchet down on his skullcap, but
instead of Little Pete collapsing, there was just a
metallic clang. His assailants then swung at his chest
and again drew clangs rather than blood. The attackers’ puzzlement didn’t last long, for Little Pete drew
his own hatchet and quickly dispatched two of them.
Little Water Street
New York vice district
Historians generally agree that the single most notorious street in early 19th century New York was Little
Water Street, in the crime-infested Five Points section.
Many an outsider who entered Little Water Street was
never seen again, being killed and robbed and then
buried in the walls of wretched tenements or in underground passages connecting them. A more dismal thoroughfare could hardly be imagined, the filth in the
Some of the hatchet men taken into custody for the
murder of Little Pete. Even Little Pete’s coat of mail
(center) failed to prevent his assassination.
538
LIVE Oak Boys
had witnessed the murder, and O’Brien was sent to the
penitentiary, where he later died.
The Live Oakers devoted their nights to robbing and
killing. They were feared throughout the city for their
vicious forays, but most of their activities were confined to Gallatin Street and the surrounding area; in its
dives they loafed, slept and planned their crimes. They
were particularly the bane of dance house proprietors,
raiding at least one such establishment almost nightly,
either out of sheer deviltry or because they had been
hired to do so by a business rival. When the Live Oakers stormed a place brandishing the oaken clubs that
gave them their name, bartenders, customers, musicians
and bouncers quickly repaired out the rear exit and
harlots fled upstairs. They then would take apart the
establishment at their leisure, smashing furniture, gouging up the dance floor, destroying the musical instruments and, quite naturally, emptying the till and carting
off all the liquor they desired.
The only place safe from their depredations was Bill
Swan’s Fireproof Coffee-House on Levee Street. Swan
was a former member of the gang who had acquired
enough money to go into business. His resort enjoyed
the protection of the Live Oakers, partly for old time’s
sake but also because Swan always provided the gang
with free drinks.
Among the more notable members of the Live Oak
Boys, in addition to Red Bill Wilson, Bill Swan, Henry
Thompson and Jimmy O’Brien, were Jimmy’s brother
Hugh and his two sons, Matt and Hugh, Jr.; Crazy Bill
Anderson; Jack Lyons; the three Petrie brothers, Redhead, Henry and Whitehead; Yorker Duffy; Barry
Lynch; Jack Lowe; Tommy Lewis; Charley Lockerby
and his son Albert; and Billy Emerson. Most of these
were either killed, sent to prison or became drunken
derelicts.
The most ferocious of all was Charley Lockerby, a
short, powerful man who was credited with several
murders. He was mortally wounded in a gun duel with
a saloon keeper named Keppler, whom he killed. Doctors at Charity Hospital marveled over how long
Lockerby lasted despite his fatal head wound. Hugh
O’Brien was killed after robbing a fisherman of a rowboat and setting out on the Mississippi with the
whiskey-besotted idea of becoming a pirate.
In a way, the lucky ones were those of the gang who
were killed or imprisoned. With the passage of years
the others turned into derelicts. While in earlier days
there was no record of the New Orleans police standing
up in combat to the Live Oakers, that changed as the
gang members aged and turned helpless. In 1886 the
New Orleans Picayune made the following comment
about Crazy Bill Anderson, who generally was arrested
for drunkenness 10 or 12 times a month:
street generally reached shoe-top depth. On Little
Water Street one found houses with such sinister names
as Gates of Hell and Brick-Bat Mansion. In his description of the Five Points, Charles Dickens wrote of
“hideous tenements which take their names from robbery and murder.”
A mid-19th-century book, Hot Corn, by an anonymous author takes the reader on a tour of Little Water
Street, advising one to
saturate your handkerchief with camphor, so that you
can endure the horrid stench, and enter. Grope your
way through the long, narrow passage—turn to the
right, up the dark and dangerous stairs; be careful
where you place your foot around the lower step, or in
the corners of the broad stairs, for it is more than shoemouth deep of steaming filth. Be careful, too, or you
may meet someone, perhaps a man, perhaps a woman,
who in their drunken frenzy may thrust you, for the
very hatred of your better clothes, or the fear that you
have come to rescue them from their crazy loved dens
of death, down, headlong down, those filthy stairs.
Here, one would find as many as four or five couples
living in a single, squalid room, wearing, eating, drinking nothing that most of them did not steal.
Live Oak Boys
New Orleans gang
Probably the outstanding example of the mindlessly
brutal criminal organizations that plagued America’s
big cities during the mid-19th century was the Live Oak
Boys of New Orleans. Lasting about a generation, most
of them met a bitter fate.
Formed about 1858 by Red Bill Wilson, a vicious
thug who always concealed a knife in his bushy red
beard, the Live Oakers were not a gang in the usual
sense of the word. There was no recognized leader, no
regular organization and no division of loot. They often
committed crimes on the spur of the moment, allying
themselves with whatever other Live Oakers happened
to be handy, and each kept what he stole. Sometimes
they even stole from one another. In 1867 this
unwholesome trait cost the gang two of its most-noted
brutes.
Live Oaker Henry Thompson had been asleep at the
shipyard the gang utilized as a rendezvous (the shipyard
owner had long since desisted from trying to evict them
because of their threat to burn the place down) when he
awoke to find fellow Live Oaker Jimmy O’Brien, with
whom he had tied on a drunk the night before, searching his pockets. Thompson started struggling, whereupon O’Brien jammed a knife into his heart and
continued the search, being rewarded with a few coins.
Unfortunately for the latter, a black and a small boy
539
LOANSHARKING
Now he is handled without gloves by the police,
and is kicked and cuffed about like any other common
drunkard. Yet, there was a day . . . when the police
really feared to approach him with hostile intentions,
and it usually occupied all the time, strength and attention of four able-bodied policemen.
By the late 1880s it was common for the young
toughs of the city to seek out old Live Oakers to beat
and torture. In time, only Bill Swan, the entrepreneur of
the bunch, remained of a gang known as the terror of
New Orleans for almost three decades.
See also: GALLATIN STREET, GREEN TREE DANCE HOUSE.
ing an advantageous labor contract through its connections with corrupt union officials.
At times, the gangsters may decide to simply loot a
company, an operation perfected under the aegis of a
cunning Mafia operator named Joseph Pagano. In the
1950s a large meat wholesaler got into financial trouble
and had to borrow mob money. In time, he was forced
to accept Pagano as the firm’s new president “to safeguard the loan.” Pagano’s people bought up a huge
amount of poultry and meat on credit and then resold it
at cut-rate prices, collecting $ 1.3 million. Having
milked the company and its suppliers the mob simply
ordered the firm to go into bankruptcy.
loansharking
lockstep surveillance
After gambling, loansharking is probably the most
profitable activity of the Mafia today. Known in the
underworld as shylocking or six for five, the loanshark
racket generally nets its operators 20 percent profit—
per week. For every $5 borrowed the amount that must
be repaid the following week is $6, or $1 if the borrower wishes just to pay the interest and not retire the
principal. The standard short-term Mafia loan is for six
weeks, which means the borrower must pay back a
total of $11 dollars for each $5 borrowed: 120 percent
interest for 42 days. Generally, the borrower must have
permission to extend the payment date of the loan. One
investigation in New York found that some syndicate
loans brought back as much as 3,000 percent interest.
Naturally with such profit margins, some loan sharks
have been tempted to reduce their rates to stimulate
business. In Dallas, Tex. in 1938 a loan shark was
found to be making loans to destitute customers for
only 585 percent annually. One man borrowed $20 to
pay a medical bill and was charged $2.25 in weekly
interest. Nine years later, he had paid a total of $1,053
and still owed the original $20.
While the Mafia first viewed loansharking as a way
to victimize the poor or gamblers having a bad run of
luck at a dice game, they soon discovered that it was
easy to find potential victims among businessmen. A
neighborhood store owner with his bank credit overextended and in need of quick cash often had no choice
but to deal with a loan shark. Today, however, the
Mafia’s thrust is to use the racket to gain a foothold in
legitimate businesses. A garment manufacturer may
guess wrong on the season’s line, a home builder is
caught in a credit squeeze, a Wall Street securities house
is hit in a sudden shift in market prices—the short-term
solution is offered by the mob; in return, a piece of the
business is demanded. Once the Mafia has an investment in a legitimate company, it protects it to the limit,
perhaps terrorizing the competition or at least obtain-
Although illegal, lockstep surveillance, or rough shadowing, as it is sometimes called, is a form of harassment frequently practiced against important members
of organized crime.
One of the most famous recent incidents of this
harassment involved the late boss of the Chicago mob
Sam Giancana. Since the old days Giancana had been
known as Mooney, which meant he at times acted
erratically. Hoping to make him lose his control and
commit mistakes, FBI agents subjected Giancana to a
24-hour “rough.”
Everywhere Giancana went he was followed. FBI
cars were constantly parked outside his house, even
when his daughters were having girl friends over to
visit. There were times on the golf course when as many
as six FBI agents watched him putt and often deliberately tried to upset his game with caustic remarks. In
one effort to shake off his followers, the crime boss
slipped into a church. The FBI men followed and verbally abused him when he exhibited rustiness on what
to do during the services, taking his cues on when to
stand, sit and kneel from his neighbors. The agents
would whisper to him: “Kneel, asshole. . . . Sit down,
asshole.”
In desperation, Giancana took the FBI to court to
force them to stop lockstepping him. Amazingly, he
won, and the FBI was enjoined from practicing the
technique. The decision, however, was later vacated for
technical reasons, and lockstepping continues today.
Important gang figures do not generally go to court to
challenge the treatment because they will be required to
testify that none of their activities warrants police surveillance. Having so testified, they can be cross-examined on their activities and alleged criminal acts, thus
opening the door to a possible perjury conviction.
The courts are more inclined to protect a private citizen from any form of rough shadowing and have often
upheld complaints of this type. Still, such cases do occur.
540
harassment technique
LONERGAN, Wayne
200,000 Italians, whose rise in prestige and importance
is one of the modern miracles of a great city.
No people have achieved so much from such
small beginnings, or given so much for what they
received in the land of promise to which many of them
came penniless. Each life story is a romance, an epic of
human accomplishment.
Antonio Lombardo is one of the most outstanding of these modern conquerors. . . . He was one of
hundreds who cheered joyously, when, from the deck
of the steamer, they saw the Statue of Liberty, and the
skyline of New York, their first sight of the fabled land,
America. With his fellow countrymen he suffered the
hardships and indignities to which the United States
subjects its prospective citizens at Ellis Island without
complaint, for in his heart was a great hope and a great
ambition.
Mr. Lombardo . . . accepted the hardships as
part of the game, and with confidence in his own ability
and assurance of unlimited opportunities, began his
career. . . .”
One classic example involved the late author Iles Brody,
whom private detectives jostled in crowds and awakened
with mysterious midnight phone calls. They had been
hired to do so by rich friends of the Duke and Duchess of
Windsor in an attempt to prevent the publication of
Brody’s gossipy book Gone With the Windsors.
Logan, Harvey
See KID CURRY.
Lohman, Ann Trow
See MADAME RESTELL.
Lombardo, Antonio “The Scourge” (1892–1928)
Capone aide
Part of Al Capone’s success as a crime boss rested on his
ability to obtain advice and support from men more
brilliant and cunning than himself. Antonio “The
Scourge” Lombardo, an urbane, levelheaded Sicilian
who had prospered in Chicago as a wholesale grocer,
was a typical example. Capone followed much of Lombardo’s advice following the departure of Johnny Torrio, his original mentor, and eventually made the
Scourge his consigliere. Lombardo played a key role in
arranging a famed peace conference that led to a brief
period of tranquility in the Chicago underworld. He
counseled Capone to seek accommodation with the
North Siders, a predominantly Irish gang, even after the
murder of their leader, the celebrated Dion O’Banion,
by Capone gunners. To bring about peace between the
two mobs, Lombardo told the North Siders he would
arrange to have O’Banion’s killers, the murderous team
of Albert Anselmi and John Scalise, turned over to them.
But Capone rejected this deal, declaring “I wouldn’t do
that to a yellow dog.” The everplotting Lombardo
promptly turned this rare show of mercy into a propaganda coup, declaring it proved that “Big Al’s the best
buddy any of his boys could ever hope to have.”
Still, overall, Capone followed Lombardo’s advice
and even picked up his practice of using court tasters;
Lombardo was so fearful of being fed poison in his
food that he always insisted on having an underling
sample his meals before he ate them. In 1925 Capone
rewarded Lombardo for his faithful service by making
him, through gangland muscle, president of Chicago’s
huge branch of the Unione Siciliane. Despite his close
ties to Capone and the fact that he had ordered many a
man’s death, Lombardo received rather fine press. In
honor of his appointment, he issued a glowing testimonial to himself:
Such glowing testimony did not prevent Lombardo
from falling victim in the vicious battle between
Capone’s followers and enemies for control of the criminal-dominated fraternal organization. On September
7, 1928 Lombardo was gunned down on Madison
Street in the midst of a dense crowd of shoppers and
office workers, two dum-dum bullets ripping away half
his head. If it was any comfort to Lombardo, Capone
saw that the Aiello mob, “the dirty rats who did the
job,” paid for it.
Lonely Hearts Murders
See MARTHA BECK.
Lonergan, Wayne (1916– ) murderer
In one of New York City’s most sensational murder
cases, Patricia Burton Lonergan, a 22-year-old heiress
to a $7 million brewery fortune, was murdered in her
bedroom on October 24, 1943. She had been strangled, bludgeoned by a pair of antique candlesticks and
left naked on her bed.
Two months earlier, her husband had departed for
his native Canada to join the Royal Canadian Air
Force. However, it was discovered that he had been
staying in a friend’s apartment in New York City on the
weekend of the murder. He was traced back to
Toronto, arrested and returned to New York. At first,
Lonergan, a bisexual, insisted he had spent the time in
New York hunting for soldiers, but after 84 hours of
interrogation he supposedly confessed that he had gone
Chicago owes much of its progress and its hope of
future greatness to the intelligence and industry of its
541
LONG, Huey
to Patricia’s apartment and, after a quarrel, killed her,
throwing his bloodstained uniform into the East River.
His confession received a terrific play in the press, in
part because of the concurrent admission that he had
taken part in sex orgies and the fact that he had been
the acknowledged lover of Patricia’s father prior to
their wedding. At one point Lonergan claimed to have
killed his wife in self-defense during a fight.
The case against Lonergan was not the tightest on
record. The police had neglected or failed to get Lonergan to sign his so-called confession. Moreover, there was
no conclusive proof to show that he had visited the
apartment or handled the candlesticks. Some legal
observers felt he was convicted as much because of bisexuality as because of the evidence. The jury found him
guilty of second-degree murder and he was sentenced to
35 years to life. After doing 21 years in Sing Sing, Lonergan was paroled in 1965 and deported to Canada.
FPO
FIG #104
TO BE
PICKED-UP
FROM
PREVIOUS
ED.
Long, Huey (1893–1935) assassination victim
The powerful Kingfish of Louisiana politics, first as
governor and then as a U.S. senator, flamboyant Huey
P. Long was shot to death in 1935. At the time, he was
among the most-beloved and most-hated men in the
state and nation. His supporters called him “the one
friend the poor has,” while his foes considered him a
“demagogue,” a “madman” and the “destroyer of constitutional government.” One group that was solidly in
Huey’s camp was the underworld, with whom he could
always reach accommodation. When New York City
Mayor Fiorello La Guardia started busting up the syndicate’s slot machines, Long told Frank Costello, in
effect, to bring his business down. The underworld
shipped in one-armed bandits by the thousands, making New Orleans the illegal slot machine center of the
country. The payoffs supposedly contributed the grease
that kept the Long machine running.
On September 8, 1935, Long, although a U.S. senator at the time, was attending a special session of the
Louisiana House of Representatives in Baton Rouge.
As he walked down one of the capitol corridors with
five bodyguards in attendance, a 29-year-old man, Carl
Weiss, who was considered a brilliant medical doctor,
stepped from behind a pillar and shot Long with a .32
caliber automatic. The Kingfish screamed and clutched
his side as he ran down the hall. His bodyguards
knocked Weiss to the floor, shooting him twice. As he
struggled, a fusillade of 61 shots turned his white linen
suit red with blood.
Weiss died on the spot. Long lived about 30 hours,
as doctors vainly struggled to save his life. Weiss’ exact
motive for killing was never learned, other than that he
and his family had long hated the Kingfish. However,
An artist’s conception of the assassination of the
Kingfish
there was another version of the assassination: Weiss
had not killed Long at all.
There were two variations of this theory. According
to one of them, a cut on Long’s lip had come from a
punch in the mouth Weiss had given him. The enraged
bodyguards, so the story goes, pulled their guns and
started shooting wildly, and one of their shots fatally
wounded the Kingfish. After killing Weiss, they took
his gun and fired it. Since the bullet that killed Long
passed right through his body, it was impossible to tell
which of the many discharged bullets was the fatal one.
In the other variation, Weiss had intended to kill Long
but was gunned down before he could get off a shot. In
either case the consensus was that Long’s aides and
bodyguards had put the blame on Weiss to protect
themselves.
Long was buried on the landscaped grounds of the
capitol he had built. A novel based on his career, All the
King’s Men, won the Pulitzer Prize, and the movie version won an Academy Award in 1939.
Further reading: The Day Huey Long Was Shot by
David Zinman and The Huey Long Murder Case by
Hermann B. Deutsch.
542
LONGLEY, William P.
Long, Steve (?–1868) lawman and thief
A man with an obscure past, six-foot six-inch Big Steve
Long drifted into Laramie, Wyo. in 1867. Having the
reputation of a gunman, Long rather quickly was made
a deputy marshal. He soon became known as one of the
bloodiest lawmen in Wyoming history, killing eight
men in a two-month period. On October 22, 1867
four boisterous cowboys decided to roust four greenhorn Easterners. Although they had no guns, the newcomers were not cowed by their foes, wading into them
with fists flying. Long arrived on the scene and
demanded a halt to the action. When the participants
ignored him, he drew his two .44s and began pumping
shots into the battling horde. When the smoke cleared,
two cowboys and three of the newcomers lay mortally
wounded.
Despite all of Deputy Marshal Long’s firepower,
Laramie remained a lawless place, and local vigilantes
had to take over some of the more important functions
of the law, which Long seemed unable to manage. The
reason for his inefficiency became evident the following
year when it was discovered that the deputy marshal
was moonlighting as a highwayman. In October 1868
Long was wounded by a prospector he tried to waylay.
He made it back to town and had his wounds treated
by his fiancee, a young lady proud of having a law officer for her future husband. When she discovered the
cause of his wound, however, she immediately
informed the vigilantes and the following day Long was
hanged from a telegraph pole. Apparently retaining
some fondness for him, she erected a marker to his
rather tarnished memory.
Longbaugh, Harry
The life story of Bill Longley became a best-seller in
Texas.
See SUNDANCE KID.
Wyoming. Almost everywhere he went he managed to
shoot someone.
Although a much-hunted man, Longley slipped
back into Texas in 1875 and murdered Wilson Anderson of Evergreen, who, Longley was convinced, had
shot a cousin of his. He managed to elude capture for
more than two years but was finally apprehended in
1877 and taken to Giddings, Tex., where he was convicted and sentenced to death. While the decision was
being appealed, Longley wrote an angry letter to the
governor demanding to know why Wes Hardin was
sent to prison for “only twenty-five years” for his
many murders while he, Longley, was doomed to the
gallows. The governor did not respond. The night
before he was hanged, Longley told a guard about
many of his killings. “He said that he didn’t regret
killing but one man,” the guard later reported. “They
were in camp together and Bill said it seemed like the
Longley, William P. (1851–1877) gunfighter and
murderer
Among Western gunfighters, William “Wild Bill” Longley probably stands second only to another Texas killer,
Wes Hardin, in total “notches.” Hardin had an estimated 40 and Longley, by his own admission, had 32.
Like Hardin, Longley had a pathological hatred for
blacks, Yankees and carpetbagging lawmen. At the age
of 15, he killed his first victim, a black state policeman
who had asked Bill in an “arrogant manner” to identify
himself. After that, he gunned down another black lawman and a Yankee sergeant. Then he rode with Cullen
Baker’s so-called Confederate Irregulars, who were
really just a bunch of farm looters. After a year Wild
Bill left the gang and headed west, traveling from the
Rio Grande to the Black Hills and out as far as
543
LOOMIS gang
feller was watching him. He said he had had a hard
day and he was sleepy, but he wasn’t going to sleep
with the feller watching him. Well, he said, that kept
up until midnight, when he got plumb tuckered out, so
he got up and shot the feller in the head and went to
sleep. The next day he found out that the feller was on
the dodge just like him, so he always felt sorry about
killing him.”
Longley was his cool, dapper self mounting the gallows. He surveyed the crowd of 4,000 and said, “I see a
good many enemies around, and mighty few friends.”
After the execution a number of the witnesses found
amusement in the observation that Longley’s head
could be rotated until his billy-goat beard rested
between his shoulder blades.
See also: CULLEN M. BAKER.
Loomis gang
could strike out on criminal raids, terrorizing communities, murdering, burning and robbing. As a sideline
the family masterminded the distribution of counterfeit
money. To their banner the Loomis brothers and sisters
recruited a strong band of escaped fugitives and runaway slaves and ran massive sheep-, cattle- and horsestealing operations.
In 1857 a large posse of citizens enraged by the
gang’s ever-growing operation, bore down on the
Loomis farmhouse and seized most of the family. Huge
quantities of stolen goods were found behind trapdoors
and in sealed-off rooms. More than a dozen sleighs
were needed to haul off the evidence to Waterville,
where members were arraigned on larceny charges.
Those Loomis brothers who had not been apprehended
led the gang in a night raid on the courthouse to burn
the records and resteal much of the evidence. Some witnesses against the Loomis brothers disappeared and
were not released until the arrested members of the
family were freed, there no longer being any case
against them.
When Grove Loomis was grabbed a short time later
for running the gang’s counterfeit money distribution
network, newspapers in Utica reported that the local
district attorney carried the evidence on him rather
than leave it unguarded in his office. So the gang simply
kidnapped him, took the evidence and beat him
severely. Without the evidence, Grove had to be
released.
In 1858 the gang’s first important nemesis appeared.
He was James L. Filkins, a blacksmith who had been
elected constable of the town of Brookfield. More than
anyone else, he was responsible for destroying what
had become one of the most powerful gangs in the
nation. Even when his fellow citizens wouldn’t back
him up, he tackled the gang alone, more than once
using his fists to subdue a Loomis.
At first, the Loomis gang regarded Filkins as little
more than a nuisance, even though he constantly raided
their farmhouse. They were too busy running a massive
horse-stealing venture, especially when the price of
horses escalated with the outbreak of the Civil War.
The gang shipped hundreds of horses, suitably disguised, to markets in Albany, Scranton, Pa. and various
places in Canada, where they commanded top prices.
To dispose of their other loot, they ran “thief boats”
along the Erie Canal and down the Hudson River to
New York City, where such famous fences as the notorious Marm Mandelbaum handled their resale.
When another mass trial for several members of the
gang was scheduled in the North Brookfield Courthouse, the Loomis clan fell back on “smoking” to solve
the problem. The courthouse was set afire and the fire
hoses cut. The evidence burned, and once more, several
criminal family
For the better part of the 19th century, crime in upper
New York state, especially in the Mohawk and
Chenango valleys, was dominated by a sinister family
gang, the large Loomis brood. Indeed, had Richard L.
Dugsdale focused on the Loomis clan rather than the
largely fanciful Juke family in his controversial theory
that immoral behavior could be passed on genetically
from one generation to the next, his detractors probably would have had a much tougher time demolishing
his position.
The Loomis family’s roots in the area were planted
by George Washington Loomis, Sr., who was forced out
of Vermont in 1802 by a posse cleansing the area of
horse thieves. In 1812, just before he went off to war,
Loomis married Rhoda Marie Mallett, a young schoolteacher. Rhoda’s father was an illicit distiller and forger,
so that both sides of the Loomis family contributed to
its later criminal tendencies. Rhoda mothered 12 children and served as the female Fagin for her brood. As
her devoted son, Washington Jr. (born 1813), better
known as “Wash,” lovingly said, she approved of the
children “stealing little things—and as long as we were
not caught it was all right. If we got caught we got
licked.”
By the 1840s Wash was the leader of a great crime
family, giving orders to brothers Grove, Bill, Wheller,
Denio and Plumb and sister Cornelia. Three other sisters engaged in minor criminality, such as luring
strangers into traps where they would be waylaid and
robbed, but Cornelia was a true hellion who could
ride and jump horses and shoot as well as any of her
brothers.
The headquarters for the family’s illegal enterprises
was the miasmal Nine-Mile Swamp, from which no
posse was ever able to dislodge them. From here, they
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LOS Angeles Times bombing
Loomis boys and their followers walked away free.
Afterward, another set of indictments and evidence on
still other charges were kept in a safe in the town clerk’s
office in Morrisville. It was burglarized and the papers
burned right in the town clerk’s own potbellied stove.
By 1865 Constable Filkins decided extralegal means
were needed to destroy the gang. He organized a vigilante committee and they descended on the Loomis
farmhouse. A hand-to-hand battle ensued, and Wash
Loomis was literally stomped to death. The vigilantes
thought they’d also killed Plumb and tossed his body
on a fire outside the house as they left. Ma Loomis
pulled Plumb from the flames, and although he was
badly seared, he survived. Denio and Plumb took
charge of the gang and it was soon operating as ruthlessly and efficiently as it had under Wash. In 1867 the
vigilantes staged another raid. This time, they hung
Plumb and Grove by their hands over a fire until they
confessed their crimes. The vigilantes then rousted the
women from the Loomis house and burned it to the
ground. In the ensuing confusion, Grove slipped away
while Plumb was taken off to a jail.
In 1870 Grove Loomis died, but the gang, led by
Denio continued operating into the 1880s, when both
Denio and Plumb died. Cornelia took charge of the gang
then, masterminding its still vast operations, especially
horse and sheep stealing. She died in 1897 and a few
months later the gang’s great foe, Constable Filkins, also
passed away. It didn’t matter; the Loomis gang was just
about finished. By 1911 the last of the minor Loomises
disappeared from the valley, 99 years after George
Washington Loomis, Sr., started raising his brood.
soon turned the structure into an inferno. Printers,
clerks, reporters, editors, typesetters, old scrubwomen,
young copy boys—21 in all—died, and at least an equal
number suffered permanent injuries.
An enraged city demanded a solution to the crime.
Mayor George B. Alexander brought in the famed private detective, William J. Burns, to aid in the investigation. Eventually, although under attack by some
officials, union leaders, rival newspapers and others,
Burns solved the case through clues found in other
bombs delivered to Otis’ home and the home of the secretary of the Merchants and Manufacturers Association. He arrested Ortie McManigal, an Indianapolis
resident, James B. McNamara; and his brother John J.
McNamara, secretary-treasurer of the International
Union of Bridge and Structural Iron Workers. In addition, two anarchists named David Caplan and Matt A.
Schmidt were not caught until 1915. Burns struck a
deal with McManigal under which he would testify
against the McNamara brothers.
The arrest of the McNamaras mobilized organized
labor against what they considered to be an outrageous antilabor plot. American Federation of Labor
President Samuel Gompers hired Clarence Darrow,
fresh from successes defending Eugene Debs of the
Railroad Brotherhoods and Big Bill Haywood of the
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), to conduct
the brothers’ defense. Darrow proceeded to call the
McNamaras “pawns in a vast industrial war,” victims
of a “capitalistic conspiracy.” He said the great frameup was being financed by “the steel trust with its
gold.” The labor unions even utilized what was at the
time still a novelty, the motion picture, and produced
a movie about the McNamaras and their plight. Buttons were sold proclaiming, “THE McNAMARAS
ARE INNOCENT.” There were torchlight parades
and rallies.
Burns countered by saying, “If Mr. Gompers will
just sit down with me, at his convenience, I am certain I
can convince him this is strictly a criminal case and
does not concern organized labor. If need be, I will even
show him evidence that cannot be made public as yet.”
Gompers spurned the offer, reminding reporters that
private detectives had often planted evidence and
bought false confessions in the past to discredit unions.
Nevertheless, by the time the trial opened, Darrow realized the McNamaras were guilty and sure to be convicted. His options were to fight a hopeless case in
order to protect the union movement or to plead the
defendants guilty in the hope of saving their lives. He
chose the second course, which had a devastating effect
on the Western labor movement. Gompers considered
Darrow a traitor, and most of the country was numbed
with shock.
Los Angeles Times bombing
In 1910 few cities in the United States had a more
firmly antilabor climate than Los Angeles, Calif. One
reason for this was the labor-baiting views of Harrison
Gray Otis and his Los Angeles Times. Otis was the
prime mover behind the Merchants and Manufacturers
Association, which was violently opposed to labor
unions and the closed shop and proudly proclaimed,
“We employ no union men.”
It was an era when many segments of the labor
movement believed that the only answer to such intransigence was bombs and dynamite. For protection, Otis
strapped a small cannon to his car’s running board.
On the morning of October 1, 1910, the Times was
hit by an explosion. The entire south wall of the Broadway Street side of the building crumbled, and the second floor collapsed under the weight of linotype
machines and crashed down on office workers below.
The first floor then smashed into the basement, shattering the building’s gas mains and heating plant. Flames
545
LOVEJOY, Elijah
James McNamara got life (as did Caplan and
Schmidt after they were apprehended), but John J.
McNamara got 15 years because he could not be linked
directly to the Los Angeles bombings. Having won their
case against union violence, the Otis forces then
decided to try to eliminate Darrow’s future service as a
labor defender. He was charged with attempting to
bribe a juror.
Darrow was alone, having lost his support from the
unions, indeed not having received even his $50,000
fee in the case. However, following a trial that lasted
several months, thanks to a prosecution strategy to
stretch out the time in order to drain Darrow’s dwindling finances, the master of the courtroom was
acquitted after making a moving summation, lasting a
day and a half, in his own defense. Undaunted, the
prosecution simply indicted him for the attempted
bribery of a second juror. This case ended in a mistrial
when the jury failed to reach a verdict. The state had
no interest in attempting to prosecute Darrow yet
another time and settled for an agreement whereby
Darrow promised never to practice law in California
again.
Some historians consider the case Otis’ greatest triumph. Although Darrow was to win many a great legal
battle thereafter, he never defended another union man.
See also: WILLIAM J. BURNS, CLARENCE DARROW.
to establish the myth that triumph belonged to the man
who fired slowly and last.
The gunfight was the culmination of a long-standing
feud over a woman between the gambler and Levi
Richardson, a hard case reputed to have killed three
men. On April 5, 1879 words turned to lead at Dodge
City’s Long Branch Saloon. Richardson, being the
much faster draw, started firing first, fanning his pistol
as the pair waltzed around a gaming table and a stove.
With the men so close together that their pistols almost
touched—Richardson got off some five shots but,
except for one shot that scratched his opponent’s hand,
did no more than hit the wall.
There is some confusion about Loving’s shooting,
but apparently, his first three shots also hit nothing but
wall. Finally, at a distance of no more than a couple of
feet, he found the mark with three shots, and Richardson dropped, fatally wounded. Loving hung around
Colorado bars for the next three years, telling of his
exploit and expounding his theory that a “cool head”
will always prevail in a gunfight. In April 1882 in
Trinidad, Colo. he met up with a former lawman
named Jack Allen. In one duel the pair exchanged 16
shots and every one missed. When they met again the
next day Allen shot first and more accurately and
Cockeyed Frank fell dead, although he lives on today as
the epitome of the great Western duelists.
See also: GUNFIGHTING.
Lovejoy, Elijah (1802–1837) abolitionist and murder victim
Lowe, Joseph “Rowdy Joe” (1846?–1899) gunfighter
and brothel keeper
Few murder victims have ever encountered the merciless hatred reserved for abolitionists by proslavers who
felt their way of life threatened.
Typical was the fate of abolitionist Rev. Elijah P.
Lovejoy, who was lynched by a proslavery mob in
Alton, Ill. on November 7, 1837. As editor of the
Alton Observer, Rev. Lovejoy had written, “Abolitionists, therefore, hold American slavery to be a wrong, a
legalized system of inconceivable injustice, and a SIN
. . . against God.”
A “posse” upholding “law and order” broke into
the newspaper’s office, seized the printing press and
threw it into the river, set the building aflame and shot
Lovejoy. The next day the posse returned for Lovejoy’s
mutilated corpse and dragged it through the streets to
the cheers of crowds of proslavers. In the final analysis,
Lovejoy’s martyrdom advanced the abolitionist cause.
Rowdy Joe Lowe was a tough and mean gunman,
brothel and saloon keeper and gambler. As a procurer,
he could well be described as the Lucky Luciano of the
Plains. He and his wife, known as Rowdy Kate, ran
what was described as the vilest dive in the cow camps.
While Kate reputedly gave an occasional stray girl
money to go back home in order to escape a life of
shame, Rowdy Joe could never be accused of such softheartedness.
Little is known of Lowe’s early life except that he
was probably born in Illinois in 1846. Various historical accounts place him in Quantrill’s guerrillas during
the Civil War and in the Texas Rangers in 1866. There
are doubts about these stories but none that Lowe
deserved his nickname of Rowdy. Once in a saloon battle between Lowe and another man, the local lawmen
intervened and demanded the two apologize to one
another. Lowe told his opponent: “Come here. I want
to kiss and make up.” He promptly bit off the end of
the man’s nose.
In 1869 Lowe was run out of Ellsworth, Kan.
where he had been operating a combination saloon
Loving, Cockeyed Frank (1854–1882) gambler and
gunfighter
A cockeyed gambler who worked the Colorado circuit,
Frank Loving went down in history as the victor in one
of the West’s most famous gun duels, one that went far
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LUCAS, Henry Lee
and brothel, on suspicion that he had donned a mask
and held up customers after they left the dive. Two
years later, Lowe and his wife opened a wicked dive in
Newton, Kan. Killings and shootings were frequent
there, and in 1872 Rowdy Joe shot and killed Jim
Sweet, who had been paying too much attention to
Rowdy Kate. The Lowes then moved on to Delano,
Kan. and opened another establishment. Among the
new admirers of Rowdy Kate, there was another
saloon keeper named E. T. “Red” Beard, whom Lowe
killed in a 50-shot duel, thus wiping out in one swoop
a romantic and business rival. Because of confused
and contradictory testimony about what had happened, Lowe was acquitted of the murder but lesser
charges were then brought against him. The Lowes
got out of town fast. After that, they plied their trade
in bad whiskey, bad women and crooked cards in such
places as Fort Worth and Fort Griffin, Tex. Dodge
City, Kan., Tombstone, Ariz., and several boom camps
that sprang up and later disappeared when the veins
ran dry.
In the early 1880s Lowe was reported killed several
times, once while robbing a train, once by outlaws, and
once by scalp-taking Indians. All these reports were
erroneous. He turned up in Kansas in the 1880s to help
Luke Short and Wyatt Earp make their play during the
Dodge City War. Lowe finally came to a much-deserved
violent end in 1899, when E. A. Kimmel, an ex-policeman, shot him in a Denver saloon over an old grudge.
It is part of Western folklore that after Rowdy Kate
buried her husband, she moved on to San Francisco,
married a millionaire railroad tycoon and became an
honored member of Nob Hill society.
Lucas, Henry Lee (1936–
killings
Walsh in 1981. His confessions were at first embraced
by law officials, with the obligatory declaration that
Toole had offered details no one else could have. But
within a few weeks, all charges against Toole were
dropped, an obvious indication that Toole had become
regarded as a “full mooner.”
In the meantime, Lucas, being held on a weapons
charge and suspicion of murder, went Toole many times
better. With incredible perversity he started making confession after confession. He said he personally knocked
off 69 men and women and with the aid of Toole some
20 or so others. In later statements to Texas Rangers
Lucas kept raising the total as though it was some sort
of macabre auction. The law wanted details, Lucas gave
them hair-raising details. He said he engaged in mass
torture and willy-nilly slaughters all around, and
claimed he crucified some unfortunate victims and “filleted” others. Lucas boasted, “If I wanted a victim, I’d
just go get one. I had nothing but pure hatred.”
Law agencies around the country were overjoyed
and started “clearing the books” on grisly crimes by the
score. It seemed Lucas had made it a habit to travel
about visiting murder scenes and the like and later
picked up vibes when the reaction of police indicated
he was around the area when a corpse had been found.
Ever-obliging, Lucas pleaded guilty to killing an 80year-old woman in a robbery in Texas and he was sentenced to 75 years.
When Toole recanted his killing of Adam Walsh, the
law continued its acceptance of Lucas’ claims. In late
1983 police from 19 states decided his confessions had
solved 210 slayings. Later it was estimated Lucas’ death
toll was definitely at least 100. Of course, during that
time Lucas just kept confessing more and more murders. Would they like 250 . . . 300 . . . 400? Soon
Lucas topped the 500 mark and then he said he was
responsible for at least 600 murders—and worldwide
at that, including Spain and Japan. And, oh yes, he had
delivered poison to the People’s Temple cultists in
Guyana.
Then reporter Hugh Aynesworth wrote a series of
articles in the Dallas Times-Herald blasting Lucas’ confessions as “a massive hoax.” Previously, it would be
fair to say Aynesworth had been a believer, having
signed a book contract to write Lucas’ biography in
1984. In February 1985 Aynesworth did an interview
in Penthouse magazine. Later Lucas got around to
denying the killings and had supplied alibis that
Aynesworth could check that indicated Lucas was
clearly elsewhere at the time.
Predictably, Lucas then recanted his recantations,
claiming he had been drugged and forced to lie.
While there were police agencies still clinging to
Lucas’ confessions, most observers had had enough,
) Baron Munchhausen of serial
In the 1980s the American public and media were in a
frenzy over serial killings due to the increasingly brutal
confessions of a weak-minded drifter named Henry Lee
Lucas. Born to dysfunctional parents in 1936 and subjected to considerable family abuse, Lucas led an early
life of lawbreaking spent in prisons and mental institutions. Upon his latest release in 1975 Lucas roamed the
country carrying out robberies and the like and, at least
according to his later claims, wholesale murders.
In 1980 Lucas hooked up with another drifter
named Ottis Toole and the pair went around the nation
on a robbery and burglary spree. Each told the other of
the weird murders they had allegedly committed. In retrospect the claims seemed to be a sort of bizarre oneupmanship.
In 1983, Toole created a nationwide sensation when
he confessed to the kidnap-murder of six-year-old Adam
547
LUCAS, James
and his statements had taken on a comic quality
unworthy of much newspaper space.
In an interesting climax to the Lucas saga, he was
sentenced to be executed for one murder in Texas.
However, in that generally unforgiving state, the sentence of weak-minded Henry Lee Lucas was reduced to
life imprisonment, indicating some further possible
uneasiness about him.
Perhaps more significantly it is obvious that the murders had indeed occurred (except for some people
Lucas said he had killed who turned out to be alive)
and, if Lucas hadn’t done them, a legion of murderers
had got away with their crimes.
Overall, it could be said that the Lucas saga had
been ghoulish fun while it lasted.
See also: ADAM WALSH.
Prison Rebellion of 1946. After the revolt was
squelched, he was returned to solitary. Lucas was
treated mildly better, although he too did long stretches
in solitary and following the trio’s escape attempt was
subjected to what was called “the worst grilling in
Rock history” to try to make him reveal who else had
been involved. Although his reputation had been tarnished badly in the prisoners’ eyes because he had given
up without a fight, Lucas won back their esteem when
he refused to talk.
Subsequently, Lucas and Franklin became nonpersons in the federal penal system. In addition, Franklin
was to become the most ill-treated prisoner on the
Rock, even more so than the Birdman of Alcatraz,
Robert Stroud. However, Stroud, who had also killed a
federal prison guard, was too famous to be turned into
a nonperson. Both Lucas and Franklin are probably
dead. It is doubtful if either was ever paroled. In 1977,
in response to queries by author Clark Howard, the
U.S. Bureau of Prisons simply stated that neither man
was at the time incarcerated within the federal system.
If by some chance Lucas was free, the bureau was not
about to admit it.
See also: RUFUS “WHITEY” FRANKLIN.
Lucas, James (1908–?) bank robber and murderer
Jimmy Lucas, once described as “the most vicious slugger on the Rock,” typified the “new social order” that
developed in Alcatraz after it was set up as a superprison for supercriminals. Famous criminals, such as Al
Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, Alvin Karpis, became
minor characters while toughs such as Lucas became
kings of the Rock. Lucas won his fame in a confrontation with Capone.
One day a number of convicts including Capone,
were lined up at the barber shop. After a while, the
famous mobster got tired of waiting and moved to the
front of the line, just ahead of Lucas, a mean Texas
bank robber doing 30 years.
Lucas was not impressed by Capone and said,
“Hey, lard ass, get back at the end of the line.”
Capone put on a mean look and said, “You know
who I am, punk?” Lucas was enraged. He grabbed the
scissors from the convict cutting hair and stuck the
point into Capone’s fat neck. “Yeah,” he said, “I
know who you are, greaseball. And if you don’t get
back to the end of that fucking line, I’m gonna know
who you were.” Capone went to the back of the line
and never again acted like anything but just another
con on the Rock.
In 1938 Lucas, Whitey Franklin and Sandy Limerick
took part in one of the most daring and brutal escape
attempts from Alcatraz. After murdering a guard, they
climbed to the roof of the furniture work shop and
tried to storm a gun tower. Limerick was killed,
Franklin wounded and Lucas surrendered when he saw
the situation was hopeless.
Franklin and Lucas were convicted and sentenced to
life for the murder of the guard. Franklin, who had
done the actual killing, spent the next seven years in
solitary confinement without a break until the Alcatraz
Lucchese, Thomas “Three-Finger Brown”
(1903–1967) top Mafia leader
Of the five crime families in the New York area established after the murder of the last boss of bosses, Salvatore Maranzano, the Gagliano-Lucchese combine was
always recognized as the most efficient and relatively
peaceful crime family, especially after the death—from
natural causes—of Tom Gagliano and the coming to
power of underboss Thomas Lucchese. Lucchese was
also known as Three-Finger Brown—after a leading
pitcher of the same name—ever since 1915, when he
had lost three fingers in an accident.
The generally peaceful development of the Lucchese
family was rather remarkable considering its leader’s
penchant for violence during his early years. In the
1920s he had served as a bodyguard for Lucky Luciano
when both were working under Giuseppe “Joe the
Boss” Masseria and he became Luciano’s favorite killer.
He murdered several Maranzano men during the war
for control of the New York Mafia and is believed to
have been involved in a total of 30 murders, although
his only important arrest was for grand larceny in
1923.
After Luciano had Masseria assassinated and made
a shaky peace with Maranzano, he used Lucchese as
the fingerman in Maranzano’s murder on September
10, 1931. From the lowly status of a Sicilian gunman,
Lucchese thus rose to the high councils of the modern
548
LUCIANO, Charles “Lucky”
Mafia. One of the most popular crime bosses, he
exerted great power in the garment industry rackets
and ran smooth operations in the narcotics, gambling,
loansharking and construction rackets. As a corrupter,
he was the equal of Frank Costello and had friends
and connections at all branches and levels of local government. When the mob wished to make its desires
known to judges and legislators, Lucchese was the
most important pipeline. Of all the Mafia leaders, he
was probably the best at remaining out of the limelight. When Lucchese died of cancer, his funeral was
one of the biggest in underworld history, with a
turnout of over 1,000 mourners, including politicians,
judges and businessmen as well as hit men, loansharks,
narcotics peddlers and Mafia leaders. Because it was
known that the FBI and police were going to monitor
the funeral on film, the Lucchese family let out word
they would not be offended if important mafiosi
stayed away. Many did but sent emissaries to deliver
their money envelopes out of respect. Despite the
warning, others, including Carlo Gambino, then the
most powerful boss in New York, Aniello Dellacroce,
Crazy Joe and Vincent Rao, insisted on coming in person to show how much they thought of Lucchese. Perhaps what they respected most about him was that for
the last 44 years of his life he had never seen the inside
of a courtroom.
See also: CHARLES “LUCKY” LUCIANO, SALVATORE
MARANZANO, GIUSEPPE “JOE THE BOSS” MASSERIA.
course, he slugged those who would not pay. One runty
little Jewish kid who wouldn’t pay was a youngster
from Poland, Meyer Lansky. At first the two fought
and then they became the best of friends, a relationship
that was to continue long after Luciano had been sent
into exile.
By 1916 Luciano was a full-fledged member of the
notorious Five Points Gang and was listed by police as
the prime suspect in a number of murders. Early on,
Luciano developed an unabiding hatred for the “Mustache Petes,” the old-timers who ruled the Mafia gangs,
and by the 1920s he was plotting their elimination. At
that time, Luciano was already an important figure in
the underworld, a power in bootlegging rackets in
cooperation with Lansky and his erstwhile partner
Bugsy Siegel as well as Joe Adonis, Vito Genovese and,
especially, Frank Costello. Costello put him in contact
with other ethnic gangsters (much to the displeasure of
the Mustache Petes): Irishmen like Big Bill Dwyer and
Jews like Arnold Rothstein, Dutch Schultz and Dandy
Phil Kastel. What impressed Luciano most about
Costello was the way he could buy protection from city
officials and the police, which Lansky had for years
stressed to Luciano was an absolute requirement for a
successful underworld existence.
By the late 1920s Luciano had risen to the number
two position in the family of Giuseppe “Joe the Boss”
Masseria, the top Italian gangster of the era. Luciano
detested Joe the Boss’ Old World ways, steeped in the
rituals of the Sicilian Mafia that stressed “respect” and
“honor” for the chief and distrust and hatred of all
non-Sicilians. The things Luciano respected and honored were ways to earn more money from crime, and in
Masseria’s prejudice against other gangsters, Sicilian as
well as non-Sicilian, he saw an unconscionable obstacle
to achieving greater profits. Instead of cooperating with
other criminals to make more money, Joe the Boss
fought them, even waging old-fashioned feuds with fellow Sicilians based on which town or village they had
come from.
In 1928 the Castellammarese War broke out
between the forces of Joe the Boss and those of the second most powerful mafioso in New York, Salvatore
Maranzano, and over the next two years dozens of
gangsters on both sides were killed. While the fighting
was going on, Luciano was cementing relationships
with the younger, second-line leadership within the
Maranzano camp, and it soon became clear that both
groups were merely waiting to see which of the two
leaders would die first so they could make plans to get
rid of the other.
When after a time neither had been assassinated,
Luciano took matters into his own hands. Three of his
men and Bugsy Siegel on loan from Meyer Lansky, shot
Luciano, Charles “Lucky” (1897–1962) syndicate
leader
Charles “Lucky” Luciano is generally regarded as the
most important figure in the development of organized
crime, even more important than Al Capone. As the
guiding genius along with Meyer Lansky, Luciano, by a
campaign of double-dealing and, where necessary, murders, cleansed the Italian underworld of its narrowminded old-line leaders and took it into alliances with
other ethnic groups. Thus, in the early 1930s he established the national crime syndicate that has dominated
many aspects of American life ever since. Despite public
misunderstanding of the subject, Luciano’s creation is
not the Mafia, but something even bigger and more
powerful. In a manner of speaking, he can be credited
with killing off the Mafia.
Luciano was born Salvatore Luciana in the Palermo
area of Sicily. He came to this country in 1906 at the
age of nine and was arrested at 10 for shoplifting. At
this tender age he started a racket that would later produce millions for him; for a penny or two a day, he
offered younger and smaller Jewish kids his personal
protection against beatings on the way to school. Of
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LUCIANO, Charles “Lucky”
he had survived a “ride,” something few gangsters ever
did, he was nicknamed Lucky.
Lucky Luciano’s downfall started in 1936, when special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey succeeded in getting
him convicted on prostitution charges, which the
underworld has always insisted were a “bad rap,”
claiming Dewey had framed the case with the perjured
testimony of pimps and whores who would say anything to avoid going to jail themselves. The conviction
was especially ironic in view of the subsequent disclosure that Luciano had had Dutch Schultz murdered
because that flaky and brutal gang leader had been
planning to assassinate Dewey. The prosecutor had
been putting heavy pressure on the syndicate in general
and on Schultz in particular, and the latter appeared
before a board meeting of the syndicate to demand that
Dewey be eliminated. Luciano led the opposition to
Schultz’ demand, insisting Dewey’s death would cause
more problems than it would solve. When the enraged
Schultz insisted he would go it alone in the “hit,”
Luciano pressed for a vote to kill the Dutchman for the
good of the syndicate. It was done.
Luciano got 30 to 50 years for the prostitution
charges, the longest sentence of its type ever given to
anyone. Nevertheless, he continued to run syndicate
affairs from his cell until he was paroled in 1946 for his
so-called war services, especially for ordering security
tightened on the mob-controlled New York waterfront
(which was true) and for enlisting the aid of the Mafia
in Sicily during the Allied invasion (which was nonsense). Upon his release, Luciano was deported to Italy.
He was able to sneak back to Cuba for a time to continue his involvement in American criminal affairs, and
at a top conference there in 1947 he approved the execution of Bugsy Siegel for looting the mob’s funds while
constructing his dream, the Flamingo Hotel, in the
hopes of making Las Vegas a plush gambling mecca.
When his presence in Cuba was revealed, Luciano was
forced to return to Italy because of protests from the
U.S. government. He continued to issue orders and
receive his cut of racket funds through underworld
couriers, including Virginia Hill. With the assassination
of Albert Anastasia and the attempted assassination
and forced retirement of Costello in 1957, Luciano lost
two of his most ardent supporters within the syndicate.
Genovese turned against him and there is reason to
believe he even planned to eliminate him. Lansky
remained semi-loyal, seeing that syndicate money continued to be funneled to Luciano—but in decreasing
amounts.
Luciano was in no shape to mount a serious protest,
having suffered a number of heart attacks in his later
years. Gradually, he began to reveal to journalists his
version of many of the past criminal events in the
Joe the Boss to death in a Coney Island restaurant after
Luciano had stepped into the men’s room. Luciano then
became number two man under a seemingly grateful
Maranzano, who proclaimed himself the “boss of
bosses” of New York. Actually, Maranzano intended to
make himself the supreme boss of the entire Mafia in
the U.S. and, to that end, drew up a death list of those
who would have to be eliminated because they stood in
his way. The top name on the list in Chicago was Al
Capone, in New York, Luciano.
Unfortunately for Maranzano, Luciano anticipated
his actions, in fact learned of them in advance, and
avoided walking into a death trap in the gang leaders’
office, where he and his aide Vito Genovese had been
summoned for a conference. Maranzano had arranged
for a homicidal Irish gunman, Mad Dog Coll, to assassinate the pair in his office. Instead, moments before
Coll arrived to set up the ambush, four of Lansky’s
gunmen, pretending to be law officers, entered the
office and shot Maranzano to death.
In a practical sense, Maranzano’s death marked
the end of the “old Mafia,” at least in the United
States. It has long been rumored that Luciano followed up the assassination with the murders of 40
other “Mustache Petes” across the country, but no
list of victims was ever compiled and probably no
such deluge of killings was necessary. In the years
prior to Luciano’s revolt, many of the old-timers had
already passed away: either as the result of natural
causes or assassinations.
The remnants of the old Mafia were incorporated into
a new national crime syndicate, a more open society that
combined all the ethnic elements of organized crime. The
new syndicate included among its directors Lansky, Joe
Adonis, Dutch Schultz, Louis Lepke and Frank Costello.
There was no boss of bosses, although Luciano was
really the boss in everything but name. The syndicate
moved to control the bootlegging, prostitution, narcotics, gambling, loansharking and labor rackets.
Luciano was at the top of the heap, becoming a
dandy dresser and a well-known sport along Broadway.
He still looked menacing, however, thanks to a famous
scarring he had received in 1929, when knife-wielding
kidnappers severed the muscles in his right cheek, leaving him with a drooping right eye that gave him a sinister look. Luciano told various stories about how he was
kidnapped and by whom, alternating culprits from
gangland rivals (including the Maranzanos), to drug
smugglers who thought he knew about a big incoming
shipment and wanted to hijack it, to rogue cops who
tried to get information from him by torture. More
likely than any of these stories was a theory that he had
been kidnapped by a policeman and his sons because he
had been playing around with the cop’s daughter. Since
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LUFTHANSA robbery
United States. In 1962 he died of a heart attack at the
Naples airport. Finally, Luciano was permitted to come
back to America—for burial in St. John’s Cemetery in
New York City.
See also: JOE ADONIS; ALBERT ANASTASIA; ANTHONY
“TOUGH TONY” ANASTASIO; ATLANTIC CITY CONFERENCE;
BAGMAN; BROADWAY MOB; LOUIS “LEPKE” BUCHALTER;
CASTELLAMMARESE WAR; FRANK COSTELLO; THOMAS E.
DEWEY; VITO GENOVESE; HAVANA CONFERENCE; MEYER
LANSKY; THOMAS “THREE-FINGER BROWN” LUCCHESE; SALVATORE MARANZANO; GIUSEPPE “JOE THE BOSS” MASSERIA;
MURDER, INC.; MUSTACHE PETES; NIGHT OF THE SICILIAN
VESPERS; S.S. NORMANDIE; ARNOLD ROTHSTEIN; DUTCH
SCHULTZ; SEVEN GROUP; BENJAMIN “BUGSY” SIEGEL; CIRO
TERRANOVA.
human. The wedding ring was even more damning
because the sausage maker’s wife suffered from swollen
joints in some of her fingers and had been unable to
remove the ring for years. However, as the police theorized, she could have been melted out of it.
Luetgert’s trial was sensational, although most unsavory. The evidence against him was formidable, especially when one mistress after another took the stand to
testify against him. Convicted, Luetgert was sentenced
to life at Joliet Prison, where he died in 1911.
Lufthansa robbery
The biggest holdup in the history of American crime
occurred on December 11, 1978, when six or seven
men wearing ski masks and armed with shotguns and
automatic weapons staged a bold predawn raid on the
Lufthansa Airlines cargo facility at New York City’s
Kennedy International Airport and made off with $5.85
million in cash and jewelry. Although the caper has not
been completely solved, authorities have made a number
of arrests and pieced together a scenario of the daring
heist, which has since resulted in a trail of corpses.
Investigators now know through certain confessions
that the robbers had inside aid and information. Louis
Werner, a Lufthansa cargo agent, was convicted and
sentenced to 161/2 years in prison for giving the robbers crucial inside assistance. Because of fear of retribution, Werner has refused to give testimony against
others involved in the crime. Within a year after the
crime, authoritative counts of persons rubbed out
because they had knowledge of various aspects of the
caper rose to a minimum of nine and perhaps as many
as a dozen.
The crime, authorities are certain, was planned at
Roberts Lounge, a bar near the airport where known
cargo thieves, airline cargo handlers and undercover
cops congregated to drink and bet on horses. The bar’s
ownership has since changed hands but its current customers still gossip about the huge theft and whisper
alleged new revelations about it.
There seems little doubt that the crime was a “Mafia
operation,” planned by members of the crime family of
the late Tommy Lucchese. According to the FBI, the
Lucchese group supervised the plot and then handled
the disposition of the money and jewels. It is said the
mob secured the cooperation of the inside employees by
the standard Mafia method of encouraging them to
gamble beyond their means, then pressuring them to
pay up, lending them money at exorbitant rates and
finally pointing out they could cancel their debts and
come out ahead by helping pull off the heist.
While only 10 persons are believed to have been
directly involved in the robbery, the circle of those who
Luetgert, Adolph Louis (1848–1911) murderer
Few murders have ever shocked the citizens of Chicago
as much as the gruesome killing in 1897 of Louisa
Luetgert by her husband, Adolph, the owner of a leading sausage-making business.
Luetgert had emigrated from his native Germany in
the 1870s and, over the years, had acquired three distinctions: he made just about the best German sausages
in the city; he was a man of enormous appetite and
considerable girth, weighing about 250 pounds, and he
had sexual appetites that equalled or exceeded his culinary one, having three regular mistresses at the time of
his wife’s demise and a bed installed at his plant for his
many trysts.
Luetgert was relatively happy except for one thing:
his hefty wife, Louisa. She annoyed him, so much so
that he often felt, as he told one of his lovers, “I could
take her and crush her.” Actually, as the police were to
surmise in 1897, he probably stabbed her to death with
a huge knife. That much is conjecture because almost
nothing of Louisa’s body was ever found. After Adolph
killed her, he did something that was to damage the sale
of sausage meat in Chicago for a long time. He melted
her body down in a vat at his meat plant and made her
part of his sausages.
Louisa turned up missing on May 1, 1897. Adolph
told her relatives that he had hired private detectives to
find her and that he would not go to the police because,
as a prominent businessman, he could not afford to
have any scandal. Eventually, his wife’s relatives went
to the police, who in turn searched Adolph’s sausage
factory. After several searches the police emptied one of
many steam vats and found some pieces of bone, some
teeth and two gold rings, one a wedding band with the
initials “L. L.” engraved on it. Both rings belonged to
Louisa Luetgert. Although Adolph insisted the bone
fragments were animal, analysis identified them as
551
LUPO the Wolf
An aerial view of the route taken in the Lufthansa heist, the biggest holdup in American history
owner of a Long Island beauty shop who had shared a
house with an associate of Burke. Her dismembered
body washed ashore near Toms River, N.J. and could
only be identified by X rays.
Police thought they had a major break in the case
when they got a tip that another body was buried in
the yard behind Roberts Lounge but when they dug
up the ground, they found only the body of a horse. A
year after the robbery, FBI agent Steve Carbone was
optimistic about eventually breaking the case. “It
took the Brink’s people five years to solve that case, so
we still have four to go,” he said. “We’re very confident.”
took part in the overall operation may amount to as
many as 30 or 35. A key suspect in the investigation
has been James “Jimmy the Gent” Burke, the former
operator of Roberts Lounge. Shortly before the
Lufthansa job, Burke was released from prison, where
he had been serving time for another cargo caper. He
reputedly was the “coach” on the job, tirelessly training
the holdup men during methodical rehearsals of the
robbery. Burke refused to answer any questions about
the heist and eventually was returned to prison for
parole violation.
Other leading suspects were Thomas DeSimone,
believed to have been one of the holdup men, and a bigtime bookmaker named Martin Krugman, who is said
to have passed on the idea of the scheme to the men
who carried it off. Both DeSimone and Krugman went
missing. Some law officials believe they are dead, but
others are doubtful and point out that no effort was
made to hide other victims’ bodies, probably indicating
the mob wanted the various deaths to act as a deterrent
to those who might talk.
The only murder victim whose identity the killers
tried to conceal was Theresa Ferrara, a 27-year-old part
Lupo the Wolf (1870?–1944) Black Hander and murderer
From the 1890s until 1920, Ignazio Saietta, better
known as Ignazio Lupo, or Lupo the Wolf, was the
most important Black Hander in New York City. The
Black Hand was not an organized society but a mixed
bag of amateur and professional extortionists who terrorized various Italian communities throughout the
United States, threatening victims with death unless
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LUSTIG, “Count” Victor
Lustig, “Count” Victor (1890–1947) con man
they paid to stay alive. The victims would receive letters
demanding money and at the bottom of the letter there
would usually be the outline of a hand that had been
dipped in black ink, a sign sure to produce icy terror.
Lupo the Wolf fostered and perfected the Black Hand
technique, promoting himself into the embodiment of
evil in the Italian section of Harlem.
Lupo came from Sicily as a grown man and soon
won a reputation as one of the most desperate and
bloodthirsty criminals in the history of American
crimes. His followers knew they had to kill without
questioning his authority, so terrified were they of him.
It was the custom in Italian Harlem for a resident to
cross himself on the mere mention of Lupo’s name and
extend his fingers to ward off the spells of this evil
creature. Many of Lupo’s killings took place in the
infamous Murder Stable at 323 East 107th Street,
where eventually the bodies of some 60 murder victims
were found. Some of these were individuals who had
refused to meet Lupo’s Black Hand demands, but more
were victims of murder-for-pay jobs done for other
gangs, secret societies or private individuals who had
contracted with Lupo for an old-country vendetta
killing.
Included among the victims were gang members
who had strayed, such as the 18-year-old stepson of
Giuseppi Morello, Lupo’s chief ally. The youth was
tortured and slaughtered because he was suspected of
having betrayed the gang’s counterfeiting activities.
Using fear and intimidation, Lupo continued to operate through the first two decades of the 20th century
seemingly immune to arrest for his various murders
and extortions. Finally, in 1920 Secret Service agents
caught him in a counterfeiting plot in which dollars
were forged in Sicily and then smuggled into this
country.
Lupo the Wolf was sent to prison for 30 years.
Released in the late 1930s, he emerged to find much
of the criminal world altered. Black Hand operations
had long since ceased because of the increased sophistication of the Italian community whose members
now would go to the law if pushed. There was no
longer any room for Lupo in other rackets. Mafia
racketeers had joined in an organized crime confederation that used murder only as a last resort and in
accordance with sound business procedures. Clearly,
Lupo the Wolf, with his crude methods, did not
belong, and he was so informed. Terror and murder
as he practiced them would only cause serious legal
and political problems for the organization and simply would not be tolerated. Lupo took the warning to
heart and went into retirement until his death in
1944.
See also: BLACK HAND, MURDER STABLE.
Probably the only confidence operator who could be
classed as the equal of the legendary Yellow Kid Weil
was “Count” Victor Lustig, a remarkable rogue who
not only pulled the most outrageous swindles of the
1920s and 1930s but also constantly courted danger by
victimizing the top gangsters in America, including Al
Capone and Legs Diamond.
Born in 1890 in what is now the Czech Republic,
Victor Lustig soon established himself as the black
sheep of the family (although when he became a successful international confidence swindler, his brother
Emil followed in his footsteps).
Lustig pulled a number of swindles in Europe as a
young man and was hunted by police in several countries. Consequently, he came to the United States just
after World War I and immediately emerged as the
leading practitioner of the “money-making machine”
swindle. A sucker would be informed that the Count
had discovered a secret process for making real currency out of plain paper that he fed into a machine. He
demonstrated the process several times, although what
came out were other genuine bills that he had secreted
in the machine earlier. As outrageous as the dodge was,
Lustig had such a gift for grift that he sold the
machine—often for sums up to and even exceeding
$10,000—to bankers, businessmen, madams, gangsters
and small-town lawmen.
An incorrigible rascal, Lustig believed in flimflamming as a matter of principle, and no one was exempt.
He originated one of the con man’s favorite petty swindles, that of “tishing a lady.” Lustig was a habitue of
brothels and paid extremely well, at least in a manner of
speaking. Upon taking leave of a lady, he would produce a $50 bill, fold it up, lift up her skirt and pretend
to tuck it in her stocking. Actually, he would palm the
bill and stuff in a wad of tissue paper. Then the Count
would explain to the woman that it was trick money
and that if she removed it before morning, it would turn
to tissue paper. The lady would promise to leave it there
but after Lustig’s departure she would eagerly retrieve
her pay—and indeed, it had turned to tissue paper!
In the mid-1920s Lustig returned to Europe and
twice succeeded in selling the Eiffel Tower. He had read
in the newspapers that the great tourist attraction was
in need of repairs and would be very costly. The Count
had a brainstorm. When he arrived in Paris, he sent out
letters to six leading scrap metal dealers inviting them
to a secret government meeting in a luxury hotel. Lustig
introduced himself as “deputy director-general of the
ministry of mail and telegraphs,” and explained to the
dealers that since it was too costly to repair the Eiffel
Tower, it would have to be torn down and sold for
scrap. However, the government was fearful of public
553
LYNCH, William
reaction, so the plans had to be kept secret. Then when
the government announced how much money would be
saved, the public would accept the idea.
The dealers were invited to bid for the scrap metal
from the tower. All turned in secret bids. Then Lustig
informed one of the dealers that for a fee his bid would
be accepted. The dealer paid eagerly, and Lustig immediately fled to Vienna. When the story of the swindle
failed to make the newspapers, he realized the dealer
had been too frightened or too ashamed to go to the
police. So he returned to Paris and swindled another
dealer. This one, however informed the law when he
realized he had been taken and Lustig realized he
couldn’t sell the Eiffel Tower again and returned to
America.
For a time Lustig operated in the worthless security
field, selling bogus paper that he often presented as
“stolen.” He found a number of underworld buyers
who agreed to take the hot stuff off his hands for as little as 10¢ on the dollar, with the idea of holding it several years before disposing of it. Among those so taken
were Big Bill Dwyer, Nicky Arnstein and Legs Diamond, who actually thought he was buying some retirement security. Oddly, when the gangsters found out
they had been taken, they could do nothing because
Lustig said he would spread the word on how they’d
been suckered, making fools of them. Even the maniacal Diamond saw the humor of the situation and left
Lustig alone.
The Count once swindled Al Capone out of $5,000
and the famous gangster never realized he had been
taken. Lustig asked Capone for $50,000, promising to
double it in 60 days in a scam he was working. Capone
gave him the money, warning what he did to welchers
and swindlers. Lustig simply put the money in a safedeposit box for the allotted time and then dolefully
informed him his plan had failed and he had not made
any money. Capone was about to explode, thinking he
had been taken, when Lustig returned his $50,000,
keeping up a spiel of apologies. Capone was not prepared for this situation. Initially figuring Lustig had
swindled his money, he now was faced with the obvious
fact that the Count was playing square with him.
“If the deal fell through,” Capone said, “you must
be down on your luck.” He peeled off five $1,000 bills
and handed them to Lustig. “I take care of guys who
play square with me.” The Count gratefully left with
the $5,000, which was what he was after from the
beginning.
One of the Count’s prize patsies was a renowned
madam of the period, Billie Scheible, operator of a
string of very plush houses in Pittsburgh and New
York. He once sold the madam a moneymaking
machine for $10,000 after telling her he was too impa-
tient with it since it could only turn out one $100 bill
every 12 hours. When Billie determined she had been
hoaxed, she had some of her strong-arm boys run the
Count down in Philadelphia.
Lustig refunded Billie’s $10,000 and then turned on
the charm full voltage to sell her $15,000 in worthless
securities. “The Count had a way with him,” Billie
once explained.
Since many of Lustig’s swindles involved money
schemes, it was only natural he would also venture into
counterfeiting. But counterfeiting was another matter
and the Count, who had never done time for any of his
cons, was caught in 1935.
On September 1, the day before he was supposed to
go on trial in New York City, Lustig, using a rope fashioned from nine bed sheets tied together, climbed out a
lavatory window of the Federal House of Detention
and started his escape descent. Part way down, Lustig
noticed lunch-hour pedestrians watching him. Immediately, he began to go through the motions of cleaning
the window. Down he went, floor by floor, scrubbing
every pane he passed. When he hit the sidewalk, he ran.
It was several minutes before one puzzled onlooker
approached the small wicket in the formidable jail
doors and asked, “Do you know your window cleaner
has run away?”
The Count’s fantastic escape made headlines
throughout the country, as did the ensuing manhunt for
him. Billie Scheible was questioned but knew nothing.
Perhaps Arthur “Dapper Don” Collins did. Collins,
reputed to be one of the country’s greatest con men,
had been pals with Lustig before his arrest. But he was
not too helpful either. It turned out Lustig had swindled
him out of several thousand dollars and, quite naturally, failed to keep in touch.
Finally, Lustig was run to earth in Pittsburgh. He
was convicted and sentenced to 15 years for the counterfeiting charge and five more for his escape. He died
in prison in 1947.
See also: MONEY-MAKING MACHINE.
Lynch, William (1724–1820) first lyncher
The origin of lynching has been attributed to many persons named Lynch, some who did the hanging and
some who were hanged. Many texts credit a Virginia
planter, Colonel Charles Lynch, who with his brother
founded Lynchburg, as the first lyncher. His activities,
however, seem to have been limited to the flogging of
criminals and Tories during the American Revolution;
there is no evidence that he ever hanged anyone by
extralegal means. Most likely, the first lyncher was
another Virginian named Lynch, Captain William
Lynch, who used the rope to cleanse Pittsylvania
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County of a ruffian element. In a sense, Captain Lynch
did only what the community required, since in the
frontier the law was either weak or entirely lacking.
Writing in 1836, Edgar Allen Poe discovered the
date the first lynching organization was formed when
he found a compact signed by Lynch and a number of
his supporters. It read:
Whereas, many of the inhabitants of Pittsylvania . . .
have sustained great and intolerable losses by a set of
lawless men . . . that . . . have hitherto escaped the
civil power with impunity . . . we, the subscribers,
being determined to put a stop to the ubiquitous practices of those unlawful and abandoned wretches, do
enter into the following association . . . upon hearing
or having sufficient reason to believe, that any . . .
species of villainy (has) been committed within our
neighborhood, we will forthwith . . . repair immediately to the person or persons suspected . . . and if
they will not desist from their evil practices, we will
inflict such corporeal punishment on him or them, as to
us shall seem adequate to the crime committed or the
damage sustained. . . . In witness whereof we have
hereunto set our hands, this 22nd day of September,
1780.
A contemporary drawing of the lynching of two black men
and three black women for the killing of a white man in
Greenville, Ala. in 1895. One account assured readers that
the 100 men in the lynching party were “all cool and
brave.”
a minimum of 2,605 blacks, and in 1892 alone the figure was 160.
By the 1890s the frontier was being tamed and
lynchings in the West started to decline, but in the
South they started to increase. In that decade 87 percent of all lynchings occurred in the South; from 1930
to 1937 the South had 95 percent of all lynchings.
While the standard assertion in the region was that
lynchings were necessary to protect white womanhood,
less than 30 percent of black lynch victims during the
seven-year period were accused, let alone proved guilty,
of rape or attempted rape.
Obviously, these figures give an incomplete picture
of the extent of lynching. Omitted entirely is any reference to Chinese or to Indians, probably the most common victims of lynchings in the West. While the
literature and history of the West describe the lynching
of murderers, claim jumpers, rustlers and thieves, it has
always been members of minority groups who have
most felt the lynch mob’s wrath. The early German settlers seem to have had a particularly strong bent for
lynching Indians. In 1763 German settlers, fired up by
the passions of the French and Indian War, butchered
20 peaceful Conestoga Indians, many women and children, near Lancaster, Pa.
This lynching, hardly the first to occur in the
colonies, preceded the activities of two Virginians,
Colonel Charles Lynch and Captain William Lynch,
both of whom are credited in various texts as being the
The compact did not specifically mention hanging
but hangings occurred, especially after floggings had
stimulated confessions, true or imaginary. The hangings
were carried out indirectly, as described by an acquaintance of Lynch:
A horse in part became the executioner . . . the person
who it was supposed ought to suffer death was placed
on a horse with his hands tied behind him and a rope
about his neck which was fastened to the limb of a tree
over his head. In this situation the person was left and
when the horse in pursuit of food or any other cause
moved from his position the unfortunate person was
left suspended by the neck—this was called “aiding the
civil authority.”
See also: LYNCHING.
lynching
The extent of lynching in the United States had never
been accurately measured. Before 1882 there were no
reliable figures at all. Since then the records have been
reasonably accurate. Statistics compiled at Tuskegee
Institute indicate that from 1882 to 1936 at least 4,672
persons were lynched in this country; of this total,
almost three quarters, or 3,383, were blacks, and 1,289
were whites. Between 1886 and 1916 lynch mobs killed
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LYNDS, Elam
first lyncher and the one who lent his name to the practice. The evidence appears to favor William Lynch.
Whoever deserves the credit, lynching became a
widespread practice in America, employed for whatever
reasons the lynchers thought just. The Vicksburg Volunteers in the 1830s used it to get rid of the gamblers
who were driving the residents of that Mississippi port
city to poverty with their crooked games. The Vigilantes of San Francisco did much to clean up San Francisco, ridding the city of a number of cutthroats and
crooked politicians. Probably the greatest lynching
rampage in the West occurred in the 1860s, when the
Vigilantes of Montana wiped out the Innocents, a massive outlaw gang run by a sheriff, the notorious Henry
Plummer. During six weeks in late 1863 the vigilantes
hanged an estimated 26 Innocents as well as the sheriff
himself. Many lynchings were probably stage-managed
by private detectives, railroad detectives and range
detectives, who would take suspects into custody and
make a point of jailing them in an area where the feeling of the community ran high against the detainees.
Their apparent strategy was to fan the public’s ire and
then stand to one side as a lynch mob took over.
The various Ku Klux Klans that were established
starting in 1866 aimed to keep the South under the control of white Protestants. Naturally, blacks were the
most frequent victims of the Klan, but others who felt
the whip and the hangman’s rope included Jews,
Catholics, bootleggers, pacifists, “Bolshevists,” internationalists and evolutionists. While hangings and shootings were the most common methods of lynching in the
South, methods of shocking cruelty were often used. In
1899 thousands of whites took special excursion trains
to Palmetto, Ga. to watch a black man being roasted
alive.
Two of the most outrageous lynchings of this century involved white victims. One was Leo Frank, a pencil company executive in Georgia who was lynched in
1915. Frank was taken from a prison where he was
serving a life sentence for the murder and rape of a
young girl, a crime of which he was almost certainly
innocent. What he was not innocent of was being Jewish and rich. Frank was hanged by vigilantes calling
themselves the Knights of Mary Phagan, the name of
the girl whom Frank had been convicted of murdering.
Shortly thereafter, most of the Knights were initiated
into a “reincarnated” Invisible Empire of the Knights of
the Ku Klux Klan.
The other shocking case occurred in the aftermath of
the 1933 kidnap-murder of California department store
heir Brooke Hart in 1933. A huge mob broke into the
jail in San Jose where Hart’s two confessed murderers,
John Maurice Holmes and Thomas Harold Thurmond,
were being held, and hanged the pair after brutally mis-
treating them. The tenor of the times was best articulated by Gov. James “Sunny Jim” Rolfe, who
announced the lynch mob provided “the best lesson
ever given the country. I would pardon those fellows if
they were charged. I would like to parole all kidnappers
in San Quentin and Folsom to the fine patriotic citizens
of San Jose.”
But despite such publicized mob executions of
whites, the vast majority of lynching victims in the 20th
century have been blacks. From its inception in 1909,
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People fought mob violence and campaigned for a
federal antilynching law, but congressional action was
always frustrated by filibusters in the Senate. About
1935 the number of lynchings started to decrease, and
by 1952–54 there was, for the first time in the nation’s
history, a three-year period without a reported lynching. Since then there have been some lynchings, but by
and large, they have become a thing of the past. While
no antilynching statute has ever been adopted, the 1968
Civil Rights Act, which makes it a federal offense for
two or more persons to join in a conspiracy to violate a
citizen’s constitutional rights whether or not death
occurs, has been considered effective in preventing
lynchings.
See also: BISBEE MASSACRE, WILLIAM COONS, GEORGE
JOHNSON, WILLIAM LYNCH.
Lynds, Elam (1784–1855) Sing Sing’s first warden
He was regarded in his day—not particularly an era of
enlightenment in the treatment of convicts—as the
wickedest warden ever to run an American penitentiary, and still today, many historians trace almost every
evil committed in the history of American penology to
Elam Lynds, the first warden of Sing Sing. If that was
perhaps too sweeping a judgment, it can at least be said
that whatever evil he did not originate, he most certainly refined. A full century after Lynds’ reign, another
warden of Sing Sing, Thomas Mott Osborne, wrote,
“We are just now getting rid of the Lynds’ influence.”
And another, Lewis E. Lawes, added, “Bit by bit, one
reform at a time, the memory of Captain Lynds is being
scrubbed out of the stones at Sing Sing.”
The atrocities committed in the new prison Lynds
built with convict labor at the village of Sing Sing, N.Y.
in the 1820s gave the community such a bad reputation
that the local citizens changed the village’s name to
Ossining.
It was Lynds who originated the use of striped uniforms and who developed the technique of lockstepping
(close marching) convicts. He initiated the practice of
having prisoners pass each other with downcast eyes so
that no inmate would come face to face with another; of
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LYNDS, Elam
prohibiting prisoners from talking, in or out of their
cells; and of making prisoners perform hard labor from
dawn to dusk. Above all, he believed in the whip.
“Whip ’em till they drop,” he commanded his guards
until he won the sobriquet the Whip of Sing Sing.
Born in 1784 in Litchfield, Conn., Lynds entered
military service while in his teens. By the beginning of
the War of 1812, he had gone from private to lieutenant and was subsequently promoted to captain for
valor in action. After the war the government cut the
size of the army and Lynds was mustered out. Finding
a job suited to his talents, he became principal keeper
of the new state prison at Auburn, N.Y. The warden
was a political appointee with no background in penology and he turned over the running of the institution to
Lynds, who immediately introduced a series of severe
practices. One that he was not allowed to implement
was the equipping of all guards with rawhide whips so
that they could mete out instant punishment. In 1821
the warden died and Lynds succeeded him, initiating
the darkest period in penal history. Auburn Prison
became known as the harshest in the country, which
made Lynds the darling of the prison discipline societies throughout the nation and their allies in the legislature.
Lynds gave them exactly what they wanted. The
New York legislature approved a plan that allowed
Lynds to pick 80 prisoners to be kept in solitary confinement in the first of 550 individual cells being constructed at the prison. The inmates were to remain
there for the entire duration of their sentences. If any of
them broke their silence, they tasted Lynds’ whip.
Within the first two years of this cruel experiment, only
two of those among the 80 who were not lucky enough
to win their freedom survived, the rest either died or
went hopelessly insane.
Lynds transferred more men into the newly completed cell blocks—the first of their kind in the world
and upon which all others have been patterned. Six
days of the week the men were allowed out of their
cells from dawn to dusk to do hard labor and then
returned to their unlit, unheated and unsanitary confines for the long silent night. The seventh day they
were kept locked up the entire 24-hour period.
The Rev. Louis Dwight, head of the Boston Prison
Discipline Society, wrote admiringly of Lynds’ concept
of labor, beatings and silence:
proceed in military order, under the eye of the turnkeys,
in solid columns, with the lock march, to their workshops; thence in the same order, at the hour of breakfast, to the common jail, where they partake of their
wholesome and frugal meal in silence. Not even a whisper is heard through the whole dining area. The convicts are seated in single file, at narrow tables, with
their backs towards the center, so that there can be no
interchange of signs. If one has more food than he
wants, he raises his right hand, and the waiter changes
it. When they have done eating, at the ringing of a little
bell, of the softest sound, they rise from the table, form
the solid columns, and return under the eye of their
turnkeys to the work-shops. . . .
At the close of day, a little before sunset, the
work is all laid aside at one and the convicts return in
military order to the solitary cells; where they partake
of the frugal meal, which they are permitted to take
from the kitchen, where it was furnished for them, as
they returned from the shops. After supper, they can, if
they choose, read the Scriptures undisturbed, and then
reflect in silence on the errors of their lives. They must
not disturb their fellows by even a whisper. . . . The
men attend to their business from the rising to the setting sun, and spend the night in solitude.”
Despite such glowing testimonials, there were several critics who were appalled at the sufferings of the
prisoners and Lynds’ dedication to whipping. In one
case he actually flogged a prisoner 500 blows. He
lashed convicts who had fits and those who were
insane. Indeed, there is no way of knowing how many
men went insane because of Lynds’ brutal practices.
The huge increase in insanity cases and suicides
plagued Lynds. Prison reform associations were springing up and all railed against his oppressive rule. They
were especially revolted by one case in which a guard,
acting on Lynds’ orders, entered the cell of a woman
prisoner, one of 100 kept in the segregated south wing
of the prison, and whipped her severely. Within a
month she died. When her body was later shipped to a
medical college, it was ascertained that her death had
not been from natural causes. Finally, even Lynds’
devoted supporters in the legislature couldn’t protect
his Auburn post. They arranged for him to be put in
charge of the construction of a new prison at Sing Sing
on the Hudson River. The transfer proved irresistible
when Lynds pledged to build the prison free of cost to
the state.
The site at Sing Sing was picked out because it was
accessible by boat and had large quantities of marble
rock and good building stone that were not difficult to
quarry. Lynds arrived there in the spring of 1825 with
100 prisoners from Auburn. All the convicts were given
The whole establishment, from the gate to the sewer, is
a specimen of neatness. The unremitted industry, the
entire subordination and subdued feeling of the convicts, has probably no parallel among an equal number
of criminals. In their solitary cells they spend the night,
with no other book than the Bible, and at sunrise they
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LYNDS, Elam
striped uniforms, the first time such outfits were used.
Lynds decided on the uniforms because they would
stand out against the background of trees if any prisoners tried to escape.
It took the work force three years to complete the
prison, constructing individual cells for themselves
and for 400 other convicts and a chapel room for 900
more. It was quite an accomplishment. The convicts
had labored without an enclosing wall and yet none
had escaped. Lynds had driven them hard, never coddled them. During the winter months the men worked
fewer hours because there was less daylight. Since
they worked less, Lynds cut their food rations, reasoning they did not need the same level of nourishment.
Of course, the government had provided the same
amount of rations. Lynds had simply sold the “surplus” to outside merchants, a practice he was to continue during his long reign and which was to
supplement his $1,000 annual salary and make him a
rich man.
And Sing Sing was built without cost. While quarrying stone for building their own cells, they were also
cutting beautiful slabs of light gray stone, almost like
granite, for sale to state and local communities all over
New York and New England. State legislative inspectors were so thrilled by the pay-as-you-go construction
of the prison that they ignored additional tons of stone
continually stacked on the river’s bank for shipment to
private builders at special cut-rate prices.
Lynds was given a free hand in the prison he had
built, and he, in turn, loosed his guards on the inmates.
“Punish! Punish!” he ordered them. “I don’t believe in
reformation of an adult criminal. He’s a coward, a willful lawbreaker whose spirit must be broken by the lash.
Why is it that one guard, armed with a whip, can control twenty convicts? They are afraid of him. I’ll teach
them to fear my guards. And all of them, guards
included, to fear me. That is the only way to conduct a
prison.”
Lynds personally met every new batch of prisoners
shipped up from New York City. He would look over
the commitment papers to find the new arrival with the
worst record, pull that man out of line and have him
strapped to the whipping post. He would then lash him
10 times. Such was the greeting newcomers received in
Lynds’ grim fortress on the Hudson.
“You’ll be back for more,” Lynds told a man who
had assaulted a brutal guard at Newgate Prison in
Greenwich Village, from where he had been transferred. “I know my men.” Thereafter, Lynds found special cause for singling out the convict for punishment.
One day at the rock quarry, the man found lasting freedom from the whip by refusing to run when some
explosives were set off.
Such was the fear that Lynds could inspire. For no
matter what the prisoners thought of him, he was no
coward, as he proved constantly by parading in their
midst.
Once when Lynds learned the prison barber, a murderer named Wilde, was threatening to kill him if he
ever got the chance to put a razor to his throat, he sent
for the barber. Leaning back in his office chair, he told
Wilde to shave him. By the time the shave was completed, the barber was a nervous wreck. Lynds laughed.
“I know you threatened to kill me, Wilde,” he said.
“But I knew you wouldn’t. Unarmed, I’m stronger than
you are with a weapon. Now get out.”
If Lynds was a terror to the prisoners by day, he was
far worse by night. Two French writers, G. de Beaumont and A. de Tocqueville, who visited Sing Sing
related in their famous book, On the Penitentiary System of the United States, published in 1833, how
Lynds, a barrel of a man, prowled on tiptoes through
the silent galleries of the prison, at night, his ever present whip in hand, listening for violators of the nowhispering rule:
It was a tomb of living dead. . . . We could not realize
that in this building were 950 human beings. We felt
we were traversing catacombs. A faint glow from a
lantern held by an inspector on the upper galleries
moved slowly back and forth in the ghostly darkness.
As it passed each narrow cell door we saw, in our imagination, the gateway to a sepulcher instead. . . . The
watchman wore woolen moccasins over his shoes to
deaden even the faint scrape of his shoes on the gallery
floor. There was not a sound.
Not a sound until some unfortunate cried out in
anguish when his cell door was thrown open and that
awesome whip cracked. Some prisoners, apparently
guilty of no more than talking in their sleep, told later
of being jarred awake by the first slash of rawhide.
Eventually, Lynds was removed from his post, but it
was not because of his unhumane treatment of convicts. Rather, it was due to financial and other forms of
malfeasance. It was found that contractors who supplied the food for the inmates billed the prison for a
certain quality of meat but supplied a much cheaper
grade. Lynds insisted on half the difference in value as
his kickback. Another revelation was that the garbage
swill from the convicts’ food was sold to pig farmers,
but since they insisted on a certain quality, Lynds
dumped part of the prisoners’ rations directly into the
garbage.
Perhaps the most telling case against him was made
by Colonel Levi S. Barr, an ex-army officer and lawyer
who was sent to Sing Sing for three years. His accusa558
LYONS, Haze
tions against Lynds took on added weight when, after
his release, he proved the criminal charges against him
had been unwarranted. “In my three years of confinement,” he declared in a petition to the legislature, “I ate
no butter, cheese, milk, sugar, no turnips, beets, carrots,
parsnips or vegetables of any kind save potatoes, no
soups or strengthening drinks. . . . I have gladly eaten
the roots of shrubs and trees that I dug from the ground
in which I labored. . . . I saw no exception among
individuals around me. . . . There were some who
told me they ate the clay they worked in. . . . It at
least filled their stomachs.”
Additional charges were brought by John W.
Edmonds, an inspector of prisons, who uncovered evidence that some prisoners had thrived, enjoying double
food rations provided they had the money to pay the
warden for them. It was also discovered that Lynds had
hushed up several escapes. Inmates who had broken
out were still carried on the books.
Lynds finally was forced to resign in 1845. He lived
out his remaining years in comfortable retirement, buying a fashionable home and making numerous business
investments, all presumably financed by savings from
his $1,000-a-year salary. While the man died in personal disgrace, his penal beliefs and practices lived on
after him and many would say they have yet to be
totally eradicated.
self-defense. Certainly, the authorities had been hoping
to get a noose around Lyons’ neck and such a God-sent
opportunity was not to be lost because of a quibble
over who had shot first.
Kitty McGown and Bunty Kate immediately found
themselves new protectors, but Lizzie the Dove and
Gentle Maggie put on widow’s black and canceled all
business engagements while they went into mourning.
One night toasting their departed lover in a Bowery
dive, they got into a heated argument over which of
them he had loved more and whose sadness was
greater. Gentle Maggie won the argument by plunging a
cheese knife into Lizzie the Dove’s throat. As she lay
dying, Lizzie told her rival, “[I will] meet you in hell
and there scratch your eyes out.”
See also: DANNY DRISCOLL, WHYOS.
Lyons, Haze (1840–1864) road agent and murderer
A minor member of Sheriff Henry Plummer’s huge gang
of crooks, Haze Lyons ended up celebrated because of a
sentimental ballad bewailing his misfortunes.
A young cowboy, Lyons made his way from California to Montana and there joined Plummer’s gang of
Innocents, who plundered the area in robberies plotted
by the sheriff himself. Lyons did whatever ordered, no
less so when told to help take care of Sheriff Plummer’s
deputy, Bill Dillingham, a peace officer suffering from a
terminal incorruptibility. However, Lyons and two
other Plummer gunmen botched the job and were
caught. Lyons tried to argue that he was just an innocent bystander but was quickly tried and convicted
before a miners court and sentenced to hang. The rope
was round his neck when someone started reading
aloud a last letter he had been permitted to write to his
mother. It was a sentimental bit of prose that, it is said,
reduced the tough miners to tears. The miners untied
Lyons’ hands, put him on a horse and told him to “git”
back to mother. Lyons made the mistake of going only
as far as Bannack and reporting back to Plummer. He
pulled some more jobs for the sheriff and just a few
months later, on January 14, 1864, was taken prisoner
by vigilantes who were not impressed by sentimental
letters. They hanged him the same day. Much was made
of the gunman who wouldn’t go home to mother. A
ballad celebrated his fate, but the verse is lost, as is,
perhaps more sadly, that heartrending letter that saved
a killer’s life, at least for a time.
See also: INNOCENTS, HENRY PLUMMER.
Lyons, Danny (1860–1888) murderer
A leading member of the Whyos, easily the most murderous gang in New York City during the late 19th century, handsome Danny Lyons was available to do any
job at a price. He would blacken both eyes of a victim
for a $4 fee, break his leg for $19, shoot him in the leg
for $25 or “do the big job” for $100 and up. A strutting
rooster, he kept three women in prostitution on the
streets: Lizzie the Dove, Bunty Kate and Gentle Maggie.
When they failed to bring in the revenues that Lyons felt
were necessary to maintain him properly, he recruited a
fourth Kitty McGown. But Kitty already had a lover,
Joseph Quinn, who vowed to get Lyons for stealing his
inamorata and meal ticket. The two prowled lower New
York for months and on July 5, 1887 their paths finally
crossed. They blazed away at each other, and Quinn
dropped with a bullet in his heart.
Lyons went into hiding but was caught some months
later and hanged on August 21, 1888. In underworld
circles there was much denunciation of the execution
for what was considered a bum rap. The story was that
Quinn had shot first, and Lyons had merely acted in
559
M
McCall, Jack (1851–1877) killer of Wild Bill Hickok
Jack McCall is remembered as one of the two meanest
and vilest assassins in Western history, the other being
Bob Ford, “the dirty coward” who shot Jesse James.
McCall arrived in Deadwood, Dakota Territory in the
spring of 1876, using the name of Bill Sutherland,
probably because he was suspected of having stolen
range stock in Nebraska. He was a cross-eyed, brokennosed, whiskey-besotted saddle tramp who was always
getting into scrapes. It was said he got his cross eyes in
a dispute with a sheriff whom he went after with a couple of .45s. The lawman simply picked up a hefty piece
of lumber and cracked him over the head, rendering
him unconscious for 24 hours and leaving him with
scrambled eyes thereafter.
Wild Bill Hickok, himself a notorious back-shooter,
drifted into Deadwood about a month after McCall.
They apparently got to know each other over the
town’s poker tables. Thus, it came as a shock when on
August 2, 1876 at about 4 P.M., McCall walked into
Carl Mann’s Saloon Number 10, stepped up behind
Hickok, who was playing cards, and put a bullet
through his head. Hickok slumped forward dead, still
clutching his cards, a pair of aces and a pair of eights,
thereafter to be known as a “dead man’s hand.”
As soon as everyone realized what had happened,
there was a mad rush for the exits. McCall tried to
shoot twice at the fleeing figures, but his gun misfired
both times. He rushed out the door and hopped on the
first horse he saw. Unfortunately for McCall, its owner
had slackened the saddle cinch because of the heat, and
he was sent sprawling in the dust. He ran into a butcher
560
shop to hide, but someone stuck a rifle in his back and
forced him out.
McCall faced a miners court the following day and
pleaded self-defense. He also said he was avenging the
death of his brother, whom Hickok had killed. By a
vote of 11 to one the jury declared him not guilty and
set him free, indicating despite what the makers of the
Hickok legend have said, how people really felt about
Wild Bill.
McCall quickly left town, ending up in Laramie,
Wyo., where he often bragged of killing Hickok in a
duel. Finally, he was arrested for the Hickok killing by
a federal marshal and brought to trial at Yankton,
Dakota Territory. McCall’s protest that he’d “done
been tried” was ignored, since miners courts had no
official standing. In a real court of law there was not
much chance of his being found not guilty on the
grounds of self-defense. His claim about avenging his
brother’s death wasn’t too effective either after it was
established he had three sisters but no brother. There
was some speculation that McCall felt Hickok had
cheated him out of $25 in a card game, but that was
doubted on the ground that McCall rarely possessed
such a bountiful sum. Some evidence indicated that the
pair had had words over whether McCall owed Hickok
25¢. That may well have been the real motive for the
shooting. McCall was asked why he had shot Hickok
from behind rather than face-to-face. For that at least,
he had a perfectly logical answer, “I didn’t want to
commit suicide.”
On March 1, 1877 McCall was hanged and buried
with the rope still around his neck.
See also: WILD BILL HICKOK.
MACCORMICK, Austin H.
McCanles gang
Wild Bill Hickok foes
McCarty gang
Wild Bunch outlaws
The McCartys were a flaky band, fitting in well with
Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch, with whom they often
rode. On March 30, 1889 Tom McCarty, Cassidy and
an unidentified member of the gang walked into the
First National Bank of Denver, where McCarty told the
bank president he had just overheard a plan to rob the
bank.
“My God,” the bank officer cried. “How do you
know about this plot?”
“Because I planned it,” McCarty said. “Hands up!”
The McCartys fared well under Cassidy’s wing, but
when they struck out on their own in 1893, it was a different story. They bungled a holdup of the Merchant’s
Bank in Delta, Colo. Overhearing cries for help, a
young hardware store owner, W. Ray Simpson,
instantly seized a rifle and some shells and stepped out
to the street. In an incredible display of shooting, Simpson blasted the top of Bill McCarty’s head off, put a
bullet through the heart of Fred McCarty, Bill’s son,
and killed Tom McCarty’s mount. Still, this last
McCarty managed to get away. He later sent a messenger to inform Simpson he was going to come back to
kill him.
Simpson’s response was laconic. McCarty’s messenger left Delta bearing a small piece of cardboard, about
the size of a playing card, with 10 bullet holes in it. The
card read, “Made at 225 feet.” Tom McCarty never
returned to Delta to settle the score.
The Wild Bill Hickok legend began in Rock Creek,
Nebraska Territory in 1861, when he wiped out the
“McCanles gang” of nine “desperadoes, horse-thieves,
murderers and regular cut-throats,” as Harper’s
Monthly called them, in “the greatest one-man gunfight
in history.” In the battle Hickok supposedly made use
of a six-gun, rifle and bowie knife and took 11 bullets
in his own body.
The true facts were a little less spectacular than the
magazine reported, however. The so-called McCanles
Gang actually consisted of David C. McCanles, a 40year-old rancher who had sold his previous homestead to a stage and freight company for use as a relay
station, and his 12-year-old son, a cousin and a
youthful employee. The four went to the company’s
office in the McCanles’ former home to demand the
payments beyond the first, which were long past due.
In charge of the station was a man named Horace
Wellman, who had as his assistant a 24-year-old stock
tender named James Butler Hickok. McCanles, who
was something of a community bully and appears to
have had some conflict with Hickok over a woman,
demanded to see Wellman, informing Hickok that if
he didn’t send him out he would come in after him.
Hickok entered the depot and in a few minutes
McCanles was summoned to follow. There is some
dispute over whether McCanles was even armed at
the time and over why he would have brought his
young son along if he expected a shoot-out. While
McCanles was belaboring Wellman, Hickok apparently shot the rancher while hiding behind a calico
curtain. McCanles’ son rushed into the building and
cradled his dying father in his arms while the other
two young men, both almost certainly unarmed, were
murdered, one hacked to death with a hoe and the
other killed by a shotgun blast. Both were killed by
other members of the relay station crew. The McCanles boy avoided being murdered only because he was
fast afoot. There is no indication that the “McCanles
forces” ever fired a shot, and Hickok certainly was
not wounded.
Hickok, Wellman and a man named J. W. “Doc”
Brink were charged in the three deaths, although there
was considerable evidence that Mrs. Wellman was
responsible for at least one of the killings. The record
doesn’t reveal whether they were ever brought to trial.
Well into the 20th century, each time a new scrap of
evidence was discovered by historians, the facts of the
McCanles killing were dredged over again and again.
At no time, has Hickok ever come out looking heroic.
Still, the myth of a “McCanles gang” persists.
See also: WILD BILL HICKOK.
McConaghy, Robert (1810–1840) mass murderer
Robert McConaghy’s 1840 crime—the murder of his
wife, his mother-in-law and four of her other children
in a mindless frenzy—won enormous notoriety thanks
to a best-selling publication that focused on the bizarre
events at his execution.
McConaghy went on his murder spree on May 30,
1840. Throughout his trial, he refused to admit his
guilt, but he was nonetheless convicted and sentenced
to hang. On November 6, 1840 McConaghy mounted
the gallows at Huntington, Pa. The large crowd in
attendance gasped loudly when the rope broke.
McConaghy, in a state of shock, was carried up the
scaffold again. The ordeal proved too much for him,
and he started babbling out the full confession he had
refused to make earlier. This time the rope held. The
drama of McConaghy’s execution inspired a pamphlet
about his case.
MacCormick, Austin H.
SCANDAL.
561
See WELFARE ISLANDPRISON
MACDONALD, Jeffrey
she attempted to defend herself. Her husband lay on
the bed next to her, not moving but alive. The word
“PIG” was scrawled in blood across the headboard of
the bed.
In other bedrooms, the two MacDonald children,
five-year-old Kimberly and two-year-old Kristen, had
similarly been slaughtered, stabbed many times with a
knife and ice pick and Kimberly clubbed repeatedly.
MacDonald said he had been sleeping on the living
room couch when he was awakened by the screams of
his wife and older daughter. He then found himself
attacked by four intruders, including a black man in
army garb, two white men and a blonde female wearing “hippie style” clothing and carrying a candle. The
woman kept chanting “Acid is groovy” and “Kill the
pigs.”
MacDonald said he remembered struggling with his
attackers and then passed out. When he came to, he
went from room to room and discovered the full
dimensions of the massacre. He declared he had tried
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation without success. He said
he then staggered to the bathroom and checked out his
own injuries, then staggered to the telephone and
reported the crime.
Investigators were not impressed with MacDonald’s
claims, feeling there were inconsistencies with the physical evidence, such as bloodstain patterns and the location of fibers from MacDonald’s pajama tops. In
addition, the doctor’s wounds were rather superficial,
the worst being a small stab in the chest that caused a
partial collapse of the right lung.
Later that year MacDonald was charged with the
murders, but at the outset of the court-martial proceedings, defense counsel made a shambles of the army’s
charges, noting disturbance of evidence by MPs, loss of
evidence, and the failure to establish roadblocks to
hunt for possible intruders. There were charges that the
military investigators failed to fully investigate another
possible suspect. The defense was complemented by
character witness testimony, including that of Colette’s
stepfather, Freddy Kassab.
MacDonald was cleared and left the service with an
honorable discharge.
Within a few years, however, Freddy Kassab, having
long reviewed all the evidence, changed his mind and
determined his son-in-law was guilty. For two years he
fought a lonely fight to get the charges reinstated. In
1975 MacDonald was indicted by a federal grand jury.
At the subsequent trial the prosecution charged that
MacDonald had engaged in an extramarital affair, that
he was drug dependent and that a number of domestic
problems led him to decide to murder his wife. The
defense produced Helena Stoeckley whom it charged
was the “kill the pigs” female at the crime scene.
Although priced at a not-inexpensive 12 1/2¢ a copy, it
was one of the biggest-selling pamphlets of the decade.
MacDonald, Jeffrey (1944– ) convicted of killing his
wife and children
The scene that confronted military police in the early
morning of February 17, 1970, when they were summoned to the Fort Bragg, North Carolina, home of Dr.
Jeffrey Robert MacDonald, was horribly bloody. MacDonald, a medical officer at the fort and a captain in
the Green Berets, was found semiconscious, but the
rest of his family had been butchered. The doctor’s 26year-old wife Colette, pregnant with her third child, lay
dead in the master bedroom. She had been stabbed a
total of 21 times in the chest with an icepick and battered in the head at least a half-dozen times with a
club. Both her arms had been broken, apparently while
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MCDONALD, Michael Cassius “Mike”
Stoeckley had been diagnosed as a substance abuser
and a paranoid schizophrenic. However, she insisted
she had never been in the MacDonald home and had
never even seen the doctor until that day in court.
MacDonald was found guilty of second-degree murder in the cases of Colette and Kimberly and firstdegree murder in the case of Kristen, and drew three
consecutive life sentences.
The MacDonald case would not go away, however.
In 1980 a federal court threw out the conviction on the
grounds that MacDonald had not had a speedy trial.
Later, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 6-3 vote, ruled
MacDonald’s constitutional rights had not been violated, and the sentence was restored.
In 1983 Joe McGinniss’ book Fatal Vision became a
best-seller. McGinniss had been asked by MacDonald
before his trial to tell his story. Unfortunately for MacDonald, the writer came to the conclusion that the doctor was guilty, and perhaps committed the brutal
murders because of exhaustion, amphetamine use and a
psychological disorder. The outraged MacDonald
unsuccessfully attempted to prevent NBC from doing a
miniseries based on the book, and he continued to
assert his innocence.
A $15 million lawsuit by MacDonald against
McGinniss for breach of contract and fraud ended in a
deadlocked jury and a mistrial. In August 1987 MacDonald settled out of court for $325,000.
The murder verdict continued to be a matter of
dispute, and a 1989 documentary by filmmaker Ted
Landreth entitled False Witness probed the drug culture around Fayetteville at the time the murders
occurred and the alleged involvement of Helena
Stoeckley. MacDonald continued serving his sentence
but by the turn of the century, the number of his supporters kept on growing amid claims that newly discovered scientific evidence was being developed that
would inevitably result in yet another reversal of the
case that refused to die.
with a stake large enough to open a gambling house at
89 Dearborn Street.
In 1869 McDonald swindled $30,000 out of an
assistant cashier who, in turn, was embezzling money
from the large company he worked for. McDonald was
arrested for the swindle but beat the rap by hiring
scores of witnesses to testify that his gambling place ran
honest games and that his victim had begged him, with
tears in his eyes, to be allowed to play. However, the
trial drained McDonald’s finances, and he was unable
to keep up protection payments to the police, which
resulted in raids on his establishment several times a
week. The experience left him with a hatred for policemen, which continued into his later life when he was
the greatest fixer in the city and even named police
chiefs. Years after, a patrolman came to him and said:
“We’d like to put you down for two dollars, Mike.
We’re burying a policeman.”
“Fine!” Mike replied. “Here’s ten dollars. Bury five
of ’em!”
Like all other gambling and vice operators, McDonald was wiped out by the Chicago Fire, but because he
was one of the quickest to get back in business, he was
able to “build a poke” before the police became organized enough to collect protection payments again. By
1873 he and two partners had opened a four-story
resort in a building that would later become the home
of the Hamilton Club. The first floor was a top-notch
saloon; the second floor housed McDonald’s office and
a large set of gambling rooms. The third and fourth
floors were run by his wife Mary, who rented furnished
flats to select gamblers and bunco men, such as Kid
Miller, Snapper Johnny Malloy, Dutchy Lehman, Jew
Myers, Charley Gondorf, Boss Ruse and Black-Eyed
Johnny. Another of his cronies, Hungry Joe Lewis, took
Oscar Wilde for several thousand dollars during the
English writer’s tour of the United States in 1882. The
same year two others, Johnny Norton and Red Jimmy
Fitzgerald, swindled diplomat Charles Francis Adams
out of $7,000.
In this famous resort, called The Store, McDonald
uttered a number of phrases that were to become part
of the American vernacular. When a partner objected
that his plans were too lavish and that they would
never attract enough customers, McDonald replied,
“There’s a sucker born every minute.” While later writers would attribute the remark to P.T. Barnum, it was
McDonald who coined it as well as another equally
famous saying: “Never give a sucker an even break.”
By 1880 McDonald’s stature had grown to the
extent that he controlled all vice operations except for
prostitution, a business activity he found repulsive. “A
crook has to be decent to work with Mike,” a friend of
his once explained. And working with Mike meant
McDonald, Michael Cassius “Mike” (1832–1907)
gambler and fixer
Chicago gambling, confidence swindling, vice and the
political fixing during the 30 years after the fire of 1871
starred Michael Cassius McDonald.
A professional gambler while still in his early teens,
Mike became the King of the Bounty Jumpers during
the Civil War, heading an organized gang of crooks
who reaped a fortune collecting bounties for enlisting
in the Union Army and promptly deserting to repeat
the process elsewhere. McDonald masterminded the
movements of his men, keeping track of their “enlistments” on a large war map. He came out of the war
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MCGLUE, Luke
making good money. McDonald moved into politics,
refining the political fix to a fine art. A criminal wishing to operate freely had to pay Mike as much as 60
percent of his take, which was then divided among the
police, various city officials and judges and McDonald’s
own syndicate. McDonald became close friends with
such Chicago mayors as Harvey Colvin and Carter
Harrison. During the terms of these two mayors,
Mike’s minions were allowed to run wild. In 1882, during one of the mayoral reigns of Carter Harrison,
McDonald flexed enough muscle to have Superintendent of Police Simon O’Donnell, who was both honest
and efficient, reduced in rank to captain and replaced
by his own man, William J. McGarigle. McGarigle later
had to skip town following the disclosure of a cleaning
and painting swindle of a governmental building that
netted McDonald’s company $67,000. While some of
the governmental grafters went to prison, McDonald
remained untouched.
McDonald continued to control the Chicago rackets
until the turn of the century, pulling in his horns whenever a reform administration came in and then swinging back into action when the heat was off. After
accumulating several million dollars, he started to lose
interest in his business because of marital problems. In
the mid-1880s his wife ran off with a minstrel singer.
McDonald finally tracked her down in San Francisco
and brought her home, but in 1889 she took off again,
this time with a Catholic priest who used to say mass at
a private altar in the McDonald mansion. The lovers
went to Paris, where they lived for six years until the
priest entered a monastery and McDonald’s wife
returned to Chicago to operate a boardinghouse. Mike
meanwhile had obtained a divorce and married Dora
Feldman, four decades his junior. In the ninth year of
this second marriage, Dora shot and killed a young
artist named Webster Guerin, who, it developed, had
been her secret lover during almost all of the marriage.
The now-retired political fixer never recovered from
the shock of the disclosure and his wife’s comments to
the press that she had always disliked him; he died on
August 9, 1907. Nevertheless, McDonald had left his
second wife a large portion of his estate and had set up
a special defense fund of $40,000 for her murder trial.
Chicago being Chicago, Dora McDonald was acquitted
in 1908.
See also: BOUNTY JUMPING, CARTER HARRISON.
McGlue, Luke
room looted, it was most likely the work of Luke
McGlue. If a man’s luggage disappeared, it was that
damnable Luke McGlue again. If a man’s trousers disappeared while he was visiting a harlot in a crib, she
would tell him—with a straight face—it was the work
of Luke McGlue. Luke McGlue specialized in robbing
greenhorns or constantly playing practical jokes on
them, and they would leave town happy to have seen
the last of him. Well, not literally, since they had never
seen Luke McGlue. Nor could they have. Luke McGlue
didn’t exist. He was invented by the denizens of Dodge
City as an explanation for the many practical jokes and
petty thefts greenhorns were subjected to. Even Wyatt
Earp assured such victims he was on the lookout for
Luke McGlue and would deal with him severely when
he caught him.
McGuirk’s Suicide Hall
New York underworld dive
Few dives on New York’s Bowery ever descended to the
depths of McGuirk’s Suicide Hall, the favorite haunt of
the lowest female criminals and prostitutes around the
turn of the 19th century.
Men were permitted in Suicide Hall, and if they were
fortunate enough not to be drugged and robbed, they
could very likely find sexual companionship for as little
as a nickel. Gangsters low on their finances, however,
were always welcomed as patrons and fawned over by
women desperate to obtain a sponsor or protector. The
place teemed with “lush workers” (women who robbed
drunks), pickpockets, purse snatchers, burglars, panhandlers, beggars, drug addicts and female thieves of all
descriptions.
The only real competition Suicide Hall faced for the
patronage of these dregs of female humanity was
Mother Woods’ on Water Street. The two establishments often engaged in price wars and sought additional business by permitting almost any unwholesome
activity on their premises. Suicide Hall won out, allowing McGuirk to make his famous boast that more
women had killed themselves in his place than in any
other house in the world. After seven years of existence, the establishment passed from the scene in
1902, a victim of constant police raids and better economic conditions, which reduced female criminality
and generally destroyed the low Bowery dives. The
Suicide Hall building later housed the Hadley Rescue
Mission.
fictitious thief
McGurn, Machine Gun Jack (1904–1936) hit man
During the boom years of Dodge City, Kan., from
about 1877 to 1887, the nefarious Luke McGlue committed more crimes in the “wickedest little city in
America” than anyone else. If a man had his hotel
Machine Gun Jack McGurn was the kind of subject
Hollywood embraced for its gangster movies of the
1930s. James De Mora was 19 when his father was
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MCINTYRE, Charles
and it was 10 years before he once more rose to the top
of his profession.
After Al Capone was convicted of income tax evasion, McGurn went into a slow decline. By 1936
things had really gotten tough for him. He was being
edged aside by other Capone gang members and his
nightclubs had folded because of the Depression. On
February 13, the eve of the anniversary of the St.
Valentine’s Day Massacre, McGurn was in a bowling
alley with two other men when three gunmen entered.
The trio drew their guns, as did the two men with
McGurn. All five turned their weapons on him and
opened fire. In his right hand they pressed a nickel,
perhaps indicating McGurn’s killing was an act of
revenge for his earlier slayings of Genna gang members. On the other hand, the fact that the murder
occurred on the night before the anniversary of the
massacre may mean it was the work of Bugs Moran
and remnants of the O’Banion gang. Then again, both
touches could have been deliberately staged by the
Capone mob to cover their tracks. In any event, neither the police nor the public seemed too concerned
about who had been responsible.
See also: ST. VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE.
murdered in Chicago’s Little Italy. Legend has it that
the son soaked his hands in his father’s blood and
vowed vengeance. He started practicing to take his
revenge by shooting birds off telephone wires with a
Daisy repeating rifle.
Meanwhile, he tried boxing, becoming a reasonably
good welterweight, under the name of Jack McGurn.
When it was apparent he didn’t have the stuff of a topnotch fighter, McGurn’s manager dropped him, and he
went back to hunting his father’s killers, whose identities were, in fact, hardly a dark secret. McGurn’s father
had been an alcohol cooker for the vicious Genna gang,
which controlled illegal booze production in Little Italy.
When he made the mistake of supplying alcohol to the
competition, he was killed. Young McGurn could
hardly expect to learn which Genna gunmen had done
the job, so he decided to kill any and all Genna men.
The best way to do that was to join the Capone outfit,
which sooner or later would have to make war on the
Gennas.
McGurn became one of Capone’s most reliable hit
men, exceedingly proficient with a machine gun, hence
he was called Machine Gun McGurn. The police supposedly attributed 28 killings to McGurn, including
about six of the Genna gang. In the hand of each of
these, McGurn had placed a nickel to show his contempt for the dead men, lousy nickel-and-dimers. His
devotion to killing for Capone knew no limits. He is
said to have personally held the heads of Albert
Anselmi, John Scalise and Hop Toad Guinta as Al
Capone battered their brains out with an Indian club at
a famous party thrown in their honor. He also is generally believed to have been one of the machine gunners
and certainly one of the chief planners of the St. Valentine Day’s Massacre. But charges against him had to be
dropped when Louise Rolfe, a showgirl, insisted he had
been with her at the time of the massacre, thus winning
her fame as the Blonde Alibi. Later, the police were able
to prove the story was false and charged McGurn with
perjury, but he beat that rap by marrying Louise Rolfe,
who, as his wife, could not be forced to testify against
him.
McGurn was a great nightclub crawler. With the
shoulders of his suit heavily padded and his hair
pomaded, he did his best to look like Rudolph
Valentino. He so prospered in his criminal endeavors
that he soon owned a number of Loop nightclubs. One
of his entertainers was a young comer named Joe E.
Lewis, who eventually deserted him to work in a rival
club. A week later, Lewis was waylaid by three of
McGurn’s men. Two of them pistol-whipped him while
the third worked him over with a knife, carving up his
face and slashing his throat and tongue. Somehow
Lewis survived. He had to learn to talk all over again,
McIntyre, Charles (1858–1874) lynch victim
Lynched at the age of 16, Charles McIntyre may have
been one of the youngest labor union martyrs in the
country’s history, but he is little remembered, mainly
because he didn’t live long enough to accomplish
much.
A native of Pennsylvania, McIntyre was working in
the Nevada mines at 16. He was also making noise
about the miners organizing into a union, and for that
he earned the enmity of mining interests. On May 20,
1874 McIntyre was in the company of a friend, John
Walker, who wounded a man named Sutherland in a
gunfight. Although McIntyre had been hardly more
than a disinterested spectator, he was placed in the Belmont, Nev. jail along with Walker. Eleven days after
their arrest the pair broke jail and hid out in an abandoned mine shaft. They were found two days later, and
about midnight of June 2 a mob stormed the jail and
hanged McIntyre and Walker in their cell. The hangings, credited to the 301 Vigilante Movement, stand
out as flimsy cases even for lynch justice. Walker’s victim had not died and, of course, McIntyre had not
killed or robbed anyone; in fact, he had done nothing
worse than break out of jail, which was seldom
regarded as a hanging offense. The miners speculated
that McIntyre had brought on the vigilante action
because of his organizing talk, but that speculation was
done in whispers.
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MCKINNEY Touch
McKinney Touch
The elder brother, Frank, was as mean and vicious as
Old Man Clanton and Curly Bill Brocius, taking particular delight in torturing to death Mexican mule pack
drivers after the gang robbed them of their silver. Tom
McLowery, the tamer of the pair, was never tied to any
particular killings, although he joined the Clantons in
many cattle-rustling operations.
In the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the Earps concentrated most of their early firepower on Frank McLowery, since he was considered by far the most dangerous
opponent. There has been much dispute over whether
or not Tom McLowery was even armed when the
shooting started, although somehow he did obtain a
gun during the next 30 seconds. It is unclear whether he
had a concealed weapon or whether a weapon was
passed to him by a comrade. After the fatal shootings
the McLowerys and Billy Clanton were laid out in caskets at the undertaker’s under a large sign that read,
“MURDERED IN THE STREETS OF TOMBSTONE.”
See also: O.K. CORRAL.
sadistic trademark
A Western term that for the most part became extinct
when the frontier tamed down, the McKinney Touch
was named after James McKinney, who won fame
from Leadville, Colo. to California’s San Joaquin Valley as, for want of a better description, a mad buttocks
mutilator.
Born in Illinois in 1861, McKinney is officially credited with killing his first man in Leadville. In a display
of gratuitious sadism, he then shot off the nipples of his
victim’s girlfriend. Moving westward, he introduced the
McKinney Touch when he deliberately decorated a cancan dancer’s rump with bullet ridges. In California he
whittled off a bit of a schoolteacher’s ear and knifed
two lawmen, the last offense earning him seven years in
San Quentin. Within a short time after he got out,
McKinney had refined his trademark to the point that
folks started calling it the McKinney Touch. On
December 13, 1901 McKinney shot and killed a man
named Sears. When a lawman hearing the shooting
bounded out of an outhouse gun in hand, McKinney
sent him scurrying with two shots that grazed his rump.
Amazingly, McKinney was held blameless in these
shootings: it was ruled he had acted in self-defense
when Sears tried to kill him and that he had taken due
care not to maim the officer when he came at him without first ascertaining the facts.
That was the last time the McKinney Touch was
considered a mere prank. After he killed a man named
William Linn and wounded two lawmen, McKinney
fled California with a posse hot on his heels. He crossed
into Mexico but soon returned to California and killed
two prospectors. The law knew the killings were McKinney’s work because of where the two had been shot.
Finally, on April 18, McKinney was cornered in a Chinese opium den in Bakersfield, Calif. City Marshal Jess
Packard and five deputies stormed the den. When the
smoke cleared, McKinney, Marshal Packard and
Deputy Marshal William Tibbett, the father of
Lawrence Tibbett, the future Metropolitan Opera star,
lay dead.
Mackle, Barbara Jane
McLowery brothers
Corral gunfight victims
McNamara brothers
See LOS ANGELES TIMES
BOMBING.
McNelly, Leander H. (1844–1877) Texas Ranger
A sickly law officer who often had to direct his men
from a wagon bed, Leander McNelly nonetheless was
one of the most-fabled and fearless of the Texas
Rangers.
A former captain in the Confederate Army during
the Civil War, he later served in the Texas State
Police. When the Texas Rangers were reorganized in
1874, he won command of the Special Battalion,
which was charged with running down rustling rings
and international smugglers and assigned whatever
unusual missions came up. For this task McNelly
recruited an unusually tough band of Rangers, who
were willing “to follow him to hell and back if we
can make it.”
McNelly’s assignments were, first, to cool the bitter
Sutton-Taylor feud in De Witt County and then, to do
battle with the American outlaws infesting the Nueces
Strip near the Mexican border. In that area McNelly
also faced the Mexican bandit army of Juan Cortina,
which had plagued Texas for some 15 years.
In June 1875 Cortina’s men stole a large herd of cattle from the King Ranch and headed for the safety of
the border. McNelly and his men caught up with them,
killed 12 of the rustlers and headed the cattle back
north. Later on, determined to break Cortina’s hold on
the border, McNelly took 36 Rangers across the Rio
See GARY STEVEN KRIST.
Clanton gang members and O.K.
The McLowery, or McLaury, brothers were important
members of the Clanton gang, which terrorized parts of
Texas, the Arizona Territory and Mexico in the 1870s.
Both ended up shot to death in the famed gunfight at
Tombstone’s O.K. Corral.
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MCPHERSON, Aimee Semple
Grande in an illegal invasion. The Rangers and
Cortina’s men fought several engagements, including
one in which the Rangers routed a band of 300 Cortinastas. McNelly’s daring raid was given credit for ending large-scale rustling sorties into Texas by Mexican
outlaws.
McNelly then turned his attentions to other outlaws,
but tuberculosis compelled him more and more to
direct his troops from a wagon bed. In February 1877
he was forced to resign and he died on September 4 of
that year.
See also: JUAN CORTINA, SUTTON-TAYLOR FEUD, TEXAS
RANGERS.
and in later years the McParland legend was further
enhanced by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, whose melodramatic The Valley of Fear, was based on the detective’s
work.
After the destruction of the Mollie Maguires, McParland became the head of the detective agency’s Denver
office. Following the turn of the century, he starred in
his second world-famous labor case, which involved the
prosecution of the labor leadership of the Western Federation of Miners and the Industrial Workers of the
World. After the 1905 murder of Frank Steunenberg,
ex-governor of Idaho, McParland uncovered two
informer-assassins, Steve Adams and Harry Orchard,
whose statements led to the arrest of union leaders
William D. “Big Bill” Haywood, Charles H. Moyers
and George A. Pettibone. Later, Adams withdrew a confession he had made involving the trio and insisted his
false statements had been Pinkerton-inspired. Clarence
Darrow, presenting the defense, made a shambles of the
prosecution’s case and Orchard’s written confession,
which included a number of inked corrections, many
believed to be in McParland’s hand. In the end, all the
defendants were acquitted, and only Harry Orchard
was condemned to death (his sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment).
Whatever excuses could be made for the loss of the
case—and the Pinkertons and McParland had many—
the fact remained that the Orchard-Haywood case
could hardly be viewed as a great success. So of his two
great labor cases McParland won one (the Mollie
Maguires) and lost one (Orchard-Haywood). Sixty
years later even that score had to be revised. In January
1979 John Kehoe was granted a full state pardon a century after his hanging, a sort of final determination that
the Mollie Maguire leader had been subjected to a
frame-up by detectives and spies in the employ of the
mining company.
See also: WILLIAM D. “BIG BILL” HAYWOOD, MOLLIE
MAGUIRES, HARRY ORCHARD, PINKERTON’S NATIONAL
DETECTIVE AGENCY, FRANK STEUNENBERG.
McParland, James (1844–1919) undercover detective
Probably no private detective was more hated by the
radical labor movement in America than Irish-born
James McParland, who gained credit as the man who
broke the secret labor society known as the Mollie
Maguires.
McParland emigrated to the United States in 1863.
After working as a coal company wagon driver, he
joined the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in the
early 1870s. After distinguishing himself in a number of
cases, McParland was assigned to a case that eventually
would bring him worldwide notoriety. The Pinkertons
were hired by the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad to
help crush a secret labor society known as the Mollie
Maguires, which was terrorizing the railroad’s coal
fields. These agitators had taken the name of an earlier
Irish land reform group called the Mollie Maguires.
Allan Pinkerton sent McParland into the anthracitemining region of eastern Pennsylvania with orders that
he infiltrate the Irish-Catholic community there. The
undercover man gained membership in the fraternal
Ancient Order of Hibernians, some of whose lodges in
the area were under the control of the Mollies. He
gained the confidence of the Mollie leadership and was
able to make daily spy reports on their activities, which
included sabotage against the coal operators and, occasionally, murder. In all, McParland was responsible for
the conviction of more than 60 men, including Mollie
chief John “Black Jack” Kehoe and 10 other of the 19
men who were hanged.
The hardest moment for McParland during a series
of sensational trials in 1876–77 came when defense
attorneys forced him to admit that he knew of planned
murders and did nothing to prevent them, although he
had ample time to do so. McParland’s defense, which at
least satisfied the antilabor forces, was that he feared he
would have been assassinated if he had tried to prevent
the killings. McParland was lionized in a number of
contemporary books and other accounts of his exploits,
McPherson, Aimee Semple (1890–1944) evangelist
and alleged kidnap victim
For a decade before 1926, Sister Aimee Semple
McPherson was America’s most successful, if controversial, female evangelist, billing herself the World’s
Most Pulchritudinous Evangelist, until a bizarre “kidnapping” started her career in decline.
Born near Ingersoll, Ontario, Sister Aimee married a
Pentecostal evangelist, Robert Semple, with whom she
served as a missionary in China. When he died, she
returned to the United States and remarried. She left
her second husband, Harold McPherson, in favor of a
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MAD Bomber
life of preaching that took her all over the United
States, Canada, England and Australia. When she
finally settled in Los Angeles, she was without funds
but had a large, devoted following, which she organized into a religious movement called the International Church of the Four-Square Gospel. The church
appealed especially to transplanted midwesterners and
southerners who had difficulties coping with California life.
Raising $1.5 million from her devout followers, Sister Aimee built the huge Angelus Temple, where 5,000
of the fervent could attend her meetings, which featured faith healing, adult baptism by immersion, an
aura of hope and Cecil B. DeMille–style spectacle. Sister Aimee would appear in a white silk gown, her hair
adorned with flowers and colored lights dancing on her
figure. A 50-piece band played patriotic songs and
rousing religious music. Sister Aimee’s lectures were
broadcast live from the group’s own radio station in the
church. The sheer size of the operation required a
weekly payroll of $7,000.
As well known as Sister Aimee was, she became even
more famous in the spring of 1926, when she went to a
lonely section of beach near Venice, Calif. and disappeared after being seen entering the water. Her mother,
active in the temple, summoned the faithful and bade
them to pray for her. “We know,” she said, “she is with
Jesus.” Besides praying, the faithful kicked in $25,000
as a reward for anyone helping Sister Aimee to return.
About 100 of her devoted followers hurled themselves
into the waters where Sister Aimee had disappeared.
One drowned and another died of exposure. A young
girl became so distraught at the loss of her spiritual
mentor that she committed suicide. A plane scattered
lilies over Sister Aimee’s watery departure spot.
Then, 32 days after her disappearance, Sister Aimee
limped out of the desert near Douglas, Ariz., the victim
of an alleged kidnapping. She said that while she was
on the beach, her secretary having returned to a nearby
hotel, she was kidnapped by a couple and a second man
who said they wanted her to say prayers over a dying
baby. Instead, they drugged her and imprisoned her in a
hut in Mexico. They told her that if she didn’t raise a
half-million dollars in ransom, they would sell her to a
Mexican white slaver. One of the men burned her with
cigars when she would not answer all his questions. On
June 22 the trio had gotten careless in their vigil and
Sister Aimee was able to slip away, hiking for 13 hours
across the desert to Douglas, Ariz.
While several of the faithful gathered outside the
hospital, Sister Aimee showed burns on her fingers and
assorted bruises and blisters she said she had gotten
while tied up and during her long trek to freedom. The
story did not sit too well with many, however. Her
568
shoes and clothing didn’t seem scuffed enough for such
a hike across sun-baked sands, and some thought it odd
that after such an ordeal Sister Aimee hadn’t even asked
for a drink of water.
Los Angeles District Attorney Asa Keyes investigated
and was dubious, so dubious that in due course he
indicted Sister Aimee and her mother for obstruction of
justice because of their story of the “disappearance”
and “kidnapping.” Keyes produced evidence that while
the evangelist’s flock was praying for her return, the
good Sister was trysting with the married radio operator of her temple, Kenneth G. Ormiston, at various
hotels. At her trial Sister Aimee announced, “I am like a
lamb led to slaughter,” and she blamed her troubles on
“the overlords of the underworld.” Keyes ignored such
comments and called to the stand a parade of hotel
maids, house detectives and others who identified Sister
Aimee as the woman who accompanied Ormiston on
various stopovers while the nation puzzled over her disappearance.
Keyes also had flushed Ormiston out of hiding in
Harrisburg, Pa. Previously, he had supposedly mailed
an affidavit to Keyes admitting to the hotel trysts but
insisting his companion was really “Miss X” whom he
would not embarrass by identifying. The district attorney had been unimpressed by the paper since it bore a
signature that closely resembled the hand of Sister
Aimee. However, Keyes failed to call the radio operator
to testify, and midway through the trial he suddenly
moved for an acquittal. Keyes never explained why, but
it is worth noting that in later years the district attorney
himself went to prison for taking bribes in a number of
strong cases that had been dropped or plea-bargained.
Officially cleared, Sister Aimee returned to her spiritual work, but the ardor had gone out of many of the
faithful. She took to touring Europe and the Orient but
never fully recaptured a style one historian described as
fusing “economies and ecstasy, showmanship and salvation, carnival and contrition.” Sister Aimee later had
a short marriage with a radio man named Dave Hutton
and then dropped from public view. In September
1944 she died in Oakland, Calif., apparently from an
overdose of sleeping pills.
Mad Bomber
See GEORGE PETER METESKY.
Madden, Owney “The Killer” (1892–1964)
bootlegger and murderer
The transformation of Owney “The Killer” Madden
from a vicious young thug, who was called “that little
banty rooster out of hell,” into a sleek, dapper sophisticate of crime was truly remarkable. During the early
MADSEN, Chris
1900s Madden was known as a heartless, mindless
murderer. He killed his first victim at the age of 17 and
had done in five by the time he reached 23. During the
1920s and 1930s he was one of the top bootleggers and
gang leaders in New York, a debonair character who
was still capable of murder—but with a certain flair.
Owney came to New York from his native Liverpool, England when he was 11 and soon enrolled in
one of the major gangs of the day, the Gophers. He ran
up a total of 44 arrests in his youthful escapades without ever doing any time in prison. In the process he
became accomplished with a slung shot, a blackjack,
brass knuckles and his favorite weapon, a piece of lead
pipe wrapped in a newspaper. Because of his callousness and daring, Madden quickly gained the nickname
the Killer and advanced to the leadership of the gang.
In that exalted position he raked in an estimated $200 a
day for the robberies, labor beatings, killings and intergang attacks he planned. By the time he was 20, he was
receiving extortion money from scores of merchants
eager to pay “bomb insurance” to avoid having their
storefronts blown out.
The police charged but couldn’t prove that Madden
had killed his first man, an Italian, for no other reason
but to celebrate his rise to power in the Gophers. Some
of his homicides, on the other hand, resulted from
affairs of the heart. When he learned in 1910 that an
innocuous clerk named William Henshaw had asked
one of his girls for a date, Madden followed him onto a
trolley car at Ninth Avenue and West 16th Street and
shot him in front of a dozen other passengers. Before
departing the trolley, he paused to toll the bell for his
victim. Henshaw lived long enough to identify Madden, who was captured after a chase across several roof
tops in Hell’s Kitchen. He was not convicted of the
murder, however, since all the witnesses thought it wise
to vanish.
In November 1912 a youthful Owney the Killer
almost had his career cut short during a confrontation
in a dance hall with 11 gunmen from the rival Hudson
Dusters. When he tried to outdraw and outshoot the
bunch of them, he ended up with five bullets in his
body. Rushed to the hospital, Madden refused to tell
the police who had shot him. “It’s nobody’s business
but mine,” he said.
By the time he got out of the hospital, his men had
knocked off six of his assailants. However, Owney the
Killer had other pressing problems to deal with. Little
Patsy Doyle had moved to take over the Gophers,
spreading the false word that Owney was crippled for
life. Little Patsy was motivated by more than blind
ambition; the Killer had appropriated his woman,
Freda Horner, and made Patsy a laughingstock. Little
Patsy played tough, shooting up a number of Madden
loyalists. In due course, Owney ended Little Patsy’s bid
for power and his entire insurrection by filling him with
bullets. For this offense Madden was imprisoned in
Sing Sing from 1915 to 1923.
By the time Owney the Killer got out of prison, he
had undergone a sort of metamorphosis. He had
attained a measure of finesse and respectability. Owney
went into rumrunning and into the coal and laundry
rackets, proving such a dependable crook that Tammany’s Jimmy Hines stood behind him. Owney the
Killer moved in the top criminal circles with such
ascending powers of the 1920s as Lucky Luciano,
Dutch Schultz, Frank Costello, Waxey Gordon, Longy
Zwillman, Louis Lepke and the Bug and Meyer team of
Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky. Despite his rise in status, Madden had not lost his instinct for violence.
When Mad Dog Coll was running around Manhattan
kidnapping and murdering top criminals, it was Owney
who kept him talking on the telephone one day until
gunmen arrived to cut off the Mad Dog’s connection.
In the 1930s Madden moved into the world of
sports, promoting the dimwitted Primo Carnera into
the heavyweight boxing championship. Carnera ended
up stone broke, but Madden was said to have made a
million, taking a 100 percent cut of the Italian fighter’s
earnings.
Owney was picked up in 1932 for a parole violation,
but after a short stay in prison he was back on the
town. The police kept the heat on him with all sorts of
minor arrests until in the mid-1930s he decided to
retire. If 20 years earlier a veteran cop had been asked
what young punk would most assuredly end up on a
slab in the morgue, more than likely he would have
picked Owney the Killer. Instead, Madden retired to the
good life in Hot Springs, Ark., a famous underworld
“cooling-off” spot where his protection by the local
law was to become legendary. The local cops performed heroic work keeping him from being annoyed
by pesky journalists. If they didn’t, Owney warned
them, he would have them transferred and broken. By
the time he died in 1964, Owney the Killer had almost
achieved the stature of a southern gentleman.
See also: VINCENT “MAD DOG” COLL.
Madsen, Chris (1851–1944) lawman
A Dane who led a truly adventurous life, Deputy Marshal Chris Madsen became one of the West’s legendary
peace officers as one of the Oklahoma Territory’s
famed Three Guardsmen, along with Heck Thomas
and Bill Tilghman.
Madsen was a far more honest and productive lawman than the likes of Wild Bill Hickok or Wyatt Earp.
Born in Denmark in 1851, red-haired, cherubic-faced
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MAFIA
Madsen served in the Danish army, fought with the
forces of Italian rebel Garibaldi and for the French Foreign Legion before the lure of gold brought him to
America in the 1870s. He joined the 5th Cavalry and
took part in a number of Indian campaigns before pinning on a nickel-plated deputy’s star in the Oklahoma
Territory.
As a law officer in what was called the worst badlands in America, Madsen became the scourge of
rustlers, whiskey peddlers, thieves, train robbers and
murderers. Either by himself or working with others, he
played a key role in rounding up members of the Dalton gang, killers Kid Lewis and Foster Crawford and
train robber Henry Silva. In the campaign against the
Doolin gang, the three Guardsmen were each assigned
a portion of Bill Doolin’s known territory and given the
task of cleaning it up. Madsen got much of the credit
for running down and killing two of Doolin’s worst
toughs, Tulsa Jack Blake and Red Buck Waightman.
In 1898 Madsen resigned his post to join Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. Although he contracted yellow
fever in Cuba, he was able to resume his law enforcement career after the war until 1907, when Oklahoma
became a state. Afterward, he settled in Guthrie, Okla.,
and lived to the ripe old age of 92. He died on January
9, 1944 as the result of a fall, a far more peaceful end
than many of his friends and enemies experienced.
See also: HENRY ANDREW “HECK” THOMAS, THREE
GUARDSMEN, BILL TILGHMAN.
was the opening of a bloody war between Neapolitans
and Sicilians for control of the New Orleans waterfront. When the police—or at least some of the top
brass—seemed to be favoring the Neapolitan element,
the city’s police chief, David Hennessey, was ambushed
and shot-gunned to death in 1890. A grand jury considered the evidence in the case and found that “the existence of a secret organization known as the Mafia has
been established beyond doubt.”
Nineteen Sicilians were indicted for conspiring to
murder Hennessey. However, a Mafia reign of terror
silenced most of the 60 witnesses scheduled to testify at
the trial, with the result that none of the accused was
found guilty. After the trial the defendants were
returned to their cells awaiting final disposition of their
cases.
Public outrage, fueled by anti-Italian feelings in general, mounted to fever pitch. Headed by 60 of New
Orleans’ most prominent citizens, mass protests were
held, and finally a mob of several thousand marched on
the parish prison and killed 11 of the defendants.
Newspapers headlined the “Destruction of the Mafia,”
a somewhat overly optimistic statement. Part of the
Mafia simply went underground for a time while other
important elements moved on to different cities, establishing “beachheads” in a number of southern cities
and as far north as St. Louis. Still others moved to New
York. The Mafia was neither destroyed nor contained
by the bloody events in New Orleans.
In city after city the police proved incapable of stopping Mafia gangsters, in part from pure ignorance, if
not indifference, to most matters Italian. A few urban
police forces organized Italian squads to oversee the
sprouting Little Italy sections, but even these units
made only limited headway because of the attitude of
the Italian immigrants toward police, whose help they
shunned. In the old country the police were ineffective
against the Mafia. Could the American police be any
better? Thus the Mafia was able to grow.
Many mafiosi became Black Hand extortionists,
threatening death to those who would not pay for protection. Others committed various forms of robbery
and mayhem—most always against Italian victims,
especially newly arrived immigrants. The son of an
immigrant-criminal once explained this propensity:
Mafia
Referred to by several names, the Mafia first became
known to American officials in New Orleans during the
1880s, when some mafiosi murdered the city’s chief of
police. The society had been founded in Italy some six
centuries earlier to fight the oppression of the French
Angevins. Its slogan then was Morte alla Francia Italia
anela! (“Death to the French is Italy’s cry!”) The word
“Mafia” was taken from the first letters of each word
of the slogan. The Mafia turned to crime in the 19th
century, sometimes victimizing wealthy landowners but
more often hiring out to them as oppressors of the
peasants. The society spread to the rest of Italy and, to
a lesser extent, to other European countries. Its arrival
in the United States came in two great waves, the first
during the last two decades of the 19th century and the
other in the 1920s, after Benito Mussolini declared war
on the Mafia and forced hundreds of criminals to flee
the country.
The first known Mafia victim in America was a
Neapolitan named Vincenzo Ottumvo, who was killed
in New Orleans while playing cards on January 24,
1889. He was the victim of Sicilian gangsters in what
Can you imagine my father going uptown to commit a
robbery or a mugging? He would have had to take an
interpreter with him to read the street signs and say
‘stick ’em up’ for him. The only time he ever committed
a crime outside Mulberry Street was when he went over
to the Irish section to steal some milk so my mother
could heat it up and put it in my kid brother’s ear to
stop an earache.
570
MAFIA
As early as the first decade of the 20th century, the
U.S. government began trying to deport Mafia criminals. Lt. Joseph Petrosino of the New York Police
Department’s Italian Squad did considerable work
along these lines until he was murdered by gangsters in
Italy in 1909.
In New York City the Manhattan Mafia fought a
bloody war in 1916–19 with the Brooklyn Camorra,
the main Neapolitan underworld organization. Under
the leadership of Don Pelligrino Morano, the camorristi controlled most of the Brooklyn waterfront rackets
and extracted protection money from Italian businessmen, including storekeepers and ice and coal dealers.
Mafia gangsters ran similar extortion rackets in Manhattan, chiefly in the Greenwich Village and East
Harlem areas. Whenever either side made a move into
the other’s territory, the killing would start.
The leader of the Manhattan Mafia, Nicholas
Morello, thought it was foolish for the two sides to
carry on their bloody Old World rivalry, and when
Morano suggested a peace conference, Morello agreed.
It was held in a cafe on Brooklyn’s Navy Street.
Morello was still suspicious of Morano and thus
showed up with just a bodyguard and not his top lieutenants, on the assumption that their absence would
frustrate an assassination plot. Although Morano was
disappointed when he saw Morello’s top guns were
missing, he nonetheless had a five-man execution squad
cut the pair down after pledging eternal peace.
Morano’s strategy backfired. In this case witnesses
actually talked. Several camorristi went to the electric
chair and Morano was sentenced to life imprisonment.
After the gang leader’s trial the Brooklyn Eagle
reported: “Morano was surrounded by a dozen Italians
who showered kisses on his face and forehead. On the
way to the jail other Italians braved the guard and
kissed Morano’s hands, cheeks and forehead.”
The war continued, but without Morano’s cunning
leadership, camorristi were murdered by the dozens. By
1920 many of the gang’s surviving members gave up
the struggle and even joined various Mafia outfits. In a
sense, the 1920s was the heyday of the old Mafia, but
already new problems were arising. The aging leaders
of the Mafia continued to follow the society’s old-fashioned customs. Fundamentally, this meant limiting their
activities to exploiting Italians. Young Mafia members
saw that the gravy lay in broadening the base of criminal activity and forming alliances with other ethnic
gangster groups, mostly with the still potent Irish gangs
and the great Jewish gangs of the 1920s.
The last of the big-time “Mustache Petes” were
Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria and Salvatore
Maranzano, who sought to eliminate Joe the Boss in
order to establish himself as the “boss of bosses” of the
Mafia. Maranzano fought a bitter war against Masseria, which he won in 1931, when underlings of Joe the
Boss, led by Lucky Luciano, murdered their leader and
made peace. The peace lasted only a few months until
Luciano, working in cooperation with non-Italian
gangsters, mainly Meyer Lansky, successfully directed
the liquidation of Maranzano. Luciano and Lansky
then brought together various criminal elements—Italian and non-Italian—from around the country and
formed the national crime syndicate.
The fall of the last “Mustache Petes” could be
regarded as the end of the old Mafia and the establishment of the new one, which reached new levels of
wealth as the most dominant force within the national
crime syndicate. In the next few decades the Mafia
prospered as never before, meeting little opposition on
the federal level. For years FBI Director J. Edgar
Hoover denied the existence of the Mafia, claiming that
it was a mere figment of the imagination of crime writers. In a sense, informer Joe Valachi got Hoover off the
hook by referring to the new Mafia as Cosa Nostra,
“Our Thing.” Hoover readily conceded there was a
Cosa Nostra, neglecting to explain why he had failed to
note that point all the years he had insisted there was
no Mafia.
Today, the Mafia has some 5,000 men, just as it
had during the time Hoover was saying it didn’t exist,
belonging to 24 separate organizations, or “crime
families,” located in major cities around the country.
New York City has five families, which generally
function independently of each other and in relative
peace, except when the leader of one family attempts
to enlarge his territory at another family’s expense or
even tries to take control of all five families, as the late
Carmine Galante did in 1979. As a result of his
efforts, Galante was shot dead by hit men in the garden of a Brooklyn restaurant before the last course of
his meal.
By the late 1960s a third great wave of mafiosi had
begun to arrive from the old country, this one fostered
by the crime bosses in America, who had come to realize that a new infusion of toughness was needed to keep
the Mafia going. Too many second- and third-generation Italians were proving incapable of serving as soldiers. Crime family head Joseph Bonanno (Joe
Bananas) was particularly irate on two occasions when
soldiers begged off assignments because they had
promised to spend the evening with their wives. As
more and more aliens were imported to staff Mafia
operations in the 1970s, police were forced to admit
they were losing touch with mob operations.
Then came the great crackdown that shifted into full
gear after the death of J. Edgar Hoover and his earlier
pronouncements that there was no Mafia. Throughout
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MAFIA, Jr.
the 1980s mafiosi in New England, New Jersey, New
York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Cleveland
and many other localities were jailed on a scale never
before witnessed. In 1992 the government claimed that
the power of the Mafia was finally broken with the
conviction of John Gotti, the head of the Gambino
family. It had taken prosecuters four tries to convict
Gotti, but the fact was that at age 52, the crime boss
would never see freedom again. With his victory, U.S.
Attorney Andrew J. Maloney declared the death knell
to have sounded for organized crime.
This, however, was an old saw repeated since the
crime-buster days of Tom Dewey in New York and the
imprisonment of Al Capone in 1931. Five years later
the fall of Lucky Luciano and the destruction of Murder, Inc. elicited the some sort of remarks, as did the
exposures and mass jailings that followed the Kefauver
crime committee, and the disclosures of mob informer
Joe Valachi a decade later. Yet the mob continued to
thrive. Would it again?
See also: COSA NOSTRA; CHARLES “LUCKY” LUCIANO;
MAFIA, JR.; MAFIA FAMILIES; MAFIA, NEW ORLEANS MASS
EXECUTION OF; SALVATORE MARANZANO; GIUSEPPE “JOE
THE BOSS” MASSERIA; MORELLO FAMILY; MUSSOLINI SHUTTLE; MUSTACHE PETES.
Mafia, Jr.
with the bright idea of perhaps knifing Greenberg so he
wouldn’t be able to play. Although he wasn’t able to
pull off the assault, young Harry became the talk of the
Brownsville section of Brooklyn. The story reached
Louis Capone, Louis Lepke’s righthand man in Brooklyn, who related it to his boss. Lepke mentioned the
story to Albert Anastasia, and everyone got a big laugh
out of it. The word came back to Capone to “keep your
eye on that kid. We might be able to use him.” Strauss
eventually became the star killer of Murder, Inc.
For years the New York Mafia could recruit all the
eager punks it needed from Bensonhurst, Brownsville
and the Bath Beach districts of Brooklyn, drawing
most of its new blood, quite naturally, from the Italian
population and, by necessity, from the Jewish population as well. By the 1960s all this had changed. Mafia
leaders were bewailing the fact that the native-born
youths were not good enough to keep the crime families functioning and that the organization was hurting.
By 1971 some two-thirds of the 5,000 Mafia members
identified in the McClellan Committee reports less
than a decade before were in jail, facing trial or dead.
The youthful hoods put in charge of Mafia operations
were proving totally inept. Crime boss Carlo Gambino
complained that most of the young Italian-American
criminals seemed primarily interested in moving to the
suburbs.
The Mafia was forced to go back to Sicily for new
recruits, picking up youths who still believed in the old
Mafia traditions and who could and would follow
orders. Some 300 young Sicilians were smuggled into
New York via South America, while a much larger
number came in from Montreal via a pipeline run by
the Cotroni gang.
However, if today’s Mafia, Jr. speaks more Scidgie,
the Sicilian dialect, than English, it is as much the fault
of the crime elders as it is of the easy life. Contrary to
popular belief, nepotism is virtually nonexistent in the
Mafia. The dream of virtually every mob parent is that
his children will become lawyers, doctors or legitimate
businessmen; few will allow their offspring to mix in
Mafia matters. There are of course the exceptions, like
Bill Bonanno, the son of Joe Bananas, and Tony Zerilli,
the son of Detroit boss Joe Zerilli.
And sometimes there are subterfuges involved. Carlo
Gambino set his two sons up in what he said was a
legitimate trucking business. He also said he would see
to it that their legs were broken if they got into illegal
activities. So the boys went into the garment district.
Now, who ever would think Mafia progeny would go
into that area for anything but lawful purposes? Only
the law was an exception, and the Gambino brothers
were smacked down.
See also: COTRONI GANG.
young Mafia recruits
Following in the wake of the first criminal gangs to
appear in America were “junior contingents,” youth
gangs, such as the Little Dead Rabbits and the Little
Forty Thieves, whose members eagerly awaited the
opportunity to move up to the “big boys.” Oddly, the
great gang of today, the Mafia, no longer seems to have
this abundant pool of youthful reserves.
As late as the early 1960s, the newspapers still wrote
feature stories about a “Mafia, Jr.,” comprised of
youngsters schooled by the mob to step into the rackets. Indeed, there had been a Mafia youth auxiliary
from virtually the beginning of the century. Mafia leaders of the 1930s, such as Lucky Luciano, Frank
Costello, Al Capone, and Joe Adonis, had been weaned
in the old Five Points Gang. There were always juvenile
toughs eager to do gangsters’ bidding in the hopes of
stepping up. The mob leaders actively searched out
such young talent.
A case in point was Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss.
The word got around about him when he was a 16year-old student at Brooklyn’s Jefferson High School in
New York City. Jefferson was scheduled to play an
important basketball game in the Bronx against James
Monroe High School, which had a star player named
Hank Greenberg, destined to become one of the top
baseball players of all time. Strauss went to the Bronx
572
MAFIA, New Orleans mass execution of
Mafia, New Orleans mass execution of
While it is difficult to determine with certainty, the first
significant appearance of the Mafia in America seems
to have been in New Orleans during the late 1800s.
Between 1888 and 1890 the New Orleans Mafia
achieved so much power that its members were able to
terrorize much of the city, committing an estimated 40
murders without serious opposition. During this period
Antonio and Carlo Matranga, two top Honored Society members from Palermo, Sicily took control of the
Mississippi River docks. Tribute had to be paid to them
before a freighter could be unloaded. However, the
Matranga operations were challenged by the Provenzano brothers, leaders of another Mafia group.
War broke out between the two groups and killings
along the docks became a regular occurrence. The police
appeared unable to stop the slaughter until flamboyant
Chief of Police David Peter Hennessey personally took
charge and launched an investigation. Soon, the
Matrangas found themselves pressured everywhere by
the police while the Provenzanos were left relatively
unbothered, raising some question about the fairness of
Hennessey’s investigation. The Matrangas sent warnings
to the chief to lay off. When that tactic failed, they tried
to bribe Hennessey. The police leader rejected the offer,
convincing the Matrangas that the Provenzanos had
offered him more and that Hennessey was determined
to have a piece of the riverfront rackets for himself.
At this stage the Mafia in America had no real
understanding of what they could get away with and
what they couldn’t. Back in Sicily they had killed their
enemies, each other and any government official who
had dared to interfere. They resolved to do the same to
an American police chief if it became necessary.
Ironically, Hennessey’s fatal provocation occurred
when police conducting a routine murder investigation
charged two Provenzano brothers with involvement in
the killing of a Matranga gangster whose head had
been cut off and stuffed in a fireplace. Seeing a great
opportunity to eliminate their hated rivals, the Matrangas hired some of the leading lawyers of the city to aid
the prosecution. Then Chief Hennessey interfered. He
announced to the press that he had uncovered the existence of a criminal society known as the Mafia in the
city and said he planned to introduce his evidence at the
Provenzanos’ trial. On October 15, 1890 Hennessey
left the Central Police Station and started for his home.
He was cut down by a shotgun blast a half block from
his house. Hennessey managed to get off a few shots at
several of his assailants as they fled. When asked who
had shot him, he whispered, “Dagoes,” collapsed and
died.
Hennessey was an enormously popular official
despite his flamboyance—or because of it—and his
One of two men hanged by a New Orleans mob
determined to wipe out the Mafia.
murder outraged the city. A grand jury was convened
and announced that “the existence of a secret organization known as the Mafia has been established beyond
doubt.” Nineteen members of the Mafia were indicted
as principals and conspirators in the police chief’s murder, but their trial proved to be an affront to any concept of justice. A large number of the 60 potential
witnesses were intimidated, threatened or bribed and
several members of the jury were later found to have
taken bribes as well. Despite overwhelming evidence
against at least 11 of the defendants, all but three were
acquitted, and the jury could not reach a verdict on
these three.
All the defendants were returned to the parish
prison to await final disposition of their case and
release. The Mafia organized victory parades and celebrations in the Italian section, but there was a cry of
public outrage and protest meetings in other parts of
the city. Two days after the verdicts, a mob, several
thousand strong, headed by 60 leading citizens,
573
MAFIA at the turn of the century
In an interview with the St. Louis Globe Democrat,
Mayor Joseph Shakespeare declared: “I do consider
that the act was—however deplorable—a necessity and
justifiable. The Italians had taken the law into their
own hands and we had to do the same.” Resolutions
endorsing the lynchers were adopted by the Sugar
Exchange, the Cotton Exchange, the Stock Exchange,
the Mechanics’, Lumbermen’s and Dealers’ Exchange
and the Board of Trade.
For a time the lynchings threatened international
complications. Italy recalled its ambassador, severed
diplomatic relations with the United States and
demanded reparations and punishment for the lynchers. Eventually, the matter was settled when Washington agreed to pay $25,000 to the dead men’s relatives
in Italy.
Meanwhile, newspapers announced, “The Mafia
Exterminated.” The report was a bit exaggerated,
although it took some two decades before the New
Orleans Mafia regained full strength.
Seven mafiosi were executed by citizens firing squads in
the yard of the women’s section of the New Orleans
prison.
marched on the jail. They had a death list composed
of the 11 defendants against whom the evidence had
been the strongest; yet the mob was under instructions not to touch those defendants, including the
Matranga brothers, against whom the legal case had
been weakest. Two of the mafiosi were dragged out
to the street and hanged from lampposts. Seven others were executed by firing squads in the yard of the
women’s section of the prison, and two others were
riddled with bullets as they hid in a doghouse built
for the jail’s guard dog. The lynch mob contained a
large number of outraged blacks, making it perhaps
the most unusual lynching ever to take place in the
South. While some newspapers denounced the hangings, the citizens of New Orleans were, on the whole,
rather proud of their accomplishment and a new song
by a popular poet named Fred Bessel became a bestseller. Entitled “Hennessey Avenged!” the song
started:
Mafia at the turn of the century
If the Mafia was regarded to be in its death throes in
1992, the death rattle continued in December 1997
when Vinnie “The Chin” Gigante, the head of the Genovese crime family, the only group larger than the Gambinos, was also tucked away behind bars for a long
period, perhaps the equivalent of a life sentence.
However, the following month, given the claims of
prosecutors that the Gambino family was finished, it
was something of a surprise when John Gotti Jr. was
seized along with 39 others in what was alleged to be a
massive strike at the Gambino family.
The New York Times observed, “Although prosecutors portrayed the indictments as a triumphant blow to
organized crime, the allegations also testified to the
resiliency of the Mafia, which despite repeated indictments has been able to continue its hold on lucrative
ventures and enter into new ones, like telecommunications fraud.” Even the triumphant Mary Jo White, the
U.S. attorney for Manhattan, noted, “What this case
graphically shows is the power, profit and reach of the
Gambino crime family in business and industries, both
legitimate and illegitimate, throughout the metropolitan New York area.”
Clearly, the families were still around even though
they had lost considerable clout and power in the fish
and construction industries and to a lesser but growing
extent in trash-hauling and the garment industry. Officials essentially conceded that even as the Mafia loses
ground in some areas, it gains ground in others. Certain
old reliables as loan-sharking, chop-shop rings and
gambling were still there. A new crop of mobsters,
Chief Hennessey now will lay at rest, his soul will be at
ease,
It would be useless without their lives his spirit to
appease,
They have killed and robbed among themselves, that all of
us do know,
They cannot do it among us, for our power we now do
show. . . .
It concluded:
Great praise is due those gentlemen whom we all do
know,
Who called upon the citizens for them their power to
show.
No more assassins we will have sent from a foreign soil,
In New Orleans we’ve proved to all we’re honest sons of
toil.
574
MAFIA families
however, were focusing on lucrative white-collar
crimes, such as stock swindles, the sale of fake prepaid
telephone cards, and medical-insurance frauds. According to Lewis D. Schiliro, the head of the FBI’s New
York office, “The families are in transition, trying to
figure out how to redirect their criminal activities in a
new environment.”
While it may be said, quite logically, that John
Gotti bossed the Gambinos down in power, other
families have thrived. That was certainly true of the
Bonanno family, which had fallen into disrepute
among mafiosi. They had been deeply involved in
drug trafficking and fought numerous brutal turf
wars among themselves for internal rackets and spots
in the mob power structure. But under boss Joseph
Massino, the family made a remarkable comeback
with well over 100 active members and no top leaders in prison or even under indictment. Massino
could be said to have been a Gotti protege—and
according to some a “smarter John Gotti.” By 1998
the family had gained so much strength that they
were close to rivaling the Gambinos as the second
most powerful crime group in the East. With 100
made men and another 1,000 “associates” clearly
Massino was the boss of a powerful organization. Of
course, the law shifted major attention to the Bonannos, but it remained obvious that the family’s growing strength was additional testimony to organized
crime’s resilience.
It was to be expected that the law would continue to
harass the mobs and imprison deserving criminals, and
RICO (the 1970 Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt
Organization Act) would roadmap the way to kingsized sentences. And confiscation of mob profits would
continue, but perhaps to an underwhelming extent. As
many wise guys noted, there were more riches where
the previous came from.
Still, despite all the arrested and imprisoned, the two
biggest families, the Genoveses and the Gambinos, still
had, it was estimated, hundreds of made men, virtually
all of them millionaires. Despite claims to the contrary,
there has never been a period when the Mafia didn’t
have more applicants than needed. Ironically, it has
been argued that prosecutions of leading mafiosi provide the lifeblood of the organization because they create golden chances for advancement. There remained a
constant need for a new boss, a new underboss, new
capos, new soldiers every time there was a top-level
conviction or erasure.
How fast can these replacements be found? Gotti
from his prison was videotaped in family conversations
with visitors as being amazed how fast newcomers had
arrived. He said he had never heard of his son’s codefendants. “Where did these people come from? I’m not
away for 100 years! I’m only away seven years! Where
did these people come from?”
On one level the answer could be that “crime
marches on.” On a real basis it could indicate that
prosecutions cannot eliminate the mob, not when there
are millions of illicit dollars to be made daily. The most
educated guess could be that organized crime remains
with us and will continue to be a growth industry in the
21st century.
Mafia families
Any discussion of the Mafia in America soon boils
down to the question of whether or not there is a “boss
of bosses.” There does not appear to be, and such discussions often beg the more serious question as to who
is the acknowledged boss of each of the various crime
families around the country.
In New York City the authorities label the five local
families by the names of their long-ago or more recent
leaders, even though they may now be dead. A discussion of the current leaderships often entails getting into
a morass of partial or inaccurate information and
guesswork. Thus, it is generally said that the five crime
families in New York are the Genovese (né Luciano)
family, the Gambino (né Anastasia) family, the Profaci
family, the Bonanno family and the Lucchese (né
Gagliano) family.
In other localities there tends to be just one Mafia
family in operation and it is easier to identify the boss.
In 1978 the FBI’s list of crime leaders, subject to attrition through assassination, retirement and death due to
old age or other ailments (heart disease is definitely a
peril of the profession) included:
Baltimore: Frank Corbi
Binghampton, N.Y.: Anthony Frank Guarnieri
Boston: Raymond Patriarca, also believed to control
all of New England
Buffalo: Joseph Angelo Tieri
Chicago: Anthony Accardo (retiring); Joe Aiuppa (in
charge)
Cleveland: James Licavoli
Denver: Clarence M. Smaldone
Detroit: Anthony Zerilli
Kansas City: Joseph N. Civillo (in prison); Carlo De
Luna and Carlo Civillo (contending)
Las Vegas: Tony Spilotro
Los Angeles: Louis Dragna
575
MAFIA gun
Magruder, Lloyd (1823–1863) murder victim
Milwaukee: Frank Balistrieri
The motive for the killing of Lloyd Magruder was a
common one, greed. But the murder case was to
become famed in the literature of psychic happenings,
since the crime could be said to have been solved as the
result of a dream.
Magruder was a mule train operator who traveled
the Montana-Idaho gold camps in the early 1860s. His
closest friend was Hill Beachy, a lifelong acquaintance
who ran a hotel, the Luna House, in Lewiston, Idaho
Territory. In October 1863 Magruder set out back
through the Bitterroot Mountains to pick up a new
load of gold. His party consisted of five muleteers,
including a man named Bill Page; three guards, David
Howard, Chris Lowery and James Romaine; and two
prospectors. As the party crawled into their sleeping
bags one night, the three guards killed Magruder, the
two prospectors and four of the teamsters—all except
Bill Page. Page was not part of the murder plot, but the
three killers decided they needed someone to lead them
through the snow-driven passes.
Bad weather forced them, against their plan, to come
into Lewiston. There, they ran into Hill Beachy, who
looked at them with amazement. Several nights earlier,
Beachy had had a horrifying dream that some men had
killed Magruder out on the trail. The men who had just
come into town looked like the killers in the dream. Of
course, Beachy felt silly; he had no proof that
Magruder was even dead and could hardly go to the
law with a demand that the men be held. So, he
watched them leave Lewiston.
A few days later, someone found a few of
Magruder’s pack animals shot to death. They also discovered Magruder’s six-gun and some other personal
effects. Beachy was now convinced the men he’d seen
were Magruder’s killers, since they had ridden into
town from the same direction Magruder would have
been traveling. Even if they had not seen Magruder,
they should have at least noticed the dead pack animals. Getting himself deputized, Beachy swore out warrants for the arrest of the four men and tracked them
through Washington Territory, Oregon and into California, where he finally caught up with them and
brought them back to Idaho. He coaxed Page into testifying against the other three. Page was given his freedom, but on March 4, 1864 the rest were hanged in a
ravine outside Lewiston before a crowd of 10,000,
most of whom wanted to see the outcome of the
“dream murder.”
Much was made of the psychic import of Hill
Beachy’s dream. Yet the area around where the killings
had occurred was violent country, rife with murders;
e.g., one band of holdup men committed over 100 murders there in less than a year. Given those grim circum-
New Orleans: Carlo Marcello
Niagara Falls, N.Y.: Benjamin Nicoletti
Philadelphia: Angelo Bruno
Pittsburgh: Sebastian La Rocca
Rochester, N.Y.: Sam J. Russotti
Rockford, Ill.: Joseph Zammuto
St. Louis: James Giammanco
San Francisco: Anthony Lima
Syracuse, N.Y.: Joseph Falcone
In addition, Miami and Atlantic City are considered
“open cities,” with many forces active. In Miami the
Genovese and Gambino families are prominent. In
Atlantic City the Gambino and Bruno families are
active.
Mafia gun
The date of the first appearance of the Mafia in this
country was not fixed by identification of any specific
individuals but rather by the appearance of a typically
Italian shotgun, which became known to the New
Orleans police as the “Mafia gun.” It was first used in
1869 by what the New Orleans Times called a group of
“notorious Sicilian murderers, counterfeiters and burglars, who, in the last month, have formed a sort of general co-partnership or stock company for the plunder
and disturbance of the city.” This “co-partnership” consisted of four Italian mafiosi who had been driven out of
Palermo by the Sicilian police. They came to New
Orleans and established a Mafia branch after a savage
war against a number of gangsters from Messina who
were trying to organize crime in the Delta city.
The war was won by a number of efficient assassinations committed with a unique shotgun, one with the
barrels sawed off to about 18 inches and the stock
sawed through and hollowed out very near the trigger.
The stock was then fitted with hinges, so that the gun
resembled a jackknife, and was carried inside a coat
hanging on a hook. It had a certain, if messy, fatal
effect up to a distance of 30 yards.
As the executions with the weapon continued and
the authorities learned more about the Sicilian version
of the Mafia, the weapon was christened the Mafia
gun. Because a slaying with such a gun was instantly
labeled a Mafia job, the organization in time greatly
reduced its reliance on the weapon in favor of more
American murder techniques.
576
MAIMING
stances, nightmares like Hill Beachy’s must have been
common enough occurrences.
men and appears to have adopted a number of aliases,
so that his subsequent exploits are shrouded in mystery.
See also: ITALIAN DAVE GANG.
Mahaney, Jack (1844–?) thief and great escape artist
maiming
One of the most colorful and famous American criminals in the 19th century, Jack Mahaney was called the
American Jack Sheppard because of his constant and
daring escapes from captivity. Twice he was locked up
in Sing Sing and twice he escaped. He also escaped
from New York City’s Tombs Prison on two occasions
and broke out of several other Eastern prisons. Several
times he leaped from speeding trains and somehow
avoided what seemed certain death without even suffering serious injury. His numerous exploits made him one
of the regulars to grace the illustrated covers of the
National Police Gazette.
Born to a wealthy family in New York in 1844, he
was sent to boarding school at the age of 10, where he
was an “undisciplined terror” despite numerous floggings. Jack ran away from the boarding school and
joined up with a gang of notorious young dock rats.
Caught by the police, he was sent to the House of
Refuge and promptly made his first escape from incarceration, taking a dozen youths with him.
Eventually, Mahaney came in contact with Italian
Dave, an infamous Five Points Fagin who gave him a
liberal education in crime. In a rickety tenement on Paradise Square, Italian Dave ran his own boarding school
for some 40 youths, instructing them in the art of sneak
thievery. The boys, aged nine to 15, learned how to
pick pockets with the aid of fully dressed dummies.
Italian Dave quickly came to regard young Mahaney as
his prime pupil and allowed him privileges extended to
no other youth. Mahaney was permitted to accompany
Italian Dave on his more important jobs. On other
occasions they would walk the streets together and
young Jack was given the opportunity to pick out a logical mugging victim. If the master approved, they
would fall on the unfortunate pedestrian, rob him and
adjourn back to Paradise Square.
Young Jack soon tired of working with Italian Dave
because of the latter’s unwillingness to share the loot,
and he severed connections with the Fagin. Italian Dave
was supposedly shattered by the loss of his protege and
tried to win Mahaney back by offering him 10 percent
of all future earnings, a truly magnanimous gesture, at
least by Dave’s standards. However, Jack Mahaney was
ready for bigger and better things, first organizing his
own gang of butcher cart thieves and then becoming an
accomplished burglar and all-around crook. It was in
this period that he achieved his fame as a great escaper,
becoming a hero to the urchins of the New York slums.
In later years, Mahaney joined a group of confidence
One of the most willful and vicious crimes, maiming
has a long history in America. The early Irish gangs of
the 1820s were notorious for not only robbing Englishmen but cutting off their ears or noses as well. If the
gang members were in a more bestial mood, they might
blind the victim or cut out his tongue. Eye gouging
became an art form in the underworld and many criminals carried special devices to pluck out eyes with studied efficiency. The Whyos, a New York gang of the late
19th century, hired out for maiming jobs as well as
murder. For a trifling $15 a client could arrange to have
an enemy’s “ear chawed off,” certainly an economic
alternative to the staggering $100 fee for “doing the big
job,” murder.
Black Hand extortionists in big-city Italian communities seldom killed the first time a blackmail victim
refused to pay. Instead, they would chop off one of the
victim’s fingers or the finger of a relative of his. Organized crime long used maiming as a “convincer.” In his
youth, Tony Accardo, a Chicago crime boss, was nicknamed Joe Batters for his proficiency with a baseball
bat, one of the favorite arguments used during the Prohibition era to sell mob beer and liquor. The Green
Ones, the Mafia branch in Kansas City during Prohibition, were dedicated bat maimers, even working over
victims with clubs after they had been shot dead.
Entertainer Joe E. Lewis was the victim of an underworld maiming when he switched from one Prohibition
nightclub to another. The offended owner of the club he
left, Machine Gun Jack McGurn, demanded he return;
when he refused, three of McGurn’s men burst into
Lewis’ hotel room and pistol-whipped him. One of them
drove a knife into his jaw and then forced it upward
along his face to his ear. Lewis was stabbed a dozen
times, his throat and tongue severely gashed. For many
months the comedian could barely speak at all and the
pummeling administered to his head left him unable to
recognize words. Through an incredibly determined
effort Lewis learned how to talk and sing again,
although it took him 10 years to regain his top form.
Labor columnist Victor Riesel was blinded with acid
in 1956 on the orders of gangster Johnny Dio, who at
the time was seeking to curry favor with Teamster
leader Jimmy Hoffa. The acid thrower was identified as
Abraham Telvi, but he never got a chance to admit anything. He was found lying on a street in New York
City’s Lower East Side with a bullet hole in the back of
his skull.
577
MAISON Coquet
Just as some gangsters become accomplished hit men,
others become specialists at delivering beatings that
leave the victim maimed but still alive. There have even
been cases of such underworld maimers losing their fee
because the victim inadvertently died; a maimed victim
is often considered a better advertisement for cooperation with the mob than is a mere corpse.
In New York state anyone who permanently injures,
disables or disfigures another is subject to imprisonment for up to 15 years. Maiming oneself to escape performing a legal duty, such as military service, or to
escape or protest odious prison work assignments is
also a felony. Often with the passage of time, the victim
may recover from his disability or disfigurement, in
which case the offender cannot be convicted of maiming but rather of a lesser charge of assault.
Maison Coquet
$5,000, she appeared at the Chicago Times to place an
ad reading, “Five thousand dollars reward for killers
of Officer Lundy on December 9, 1932. Call Gro1758, 12-7 p.m.” Classified tipped off the city desk
that Tillie might be worth interviewing and the newspaper sent a reporter to see her. The story led to a fullscale investigation that finally established Joe’s
innocence and showed he had been the victim of an
official frame-up. The police had gotten the woman
owner of the grocery to identify Majczek and
Marcinkiewicz by threatening to arrest her for selling
liquor. She later admitted she had no idea what the
two robbers looked like. The police, it developed,
were under pressure at the time to solve murders
because the Chicago World’s Fair was to open the following year and a poor police record might discourage
visitors. Naturally, if any case should be solved it was
that of a cop killing. Finally, after 12 years behind
bars, Joe Majczek was freed and awarded the sum of
$24,000 for the miscarriage of justice—$2,000 for
each year in prison. Ted Marcinkiewicz was not
released until 1950 and he never got a penny. The
Majczek story was used as the basis for the movie Call
Northside 777.
“legal” bordello
Around 1800 the Maison Coquet, a lavish gambling
den and brothel, opened on Royal Street in the center
of New Orleans, advertising itself on street corner placards as operating with “the express permission of the
Honorable Civil Governor of the city.” In point of fact,
the so-called legal status of the establishment was
accomplished more by daring than decree. At the time,
New Orleans was in the process of being transferred
from Spanish to French rule, creating a power vacuum.
The Spanish owned but no longer reigned, and the
French were doubtful of their status. It may well be that
bribes were paid to someone, but in any case, the resort
opened and operated with impunity.
When the American flag was raised over New
Orleans in December 1803 following the Louisiana
Purchase, the Maison Coquet was an established reality, as were a number of other fancy brothels. By their
simple, though dubious, assertion of official recognition, the Maison Coquet and its imitators established a
quasi-legal existence that gave New Orleans the nearest
thing to legalized prostitution anywhere in America. So
firmly rooted was this tradition that it did not disappear until World War I.
See also: PROSTITUTION.
Malcolm X (1925–1965) murder victim
The murder of Malcolm X in New York City on February 21, 1965 remains steeped in controversy, although
three men were convicted of the killing and sent to
prison for life. Within the black community there
remains a conviction that the police investigation was
superficial, that one or more of the men charged were
not the right men and that the crime itself may not have
been the work of the Black Muslims or not of that
group alone.
Malcolm X had risen to become the second most
powerful figure in the Nation of Islam, at the time the
official name for the Black Muslim separatist movement. He had been converted to the Black Muslims 15
years earlier while serving a prison term for burglary. A
glib and powerful speaker, Malcolm X clearly represented a threat to the leader of the movement, Elijah
Muhammad, and to his presumptive successor and sonin-law, Raymond Sharrief.
In 1964 Malcolm split away and formed his own
group, the Organization of Afro-American Unity, after
being suspended from his post by Elijah Muhammad.
Tension built up between the two groups, and a week
before his assassination Malcolm X’s home was
bombed. The next Sunday, February 21, he arrived at
a mosque in Harlem to deliver a speech. As he stepped
before the audience of 400, a disturbance broke out
near the front rows. One man yelled to another, “Get
Majczek, Joseph (1908– ) accused cop killer
On December 9, 1932 two men holding up a small
grocery store in Chicago shot and killed a police officer named William Lundy. In due course, two men, Joe
Majczek and Theodore Marcinkiewicz, were convicted of the crime and sentenced to life imprisonment.
They would have stayed in jail had it not been for
Joe’s mother, Tillie. She scrubbed floors to raise money
to fight for her son’s release. When she had saved
578
MALEDON, George
your hands off my pockets—Don’t be messin’ with my
pockets!”
As four of at least six bodyguards moved forward,
Malcolm X said, “Now, brothers, be cool.” At that
moment another disturbance erupted further back in
the audience. A smoke bomb was set off, and at that
instant a black man with a sawed-off shotgun charged
toward the stage and blasted Malcolm X in the chest.
Two other blacks rushed forward with handguns and
fired several bullets into the black leader’s prone body.
For a moment the audience and most of Malcolm
X’s bodyguards froze and the killers raced off. One of
the assailants, however, was shot in the thigh by a
bodyguard. As he dropped at the front stairway exit to
the ballroom, members of the audience surrounded him
and started beating him until he was rescued by police
officers.
Immediately after the assassination, the police, the
media and Malcolm X’s supporters believed the killing was the work of the Black Muslims, and a Muslim mosque was burned in retaliation. However, the
assailant trapped at the scene, 22-year-old Talmadge
Hayer, married and the father of two children, could
not be identified as a Black Muslim. Two other men
arrested later by the police and tried with Hayer were
Black Muslims, but both denied any involvement.
Hayer admitted his guilt and said he had three accomplices, whom he refused to name, but declared neither of the other two defendants, Norman 3X Butler,
27, and Thomas 15X Johnson, 30, were part of the
plot.
After a while, most blacks agreed that Butler and
Johnson were the wrong men, since both were wellknown Black Muslims and, as such, would have had
difficulty penetrating the security at the mosque. In
addition, Norman 3X Butler had been treated at Jacobi
Hospital in the Bronx on the morning of the assassination for thrombophlebitis; he had had his right leg bandaged and had been given medication. Some observers
who claim no real investigation was made find the idea
of a physically impaired assassin being used in the plot
unbelievable. Oddly, several of those present, including
three of Malcolm X’s lieutenants and bodyguards, vanished.
administered justice in the rough-and-tumble Indian
Territory. Annie died with a bullet in her spine, the end
result of an ill-fated love affair with a married adventurer named Frank Carver. There was an argument, a
desperate struggle and finally a gun went off. Judge
Parker was incensed at the killing and forthwith sentenced Carver to hang. A grim George Maledon started
oiling up his rope and thousands prepared to attend the
festivities, which were sure to provide some moments
of high drama. At the last minute, however, the execution was canceled. Carver’s death sentence was thrown
out on appeal as being excessive for what did not
appear to be premeditated murder.
Judge Parker was outraged by the reduction of
Carver’s sentence to a prison term. He had looked forward to seeing Carver swing for killing little Annie,
who had played with the two Parker boys in her childhood. Maledon too was enraged. And the community
had lost a wonderful Sunday afternoon’s entertainment
and could only speculate whether Maledon would have
done his usually brilliant job of dispatching a victim
with merciful quickness, or whether in this one case the
hangman’s handiwork would have resulted in what was
referred to as the long twitch.
See also: GEORGE MALEDON.
Maledon, George (1834–1911) hangman
The saying around Hanging Judge Parker’s court in
Fort Smith, Ark. was that Parker sentenced men to
death and George Maledon “suspended sentence.”
Maledon was Parker’s executioner and, during their 21year association, hanged almost all of the 88 men
Parker sent to their doom. Maledon’s ambition knew
no bounds. He constructed a 12-man gallows for special no-waiting occasions, although the most ever to
“stretch rope” at the same time was six, in the notorious Dance of Death, a multiple execution that brought
vigorous criticism to both Parker and Maledon for
being excessively bloodthirsty and gave the former his
nickname the Hanging Judge.
Born of German immigrant parents, Maledon left
the industrial grime of Detroit to seek a new occupation. He found it as an officer of the Fort Smith Police
Department. During the Civil War, Maledon joined the
Union Army and afterward held a number of lawman
jobs, including that of a deputy U.S. marshal working
out of Fort Smith. He distinguished himself by volunteering to act as hangman whenever there was an execution, a service that earned him extra pay. When
federal Judge Parker arrived in 1875, Maledon’s future
was assured. The hangman got what he considered a
good fee for his services, $100 a man, minus the pittance it cost him to bury the dead.
Maledon, Ann (1877–1895) murder victim
Annie Maledon was an 18-year-old hangman’s daughter who was killed in a lover’s quarrel that provided
Hollywood filmmakers with the basis for an endless
variety of dramatic situations.
Annie’s father was George Maledon, the fearsome
executioner for Hanging Judge Parker, who presided
over the federal court in Fort Smith, Ark. and later
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MALLOY, Indestructible Mike
Maledon went about preparing for an execution like
a craftsman, oiling his specially purchased ropes and
stretching them with sandbags to even them out and
thus guarantee a good knot. He could always be
counted on for some quotable comments, such as: “I
never hanged a man who came back to have the job
done over. There’s no ghosts hanging around the old
gibbet.”
Maledon regarded multiple hangings as a special
challenge, demanding a certain drop that would dispatch all the victims with the same lethal quickness. He
never quite understood the outrage of much of the rest
of the country, especially the eastern press, whenever he
staged one of these multiple dances of death. But he
also could not understand why much of the community
shunned him nor why even some of his own family
shrank from him. Mrs. Maledon was most upset by his
labors and would not let him post press clippings and
photographs of the men he killed in the living room.
After Judge Parker died, Maledon continued to work
as an executioner for a few more years and then retired,
taking his ropes, traps, photographs and newspaper
clippings on the road for the curious to see. He also
tried his hand at farming but was a failure at it. He died
on May 6, 1911.
See also: DANCE OF DEATH, ANN MALEDON, ISAAC C.
“HANGING JUDGE” PARKER.
Malloy, Indestructible Mike (1872–1933) murder
victim
Perhaps the most durable American murder victim,
Indestructible Mike Malloy was an unheralded
barfly who achieved fame and earned his nickname posthumously. He was selected to be murdered
in 1932 by a Bronx, New York insurance murder
ring headed by a speakeasy operator named Tony
Marino. Marino was assisted by his barkeep, Joe
Murphy, and two others, Frank Pasqua and Dan
Kriesberg. They had killed their first victim the previous year, a young blonde named Betty Carlsen.
Marino had befriended Betty, who was down on her
luck. He brought her into the speak, gave her drinks
on the house and even set her up in a room nearby.
Betty had never been treated so well. She couldn’t do
enough to thank Marino, even signing some papers
so he could run for public office. Actually, what she
signed was an insurance policy naming her newly
found benefactor her beneficiary. One frigid night
Betty passed out in the speakeasy and the boys carried her back to her room, laid her out on the bed
naked, poured cold water over her and left the window wide open. When she was found dead the next
morning, the coroner declared her death the result of
580
pneumonia compounded by alcoholism. The boys
collected $800, not an inconsiderable sum in that
Depression year.
Then the murder ring started glad-handing Mike
Malloy, a derelict more accustomed to getting the
bum’s rush whenever he entered the speakeasy. Now, he
was greeted like an old buddy. They gave him a back
room to sleep in so that he would not have to freeze in
some drafty hallway. By the way, did Mike think it was
a good idea for Marino to run for office? Absolutely,
Mike’s life was soon insured for a total of $3,500 under
a double-indemnity clause. The boys shrewdly figured
they would not avail themselves of that provision but
settle for $1,750, thus allaying suspicions.
At first, the four tried to get Malloy to drink himself
to death, but the more he drank the more he seemed to
thrive. Since that method appeared to offer only bankruptcy for Marino, they switched to giving Malloy
some “new stuff” that had come in, actually automobile antifreeze, which of course was poisonous. After
consuming some of the new stuff, Malloy commented
that it was quite smooth. A couple of hours later, Mike
collapsed on the speakeasy floor and they dragged him
out back to let him expire in privacy. An hour later, a
beaming—and thirsty—Malloy was back at the bar.
Over the succeeding days the boys kept lacing his
drinks with ever stronger doses of antifreeze and
finally, in desperation, with turpentine. Malloy downed
shot after shot and lived. Even when the four took to
using diluted horse liniment laced with rat poison,
nothing happened. They had to wonder what Malloy
had been drinking all his life.
The boys decided nothing liquid would kill Malloy.
They switched to food and started giving him raw oysters, tainted and soaked in wood alcohol. Malloy
downed two dozen at once and gave the treat his
approval. “Tony,” he told Marino, “you oughta open
up a restaurant, you know first-class food.”
After several days of tainted oysters followed by rotten sardines, with which Malloy always requested some
of that “new booze,” the plotters were ready to throw
caution to the wind. They got him drunk and then
lugged him to Claremont Park, where they stripped off
his coat, opened his shirt, poured a five-gallon can of
water on him and dumped him in a snowbank.
The next day the boys scanned the newspapers for a
report of a corpse being found in the park, but there
was nothing. Pasqua, sneezing fiercely as a result of his
battle with the elements while carrying Malloy to the
park, was most upset. Finally, that evening Malloy
appeared wearing a new suit. He explained he had
really tied one on the previous night and wound up
practically clothesless in the park. But it had all turned
out well. The police had found him and had a welfare
MANDELBAUM, Fredericka “Marm”
the blame to the remaining three. On various dates in
June and July 1934, the four—Marino, Pasqua, Kriesberg and Murphy—died in the electric chair at Sing
Sing, none of them nearly as well remembered as Indestructible Mike Malloy.
organization outfit him with new clothes before he was
released to the world.
Truly desperate, the would-be murderers hired a
criminal who was working as a cab driver to kill their
seemingly indestructible victim. Once again, they got
Malloy into a drunken stupor and then took him at 3
A.M. to the deserted intersection of Gun Hill Road and
Baychester Avenue. They held him upright as the cab
driver backed his taxi up and then roared forward at 45
miles per hour. At the last instant they jumped back
leaving the weaving Malloy standing in the path of the
oncoming cab. When struck by the vehicle, Mike catapulted into the air. To make absolutely sure that he had
done the job right, the cabbie backed his taxi over Malloy’s prone body.
This time their victim was surely dead. But nothing
appeared in the newspapers. They visited the morgue
looking for his body. No Malloy. They contacted the
hospitals. No Malloy. In fact, Malloy didn’t show up
again for three weeks. When he did, he said he had
been in the hospital after having a car accident. The
hospital had listed him under the wrong name. Seeing
how downcast his friends were, Mike assured them he
was all right, that he had suffered a concussion of the
brain and had a fractured shoulder. “But I’m all right,”
he said, “and I sure could use a drink.”
At this point, the boys were beyond desperation.
They even contacted a professional hit man about
machine-gunning Malloy on the street. The explanation
would be that he was a poor unfortunate caught in the
crossfire of a gangland battle. Unfortunately, the hit
man wanted $500 for the job and the boys were getting
close to having a losing proposition on their hands as it
was. The plan was abandoned. The four decided that
only straightforward murder would work. They rented
a furnished room for Malloy and, on February 22,
1933, ran a hose from a gas jet to his mouth and held it
there until he stopped breathing.
Unfortunately for the killers, they had to get a corrupt doctor to sign a phony death certificate citing
lobar pneumonia as the cause of death.
By now there were just too many people involved in
the plot. A cab driver was complaining to friends that
he had been hired to run down a guy and had been paid
so little it failed to cover the cost of fixing the dents in
his cab. A gunman told of losing out on a hit contract
with some pikers. The police got wind of an insurance
ring killing people in the Bronx and started checking
around. They learned of an Irishman being buried
within four hours of his death. And without a wake?
That was unusual. They exhumed the body and started
asking questions. Everybody started talking—the doctor, the cab driver, the hit man, even the undertaker.
When accused, each of the four murderers tried to shift
Mandame, Mary (c. 1639) Pilgrim sex offender
Mary Mandame of the Plymouth colony was the first
American woman to be forced to wear a mark on her
clothing for a sex offense. Specifically, she was charged
in 1639 with “dallyance diverse tymes with Tinsin, an
Indian” and “committing the act of uncleanse with
him.” Her punishment was to be whipped through the
streets of Plymouth and thereafter to always wear a
badge of shame on her left sleeve. Since Mary Mandame’s name does not appear again in historical
records, it would seem that she obeyed the terms of her
punishment. Had she not, she would have been
branded in the face with a hot iron. In 1658 the punishment given to Mary was extended to wives found guilty
of committing adultery. This cruel punishment became
the basis for Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter
(1850).
See also: COLONIAL PUNISHMENTS.
Mandelbaum, Fredericka “Marm” (1818–1894)
fence
The most notorious fence, or receiver of stolen goods,
in the 19th century was Fredericka Mandelbaum, better known to the underworld as Marm because of her
often maternalistic attitude toward criminals. Indeed,
the sobriquet Ma Crime, as she was called by the press,
was well justified since, unlike the fences of today who
insulate themselves from the actual commission of
crimes, she was an active plotter and bankroller of
many of the great capers of the period.
It would be difficult to put a dollar value on the loot
Marm handled in her three decades of activity, from
1854 to 1884, but it certainly was in the tens of millions. In fact, it could be said that Marm Mandelbaum,
rather than the later-arriving Lucky Luciano and Meyer
Lansky, first put crime in America on a syndicated
basis. She angeled, or bossed, the operations of several
gangs of bank robbers, blackmailers and confidence
men, gave advanced courses in burglary and safe blowing and outdid Dickens’ Fagin with a special school for
teaching little boys and girls to be expert pickpockets
and sneak thieves.
Fredericka came to America from her native Prussia
in 1849 with her rather meek husband, Wolfe, whom
she supposedly had induced to embezzle funds from his
employer. Arriving in New York City, they bought a
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MANDELBAUM, Fredericka “Marm”
home and dry goods store at 79 Clinton Street in the
teeming Kleine Deutschland section of Manhattan’s East
Side. Wolfe Mandelbaum would have been content to
be an honest businessman, but Fredericka soon began
dabbling in stolen goods, and by 1854 the store was
nothing more than a front for her illegal operations.
Soon, she required several warehouses in Manhattan
and Brooklyn in which to keep her stolen articles and
remove their labels, trademarks and other means of
identification. She retained the famous criminal law firm
of Howe and Hummel to keep herself and her growing
legion of thieves out of serious trouble. Other flunkies
handled her direct payments to the police.
Upon her arrival in New York, Fredericka weighed
150 pounds, a weight she was to double as she grew in
stature, literally and figuratively, in the underworld.
She had a sharply curved mouth, unusually fat cheeks,
small, beady black eyes, bushy brows and a high, sloping forehead. She generally wore a tiny black bonnet
with feathers over her mass of tightly rolled hair.
Although far from a raving beauty, she was lovingly
regarded by the underworld. One leading thief, Banjo
Pete Emerson, was quoted as saying, “She was scheming and dishonest as the day is long, but she could be
like an angel to the worst devil as long as he played
square with her.”
While she was undoubtedly the leading criminal in
America during the latter part of the 19th century,
Marm was—by her own standards—a lady. She was
treated with respect by the ruffians with whom she
dealt on a daily basis. Vile language was definitely not
permissible. A party at the Widow Mandelbaum’s—
Wolfe died in 1874—was definitely the highlight of the
underworld social season, and Marm was not above, or
below, playing gracious hostess to the better half of
town, whose homes and purses her thugs robbed regularly. Her parties were also attended by judges, police
officials, politicians and the like. Marm, ever on the
lookout for ways of improving the social life and mores
of the underworld, judiciously mixed into these gatherings the best of the criminal lot. Thus, at the dinner
table the wives of a judge and an important City Hall
figure might well find themselves flanking someone like
Mark Shinburn, a burglar of distinction and one of
Marm’s favorites. Shinburn, insisted that he was an
aristocrat at heart and detested associating with crooks
even for business reasons.
Marm took an intense interest in all her flock, constantly trying to improve them in mind and manners.
When it came to finances, however, she dropped any
pretensions of being a lady and was as tightfisted as
they came, seldom if ever granting a thief more than 10
percent of the value of any stolen article he sold her.
Yet, after completion of a deal, Marm might turn right
582
A dinner party at Marm Mandelbaum’s was always a high
point in the New York underworld’s social life.
around and hand that same individual several hundred
or thousand dollars for a needed operation or as a
retirement kitty. It was Marm who counseled Shinburn
to save his money, go back to Europe and live out his
life in luxury. Buying himself a title with a portion of
his loot, Shinburn became Baron Shindell of Monaco
and lived aristocratically ever after.
Following the Civil War Draft Riots in New York,
Marm was the biggest receiver of the goods looted,
much of which she disposed of as far away as Chicago;
fittingly enough, a good portion of the loot taken during the Chicago Fire a few years later ended up in
Marm’s New York warehouses.
Besides Shinburn and Emerson, some of the top
criminals who worked at her beckon were George
Leonidas Leslie, the King of the Bank Robbers; Sheeny
Mike Kurtz, burglar extraordinary; Shang Draper, master of the panel game rackets; Ned Lyons; Johnny
Dobbs; Jimmy Irving; and Bill Mosher and Joe Douglas, these last two the confessed kidnappers of little
Charley Ross. There was no loot Marm could not handle, including stolen horses shipped in by the Loomis
gang from upstate New York.
Marm became the queen mother of the leading lady
crooks. There were Queen Liz and Big Mary, the top
shoplifters of the day and instructors in one of Marm’s
schools for the underworld juniors; Black Lena Kleinschmidt, blackmailer, pickpocket and sneak thief;
Sophie Lyons, wife of bank robber Ned Lyons and a
renowned con lady; Old Mother Hubbard; Kid Glove
Rose; Little Annie; and Ellen Clegg. Marm liked all
these ladies because they shared her desire for
respectability and because, above all, they recognized
her as their social queen. Only Black Lena ever challenged Marm’s position. It happened when Marm
started courting the rich. Black Lena moved to Hacken-
MANSON, Charles
sack, N.J., posed as the wealthy widow of a South
American mining engineer and began giving elaborate
functions that rivaled Marm’s.
Although the social columns of the day referred to
Black Lena as the Queen of Hackensack, she continued
to spend two days a week in New York working her
illegal trade to replenish her coffers. She was finally
dethroned when she wore an emerald ring that one of
her dinner guests recognized as having been stolen from
a friend’s handbag. Marm read the news of Black
Lena’s arrest and exposure with pure delight. “It just
goes to prove,” Marm told the tittering ladies of her
court, “that it takes brains to be a real lady.”
Marm’s own fall from grace came in 1884, a seemingly unlikely event considering the amount of protection money she paid the police. Her problem came in
the form of one Peter B. Olney—a sort of oddity for his
day—a district attorney without a price. Convinced the
police would never catch Marm, Olney turned to the
Pinkertons. After four months of intensive work, one of
the agents gained her confidence by posing as a thief.
Soon after, thieves working with Marm stole a supply
of silk from the store of James A. Hearn and Sons on
14th Street, but the bolts had been secretly marked by
detectives. Later the same night a task force of Pinkertons smashed through the doors of Marm’s house and
found the stolen silk. But that was nothing compared to
what else they found. As one reporter put it:
up in 1890 for the funeral of her daughter in Kleine
Deutschland. The local papers learned of it, but the
police professed to be skeptical—until Marm was safely
across the border again.
In 1894 Marm came back to New York for burial,
dead at the age of 76. The newspapers reported that
several of the mourners at the cemetery had their pockets picked.
See also: GRAND STREET SCHOOL, HOWE AND HUMMEL,
GEORGE LEONIDAS LESLIE, MARK SHINBURN.
Mann Act
white slavery control statute
The White Slave Traffic Act, introduced in 1910 by
Rep. James Robert Mann of Illinois and popularly
known as the Mann Act, outlawed the transport of
women across state lines for immoral purposes. The
direct cause of the legislation was the disclosure that a
Chicago vice couple, Alphonse and Eva Dufaur, had
imported 20,000 women and girls into the United
States to stock their many brothels. The first prominent
person to run afoul of the act was Heavyweight Champion Jack Johnson, the first black to hold the heavyweight boxing title, who in 1912 persuaded a white
woman, whom he later married, to leave a house of
prostitution where she was working and travel with
him to another state. Johnson was sentenced to one
year in prison but fled the country after posting bail.
He finally returned in 1920 to serve his time.
While the Mann Act has been successfully used to
prosecute a number of minor criminals over the years,
it has not been an unqualified success. Some enterprising prostitutes turned it into a valuable blackmail foil,
and the act failed miserably in stopping the prostitution
activities of the Capone mob. With the decline of prostitution as an organized crime activity, the result of
changing sexual mores rather than effective law
enforcement, the Mann Act has been relegated to relative unimportance.
See also: PROCURING.
It did not seem possible that so much wealth could be
assembled in one spot. There seemed to be enough
clothes to supply an army. There were trunks filled with
precious gems and silverware. Antique furniture was
stacked against a wall and bars of gold from melted
jewelry settings were stacked under the newspapers.
There were scales of every description to weigh diamonds.
Marm, her son Julius and her clerk Herman Stroude
were clapped behind bars. It was the first and only
night Marm spent in jail. The following day she posted
$21,000 bail and got her lawyer Bill Howe working on
a fix so that she could continue operations. However,
Tammany Hall was having problems with reformers
and Marm was advised her day was over. She shrugged,
gathered up what was believed to be $1 million in cash
and fled. When she didn’t show up for her trial, the
newspapers berated the police for not keeping her
under constant surveillance.
The Pinkertons were put back on the job and within
a month they located her in Toronto, Canada, but
under existing extradition laws, she could not be forced
to return to the United States. She did come back twice,
however. In disguise and weeping profusely, she turned
Manson, Charles (1934– ) murder cult leader
The highly publicized leader of a “family,” or selfaggrandizing cult, Charles Manson burst on the California scene in shocking style, even in a state long
thought inured to bizarre bloodletting. On August 9,
1969 Charles “Tex” Watson and three female accomplices, Patricia Krenwinkel, Susan Atkins and Leslie
Van Houten, entered the Beverly Hills estate of film
director Roman Polanski, who was away at the time,
and murdered his pregnant wife, actress Sharon Tate,
and four others—Abigail Folger, heiress to the Folger
coffee fortune; Voyteck Frykowski, a Polish writer and
583
MANSON, Charles
Charles Manson (right) and two of his female cultists, Patricia Krenwinkel (left) and Leslie Van Houten, were in a jovial
mood at a court appearance after their arrest. All were convicted of murder.
producer, who was living with Folger; Jay Sebring, a
hairstylist; and 18-year-old Steven Earl Parent. The five
were shot, stabbed and clubbed to death, with Sharon
Tate begging to be allowed to live for the sake of her
unborn baby. The killers used the victims’ blood to
scrawl crazed slogans and words like “Pig” and “War”
on the walls. During the slaughter Watson kept screaming, “I am the devil and I have come to do the devil’s
work!”
Two nights later, the shocking process was repeated
at the home of Leno and Rosemary La Bianca; they
were butchered and the same sort of bloody messages
were scrawled all over their home.
The murderers were soon traced back to the Manson
family. Manson, at 34, had done time in several prisons
and reform schools for such charges as procuring and
forgery. After his last release from prison, he had set up
a sort of commune for a cult of shiftless hippies and
drifters at the Spahn Ranch outside Los Angeles, once a
filming location for Hollywood studios. At the ranch
the cult practiced free love, experimented with drugs
and conducted pseudo-religious ceremonies built
around Manson as a Christlike figure. When Manson
ordered guerrilla tactics, his followers practiced guerrilla tactics, and when he told them to kill, they killed.
After their capture none of the actual killers or Manson, who had directed them, showed any sign of
remorse over the horrifying crimes. At their trial—during which a number of Manson’s shaved-head female
followers kept daily vigil outside the courthouse—the
prosecutor called Manson “one of the most evil, satanic
men who ever walked the face of the earth.” For a time
the three women defendants offered to admit their guilt
if Manson was declared innocent. Manson waved off
their offer, telling the court: “I have done my best to get
along in your world, and now you want to kill me. I say
to myself, ‘Ha, I’m already dead, have been all my life
. . . I don’t care anything about any of you.”
All were found guilty and sentenced to die, but they
were spared the death penalty because of the Supreme
Court ruling outlawing capital punishment and were
given life instead. They have been eligible for parole
since 1978. In 1980 Manson was turned down on his
third annual application for parole. The parole board
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MARANZANO, Salvatore
advised him to train for a trade as part of his rehabilitation, but Manson said: “I’ll stay here forever. I’m too
old. I can’t do too much. I like to sit around, smoke
grass, read the Bible now and then.”
See also: HELTER SKELTER.
he had modern ideas about crime and wanted to institutionalize it in America—with himself on top. If he
had survived 1931, organized crime in America today
would operate much differently.
Maranzano had come to the United States late in his
criminal career, around 1918, but he had been an established mafioso in Sicily (he had fled because of a murder charge and because the older Mustache Petes
resented his new ideas and probably would have killed
him if he had stayed). His magnetism quickly made him
a gang power and he surrounded himself with gangsters
from his hometown in Sicily, Castellammare del Golfo.
College-trained and originally a candidate for the
priesthood, he was a far cry from the standard mafiosi.
Within a few years he had grown so powerful he was
becoming a threat to the acknowledged Mafia boss of
New York, Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” Masseria.
Masseria was a glutton, both in personal habits and
in the way he ran criminal affairs, demanding enormous tribute from his subchiefs. Maranzano shrewdly
used the resentment this produced to lure many leading
gangsters away from Joe the Boss. But he could not
bring in the biggest prize, a rising young mobster
named Lucky Luciano, a brilliant strategist whose reorganization of much of Joe the Boss’ empire resulted in
greatly increased profits.
When Maranzano seemed to be getting too strong,
Joe the Boss declared war on him. The police, having
no way of separating gang war killings from other
underworld executions, never knew how many men
died in what was called the Castellammarase War; the
toll between 1928 and 1930 may well have been 50.
Because he could field probably 200 more gunmen than
his foe, Joe the Boss did not take the threat seriously at
first. But Maranzano kept winning defections by
promising Masseria men a better share of the loot if
they joined him.
While Maranzano and Masseria fought their twosided war, a third side was developing. Luciano had
been cultivating the younger gangsters within the
Maranzano forces, telling them an entirely new crime
setup, one that would really bring in big money. He had
developed contacts with the Jewish gangs that would
lead to the formation of a new crime syndicate and end
the Mafia’s internecine struggles as well as its battles
with other ethnic groups involved in crime. Luciano,
through Frank Costello, had also established rapport
with the New York police, sending $10,000 a week
directly to police headquarters (the sum was doubled in
the late 1920s), and he could thus supply better protection than either Joe the Boss or Maranzano.
For a time Luciano had hung back waiting to
see which of the two leaders would eliminate the
other. When a stalemate developed, he decided to help
Manton, Martin T. (1880–1946) crooked judge
The only federal judge ever imprisoned for corruption,
Martin T. Manton was something of a courtroom wunderkind. When Woodrow Wilson named him district
court judge, he was, at the age of 36, the youngest federal jurist in the country. Within a year and a half he
had moved up to the appellate court; in 1922 it was
said that he missed an appointment to the Supreme
Court by an eyelash. Over a 10-year period Manton
produced 650 opinions, an output very few judges have
ever equaled. However, it developed that his opinions
were for sale. Soliciting a bribe in one case, Manton
was quoted as saying, “While I’m sitting on the bench, I
have my right hand and my left hand.”
In 1939 Manhattan District Attorney Thomas E.
Dewey accused him of taking bribes with both hands
and even employing an agent to negotiate the sale of
verdicts. The charges against Manton were considered
so incredible that he had no trouble convincing Judge
Learned Hand and two former presidential candidates,
Al Smith and John W. Davis, to appear as character
witnesses at his trial. Nonetheless, he was found guilty.
Pleading his own appeal before the Supreme Court,
Manton came up with a novel argument: “From a
broad viewpoint, it serves no public policy for a high
judicial officer to be convicted of a judicial crime. It
tends to destroy the confidence of the people in the
courts.” The High Court was unimpressed, however,
and turned down his appeal. Manton served 19 months
at the federal prison in Lewisburg, Pa. and died a broken man in 1946.
See also: JUDICIAL CORRUPTION.
Maranzano, Salvatore (1868–1931) Mafia “boss of
bosses”
For four months in 1931, Salvatore Maranzano was
probably the most important criminal boss in the
United States, even more important than Al Capone,
whom Maranzano put on a list of mobsters to be eliminated in order to solidify his authority throughout the
entire country. Maranzano founded what came to be
known as the Cosa Nostra.
Maranzano was a “Mustache Pete,” an old-line
Mafia leader who held to the criminal society’s traditions of “honor” and “respect” for the gang boss and
bloody feuds with foes of decades past. Nevertheless,
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MARIN County, Calif. Courthouse Shooting
matters along by getting rid of Joe the Boss, who would
be easier to kill since he trusted Luciano. On April 15,
1931 Luciano and Masseria had lunch in a Coney
Island restaurant. About 3:30 P.M. Luciano went to the
men’s room. Just then four assassins stepped up to
Masseria and fired a fusillade of 20 shots at him, hitting him six times. Joe the Boss lay dead.
Luciano had handed the crown to Maranzano. Now,
he bided his time to allow Maranzano to think he was
secure. As a supposed act of gratitude, Maranzano gave
Luciano the number two position in his new organization. In a memorable conclave he summoned 500 gangsters to a meeting in the Bronx and outlined his great
new scheme for crime. The New York Mafia would be
divided into five major crime families, with a boss, a
sub-boss, lieutenants and soldiers. Above them all
would be a “boss of bosses”—Salvatore Maranzano.
He called this new organization La Cosa Nostra, which
meant nothing more than “Our Thing.” Years later, the
phrase “Cosa Nostra” would be used to get J. Edgar
Hoover out of a bad hole of his own making. For
decades Hoover had insisted there was no such thing as
organized crime and no Mafia. Oh yes, he was able to
announce, there was a Cosa Nostra.
While Maranzano was constructing his new empire,
he was aware that not all those under him were loyalists. He knew better than to trust the ambitious
Luciano, who was too worldly and was setting up a
partially non-Italian power base. Maranzano composed
a death list that, when carried out, would guarantee his
rule. On that list were Luciano, Costello, Vito Genovese, Joe Adonis, Willie Moretti, Dutch Schultz and
the “fat guy” in Chicago, Al Capone, who was friendly
with Luciano.
It would be a prodigious undertaking to eliminate
them all, and Maranzano realized it would be dangerous to trust other Italians with the task—whomever he
picked might be a secret ally of Luciano. So, he decided
to have the job handled by a non-Italian. He enlisted
the notorious young killer Vince “Mad Dog” Coll and
arranged for him to come to his office in the Grand
Central building at a time when Luciano and Genovese
would be present. Coll was to kill them and then get as
many of the others on the list as possible before the
murders became known. Maranzano gave Coll
$25,000 as a down payment and promised him another
$25,000 upon successful completion of the assignment.
The boss of bosses then invited Luciano and Genovese to a meeting in his office. Unaware of how many
gunmen Luciano had won over to his cause, Maranzano made the mistake of trusting a gangster named
Tommy Lucchese, who had been a secret friend of
Luciano for years and his chief spy in the Maranzano
586
organization. Lucchese learned of the murder plot and
warned Luciano. On the day set for the meeting, Lucchese innocently dropped into Maranzano’s office a few
minutes before Luciano and Genovese were due. Just
then four men walked in flashing badges and
announced they had some questions to ask. The four
were Jewish gangsters Luciano had borrowed for the
plot because they were unknown to Maranzano and his
bodyguards. On the other hand, since the gunmen did
not know Maranzano, Lucchese was there to ensure
they got the right man.
The phony officers lined the bodyguards up against
the wall and disarmed them. Then two went into
Maranzano’s office and shot him to death. The assassins charged out, as did the bodyguards after ascertaining their boss was dead. On the way down the
emergency stairs, one of them ran into Mad Dog Coll
coming to keep his murder appointment. Appraised of
the new situation, Coll exited whistling. He had
$25,000 and nothing to do for it.
The death of Maranzano meant a new deal for crime
in America. The forces of Luciano, Meyer Lansky and
Dutch Schultz would form a national crime syndicate.
Over the years Schultz would be killed by the others,
but the apparatus was there to stay.
See also: CASTELLAMMARESE WAR, VINCENT “MAD
DOG” COLL, THOMAS “THREE-FINGER BROWN” LUCCHESE,
CHARLES “LUCKY” LUCIANO, GIUSEPPE “JOE THE BOSS”
MASSERIA, MUSTACHE PETES, NIGHT OF THE SICILIAN VESPERS, JOSEPH M. VALACHI.
Marin County, Calif. Courthouse Shooting
See
ANGELA DAVIS.
Marion Penitentiary
highly restrictive federal prison
While today the Administrative Maximum Facility in
Florence, Colorado, better known as the Alcatraz of the
Rockies or Super Max, is the top maximum-security
prison in the nation, Marion Penitentiary in Illinois is
still viewed by many as the worst institution of the type
and has been labeled as inhumane by Amnesty International. Super Max is mainly used for holding the most
violent prisoners, while Marion has more high-profile
criminals.
Chief among them in recent years was Mafia kingpin
John Gotti, confined at Marion since his conviction in
1992. Gotti’s status could be described as total isolation. When Gotti arrived at Marion there were a number of other underworld types there, but unlike as in
other prisons, he would never get to see them. There
was “Nicky” Scarfo, the brutal former boss of the
MARIS, Herbert L.
Philadelphia crime family, and Jimmy Coonan, the
equally brutal ex-head of the Westies, the New York
Irish mob affiliated with the Mafia, and many others of
organized crime’s most ardent killers.
There were equally notorious prisoners, including
John Walker, the navy man who sold classified information to the former Soviet Union; Edwin Wilson, a
U.S. government employee who sold weapons to
Qaddafi’s Libya and conspired to kill eight witnesses
who could expose his crimes, and Jonathan Jay Pollard,
who spied for the Israelis. It was debatable whether
these prisoners were at Marion because they constituted a continuing menace to the nation and society or
because they were thought to have deserved greater
punishment.
The matter was rather clear in the case of Gotti, held
in the top level of restrictive confinement in an 8-by-7foot underground cell for 22 to 23 hours a day. Gotti
got no work, no communal education classes, no communal recreation. Food was delivered through a slot in
the cell door. His cell consisted of no more than a single
cot, a basin, a toilet, a radio and a black-and-white TV.
He had no chair to sit on. To avoid spending all his
hours prone on his cot, Gotti folded his mattress into
an L shape, which he propped against the wall to simulate a chair. He was described as spending his time
reading, watching television (mostly talk shows) and
exercising by doing about 1,000 push-ups a day. When
he was allowed to shower, he was transported shackled
in chains inside a movable cage. His outside-world contact was limited to five visits per month by his lawyers
and those by his son Junior, until he was incarcerated
himself. The FBI conceded Gotti had continued to rule
the Gambino family through his son, who served as
acting boss of the family, passing along his father’s
instructions.
While most lifers sent to Marion are kept there 30
months and then transferred to a regular maximumsecurity prison elsewhere, Gotti continued to be held
there. The legal scuttlebutt was that his lawyers were
fearful of making an issue of the matter because Gotti
might end up being transferred to Super Max.
Some speculated that authorities kept Gotti in Marion in hopes that the conditions would finally cause
him to “break” and inform on his own mob to gain
leniency. Another view was that Gotti was a valuable
object lesson to other mafiosi of what could happen to
them if they refused to cooperate.
Maris cleared an estimated 500 unjustly convicted
persons during a half-century career. His record was
probably one of the best arguments for abolition of
the death penalty because it highlighted the grave possibility of judicial error. Time after time he demonstrated how often justice erred, freeing men originally
sentenced to death but lucky enough to win a commutation to life. Only after Maris took their case was justice finally rendered and wrong man after wrong man
set free. Almost every convict in Pennsylvania recognized his name. Maris became known as “a lifer’s last
hope.”
Such was the situation in what came to be called the
Case of the Beer Bottle that Never Was. It started one
evening on a Philadelphia street corner when a young
man met his girlfriend, allegedly had an argument with
her and hit her across the back of the neck with a beer
bottle. The prosecution produced three witnesses who
said they had observed the assault. The jury ignored the
man’s story that he had merely embraced the girl and
was stroking the back of her neck when suddenly she
lurched against him and collapsed on the sidewalk,
blood spurting from her mouth. In a matter of seconds
the girl had died.
The supposed killer was sentenced to life imprisonment and served three years before he got in touch with
Maris. The lawyer soon demolished the case that had
sent the man to prison. With the aid of the coroner’s
report, he showed that the girl had died of an aneurysm
in the aorta; in this heart condition the blood vessel can
burst, fatally, at any moment, and shock or excitement
can cause the rupture.
Checking the court transcript, Maris found that the
judge and district attorney had accepted the testimony
of the witnesses at face value, and the court-appointed
defense counsel hadn’t challenged anything the witnesses had said. The findings of the coroner’s report
simply had not been considered at the trial.
Then Maris broke down the witnesses one by one,
establishing that none of them had heard what the couple had been saying, thus none could really swear there
had been an argument between the two. And no one
had seen a bottle in the man’s hand. The witnesses
“thought” he had something in his hand. One state witness, coached to elaborate on the incident, had testified
that the man had struck the girl with a beer bottle. Yet
no beer bottle had been found.
In case after case Maris proved the so-called beer
bottle murder was hardly a unique miscarriage of justice. He constantly cited instances of where official
indifference, incompetence, suppression of evidence or
even the invention of evidence that had resulted in the
conviction of innocent men.
Maris, Herbert L. (1880–1960) defense attorney
A Philadelphia lawyer whose cases became the basis
of a television series called “Lock-Up,” Herbert L.
587
MARTIN, Michael
A farmer from near York, Pa. was given the death
penalty, later commuted to life, and did 10 years before
Maris cleared him of a murder charge. It turned out
that two local constables and two civilians had decided
it would be fun to “arrest” the farmer, ride him off 18
miles and force him to walk home. But the farmer,
thinking it was a kidnapping, shot and killed one of the
constables. When the joke turned into tragedy, the survivors decided to cover the matter up by stating that at
the time of the shooting, the farmer was being arrested
on a warrant for stealing a calf. The warrant the slain
constable was allegedly carrying was produced in court
and the farmer was convicted.
Maris proved the warrant hadn’t been prepared until
three months after the killing. In addition, he found
that the prosecutor had managed to introduce the
phony warrant in court without naming the complainant. When that man was questioned, he denied
having had a calf stolen. He had not come forward at
the time of the trial, he stated, because he didn’t even
know he was involved.
Maris declared, “I am convinced, on the basis of
my long experience, that the guilt of fully 20 percent
of those in our prisons is extremely doubtful,” and
he liked to say he always had at least 10 cases on
hand in which the convicted individuals were
“absolutely innocent.” Even in his late seventies, he
still put in 80- or 90-hour weeks trying to help as
many of these unjustly convicted persons as he could,
often without fee.
Martin, Michael
Martin-Logan force into Morehead and, in a pitched
battle, killed the Tolliver leaders.
Mason, Sam (c. 1755–1803) highwayman and murderer
A brawling river man who for a time had been one of
George Rogers Clark’s rangers, Sam Mason was the
greatest terror of the Mississippi, beginning in 1800.
He collected a large gang of cutthroats, who seldom let
a robbery victim live to tell about it. Mason would
often leave his trademark at the scene of the crime,
carving on a tree, “Done by Mason of the Woods.”
Like the Harpe brothers, a pair of brutal killers of the
same era, Mason often killed indiscriminately. But he
might turn around and let his next hapless victim go with
no more than a boot in the pants. The governors of both
the Louisiana and the Mississippi territories put him at
the head of the list of wanted men. Mason was captured
early in 1803 but escaped before he was identified.
Meanwhile, a bearded man named Setton joined the
Mason gang and took part in a number of forays and
killings. Mason did not know it, but Setton was the
much-sought Little Harpe, whose older brother, Big
Harpe, had been captured by the law and executed earlier that year. There was a handsome reward out for
Mason and Harpe-Setton had designs on it. One day in
late 1803, Harpe, with the aid of another gang member
named Sam Mays, waited until Mason was separated
from the rest of his men and then tomahawked him to
death. Harpe and Mays took Mason’s severed head to
Natchez to claim their reward. Unfortunately, Little
Harpe was recognized and they, like their victim, ended
up with their heads cut off.
See also: HARPE BROTHERS.
See CAPTAIN LIGHTFOOT.
Martin-Tolliver feud
Mason County War
Far more disruptive to the life of its community than the
more famous Hatfield-McCoy feud, the dispute between
the Martins and the Tollivers, which had begun as an
election argument, in Morehead, Ky. erupted into
bloodshed in 1884, when Floyd Tolliver shot John Martin. Before the law could act, Martin shot Tolliver to
death. While Martin was being held under arrest, members of the Tolliver clan killed him. For the next three
years a bloody feud enveloped Rowan County. The
resulting anarchy provoked an exodus of hundreds of
residents from the county; the county seat at Morehead
saw its population drop from 700 to 300. Because of
close marital ties, the Logan family was drawn into the
struggle on the side of the Martins. By 1887 the death
toll stood at 23, with the number of wounded kept
secret by the close-mouthed clans. The feud ended on
June 22, 1887, when Daniel Boone Logan led a large
western feud
Although not as bloody as the Graham-Tewksbury feud
in the Arizona Territory, the Mason County War in
Texas was another violent confrontation in which the
underlying causes (cattle rustling) soon were forgotten,
swept aside by blind passion, hatred and brutality, with
friends coming to the aid of friends.
The first victim of the 1875 war was Tim
Williamson, a cattleman not averse to shooting his
enemies or mixing cattle from other herds together
with his own stock. Arrested for stealing livestock, he
was on his way to jail when a mob of his enemies
abducted him and shot him to death despite the efforts
of John Worley, a deputy sheriff of Mason County.
Worley’s attempt to save Williamson did not impress a
number of the deceased’s friends, especially Scott Cooley, an ex-Texas Ranger turned gunman who had
588
MASSERIA, Giuseppe “Joe the Boss”
worked for Williamson and other cattlemen for some
time. Cooley, who had developed a warm friendship
with Williamson, became convinced that Deputy Worley had conspired in the mob killing. He took his
revenge by not only shooting the lawman but cutting
off his ears as well. Cooley exhibited his grim prize,
promising publicly to kill every man involved in the
Williamson murder. When Cooley and a number of
friends killed Daniel Hoerster on suspicion of being
part of the mob that had attacked Williamson, fullscale war broke out. Unable to corner Cooley, his enemies set upon two friends of his, the brothers Elijah
and Pete Backus, and hanged them from a tree. Cooley’s forces dispatched a pair of mob law advocates,
Pete Bader and Luther Wiggins. The other side then
shot to death Moses Beard, a Cooley man. By that time
the conflict had been named the Hoodoo War. In all,
the eye-for-eye struggle officially resulted in the killing
of at least a dozen men and the wounding of many
more. There is little doubt that some other killings
were wrongly attributed to unknown desperadoes and
road agents.
After more than a year, the war came to an abrupt
end when a company of Texas Rangers was sent into
Mason County to prevent further bloodshed. Cooley,
the main instigator, disappeared, and only a few minor
characters had to face charges. One of these was a then
little-known friend of Cooley’s, Johnny Ringo. Ringo
had killed an anti-Williamson man after the latter had
invited him to sit down and eat with him. Jailed for
murder, Ringo broke free from his cell in Lampasas and
quickly left Texas.
See also: SCOTT COOLEY, JOHNNY RINGO.
with the onset of Prohibition, was control of the liquor
stills and wine-making vats that were common in many
Italian households.
The revenues from bootleg booze made Masseria
richer than any Mafia leader before him, and he moved
quickly to consolidate his power. Whenever any leader
appeared to be gaining strength, Joe the Boss had him
killed. He too was the subject of numerous assassination attempts. Once, two gunmen sent by his archrival,
Umberto Valenti, shot at him as he left his Manhattan
apartment on Second Avenue. Joe the Boss darted into
a millinery shop, trailed by the gunners, whose bullets
shattered windows and mirrors and hit Masseria’s
straw hat twice. But they missed the Italian gangster,
who thereby gained the mystique of being able to
dodge bullets.
In due course, Joe the Boss announced he wanted to
make peace with Valenti and asked for a conference to
discuss terms. The pair met in an Italian restaurant on
East 12th Street and Masseria pledged his loyalty to his
new “brother.” As they left the restaurant, Masseria
draped his arm over Valenti’s shoulders. On the sidewalk Joe the Boss suddenly moved away and Valenti
was cut down by a hail of bullets.
Masseria ruled supreme for several years until he
received a challenge, the most serious of all, from Salvatore Maranzano, who wanted to be the “boss of
bosses.” Masseria was upset by the effrontery—after
all, he was Joe the Boss. Soon, war broke out and bodies littered the streets in all the boroughs of New York.
Masseria felt secure. He had twice as many gunners
as Maranzano had and some very able assistants as
well. His top aide was Lucky Luciano, and among others were Joe Adonis, Frank Costello, Carlo Gambino,
Willie Moretti and Albert Anastasia. And under them
was a host of savage killers. Masseria especially liked
Anastasia, who shared his own instincts for solving
matters by murder, but he had to admit Luciano was
his most cunning assistant, a brilliant planner and organizer. All these young hoods had one problem: they
kept telling him the gang had to abandon the ways of
the old country and make deals with other ethnic gangsters, like the Irish and the Jews. Luciano insisted everyone could make more money if they cooperated, and he
and Adonis were working their bootleg rackets with the
Bug and Meyer gang—Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky.
Joe the Boss did not trust Siegel and Lansky, and he bridled at working with Dutch Schultz, even if he had converted to Catholicism. Moreover, he disliked the fact
that Costello was paying off all the politicians. It was
all right to bribe an official now and then when needed,
but one should not “sleep with them” all the time. The
politicians would eventually corrupt you, Masseria felt,
Masseria, Giuseppe “Joe the Boss” (c. 1880–1931)
Mafia leader
Joe the Boss Masseria was the undisputed boss of the
New York Mafia in the 1920s, a rank he achieved by
knocking off a number of rivals for the throne. Masseria had come from Sicily in the early years of the 20th
century with solid Mafia connections. He soon teamed
up with Lupo the Wolf, often regarded as the cruelest
mafioso in the country and the owner of the infamous
Murder Stable in East Harlem where his foes or victims
were hung on meat hooks.
Masseria looked like a round little cherub except for
his cold eyes, which betrayed a fearsomeness that made
him a worthy partner of Lupo. When the pair made
extortion demands of Italian immigrants, their victims
paid whether they could afford to or not. In 1920 Lupo
went to prison on a counterfeiting charge and Masseria
fell heir to his operations, the most important of which,
589
MASSIE Case
even though Luciano insisted it was the other way
around.
Joe the Boss didn’t realize that these younger mafiosi
hated him as intently as they hated Maranzano. They
looked forward to the day when they would be rid of
all the “Mustache Petes,” as they disdainfully called old
country mafiosi. They even had secret contacts within
the Maranzano organization, especially with Tommy
Lucchese and Tom Gagliano, intended to stop the
senseless killings between the groups so that everyone
could just concentrate on making money.
Luciano counseled the others to bide their time until
either Masseria killed Maranzano or vice versa, but by
1931 both leaders were still around and others were
doing the dying. That year Luciano decided something
had to be done. Since it would be easier to kill someone
who trusted him rather than one who did not, he
decided Joe the Boss would have to die first. On April
15, 1931 Luciano suggested to Masseria that they drive
out to Coney Island for lunch. Joe the Boss agreed and
they dined at a favorite underworld haunt, Nuova Villa
Tammaro, owned by Gerardo Scarpato, an acquaintance of a number of gangsters. During lunch Joe the
Boss gorged himself, and after the rest of the diners
cleared out, he and Luciano played pinochle while
owner Scarpato went for a walk along the beach.
About 3:30 P.M. Luciano went to the toilet. As soon
as he left, four men came marching through the door.
They were Vito Genovese, Joe Adonis, Albert Anastasia
and Bugsy Siegel, loaned especially for the operation by
Meyer Lansky, who was destined to become Luciano’s
closest associate. All pulled out guns and fired at
Masseria. Six bullets hit home, and the reign of Joe the
Boss came to an abrupt end.
In newspaper reports of the sensational assassination, Luciano told the police he had heard the shooting
and, as soon as he had dried his hands, went out to see
what was going on. Actually, Luciano’s recollection
was not accurately reported, possibly a form of selfcensorship by the press. What he told the police was: “I
was in the can taking a leak. I always take a long leak.”
In any case, the first significant step in the LucianoLansky plan to establish a new national crime syndicate
had been completed.
See also: CASTELLAMMARESE WAR, THOMAS “THREEFINGER BROWN” LUCCHESE, CHARLES “LUCKY” LUCIANO,
SALVATORE MARANZANO, MUSTACHE PETES.
Massie Case
Hawaiian murder case
Few criminal cases provoked as much racial hatred in
the 1930s as Hawaii’s Massie Case. Thalia Massie, the
pretty wife of a young U.S. naval officer, Lt. Thomas H.
Massie, was allegedly raped by five Hawaiians in Hon590
olulu in 1931. News of the alleged crime led to racial
tensions between Hawaiians and Americans and American sailors rioted in the streets. Thalia Massie was the
daughter of socially prominent Mrs. Grace Fortescue of
Long Island, N.Y., who promptly rushed to her daughter’s side. Five beach boys were arrested and charged
with the rape, but the case against them was weak.
After the jury became deadlocked, a mistrial was
declared. More battles between Hawaiians and Americans immediately broke out.
At this stage Mrs. Fortescue and Lt. Massie decided
to take matters into their own hands, and together with
two sailors, E. J. Lord and A. O. Jones, they made
plans to force a confession out of one of the defendants.
They grabbed Joseph Kahahawai right off the street
and shoved him into a car. But a friend of Kahahawai
had witnessed the abduction and provided police with
the car’s license number. About an hour and a half later,
police located the vehicle bound for Koko Head, a bluff
overlooking the sea. Inside they found Lt. Massie, Mrs.
Fortescue, the two enlisted men and the body of Joe
Kahahawai. He had been shot in the chest.
An investigation revealed the four had taken the
man to the Massie home and questioned him there
about the rape. Someone had shot him, but the four
insisted they were in a “daze” and didn’t know what
had happened.
All four were charged with murder. The charge created such a sensation in Honolulu that a Marine detachment was assigned to maintain order. Reaction on the
mainland was also strong. One day Mrs. Fortescue
received what was described as a boatload of flowers
from well-wishers. A Hearst newspaper headlined the
case, “The Honor Slaying,” and the American press in
general reported all sorts of atrocity stories, later proved
to be false, of rapes and assaults that had, according to a
Hearst report, “forced decent white folks to take up
arms to protect the honor of their women.”
Mrs. Fortescue hired the aged Clarence Darrow to
represent herself and the other three defendants, in
what was to be one of the most sensational trials of the
century. Darrow’s task was enormous. He tried to
establish that Lt. Massie had been suffering from “temporary insanity” but he would not admit that Massie
had fired the fatal shot. In the end, the jury of five
whites, three Europeans, three Chinese and one juror of
mixed white-Oriental ancestry was partly swayed by
Darrow’s tactics and voted only a manslaughter conviction. The native population was satisfied when the
defendants were all given 10 years, but the sentence
caused an explosion back in the States.
Various congressmen demanded a presidential pardon be issued. A military boycott began, damaging the
local economy, and soon, the territorial governor and
MASTERSON, James P.
Darrow engaged in intense negotiations over the sentences. In the middle of their talks, the governor
received a call from President Herbert Hoover. The end
result was one of the strangest sentencing agreements in
American judicial history: the governor ordered the
prisoners brought into court and had them “held” one
hour before he commuted the remainder of their sentences. Part of the agreement called for the Massies and
Mrs. Fortescue to leave the islands immediately.
Officially, the case ended there, but on reflection,
much of the public decided the original rape case was
not all it had seemed. Thalia Massie’s gynecologist was
quoted as saying, “If I had . . . to tell everything I knew
. . . it would have made monkeys out of everybody.”
Two years after the incident the Massies were divorced.
Lt. Massie eventually remarried and left the navy for
private business. Thalia Massie’s later life included several suicide attempts and hospital confinements. She
finally remarried before committing suicide in 1963.
son came charging across the Sante Fe tracks to the rescue, taking a quick shot at the other cowboy. Finally,
Ed Masterson felt he had no choice but to draw, and as
he did, so did the cowboy he had been holding. In the
next two seconds the two Mastersons shot both cowboys fatally, but Ed Masterson also suffered a mortal
gunshot wound, which the Ford County Globe
reported, was fired from such close range that “his
clothes were on fire from the discharge of the pistol,
which had been placed against the right side of his
abdomen and ‘turned loose.’”
Ed Masterson’s funeral was one of Dodge City’s
biggest. All businesses were closed and draped in
mourning. The Dodge City Fire Company, to which Ed
belonged, conducted the funeral. A choir stood by the
marshal’s coffin in the parlor of the fire company and
sang somber dirges. It was said that every buggy and
wagon in workable condition joined the cortege to
Masterson’s burial site in the military cemetery at Fort
Dodge. The entire city council preceded the hearse,
with Bat Masterson riding directly behind it. Behind
Bat rode the 60 members of the fire company.
It was an outpouring of respect that Dodge City
never gave another law official, and one that the city
never would have given Bat Masterson, who was voted
out of office the following year.
See also: WILLIAM B. “BAT” MASTERSON.
Masterson, Edward J. (1852–1878) lawman
Ed Masterson, Bat Masterson’s older brother, enjoyed
far more respect as a lawman than did Bat, who mainly
was respected for his gunslinging prowess. Ed was
inclined to rely more on talking than on gunfighting to
uphold the law. It was a point of dispute between the
brothers, with Bat insisting a lawman must inspire fear
and, to that end, use his gun often.
Ed, like his brother, worked at a number of jobs
before turning up as assistant city marshal of Dodge
City, Kan. in 1877. There, he followed, as much as possible, a policy of keeping his gun holstered. Late that
year he was wounded in the chest while arresting a
drunken Texas cowboy named Bob Shaw in the Lone
Star Dance Hall. Before the year was out, Ed had recovered sufficiently to take over as city marshal. Clearly,
the citizens of Dodge City appreciated Ed’s style of settling things peacefully, unlike the style of brother Bat,
who in the meantime had been elected sheriff of Ford
County, which included Dodge.
Ed Masterson’s term of office was to last a little over
four months, during which time he cajoled cowboys
out of “hurrahing the town” and organized a “vagrant
patrol” to arrest tramps, who then worked off their jail
time by cleaning rubbish that accumulated on the
streets. Ed Masterson was obviously a different kind of
lawman.
Late on the evening of April 9, 1878, Marshal Masterson hurried over to the Lady Gay Dance Hall to try
to disarm two drunken cowboys, Jack Wagner and Alf
Walker. His gun, as usual, was in its holster. As both
cowboys leveled their guns at him, Ed seized one of
them and pinned him to a wall. Just then Bat Master-
Masterson, James P. (1855–1895) lawman and
gunfighter
The youngest of the three Masterson brothers, Jim
Masterson engaged in far more shooting scrapes than
his more famous brother, Bat, and was a more-accomplished lawman as well. Like Bat, he generally used his
guns to serve the important political powers as a law
officer in Dodge City and Ford County, Kan.
When not working as a law officer, Jim frequently
operated saloons, in which capacity he had a number of
gun battles with clients and partners alike. In one such
confrontation, Jim shot and killed Al Updegraff, a bartender hired by his partner. As a result of this fray, both
Jim and Bat, who also took part in the proceedings,
were forced to leave Dodge City. However, Jim went on
to hold a variety of law enforcement jobs, including
that of U.S. marshal. In 1889 Jim was working in
Ingalls, Kan., as a “deputy sheriff,” i.e., hired gunman,
during that town’s bloody war with Cimarron over
which would become the county seat.
In the early 1890s Masterson played a key role in
cleansing the Oklahoma Territory of numerous outlaws
and performed heroically against the Doolin gang at
the famed Battle of Ingalls. Shortly thereafter, he developed “galloping consumption” and died in 1895.
591
MASTERSON, William B.“Bat”
See also:
CIMARRON COUNTY SEAT WAR; INGALLS,
OKLAHOMA TERRITORY, BATTLE OF; WILLIAM B.
“BAT”
MASTERSON.
Masterson, William B. “Bat” (1853–1921)
gunfighter and lawman
There probably have been more lies told about Bat
Masterson’s gunfighting than that of any other Wild
West character. A Kansas newspaper said of him in
1884: “He is credited with having killed one man for
every year of his life. This may be exaggerated, but he is
certainly entitled to a record of a dozen or more. He is
a cool, brave man, pleasant in his manners, but terrible
in a fight.” However, even that newspaper’s tally of
Masterson’s victims was more than a bit excessive; he
actually killed only one gunfighter, Mel King, who outdrew him in a dance hall brawl and hit him with a near
fatal shot before Bat gunned him down. Bat undoubtedly would have been killed had not a dance hall girl
named Molly Brennan shielded him with her own body,
absorbing a fatal shot, a situation for which Hollywood
would be eternally grateful.
However, Masterson cannot be dismissed as merely
a dapper fop. He was a genuine hero during a skirmish
in which 35 buffalo hunters made a famous stand at the
Battle of Adobe Walls, against 500 attacking Indians,
and as a lawman, he was an effective peacemaker. So
demonstrably fast on the draw, he simply was not challenged by other gunfighters. Masterson showed his
great sharpshooting ability when he captured Spike
Kennedy, the murderer of Dora Hand, knocking him
off his horse with a rifle shot at what was described as a
huge distance. As sheriff of Ford County, Kan., Masterson was part of the Dodge City Gang of Mayor James
H. “Dog” Kelley and Marshal Wyatt Earp and he was
not above taking his cut of the revenues from various
vice operations, figuring such rewards came with the
job. In fact, he was voted out of office because the citizens felt he was too free and easy with public money,
having somehow managed to spend the then-staggering
sum of $4,000 for five months’ care and feeding of
seven prisoners.
After his Dodge City days Bat drifted around the
West, often showing up to help out Wyatt Earp or
Luke Short whenever they needed it. His reputation
always preceded him. Far more than even Earp’s or
Doc Holliday’s, Bat’s appearance was an invitation to
silence and respect. This was partly due to sheer
showmanship and his ability to tell a tall tale or two.
When he didn’t, friends of his would. A certain Dr.
Cockerell once told the New York Sun how Bat had
shot seven men dead in just a few minutes. He also
described how Masterson had killed a Mexican father
FPO
FIG #113
TO BE
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FROM
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ED.
Bat Masterson was credited with “having killed one man
for every year of his life.” His actual number of gunfight
victims amounted to one.
and son badman team and put their bodies in a sack.
Dr. Cockerell, however, went on to tell how Bat had
lost out on the reward for the pair because, after a
ride of two days, the sun had “swelled and disfigured
the heads so that they were unrecognizable, taking
advantage of which the authorities refused to pay the
reward.”
A myth about Masterson which has persisted up to
the present is that he carried a walking stick, or “bat,”
hence his nickname, which served either as a repository
for a secret gun or as a club. Actually, his use of the
walking stick was restricted to his later gambling days
and did not account for his sobriquet, which he coined
himself because he could not abide his given name of
Bartholomew, which he officially changed to William
Barclay.
In later years the once hard-drinking Masterson
became an ardent prohibitionist and, as a special officer, even tried to close down the Dodge City saloons.
This odd conversion occurred in 1885, just a year after
Masterson, as one of the so-called Dodge City Peace
Commissioners, had—by threat of force—brought
back Luke Short to that town and reopened Dodge to
all matters of vice and prostitution. Masterson’s con592
MATHER, Mysterious Dave
version did not last long; by 1886 he was working with
Short at the White Elephant Saloon in Fort Worth, Tex.
Later, Masterson moved to Colorado, where he
occasionally wore a badge but spent most of his time
as a gentleman gambler and sport. He continued to
drink heavily, and in 1902, no longer the expert gunman, he was run out of Denver by force. He went to
New York City, where President Theodore Roosevelt,
who had met him years before, appointed him a
deputy U.S. marshal, a desk job entailing no old-style
gunslinging. When President William Howard Taft
refused to reappoint him, Masterson, through the
intercession of Alfred Henry Lewis, established a name
for himself as a writer, turning out a series of articles
on his gunslinger acquaintances. Lewis later helped
him become sports editor of the New York Morning
Telegraph.
In a sense, Masterson achieved a greater measure of
respectability than any of his gunfighter pals. In 1921
he died of a heart attack working at his desk on his
next column. It read: “There are many in this old world
of ours who hold that things break about even for us. I
have observed, for example, that we all get about the
same amount of ice. The rich get it in the summer-time
and the poor get it in the winter.”
See also: MOLLY BRENNAN; CIMARRON COUNTY SEAT
WAR; DODGE CITY, KANSAS; DODGE CITY PEACE COMMISSION; WYATT EARP; DORA HAND; EDWARD J. MASTERSON;
JAMES P. MASTERSON; NOTCHED WEAPONS; THEODORE
ROOSEVELT.
outlaw, serving as marshal of several frontier towns
and spending as much time in their jails.
Little is known of Mather’s life before he reached the
age of 28 except that he was from Massachusetts and
appears to have been, as he claimed, a direct descendant of Cotton Mather. Mather earned his nickname
Mysterious not so much because his escapades were
unknown but because it was a mystery how he got
away with so many of them. It was pretty well established that Mather became involved in cattle rustling in
1873. The following year in Dodge City, Kan. he
worked sometimes as a gambler and sometimes as a
peace officer. Dave kept drifting in and out of Dodge
City over the years and ran up quite a record as a killer
and a lawbreaker in general. It was often said—and
believed—that he once killed seven men in a single gunfight, but the facts are hard to pin down.
In one of his law-abiding phases, Mather headed a
vigilance committee that strung up horse thieves. Operating on the other side of the law, he and Wyatt Earp
ran a con racket in 1878 in which they sold “gold
bricks” to gullible cowboys in Mobeetie, Tex. The following year Mather was accused of train robbery but
the charge was dropped because of insufficient evidence. Mysterious Dave was again on the side of the
law in 1880, aiding Las Vegas Marshal Joe Carson battle the Henry gang. In the gunfight, in which the marshal was killed, Mather shot dead one of the gang and
wounded another, who was taken off to jail. Three days
later, he killed a third member. When the last two gang
members were rounded up and put behind bars,
Mather led a lynch mob to the local jail and there they
dispensed rope justice to the three survivors of the
gang. Within a few months Dave left the Las Vegas
scene following accusations that he had engaged in
“promiscuous shooting.” After some drifting and
apparently more lawbreaking, he took a job as assistant
marshal in El Paso, Tex., but he found the remuneration poor and turned to procuring for a time. Mather
was slightly wounded one day for reasons that are
unclear. Either because he had tried to skip out with a
prostitute’s entire wages or because he had attempted
to hold up a whorehouse, he was shot and butcherknifed by an angry madam. In any event, he returned to
law work in Dodge City as assistant city marshal.
In February 1884 Mather lost his position following
an election, and he suffered the added annoyance of
being succeeded in the job by Tom Nixon, with whom
he had never gotten along. By this time Mysterious
Dave had set himself up in the saloon business, the
same activity Nixon engaged in after his normal working hours. The two got into a price war over beer, and
when Mather got the best of it, Nixon used his law
enforcement job to cut off his competitor’s beer supply.
Mather, Cotton (1663–1728) promoter of Salem witch
trials
The American colonial clergyman Cotton Mather, it
has been said, was simultaneously the most intelligent
and the most stupid man this country has ever produced. He was the author of no less that 450 books on
many erudite subjects, but he was also obsessed by
witches. With his fiery sermons, Mather was probably
the man most responsible for the Salem witchcraft
mania of 1692. He encouraged the persecutions, which
finally ended only because of public revulsion. Among
the many contributions Dr. Mather made on the general subject of witchcraft was the theory that the devil
spoke perfect Greek, Hebrew and Latin, but that his
English was hampered by an odd accent.
See also: SALEM WITCHRAFT TRIALS.
Mather, Mysterious Dave (1845–?) lawman and
outlaw
Mysterious Dave Mather, one of the most cold-blooded
gunmen in the West, was the epitome of the lawman593
MATTRESS girls
The conflict eventually led to a gun battle, but it
appears that the immediate cause of the shooting was
Dave’s attention to Nixon’s young wife. As Mather
came out of his saloon on July 18, 1884, Nixon took a
shot at him and fled, thinking he had killed his quarry.
But Mysterious Dave had been hit by nothing worse
than flying splinters. Nixon was arrested, but Mather
refused to press charges, preferring to exact private justice. Three days later, on July 21, 1884, Nixon was
lounging in front of a Front Street saloon. The last
words he heard were a whispered “Hello, Tom.” Then
Mather put four bullets in Nixon’s back, killing him
instantly.
Mysterious Dave was brought to trial for the murder.
In a verdict that could happen only in the American
West, he was acquitted on grounds of self-defense. After
all, Nixon had started the shooting three days earlier.
The following year Mather killed a man and, in a
separate shooting, wounded two others. He was finally
run out of Dodge by the town’s fearless marshal, Bill
Tilghman. Moving on, Mather did short stints as city
marshal in a couple of small towns in Kansas and
Nebraska. After that, his trail disappears. According to
unconfirmed accounts, he served in the Canadian
Mounties, but other reports say he became an outlaw
up north. There was a story that he was alive in
Alberta, Canada as late as 1915. Mather’s final years
remain a mystery.
See also: WYATT EARP, GOLD BRICK SWINDLE.
mattress girls
young playmate were happily planning the rest of the
holiday season in the Tacoma, Wash. home of Dr. W.
W. Mattson. As the children—the three Mattsons,
Charles, 10, William, 14, and Muriel, 16, and their visitor, Virginia Chatfield, 16—talked, they were unaware
of a shadowy figure watching them from the darkness
outside the French doors. Suddenly, the intruder, a scarf
masking his face, pushed through the glass doors and
entered the room, brandishing a .38 revolver.
At first, the man demanded money, but when the
children told him they had none, he announced, “All
right, I’ll take the kid.” As he seized Charles, his scarf
dropped and the other children saw a coarse-featured
man of 25 to 35 years old with a break in the bridge of
his nose. He was about five feet eight and wore a tan
checked cap, dark trousers and a zippered jacket. He
readjusted the scarf and then backed from the room,
holding his prisoner. Just before he left, he threw a prepared ransom note on the floor, indicating that kidnapping was his intention from the first.
The note, prepared with what appeared to be a toy
printing set, demanded a $28,000 ransom. Charles
Mattson was never to be seen alive again. Negotiations
for the child’s release were carried on through personal
ads in the newspapers. The parents were harrowed not
only by the kidnapping but also by unrelenting coverage of the press, radio and newsreels. In fact, some
authorities have always felt the circuslike atmosphere
created by the media finally panicked the kidnapper
into killing his young victim.
On January 11, 1937 a rabbit hunter found little
Charles’ body in an open field near Everett, Wash. Bits of
orange pulp were found in the child’s mouth, indicating
that the killer had murdered the boy as he was eating.
In the ensuing years the FBI questioned some 26,000
suspects in the case but failed to come up with a solution. Among the 400 kidnap cases the FBI has investigated since given that duty in 1932, the Mattson case is
one of only four that the agency has failed to solve.
Ironically, young Charles had been a playmate of
George Weyerhaeuser, who had been kidnapped in
1935 but released when his father, wealthy lumberman
John Philip Weyerhaeuser, paid a $200,000 ransom. In
that case the kidnappers were captured and convicted.
After Charles Mattson’s death Weyerhaeuser established an endowment in his memory at the Children’s
Orthopedic Hospital in Seattle.
prostitutes
Almost from its founding, New Orleans became the
sex capital of America and the mecca for countless
traveling prostitutes seeking to make a living in the
world’s oldest profession. Competition was so intense
and the houses so crowded that many prostitutes could
not find lodgings and took to carrying a mattress on
their heads, ready to set up for business in an alley or
open field. Some of them branched out from New
Orleans, trekking up the Mississippi or westward with
their trusty mattresses on their heads. The call “Mattress girl a-comin’” often caused considerable excitement. In time, reform elements in various
communities, including New Orleans, either drove
such prostitutes away or into houses where it was felt
they belonged, and a quaint, if demeaning, custom
vanished from the scene.
Maury County, Tennessee jail fire
Mattson, Charles (1926–1937) kidnap murder victim
One of the most bizarre jail fires in American history
occurred on June 27, 1977 at the Maury County Jail in
Columbia, Tenn. The fire was all the more tragic in that
it took place during visiting hours.
Few kidnap-murder cases upset America as much as
that of 10-year-old Charles Mattson. With Christmas
just two days past, three of the Mattson children and a
594
MAXWELL, Robert
A juvenile prisoner started the fire in his cell. As the
plastic padding in the young arsonist’s cell burned, it
produced cyanide and carbon monoxide gases, which
were quickly transmitted to all parts of the jail through
the ventilation system. As the poisonous smoke came
pouring out of the air ducts into the prisoners’ cells,
panic ensued and visitors stampeded blindly through the
corridors. When a prison guard realized what was happening, he hurried to unlock the cell block doors, but he
was bowled over by the panicked visitors and the keys
disappeared among the shuffling feet. There was
another set of keys in the jailer’s office but no one had
the presence of mind to locate them. By the time the cell
doors were battered open, 42 persons, virtually all prisoners or their relatives, had died from the poisonous
fumes. In some cases entire families were wiped out; one
inmate, for instance, died along with his parents, his
wife and his sister. Ironically, many of the prisoners had
not even been convicted but were awaiting trial.
PICK UP
PICTURE
FROM FILM
Superswindler Robert Maxwell was for a time hailed as
the savior of the ailing New York Daily News when he
took it over. Then he began what was later called
“Operation Siphon,” looting pension funds at the News
and his other holdings and cheating creditors out of
many billions.
Maxwell, Robert (1923–1991) intercontinental
superswindler
While the 1980s have been called the decade of the
superswindler—producing such financial felons as
Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Charles Keating, and the
like—Robert Maxwell was in a class of his own.
Maxwell, a flamboyant Czech-born British publisher, was regarded by many as a brilliant ringmaster
who fought his way up from poverty and personal
tragedy to build a financial empire that made him one
of the business world’s most feared operators. In the
1980s Maxwell eagerly sought the mantle of savior of
downtrodden newspapers, such as Britain’s Mirror
Group newspapers and New York’s Daily News.
Then began what may be called Maxwell’s “Operation Siphon.” It will take years into the 21st century to
unravel the full extent of Maxwell’s depredations, but it
became clear that he and perhaps a few others siphoned
off at least $1.63 billion from pension funds and the
two flagship companies of his publishing empire, Mirror
Group and Maxwell Communications Corp. The total
losses to the pension funds and other creditors will at
some point escalate by many billions of dollars more.
Maxwell died at sea, having either fallen, been
pushed or jumped from his luxury yacht, Lady Ghislaine. Was he murdered to be silenced? Had he died
accidentally? Or had he finally decided the jig was up
and taken his own life? Of the alternatives, the last
seems the more likely since, according to investigators,
he faced certain exposure in a matter of days.
Actually the most amazing aspect of his crimes was
that Maxwell had gotten away with them for so many
years, considering that 20 years earlier Great Britain’s
Board of Trade found that he was not “in our opinion a
person who could be relied on to exercise proper stewardship of a publicly quoted company.” Nevertheless,
Maxwell continued to thrive, proving that nothing succeeds in fraud like excessive success. Even while picking
up the nickname “The Bouncing Czech,” Maxwell
blithely went from one megadeal to the next, using
looted assets to keep afloat the heavily indebted private
companies at the heart of his empire.
In the firestorm after Maxwell’s death, even the most
austere elements of the British press descended to colorful and livid terms to denounce him as a “fraudster on
a grand scale.” Whittam Smith, editor of The Independent, declared, “He was a crook. Shareholders other
than his family were lambs to be fleeced; pensions were
fair game.” Peter Jenkins wrote in the same publication: “Ask anyone with knowledge of financial matters
the secret of his success, and they would explain how
he could make money move from bank to bank, company to company, faster than the eye could see. Some
called this wizardry business, but most knew in their
hearts that Maxwell was simply not kosher, no friend
of widows and orphans.”
Within a month of Maxwell’s death, his financial
empire had crumbled in bankruptcies. Perhaps
Maxwell knew the house of cards was rushing headlong to collapse. In a television interview shortly before
his death, Maxwell said in response to a question that
in the hereafter he couldn’t say if he would meet his
“maker . . . or the banker.”
595
MAXWELL Street police station
would be seized by police in other parts of the city
while making deliveries, the Maxwell Street precinct
also supplied police escorts through such dangerous
zones. The police tried to shut down those alky cookers not working for the Gennas but were generally put
off when the independents insisted they were operating Genna stills. To solve that problem, the Gennas
supplied the police with a complete list of their stills.
Whenever a private operation was unearthed, the
police would move in with axes and destroy it, often
alerting the newspapers in advance so that the
precinct’s aggressive fight against crime would be publicized.
See also: GENNA BROTHERS.
Maxwell left a few somewhat laughing—but far
many more stone-cold broke.
Maxwell Street police station
corrupt precinct
Chicago’s most
When in the early 1920s Charles C. Fitzmorris,
Chicago’s chief of police, publicly stated, “Sixty percent of my police are in the bootleg business,” he was
not referring to the Maxwell Street police precinct in
the heart of Little Italy. There, the percentage was
placed, according to a popular saying, at 110 percent,
which was not a mathematical impossibility.
Chicago’s Little Italy at the time was the heart of the
city’s bootleg alcohol production and was for thousands of immigrant families a sort of cottage industry
that earned them a rather fine living. This racket was
controlled by the notorious Gennas, a family of five
ruthless brothers. The Gennas induced Italian families
to set up portable copper stills in their kitchens or the
back rooms of their stores for extracting alcohol from
corn sugar. In return, they received a set fee of $15 a
day, far more than immigrants could make as simple
laborers. Those families that refused usually changed
their minds quickly when they received Black Hand
threats. So pervasive was the “alky cooking” that all
of Little Italy was enveloped in the stink of fermenting
mash.
It was an activity that could hardly be kept secret
from the police of the Maxwell Street precinct, a matter the Gennas easily handled with bribes. There was
plenty of money available for police graft, since a
home still could produce 350 gallons of raw alcohol a
week for considerably less than $1 a gallon and the
Gennas, after processing the alcohol further in their
plant at 1022 Taylor Street, sold the product wholesale
for $6 a gallon.
The Maxwell Street cops got their cut out of this
huge gross, being paid $10 to $125 a month depending on their importance and length of service. There
were regular payoffs to some 400 officers plus larger
stipends for plainclothesmen, detectives attached to
the state attorney’s office and five police captains. All
day on the monthly payday, police officers would
troop in and out of the Taylor Street plant, many
openly counting their graft on the street. The Gennas
found they had to contend with a particularly venal
form of police dishonesty, officers from other
precincts showing up and pretending to be from the
Maxwell Street station, hence the 110 percent figure.
The local police brass solved this dilemma by furnishing the gang with a list of badge numbers to check all
claims against. Because an occasional Genna truck
“Mayflower Madam”
See SYDNEY BIDDLE BARROWS.
Meagher, Mike (1844–1881) Kansas lawman
Michael Meager and his twin brother, John, came to
America from their native Ireland with their father,
Timothy, and settled in Kansas. Both brothers became
local lawmen. Mike eventually won fame as the marshal who taught Wyatt Earp all he knew.
Mike served several years as city marshal of
Wichita with John as his deputy. John later was
elected sheriff but quit after one year to follow the
gambling trail, eventually becoming the owner of several saloons. After a short stint as a deputy U.S. marshal tracking down horse thieves, Mike again became
city marshal of Wichita, which had grown into a riproarin’, shot-em-up cattle town in need of taming.
One of his deputies was Wyatt Earp. Meagher managed to quiet Wichita down and reduce the size of his
force at the same time.
In 1877 Meagher shot and killed Sylvester Powell,
who had wounded the marshal while resisting arrest.
The killing weighed on Meagher, and he decided not
to run for reelection later that year. All through
Wichita’s worst shooting years, Meagher had kept
order without ever having to kill a man, but now his
record had been bloodied. Killing was not something
Meagher was proud of, a feeling he failed to instill in
Wyatt Earp. Meagher moved on to Caldwell, Kan.
and was its mayor for a time. He quit politics to open
a saloon. When murders became common in Caldwell, the townspeople asked him to take the marshal’s
job, but Meagher refused, telling them he no longer
wanted to be a lawman. He would, however, leave his
saloon to put on a badge temporarily when the marshal called for help. On one such mission in 1881,
Meagher was murdered by an unidentified gunman.
596
MEANS, Gaston Bullock
Means, Gaston Bullock (1880–1938) swindler and
rogue
tism than because of the difficulty he encountered in
collecting his pay. Quite naturally, he shifted his activities to U.S. Army Intelligence.
When the Harding Administration came to power
in 1921, Burns brought his old friend Means into the
Bureau of Investigation, which enraged Hoover, who
was made assistant director of the agency. Although
the bureau was rife with bribe takers during this
period, Means upgraded the graft system to a fine art.
He was also busy, as he subsequently revealed, in the
employ of Mrs. Harding, secretly investigating her
husband’s love affairs and paternity situation. For a
time Means came under such a cloud that he was
dropped from his job, but he was quickly reinstated as
an “informant” through Burns’ good offices. A short
time later, Means was indicted for a scheme in which
he had swindled a number of bootleggers by telling
them he was collecting graft for Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon. During a Senate committee
investigation, Means told how he had acted as a gobetween in the payment of $50,000 to an associate of
Attorney General Harry Daugherty to have a $6 million government suit against an aircraft concern
killed.
In this same period Means was also busy attempting
to blackmail the Hardings for $50,000 with the accusation that the president had fathered a child by Nan Britton, an undistinguished young poetess from Ohio.
After Harding died in office, Means tried to make his
money by coauthoring a book with Nan Britton entitled The President’s Daughter. Eventually, Means went
to prison for his bribery scams. When he emerged in
1930, he further pursued his literary career with a scandalous best-seller, The Strange Death of President
Harding, in which he implied Mrs. Harding had poisoned her husband.
Means capped his career of unbridled roguery by
concocting a swindle to capitalize on the Lindbergh
baby kidnapping. He convinced another flighty heiress,
Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean, that through his underworld contacts he could recover the child. Mrs.
McLean gave him $100,000 for the ransom and $4,000
for his own expenses. The child was not recovered, and
Means did not give back the money, instead telling the
woman one preposterous story after another. He finally
insisted he had returned the money to an associate of
Mrs. McLean, but his story was proved false and he
went to prison for 15 years.
When Means suffered a heart attack in 1938,
Hoover dispatched FBI agents to his prison hospital
bed to learn the whereabouts of Mrs. McLean’s money.
Means gave them a puckish smile and died.
See also: LINDBERGH KIDNAPPING.
In the pecking order of J. Edgar Hoover’s pet hates,
Gaston Bullock Means stood close to the top of the list
and deservedly so, since Means was perhaps the most
outrageous figure to appear on the Washington scene in
the 20th century.
At one point this rogue of unsurpassed effrontery
stood almost at the top of the list of future candidates
to become head of what was then called the Bureau of
Investigation, later renamed the Federal Bureau of
Investigation. He was, in William J. Burns’ words, “the
greatest natural detective ever known.” The word
“detective” easily could have been replaced by such
terms as con man, swindler, hoaxer, spy, influence peddler, blackmailer and, quite possibly, murderer. His
depredations were astonishing. Only Gaston Means,
for instance, could do more to besmirch the administration of Warren G. Harding than the Ohio Gang and
Teapot Dome. Always the opportunist, he made more
money out of the Lindbergh kidnapping than did Bruno
Hauptmann.
Means, born in North Carolina in 1880, had a most
undistinguished record as, among other things, a towel
salesman and sometimes lawyer. When he joined the
Burns Detective Agency in 1910, it was in this period
that Means so impressed Burns, using such standard
private detective cons as “secret informants” and other
phony methods indicative of investigative prowess to
impress his superior.
In 1915 Means left the agency for bigger and better
things, becoming bodyguard and financial overseer for
madcap heiress Maude R. King. There is strong reason
to suspect that Means gained Mrs. King’s confidence by
arranging to have a thug fake a robbery attempt on her
and some friends on a Chicago street, a crime frustrated by the gallant appearance of Means. In no time
at all, the con artist was managing the woman’s financial affairs and by 1917, he had bilked her out of some
$150,000. Even as flighty a person as Maude King
eventually got a bit upset about her losses, but Means
solved this problem by taking her on a hunting trip to
North Carolina. Mrs. King, unaccustomed to such
sport, was shot to death on the trip. Means was tried
for murder but acquitted; the conclusion was that the
woman had committed suicide.
Means’ activities were not confined to swindling
heiresses. During World War I he hired out as both a
secret agent for the Germans (with duties to disrupt
British shipping) and at the same time, as a counterspy
for the British against the Germans. Eventually—before
the United States entered the war—Means severed his
German connections, probably less because of patrio-
597
MEDICAL quackery
medical quackery
In a century that has seen monumental strides in pharmaceuticals, general medicine and surgery, medical
quackery has become among the most lucrative criminal activities in the United States. The public wastes
hundreds of millions and probably billions of dollars
each year on “miracle” and “sure-cure” medicines, cosmetics, drugs and therapeutic devices. Particularly victimized are persons who have incurable diseases and
those with great fear of going to doctors.
Typical cures are those that will grow hair on a bald
head and renew sexual vigor in older men. In fact, there
are nostrums for every human ailment from hemorrhoids to cancer. Devices offered include a magnetized
copper bracelet with magical powers against rheumatism and arthritis, an electric rolling pin that melts fat
and a plug-in vibrating cushion that cures arthritis and
varicose veins. Concentrated seawater, according to
those who sell it, will do away with such varied ailments as diabetes, baldness and cancer, among other
things, while offering our bodily glands “a chemical
smorgasbord.”
One of the more unique instruments sold some years
ago was a set of two small rubber hammers for people
tired of wearing glasses all the time. They were
instructed to tap their eyes with the hammers 200 times
a day as a method of “strengthening” them. Then they
were to put a mask over their eyes for total relaxation
and rest. When the mask was removed, quite a few of
the victims sported two perfect black eyes. But the promoter even turned this development into a plus by
insisting that the discoloration indicated the victim was
eminently susceptible to the treatment and that if the
hammers were used on the male genital organs, such
tapping would increase virility.
Probably the biggest con man in the cancer field was
Norman Baker, who battled postal inspectors with
every available legal delaying tactic for almost a decade
before he was put out of business. Baker’s empire
mushroomed to include a number of hospitals and
radio stations, and he even published a newspaper in
Iowa. It was charged that he fed his patients large
amounts of flavored waters and acids as a cancer cure.
Since he gave the patients in his hospitals no substantial
foods, his operating expenses were greatly reduced. In
the process, a great many of his patients, understandably, died, but Baker was nonetheless able to accumulate millions of dollars. His achievement was even more
monumental considering the punishment he later
received: four years imprisonment and a $4,000 fine.
According to postal inspectors, the two main obstacles to successful prosecution of medical quacks are the
fact that potential chief witnesses against them often
die before the case reaches court and the mistaken
598
belief of many of their victims that they are getting
treatment the “medical interests” and the American
Medical Association in particular conspire to keep
from the public.
Megan’s Law
public notice about sex offenders
Because of a growing perception on the part of the public that many sex crime offenders are extremely likely
to repeat their offenses and that psychiatry has been
unable to reform many, by the mid-1980s there was a
move in many localities to alter the laws so that the
public would have a measure of protection. Various
localities and states put into effect a number of such
measures, the most comprehensive being the so-called
Megan’s Law, which was enacted by the New Jersey
state legislature in 1994 after seven-year-old Megan
Kanka was murdered by a twice-convicted sex offender
then living across the street from the Kanka home.
Under the statute, notification could be made to
community members, school principals, coaches and
Scout troop leaders when an ex-offender lived or
moved into a community and was classified as “high
risk.” By the end of the decade virtually every state in
the Union had adopted somewhat similar legislation.
The practice, however, was considered spotty in a number of jurisdictions, but perhaps the most public disclosure was made in Alaska, which in 1997 posted a list
on the Internet naming every one of the state’s 1,600
paroled sex offenders.
Meldrum, Robert (1865–?) hired killer
Famed, not entirely accurately, as a “hired killer who
never was caught,” Robert Meldrum was, next to Tom
Horn, probably the most notorious gunman employed
by what Westerners called “the interests,” generally
meaning ranchers and mine operators who wanted
troublesome nesters and activists neutralized. As was
common in such matters, the case or cases against Meldrum were always shrouded in mystery and controversy. When he arrived in Baggs, Wyo. in 1899,
Meldrum had the reputation of a paid killer. According
to local tales, he was a New Yorker, the son of a British
army officer. The following year Meldrum was
appointed town marshal of Dixon, Wyo., quite possibly
based on his supposed ability to handle troublemakers.
During the course of his duties there, he won fame for
killing Noah Wilkinson, a Texas outlaw with a price on
his head.
In 1901 Meldrum quit being a lawman in favor of
more lucrative work as a guard at the Smuggler Union
Mine in Telluride, Colo., which was having strike troubles. Shortly after Meldrum’s appearance, a number of
“MERRICK, Pulling a Dick”
the strikers were assassinated, and it was suspected that
Meldrum had done the killings. He also had dealings
with Tom Horn, another paid killer of the interests. A
popular notion was that Meldrum helped Horn with a
number of range assassinations. When Horn was
hanged for his crimes in November 1903, there was
speculation that his silence had saved Meldrum from a
similar fate.
Over the next four years Meldrum had two brushes
with the law: once, in 1904, when he killed a miner,
apparently for the offense of smuggling whiskey into
the workings in violation of company rules; and again,
in 1908, when he killed another miner, a man named
Lambert, who was considered a troublemaker. The first
matter did not even reach the indictment stage and the
second resulted in a not-guilty verdict. In 1910 Meldrum, back in Baggs, committed a “personal” killing
shooting down John “Chick” Bowen because of the
attention Bowen was paying to Meldrum’s commonlaw wife. The personal nature of the killing did not prevent a number of ranchers from raising Meldrum’s
$18,000 bail, which he promptly jumped. Six years
elapsed before Meldrum surrendered to stand trial, and
there was considerable speculation that his friends
among the ranchers and mine operators had made a
deal for him. That theory seems to have been borne out
by Meldrum’s relatively light sentence of five to seven
years for a reduced charge of manslaughter. After serving only three months, he was paroled into the custody
of an obliging rancher.
Following that experience Meldrum’s gunslinging
days appeared at an end, as much due to the general
taming of the area as to his own advancing years. For
a time he ran a saddler’s business in Walcott, Wyo.,
but he was still known as a man with a violent temper
and one to stay clear of. Meldrum’s business burned
down in 1929; some said the fire was the result of one
of his rages and others claimed it was the work of enemies. Shortly thereafter, Meldrum disappeared from
sight.
the couple. Both brothers said they had been sexually
abused by their father between the ages of 6 and 8. So
they slaughtered their parents with a pair of shotguns
as they watched television in the Beverly Hills mansion. The prosecution charged that the brothers committed their crime to inherit an estate valued at $14
million and pointed to the brothers’ wild spending
spree after the slayings. Lyle got himself a Porsche and
Erik a private tennis coach. The brothers at first
claimed alibis, and it was not until Erik confessed to
his therapist, who notified the law, that they were
arrested.
The brothers’ first trial was televised and became
almost the obsession that the Simpson trial caused not
long afterward. A feisty defense lawyer, Leslie Abramson, became a media star as she managed to pull out a
hung jury after filling the record with tales of parental
mistreatment and provoking nationwide outrage at the
“abuse excuse.”
It was charged in some legal circles that the televising of the trial made the sensationalism of the case so
compelling that a conviction was impossible. In the second trial however the judge banned television and
excluded much of the lurid abuse testimony, which was
relegated to the possible punishment phase of the proceedings. The judge also rejected the defense’s argument
of “imperfect self-defense,” which reasoned that even if
there was no real threat of attack, the brothers’ fears
were genuine. The judge ruled the argument was
invalid since it was the siblings who had set up the final
confrontation with their parents. The brothers had
indeed laid in wait for their parents.
On March 20, 1996, the Menendez brothers were
convicted of first-degree murder. They were both sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of
parole. What may have been even more crushing for
the brothers was that they were not confined to the
same institution. Erik was confined at the California
State Prison in Sacramento County and Lyle at the California Correctional Institution at Tehachapi.
Menendez Brothers
“Merrick, Pulling a Dick”
parent killers
In one of the most explosive California murder cases of
the late 1900s—even coming close to rivaling the notorious O. J. Simpson trial—two brothers, Lyle Menendez, 21, and Erik Menendez, 18, shotgunned their
wealthy parents to death in 1989. But was it a crime or
self-defense?
The boys’ shocking defense was that they had killed
their parents, entertainment executive Jose Menendez
and Kitty Menendez, because, they said, they feared
their parents were going to kill them to prevent them
from revealing years of sexual and emotional abuse by
saying for a lucky survival
In Missouri the saying “pulling a Dick Merrick” was
more popular in the 1860s and 1870s than the expression “a Frank Merriwell finish” was in the 1920s and
connoted an even more miraculous conclusion to a
tight situation.
In 1864 Dick Merrick and Jebb Sharp were convicted and sentenced to hang in Jackson County for
the robbery and murder of a horse trader named
John Bascum. It was a period of no-nonsense treatment of murderers, and the execution was scheduled
to be held the day after the jury’s verdict. Early that
599
MERRICK, Suds
Metesky, George Peter (1903–1994) New York’s “Mad
Bomber”
morning the condemned pair were rousted out of their
jail beds and duly dispatched. On returning to the jail,
Deputy Sheriff Clifford Stewart was stunned to find
Merrick and Sharp sitting in their cell. It took a few
hours for the sad truth to be uncovered. During the
night two drunks had been heaved into a cell to sleep
off their inebriation, and it was they who had been
taken to the scaffold. Since the pair were still so
boozed up, they were in no condition to protest,
indeed to comprehend, what was being done to them.
Quickly, the matter was rushed to the sentencing
judge, who ruled that since the men had not been
hanged at the prescribed time, they had to be released.
Merrick and Sharp wasted no time raising dust on the
trail, leaving behind only the folklore about “pulling a
Dick Merrick.”
Starting in 1950, New York’s mysterious Mad Bomber
terrorized New York City for eight years, planting 32
homemade bombs in train stations and movie theaters,
including Radio City Music Hall. The bombings
injured 15 people and created a period of anxiety that
was said to have hurt Manhattan’s theater business as
much as television did.
Actually, the Mad Bomber had gone through an earlier period of maniacal bombings in 1940–41, virtually
all of them duds. Then a decade later, the Bomber
started up again, this time more efficient in his production of explosives. The bombings were followed by
notes that ranted about the local utility company, Consolidated Edison. He often signed these notes “Fair
Play.” Metesky set off bombs in Radio City Music Hall,
Grand Central Station, Penn Station and several theaters. A train porter at Penn Station was permanently
crippled by one of the bombs and seven persons suffered serious injuries from a blast in a theater.
The hunt for the Mad Bomber got nowhere for years
until he wrote a letter to a newspaper in which he once
more castigated Consolidated Edison and charged the
company had caused him to contract tuberculosis.
Finally, a close study of the firm’s records turned up a
former employee, George Peter Metesky, who in 1931
had had an accident working for the company and had
previously made a claim of having developed tuberculosis on the job.
Metesky was taken into custody at his home in
Waterbury, Conn. and accused of attempted murder.
The assortment of charges against Metesky made him
liable to a total of 1,235 years imprisonment, but he
was found criminally insane and incarcerated in a mental hospital in New York state. Pronounced cured some
15 years later, Metesky was set free in 1973 and had the
charges against him dropped. A bachelor in his seventies, Metesky went home to take care of his ailing sister
and later rejected a marriage proposal from a pen pal.
Merrick, Suds (?–1884) burglar and river pirate
For most of the 1860s and into the 1870s, Suds Merrick was one of the most-renowned river pirates in New
York City. He was one of the coleaders of the Hook
Gang, which plundered the East River docks and cargo
boats moored there. The Hookers were at least 100
strong, and many of their crimes were masterminded by
Merrick.
In 1874 Merrick, Sam McCracken, Johnny Gallagher and Tommy Bonner boarded the canal boat
Thomas H. Brick, tied up the captain and set about
looting the cargo at their leisure until they were surprised by police. Merrick escaped by diving overboard,
but his three accomplices were captured and sentenced
to long terms at Auburn Prison.
After the incident, Merrick fell into disfavor with the
Hookers, who were suspicious about the affair. Some
thought Merrick must have been in trouble with the
law and set up the trio in exchange for his own freedom. Since there was no proof of this, he was simply
allowed to resign from the gang. For the next 10 years
Merrick operated as a lone wolf, carrying out numerous burglaries and muggings. He was ignored by the
rest of the Hookers, and there is no record of other
criminals attacking him, which indeed would have been
a foolhardy enterprise since Merrick was virtually
unbeatable in a fight at anything near even odds. He
never ventured abroad without a knife and gun and
generally wore brass knuckles or carried a blackjack up
his sleeve. In 1884 he was found murdered in the Bowery. There were no clues as to who might have done the
killing, and the police seemed singularly unconcerned
about solving the case, considering the murder a definite civic improvement.
See also: HOOK GANG.
Mickey Finn
knockout drink
Named after a Chicago barkeep, a Mickey Finn is a
drink used to put a victim into a state of collapse so
that he can be robbed. Mickey Finn did not originate
the drink but bought the recipe of a secret voodoo mixture that could be added to alcohol and water.
Finn, who operated the Lone Star Saloon and Palm
Garden on Chicago’s notorious Whisky Row during the
Gay Nineties, ordered his employees to give the drink to
any lone customer. Two of the employees, Isabelle Ffyffe
and Gold Tooth Mary Thornton, eventually testified
before a special crime commission. Gold Tooth Mary, so
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MILKEN, Michael R.
named because her single tooth was crowned with the
precious metal, explained the potency of the drink:
“When the victims drink this dopey stuff, they get talkative, walk around in a restless manner, and then fall into
a deep sleep, and you can’t arouse them until the effect
of the drug wears off.” While so incapacitated, the victim would be lugged into the back room, where Finn, in
an odd ritual, would be waiting in a derby hat and a
clean white apron to “operate.” The victim would be
searched to the skin for valuables, and if articles of
clothing were deemed to have any worth, they too
would be taken. The victim would then be dressed in
old rags and dumped in an alley. When he awoke, he
seldom had any recollections of what had happened.
Eventually, Finn lost his license and was put out of business. He thereupon sold his secret recipe to several other
eager saloon keepers and use of Mickey Finns soon
spread throughout the country.
Midnight Rose’s
circulate in the crowd looking for potential mugging
victims. The Terrors disappeared around the late
1890s, victims of their own crude operating methods,
which resulted in their repression.
Milken, Michael R. (1946– ) king of junk bonds
As a result of the scandals and prosecutions of the
1980s and early 1990s a debate left unsettled was who
among the perpetrators did the most damage and
walked away with the most loot. For a time Ivan
Boesky was labeled by the press as the most “successful.” However, Boesky could make the point that he
was nowhere near being the biggest crook in American
finance. He could point to Michael R. Milken, the junk
bond king of Drexel Burnham Lambert, Inc., who was
nailed after Boesky’s cooperation.
Milken had risen to fame as the main force creating
the huge market for junk bonds, the high-yield, highrisk debt securities that marked the corporate
takeover boom of the 1980s. Milken did not go down
easily, spending an estimated $1 million a month for
several years fighting the federal government’s case
against him. He finally reversed his tactics and
pleaded guilty in 1990 to six felony counts involving
securities fraud and agreed to pay the lion’s share of a
cash settlement by himself and his cohorts, which was
eventually fixed at $1.3 billion in fines and restitution
costs to victims.
Still, there were those who objected to the deal,
insisting that Milken had forced the government to
drop the more serious charges of racketeering and
insider trading. They also complained about his being
able to keep about $125 million of his personal fortune. In addition, his immediate family maintained
more than $300 million in assets, meaning that the settlement could leave the convicted junk bond dealer
with close to a half billion dollars. Milken drew a 10year prison term, with sentencing judge Kimba M.
Wood declaring, “When a man of your power in the
financial world, at the head of one of the most important banking houses in this country, repeatedly conspires to violate, and violates, securities and tax laws in
order to achieve more power and wealth for himself
and his wealthy clients, and commits financial crimes
that are particularly hard to detect, a significant prison
term is required in order to deter others.”
The 10-year sentence was not permanent. Milken
negotiated with the government and provided evidence
against others (although critics said his offerings were
less than adequate). For his cooperation Judge Wood
reduced Milken’s sentence to 33 months and 26 days so
that he could be released on parole after 24 months.
The judge said she also took into account Milken’s
“office” of Murder, Inc.
Midnight Rose’s was a seedy little Brooklyn candy
store, at the intersection of Saratoga and Livonia
avenues under the elevated New York subway tracks,
where probably more murders were planned than anywhere in the world. In the late 1930s the store was
owned by a woman who kept it open 24 hours a day
and was thus called Midnight Rose. Early in the morning and late at night, the gunmen, knife specialists and
garroters of Murder, Inc. gathered on the corner and in
the store. Midnight Rose’s was the assembly room and
dispatch office for homicide specialists who worked out
the details for the elimination of an estimated 300 to
500 victims.
See also: MURDER, INC.
Midnight Terrors
Gay Nineties New York gang
One of the most mindless, vicious street gangs in New
York in the 1890s was the Midnight Terrors, named for
their nocturnal muggings. Overflowing with selfesteem, the Terrors decided to form a baseball team.
They raised money for uniforms and equipment in their
home territory, the First Ward, by robbing and beating
anyone who seemed likely to have money; as one of the
Terrors said, “Dat’s de way we was to get the uniforms
for de ball club.”
The Terrors enjoyed considerable freedom from a
police department not eager for confrontations as long
as they confined their depredations to their own area
and to their “own kind.” The Terrors, however, carried
their actions to the public parks and even to their baseball games. Watching them was not the safest activity
for a baseball fan, as some of the bench warmers would
601
MILLER, Bill “The Killer”
good behavior in prison, where he had been tutoring
other prisoners and had set up a prison library. Milken
was also sentenced to 1,800 hours of community service. Barred from doing any more stock deals, Milken
hardly maintained a low profile in business matters.
Miller, Bill “The Killer” (1905–1931) partner of Pretty
Boy Floyd
A remarkable young criminal, William Miller, better
known in the underworld as Bill the Killer, molded
Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd into a future public enemy.
It was not an easy task, since Floyd, four years older
than Miller, was a trigger-happy punk who preferred to
shoot first and think afterward. In 1930, after jumping
out of a train window while en route to the Ohio State
Penitentiary, Floyd made his way to Toledo to hook up
with Miller, who had been recommended by another
criminal as a man who could be trusted. Floyd immediately suggested they start robbing banks. However, the
younger hood was dubious. Floyd’s past criminal
record was hardly inspiring. In 1925 he had been
caught following a $5,000 holdup of a paymaster and
had served 15 months. Earlier in the current year, 1930,
Floyd had been convicted of bank robbery and sentenced to 10 to 25 years. It was while on his way to
serve this sentence that Floyd had staged his escape. In
between these two relatively big but bungled crimes, he
had been arrested several times on such charges as
vagrancy and possession of firearms.
Bill the Killer on the other hand, was a young Missouri gangster with a rather amazing record. Before
meeting Floyd, he had killed five men and had broken
out of prison. Furthermore, in 1929 in Detroit, he
pulled off one of the most incredible escapes on record.
Charged with the murder of Detective Frank Tradeau,
he was in a long line of prisoners all handcuffed
together. Suddenly, he ran out of the line with his handcuffs dangling on one wrist and made a clean getaway.
It was never learned how he had gotten himself free
from the manacles.
Miller finally agreed to join up with Floyd, but he
decided they needed considerable “seasoning” to work
as a team. The pair moved on to Michigan, where they
stuck to small scores, holding up farmers and filling
stations. In no case did their take come to more than a
couple of hundred dollars. They pulled three minor
bank holdups in the northern part of the state and then
headed for safety in Kansas City, where they holed up
at Mother Ash’s place, a whorehouse of some standing.
At this establishment love came to both men, Floyd
falling for Mother Ash’s daughter-in-law, Rose, and
Miller for Rose’s sister, Beulah Bird. The fact that Wallace Ash was married to Rose and his brother, William,
602
had been keeping company with Beulah didn’t prevent
the two young hoods from marching the women out of
the house under Mother Ash’s hateful glare. Wallace
and William Ash, besides being bouncers at their
mother’s establishment, were deeply involved in Kansas
City crime and announced they planned to kill Floyd
and Miller. A short time later, Wallace Ash received a
telephone call from a woman asking him and William
to rendezvous with their two former loves. The brothers left for the appointment. When next seen again on
March 25, 1931, they were lying in a ditch beside a
burning automobile; each had a bullet in the back of his
head. According to a weeping Mother Ash, Miller and
that “pretty boy” had killed her sons.
Miller and Floyd went back to bank robbing, hitting
three banks in Kentucky for sums of $4,000, $2,700
and $3,600. With their lady friends in tow, they then
repaired to Bowling Green, Ohio to enjoy the loot.
When they attracted too much attention buying suits
and dresses, especially with Floyd flashing a fat roll of
bills, Chief of Police Carl Galliher was notified and he
and an assistant, Ralph Castner, investigated. They
found Miller and the two women about to enter a
store. Pretty Boy Floyd was stationed across the street,
on Miller’s theory that it was always a good idea to
have someone maintaining watch even when they were
relaxing.
When Galliher ordered Miller to stop, the gangster
dropped to the ground so that Floyd would have a clear
view of the officers. Pretty Boy opened up with a pair
of pistols and Castner fell dead. Miller then tried to run
to Floyd’s side but Chief Galliher shot him through the
neck, killing him instantly. Floyd drove the police chief
to cover with a barrage of shots, broke for his car and
sped out of town. After the battle Miller and Castner
lay dead and both women were wounded. From then
on, Floyd would have to make his legend without
instructions from his young tutor, Bill the Killer.
See also: CHARLES ARTHUR “PRETTY BOY” FLOYD.
Miller, John (1829–1861) New Orleans criminal and jailer
One of the most colorful, if deadly, scourges of antebellum New Orleans was John Miller, a one-armed brute
with a chain and iron ball attached to the stump that
was left of his other arm. It proved to be a most effective weapon in his criminal endeavors.
Miller was born in Gretna, across the river from
New Orleans, and became that community’s principal
ruffian. So far as can be determined, he never did an
honest day’s work in his life, making enough by venturing over into the French Quarter two or three times a
week to fall on some unsuspecting visitor and make off
with his purse.
MILLER, William F.
In 1854 Miller branched into fight managing, taking
under his wing a heavyweight named Charley Keys,
who soon became the champion of the Gretna side of
the Mississippi. He arranged a bout between Keys and
Tom Murray, the so-called bruiser of Gallatin Street.
Miller wagered a considerable sum on his man, who
was soon being belted mercilessly by Murray. It became
apparent that if the fight continued, Murray would
surely win. Realizing this, Miller stuck a knife into
Murray’s chief backer. A general riot ensued, enabling
Miller to keep his money but resulting in the loss of his
left arm. After the riot he attached a chain and iron ball
to the remaining stump of his left arm, and with a knife
in his right hand, he was as fearsome an opponent as
one could meet in the back alleys of the city. He proved
this in 1857, when he killed a man in a fight. Since
Miller was “disabled,” he got only two years for this
offense. If that struck the citizenry as unusual, it didn’t
compare to the stir caused by what happened to him
when he completed his term in the parish prison. In an
ironic turnabout arranged by the parish politicians of
the day, Miller was kept on as a prison guard. While
some claimed that there had been a genuine “reformation of his character,” Miller’s case was widely credited
as a prime cause of the creation of the New Orleans
Vigilance Committee for the purpose of “freeing the
city of thugs, outlaws, assassins and murderers.”
Miller left his position more or less voluntarily, having discovered there his true love, a prisoner named
Mary Jane Jackson, better known in the vicious slums
and dives of the city as Bricktop Jackson, who was also
doing a stint for murder. When she was released, the
couple repaired to a love nest in Freetown. A mean
street fighter, Bricktop gave away nothing in a match
with any of the tough bullies of Gallatin Street. While
there is no absolute proof that she was the toughest
female in the city, there is no doubt that as a couple
Bricktop and Miller were unequaled in viciousness by
any other husband-wife team in the city. A half-dozen
Live Oak gangsters were known to have backed off
from a battle with Bricktop Jackson and Miller, swinging his iron ball.
In keeping with Miller’s past history, there is no
record of the couple ever supporting themselves honestly. They would strut through the French Quarter
arm in arm, with many a man staring at Bricktop, who
was a most attractive woman. Finally, Miller would
leave her alone, and it was usually just a matter of
moments before she would attract a male admirer. She
and her new friend would then be seen departing for a
destination unknown but reasonably deduced. When
next seen, if ever, the gentleman involved would be
sporting a very bruised head, not surprising considering
the bruising potential of an iron ball.
The love of Bricktop Jackson and John Miller ended
on December 5, 1861, when Miller came home with a
cowhide whip and announced to the entire neighborhood that Bricktop was in need of a thorough thrashing. It soon became clear which of the pair was the
toughest. Bricktop took the whip away from him and
beat him unmercifully. Miller tried to brain her with his
iron-ball, but she grabbed the chain in midair and
pulled him around their living quarters. In desperation,
Miller drew a knife and tried to slash her. Bricktop
wrestled the knife free and, shoving him against the
wall, stabbed her lover five times. Miller was dead
when his body hit the floor.
The New Orleans Picayune commented, “Both were
degraded beings, regular penitentiary birds, habitual
drunkards, and unworthy of any further notice from
honest people.” Bricktop Jackson served nine months
for the killing.
See also: MARY JANE “BRICKTOP” JACKSON.
Miller, William F. (1874–?) swindler
A 24-year-old Brooklyn, New York City bookkeeper,
William F. (520%) Miller was one of the greatest
swindlers this country has ever produced. Charles
Ponzi did nothing but lift Willy Miller’s modus
operandi; and while the latter could not be credited
with having originated the idea of robbing Peter to pay
Paul, he certainly carried it to dizzying heights during
11 incredible months in 1899, while he trimmed an
array of suckers out of well over $1 million.
For years Miller was an insignificant bookkeeper
who tried in vain to make a killing in the stock market. He made small investments, in the hundreds of
dollars, with money borrowed from friends in his
community. Miller was good for it, though, and
always repaid his debts promptly—by the simple
expedient of borrowing a slightly larger sum elsewhere. It took Miller some time to figure out this robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul tactic was one of the great
secrets of high finance.
One day he posted a sign in his window:
WM. F. MILLER
Investments
The way to wealth is as plain as the road to market.
—B. Franklin
Miller was a great admirer of Benjamin Franklin.
By the following Sunday everyone in the neighborhood had seen the sign and Miller was asked about it in
the adult Bible class he ran at the local church. With a
very earnest expression he said, “It’s not fair that the
Morgans and the Goulds and the Vanderbilts are mak603
MINA, Lino Amalia Espos y
ing so many millions when us little people are making
so little—and I’ve decided to do something about it.”
Then he confided a great secret. Everyone knew he
was always hanging around Wall Street. Well, he had
learned the investment secrets used by the big boys.
Naturally, he couldn’t tell what they were, but he was
now in a position to pay 10 percent interest on money
invested with him. A few persons expressed interest,
since that rate was substantially more than what the
banks were paying.
“You don’t understand,” Miller said matter-offactly. “I don’t mean ten percent a year. I mean ten percent a week.”
“Holy smoke!” one parishioner exclaimed. “That’s
520 percent a year!”
“I suppose it is,” Miller said modestly.
Now, many of his students were impressed and
wanted to invest right on the spot. Righteously, Miller
said he wouldn’t take any investments on the Sabbath.
The next night when he got home from work, there
was a line of investors waiting at his door. True, many
had only tiny sums, undoubtedly cautious about so
remarkable an investment opportunity. Miller took
many amounts of less than $10, but he told each
investor to return in one week for their first interest
payment.
Sure enough, after seven days an investor who had
given $10 got $1 back as interest. By the time 10 weeks
passed, all the original investors had made back initial
investments and were still drawing more. All of these
people were investing larger sums now, as were others
who had joined the eager procession as soon as Miller
started making payments.
Miller’s fame spread far beyond his Brooklyn community. He was known as 520% Miller and money
flowed in much more rapidly than he was paying it out.
Some investors thought they were being rather shrewd
by promptly reinvesting their interest as soon as Miller
handed it to them. In 11 glorious months Miller
trimmed his suckers for well in excess of a million dollars. According to some later accounts, while he lived
high on the hog, he managed to salt away $480,000
and possibly more, considering that in one month in
1899 he made an estimated $430,000 profit.
But Miller never did get to enjoy his money. The
great con man was himself conned out of half of the
$480,000. A fixer named T. Edward Schlesinger told
Miller that for a cut of the take, he would show him
how to keep the law off his neck. Gullible Miller, the
genius swindler, dutifully handed over the money.
Schlesinger, however, didn’t offer Miller any foolproof
method to avoid legal harassment. He simply took his
$240,000 and caught a fast boat for Europe, finishing
out his days in Baden-Baden.
Miller’s turn at playing the sucker would come
again. His second bit of gullibility resulted from his
meeting with a slick lawyer named Robert Ammon. He
hired Ammon to give him legal advice on how to stay
out of jail once it became known that when new investments stopped coming in, Miller would be unable to
pay any more juicy 10 percent dividends.
Ammon’s advice was that Miller leave the country.
As for the $240,000, Miller said he had left, Ammon
suggested he leave it with him “because if you are
caught and have the money in your possession, it
would be proof of your guilt.”
Miller went to Canada after getting Ammon’s firm
promise that he could have his money sent to him
whenever he wanted it. He never did get a penny of the
loot he left with Ammon and was eventually caught
and sent to prison, but only for 10 years, a surprising
ending to one of the most fabulous crime careers in
American history. Well, maybe not quite the ending.
Miller was sent to Sing Sing, where he finally was able
to make a deal with the law to get out of prison in
1907, having served only five years. The authorities
were very much interested in lawyer Ammon and
Miller told everything he knew about him. Ammon
screamed that Miller had given him nowhere near
$240,000. In any event, Ammon went to Sing Sing and
Miller got out. He returned to Brooklyn and, for a
time, worked again as a bookkeeper. But after a few
years Miller just sort of faded away, perhaps going off
to enjoy the underestimated fruits of his crime.
Mina, Lino Amalia Espos y (1809–1832) impostor and
murderer
An impostor for whose favor much of early 19th century Philadelphia society vied, Lino Amalia Mina was a
young man who passed himself off in that city as the
son of the Spanish governor of California. He claimed
to be stranded without funds until the arrival of a clipper rounding the Cape. Of the several important families that offered to house him, Dr. and Mrs. William
Chapman won out. Dr. Chapman’s wife, Lucretia, was
overjoyed; she was very socially conscious and she
thought having Mina as a houseguest would be a triumph. Within a week Mina’s presence developed into a
triumph in more ways than one. The servants saw
Mina kissing Mrs. Chapman on a number of occasions,
and the 41-year-old matron offered no resistance at all.
If Dr. Chapman noticed anything, he said nothing, and
within another month he was not able to say anything.
Mina went to a Philadelphia pharmacy and bought a
huge amount of arsenic—for “stuffing of birds.” Four
days later, Dr. Chapman suddenly became ill and died.
Two weeks after the funeral, Mina and the widow
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MINER, Bill
Chapman traveled to New York and were married.
When they returned home, valuables in the mansion
started disappearing. So did much of Lucretia’s jewelry,
and Mina set about cleaning out certain bank assets.
He also posed as Dr. Chapman to complete certain
financial dealings. This brought him to the attention of
the authorities. Now suspicious, they ordered an
autopsy performed on Chapman’s body. Massive
amounts of poison were found, and both Mina and
Lucretia were charged with murder. Mrs. Chapman
wept at the trial, insisting she had been totally taken in
by Mina. A male jury was swayed and freed her but
condemned Mina to death.
It was reported that a number of important personages attended Mina’s hanging, perhaps more incensed
over how the cad had bamboozled the city’s high society than over the murder he had committed.
behind him. That brush with death had a sobering
effect on Miner, who promptly made for San Francisco
and from there to Europe, where he became a freespending tourist on the proceeds of his Colorado
crimes.
Miner actually plotted out some train robberies in
England but wisely decided his American style would
stand out too much and assure his apprehension. He
bounced around the continent for a while and finally
wound up in Turkey, where he joined up with desert
bandits in the slave trade. When the law started looking
for a light-haired American, Bill hightailed it for Africa,
finding his way to South Africa. In Capetown he considered the idea of holding up a diamond train, a thought
he abandoned, as he said in his memoirs, “when I saw
they [the guards] would be too much for me.”
The next stop was South America and a stint at gunrunning, but Miner hankered for the Western outlaw
trail and by November 1881 he was back in business in
California as a road agent, holding up the Sonora stage
for $3,000. Pretty soon, Bill had posses on his trail
again and fled to Colorado, where he pulled another
holdup before returning to California to rob the Sonora
stage once more, this time with a partner named Jimmy
Crum. They were caught shortly thereafter and Miner
was sent back to San Quentin under a 25-year sentence.
He emerged from prison in 1901, again a reformed
man determined to follow the Good Book. By 1903 he
and two others were holding up trains in Oregon and
Washington. With the law hot on his trail, Old Bill
moved into Canada to continue his unlawful activities.
He was finally arrested there after a train robbery and,
at the age of 60, was put away for life. When he heard
the sentence, Bill just smirked at the judge, declaring,
“No jail can hold me, sir.” He was right. A year later, in
August 1907, Miller tunneled under the prison fence
and escaped.
For the next four years Old Bill, now stoop-shouldered and white-haired, pulled off several bank and
train jobs in Washington and Oregon. The Pinkertons
sent out an alert for his apprehension, figuring he
would be easy to catch since there weren’t too many
stoop-shouldered, white-haired old codgers robbing
trains and banks. By February 1911 Bill had worked
his way to White Sulphur, Ga., where he led a gang of
four others in the holdup of the Southern Railroad
Express. Even though he had put some 3,000 miles
between that robbery and his previous job, Old Bill was
identified and eventually run down in a Georgia swamp
by a Pinkerton-led posse.
Once more, he received a life sentence, this time at
the state penitentiary at Milledgeville, Ga. On three
occasions in 1911–12, Old Bill escaped, but he was soon
recaptured each time. When caught the last time, he was
Miner, Bill (1847–1913) stagecoach and train robber
Although he had one of the longest careers of any
stagecoach and train robber, running from the 1860s
until 1911, colorful Old Bill Miner seldom gets the
recognition he deserves in histories of American crime.
He was, so far as can be determined, the man who
invented the phrase “Hands up!”—an Americanism as
distinctive as the English road agent’s order “Stand and
deliver!”
At the age of 13 young Bill ran away from his Kentucky family, which his footloose father had abandoned
a few years earlier, and went West to become a cowboy.
He ended up in the California gold fields, but the only
place he ever searched for gold was in the pokes he
stole from sleeping miners. In 1863 he did a stint as an
army dispatch rider and then set up his own business as
a mail rider. Bill made good money carrying the mail
but invariably spent more than he earned. By 1869 he
had hit the outlaw trail (although he may have been at
it as early as 1866), robbing a stagecoach near Sonora,
Calif. of a few hundred dollars. Pursued by a posse, Bill
was captured when his horse dropped dead in his
tracks. He probably avoided being lynched only
because he looked so young; prudently, he announced
his age as 16.
Bill was sentenced to 15 years in San Quentin.
Behind bars he became an avowed religionist and in
1879 the authorities released him early for good behavior. But instead of leading a saintly existence thereafter,
Miner headed for Colorado and became a train robber.
He and a hard case named Bill Leroy made a daring
duo, notching up a long string of train and stagecoach
holdups until Leroy was captured in a gun battle with
vigilantes and strung up. Bill fought his way free in the
same gunfight, leaving three bullet-ridden possemen
605
MINKOW, Barry
up to his waist in swamp water with bloodhounds baying at him, Bill confided to his captors, “Boys, I guess
I’m getting too old for this sort of thing.”
He returned to the prison and spent his final year
and a half tending a flower garden and dictating his
adventures to a detective who had come to admire the
incorrigible old crook. One day he told a fellow prisoner he had a plan for getting out, but he died peacefully while asleep in his cell in late 1913.
Minkow, Barry (1966– ) teenage wolf of Wall Street
One cunning teenager who left Wall Streeters with very
red faces—to say nothing of flattened portfolios—was
Barry Minkow, who at the tender age of 16, launched
his own rug-cleaning business from his parents’ garage
in Reseda, California. In less than four years, the still
barely postadolescent punk engineered a stock scam that
conned top Wall Street firms with a bald-faced ploy no
different than the classic one used by legendary swindler
Charles Ponzi—that of robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Ponzi was known to his gullible victims as the “man
who invented money.” Barry was hailed in the financial
press as the kid wonder who “invented profits.” Barry
did not earn profits the old-fashioned way—by working for them; he hardly worked at all. His most laborious exertions seemed to have been naming his
company, which was ZZZZ Best. After that the youthful entrepreneur simply went about convincing Wall
Street that his tiny company had grown into a financial
cash cow. In retrospect, Barry’s company might have
been a little more impressive if his business had actually
earned a dime.
Daniel Askt, his biographer, said, “There was always
a quality about Barry that suggested he held an MBA
from the Dada School of Business.”
Business methods to get capital had no restraints. He
staged burglaries to collect insurance. He borrowed
$2,000 from his grandmother and then stole her pearls
for good measure. In 1984 he forged $13,000 worth of
money orders from a liquor store.
ZZZZ Best prospered by such methods. By 1985
Barry hit on a lush source of income, opening up a merchant’s account at a local bank, thus allowing him to
take credit card payments. Whenever he needed money,
he added bogus charges to customers’ credit card
accounts and got cash from the bank. If a customer
noticed and complained, Barry ranted about forgeries
by crooked employees, made refunds and then simply
took from other accounts.
Since Barry wanted to eventually float stock in his
company, he set up another firm called Interstate
Appraisal Services. This company was headed up by a
weirdo friend who collected guns and had a special fond606
ness for Hitler and SS jewelry. Interstate’s only activities
were confirming ZZZZ Best’s job contracts, which
allegedly included large orders from insurance companies to repair fire-and-water damage in large buildings.
The phony revenues convinced banks and investors
to put money into ZZZZ Best. Those who got in early
reaped wonderful returns, which were of course provided by the investments of those who hopped on the
bandwagon a bit later.
As late as 1986 nobody had actually seen a site
where any of ZZZZ Best’s work had taken place. Barry
blandly explained that such information was confidential. Finally, an auditor for Ernst & Whitney insisted
he’d have to see a site. Barry and his aides thus leased
office space and put up signs indicating that ZZZZ
Best was doing work on the premises. The actual work
was handled by an outside contractor who was paid a
big bonus to do the work. The ploy worked.
Barry enjoyed a massive success. He was featured in
fawning newspaper stories, indulged on the Oprah
Winfrey show and just about ready to make a smash
entrance on Wall Street. He lived in high style with all
the trappings of a successful millionaire and then some.
Fostering an apparent smoldering hatred for his parents, he put them on the ZZZZ Best payroll just so he
could have the pleasure of threatening to dismiss them.
Always a believer in the fix, he coached a girls’ softball
team with which his girlfriend was involved and passed
out up to $100 a piece to spectators to cheer for his
team.
Barry negotiated with the securities firm of Rooney,
Pace (a company that would soon be defunct) to take
his company public, so that he could start shearing
thousands of small investors who saw him as epitomizing the American Dream. In December 1986 ZZZZ
Best stock made its debut on Wall Street, and Barry got
a hero’s welcome. By the following March the shares
were worth $64 million and a month later $100 million. At its peak ZZZZ Best commanded a stock market valuation of $200 million without having any
actual value. Eventually its assets would be auctioned
off for $64,000.
Oddly, it was Barry’s credit card frauds, not the
nonexistent fire-and-water jobs revenues, that were
exposed. Biographer Askt, a former reporter for the
Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal, had
originally been conned by Minkow and wrote a flattering article in 1985, which helped establish the myth of
Barry’s acumen. On May 22, 1987, he revealed the
credit card skulduggery in a story headlined: “Behind
‘Whiz Kid’ Is a Trail of False Credit-Card Billings.” The
next day ZZZZ Best stock fell 28 percent and continued plummeting straight to nowhere. In December
1988 Barry Minkow was convicted of 57 counts of
MISSISSIPPI bubble
tain aspects of the Miranda decision but that the main
thrust of guaranteeing the rights of arrested persons
could not be totally reversed. The need for this guarantee is itself somewhat dubious in light of the aftermath
of the Miranda decision, something seldom mentioned
by opponents. Despite the quashing of the confession,
Miranda was later convicted of the rape charge and
sentenced to a 20- to 30-year term. Later freed on
parole, he was killed in 1975 in a brawl in a Phoenix
bar. In 2000 the Supreme Court took on another
Miranda case, one that ultimately left the original decision more or less intact.
fraud and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Barron’s, the
financial weekly, stated: “ZZZZ Best had earned a
chapter in the long history of financial scams written by
the ’Eighties.”
When Barry was released with good behavior time
off, he followed a hallowed trail of many con artists
and hit the lecture circuit, warning folks not to be taken
by the likes of him.
Miranda decision
prisoner’s rights ruling
Probably no Supreme Court ruling has been more bitterly attacked by law enforcement officials than the
Miranda decision, which mandated new procedures for
interrogating prisoners. For years the courts decided
the validity of confessions on a case-by-case basis, taking into account the individual circumstances. Then on
June 13, 1966 in Miranda v. Arizona, the High Court
changed that approach.
In 1963 an unemployed 22-year-old man named
Ernesto Miranda was arrested for stealing $8 from a
bank employee in Phoenix, Ariz. While in custody, he
was picked out of a lineup by a young girl who said he
had kidnapped and raped her. Miranda at first denied
the charge, but two steady hours of police interrogation
produced a written and signed confession by the suspect.
The Supreme Court threw out this confession because
the police had failed to advise Miranda of his right
against self-incrimination under the Fifth Amendment.
In its decision, the court laid down certain rules the
police had to follow in questioning suspects. Failure to
follow four basic rules, said the court, meant that a
confession made by a suspect could not be used against
him even if it appeared to be voluntary. First, the prisoner taken into custody must be advised he has the
right to remain silent. Second, he must be informed that
if he says anything, it can and will be used against him.
Third, he must be advised of his right to have a lawyer
present while he is being questioned. Finally, he must be
told that if he cannot afford a lawyer, the court will
appoint one before he is questioned.
Additionally, on the matter of counsel, the defendant
can indicate “at any stage of the process that he wishes
to consult with a lawyer before speaking (or continuing
to speak).”
Quite naturally, the police strenuously attacked the
new rules for questioning prisoners as placing an
impossible burden on them during a “national crime
crisis.” Voting in the minority on a more recent
Miranda-type decision, Chief Justice Warren Burger
called the majority opinion “weird” and “intolerable”
and said it punished the public “for the mistakes and
the misdeeds of law-enforcement officers.” Most legal
experts agree that future court rulings may dilute cer-
miscegenation
The prohibition of and criminal penalties against interracial marriage were largely American ideas. England,
for instance, had no such bans when it colonized America. The concern that developed in the colonies sprang
not only from revulsion at the idea of marriage between
black slaves and whites (especially indentured white
women) but also from the economics of the situation,
since children of such a union were free under the law.
Maryland and Virginia adopted antimiscegenation
laws in the 17th century and other colonies soon followed suit. The typical law prohibited only interracial
marriages that included a white person and one of
another color, not those involving, for example, an
Indian and a black. By the 1950s about 30 states carried such laws on the books, but court rulings thereafter began stripping them away on constitutional
grounds. Finally, in the 1967 Loving decision the U.S.
Supreme Court declared unconstitutional laws that
restricted, solely on the basis of race, a person’s “fundamental freedom” to marry. The High Court ended
antimiscegenation laws once and for all by declaring it
would only uphold racial classifications when they
were “shown to be necessary to the accomplishment of
some permissible state objectives independent of the
racial discrimination which it was the object of the
Fourteenth Amendment to eliminate.”
Mississippi bubble
18th-century fraud
Although the fraudulent Mississippi Bubble was developed in France and felt most there, the scourge of criminality it introduced into the New World left its mark
for decades to come.
The Bubble was a swindle conceived by a resourceful
and unscrupulous Scot named John Law, who founded
the Mississippi Company in 1718 to extract the supposedly vast riches of French Louisiana and convinced
the French government to back his scheme. With the
aid of the French regent, Law soon had all of France
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MISTAKEN identity
caught up in a frenzy of speculation. Frenchmen
invested their entire savings in the glorious company
that was to yield enormous riches, and the national currency was inflated to further the bogus operation. In
fact, a few who sold at the right time made 36 times
their investment. Unfortunately, most held out for
more. Not only was there no more, there was just plain
nothing, except Law’s lavish promises. Millions of
Frenchmen were wiped out, and France itself tottered
on the brink of ruin. Law, disguised as a beggar, barely
escaped the country before being lynched.
But what of Louisiana itself? In its zeal to reap the
wealth of this new land, the government had peopled it
with a type of colonial not found anywhere else in the
New World, at least not in comparable numbers. Historian Albert Phelps noted
The government went boldly to the task of ransacking
the jails and hospitals. Disorderly soldiers, black sheep
of distinguished families, paupers, prostitutes, political
suspects, friendless strangers, unsophisticated peasants
straying into Paris, all were kidnapped, herded, and
shipped under guard to fill the emptiness of Louisiana.
To those who would emigrate voluntarily the Company
offered free land, free provisions, free transportation to
the colony and from the colony to the situation of their
grants, wealth, and eternal prosperity to them and their
heirs forever; for the soil of Louisiana was said to bear
two crops a year without cultivation, and the amiable
savages were said so to adore the white man that they
would not allow these superior beings to labor, and
would themselves, voluntarily and for mere love,
assume all the burden of that sordid necessity. . . .
And now the full tide of the boom began to reach
Louisiana. The emigrants, hurried out to fill seignorial
rights, began to arrive in swarms and were dumped
helplessly upon Dauphin Island. . . . Crowded,
unsheltered and unfed, upon that barren sand heap, the
wretched emigrants sickened, grew discontented,
starved and died. . . .
The seed of the Mississippi Bubble planted in
Louisiana, particularly in New Orleans, bloomed into a
level of criminality that for the next 100 years was
unmatched in any locale on the North American continent.
mistaken identity
The annals of crime are filled with cases of mistaken
identity, pointing up the unreliability of eyewitness testimony.
Christopher Emanuel Balestrero was arrested on the
eyewitness testimony of four women clerks at a New
York insurance company that he had twice robbed the
608
office. He was finally cleared when the real robber confessed the crimes along with 26 others. Alfred Hitchcock made Balestrero’s story into a movie, The Wrong
Man. However, as a case of mistaken identity, it was
hardly startling. A far more incredible case involved a
man named Hoag who arrived in Haverstraw, N.Y.,
where he acquired a job, a large circle of friends and a
wife. Six months later, he got out of town fast when he
was revealed to be a bigamist who had a spouse in
another city. Some two years after his departure a man
named Parker settled in Haverstraw and suddenly
found himself identified as Hoag and brought to trial.
The prosecution presented more than a dozen witnesses
who identified him as Hoag. Hoag’s former boss recognized Parker as his onetime employee and Mrs. Hoag
positively identified him as her husband. Winding up
her testimony, Hoag’s wife declared that her husband
had a long red scar on his right foot. Parker immediately took off his shoe and rolled up his pants leg.
There was no scar. Naturally, the case was dismissed.
“He lies like an eyewitness” is a common saying
around courtrooms. The statement is, as the late Judge
Jerome Frank noted in his book Not Guilty, a study of
36 cases in which innocent men had been convicted,
“made in jest. But it does point up an important fact:
Any witness, being human, may be fallible.”
“Eminent lawyers and judges have expressed awareness of this fact. A well-known judge said, ‘It has been
profoundly observed, that of all the various sources of
error, one of the most copious and fatal is an unreflecting faith in human testimony.’ Another judge wrote: ‘It
must be admitted that at the present day the testimony
of even a truthful witness is much overrated’.”
Certainly overrated was the testimony of five bank
tellers who agreed that Bertram Campbell was the
forger who passed worthless checks for more than
$4,000. After Campbell served three and a half years
and emerged from prison a broken and sick man, it was
discovered that the real forger was a professional check
passer named Alexander D. L. Thiel, whose appearance
could not be regarded as very similar to Campbell’s (see
comparison photographs under Bertram Campbell).
How could five honest persons make such an error?
There is a case on record of a man being convicted as a
swindler on the testimony of 19 eyewitnesses and later
proved innocent. There have been numerous instances
of police “helping” a witness make an identification by
combing the suspect’s hair the way the witness
described it. Or they let the witness see the suspect
before he or she was put in a lineup. One of the four
women who testified against Manny Balestrero picked
him out of a lineup that included the woman’s own
husband. Nor do the cards have to be so strongly
stacked against a defendant. If a witness picks out a
MOCK Duck
possible suspect from a police mug shot and then confronts him or her in person, is the witness identifying
the person from his or her memory of the crime or from
the memory of the mug shot?
A famed private detective, John Terry, who often
worked for defense lawyer Sam Leibowitz, a master at
breaking down witnesses who had made positive
identi-fications, once observed: “Eyes make a helluva
lot of mistakes. Put a man in handcuffs and to a witness
he immediately looks like a guilty man. A witness is in
an abnormal state of mind during a robbery and it’s the
same thing when he goes into a station house. The average person isn’t around jails all the time. In that atmosphere, plus seeing a man in handcuffs, he could name
anyone a crook.”
A lawyer particularly distrustful of eyewitness identifications was Clarence Darrow. He would question a
witness very closely for several minutes and suddenly
turn his back on him. Then he’d snap, “All right, let’s
just test your memory. You’ve looked at me for some
time now. Is the scar on my face on the left or the right
cheek?” Often the witness made a guess—and the
wrong one. Darrow had no scar.
Rape victims, not surprisingly, make very poor eyewitnesses. In Chicago a woman guest in one of the better hotels was slugged in her darkened room and raped
“by a big giant of a man at least six feet three inches in
a bellhop’s uniform.” That was all she could tell about
her assailant. John E. Reid, inventor of the Reid Polygraph, tested the bellhop most matching the victim’s
description and cleared him. Seven other bellhops were
also tested and cleared. Reid then asked the hotel manager if there were any bellhops he hadn’t seen.
The manager said he hadn’t bothered to send him
one. Reid demanded to know why, and the manager
replied, “Because Shorty is Shorty.”
Reid nonetheless tested Shorty and got a confession.
He was the rapist—five feet two inches.
See also: BERTRAM CAMPBELL.
however, for use in attacks on the mining camps of
“greasers,” or Latin Americans, who seemed to have
arrived at the promising sites first, and a great many fell
dead under its terrifying blast.
Mock Duck (1878–1942) tong leader
Recognized as the greatest tong warrior ever to appear
in any American Chinatown, Mock Duck became the
top Chinese gangster in the nation, exerting power from
New York to Boston and all the way to San Francisco.
He led the upstart and relatively small Hip Sing Tong in
their great battles against the On Leong Tong, the rich
and powerful society that dominated Chinese rackets,
especially opium, gambling and prostitution, until
Mock Duck’s appearance in New York City in 1900.
To wrest control of the rackets, the rotund, 22-yearold Mock Duck had to topple the near-legendary Tom
Lee, who had cultivated a reputation as the unofficial
mayor of Chinatown. Tom Lee was celebrated in the
white press because of his massive payoffs not only to
the police but to newspapermen as well. With no more
than a handful of supporters, Mock Duck approached
Tom Lee and blandly informed him that he desired half
the revenues from all gambling and singsong girl (prostitute) operations, adding, “If this is not agreeable with
your honorable self and that of your wonderous tong,
we shall have to fight.”
Tom Lee stared at Mock Duck for a long time, then
laughed and walked on without saying a word to this
upstart. By that evening all Chinatown was laughing
over Mock Duck’s impudence.
Mock Duck waited only 48 hours before demonstrating he was very serious about his demands. A fire
started in an On Leong boardinghouse on Pell Street,
killing two tong members. Tom Lee could not be
absolutely sure this was the work of Mock Duck and
his Hip Sings, but he could be certain of who was
responsible for the next attack. An On Leong member
walking on Doyers Street was set upon by a pair of Hip
Sing boo how doys, or hatchet men. The next day his
head was found in the gutter.
Tom Lee countered with orders to kill all Hip Sings,
especially Mock Duck. What followed was an incredible series of survivals by Mock Duck that was to win
him the nickname Clay Pigeon of Chinatown and to
convince many Chinese that he was truly unkillable.
Two On Leongs waylaid him late one night, jabbing
daggers into his shoulders. Mock Duck lunged free,
shot them both and ran back to the Hip Sing battle
headquarters on Pell Street with the two knives still
embedded in him.
In the next assault the On Leongs used guns. Mock
Duck was walking out of Hip Sing headquarters when
mob pistol
A four-barrel flintlock pistol of foreign make, the mob
pistol was much used in the first half of the l9th century, as its name implies, to quell mobs. All four barrels
were fired at once and covered such a broad range that
there was always an excellent chance that someone
would be hit by one of the balls. The gun found its way
to California thanks to sailing masters who used the
weapon to tame mutinous crews. When sailors abandoned their ships to hunt for gold there, a number of
guns, quite naturally, went with them. The gun apparently violated the “code of the West” and was not
much used in gunfights. It was deemed acceptable,
609
MOCK Duck
an On Leong gunman grazed his coat with one shot
and hit him square in the midsection with another.
Remarkably, Mock Duck escaped injury, as the bullet
struck his belt buckle.
After these two attacks Mock Duck took to wearing
a bulletproof vest made of chain mail. Now, he was a
match for the boo how doys. Whenever he met three or
four enemy hatchet men, he would go into a squat,
clamp his eyes shut and start blazing away with two
pistols. As a terror tactic, the routine was unbeatable.
Mock Duck was not a very accurate shot, but that was
the beauty of his tactic. If he had taken careful aim and
fired, the boo how doys might have moved in on him
without fear, figuring that with his poor marksmanship, he never would hit them. But with his eyes shut
and both guns singing in mad tattoo, their fate was in
the hands of luck. Invariably, they broke ranks before
the unorthodox assault and fled. Indeed, the gods
seemed to be on the side of Mock Duck. Despite his
wild shooting—high, low and to the side—he almost
always drew blood from his foes.
In desperation, Tom Lee placed a $1,000 bounty on
Mock Duck’s head and lesser sums, all the way down
to $25, on the heads of lesser Hip Sings. This action set
off a war among the Chinese the likes of which had
never been waged in America. Mock Duck proved to be
the better strategist. He formed an alliance with the
Four Brothers, one of the oldest and most-respected
family guilds in China. In America the family guilds
had been undermined by the tong organizations, a fact
that annoyed many members of the Four Brothers.
After Mock Duck promised them renewed cultural
power once the On Leongs were eliminated, the Four
Brothers joined the battle.
Mock Duck added to his fighting power by importing two incredible boo how doys from San Francisco.
One was Sing Dock, among the most fiendish killers
the tong wars ever produced. The other was Yee Toy, a
pasty-faced little executioner often called “the girl
face.” Many a hatchet man met his end because he did
not regard the one with the effeminate features as much
of a threat. It was estimated that Sing Dock and Yee
Toy murdered close to 100 men in the tong wars. They
followed Mock Duck unquestioningly. Yee Toy later
killed Sing Dock in a private quarrel, only to be stabbed
to death himself a year later by his best friend, who had
been bribed by the On Leongs.
Mock Duck had other weapons in his arsenal. While
Tom Lee had the police on his side, Mock Duck keenly
realized that with New York in a spasm of reform,
the crusading Rev. Charles Parkhurst made a better
ally. He went to see Parkhurst and told him that as a
decent Chinese trying to make an honest living, he was
being persecuted by the gangsters of Chinatown. He
described the terrible gambling dens and singsong girl
houses. Parkhurst was enraged and forced the authorities to raid every address furnished by Mock Duck.
One On Leong establishment after another on Pell and
Doyers streets was hit. Mock Duck cunningly outmaneuvered Tom Lee by not giving Parkhurst information
on the locations of On Leong establishments on Mott
Street. Thus, Tom Lee realized he could not loose the
police on Hip Sing places, for Mock Duck would then
turn the white crusader on his Mott Street dens, which
at the time were the On Leongs’ prime source of
income.
Tom Lee was totally outfoxed and finally solved his
problems by going on an extended vacation. In 1906 a
truce was arranged but it lasted only about a year, giving Mock Duck the opportunity to consolidate his
power. Then he struck again. Tom Lee returned to try
Although the meaning was lost on the white man, the
flag of truce atop the On Leong Tong House on Mott
Street signaled peace between the On Leongs and Mock
Duck’s Hip Sings.
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MOLINEUX, Roland B.
guard outside until he left. The protection was not necessary, however, for even the On Leongs had long realized that Mock Duck was indestructible.
See also: BLOODY ANGLE, TONG WARS.
to rally the On Leongs but lost what remained of his
influence after their decisive defeat during the great war
of 1909–10.
Mock Duck was now the supreme power in Chinatown. However, occasional bad luck dogged him. In
1912 an On Leong hatchet man invaded a Hip Sing
gambling house on Pell Street while Mock Duck was
conducting tong business in the basement. Two plainclothes police detectives walking by a short while later
heard the sounds of shooting.
Rushing into the basement, the officers found Mock
Duck sitting at a table reading a Chinese pamphlet on
the origins of feudalism. Another Chinese stood nearby
with his hands up his sleeves. A third sat at the table
opposite Mock Duck with his head slightly bowed, as if
in deep thought. Mock Duck allowed he had heard
some shots but said he had just entered the place by the
back door. The second Chinaman was equally evasive.
The officers turned to the third man but he wouldn’t
talk either—he couldn’t, having expired with a bullet in
his heart.
The police couldn’t prove that Mock Duck had
killed the On Leong warrior but they were able to pin
something on him. In his pockets they found a mass of
slips of paper with Chinese characters on them and
proved in court that these were policy slips.
Mock Duck was convicted and served two years in
Sing Sing. When he came out, the invigorated On
Leongs struck with full fury. Numerous attacks on
Mock Duck failed. The police arrested him on several
occasions and he was accused of murder a dozen times,
but the charges were always dropped for lack of evidence. In 1918 Mock Duck disappeared, leading to
conflicting reports that he had retired from the rackets
or that he had been murdered. Both stories were proved
erroneous when he reappeared in 1921, announcing a
new peace in Chinatown. He did the same thing in
1924 and 1928.
It was clear that Mock Duck’s enemies, within Chinatown and without, could not depose him. Finally,
however, in 1932, U.S. officials, together with representatives of the Chinese government, prevailed upon him
to make peace. By that time Mock Duck was ready to
retire, satisfied that the affairs of Chinatown had
become so institutionalized that his followers could no
longer be overthrown.
Mock Duck left Chinatown, taking up residence in a
lavish home in a remote section of Brooklyn. Until his
death in 1942, he returned to Chinatown once a week
to visit a relative who ran an importing firm on Pell
Street. He arrived in a chauffeured limousine, which
waited with motor running while Mock Duck joined
his kin in partaking of tea and dried octopus flakes.
Always, about 10 young Hip Sing stalwarts stood
Molasses Gang
19th-century New York hoodlums
The Molasses Gang, composed of relatively small-time
thugs, operated in New York City for a half-dozen
years starting in 1871 and are best remembered for
their comic behavior. Captained by Jimmy Dunnigan,
they never rose beyond the level of sneak thieves and
till-tappers who victimized small store owners. After
several members of the gang entered a store, one would
remove his soft hat and ask for it to be filled with
sorghum molasses. The explanation would be that it
was a bet on how much the hat would hold. When the
hat was filled, the thugs would clap it on the proprietor’s head and pull it down over his eyes, practically
blinding him. While the proprietor wrestled with that
sticky problem, the gang would leisurely loot the establishment.
Other gangs regarded the Molasses Gang as flaky
and undependable men, who might just walk away in
the middle of an important caper if they thought of
something more entertaining to do. By 1877 the law
had had enough of the gang’s outrageous behavior and
clapped the last of them in jail.
Molineux, Roland B. (1868–1917) accused murderer
The least-remembered figure involved in the murder of
Mrs. Katherine Adams, which proved to be one of New
York’s most sensational and most enduring mysteries,
was the victim herself. All she did was drink some poison, die and get buried. Instead, the “Molineux Case”
was named after the handsome and dashing young man
who, depending upon which verdict one believes, either
did or did not poison the elderly widow.
In 1898, at the age of 30, Roland Molineux moved
with grace and ease in the city’s high society. He was
the son of Brigadier Gen. Edward Leslie Molineux,
who had served with considerable honor in the Civil
War and was a leading citizen of Brooklyn and a
power broker within the Republican Party. With an
excellent education behind him, Roland had a brilliant future as a chemist. He also possessed considerable charm—attested to by the fact that he had been
named correspondent in a divorce case at the tender
age of 15.
A fine physical specimen, Molineux was a member
of the Knickerbocker Athletic Club and national amateur horizontal bar champion. Because of his social
standing and athletic prowess, he exerted considerable
611
MOLLIE Maguires
trial began, the public atmosphere had changed. The
previous hysteria had faded and Molineux was now
viewed as a talented man of letters. The defense marshaled just as many handwriting “experts” on its side
as the prosecution had in the previous proceedings, not
a difficult accomplishment considering the state of that
art at the time. Molineux’ lawyer also produced a
woman named Anna Stephenson, the wife of a policeman, who said she had been at the General Post Office
when the poison was originally mailed. She assured the
court she had seen a man mail a package addressed to
Harry Cornish at the Knickerbocker Club and that man
was not Molineux. In fact, the man had looked something like Cornish himself.
It turned out the woman could not see very well, but
she insisted her vision had been perfect in 1898. Her
husband was called to the stand and he advised the
jurors to pay his wife no mind. The jury did not follow
his advice and acquitted Molineux in four minutes.
Molineux was now a greater celebrity than ever.
Newspapers hired him to write about other murder trials and he published a number of books. In the meantime, his wife, who had stood by him during his ordeal,
divorced him. Later, she tried to appear in vaudeville as
Blanche Cheeseborough Molineux, but her former husband took legal action to prevent it. In 1913 Molineux
wrote a play, which David Belasco produced, called
The Man Inside, about a reformed criminal. During its
run Molineux, demonstrating his own ordeal had not
left him unscathed, caused scenes at the theater and had
to be ejected on a number of occasions.
Later that year he was committed to an asylum,
where he died in 1917. Upon his death a police official
declared the Adams murder had been considered closed
since the time of Molineux’s second trial.
See also: JOHN F. TYRRELL.
influence on club affairs and usually got his way. One
member he apparently didn’t get his way with was
Henry C. Barnet, who annoyed Molineux by courting a
young lady named Blanche Cheeseborough even after
she had become engaged to Molineux. However, in
November 1898 Barnet died under mysterious circumstances. There was rumor that he had taken poison sent
to him through the mail, but nothing came of the
charge and Molineux and Blanche were married.
Meanwhile, Molineux developed a new feud, this
time with Harry Cornish, the athletic director of the
club. Actually, they had been at odds for a couple of
years, mainly because Cornish did not seem to show
the proper deference to the officious Molineux. Then
Cornish bested Molineux in a weightlifting tournament, and the angry Molineux went to the club’s board
of directors and demanded Cornish be fired for various
offenses. The board rejected Molineux’ demands and
the young athlete resigned in a huff.
On December 23, 1898 Cornish received a bottle of
Bromo Seltzer in the mail from an anonymous donor.
He considered it the work of a club wag, twitting him
not to overdrink during the holidays. On December 28
Mrs. Adams, his landlady, complained of a splitting
headache and the helpful Cornish fixed her a Bromo.
She drank it and complained of its bitter taste. Cornish
took a tiny sip and said he noticed nothing. Moments
later, Mrs. Adams writhed in agony on the floor and
died a half hour later. Cornish became deathly ill from
his small sip.
Cornish had retained the wrapping the Bromo
Seltzer had been mailed in, and suspicion soon centered
on Molineux when a number of handwriting experts
identified the writing on it as his. Other handwriting
samples linked him to the poison that apparently had
been sent to Barnet. Molineux was charged with the
Adams killing, and press indignation and public hysteria ran high against him by the time he was brought to
trial. The trial lasted three months and cost a staggering
$200,000. Five hundred potential jurors were questioned before 12 could be selected. After eight hours of
deliberation they found Molineux guilty and he was
sentenced to die.
At this point Molineux’ father financed a massive
appeal effort. John G. Milburn, the Buffalo lawyer in
whose home President William McKinley had died of
an assassin’s bullet, finally won a retrial on the ground
that the judge had allowed the jury to hear evidence
about the Barnet matter although it had no bearing on
the case under consideration.
During his 18 months on death row Molineux had
written a book of prison tales called The Room with
the Little Door, which critics hailed as the work of a
most sensitive and gifted writer. By the time the new
Mollie Maguires
secret labor terrorist organization
A secret organization of Irish immigrant miners in the
anthracite region of Pennsylvania, the Mollie Maguires
fought against what some experts have described as
perhaps the worst working conditions in 19th-century
America. Taking their name from an old-country group
of anti-landlord agitators in the 1840s led by a widow
named Mollie Maguire, the Pennsylvania version, also
known as the Buckshots and the Sleepers, undoubtedly
used illegal means, including terror, sabotage, intimidation and murder of police and mine officials, to attain
their goals.
In 1874–75 the Mollies conducted their devastating
Long Strike against the mines, and the owners determined to destroy their influence forever. An undercover
Pinkerton detective, James McParland, was sent into
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MONEY-making machine
millionaires a copy of the masterpiece, collecting a total
of $2 million. At his trial in Florence, Peruggia based
his defense on patriotism, claiming he merely wanted to
return the painting to the land of its creator, and got off
with a mild sentence of a year and 15 days in prison.
The art crook who had swindled the six American collectors was never caught.
the coal fields to gain evidence against the Mollie
Maguires, or, from the Mollies’ point of view, to act as
a provocateur.
McParland’s testimony in a series of trials from 1875
to 1877 led to the conviction of more than 60 Mollies,
including 19 men who were hanged on murder charges.
According to McParland, he was present when a number of murders were planned by the Mollies but did
nothing to warn the intended victims, although he had
had ample time to do so. McParland’s explanation was
that he himself would have been murdered if he had
warned them.
The testimony given by McParland proved sufficient
to destroy the Mollies, although a considerable number
of observers believed much of it was tainted. Three
decades later, McParland was less successful in his
investigation of the murder of ex-Gov. Frank Steunenberg of Idaho. The detective had been instrumental in
bringing murder charges against three radical union
leaders: Big Bill Haywood, Charles Moyers and George
Pettibone. The famous lawyer Clarence Darrow made a
shambles of the charges by showing that the written
confession of the prosecution’s main witness, Harry
Orchard, contained many corrections in McParland’s
handwriting.
Thus, throughout the 20th century there were many
moves to clear the Mollies who had been convicted on
McParland’s evidence. In 1979 Jack Kehoe, the leader
of the Mollies, was granted a full state pardon, a century after his hanging.
See also: JAMES MCPARLAND.
money-making machine
swindle
A racket that dates back to the 19th century is the
“money-making machine,” which is sold to a victim
with a bizarre tale that it can duplicate a bill of currency so exactly that no expert can tell the real from the
fake. The only thing that is different is the serial number, which the machine changes with a special “scrambling” device. However, this particular part of the
process is very slow, and it takes the machine six hours
to complete the entire procedure for duplicating a single bill. The swindler demonstrates the machine by
placing a plain piece of white paper on a tray inside the
machine and closing it up. He then places a genuine bill
in another compartment of the machine and inserts it
into the machine. Then he and the victim remain by the
machine until the entire procedure is finished. After the
six hours have elapsed and the victim is convinced that
no trickery has taken place in the meantime, the genuine bill is removed and the tray in which the plain
paper was inserted is opened. Inside is a new, apparently perfect bill. The victim is advised to take the bill
to a bank and change it. He does and it is readily
accepted. Naturally, the victim is now most eager to
buy the machine. The swindler is at first loathe to sell
it, but he does allow that he is impatient with the
machine because it takes so long to produce a new bill.
At the rate of only four in a 24-hour period, the
machine will produce just $400 a day at most. Perhaps
if he got a good offer. . . .
There are cases of the machine being sold or leased
for as much as $50,000. The deal is closed as soon as
the gullible buyer brings the money. The swindler
leaves and the eager victim waits for his first new bill.
It comes out right on schedule. Merrily, he puts in
another plain sheet of paper. Six hours pass . . . out
comes the same blank piece of paper. The victim tries
it again but gets the same results. Finally, it dawns on
him that he has been conned. By that time, of course,
the crook has had a minimum of 12 hours to get
away. The secret of the money machine is the tray in
which the plain paper is loaded. As the swindler closes
the tray, he presses a pin that drops a false top which
holds a real bill previously concealed there. When the
tray is opened six hours later, this is the bill that
appears.
Mona Lisa swindle
Probably the most audacious—and still unsolved—art
swindle ever perpetrated in this country was the sale of
six copies of the famed Mona Lisa to American art collectors in 1911–12.
In 1908 an international art crook, using a variety of
aliases, came to America and befriended a number of
millionaire art collectors. He made separate secret
agreements with six of them to sell each one the Mona
Lisa if he could steal it from the Louvre Museum in
Paris. Meanwhile, he had an expert art forger make six
copies of the Da Vinci masterpiece and had the fakes
stored in New York. Then in 1911 the genuine Mona
Lisa was stolen by a Louvre employee named Vincent
Peruggia, who kept the painting in his apartment for
two years. To this day it is unclear whether the art
crook had arranged this theft or whether it happened
coincidentally while his own plans were afoot. In any
event, Peruggia was arrested in Italy in 1913, when he
attempted to sell the original for $95,000. In the meantime, the cunning art crook had sold each of the six
613
MONK, Maria
By that time Maria was worth fighting over; her
book sold an astonishing 20,000 copies almost immediately. Anti-Papists could delight in a variety of chilling
charges; for example, one nun’s punishment for some
minor infraction was to be stretched out on a mattress
In the 19th century, money-making machines were
quite the vogue both in America and England. As late
as the 1930s, one American operator, “Count” Victor
Lustig, is reputed to have made well over a million dollars with the scheme. Even today, police bunco squad
experts estimate that the swindle is worked hundreds of
times annually in this country. Bankers, stockbrokers
and other professional men are the usual victims.
Because of the advances made in photocopying techniques, authorities say, supposedly sophisticated individuals are now more likely to become victims.
See also: “COUNT” VICTOR LUSTIG.
with her face upwards, and then bound with cords so
that she could not move. In an instant, another bed
[mattress] was thrown upon her. One of the priests,
named Bonin, sprang like a fury first upon it with all
his force. He was speedily followed by the nuns until
there were as many on the bed as could find room, and
all did what they could do, not only to smother, but to
bruise her. Some stood and jumped upon the poor girl
with their feet: and others, in different ways, seemed to
seek how they might beat the breath out of her body.
After the lapse of fifteen or twenty minutes, Father
Bonin and the nuns ceased to trample on her and
stepped from the bed. They then began to laugh. . . .
Monk, Maria (1817–1849) anti-Catholic hoaxer
One of the most infamous impostors of her time, a
young girl named Maria Monk became a rallying point
in the 1830s for American Protestants against what was
regarded as the evils of popery, fanning emotions that
were later exploited fully by the Know-Nothings.
Maria arrived in New York in January 1836 in the
company of a Canadian clergyman, the Rev. W. K.
Hoyt, who told all who cared to listen that he had
saved her from a life of sin in the famous Hotel Dieu
nunnery in Montreal. More likely, Rev. Hoyt had, as
Maria was to admit in moments of candor, met her following a street corner solicitation.
The pair had with them the first draft of what they
claimed was Maria’s memoirs of her years as a novice
and nun at the Hotel Dieu. When published under the
title of The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk, it was to
say the least most shocking in its charges. According to
Maria, the remote cellars of the nunnery were strewn
with the bones of nuns who had resisted the advances
of amorous priests. She said the sisters were called
upon nightly by priests from a nearby monastery, who
ventured through subterranean passages to conduct
their amorous and abusive exercises. Maria had a tiny
tot with her whose origin she traced to these nocturnal
visits from the neighboring clergyman. A later investigation by Canadian authorities turned up rather convincing evidence that the gentleman who had fathered
the child—though not in the nunnery—was a Montreal
policeman.
Maria and Hoyt found as sponsors for the book the
Society for the Diffusion of Christian Knowledge, especially its president, Dr. W. C. Brownlee, pastor of the
Collegiate Dutch Reformed Church and himself the
author of a militant anti-Catholic best-seller, Popery.
Dr. Brownlee thought so highly of this supposed
refugee from a nunnery that he took her into his own
house under the care of his wife, leading in time to
complaints by the Rev. Mr. Hoyt that Maria was a
“damned jilting jade.”
Maria assured her readers “speedy death can be no
great clamity to those who lead the lives of nuns,” and
she offered to visit the Hotel Dieu “with some impartial
ladies and gentlemen, that they may compare my
account with the interior parts of the building, and if
they do not find my description true, then discard me as
an impostor.”
Her challenge was not taken up, but in time even
firm believers in Maria developed doubts. Maria’s
mother in Montreal denied that her wastrel daughter
had ever entered a nunnery. Moreover, she insisted
that she had been visited in 1835 by the Rev. Mr.
Hoyt, who offered her $500 to say such were the
facts. Eventually, Dr. Brownlee concluded he had
been hoodwinked; not only did the girl’s story appear
contradictory but she had also run off in the meantime with his young clergyman protege, John J. L.
Slocum. In 1836 Slocum brought suit against the
publishers of the book for Maria’ share of the royalties, all of which had been appropriated by the Society for the Diffusion of Christian Knowledge. The
resulting trial clearly demonstrated Maria’s story to
be a hoax.
This, however, did not stop Maria. In August 1837
she turned up at the house of a Dr. Sleigh, a Philadelphia clergyman, and told a tale of being kidnapped by a
group of priests and held captive in a nearby convent.
She had escaped, she said, by promising one of the
priests that she would marry him. The result of all this
was, of course, a sequel to her first book, Further Disclosures of Maria Monk.
The second publication also did rather well, but
Maria evidently saw little of the financial rewards.
Slocum persuaded her to sign over to him a number of
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MOONERS
rights to both publications and he then decamped for
London to arrange for their foreign publication.
Maria’s life plunged downward. She became a
habitue of the dives of the Bowery, a drunken hag
before she was 30. She was confined in jail for picking
a man’s pocket in 1849 and died that year at the age of
32, although her true identity went unnoticed for some
time. But The Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk has
outlived her. To date, well over 300,000 copies have
been sold.
Monkey Trial
Even the army made use of Monsieur New York’s
unsurpassed abilities, calling on him in 1861 to execute
one Capt. Beale, a Confederate officer charged with
nefarious activities, and a Capt. Kennedy, a Union officer who had burned down a hotel in New York. Like
many artists, Monsieur New York had a temperament
and in 1869, in a moment of pique, refused to do any
hangings for the current sheriff. As a result, the Police
Gazette reported, “the departure of John Real was
sadly bungled.” Needless to say, the sheriff placated his
star hangman shortly thereafter.
Possibly because of rivalry, neighboring New Jersey
for a time refused to avail themselves of Monsieur New
York’s services. During this period one Bridget O’Brien
was scheduled to die in New Brunswick for the murder
of her mistress. While the master hangman was professionally ignored, he was extended the courtesy of an
invitation to the hanging.
“Boys, that Jerseyman will make a mess of the job,”
was his immediate comment when he viewed the gallows; disaster loomed, he warned.
“What are you trying to do, you damned fool!” he
cried out in dismay when he saw how the Jersey hangman was handling the rope. “Then,” one account of
the event stated, “unable to restrain himself, the scientific strangler pushed his way through the crowd and
saw to it that Bridget was sent out of this vale of tears
in as laudable style as conditions would permit and the
hand of an artist could assure.”
In the 1880s, Monsieur New York’s last decade of
service, a newspaper revealed he lived with his family in
a house near the East River in the vicinity of 125th
Street and that he was a member of the Methodist
Church. The neighborhood was rife with speculation
about his identity and many a family man, determined
to lay to rest any suspicions about himself, made it a
point to be seen on a street in his neighborhood whenever an execution was taking place downtown. To the
end, the identity of Monsieur New York remained a
secret.
See JOHN T. SCOPES.
Monsieur New York (c. 1822–?) hangman
The most famous American executioner of the mid19th century was “Monsieur New York,” that state’s
official hangman, whose true identity was a closely
guarded secret. For years newspapers referred to him
by that nickname or a more prosaic one, George. He
was considered a master of his craft, and one of the few
executioners of the era who could dispatch a condemned person with a minimum of disconcerting suffering, prolonged strangling or, the most embarrassing
of circumstances, unwarranted decapitation.
Monsieur New York got his start in the profession in
the early 1850s, when he approached the sheriff of
New York and offered to carry out the hanging of a
black convicted of murder. At the time, he was about
30 years old and a butcher’s assistant at the Washington Market. He had read about and sought to emulate
Jack Ketch, the renowned high executioner of Great
Britain. Because the previous hangman had abruptly
walked away from the job, a not uncommon occurrence, since few could cope with the public attitudes
and comments once they were identified, George’s offer
was accepted. The job was his, subject of course to a
demonstration of his efficiency.
Observers described the execution as a “beautiful
job” and George was named a deputy sheriff,
although only a handful of officials knew his real
identity. As he performed further commendable jobs,
his fame spread and Monsieur New York was soon in
demand in many parts of the country. His standard fee
was $100 per execution plus all expenses, which often
included a carpenter’s charge for constructing the
proper gallows and the price of a sound rope. Newspapers in communities he visited somberly informed
their readers that “his daily visits to the slaughterhouse had made him familiar with the use of the
windlass to the perfection of an application for the
humane accommodation of the law-breaking community.”
Mooners
moon-affected criminals
An official publication of the New York City Police
Department reads: “Mooner. A mentally disturbed person who is activated during a full moon.”
It is neither a novel nor a new belief. Sir William
Blackstone, the great British jurist, was the first to
define the mooner theory in legal terms.
A man who is a lunatic or non compos mentis is one
who hath understanding, but by disease, grief or other
accident, hath lost the use of his reason. A lunatic is
indeed properly one that hath lucid intervals, some-
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MOONEY case
walk, killing outright or mortally wounding 10 persons
and injuring 40 others. Among those charged with the
bombing were two labor organizers, Thomas J. Mooney
and Warren K. Billings. During a strike in 1913,
Mooney, his wife, Billings and two others had been
arrested on a charge of unlawful possession of explosives. In a subsequent trial Mooney had been found not
guilty while Billings had been sent to prison for two
years. Thereafter, Mooney was marked as an agitator.
Following the Preparedness Day parade massacre,
the case against Mooney was extremely weak but both
he and Billings were found guilty. Mooney was sentenced to death; Billings drew life imprisonment. Their
trial had taken place during a period of mounting antiRed sentiment. Revelations in 1918 that much of the
testimony against Mooney had been perjured and that
other evidence was highly questionable eventually
caused even the trial judge to join in the long fight to
clear him. President Woodrow Wilson prevailed on
Gov. William Stephens to delay the execution, and the
governor eventually commuted Mooney’s sentence to
life imprisonment. Labor unions and other organizations kept up the battle for Mooney. One California
governor after another was petitioned for either a
rehearing or a pardon. Finally, in January 1939 Gov.
Culbert L. Olson, shortly after being inaugurated, pardoned Mooney and later that year released Billings by
commuting his sentence. Upon his release Mooney
declared he probably had been more valuable to the
labor movement behind bars than he could have been if
he had stayed out of prison. Mooney died in 1942 at
the age of 59 and Billings in 1972 at age 79.
times enjoying his senses and sometimes not, and that
frequently depending upon the change of the moon.
And backing up these two authoritative views is the
experience of numerous cops on the beat who believe
that a full moon spells trouble for them. At the time of
the full moon, it invariably seems that more screwballs
and more drunks are abroad, more family quarrels
erupt and more false fire alarms are sounded. Veteran
newspapermen claim that during the full moon a higher
percentage of crackpots turns up in city rooms with tips
of zany stories. A survey made in Connecticut showed
that during the period of the full moon some types of
crimes increased by as much as 200 percent. Violent
robberies rose about 100 percent and breaking and
entering went up some 78 percent. Drunk cases doubled and fatal accidents quintupled.
Arsonists are notoriously affected by the full moon.
Some years ago investigators for the National Board of
Fire Underwriters solved a mysterious string of fires in
a Pennsylvania town by tracking the cycle of the moon.
Explaining the firebug’s capture, the investigators
remarked, “The majority of the fires set by this man
falls within the full-moon cycle, and his apprehension
was brought about by surveillance based on the theory
that the person responsible for the fires would set
another during the next full moon.”
This country’s classic moon murderer was DeWitt
Clinton Cook, who by the age of 20 had committed
300 burglaries and numerous attacks on women in California. During Cook’s crime rampage a leading expert
on abnormal behavior, police psychiatrist Dr. J. Paul de
River, warned the authorities they were dealing with a
mooner whose “attacks on women will continue every
month until he is caught.” On February 24, 1939, the
night of a full moon, Cook killed Anya Soseyeva, a
pretty young drama student at Los Angeles City College. He was not captured until a moon burglary in
August. When Cook was caught, Dr. de River diagnosed him as “a nocturnal prowler who likes to wander
in lonely places at night.”
While more and more evidence accummulates indicating that “moon madness” may be a genuine affliction, jurors are not prepared to hand down insanity
verdicts on such ground. Cook went to the gas chamber, and the Pennsylvania arsonist, a 24-year-old fireman, was sentenced to 30 to 60 years.
Mooney case
Moore, Flossie (1866–?) female mugger
Described by a police biographer as “the most notorious female bandit and footpad that ever operated in
Chicago,” Flossie Moore, a black woman, appeared in
the Levee and other vice districts in Chicago in the late
1880s and soon was making much more money than
any of her male counterparts. She openly declared that
a holdup woman in Chicago had to make at least
$20,000 a year or be a disgrace to the profession.
Flossie did considerably better than that, earning
$125,000 from late 1889 to mid-March 1893, when
she was sent to Joliet Prison for five years for a particularly vicious mugging of an elderly farmer who had
been visiting the city.
Flossie considered herself the black queen of crime in
Chicago and got extremely jealous when her rival for
that crown, a strong-arm woman named Emma Ford,
made a bigger score. Often, the next man down the
street had to pay for that. As befitting a crime queen,
Flossie always carried a huge roll of bills in the bosom
labor frame-up
The Mooney case, which was to become a labor cause
celebre for more than two decades, began in deadly violence on July 22, 1916 during a Preparedness Day
parade in San Francisco. A bomb exploded on the side616
MOORE, Lester
For two decades demonstrations such as this one in Detroit marked efforts to free labor organizer Tom Mooney.
See also:
of her dress and another in a stocking, sported a white
lover named Handsome Harry Gray, to whom she gave
an allowance of $25 a day, an astonishing figure for the
era, and appeared at balls staged by brothel keepers in
gowns costing $500 and more. To handle her legal
problems, she paid a lawyer $125 a month, but the
man had to work for his money. Flossie was arrested as
often as 10 times in a single day, and in one year alone
she was scheduled for trial in criminal court three
dozen times. Once when fined $100, she laughed at the
judge and said: “Make it two hundred. I got money to
burn!”
When she was sent to Joliet in 1893, Flossie quickly
proved to be the most uncontrollable woman ever
imprisoned there, twice almost killing a matron and
serving a good portion of her sentence in solitary confinement. Flossie Moore returned to Chicago after serving her sentence but soon complained she was a
marked woman, constantly watched by the police.
About 1900 she left Chicago for New York; thereafter,
no more is known of her.
CUSTOM HOUSE PLACE, EMMA FORD, PANEL
HOUSE, CLIFTON WOOLDRIDGE.
Moore, Lester (?–?) mystery subject of epitaph
Lester is a real question mark. Did he ever live? More
importantly, did he ever die? No devotee of graveyard
humor is unfamiliar with the inscription on Lester’s
tombstone in the Boot Hill Cemetery at Tombstone,
Ariz. It reads:
Here lies
Lester Moore
Four slugs
From a forty-four
No Les
No More
According to one story, a Wells Fargo guard was
responsible for sending Lester to his poetic reward, but
there seems to be no written record of that fact. Western historian Denis McLoughlin destroys a humorous,
617
MOORE, Nathaniel Ford
cial investigation indicated death was due to heart disease. The investigation’s finding, however, did not
stop the whispering that there had indeed been a murder but that the family had used its power to limit the
scandal to the proportions it had already achieved.
The facts were never fully established to everyone’s
satisfaction.
The furnace plot became a part of Chicago folklore,
adopted by the Capone gang for use when an unwanted
stiff had to be removed from a mob resort called the
Four Deuces. The boys would haul the corpse to the
cellar of a competing establishment and put it in the
furnace. Then the manager of the Four Deuces would
complain to the police that the competition was running an illegal crematorium. In the ensuing investigation the rival resort would be so ripped up by police
looking for additional “bodies” that it could never
reopen.
See also: EVERLEIGH SISTERS, FOUR DEUCES, FRIENDLY
FRIENDS.
if morbid, bit of Americana by suggesting that no one is
buried there, pointing out, “The aroma of the prankster
emanates from this plot of ground; no date of death
accompanies the verse, and had the latter originated
during Tombstone’s lead-swapping period, ‘four balls
from a .44’ would have been apt for the time.”
Moore, Nathaniel Ford (1883–1910) suspected murder
victim
Few deaths aroused as much gossip and scandal in
Chicago as that of playboy Nathaniel Ford Moore, the
26-year-old son of James Hobart Moore, president of
the Rock Island Railroad and one of the nation’s most
influential capitalists. There were many back in 1910
who firmly believed Nathaniel Moore had been murdered and that belief persists to this day.
Young Moore supposedly found a check for
$100,000 under his breakfast plate on his 21st birthday
and became a playboy that night, visiting Chicago’s and
America’s most-renowned and fabulous bordello, the
Everleigh Club. For the next five years he was a regular
there. His final visit was the night of January 8, 1910,
when he showed up drunk. The strict rule of the Everleigh Club prohibiting the admittance of any customer
in an inebriated condition was relaxed in Moore’s case.
However, one of the Everleigh sisters, Minna, refused
to allow him to be served any more wine, which set off
an argument between her and one of her girls, Moore’s
favorite, whom the playboy always tipped lavishly. The
harlot marched out of the club, vowing vengeance on
the Everleighs.
Moore himself left about 1 A.M. About 30 hours
later, at dawn of January 10, Minna Everleigh received
a telephone call from the harlot who had paraded out
of the club in such a rage. Tearfully, the girl told Minna
that Moore had died in a fashionable brothel run by
Madam Vic Shaw. She also imparted the intelligence
that Madam Shaw and some other madams along
South Dearborn Street, members of the Friendly
Friends, a society of brothel owners who constantly
plotted against the Everleigh sisters because their club
siphoned off so much of the “playboy money,” had
come up with a bizarre plot to plant Moore’s body in
the Everleigh Club furnace.
Minna Everleigh, accompanied by some supporters, marched on the Shaw brothel and forced her way
in. She confronted Madam Shaw, who finally admitted to the presence of young Moore’s corpse. Minna
insisted the police be called and stood by while the
young heir’s body was removed to the family’s Lake
Shore Drive home, rather than her furnace. According
to Minna Everleigh, Moore had died of a murderous
overdose of morphine in his champagne, but the offi-
Moran, George “Bugs” (1893–1957) gangster
By 1927 Al Capone’s control of Chicago crime, including bootlegging, was almost complete. The only major
force still in his way was the bloodied but still powerful
O’Banion gang from the North Side. O’Banion and his
successor Hymie Weiss had already departed the scene
in a hail of Capone bullets and the next boss, Schemer
Drucci, was killed by a policeman. That left George
“Bugs” Moran as the only North Sider tough enough
to continue the battle against the Capones, and in fact,
he was still capable of forcing Big Al to stay under
cover for fear of attack.
Bugs earned his nickname for his flaky behavior as
the sometimes clown prince of the gang, but he was
also committed to violence. O’Bannion’s North Siders
pulled no shooting caper in which Moran did not participate. He was the first to put a bullet in the head of a
riding academy horse the O’Banions snatched and
“executed” after it had thrown and killed their celebrated compatriot Nails Morton. He was also the gunman who rushed across the street to finish off Johnny
Torrio after Torrio had been hit four times out of a barrage of shots fired at his limousine. But Bugs’ gun misfired and Torrio survived. Moran was also in the lead
car when the North Siders made their famous 11-car
convoy attack on the Hawthorne Inn in Cicero, pouring 1,000 bullets and shotgun slugs into the building in
a vain effort to assassinate Capone.
Upon his assumption of the gang’s leadership,
Moran continued his policy of frequently making
peace with Capone but breaking it several hours later.
Moran’s hatred for Capone was almost pathological.
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MORAN, Dr. Joseph Patrick
former millionaire bootlegger would have looked on as
pocket money in his palmy days. Arrested by the FBI
for the job, Moran served 10 years. On his release from
prison, he was rearrested for an earlier bank robbery
and sent to Leavenworth, where he died of cancer in
1957. Unlike his compatriots, O’Banion, Weiss and
Drucci, who had all been given lavish gangster funerals,
Moran was buried in a plain wooden casket in a potter’s field west of the prison’s walls.
See also: LOUIS “TWO GUN” ALTERIE, ALPHONSE “SCARFACE AL” CAPONE, HAWTHORNE INN, SAMUEL J. “NAILS”
MORTON, CHARLES DION “DEANIE” O’BANION, ST. VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE, HYMIE WEISS.
He considered Capone a lowly type and never could
resist taunting him in public. Bugs held to the high
moral tone of the O’Banions, permitting no whorehouses to operate in the gang’s territory. He told of
Capone’s frequent entreaties for permission to introduce prostitution, offering to pay Moran 50 percent of
the profits. “We don’t deal in flesh,” Moran thundered. “We think anyone who does is lower than a
snake’s belly. Can’t Capone get that through his thick
skull?”
Before turning 21, Moran had committed 26 known
robberies and served three prison sentences. O’Banion
loved Moran like a brother, mainly because he had a
similarly murderous “wit.” Once, Moran ran into
Judge John H. Lyle, one of Chicago’s few honest and
courageous judges of the period, at a baseball game and
said: “Judge, that’s a beautiful diamond ring you’re
wearing. If it’s snatched some night, promise me you
won’t go hunting me. I’m telling you now I’m innocent.”
This puckish style made Moran good copy for the
newspapers and gained him acceptance by the public as
sort of a jolly good killer, with far more enviable characteristics than Capone. And probably more citizens
were rooting for Moran to win the war of survival with
Capone. As a matter of fact, each managed to survive
the onslaughts of the other. Moran’s closest call was the
infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
In early 1929 Capone used a Detroit front man to
pretend he had a load of hijacked booze available.
Moran agreed to take delivery of the shipment at the
gang’s headquarters, a garage at 2122 North Clark
Street, on the morning of February 14, 1929. Arriving
a little late for the transaction, Bugs noticed three men
dressed as policemen and two others in plain clothes
entering the premises. Figuring it was a police shakedown, Moran hung back, waiting for the law to depart.
Minutes later, machine-gun fire erupted inside the
garage, leaving six gangsters and an innocent bystander
dead. Moran took off.
The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre decimated the
North Side mob. Although Moran vowed vengeance,
wailing, “Only Capone kills like that,” his power was
gone. The North Siders fell apart, some drifting away,
others joining Capone. Moran may have had one small
victory thereafter. He has often been credited, although
the fact has never been established, with the assassination seven years later of Machine Gun Jack McGurn, a
Capone enforcer popularly believed to have been one of
the perpetrators of the massacre.
After that, Moran’s crimes turned petty. He was
involved in a number of burglaries about on a par with
his teenage capers. In 1946 he and two others robbed
an Ohio bank messenger of $10,000, a sum that the
Moran, Dr. Joseph Patrick (1895–1934) underworld’s
doctor
A promising young Illinois doctor, Joseph Patrick
Moran wrecked his career through drinking and performing abortions. He was sent to prison in 1928 following the death of a girl on whom he had performed
an abortion. In Joliet, Moran befriended a number of
leading gangsters and removed a bullet that one of
them had been carrying around for 10 years. When he
was released, convicts with strong political connections
sent him to a Chicago ward committeeman who
arranged to get him a new medical license. He became
the doctor for a Teamsters local involved in labor racketeering wars and treated many members for bullet
wounds sans the obligatory report to the authorities.
He also treated wounded holdupmen and other criminals sent to him by former Joliet cell mates.
By the early 1930s Moran was known as the underworld’s family doctor and did considerable work for
the Barker-Karpis gang as well as for the Dillinger mob.
He performed especially painful plastic surgery operations on Alvin “Creepy” Karpis and Freddie Barker,
leaving the pair in agony for weeks but hardly altering
their appearances other than to give them a number of
new facial scars. Moran also attempted to remove their
fingerprints but after a few months the same whorls
reappeared. Operating in unsanitary hotel rooms and
cellars, Doc Moran’s patient survival rate was naturally
less than that of the average medical man, but he saved
the life of many a hoodlum and murderer and thus was
seldom begrudged his fee, which was almost never less
than $1,000 and often two or three times that amount.
In the end, Moran’s drinking habit did him in again.
He needed several shots before he could probe a
wound. The most pointed critique of his ability was
made by the notorious Shotgun George Zeigler, who
said: “I can’t shoot straight when I’m pie-eyed. It stands
to reason that a doctor can’t cut straight when he’s that
way.” Zeigler was rather upset because a gunman
619
MORAN, Thomas B.“Butterfingers”
buddy of his had died after gangrene set in following an
operation performed by Doc Moran.
Still, under the theory that even an incompetent sawbones was better than none, the Barkers took Doc
Moran on the lam with them after the FBI identified
him not only as an underworld medical man but also as
one of the handlers of the ransom money in the Edward
George Bremer kidnapping. Unfortunately for Moran,
one night in 1934 he got drunk at the Casino Club near
Toldeo, Ohio and informed members of the gang: “I
have you guys in the palms of my hand. One word
from me and your goose is cooked.”
A doctor who drank and sometimes botched operations was one thing but a doctor who drank and sometimes botched operations and had a loose lip as well
was quite another. The gang quieted the Doc down and
later he left the club with two of them for a cooling-off
boat ride on Lake Erie. Doc Moran was never seen
again. As Freddie Barker later informed an associate:
“Doc will do no more operating. The fishes probably
have eaten him up by now.”
ability to “kiss the sucker,” which means lifting a victim’s wallet from his inside coat pocket while facing
him. It is the hardest maneuver for a pickpocket to pull
but it is also the one that a victim least expects because
he considers his wallet invulnerable inside his coat
pocket.
Moran’s last arrest was in 1970, when he was 78
years old. When he was released, police noted he had
only $2 in his pocket. He shrugged and said: “I’ll get on
a bus and get out of this town and get off with some
sucker’s wallet. I’ve never worried about money. I can
get some anytime.” Shortly before his death in a charity
ward in Miami, Fla. on September 14, 1971, he said he
was going to the races the next day because he was
“feeling lucky.”
See also: PICKPOCKETING.
Morello, Nicholas (1866–1916) Mafia leader and murder
victim
The leader of the New York mafiosi during the first of
the Mafia wars, Nick Morello was a crafty and brilliant
gang leader, one of the first to conceive the idea of a
great criminal syndicate, each of its elements at peace
with one another and in control of all the rackets in the
country. But in spite of his goal, Morello, the last of
that notorious family to come to power, found himself
at war with the Brooklyn camorristas, immigrant criminals from the Camorra gangs of Naples. While the
Sicilian mafiosi controlled the rackets of East Harlem
and Greenwich Village in Manhattan, the camorristas,
under Don Pelligrino Morano, had consolidated their
power in Brooklyn, collecting protection money from
Italian storekeepers, ice and coal dealers and sundry
businessmen as well as controlling the Brooklyn docks.
The conflict between the two organizations ostensibly flared because of an attempt by the Morano forces
to move into the East Harlem rackets, but it was more
likely a continuation of a bloody Old World rivalry.
Morello believed it was silly to keep fighting such battles and sent out peace feelers. The Morano forces
spurned these offers, and by 1916 tensions between the
two syndicates had become so intense that no mafioso
or camorrista would dare set foot in the other’s territory.
Finally, Morano abruptly sent word that he had seen
the merit of Morello’s idea for an armistice. Morello
was cautious about accepting Morano’s invitation to
come to Brooklyn for a peace conference. It took six
months for Morello to show up, and he failed to bring
his top aides, as Morano had suggested. When Morello
and his bodyguard stepped out of their car in front of
the meeting place, a cafe on Brooklyn’s Navy Street,
Morano was clearly disappointed, but he decided to
make the best of a poor situation. He gave an order and
Moran, Thomas B. “Butterfingers” (1892–1971)
pickpocket
Thomas “Butterfingers” Moran picked his first pocket
at the age of 14 and then went on to pick an estimated
50,000 more over the next 65 years, winning the title
King of the Pickpockets.
What made him exceptional was that he eschewed
working with a gang, which meant he had no
“framers” to distract his victims while he pulled his
light-fingered routine. Furthermore, Moran, unlike
most pickpockets, had taught himself his trade. “All
you gotta do,” he once said, “is do it.” He did it first in
1906 on the day of the great San Francisco earthquake.
“Nobody was worried about getting their pockets
picked then, and I picked several and got myself all the
confidence I needed for the rest of my career.”
Moran’s career took him to all the 48 states and
Canada, and he was caught in every one of them, doing
short stints that added up to about seven years of
imprisonment. However, he seldom was caught more
than once in a state, and out of 50,000 “scores,” some
60 “wrong ones” did not add up to a bad record. His
nickname Butterfingers was really meant as a compliment, since he could “slide in and out of a pocket like
pure butter.”
Moran never tried to make big scores around banks
and in business districts, because he knew police surveillance was tougher there. Instead, he would work
racetracks, subways, buses. One of the best spots, he
reported, was union meetings since “everyone’s a
brother there.” Moran’s most impressive talent was his
620
MORETTI, Willie
The early crimes of the Morellos included Black
Hand terrorism, contract killings, waterfront thefts and
counterfeiting. The Secret Service found it difficult to
break up their counterfeiting operation because it was
carried out in Sicily, with the bills being shipped over
hidden in legitimate freight. The Morellos could easily
retrieve the caches of bogus bills through their control
of the docks.
A great number of the Morellos’ descendants are
involved in New York-New Jersey Mafia rackets today.
See also: LUPO THE WOLF, NICHOLAS MORELLO, CIRO
TERRANOVA.
a five-man execution squad stepped forward and cut
down the pair in broad daylight.
Later court testimony revealed Morano had done the
job in such a brazen fashion because he was under the
assumption that the payoffs he had made to a New
York police detective, Michael Mealli, had “cleared the
operation with the cops.” Some of the killers talked,
and Morano and a number of his top aides went to
prison for life. When his sentence was pronounced, the
Brooklyn Eagle reported, “Morano was surrounded by
a dozen Italians who showered kisses on his face and
forehead. On the way to the jail other Italians braved
the guard and kissed Morano’s hands, cheeks and forehead.”
With Morello dead and Morano in prison, the first
Mafia war ended and with it the dreams of Nick
Morello for a “great combination” of the gangs. The
Italian underworld was forced to continue its pattern
of Old World organization, but a number of new
faces in the gangs had heard Morello and listened.
One of these was Salvatore Luciana, then only a
young thug in the Five Points gang. He would Americanize his name to Charles “Lucky” Luciano and he
would Americanize the Mafia 15 years after Morello’s
murder.
See also: MAFIA, MORELLO FAMILY, MUSTACHE PETES.
Morello Family
Moretti, Willie (1894–1951) syndicate chief
An important syndicate figure, Willie Moretti was a
power in New Jersey gambling operations who, near
the end of his life, provided some comic relief at the
Kefauver Committee hearings into organized crime.
A boyhood friend of Frank Costello, Moretti was, in
his younger days, as tough as any ganster. By 1943,
however, he was starting to act strangely, exhibiting the
first signs of mental illness brought on by syphilis, for
which he never had been treated. Moretti loved to gamble and began talking wildly about betting and winning
millions of dollars on horses that didn’t exist in big
races that were never run. He rambled on about syndicate affairs that shouldn’t have been mentioned in public. Some of the Mafia capos, those otherwise loyal to
Costello, began to grumble that Willie was a threat to
everyone.
Costello had been best man at Willie’s wedding and
had a genuine affection for him. He prudently decided
to head off trouble by getting Moretti out of the line of
fire, sending him on a long vacation out West with a
male nurse. While Willie was away, he pleaded regularly with Costello, in conversations wiretapped by the
police, to be allowed to return. Costello refused and
continued to protect Willie from himself. Only when he
became less voluble was he allowed back.
When Moretti was called before the Kefauver Committee to testify in 1950, pressure built up for his assassination, but Costello again prevented it. After much
stalling Moretti finally appeared before the Senate committee and proceeded to talk and talk and talk. However, he really said very little, aside from offering the
probers such pearls of wisdom as, “They call anybody
a mob who makes six percent more on money” and, on
gangsters he knew, “well-charactered people don’t need
introductions.” He also patiently explained to the senators that he could not be a member of the Mafia
because he didn’t have a membership card.
Moretti left the stand with the praise of the committee ringing in his ears. Sen. Estes Kefauver commended
early Mafia gang
It is difficult to decide whether Giuseppe Esposito or
the Morello family was the first to introduce the Mafia
to this country. Both Esposito and the Morellos were
vicious killers. Esposito had the greater range, with his
activities stretching from New York to New Orleans,
more because of the pressure of police pursuit than by
design, while the Morellos had the more firmly established power base in New York. The Morellos were a
cunning and vicious clan of brothers, half-brothers and
brothers-in-law from Corleone, Sicily. They were
numerous enough by themselves to constitute a Mafia
“family.”
The head of the clan was Antonio Morello, the
eldest brother of the main branch of the Morello family; Antonio was credited with some 30 to 40 New
York murders in the 1890s. Another brother, Joe
Morello, killed often and ghoulishly and eventually
became the boss of the New York Mafia. Their younger
brother Nick died in 1916 in a war with the Neapolitan
gangs, the Camorra, that controlled crime in Brooklyn.
Other important members of the Morello gang
included Ciro Terranova, an important mafioso until
the 1930s, and his brother-in-law, the notorious Lupo
the Wolf, until 1920 the most-feared gangster in all the
Italian communities of the city.
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MORRELL, Ed
floor, his left hand on his chest. Moretti’s assassination, like virtually all syndicate rub-outs, remains
unsolved.
Morrell, Ed (1871–1946) convict and prison reformer
While it may be presumptuous to single out any one
man as the most-tortured prisoner in the history of
American penology, that distinction has frequently
been assigned to Ed Morrell, the so-called Dungeon
Man of San Quentin. He had been the youngest member of a gang known as the California Outlaws,
which made war on the land-grabbing Southern
Pacific Railroad in the 1880s and 1890s. Many of
Morrell’s torturous experiences in Folsom and San
Quentin prisons formed the basis of Jack London’s
The Star Rover.
Pennsylvania-born Morrell arrived in California in
1891. He found injustices in the area little different
from those he had witnessed in his own anthracite
region of Pennsylvania, where the Mollie Maguires, a
secret labor terrorist society, came into existence. The
beautiful San Joaquin Valley of California appeared to
offer hope for a new life. Instead, he found, as in his
native state, law and order were on the side of money
and might. Life in the valley was a bitter experience.
Land agents working for the railroad were swindling
the settlers with the help of the law. Anything perpetrated by the gunmen of the railroad, popularly called
the Octopus, was considered legal, including such
atrocities as the Slaughter of Mussel Slough, in which
seven settlers had been shot and killed in 1880. The
result was a virtual civil war. Railroad undercover
agents moved in among the settlers to spy on them and
report any troublemakers, who were dealt with brutally. Under the circumstances, it was inevitable that an
organization like the California Outlaws would spring
up in the valley. They existed solely to steal from the
Southern Pacific Railroad, robbing its express car but
never victimizing any of the passengers or stealing the
mail.
Bribes and threats were made to area residents in an
effort to force them to betray the Outlaws. The gang
countered by planting 20-year-old Ed Morrell as their
own spy in the employ of the notorious railroad detective Big Bill Smith. In time, the ranks of the gang dwindled down to 25 men, 24 regular Outlaws, headed by
Chris Evans and the Sontag brothers, George and John,
plus Morrell. When Evans was finally captured, a conspiracy was hatched to have the badly wounded Outlaw leader killed attempting to escape, and Smith
assigned Morrell a key role in the plot. Instead, Morrell
staged a real escape for Evans and went with him. Mor-
Protected by Frank Costello even after his testimony at
the Kefauver Committee hearings into organized crime,
Willie Moretti finally fell victim to a mob “mercy killing.”
him on his forthrightness and Sen. Charles Tobey found
his frankness “rather refreshing.” “Thank you very
much,” Willie replied to the praise. “Don’t forget my
house in Deal if you are down on the shore. You are
invited.”
While Willie had handled himself to the mob’s satisfaction, his condition further deteriorated in 1951. He
became friendly with a number of New Jersey newspapermen and was threatening to stage a press conference
to talk about gambling in New Jersey. One who considered Willie dangerous was the ambitious Vito Genovese, who saw in the elimination of Moretti a chance
to enhance his own position, with his men taking over
Willie’s operations and thus eroding the power of Genovese’s prime enemy, Costello. He argued Moretti was
losing his mind and was endangering the entire organization. “If tomorrow I go wrong, I want you to hit me
in the head too,” Genovese said. Finally, even such a
Costello loyalist as Albert Anastasia was convinced
that a “mercy killing” was necessary for the sake of
both Willie and the syndicate.
On October 4, 1951 Willie sat down in a New Jersey restaurant with four men. When the waitress
stepped into the kitchen, they were chatting amiably in
Italian. Suddenly, she heard several gunshots. She
peered through the swinging doors. All the customers
but one were gone. Willie Moretti, 57, lay dead on the
622
MORRELL, Ed
wife, known as the Angel of the Prison, saved him. She
had overheard her husband’s plan and sent word to
Morrell through another convict. Morrell had to endure
additional tortures because he would not reveal details
of the escape plan or say who had warned him.
For this stubbornness Morrell was subjected to a
number of sessions in the “lime cell,” a fiendish torture
chamber lined with a coating of lime. A guard would
hose down the walls and a white mist from the exploding chloride of lime would fill the cell. Tossed inside,
the prisoner would feel as though his throat was on fire
and would actually think his breath was aflame. Once
subjected to 10 days in a row of such punishment,
Morrell ended up with his eyebrows and eyelashes
completely burned away, and his nose, throat and
mouth so seared that his voice was reduced to a faint
whisper.
Through all these ordeals, Morrell’s spirit never
broke and he even organized other escape attempts and
riots. Finally, he was transferred to San Quentin. There
too, Morrell was subjected to very special treatment.
When he arrived, he was given 20 days in solitary for
“looking at” a guard. The day after he was released, he
was sent back for 30 more days on a complaint from
the same guard.
Morrell was regularly punished with the “San
Quentin overcoat,” which resembled a supertight fulllength straitjacket. The overcoat was a coffin-shaped
piece of coarse, heavy canvas with brass eyelets along
the sides and two inside pockets for the hands. First,
Morrell would be wrapped in a blanket, not to ease the
pain but rather to avoid leaving too many marks and
bruises in case he died and also to make the overcoat fit
more tightly. Then the garment was fitted around him
and laced tight.
Later, in his autobiography, The 25th Man, Morrell
described his first experience in the overcoat:
rell carried, or half-dragged, Evans through the valley
and surrounding hills for weeks, with hundreds of railroad agents, Pinkertons and Wells Fargo men in pursuit. They were sheltered by one hill family after
another but finally betrayed by a man enticed by the
big reward offered for them. Both were captured and
Evans was sentenced to life. All Morrell was guilty of
was aiding Evans to escape, an offense normally punishable by just a few years in prison. Smith, however,
pointed out that Morrell had taken the police chief’s
revolver during the escape, which constituted robbery.
As a result, Morrell was sentenced to life at hard labor
in Folsom Prison. Folsom at the time was known as the
private lockup of the Southern Pacific. The warden of
Folsom was a former railroad detective, as were many
of the guards. Sometime later, it was discovered that the
warden was still carried on the railroad’s payroll
despite his state position.
Folsom was a mankiller with a blood curdling, awesome history. Many convicts not tough enough to
endure its brutal labor conditions and tortures were
known to have deliberately charged the armed guards
or even hurled themselves into the surging waters of the
American River to achieve at least a more merciful
death.
Morrell was assigned to rock pile work under the
sweltering sun and supervised by guards who went out
of their way to discipline him for imaginary infractions.
Finally, for stepping out of line in formation, a minor
infraction at best, Morrell was given 50 hours on the
derrick. Few men at Folsom were given 50 hours of this
treatment, the usual punishment calling for 10 hours
spread over a two- or three-day span. The derrick was a
block-and-tackle contraption whereby a prisoner was
suspended with his arms bound behind his back and
the tips of his shoes barely resting on the dungeon floor.
The pain, needless to say, was excruciating and often
resulted in severe bleeding from the kidneys. For that
reason a prisoner normally would be subjected to no
more than to two 2 1/2-hour sessions a day. On one
occasion Morrell’s punishment lasted for 13 days
because he bled so badly he could not do the full five
hours a day.
Punishment after punishment was heaped on Morrell
and the warden informed him he would never get any
respite until he revealed the identities of the California
Outlaws still at large. Morrell endured his punishment
and said nothing. Once, the California Outlaws bribed a
guard to look the other way so that Morrell could
escape. Another guard learned of the plot and alerted
the warden, who decided to let Morrell make the
attempt and stationed guards outside the wall to gun
him down. But Morrell never came out. The warden’s
Jungle travelers have described the awful agony of a
native victim being squeezed to death by a giant boaconstrictor. It is all too terrible for the human mind to
contemplate, but even this inconceivable spectacle must
pale before the death terrors of the jacket.
I had not been in it fifteen minutes when pain
began shooting through my fingers, hands and arms,
gradually extending to my shoulders. Then over my
whole body there was a prickling sensation like that of
millions of sharp needles jabbing through the tender
flesh. . . . Hour after hour I endured the pain and as
the time passed the anguish became more and more
unbearable. I slept neither night nor day, and how
slowly my torture went on when all was silent in the
prison! The hours dragged as if weighted with lead.
623
MORSE, Charles W.
Now a new horror came. The bodily excretions
over which I had no control in the canvas vice ate into
my bruised limbs. My fingers, hands, and arms grew
numb and dead.
Thus I suffered incessantly for four days and
fourteen hours. . . . Released from its pressure I
attempted to gain my feet, but was too weak. My limbs
were temporarily paralyzed. After a time, mustering all
my strength, I reached a sitting posture and finally
managed to drag off my saturated clothes.
“What a sight I beheld! My hands, arms, and
legs were frightfully bruised. My body was shriveled
like that of an old man, and a horrible stench came
from it.
saders to promote changes in the administration of
prisons nationwide. He spoke before the legislatures
of California and Pennsylvania and, in 1918, became
the only ex-convict ever to be called to Congress to
advise on inmate labor problems. Jack London’s The
Star Rover and Morrell’s own autobiography further
popularized the man on whom was visited almost
all forms of evil practiced in America’s prisons.
Much of the improvement later achieved in the
nation’s prisons was due to Morrell’s dogged determination to survive the whip, the dungeon, the derrick,
the lime cell and the San Quentin overcoat. He died in
1946.
See also: CALIFORNIA OUTLAWS, CHRISTOPHER EVANS,
FOLSOM DERRICK, KNUCKLE VOICE, LIME CELL, SONTAG
BROTHERS.
After enduring this punishment, Morrell was framed
on a charge of having a gun smuggled in to him for an
escape. For this alleged infraction he was ordered to
spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement in San
Quentin’s dungeon. There was only one other prisoner
undergoing the same treatment there, Jake Oppenheimer, who was known as the Tiger of the Prison
Cage.
The two, who had never seen each other, were separated by 13 cells, but they eventually learned to communicate using a form of “knuckle talk,” with various
knocks on the steel walls indicating different letters. It
was the first use of such a method of communication in
an American prison and has since been adopted in
almost every prison in the world.
In 1903 San Quentin’s most brutal and villainous
warden, Martin Aguirr, disgraced by prison scandals,
was forced to resign. The next warden learned from
the captain of the yard, John C. Edgar, that Morrell
had been framed on the gun charge and made an
investigation. As a result, Morrell, now famed as the
Dungeon Man, was returned to the general prison
population. In 1906 Edgar became warden and
worked unceasingly for Morrell’s release. Edgar did
not live to see the fruition of his efforts, but two years
later, the acting governor, Lt. Gov. Warren Porter, personally came to San Quentin to present a pardon to
Morrell.
It was a different San Quentin that Ed Morrell left.
The new warden, John E. Hoyle, was the first of California’s progressive penologists, and his term marked a
new era in the treatment of prisoners, one made possible by the publicity given to Ed Morrell. For the first
time the American public took an interest in the administration of prisons and demanded humane treatment
for inmates.
Morrell became a national hero. He lectured on
prison reform, arguing primarily for the abolition of
corporal punishment. He organized the American Cru-
Morse, Charles W. (c. 1860–1942) swindler
One of the most proficient American swindlers and
confidence operators was Charles W. Morse, a Midwesterner who pulled off hundreds of crooked deals
and bilked victims out of millions of dollars with every
conceivable financial scam.
His greatest coup occurred two years after he was
arrested, for the first and only time, in 1910 and sentenced to 15 years for tampering with the books of the
Bank of North America. In 1912 President William
Howard Taft granted him a full presidential pardon
after government physicians reported he was dying of
Bright’s disease. To the amazement of the medical men,
the cunning swindler thrived and lived for 30 years
after his release. It was finally discovered he had faked
the symptoms of the disease with a special concoction
composed mainly of different soaps.
Morton, Samuel J. “Nails” (?–1924) Chicago mob
gunman
Nails Morton was a top gun in the Dion O’Banion
gang, which from 1920 to 1924, the year of O’Banion’s
death, fought the Italian mobsters even. Morton was
held in awe by other Chicago mobsters because in
World War I he had won the Croix de Guerre in France
and received a battlefield promotion to first lieutenant.
Morton was an inventive sort of killer, but he was to
become more noteworthy because of the way he died
and the act of revenge that followed. Nails was fond of
horseback riding in Lincoln Park, “where the society
swells ride.” One day, in what the mob considered
vicious treachery, a horse threw him and kicked him to
death. The O’Banion gang took the required
vengeance. Four of them, Bugs Moran, Schemer
Drucci, Little Hymie Weiss and Two Gun Alterie, went
624
MUDD, Dr. Samuel
Mountain Meadows Massacre
to the riding stable and, with drawn guns, snatched the
animal. After leading it to the spot where Morton had
been killed, the animal was dispatched, in proper
underworld style, with four slugs in the head, the incident later forming the basis for an episode in Mario
Puzo’s The Godfather.
See also: DION O’BANION.
Mossman, Burton C. (1867–1956) first head of Arizona
Rangers
One of the Southwest’s most successful ranchers, Burt
Mossman was also one of its most illustrious lawmen,
as the first head of the Arizona Rangers.
Born in Aurora, Ill., he was ramrodding his first
spread in the New Mexico Territory by the age of 21.
Nine years later, he was manager of the huge Hash
Knife ranch, containing 60,000 cattle. He proved to be
an action-oriented manager who cleared the Hash
Knife range of rustlers. In 1901 Gov. Nathan O. Murphy named Mossman the first captain of the newly
organized Arizona Rangers, specifically assigned to
clear the state of rustlers and, above all, to “get Chacon.” Augustine Chacon, a Mexican killer, was said to
have notched his gun 30 times in shooting frays on
both sides of the border.
Getting Chacon was not easy, and Mossman first
had to take care of business closer at hand. In one
stand-up gun duel he killed a vicious robber and killer named Juan Saliveras. In other exploits he rounded
up a number of rustling gangs and chased several
more far out of the state. Then in a daring mission in
1902, Mossman went to Mexico and managed to
bring Chacon back to the hangman after wheedling his way into the bandit’s confidence and suggesting a raid on the San Rafael ranch in the Arizona Territory.
Later in that year Mossman resigned his post
to return to ranching, which was now a much safer
activity in the area thanks to him and his rangers.
Mossman was one of the Southwest’s biggest ranchers
until he retired in 1944. He died at Roswell, N.M. in
1956.
See also: BURT ALVARD, ARIZONA RANGERS.
Mother Carey’s Chickens
religious mass killing
One of the worst crimes in Mormon history occurred
on September 7, 1857, when a westbound wagon train
of 140 men, women and children was attacked by Indians at Mountain Meadows, Utah Territory.
Some fanciful accounts contend that the attackers
were not Indians at all but disguised white Mormons.
There is little doubt, in fact, that some Mormons were
acting in concert with the Indians. After about 20 of the
emigrants had been killed in the first assault, the battle
was interrupted by the arrival of Mormon Bishop John
D. Lee, who was also Indian agent for the area, with a
large group of his men and some Indian auxiliaries. Lee
offered to escort the wagon train to Cedar City, Utah
provided they would lay down their arms. The wagon
train party gratefully agreed. However, as soon as the
emigrants had put down their weapons, Lee and his
men, in collusion with the attacking Indians, shot down
all the men, including the wounded. The killing of the
women and children was left to the Indians. Only 17
very young children, too young to bear witness, were
spared in the massacre.
When Brigham Young learned what had happened,
after being told false versions by Lee, he decided to do
nothing to aid the authorities in their investigation, out
of fear that all the men of the Mormon community
would be implicated. Later, he excommunicated Lee and
several other leaders of the massacre. It took the federal
government 18 years to gather enough evidence to bring
Lee to trial in July 1875. On March 23, 1877, having
been found guilty, Lee was taken to the site of the massacre and executed there by a firing squad.
See also: HAUN’S MILL MASSACRE.
Mudd, Dr. Samuel (1833–1883) alleged Lincoln
assassination conspirator
A Maryland practitioner, Dr. Samuel Mudd became
implicated in the Lincoln assassination conspiracy after
he set the leg of John Wilkes Booth during the latter’s
flight from Washington. Although Mudd was in no
way involved in the crime, as was proved in later years,
the hysteria of the times resulted in a vengeful trial in
which Mudd was convicted of conspiring to kill the
president. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in
what was at the time the nation’s most-dreaded federal
prison, Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas off Florida,
where he was subjected to vicious treatment by his
guards. Under orders from superiors, the guards kept
Mudd chained to the floor of his cell and abused him
regularly.
The Dry Tortugas Prison, as it was called, was a
pesthole of illness and the scene of frequent yellow
fever epidemics. Following a particularly deadly out-
slang for brothel inmates
One of the most popular terms for referring to a
brothel inmate, the phrase set off a hunt by some social
historians and writers to find the original Mother
Carey, who was assumed to be a western madam since
the term originated in the West. The term “Mother
Carey,” however, seems to be a corruption of mata
cara, meaning dear mother.
625
MUFF pistol
Even 15 years after the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the eastern press continued to fuel the hysteria over the
slaughter.
break in 1867, in which another of the convicted Lincoln assassination conspirators, Michael O’Laughlin,
and all the army surgeons died, Dr. Mudd surprised
officials by offering to treat the prisoners, soldiers and
guards. Mudd treated the prison population throughout the epidemic, even after contracting the disease
himself.
Because of his humanitarian efforts and a fouryear campaign by his wife, Mudd was released from
prison in 1869 and returned to Maryland. In recent
years an effort was made to obtain a complete pardon to clear his name, and in 1979 President Jimmy
Carter sent a telegram to Dr. Richard Mudd, grandson of Dr. Mudd, affirming his belief that his grandfather had been unjustly convicted. President Carter
regretted that the military commission’s guilty verdict was not one that could be set aside by a president.
See also: DRY TORTUGAS PRISON, ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
626
muff pistol
In the 19th century, gunmakers produced a whole series
of .22 caliber firearms seldom longer than three or four
inches. Because a lady could easily conceal one in her
muff, they were known as muff pistols. Of course, not
too many ladies carried these weapons but quite a few
female criminals, such as Babe Irving of New York and
Kitty Adams of Chicago (who often stuffed two in her
muff), did. The muff pistol fell into general disrepute
because of newspaper campaigns that blamed them for
fostering criminality, much like the drives launched in
the 1970s against the so-called Saturday Night Special.
mugging
The crime of mugging—sneaking up on a hapless victim, incapacitating him and robbing him—is as old as
man himself. Practitioners of the art in early America
were called footpads, because they padded out the soles
MUNICIPAL Brothel
of their shoes or boots with cloth or some other material to deaden the sound of their footsteps.
The term “mugger” itself appears to have originated
in the 1830s in Buffalo, N.Y. on Canal Street, one of
the most vile of all the sin streets of the l9th century.
Crime ran rampant on Canal Street after the completion of the Erie Canal, and violence was always considered the quickest and easiest solution when a gentleman
ran so short of money that he could not even afford to
buy a mug of beer. He would simply walk out into the
darkness of Canal Street and waylay, or “mug,” an
unsuspecting passerby.
See also: CANAL STREET.
A womanizer and drinker, Mullinen might have
avoided capture had he not been so dedicated to having
a good time. He was apprehended at a barn dance in
New Columbia, N.J. and in August 1781, hanged.
Those attending his execution came not so much to see
him swing as in the hope that at the last minute he
might reveal the hiding places of his booty. He did not,
however, and New Jerseyites have gone on Mullinen
treasure hunts right up to the present day.
Municipal Brothel
San Francisco bordello
The nearest thing to a governmental whorehouse in
America was San Francisco’s infamous Municipal
Brothel in the early part of the 20th century. Because it
soon became common knowledge that virtually all of
the profits of the establishment flowed into the pockets
of city officials and their political sponsors, the famous
house, officially known just as 620 Jackson Street, soon
won its more recognizable name. Saloon keepers and
other businessmen who sought political favor advertised the brothel to customers. When strangers in town
asked policemen where women could be found, they
were obligingly directed to it; an officer who failed in
that assigned task could count on being transferred to a
less favorable beat. The house was a regular stop for
Jackson Street trolleys, and if no ladies were aboard,
the conductors shouted, “All out for the whorehouse!”
The brothel was first opened in 1904 as a three-story
affair with some 90 cubicles. Recruitment of women
was the duty of Billy Finnegan, a veteran character in
San Francisco vice. He rented out space at a daily rate
ranging from $2 to $5 per crib with a guarantee of
immunity from arrest. After the place was destroyed by
the earthquake and fire of 1906, a four-story and basement structure containing 133 cribs and a saloon was
erected in its place. The prices varied according to floor
and the beauty of the individual women. The basement
was given over to Mexican harlots, who charged 25¢.
The first, second and third floors were occupied mostly
by American and French women, with the prices rising
from 50¢ to 75¢ and up, to $1 on the third floor, which
was populated exclusively by what customers were
assured were “genuine Frenchies.” The fourth floor
was given over to black prostitutes at 50¢.
Not only were the inmates protected from arrest
under the political rule of Boss Abe Ruef and his puppet mayor, Eugene Schmitz, but most other brothels in
the immediate area were shuttered to guarantee a good
return for the political figures. Testimony before a
grand jury in December 1906 established that Herbert
Schmitz, the mayor’s brother, owned a one-quarter
interest in the brothel and that, despite their denials,
both the mayor and Ruef took a cut of the profits, in
Mullin, Herbert (1947– ) mass murderer
Voted most likely to succeed by his 1965 high school
class, young Herbert Mullin went on to become a college
dropout, dope addict and all-round weirdo. Late in 1972
he went on a four-month murder spree, during which he
killed at least 10 persons because he somehow believed
this would prevent a major earthquake popularly, if not
scientifically, predicted to happen in early 1973. According to his later confession, Mullin said that he had been
telepathically “ordered” to kill and that only human sacrifices could prevent the impending tragedy. He stated,
“I’m a scapegoat person made to carry the guilt feelings
of others. . . . Every day people die. There’s a steady
flow of death in order to keep the coast free of cataclysmic earthquakes and the earth in orbit.”
Declared legally sane, Mullin was found guilty of
murdering three women, one man and six boys in the
Santa Cruz Mountains of northern California and was
sentenced to life imprisonment. He was not tried for
three additional murders to which he confessed, including that of a Catholic priest in Los Gatos, Calif., whom
he had stabbed to death, he said, after having second
thoughts about a confession he had made to him.
Mullinen, Joe (?–1781) colonial Robin Hood bandit
A daring colonial bandit, Joseph Mullinen clearly got
his inspiration from the tale of Robin Hood; he stole
from the rich and gave to the poor, at least to some
extent. Mullinen began his depredations in southern
New Jersey around the start of the American Revolution. He made gifts of part of his loot to the needy, seeking to build up a sympathetic network of well-wishers
who would help him avoid the law. It worked for several years, as he made his forays out of the Pine Barrens,
a 1,000-square-mile wilderness of woods and swampland, his own Sherwood Forest. Mullinen kept the
major portion of his loot and, as we know from his confederates, buried it in various spots in the Pine Barrens.
627
MURDER
Ruef’s case $250 a week. The indictment of Mayor
Schmitz, Boss Ruef and several members of the Board
of Supervisors, whom Ruef himself described as “being
so greedy for plunder that they’d eat the paint off a
house,” led to the fall of the administration in 1907.
None of the indictments in the case was acted upon,
although Ruef eventually went to prison for bribery.
Despite the wave of reform that hit San Francisco,
the brothel continued to operate for a time, but from
early 1907 it was subjected to many police raids, under
pressure from a grand jury and the newspapers. The
pervasiveness of the bribery involved was indicated by
the fact that at first the harlots were simply driven off
rather than arrested. When they finally were arrested,
they were permitted to post small bonds, which they
promptly forfeited. In September 1907 Chief of Police
William J. Biggy visited the resort personally and
ordered it closed when he found it swarming with boys
as young as 14 years of age. The following year Chief
Biggy crossed San Francisco Bay in a police launch to
attend a conference. Later, he reembarked and was
never seen alive again. His body was found floating in
the bay a week later.
With Biggy’s death, efforts were made to reopen the
brothel but they were soon abandoned because of the
opposition of a crusading priest, Father Terence Caraher, the San Francisco Globe and the new chief of
police, Jesse B. Cook, formerly an acrobat and tumbler
with the troupe of Renaldo, Cook and Orr.
murder
Official FBI statistics shows that something like 19,000
or 20,000 murders are committed in the United States
each year. The figures are not to be taken seriously,
however, since such a raw compilation has little to do
with the actual murder rate. As far back as 1953
William F. Kessler, M.D., and Paul B. Weston, a deputy
inspector in the New York Police Department, said in
their authoritative study The Detection of Murder:
“Nowhere in the world is the investigation of unexplained or unexpected death so casual and haphazard
as it is in the United States.” They pointed out that
murder is proved in only one-third of one percent of all
unexplained and unexpected deaths. The ambiguous
“fell, jumped or pushed,” and “apparent suicide” are
standard newspaper terms that undoubtedly cover a
multitude of sins.
How many mass murderers walk free among us?
How long do they get away with their crimes? Among
the greatest known mass murderers in recent years has
been John W. Gacy, an Illinois building contractor, who
from 1972 to 1978 murdered 33 boys and young men
he had lured to his home. After having sexual relations
628
with his victims, he killed them and buried most of
them in the crawlspace under his house. Of course,
none of Gacy’s victims caused a “recount” of the murders reported for the years in which they died. Such
recording problems indicate how it is almost impossible
to put a handle on the true number of murders committed in a year.
Who gets caught? Dr. Alan R. Moritz, longtime head
of Harvard’s Department of Legal Medicine, says,
“Usually only the stupid ones are caught and convicted.” Certainly, it is difficult to argue with estimates
that for every murder discovered, there is another that
is not even noticed. The Journal of the American Medical Association states, “With reasonable certainty it
may be said that several thousands of murders pass
unrecognized each year in the United States.” In Virginia, which is considered to have one of the best medical examiner systems in the nation, it has been
estimated that there are at least 50 murders a year that
pass as natural deaths. Unquestionably, murders are
more readily recognized in states like New York and
California, but in a great many states, especially those
still saddled with a nonscientific, often politically dominated coroner system, the procedures used in determining the cause of deaths are woeful. Some coroner’s
offices are as competent as any medical examiner’s
office, but in many parts of the country there is no
requirement that the coroner even be a medical man.
Some are dentists or undertakers or political hacks.
Thus, death certificates contain, as surveys have shown,
such comments as “Could be diabetes or poison,”
“Died in a shanty,” or “The deceased died suddenly.
Might be heart trouble.”
Some states do not specifically require that the coroner be able to read and write. A university study once
MURDER BY MONTH
Percent distribution, 1994–1998
Months
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
8.2
7.5
8.8
8.1
8.2
8.3
9.0
9.1
8.2
8.4
7.8
8.4
8.3
6.8
7.6
8.4
7.9
8.2
8.9
9.9
8.6
8.8
8.0
8.6
8.7
7.8
7.5
7.5
8.3
8.8
8.8
9.1
8.1
8.5
8.0
8.9
8.7
7.3
8.5
7.6
7.9
8.7
9.0
8.7
8.2
8.6
8.2
8.6
9.1
7.2
8.3
7.7
8.4
8.4
8.7
9.2
8.2
8.2
7.6
8.9
Federal Bureau of Investigation
MURDER
discovered a report by a coroner, presumably the highest medical man in the county, that read, “So far as I
could ascertain, I found She came to her death from A
natur cause comely called hart failure, and I found no
cause to suspect any foul play.”
Ignoring the ineptitude of certain coroner systems, a
number of actual cases have perplexed medical examiners over the years. A 60-year-old New York man was
sitting on his porch one day, minding his own business,
when he suddenly slumped down and died. His grieving
relatives told the medical examiner what had happened. “He suffered an attack and apparently struck
his head on the stoop when he pitched over.” It made
sense, a natural death with no blood spilled.
That conclusion might have stood if the man’s killer
had not confessed. He was a mentally deranged man
with a 20-year record in psychiatric institutions. He
was caught in a spree of shooting people through windows with a .22 caliber rifle. After his apprehension he
kept upsetting the police by insisting he had killed a
man even though they had no such murder victim. He
repeatedly furnished the date and place of the crime but
nobody would believe him. Finally, a check was made.
The 60-year-old man’s body was dug up and an
autopsy performed. Only then was a .22 caliber bullet
found deeply imbedded in the dead man’s brain.
There is a cynical police saying that goes, “If there
ain’t no murder suspect, well then there might not have
been any murder.” That sentiment may explain why the
“cleared by arrest” record in murder cases is so superior to other types of crimes. While the police make an
arrest in only one out of five crimes in general, the
arrests in murder cases are better than 70 percent, an
average undoubtedly helped by the fact that investigators simply fail to recognize many violent or unexpected deaths as murder.
In some instances they may simply not want to recognize a death as a possible murder. Such was the case
with Mrs. Jeanne Brown, about age 30, in New York
City. She was found dead, her jugular vein cut, sitting
on the floor propped up against her bed. There were a
number of empty beer bottles and one empty whiskey
bottle in the room. Although the telephone wires had
been ripped from the wall, no signs of a struggle were
evident. At the time of her death, Jeanne’s husband was
aboard a ship in the Persian Gulf, and the police found
no indication that she had ever entertained any male
visitors while her husband was away. The woman had a
history of alcoholism and had been under treatment a
few months earlier.
The medical examiner first labeled the case a “definite homicide” and later a “possible homicide.” However, the police and the district attorney did not agree.
First of all, they had no suspect. They said the woman
had had a past history of ripping telephone wires from
the wall. As the police reconstructed the case, the
woman had been drinking and had a beer can opener in
her hand when she ripped out the telephone wires. As
she jerked the wires free, her arm swung around and
the opener slashed her throat. Not realizing how badly
she had been hurt, she grabbed some facial tissues,
placed them against the wound and dropped off to
sleep. Within 30 minutes, she had bled to death.
It was a convenient theory. But the fact remains the
woman’s death could have been an accident, it could
have been suicide or it could have been murder.
In an equally baffling case, in Milwaukee, Wis., a
despondent housewife apparently crawled inside an oil
furnace, let the door swing shut, then used a cord and
rubber band device she contrived to turn on the controls and cremate herself. At least that was the theory,
one that the county medical officer admitted was possible but added he could not rule out the possibility of a
bizarre murder. It was not the usual sort of suicide,
especially not for a woman. Usually, women suicides
prefer sleeping pills or gas. A furnace death is almost
always a case of murder.
Either of these two cases could have been a suicide
or a murder and so could dozens of other violent, unexplained or sudden deaths that occur daily. There can be
little doubt that some are murders.
Police in a large eastern city know of one case recorded as accidental death that was really murder—yet the
murderer remains forever free. The victim was found in
a pool of blood diluted with whiskey on the landing at
the top of a flight of stairs. He was lying on his left side.
There were pieces of shattered glass sprinkled about in
the slowly coagulating blood. The first detectives on the
scene quickly theorized what had happened: “The fellow is coming up the stairs and trips and falls. The broken bottle cuts him up.”
The medical examiner arrived and soon agreed with
the comment that “here’s one guy who died of booze
the hard way.”
The body was carted off to the morgue, an autopsy
was performed, the blood and glass on the landing
cleaned up and the case marked closed. When the man
fell, the official view went, the weight of his body
caused several glass fragments to lacerate the left
armpit and death resulted from loss of blood.
It took a year for the truth to surface. One night a
woman, the dead man’s part-time lady friend, got
drunk and boasted how she had killed him. She said she
had grasped the bottle of whiskey she was bringing
home for them by its neck and smashed it against the
stair railing. As the man raised his arm to hit her, she
rammed the jagged end of the broken bottle into his
armpit and just took off.
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MURDER
As Kessler and Weston noted: “She was never prosecuted. There were no eye-witnesses, no fragments of
glass, and no testimony as to the location of the various
fragments. No one had ever processed the larger pieces
of glass for fingerprints, no one had bothered to photograph the scene—in fact no one had bothered to conduct anything more than a cursory investigation.”
Thus another murder failed to make the crime
tables. Murder remains a most serious problem, and
undoubtedly far more serious than official statistics
would indicate.
Some crime writers have said that murder is more
diverse and complicated than any other offense. That is
hardly the case. Rather it is one of the most monotonously consistent. Often the method of murder tells
who did it. A single girl is stabbed two dozen times in a
murderous frenzy. The police know immediately to
look for her boyfriend or a secret admirer. If she is married, they zero in on her husband. If he is cleared, they
then start looking for a lover. Not long ago in New
York City a young mother was stabbed to death in her
hospital bed. Was there a maniac loose in the hospital?
That frightening theory was played up in the newspapers until police arrested a young man who lived across
the street from the woman. He had been secretly enamored of her for a long time.
Murder is largely a family affair. In his book Crime
in America, former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey
Clark warns, “If you are afraid of being murdered,
there is more safety in deserting your family and having
no friends than in additional police, who rarely have
the opportunity to prevent friends and relatives from
murdering each other.”
While Americans are concerned about being murdered by a stranger, the truth is that murders committed by persons unknown to the victim account for no
more than 20 percent of all homicides. Perhaps twothirds of all aggravated assaults are committed by relatives, friends or neighbors of the victim. Murder is a
crime of hate and to hate someone it is helpful to know
the person.
When John Godwin, the author of Murder USA,
asked a veteran New York City patrolman what was
the most dangerous situation facing a police officer, the
patrolman unhesitatingly replied, “Trying to stop a
family brawl on a hot night.” In fact, out of every five
officers killed in the line of duty, one dies as a result of
intervening in a domestic dispute.
Not surprisingly most in-home homicides take place
in the bedroom (where there is often a gun handy) or in
the kitchen (where there is always a knife). The basic
disputes are, of course, over money and sex and often
follow considerable drinking. Quite naturally, most
630
domestic murders occur on a Saturday and in the hot
summer months.
Handguns are by far the most common murder
weapons, used in about 50 percent of all such cases.
Adding in shotguns and rifles, guns account for perhaps
65 percent of all killings. Part of the debate over gun
control is whether guns or people kill people. The fact
is that the National Rifle Association notwithstanding,
people with guns kill people.
It is popularly thought that murder is currently at its
highest rate ever in this country. But it is not very likely.
While statistics are limited, there is little doubt that
murders were more frequent in the 19th century, especially when the great street gangs were springing up in
the 1820s and in the period from the 1860s to the
1880s. Then murders seemed to slack off until the
1920s and 1930s, when they increased again. The first
fairly reliable nationwide statistics date from 1933; the
murder rate then was 14 percent higher than in 1967.
Since that time murders have increased ever so slightly.
The rise may be because more murders are being
detected or reported to the police than an increase in
violence.
Murders are much more frequent in the United
States than in the nations of Western Europe or in
Japan, which have more homogenous societies and are
thought to be less subject to the pressures of industrial
life. However, this country’s murder rate is considerably
lower than that of the Latin American countries, where
the warmer climate is considered a contributing factor.
One of the most popular, if fruitless, pastimes of
crime buffs is to try to figure out who was the greatest
mass killer in American history. As mentioned earlier,
John Gacy stands high on the list with 33, but no one is
sure of his actual total. Some supporters of Belle Gunness, the Lady Bluebeard of La Porte, Ind., credit her
with 40, but others place her total at 14 to 17. Probably the top killer of all was H. H. Holmes, the keeper of
the notorious Murder Castle in Chicago during the
1890s. Estimates of his kill count range from 20 to 200;
all of his victims were women. Holmes complicated
matters by taking delight in misleading the police. He
confessed killing women who later turned up alive and
denied murdering others who had been found dead. In
any event, it seems likely he dispatched somewhere
between 40 and 100.
Of course, that is hardly a record if one considers
John A. Murrel, who may have killed hundreds of kidnapped black slaves. He was in the business of stealing
and selling slaves, but he sometimes got confused and
sold slaves back to the same parties he had stolen them
from. Whenever Murrel found himself in doubt about
where he had gotten certain slaves from or had to dis-
MURDER, Incorporated
pose of those he couldn’t sell quickly, he drowned them
in the river.
John Billington is generally recognized as America’s
first murderer. At least he was the first found guilty of
murdering a white man. Billington was one of the original band of 102 pilgrims on the Mayflower, a rowdy
who many said would come to a bad end. He did in
1630, when he waylaid and killed a fellow settler and
was duly hanged.
Murder, Incorporated
However, none of the estimated 400 to 500 murders
committed by the outfit was ever allowed to proceed
without the concurrence, or at least the absence of any
negative votes, of other top executives, especially
Luciano, Lansky, Joe Adonis and Frank Costello. Bugsy
Siegel probably best summarized the top gangsters’ attitude toward Murder, Inc. as merely a necessary business device when he told construction executive Del
Webb he had nothing to fear from the mob because
“we only kill each other.”
Directly below Anastasia and Lepke were a number
of lieutenants, such as Louis Capone (no relation to
Chicago’s Al), Mendy Weiss and Abe “Kid Twist”
Reles. Instructions on a specific contract generally were
only given to one underling, who then passed the word
on, so that no legal proof of the top men’s involvement
could be found. Some of the quaint killers of the mob
included Vito “Chicken Head” Gurino, who sharpened
his shooting skills by blasting off the heads of chickens;
Frank “the Dasher” Abbandando; Happy Maione, who
wore a permanent scowl; Buggsy Goldstein; Blue Jaw
Magoon; and, the most notorious of all, Pittsburgh Phil
Strauss. Pittsburgh Phil was the troop’s most prolific
and resourceful killer and was named in 58 murder
investigations around the country. His actual kill toll
was most likely about twice that figure. The boys
would hang around a certain 24-hour candy store in
the Brownsville section of Brooklyn called Midnight
Rose’s, awaiting assignments, and then hit the trail for
wherever in the country their victim happened to be.
More often than not, the assigned killer had never
before met the “bum,” creating a difficult situation for
the police. Murder by a stranger with no personal
motive presents a puzzle that is seldom solved.
Probably the most famous victim of Murder, Inc. was
top gang lord Dutch Schultz, himself a founding member of the crime syndicate. In 1935 Schultz had become
the chief target of special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey
and responded with a demand to the national board
that Dewey be hit. This was in direct defiance of the
founding rules that no politicians were to be murdered.
When Schultz’ demand was rejected, he stormed away,
vowing to handle the job himself. Immediately, a contract was voted on Schultz to prevent him from carrying
out his desperate and dangerous-for-business plot.
In 1940 Murder, Inc. came apart when a number of
lesser mob members were picked up on suspicion of
various murders. Abe Reles got the idea that somebody
would talk and implicate him, so he started singing
first. He eventually gave details of some 200 killings in
which he had either participated or had knowledge of.
In the ensuing investigation several top killers went to
the electric chair, including Pittsburgh Phil, Mendy
syndicate’s professional hit squad
Murder, Inc., a gang of professional killers who carried
out homicides on assignment in the 1930s, was hardly a
new criminal idea. Professional killer gangs existed in
the American underworld in the 19th century and murders were committed for pay, with prices generally ranging from $100 down to $5 and even $2. But the
Brooklyn “troop” of killers, dubbed by the press Murder, Inc., was an elitist outfit. Not available for hire by
outsiders, they were solely at the disposal of the emerging national crime syndicate formed primarily by Lucky
Luciano and Meyer Lansky, an ethnic conglomerate
composed of “young Turk” mafiosi and the great Jewish and, to a lesser extent, Irish gangs that blossomed in
the Prohibition era. The purpose of the new syndicate,
especially after Repeal, was to divide up such criminal
activities as gambling, loansharking, labor racketeering,
prostitution and narcotics in some sort of acceptable
and orderly fashion. Of course, what was acceptable to
one gang was not necessarily acceptable to others and
thus there developed a need for an enforcement arm to
put muscle in the national board’s edicts.
Murder, Inc. killed only for business reasons and
was never to be used against political figures or
reporters—Meyer Lansky and Moe Dalitz, then the
criminal power in Cleveland, were most insistent on
this point—because of the public stir and “heat” such
assassinations caused.
A whole new vocabulary was developed by the troop
of killers. The assassins accepted “contracts” to “hit”
“bums.” Perhaps the most significant term was
“bums,” meaning marked victims. Psychiatrists could
see in this a rationalization for the killers’ crimes, one
that allowed them to regard victims as subhumans
deserving of dying. Thus, a Murder, Inc. killer could, as
happened, go directly from a cold-blooded killing to
the bedside of a dying grandparent and weep real tears
over the sad event.
Operating commanders of the troop were Albert
Anastasia, its so-called Lord High Executioner, and
Louis Lepke, the nation’s number one labor racketeer
and a member of the crime cartel’s national board.
631
MURDER Stable
Weiss, Louis Capone, Happy Maione and Frank
Abbandando. Also executed was Lepke, the only toplevel syndicate leader to suffer that fate.
In November 1941 Reles was still doing his canary
act and was considered the key witness in a case against
Bugsy Siegel and Albert Anastasia, but before he could
testify, he “went out the window” of a Coney Island
hotel, where he was being held under police protection.
Whether Reles’ death was suicide, accident or murder
has never been established, although in his later years
Luciano insisted that he gave the orders from his prison
cell to kill Reles before he doomed Siegel and Anastasia
and that money was paid to certain members of the
New York Police Department to make sure “the canary
who could sing couldn’t fly.”
Of course, Murder, Inc. did not end with the
breakup of the Brooklyn troop. The syndicate has kept
right on ordering contracts and having them filled.
See also: FRANK “THE DASHER” ABBANDANDO, ALBERT
ANASTASIA, LOUIS “LEPKE” BUCHALTER, MIDNIGHT ROSE’S,
PITTSBURGH PHIL, ABE RELES, DUTCH SCHULTZ, STATE
STREET CRAP GAME.
Murder Stable
early Mafia burial site
The accidental discovery of the infamous Murder Stable in New York City in 1901 drove home to Americans that there was a “Mafia” or a “Black Hand,” or at
least some kind of organized gang of Italian criminals.
In the spring of 1901 the U.S. Secret Service began
investigating rumors of an anarchist plot to kill President William McKinley. Among those asked to aid in
the investigation was a New York police detective
named Joseph Petrosino, who would become legendary for his battles with the Mafia and with various
Black Handers. Petrosino reported there was no organized conspiracy but there was much talk among anarchists of an individual possibly attempting such an
assassination. McKinley was killed by such an “independent,” Leon Czolgosz, in Buffalo, N.Y. some three
months later. During the course of the investigation,
Petrosino and the Secret Service had stumbled onto the
so-called Murder Stable, a property located in Italian
Harlem at 323 East 107th Street. Digging up the
premises, they found the remains of approximately 60
murder victims. The property was owned by one
Ignazio Saietta, better known in Italian crime circles as
Lupo the Wolf. When it became apparent the victims
had been killed as part of an effort to consolidate Italian control of the waterfront, the Secret Service
dropped out of the investigation. It was left to local
officials to contain Lupo and the notorious Morello
gang he worked with. Lupo successfully insisted he
Joaquin Murieta was a major attraction both in life and
after his apparent death.
was just the landlord and knew nothing, and he
remained an awesome figure in the New York crime
scene for another two decades.
See also: LUPO THE WOLF.
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MURPHY, Jim
Murieta, Joaquin (c. 1830–1853 or 1878) bandit
Murphy, J. Reginald (1935– ) kidnap victim
The greatest desperado of the early gold rush days in
California may have been the Mexican-born Joaquin
Murieta, or Murrieta or Muriati. There is considerable
confusion about his last name and indeed even over
whether such a person existed, notwithstanding the fact
that his pickled head was later brought in by California
Rangers.
The Murieta legend seems to be a mixture of fact
and folklore. The most likely version is that Murieta
was born about 1830 of Spanish parents near Alamos,
Mexico and studied in the Jesuit school there. He took
up arms in a revolt against the Mexican government by
many of his native Sonorans as well as Mayo and Yaqui
Indians. In 1848 Murieta, now married, joined thousands of Sonorans on a trek to California to escape
their war-ravaged province.
Murieta apparently turned to crime after seeing the
way the Americans, who had won California in the
Mexican War, treated his countrymen. After supposedly being run off a number of gold claims, he vowed
vengeance, organized a gang of cutthroats and outlaws
and cut a swatch of terror through California. In 1853
the state legislature established the California Rangers
and commissioned them to bring in not one but five
“Joaquins”: Joaquin Ocomorenia, Joaquin Valenzuela,
Joacquin Botellier, Joaquin Carrillo and Joaquin Murieta. The Rangers, under Capt. Harry Love, set forth on
their mission, inspired by the $1,000 reward posted for
Murieta’s capture. Love and his men did have an
encounter with Manuel “Three-Fingered Jack” Garcia
and killed him and another unidentified Mexican. The
more Love contemplated this second man the more he
reckoned he was the notorious Joaquin. Garcia’s mutilated hand and “Joaquin’s” decapitated head were
placed in jars of preserving fluid and transported to San
Francisco.
Although newspapermen were skeptical of the claim,
the governor was impressed and paid out the reward.
After that, the head of Joaquin and the hand of Garcia
went on tour around the country. Murieta’s head was
on display until it was destroyed in the San Francisco
earthquake of 1906.
Of course, the Mexicans of California never
acknowledged that the head was that of the celebrated
Joaquin. They said he escaped his pursuers and eventually settled down to a life of farming in Sonora, where
he died in 1878. To the Mexicans his looting and
killing of Americans were not acts of banditry but of
active warfare against a foreign invader. In the barrios
of California, Murieta is still referred to as el Patrio, or
the Patriot, perhaps on the assumption that if he had
not existed, he should have.
J. Reginald Murphy, editor of the Atlanta Constitution, was kidnapped on February 20, 1974, ostensibly by members of a right-wing group called the
American Revolutionary Army, and held for
$700,000 ransom. Murphy was abducted by a man
calling himself Lamont Woods, who had contacted
the newspaper with a request for help in anonymously distributing $300,000 worth of fuel oil to the
needy. Murphy met with Woods to sign papers for
the fuel distribution. As they drove outside Atlanta,
Woods pulled a gun and told the editor: “We’re going
to straighten out this damn country. We’re going to
stop these lying, leftist, liberal news media.” Despite
talk about an American Revolutionary Army with
223 members and chapters in the Southeast and
Northeast, Woods appeared to be acting alone as he
held Murphy captive for three days until the newspaper paid the $700,000 ransom.
Murphy was released on February 23 and six hours
later William A. H. Williams, a building contractor in
Lilburn, Ga., was arrested in his home, where the
authorities found suitcases containing the ransom
money. Williams turned out to be the fanciful Lamont
Woods. He had been linked to the kidnapping even
before Murphy’s release because of a tip the FBI
received from a man to whom Williams had tried to sell
$300,000 worth of nonexistent fuel oil the previous
December. Williams was sentenced to 40 years imprisonment.
Murphy, Jim (1861–1879) outlaw and informer
Just as Missourians built a legend around Jesse James,
Texans made a folk hero of Sam Bass, their renowned
train robber of the 1870s. Similarly, Texans had their
own Bob Ford (“the dirty little coward that shot Mr.
Howard and laid Jesse James in his grave”) in the person of Jim Murphy, who betrayed Bass. As one Texas
Ranger put it, Murphy was a “veritable Judas in every
sense of the word.”
One of two sons of Henderson Murphy, a Denton
county rancher, Murphy was close to the Bass gang of
outlaws, so close that on six different occasions he
made overtures to the law to turn in Bass for various
considerations. Meanwhile, the Murphy family harbored the gang from time to time, and on May 1, 1878
father and sons were arrested because of this and
charged with being accessories after the fact in Bass’
robbing of the U.S. mails. Murphy won his release from
Ranger Capt. Lee Hall by agreeing to turn Bass in.
Murphy had no trouble throwing in with Bass and
took part in planning a robbery of a bank in Round
633
MURPHY game
Rock, Tex. On the way to Round Rock, Murphy
slipped away long enough to wire the Rangers about
the gang’s plans. The gang was ambushed, and
although he escaped for a time, Bass was mortally
wounded. The following day, July 20, 1878, Bass was
found in a woodland and brought back to Round
Rock, where he died the next morning. Before he died,
Bass was questioned about his accomplices but refused
to betray them, saying: “It is agin my profession to
blow on my pals. If a man knows anything, he ought to
die with it in him.”
The contrast between Bass’ dying words and Jim
Murphy’s actions made the latter as unpopular as Bob
Ford was to become. Even Ranger Hall labeled him a
traitor. Murphy was to outlive Sam Bass by less than a
year. He returned to Denton County and his family was
released from jail, but he found hatred wherever he
went. Often, he was so overcome with fear that he
asked to sleep in the local jail for his own protection.
He died in June 1879 after swallowing some very poisonous eye lotion. Considering that his death was most
painful and slow, it seemed likely that taking the lotion
was not Murphy’s idea. A few years later, a ballad
writer produced an epitaph for Murphy:
in different parts of town, and one will make a big
show of delivering to the other an expensive radio or
other electronic item for something like a dime on the
dollar. Then the boys will let slip that the seller has a
contact at a wholesaler’s warehouse and can get almost
anything. But right now he has a big deal cooking. The
inside man at the warehouse has found a way to cover
up the disappearance of 10 Sony Trinitrons in perfect
condition. The only thing is that he has to move them
all at once. Naturally, all the barflies are interested
when they hear the price for the $600 sets is only $75
apiece, or $750 for all 10.
Naturally, the deal falls in place and the suckers are
taken to the warehouse in a rented van. The con artist
collects all the money and disappears into the warehouse to make the payoff and have the sets brought out
on the loading platform. The suckers in the van wait
and wait and wait. What else can they do? Go into the
warehouse and ask, “Where’s that crooked employee of
yours who’s going to heist ten Trinitrons for us?”
Meanwhile, the con artist has long since disappeared
via another exit.
Murrel, John A. (1794–?) mass murderer
Murrel has often been described as the most extraordinary criminal America has ever produced. Certainly, as
a wholesale murderer, not even H. H. Holmes or Murder, Inc.’s Pittsburgh Phil was a match for him, even
taking into account their highest estimated kill totals.
Murrel may have killed over 500 victims.
With his brother, Murrel owned a very profitable
plantation in Tennessee, which he used as a cover for his
activities. Murrel found he could make it more profitable
by stealing slaves, whom he would then resell. If he
couldn’t make a fast sale on a slave or if he had stolen the
same slave so often that another sale might be dangerous, he would have the slave murdered. Murrel became
known as a rich, if eccentric, visitor to the gambling dens
and bordellos of New Orleans. Actually, he would be on
scouting missions looking for money-ladened travelers
who would be leaving the city along the Natchez Trace.
When they left, Murrel left and only Murrel would be
seen again. His technique for getting rid of a victim was
to disembowel him, fill his stomach cavity with sand and
stones and sink his body in a creek or river.
But even Murrel’s estimated 500 killings was minor
compared to what he had in mind. He concocted an
incredible scheme, probably the most grandiose ever
developed by a criminal mind. It called for fomenting a
slave rebellion; while the authorities would be battling
to quell it, Murrel and 500 underworld confederates
would sack New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis,
Natchez and a number of other cities. He actually
And so he sold out Sam and Barnes and left their friends
to mourn,
Oh, what a scorching Jim will get when Gabriel blows his
horn!
Perhaps he’s got to heaven, there’s none of us can say;
But if I’m right in my surmise, he’s gone the other way.
See also: SAM BASS.
Murphy game
confidence swindle
Originally conceived during the 19th century as a sex
swindle, the Murphy game has changed with the times.
It was apparently named after an engaging rogue
named Murphy who had the face of a pimp a man
could trust. In the swindle the con artist would describe
the delightful and talented young lady he had in store
for the lascivious pigeon. Then the “pimp” would convince the pigeon to leave the money for the whore with
him so that the woman would not be liable to a bust for
accepting money in exchange for services rendered. The
pigeon would be sent up the stairs of a building to a
nonexistent apartment, and by the time he returned to
the street, either puzzled or enraged, the Murphy man
had disappeared.
Today, the original Murphy game is fast dying out
but a substitute sex object has been found in the form
of what is often called the “$75 Sony Trinitron.” A pair
of hustlers will start patronizing a bar, actually several
634
MUSICA, Philip
planned to establish an underworld empire in the captured cities and become the supreme ruler, with New
Orleans as the capital. The trouble with the scheme was
that it involved too many people and too many mouths.
The slaves had to be drilled for their uprising and some
were overheard discussing the plot. Various criminals
were also overheard discussing their part in the bizarre
operation. Then a man named Virgil Stewart, whom
Murrel thought he had convinced to join his “army,”
defected and talked to authorities. Following Stewart’s
disclosures, Murrel was taken into custody. By this time
it was too late to stop the uprising, which was scheduled for July 4, 1835, but without Murrel’s leadership
the campaign foundered. Authorities easily contained
outbreaks in the criminal districts of Nashville, Memphis and Natchez. In Tennessee about 20 slaves and 10
white men were hanged for their part in the conspiracy.
After the grandiose plan collapsed, Murrel sulked in
prison under a 10-year sentence. He served his term,
but by the time of his release, he had degenerated to the
level of an imbecile. When last seen, he was a derelict in
the Gut, the red-light district of Memphis.
Territory, where he was being held after attempting to
make off with a herd of army mules.
Cook figured rightly that Franklin would head for
Denver to try to free his boss and intercepted him in the
nearby mining camp of Golden. Lying in his hotel bed
wearing only his long johns and gun belt, Franklin was
just able to jump off the bed before Cook sent a bullet
through his heart.
Franklin’s failure to free Musgrove was to prove fatal
to the latter. A mob of heavy drinkers got to thinking
that other members of Musgrove’s gang surely would
try the same things. Under the circumstances, the logical
thing to do was to string up the outlaw leader before
such a tragedy could befall the town, and on November
23, 1868 Musgrove was duly dispatched without benefit of a court conviction. Cynics were to observe that
some cattle interests had fired up the mob because they
believed such drastic action was the best answer to livestock thievery. Other suspicious souls were to point out
that Dave Cook himself had an amazingly consistent
record of losing his prisoners to lynch mobs.
See also: DAVID J. COOK.
Musgrove, Lee H. (?–1868) outlaw leader
Musica, Philip (1877–1938) swindler
The Musgrove gang of road agents and livestock
thieves plundered the Colorado Territory in 1867–68.
The group was noted for a barbarity that was even
more pronounced in their leader, Lee Musgrove, a
native Mississippian who had cut a wide trail of violence when he came west in the 1850s.
Settling first in the Napa Valley of California, Musgrove developed a reputation as a mean man with a
gun. He was suspected of a number of robbery-murders, but it was a killing in 1863 over “a matter of
honor”—a man who did not share Musgrove’s rabid
Confederate sympathies—that forced him on the run.
Musgrove moved on to Nevada but had to flee again
after two more killings. Musgrove then operated as an
Indian trader and alleged dealer in stolen goods in the
Idaho Territory. When he notched another victim, he
headed for the Wyoming Territory, where he organized
a gang of cutthroats whose holdups and stolen beef and
horse flesh operations ranged from Kansas to Texas. At
least a dozen killings were attributed to the gang, but
their days were numbered when a Colorado lawman
named Dave Cook started tracking them. Cook
chipped away at the outfit, dispatching permanently or
arresting them one after the other.
Cook followed Musgrove to the Wyoming Territory
and finally nailed him in the midst of preparations for a
job. After Musgrove was tucked away back in Denver,
Cook learned that the outlaw chief’s top sidekick, Ed
Franklin, had escaped from Fort Sanders, Wyoming
As a 20th century swindler, Philip Musica in many
ways surpassed the great Charles Ponzi. He stole more
money, and while Ponzi lasted only a matter of months,
Musica lasted years. In his prime he was a pillar of society, a patron of the arts, a bosom friend of the great
tenor Enrico Caruso and a charming, cultured gentleman. On Wall Street he was known as a financial
genius, in the midst of the Morgans, Astors and Rockefellers. Not at all bad for a man who had previously
been, among other things, an ex-convict, stool pigeon,
swindler, forger, rumrunner, smuggler, bootlegger, gunrunner, hijacker and briber. With a record like that, it
might seem odd that Musica was able to make Who’s
Who in America, but then again, that illustrious publication is better known for judging people for what they
appear to be rather than what they are.
Musica had qualified for Who’s Who under one of
his other identities (he used several during a long criminal career).
It was his final and greatest identity, that of F. Donald Coster, about whom the book of the nation’s notables declared:
COSTER, Frank Donald, corpn. official; b. Washington, D.C., May 12, 1884; s. Frank Donald and Marie
(Girard) C.; PhD., U. of Heidelberg, 1909, M.D.,
1911; m. Carol Jenkins Schiefflin, of Jamaica, L.I.,
N.Y., May 1, 1921. Practicing physician, N.Y. City,
1912–14; pres. Girard & Co., Inc. (succession to
635
MUSICA, Philip
Girard Chem. Co.), 1914–26; pres. McKesson & Robbins, drug mfrs., since 1926; also pres. McKesson &
Robbins, Ltd.; dir. Bridgeport City Trust Co., Fairfield
(Conn.) Trust Co. Methodist. Clubs: New York Yacht,
Bankers, Lotos, Advertising (New York); University,
Black Rock Yacht (Bridgeport); Brooklawn Country.
Home: Fairfield, Conn. Office: McKesson & Robbins,
Inc., Bridgeport, Conn.
spied on other prisoners. It paid off. In 1918 these
grateful officials got him a suspended sentence for the
hair fraud.
That was the last seen of Philip Musica until he
emerged from his final cover, F. Donald Coster, in 1938.
Musica became “William Johnson,” an “investigator”
for the district attorney’s office, a career that was cut
short when he was indicted for perjury in a murder trial
in which he had testified against two men. William
Johnson promptly disappeared.
He was replaced by “Frank Costa,” a copartner in a
firm called the Adelphi Pharmaceutical Manufacturing
Co., which was entitled to 5,000 gallons of alcohol a
month during Prohibition for production of its hair
tonics and the like. The innovative Mr. Costa so
scented and colored Adelphi’s products that running
them through a simple still would return them to highproof straight alcohol. Cut with water and spiked with
the proper coloring and flavoring and presto—“great
stuff right off the boat.” Eventually, Adelphi’s real business was discovered by revenue agents and one of the
owners was caught, but not Costa, who disappeared.
Musica reemerged as F. Donald Coster, president of
Girard and Co., and obtained a new alcohol license. By
this time Papa Musica was dead and Philip was the
acknowledged leader of the family. Because he was still
being hunted on the perjury charge, Philip severed all
ties with his Musica past. Girard was the new family
name he gave to Mama Musica and her daughters—
save for one, who, in Philip’s words, “disgraced our
whole family by running off and marrying a gardener.”
Girard and Co. also gained three new officials, “George
Vernard,” “George Dietrich” and “Robert Dietrich”—
really Musica’s three brothers, Arthur, George and
Robert.
By 1925 F. Donald Coster had become a man of high
society, more than 13 years after Philip Musica had
cavorted about so flashily. Of course, “Doctor Coster”
was nothing like Philip Musica. He was starting to gray
on top and in his trim mustache, and he was Americanborn and a Methodist now, not Italian and a Catholic.
In 1926 he moved to the pinnacle of the Wall Street
heap by buying the 93-year-old drug firm of
McKesson and Robbins. He did so after obtaining a
loan against Girard and Co., an easy matter since its
books, thanks to bootlegging activities, were in excellent shape. Once in control of McKesson and Robbins, Coster swung a stock flotation and money
flowed in. A large portion of this new money was
used to establish a Canadian “crude drug” department. It was Coster’s master swindle. George Vernard
became fiscal agent and representative in charge of the
department, which proved to be the world’s easiest
job. The Canadian crude drug department consisted
In 1883 six-year-old Philip Musica came to America
from Italy with his parents, and by the time he was in
his early twenties, he had become the most Americanized of all the children as well as the active head of the
family. He kept telling Papa Antonio that things were
different here than in the old country and that there
were different standards of ethics. Quickly, he involved
his father and a number of brothers and sisters in dishonest schemes, starting off with an imported cheese
business made all the more lucrative by bribing customhouse weighers. Soon, the Musicas could afford a mansion in the fashionable Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn,
complete with landscaped grounds, horses, stables and
a carriage house. In 1909, however, the roof fell in on
Musica’s financial empire. Several customhouse
weighers confessed to taking bribes and young Musica
was sentenced to a year in prison. He served only a few
months, however, before winning a presidential pardon, apparently because he came across as somewhat
gallant, shielding his father from a jail term by accepting all the blame himself.
Once freed, Musica moved immediately into a new
line of business, that of importing human hair from
Italy to supply the needs of American females. By 1913
he had established a thriving business and was once
more a leader in Italian-American social and financial
circles. Then the William J. Burns Detective Agency dug
up evidence that Musica had swindled 22 banks out of
$1 million by taking loans on hair shipments based on
phony invoices. When the cases of supposedly long hair
were opened, they were found to contain tissue paper
and short hair, worth no more than $1 a box and
known as trash in the field.
The entire Musica family was captured in New
Orleans shortly after boarding a liner for Honduras.
One of Musica’s sisters tried to throw overboard
$18,000 she had stashed in her girdle. Musica had
$80,000 in cash and $250,000 in other money instruments on him. Again, he accepted full blame for the
swindle. He was lodged in the Tombs Prisons in New
York City because he promised to make full restitution and said that from there he could better help
authorities round up his assets. While in prison,
Musica endeared himself to a succession of prosecutors by becoming a professional stool pigeon who
636
MUSSOLINI Shuttle
Checking further, he discovered they weren’t insured
because they didn’t exist.
Thompson took his findings to the New York Stock
Exchange and early in December 1938 all trading in the
firm’s stock was halted. Each of McKesson’s 82 vice
presidents shuddered, but none more than George
Vernard and George and Robert Dietrich. The master
swindler remained calm as story after story about him
hit the newspapers. Inevitably, tips about Coster came
in and authorities took a deep interest in his past. On
December 14 Coster was fingerprinted in his home.
“This is a pesty business,” he grumbled.
Within 24 hours newspapers revealed the life story
of Philip Musica, a long-vanished swindler and perjurer. On December 16 government agents arrived at
his house to place him under arrest, but he had shot
himself to death in the bathroom.
Musica left two notes, one to his wife pleading for
her forgiveness and the other, eight pages long, trying
to rationalize his underhanded dealings.
McKesson, he insisted, would have gone into
receivership in 1930 and 1932 had he not bolstered its
paper profits. He asserted all the alleged “lost” millions
were merely fictional “profits to save the company . . .
what is missing is the alleged profits plus expenses and
blackmail money paid to maintain it. . . .”
“As God is my judge,” he concluded, “I am the victim of Wall Street plunder and blackmail in a struggle
for honest existence. Merciful God bring the truth to
light! F. D. Coster.”
For their part in the swindle, Musica’s three brothers got off with mere three-year sentences, possibly
because not all of Coster’s claims were hogwash.
True, he had indeed siphoned off $8 million or $10
million for his own use, but the rest of the “loot”
probably never existed, being mere figure juggling to
keep up the firm’s profit margins. The conventional
wisdom on Wall Street was that without Coster’s
shady dealings McKesson and Robbins would have
been forced into bankruptcy years earlier and the
stockholders wiped out. Instead, the firm weathered
the storm and the stockholders had been both robbed
and saved.
of large inventories of drugs in half-a-dozen warehouses. But there were no drugs and no warehouses in
Canada. There was just George Vernard—and he wasn’t even Vernard. Unwittingly, through its new owner
the reputable McKesson and Robbins “bought” drugs
from phantom companies and shelled out hard cash,
which wound up in the pockets of F. Donald Coster.
Receipts, inventories, invoices, bills of lading and the
like from the crude drug department carried the
names of Coster, Vernard and Dietrich, and no questions were asked.
The Depression of 1929 hit McKesson and Robbins
as hard as most companies but the firm continued to
look robust because of its inventories of crude drugs,
which rose in value by several million dollars. Coster
became known as the wizard of the drug field. “No one
can match Coster when it comes to crude drugs,” honest directors of McKesson told one another.
Up in Fairfield, Conn., Coster relaxed in the splendor of his 16-room mansion and aboard his 135-foot
oceangoing yacht. He contributed lavishly to charity
and even established a free heart clinic in Bridgeport,
Conn. out of his own money. Why not, there was
plenty more where that had come from. But beneath
the facade of luxurious tranquility, Coster was troubled. Business was crashing downward and more and
more he had to cover up his lootings with forgeries. By
1935 he was paying $25,000 a year in blackmail
money to those who knew him as Philip Musica and
Frank Costa. Then there were reports that he used
McKesson facilities to smuggle guns and munitions to
Franco Spain. Franco received rifles packed in cases
labeled, “Milk of Magnesia.” However, there were
indications that Coster was rather impartial. He
appeared to be selling to the Loyalists as well, although
there were also reports that the Franco forces were
informed—for a price—where the Loyalists’ shipments
were going so that they could seize them, allowing
Coster to collect twice.
Coster’s undoing came from two quarters. First, he
took to adulterating his own drug products, and in September 1938, agents of the Pure Food and Drug
Administration seized some of the firm’s adulterated
quinine in New Jersey and New York. Meanwhile, the
business recession of 1937 had battered the firm and
Julian F. Thompson, a Wall Street figure whom Coster
had hired as the window-dressing treasurer (George
Dietrich was assistant treasurer and handled all illegal
matters), demanded that Coster reduce the crude drug
inventories to give the company more cash assets.
Coster stalled. He couldn’t produce something out of
nothing. After a year of stalling, Thompson launched a
quiet investigation of his own and found that an alleged
$21 million worth of inventories carried no insurance.
Mussolini Shuttle
deportation of mafiosi
As a result of Benito Mussolini’s war on the Sicilian
Mafia and other gangsters in the 1920s, perhaps hundreds of young mafiosi were forced to scurry to the
safety of the United States, where they provided fresh
blood for the criminal legions of the “Mustache Petes,”
who had begun emigrating to America around the
1890s. Journalists named this mass deportation effort
the Mussolini Shuttle.
637
MUSTACHE Petes
Mussolini’s campaign against gangsters cost him
heavily in support from Americans of Italian descent,
who saw the new criminal migrations as fostering more
crime in their communities and stirring fresh anti-Italian feelings among the general populace.
See also: MUSTACHE PETES.
Mustache Petes
old-line mafiosi
The early leaders of the Mafia in America were called
“Mustache Petes” by younger Italian gangsters, a term
coined to deride their elders’ inability to adapt to the
new society and their insistence on extraction of
“respect” from those beneath them. These old-line
criminal leaders were eliminated by the rising young
gangsters of the 1920s and 1930s, Lucky Luciano,
Frank Costello, Joe Adonis, Vito Genovese, Albert
Anastastia, Tommy Lucchese and others.
There can be little doubt that their forceful elimination was a sign of progress for the Italian underworld.
The younger gangsters felt the Mustache Petes had to
go for Italians to become powerful and perhaps even to
dominate crime in America, a situation eventually
accomplished when the national crime syndicate was
formed in the 1930s. What especially upset these
younger criminals was that the older mafiosi insisted on
exploiting only their Italian compatriots and distrusted
other ethnic criminals as well as politicians. The
Luciano types understood the need to work with Jewish
gangsters, such as Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel, the
heads of New York’s Bug and Meyer Gang, and such
other non-Italian groups as Cleveland’s Mayfield Road
Gang and Detroit’s Purple Gang. The old MorelloLupo the Wolf-Joe the Boss Masseria-Salvatore Maranzano approach of bleeding the Italian communities was
by nature limited since the Italians as a whole were the
poorer “outs” of American society.
As these old-time leaders fell or were pushed from
power and were succeeded by the “new-breed” Italian
leaders, a more-Americanized and a more lucrative
Mafia emerged.
638
See also:
MAFIA, NIGHT OF THE SICILIAN VESPERS, MUS-
SOLINI SHUTTLE.
mutilation
punishment method
Mutilation was certainly never used to punish criminals in the United States to the extent it was used in
Europe. However, the practice was not totally uncommon, especially in New England and the South. For
contempt of court or perjury, the punishment in both
areas could be losing part of an ear or having one’s
tongue pierced with a hot iron. In colonial Virginia
one convicted of slander might have his or her tongue
bored through with an awl, while the possible punishments for criticizing the colonial authorities included
losing both ears or, for lesser offenders, having one’s
ears nailed to a pillory. A runaway slave often
received the latter punishment, which produced enormous pain but allowed the slave owner’s property to
remain pretty much intact. Castration was a penalty
reserved for a slave found guilty of attempting to rape
a white woman.
The frontier West used mutilations in a more practical sense, often coupling such punishments with expulsion from the area in cases where the death penalty was
judged too harsh. Many Three-Fingered Jacks got that
way as a result of the actions of vigilante tribunals. A
Nevada miners court once needed to protect the community from a miner who would start shooting indiscriminately when drunk. Because the offender was
otherwise rather popular, hanging was deemed inappropriate; instead, the trigger finger on each of his
hands was cut off. He was thereafter referred to as
Eight-Fingered Bill.
Branding the face was practiced legally as late as
1844, although ranchers continued to use it long after
as an extralegal punishment for rustlers, considering it
a “humane” alternative to lynching. A rancher’s brand
on a thief’s face identified him as a cattle rustler and
warned him to stay away from that range or face the
rope the next time.
N
Nash, Frank “Jelly” (1884–1933) gangster and Kansas
City Massacre victim
assignment in October 1930, he simply walked away
from the prison.
Exactly what Nash did after his escape is not clear.
He is known to have spent considerable time in
Chicago and to have become involved in the affairs
of the Capone mob. There is some evidence that he
also got involved in Kansas City rackets, sometimes
with elements tied to the Pendergast machine and
sometimes with those operating without political
support.
Nash was almost bald, with only a fringe of hair
around his head, and had very distinctive features:
prominent ears, a pointed chin and a large, hooked
nose. He attempted to alter his appearance by getting a
nose job, which bobbed off a bit of the hook. He grew a
bushy mustache, wore glasses and put on a toupee. He
also got married, unconcerned that there already was a
Mrs. Nash. He and his young bride moved to Hot
Springs, Ark., then considered to be the country’s safest
haven for criminals. Nash, apparently under police protection, seemed to be working various rackets and
would occasionally venture out of town for a robbery.
On June 16, 1933 two FBI agents and the police
chief of McAlester, Okla., Otto Reed, captured Nash in
Hot Springs and spirited him out of town, realizing that
if he was turned over to local authorities he would
probably “escape” immediately. The gangster was
escorted to Kansas City, where a very special welcome
awaited him, the infamous Kansas City Massacre. As
several officers and Nash climbed into an automobile at
Union Station, a large man carrying a machine gun
ordered them to “get ’em up!” Two other gunmen
appeared and suddenly the three opened up, spraying
Frank “Jelly” Nash was one of the most-accomplished robbers and murderers of the early 20th century and had a remarkable ability to gain his
freedom from prison one way or another. In his
hometown of Hobart, Okla. people thought Nash
would have a brilliant future if he could conquer a
violent temper. As it was, he could not. Implicated in
a murder in 1913, Nash was put on trial but acquitted. He then murdered a witness who had testified
against him in the trial, and for that, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Early in 1918 his sentence was commuted to 10 years and in July he was
granted a full pardon. Within a short time, Nash
robbed the Corn State Bank in Corn, Okla. He was
apprehended and sentenced to 25 years at McAlester
Penitentiary. Remarkably, the former lifer got
another reduction in sentence. On December 29,
1922 the governor signed an order commuting
Nash’s 25-year sentence to a mere five years, and the
next day he was freed.
Over the next eight months Nash is believed to have
committed a number of murders and robberies. On
August 20, 1923 he took part in the holdup of a mail
train in Osage County, Okla., during which he brutally
assaulted a mail custodian. On March 3, 1924 Nash
was sent to the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth;
back in Hobart there was general agreement that Nash
would receive no political clemency at the federal level.
Nash did not, but he did enjoy some unusual privileges
despite his past record. He became a model prisoner
and was made a trustee. After being given an outside
639
NATCHEZ-under-the-hill
the car thoroughly. Nash died screaming, “For God’s
sake, don’t shoot me!”
Also killed were four lawmen, and two others were
wounded. One FBI agent survived by playing dead. It
has been debated for years whether the shooting was an
attempt to free Nash or to kill him because of information he could give the government. The identity of the
murderers remains in dispute as well.
See also: KANSAS CITY MASSACRE, WHITE FRONT CIGAR
STORE.
Natchez-under-the-Hill
In 1835 vigilantes tried to clean up lower Natchez,
driving off and killing a number of gamblers, while
many of the prostitutes escaped with the rivermen
aboard their flatboats. However, immediately after
each raid the gamblers and the harlots set up business
again. Such occasional forays by the outraged citizens
were not likely to drive out criminal elements when vice
could make its organizers rich in just a year or two.
Some prostitutes who knew how to save money soon
had enough to buy themselves a flatboat and sail down
to New Orleans in comfort, where they would set up a
floating bordello and, perhaps in due course, open a
lavish house in the French Quarter.
Natchez-under-the-Hill continued in its violent ways
until the Civil War, but the decline of the steamboat cut
off its lifeblood, and it gradually became just another
prosaic and dreary river port with no more than legends to remind visitors of its tawdry past.
Mississippi vice center
One of the most crime-ridden river ports of 19th century America, Natchez-under-the-Hill was separated
from the tamer part of the city, which was located on a
high bluff. Because of this separation, the under-the-hill
district was not subject to the same type of reform
movements that had swept the better part of town in
previous years. Simply stated, there was “no reason for
decent folks to go down to that hell.” Providing the
coarse rivermen with whatever they wanted and could
pay for, lower Natchez shocked the few decent visitors
who ventured into it. One John Bradbury said in 1810,
“For the size of it there is not perhaps in the world a
more profligate place.” Another described it as “the
safest place in America to kill another human being
with no threat of retribution.” Gamblers and prostitutes always did a thriving business, with as many as
150 flatboats and keelboats tying up there on an average day in 1808. Baby girls were said to have been born
in certain whorehouses and grown up there to become
working prostitutes by the age of 12. Some of these
unfortunate girls reportedly never even saw upper
Natchez, knowing no more of the world than the rough
rivermen who stormed ashore each day.
Among the most famous citizens of Natchez-underthe-Hill were a tavern owner named Jim Girty and his
paramour, Marie Dufour, the leading madam of the
town. Girty was regarded by rivermen as unkillable,
having survived a number of gun and knife fights.
Legend had it that Girty’s chest was not ribbed but
solid bone that deflected pistol ball or blade. Marie
Dufour was also known for her prowess in battle. She
invariably won wrestling contests with rivermen, the
loser taking a traditional dunking in the Mississippi.
Despite her ruggedness, Marie was also known for her
womanly charms and ran the high-class house of prostitution in Natchez. The couple came to a tragic end
when Girty proved not completely unkillable, being
shot down from ambush after a gambling dispute.
Marie Dufour rushed to his side and, finding him
dead, committed suicide by shooting herself in the
mouth.
Nathan, Benjamin (1813–1870) murder victim
The murder in 1870 of philanthropist Benjamin
Nathan, described inaccurately as “the richest man in
New York,” remains to this day a tantalizing unsolved
crime.
At 6 A.M. on July 28, 1870, Washington Nathan
went downstairs in the family mansion at 12 West 23rd
Street for a drink of water to soothe his regular hangover. He passed his father’s bedroom, looked in and
received, presumably, a shock. Benjamin Nathan lay
dead on the floor, his features and clothing covered
with blood and gore. He had been repeatedly struck on
the head with an 18-inch carpenter’s “dog.” A safe in
the room had been opened and there were signs of a
struggle. There were also indications that the killer,
rather than hurrying from the place after the crime, had
leisurely washed up in a basin on the dresser. The murderer had not been very neat, leaving a bloody handprint on the wall.
While within 24 hours rewards totaling $47,000
were offered, the case was never solved. Police suspicion centered on dissolute Washington Nathan, who
was known to have had terrific rows with his father
over his lavish spending, but a case against him could
never be proved. Washington was provided with an
alibi for part of the time when the murder may have
been committed by a “lass of the pavements,” as the
papers called her.
In 1879 Washington Nathan, still keeping up his dissolute ways, was paying court to an actress named
Alice Harrison when a former inamorata named Fanny
Barrett, who had followed him, whipped out a revolver
and shot him in the neck. When it appeared that Washington would require an operation to remove the bullet,
640
NEAGLE, David
Chief of Police George W. Walling worked out a plan to
have him questioned after the operation as he was coming out of the anaesthetic in the hope he would say
something about his father’s murder. But the bullet
came out by itself, thwarting that strategy.
A much better technique became apparent too late,
some three decades after the murder, when incredulous
New York police were prevailed upon by Scotland Yard
to take the thumb smudge of a man arrested for a New
York hotel theft and send it to London. There, it was
matched up to a print found on a jewel case in a robbery. Some New York police historian then remembered the bloodstained prints of all five fingers on one
hand of Nathan’s murderer had been left on the wall,
but the fingerprinting detection method had not yet
been developed.
times but paid her fines with a shrug, financing their
cost by selling souvenir hatchets bearing her name.
Now famous, Carry launched a new career as a public speaker (she climaxed her speeches by leading members of the audience on a saloon-busting expedition)
and began publishing a weekly newspaper called The
Hatchet. She became a leader of the Women’s Christian
Temperance Union, whose militant marching song was
“A Saloonless Nation in 1920.” Carry’s most famous
raid was in Washington, D.C., where she wreaked
havoc in the Union Station bar with her three trusty
hatchets, dubbed Faith, Hope and Charity.
Worn out from a decade of intense activity, Carry
Nation collapsed while making a speech in Eureka
Springs, Ark. and died in a hospital in Leavenworth,
Kan. on June 9, 1911. While others could claim
greater credit for bringing about Prohibition in 1919,
Carry Nation had established the militant tone of the
campaign.
Nation, Carry A. (1846–1911) saloon smasher
Carry Nation’s saloon-smashing crusade was inspired
by the Brahma Bull and Red Hot Bar in Richmond,
Tex., where her second husband, David Nation, was
badly beaten by hard-drinking patrons. This caused
such revulsion in 53-year-old Carry that she went on
her famous bar-smashing campaign in Kansas, where
the couple had moved after the ugly event. She had had
an earlier tragic experience with demon rum when her
first husband had died of alcoholism within two years
of their marriage.
On June 5, 1900 Carry wrapped a number of stones
and bricks in old newspapers and drove her horse and
buggy 20 miles to Kiowa, Kan. She entered one saloon
and announced, “Men, I have come to save you from a
drunkard’s fate!” She thereupon set out to smash every
bottle in the place and finished up by destroying the
bar’s mirror and front glass window. She went through
Kiowa like a tornado, destroying six saloons. Amazingly, no one thought of having her arrested, apparently
because Kansas was, in law if not in fact, a dry state.
Carry then moved on to Wichita, where, among others,
she wrecked the elegant bar located in the basement of
the Hotel Carey. “Glory to God,” she announced to
stunned onlookers, as she went about her work. When
she finished, she said, “Peace on earth, good will to
men.” This time, Carry was arrested. She promptly
drew a large number of supporters, who pointed out
that the saloons she had smashed were all illegal. She
was thereupon released.
Carry Nation spread her wrath throughout Kansas
and then beyond the state’s borders. When she arrived
in a town, many saloon keepers immediately closed
down. One did try to stop her at gunpoint, but she
swung a hatchet at his head and the man dropped his
weapon and ran. Carry was arrested more than 30
National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People See SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS RACE RIOT.
National Motor Vehicle Theft Act
Neagle, David
See DYER ACT.
(1847–1926) saloon keeper and lawman
Although little more than the typical gunman-lawman
of the West, David Neagle became famous for a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, In re Neagle, which
has been described as “the most relevant utterance of
the court on the extent of executive authority under the
Constitution.”
Boston-born Neagle grew up in the San Francisco
Bay area. He dropped out of school in 1860, when he
was 13, and headed for mining camp country. While a
teenager he became proficient with a six-shooter and
pursued a checkered career as a gunman, miner, gambler, saloon keeper and lawman. In 1880 Neagle served
as a deputy sheriff in Tombstone, Arizona Territory
during the period of the Earp-Clanton feud. Although
his boss, Sheriff John Behan, clearly sided with the
Clantons, Neagle managed to hold to a neutral line.
After the Earps were forced to leave Tombstone, Neagle
became city marshal. Beaten in a race for sheriff late in
1882, he moved on to other boom towns.
Neagle later became a lawman in San Francisco and,
in 1888, got involved in the famous Hill-Sharon-TerryFields case, one of California’s wildest legal battles.
Originally, the dispute centered on whether or not
Sarah Althea Hill was married to William Sharon, a
millionaire and senator from Nevada. The dispute con641
NELSON, Earle Leonard
tinued even after Sharon’s death and Sarah’s marriage
to flamboyant David Terry, one of her attorneys and a
former, controversial member of the California
Supreme Court. When a court decision went against
Mrs. Terry, a melee broke out in court, and as Sarah
was being ejected into the hallway, David Terry drew a
knife to come to her aid. Among those disarming Terry
was David Neagle. The case had been tried by an old
political rival of Terry, Stephen J. Field, an associate
justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Terry subsequently made several threats against
Field’s life, and when Field returned to California the
next year, Deputy Marshal Neagle was given the job of
protecting him. On August 14, 1889 Terry confronted
Field at the Lathrop railroad station. In the ensuing
argument Terry threatened the jurist and Neagle shot
and killed Terry. Neagle was charged with murder but
was freed after a habeas corpus hearing. Afterward,
Field presented Neagle with a gold watch for having
killed Terry.
California appealed the freeing of Neagle and the case
went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court with the
state insisting that its homicide laws gave it jurisdiction
over the case. The opposing claim was that under a
broad interpretation of the law, Neagle had not acted
improperly in killing Terry, since he was a deputy marshal, despite the fact that no federal statute authorized
marshals to protect judges. The High Court’s decision
upholding Neagle’s freedom greatly enhanced the
authority of the executive branch by declaring that the
word “law” could be interpreted to mean “any obligation fairly and properly inferable” from the Constitution.
Neagle remained a lawman in the area for another
decade and then faded into obscurity, but the legal decision named after him heralded, under Theodore Roosevelt, the development of the strong presidency.
Nonetheless, in 1918 he was placed in a home for mental defectives after raping a young Philadelphia girl. Nelson promptly escaped but was soon caught and placed
on a state prison farm. He escaped from there but was
captured again and this time was sent to the state penitentiary, from which he quickly escaped yet again.
That was the last time the law would have him in
its hands for nine years. In 1919, under the alias of
Roger Wilson, he married a young schoolteacher. Life
for Mrs. Wilson was a horror; Nelson lectured her
constantly from the Bible and accused her of consorting with other men. She finally had to be hospitalized
because of a nervous breakdown. Nelson visited her
in the hospital and had to be ejected from the building
when he was caught trying to rape her in her bed.
Thereafter nothing was heard from or of him for
seven years. Considering his prior record and his
bloody record afterward, if he was entirely law-abiding during that time, it would have been one of the
greatest self-rehabilitative efforts in the annals of
crime.
On February 20, 1926 Nelson entered a San Francisco rooming house in search of lodgings. As the landlady, Mrs. Clara Newman, ushered him up the stairs to
the third floor, a murderous urge overcame Nelson. He
strangled the woman with her own pearl necklace
before they even entered a room. Then he dragged her
body into an empty room, raped the dead woman and
left. Over the next few months Nelson strangled, killed
and raped three other landladies in the San FranciscoOakland area. By now the police had a description of
the killer as a short, blue-eyed, dark-complexioned
man. But they didn’t catch him.
Nelson moved on to Portland, Ore., where in two
days he killed two more landladies. A few weeks later,
he killed another landlady. Then he went back to San
Francisco for his next murder, after which he returned
to Portland and killed again. Nelson moved toward the
East Coast, killing more women all the way to Philadelphia. By June 1927 authorities all over the country
were hunting for the man who had definitely murdered
20 landladies and was strongly suspected of having
killed two others.
Feeling the pressure of the police hunt, Nelson fled
into Canada and took lodging in a rooming house in
Winnipeg. His landlady remembered him as a very
devout gentleman who always carried a Bible. Nelson
did not kill his landlady, realizing that would only open
up his trail again, but the blood urge in him could not
be stilled. Within a few days of his arrival in Winnipeg,
the city was rocked by two murders. One was of a
teenaged girl living in the same house as Nelson. In
another section of town, the raped and strangled body
of Mrs. Emily Paterson was found by her husband.
Nelson, Earle Leonard (1892–1928) mass murderer
For almost a year and a half, Earle Leonard Nelson terrorized the nation with a series of vicious rape-murders.
His official murder toll between February 1926 and
June 1927 stands, by most counts, at 20.
Born in 1892 in Philadelphia, Nelson was orphaned
at an early age and raised by an aunt. He suffered a
head injury in a childhood accident that would cause
him intense pain from time to time. As a teenager, he
exhibited a streak of meanness and violence usually
directed at children or women. At other times, he
became a Bible fanatic, spending hours either reading
the Bible alone in his room or loudly lecturing others
with long quotations from it. His aunt would point to
his devout character whenever one of his more antisocial peccadilloes got him in trouble with the law.
642
NELSON, George “Baby Face”
from Wheaton, Ill., where he had been tried for another
bank robbery charge. Now accepted as a “big-timer,”
something he always wanted, Nelson hooked up with
the Dillinger mob. Dillinger was not overly fond of
Nelson and his quick temper and even quicker trigger
finger, but when several of his gang, including Harry
Pierpont, Russell Clark and Charlie Makley, were
clapped behind bars, he was forced to make do.
Inevitably, Dillinger’s capers became bloodier after the
arrival of Nelson, who often needlessly shot down bank
guards and bystanders.
As his victim toll mounted, Nelson grew to resent
the fact that Dillinger got more notoriety than he got
and that the latter had a bigger price on his head. He
did all he could to change that. In the famous shoot-out
at the Little Bohemia Resort in northern Wisconsin in
April 1934, Nelson separated from the rest of the
Dillinger gang and shot it out at close quarters with FBI
agents, killing Special Agent H. Carter Baum and
escaping in an FBI Ford.
Later, Nelson rejoined Dillinger and they pulled several more capers. By now, Dillinger wanted no more of
Baby Face but was so “hot” himself that he had no
chance of recruiting new help. On the night of July 2,
1934 Dillinger was shot dead by FBI men outside a
Chicago movie house. Thereafter, Nelson, who had not
been with Dillinger that night, became Public Enemy
No. 1. His reign, however, was destined to be short.
Just as Dillinger fell, so did other members of the
gang. Tommy Carroll was killed in a gunfight in Iowa
and in separate incidents in St. Paul, Minn., G-men
caught up with Eddie Green and police gunned down
Homer Van Meter. The only support Nelson had left
was his wife, Helen, and his longtime faithful sidekick,
John Paul Chase. Still, the insane Nelson decided to
become the greatest criminal the country had ever
known, one who would make the public forget about
the fabled Dillinger. He started organizing a gang with
the intention of robbing every day for a month straight.
That grandiose scheme never came to fruition, however. On November 27, 1934 two FBI agents, Sam
Cowley, who played a key role in catching Dillinger,
and Herman E. Hollis, came upon Nelson, his wife and
Chase in a stalled car near Barrington, Ill. Hollis,
armed with a shotgun, crouched behind an FBI car
while Cowley rolled into a nearby ditch with a submachine gun. Nelson opened up with his trusty submachine gun while Chase started firing an automatic rifle.
As the wild gunfight began, Helen Nelson ran for cover
and several highway construction workers hugged the
ground.
Finally, Nelson grew impatient with the standoff,
stood up erect and announced, “I’m going down there
and get those sons of bitches.”
Nelson had killed them both, but this time he left a
trail that could be followed. He had stolen a number of
items from the Paterson home and left some of them at
a second-hand clothing dealer where he purchased a
change of clothes. A description of the killer led to his
capture within four miles of the border, which he was
preparing to recross to evade pursuit.
Although the vast majority of Nelson’s crimes were
committed in the United States, he was tried, sentenced
to death and, on January 13, 1928, hanged in Canada.
On the gallows the man whose aunt had predicted he
would grow up to become a minister turned biblical
one final time. “I am innocent,” he said. “I stand innocent before God and man. I forgive those who have
wronged me and ask forgiveness of those I have
injured. God have mercy!”
Nelson, George “Baby Face” (1908–1934) public
enemy
None of the “public enemies” of the 1930s more thoroughly deserved the description “mad dog” than did
George “Baby Face” Nelson. All the gangsters of the
1930s, Dillinger, the Barkers, Pretty Boy Floyd and others, killed to escape capture, but Nelson was addicted
to violence, much as were Bonnie and Clyde. Even the
latter were a bit more restrained, frequently turning
from murderous to maudlin because of a potential victim’s white hair. Nelson was vulnerable to no such sentimentalism, as demonstrated by his approach to bank
robbery, which was to come through the door shooting
and then simply force the lucky survivors to hand over
the loot. Once when Dillinger henchman Homer Van
Meter, a believer in a slightly more thoughtful
approach, laughed sarcastically at Nelson’s ideas on a
robbery, only the quick intervention of John Dillinger
prevented Baby Face from punishing such disdain with
a submachine gun.
Chicago-born Lester J. Gillis, a name he discarded as
too “sissy,” preferred to be known as Big George Nelson, a ludicrous sobriquet considering his five-foot fiveinch stature. Behind his back he was called Baby Face
Nelson. He started his criminal career in 1922, when he
was sent to a home for boys after being arrested for
auto theft. Paroled in April 1924, he was in and out of
custody thereafter for parole violations and other
crimes. By 1929 Nelson was working for the Capone
mob as a goon in the union field. Apparently he took
the work too earnestly and was dismissed as unreliable
because he sometimes killed when he was only supposed to injure.
Nelson was caught pulling a bank job in 1931 and
got one year to life. He escaped from a prison guard in
1932 while being escorted back to the penitentiary
643
NELSON, George “Baby Face”
Photo shows Baby Face Nelson’s bullet-riddled corpse on an undertaker’s slab in Niles Center, a suburb of Chicago.
He strode forward, his weapon spewing bullets.
“It was just like Jimmy Cagney,” one of the workers
later recalled. “I never seen nothing like it. That fellow
just came right a’coming at them two lawmen and they
must of hit him plenty, but nothing was gonna stop that
fellow.”
From his place in the ditch, Cowley fired desperately
as Nelson advanced. The gangster took a bullet in the
side but came plodding on. He sprayed the ditch with
bullets, cutting Cowley almost in half, even as he
absorbed more lead himself. Then Nelson turned his
fire on Hollis. The agent dropped his empty shotgun
and ran for cover behind a telegraph pole, where he
drew his pistol. Hollis scored several hits on Baby Face
before being fatally shot in the head.
Nelson walked to the FBI car, got in and backed it
up to his wife and Chase, who loaded their arsenal
inside. “You’ll have to drive,” Nelson told Chase. “I’ve
been hit.”
He had been hit—17 times.
The next day Nelson’s body, stripped nude to prevent quick identification, was found in a ditch some 20
miles away. He got the same mawkish coverage from
the press that Dillinger had received. An interview with
Helen Nelson, who had surrendered two days later,
read in part:
‘Baby Face’ Nelson died in the arms of his wife with a
smile on his lips, but with tears in his eyes for his two
young children.
644
NESS, Eliot
Those were the high-lights of a thrilling story
told by Nelson’s pretty widow, in which she gave a
heart-broken account of his death at the hands of federal agents.
however, Ness did justify his reputation as the head of
an incorruptible unit of officers in an era when honest
law enforcers were not easy to find.
A University of Chicago graduate, Ness was 26 years
old in 1928 when he was placed in charge of a Prohibition detail specifically created to harass Capone. At the
time, he knew full well the dishonest and venal record
of the Prohibition agents who had worked under the
Treasury Department until responsibility for enforcing
the law was shifted to Justice. Ness weeded through
hundreds of files before he came up with nine agents
who had “no Achilles’ heel in their make-ups.” All
were in their twenties and were experts in such activities as wiretapping, truck driving and, especially,
marksmanship. These men were dedicated to their task,
defied all threats and violence and proved unbribable.
They were dubbed the Untouchables by the underworld, which was shocked to come across law officers
who could neither be bought nor frightened.
Ness, who reveled in personal publicity, informed
the press whenever a major raid on a brewery was
planned. The horde of cameramen who descended on
the scene often got in the way, but Ness’ superiors did
not interfere. The resultant coverage showed the citizenry and members of the underworld that Capone was
not invulnerable. The Untouchables also distracted
Capone while other revenue agents infiltrated his organization to gain the evidence of income tax evasion that
eventually resulted in his conviction.
After the fall of Capone, Ness became the Justice
Department’s chief investigator of Prohibition violations in the Chicago area and later in the “moonshine
mountains” of Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio. In 1935
a reform administration in Cleveland, Ohio installed
Ness as its new Public Safety Director. Cleveland was
then mired in crime, and its police force was generally
acknowledged to be “on the pad,” i.e., taking graft
from the underworld. A vicious gang known as the
Mayfield Road Mob controlled gambling operations,
bootlegging and prostitution, which blighted virtually
every neighborhood in the city. The building trades
were being strangled by labor racketeers. Violence was
endemic; gang killings and the one-way ride were
almost as prevalent as they had been in Chicago during
its worst period.
Ness quickly established a new environment in the
city and rooted out corruption in the police department, ordering mass transfers and firing officers for
such offenses as taking bribes or being drunk on duty.
During his six-year tenure, Ness was the object of
shootings, beatings, threats and an attempted police
frame-up. In the end, he won the battle of Cleveland,
changing it, as one crime historian put it, “from the
deadliest metropolis to ‘the safest big city in the
Such journalistic excess greatly upset the FBI’s J.
Edgar Hoover, but he could revel in the knowledge that
the last important member of the Dillinger gang had
been eliminated. Chase was captured a short time later
in California and sent to prison for life.
See also: JOHN DILLINGER.
Nelson Tombstone
libelous epitaph
When H. Lawrence Nelson of Raleigh, N.C. was killed
in 1906, his friends and relatives had inscribed on his
tombstone: “H. LAWRENCE NELSON, born Dec.
16, 1880. Murdered and robbed by Hamp Kendall,
Sept. 25, 1906.”
Indeed, a farmer named Hamp Kendall had been
convicted of the crime and sentenced to life imprisonment. However, 11 years later, in 1917, Kendall was
pardoned; the real murderer had confessed. Then began
the great Battle of Nelson’s Tombstone. Kendall petitioned the courts to have the offending tombstone
altered, but the courts said they had no jurisdiction.
County officials declined to take action, pointing to a
state law that made it a felony to tamper with a tombstone. The Board of Deacons of the church that owned
the graveyard property also insisted they had no power
to act. Kendall then appealed to the governor, stating,
“No man can stand under the scandal of this tombstone in the town where he is making an honest living.”
He was informed that it was not a state matter and had
to be handled by county or city authorities. After years
of trying, Kendall finally succeeded in convincing the
legislature to pass a law declaring illegal “any tombstone which charges anyone with a crime.” In 1950 the
accusing inscription was removed, clearing Kendall’s
name 33 years after he was pardoned for the crime.
Ness, Eliot (1902–1957) “Untouchables” leader
One of the most-storied law officers in American history, Eliot Ness was the young head of the so-called
Untouchables. This 10-man team has been credited in
the more melodramatized crime histories in print and
on television with laying waste to Al Capone’s underworld empire in Chicago. No doubt Ness and his
raiders caused the Capone organization grievous financial harm and serious inconvenience, but the claims
made by the lawman and his eager biographers were a
bit bloated. Certainly, the Untouchables never dried up
Chicago or put the mob out of business. In fairness,
645
NEUTRAL ground
U.S.A.’” The Mayfield Road Mob was crushed, and
such Syndicate big shots as Moe Dalitz were forced to
move their gambling operations outside the city limits
to the surrounding counties and eventually, because of
continuing pressure, into northern Kentucky.
Ness left his Cleveland post during World War II to
become federal director of the Division of Social Protection for the Office of Defense. After the war he went
into private business until his death in 1957.
neutral ground
on his head and Mrs. Lowe a more serious skull
wound. Besumer was released from the hospital the
next day. Then the case became slightly twisted. The
newspapers, which had thought Louis Besumer to be
Italian, discovered he was Polish, spoke several languages fluently and received considerable mail from
abroad. In 1918, a war year, that meant Louis Besumer
might not only be the vicious Axeman but a German
spy as well; at the time there was little distinction
drawn in New Orleans between Poles and Germans.
Mrs. Lowe compounded the mess by declaring from
her hospital bed, “I’ve long suspected that Mr. Besumer
was a German spy.” The police arrested Besumer.
The next day the woman made a new statement: “I
did not say Mr. Besumer was a German spy. This is perfectly ridiculous.” The police released Besumer.
About a month after the attack, Mrs. Lowe died,
mumbling rather incoherently about Louis hitting her
with an axe. Besumer was rearrested.
That same night the Axeman struck again. Edward
Schneider returned home to find his pregnant wife lying
unconscious on the bed in a pool of blood. Mrs. Schneider recovered and recalled seeing the dark form of a tall,
heavyset white man wielding an axe. She remembered
the axe coming down at her. On August 10 Joseph
Romano was fatally wounded by an axe assailant, who
was seen fleeing by the victim’s young niece. This time
the Axeman had varied his pattern somewhat: Romano
was not a grocer but a barber. Otherwise the technique
was the same, with a door panel chiseled out and the
death weapon abandoned nearby.
A wave of hysteria swept New Orleans, especially in
the Italian section and most especially among grocers.
Families set up night watches, and the police received
constant calls from nervous grocers who reported seeing
a man with an axe near their home. On March 10, 1919
the Axeman struck again, severely wounding Charles
and Rosie Cortimiglia and killing their two-year-old
daughter, Mary. All the usual signs were present, but in
this instance one of the victims announced she knew the
identity of the assailant, or, more properly, the assailants.
Mrs. Cortimiglia said the murderous attack was the
work of 69-year-old Iorlando Jordano and his son,
Frank, rival grocers from down the street. The police,
happy to have a positive identification, arrested both Jordanos despite Mr. Cortimiglia’s vehement statements
that the rival grocers were not the attackers.
All this gave the police too many Axemen in custody.
Poor Louis Besumer was still incarcerated, awaiting
trial. When his case came up in April, the prosecution
looked rather inept as it attempted to introduce hearsay
and rumor as evidence. Federal agents testified they had
no facts linking Besumer to cases of espionage. In her
lucid moments Mrs. Lowe had indicated Besumer had
crime area during American Revolution
During the American Revolution probably the most
crime-ridden and violent area in the colonies was a section of Westchester County in New York, the so-called
neutral ground between the American lines to the north
and the British forces in New York City to the south.
While both sides occasionally ventured into this noman’s land, it generally was left to be ravaged by “cowboys,” who rode for the British, and “skinners,” who
rode for the Americans. Both groups, composed mainly
of rough farmhands, lived off the land by stealing
horses and cattle and whatever else the local populace
had to offer at the point of a musket. The word “cowboy” derives from these rugged and often vicious fighters and meant “thief” as much as anything else.
Further reading: Neutral Ground by Frank Hough.
New Orleans axeman
uncaptured mass murderer
From 1911 to 1919 New Orleans was plagued by a
series of gruesome murders. Most of the victims were
Italian grocers and/or their relatives. The murderer had
a set pattern, always chiseling in through a door panel
and wielding an axe as a murder weapon, very often
one that was found on the premises. In all cases, the
bloodstained axe was left behind.
In 1911 there were six axe murders, the victims
being three Italian grocers and their wives. The next
murderous onslaught came in 1918. The first victims
were Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Maggio, who owned a small
grocery business and lived over the store. A bloodied
axe was found outside their back door. Despite the similarity to the earlier murders, the police decided their
best suspects in this attack were two of Maggio’s brothers who had been living with the couple, and they
arrested both. Meanwhile, the press became convinced
that the various murders had been committed by one
axeman. This theory was bolstered when the Maggio
brothers produced alibis and were released.
On June 28 there was another axeman attack; the
victims were grocer Louis Besumer and a Mrs. Harriet
Lowe, who were living together as man and wife. Each
survived the onslaught, Besumer suffering a deep gash
646
NEW Orleans procuresses
showed he had constantly been in and out of prison
around New Orleans but had always been on the loose
when an Axeman killing took place. Still, the police
had been burned too often to label the Axeman case
closed. The Los Angeles authorities were unimpressed
with Mrs. Pepitone’s tale and charged her with Mumfre’s murder. Sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, she
was paroled after doing three.
Did the Mumfre killing solve the Axeman case? Or
was there more than one Axeman, up to a dozen or so,
each stealing the idea from the other? Or was it all a
Mafia plot aimed at extorting money from members of
the Italian community in New Orleans? None of these
questions has ever been answered.
not attacked her; only when delirious had she stated
otherwise. Louis walked out of court a free man, not a
killer, not a spy and, certainly, not the Axeman.
By now the entire city was seized by an “Axeman
craze.” People held Axeman parties, and a new song,
“The Mysterious Axeman’s Jazz,” became a local bestseller. Then the New Orleans Times-Picayune received
a letter signed, “The Axeman,” announcing that he
planned to stalk the city on the night of March 19 and
that he loved jazz and would not invade any house
playing such music. On the 19th, bars and nightclubs
were packed, and the city echoed to the sound of thousands upon thousands of record players blaring at full
blast. The sound must have mellowed the Axeman into
passivity; at least no one was axed to death that night.
In May 1919 the Jordanos came to trial. They were
convicted solely on Mrs. Cortimiglia’s testimony, even
though her husband, now separated from her, repeated
his story that the Jordanos had not attacked them.
Frank Jordano was sentenced to hang and the elderly
Iorlando drew a life term. There were some in New
Orleans who felt the Axeman terror had ended. But on
August 10 a grocer named Steve Boca was attacked. A
few weeks later, in another apparent Axeman attack,
someone started working through a door panel of the
home of an Italian druggist. The assailant fled when the
druggist fired a revolver. The following night a 19-yearold woman was found wounded and unconscious in
her bed and an axe was discovered outside her window.
She recovered but could not say who had attacked her.
The last suspected attack by the Axeman occurred
on October 27, 1919, when Mrs. Mike Pepitone, the
wife of yet another Italian grocer, walked into her bedroom and found her husband dead, with his blood
stains all over the walls and ceiling. She started screaming, and the Axeman, who was still in the room, rushed
out past her.
The more recent assaults made it appear that the Jordanos, convicted in the Cortimiglia case, quite possibly
were not responsible for the Axeman rampage. Then in
December, Rosie Cortimiglia rushed into the city room
of the Times-Picayune in tears, dropped to her knees
and admitted she had lied about the Jordanos. Within a
few days they were released.
Happily for the police, the Pepitone murder was the
last foray of the mysterious Axeman. Aside from the
Jordanos, the sum of their detective work in about a
half-dozen cases had been to arrest whomever had discovered the body or bodies. Then a new development
took place 2,000 miles away in Los Angeles. A man
named Joseph Mumfre was shot dead by a woman who
turned out to be Mrs. Mike Pepitone. She announced
that Mumfre was the Axeman and had killed her husband. The police checked Mumfre’s record, which
New Orleans procuresses
Even in cities that openly allowed prostitution in the
19th century, the crime of procuring was frowned upon
even by the corrupt police who took bribes from
brothel owners. Many officers in such wide-open cities
as Cincinnati and Chicago never thought twice about
breaking up a procuring ring preying on young innocents. The exception to this rule was post-Civil War
New Orleans, where the procuring trade was largely in
the hands of women who seemed to have little or no
trouble with the law despite the particularly unsavory
character of their profession, giving rise to the term
“New Orleans procuresses.”
The activities of the procuresses went back a long
time in the city’s history, but they received little public
attention until 1845, when it was revealed that Mary
Thompson was doing a thriving business selling virgins
out of a cigar store blind on Royal Street. She sold these
inexperienced girls for sums of $200 to $400, depending on their looks. In March 1845 she became friendly
with l5-year-old Mary Fozatte and gave her presents of
clothes, toy jewelry and candy. Then she sold the girl to
an elderly gentleman for $350. As she was taking her
merchandise to a house on Burgundy Street, young
Mary broke away and ran home. Most indignant, the
procuress charged the girl with stealing. The case
against her was dropped, however, and in turn, she was
awarded $50 damages. The police, as one writer put it,
“told Mary Thompson that if she tried to sell another
girl she might be punished.”
In the post-Civil War era the procuresses were kept
busy supplying girls for houses of prostitution in several cities besides New Orleans: Atlanta, Memphis,
Galveston and a number of other southern cities. They
took orders for “stock” and “fresh stock,” which
meant inexperienced children worth very high fees. In
the late 1860s a schoolteacher-procuress, Louisa Murphy, had a set price of $800 for a young girl.
647
NEW York fire of 1835
ber 16, it had already spread to surrounding buildings.
Most of the city’s 49 engines and six hook-and-ladder
units responded, but because of the weather they faced
a brutal task. The temperature was 17° below zero, and
hydrants had frozen solid, while the engine pumps
froze over with ice unless constantly heated. The ice
covering the river was broken through and bucket
brigades formed, but these efforts were unavailing. By
11 P.M. the fire had swept into Water and Pearl streets
and Exchange Place, the home of the stock exchange at
the time. Within another hour 13 acres of Manhattan
were ablaze, and the glow could be seen as far away as
Philadelphia.
By the early morning hours of December 17, the
tenement dwellers and criminals of the Bowery and the
Five Points had descended on the scene and engaged in
incredible looting. While Marines from the Navy Yard
dynamited buildings to form firebreaks around the
financial district, many of the firefighters joined the
looters and were seen carrying goods out of burning
shops and disappearing. Looters made off with hoards
of clothing, jewelry and furniture, which had been
heaped in the street without adequate guards. Thugs
set afire those buildings that weren’t already burning
to cover their criminal activities. A group of irate citizens caught one thug as he was firing a store on Broad
Street and hanged him from a tree. It was three days
before harried police got around to cutting down the
frozen body.
The fire was finally contained at the end of the second day, but by that time much of New York was in
ruins. Almost 700 buildings were gutted and losses,
estimated at $22 million, bankrupted most insurance
companies and were credited with bringing on the
Panic of 1837.
During the week following the blaze, the police
staged numerous raids on the hovels of the poor and
criminal classes of the Bowery and Five Points districts, repossessing huge amounts of loot. Moving
vans were required to handle the booty in several
individual buildings. No raids, however, were made
on the homes of firefighters, although Fire Chief
Handsome Jim Gulick was dismissed for failing to
curb the spreading of the fire or the illegal activities
of many of his men. However, when the firefighters
threatened to go on strike, the fire-panicked city reinstated him. In the Bowery and Five Points a bitter
greeting came into vogue: “I’m a firefighter and wellto-do, thank you.”
By the 1880s the procuresses operated with increasing boldness. Such notables as Miss Carol, Mother
Mansfield, Spanish Agnes, Emma Johnson and Nellie
Haley, called the Queen of the Procuresses, sent out
mail circulars of their stock. By that time the competition was so fierce that the price for virgins sometimes
dropped as low as $50.
Spanish Agnes got into only minor difficulties when
in 1890 police discovered she had sold the owners of a
Galveston brothel two girls who had been reported
missing by their parents. In a newspaper interview,
Agnes said:
I frequently receive orders from the keepers of fashionable places. These ladies ask me to send them girls, or
women for that matter. I always prefer to have experienced women than virtuous girls, because there is less
fear of trouble. I am in correspondence with women
like Molly Waters and Abbie Allen of Galveston; these
people write to me for girls. Some time ago I received
an order from Miss Abbie Allen to send her some girls,
and soon after Miss Lena Smith informed me that she
could secure two nice young girls. . . . I do not like to
have anything to do with innocent girls. . . . Not a
very long time ago a mother brought her three daughters to me and offered them for sale. Two, she said,
were bad, and the youngest still unacquainted with vice
and the wickedness of the world. She demanded $25
for the girls, and expressed her belief that she ought to
get more for the guileless maiden.
The procuress added she bought all three girls and
realized a substantial profit.
In 1892 a newspaper reporter doing an exposé on
the work of procuresses approached Emma Johnson
about buying a 15-year-old girl, then demurred at making the actual purchase. The Johnson woman was
incensed: “You’re a fool! The girl’s a virgin! You’ll
never get another chance like this in New Orleans!”
There was no record of Emma Johnson coming to
grief because of the revelations, and in fact, the New
Orleans procuresses continued to prosper until 1917,
when Storyville and much of the brothel operations in
New Orleans were shut down by the military as a
wartime health measure.
New York fire of 1835
looting spree
The New York Fire of December 16–17, 1835 produced an orgy of looting as well as the saying, “I’m a
firefighter and well-to-do, thank you.”
The fire started in a five-story building on Merchant
Street in the fledgling financial district. By the time the
alarm was sounded at 9 A.M. on the morning of Decem-
New York Lottery swindle
One of the earliest lottery swindles in America was
unearthed in New York in 1818, when it was found
648
NEWCOMB, George “Bitter Creek”
that lottery operators had arranged for certain numbers
to win in return for kickbacks from the prearranged
winners.
The lottery, much of whose proceeds were allegedly
slated for the unfortunate, was exposed by Charles
Baldwin, the editor of the New York Republican Chronicle, who wrote:
remained unsolved. To this day, a reward of $26,000
awaits the person who can supply information leading
to a solution of the case.
Newcomb, George “Bitter Creek” (1866?–1895)
outlaw
Handsome, extravagantly mustached George Newcomb was perhaps the most devilish member of that
often likable bunch of hell raisers the Doolin gang and
also the tragic hero of the supposedly authentic tale of
the Rose of Cimarron.
Newcomb appears to have been born in Kansas. He
left home early, moving to Texas, where he herded cattle for rancher John Slaughter and was known as
Slaughter’s Kid. In the 1880s Newcomb drifted into the
Cherokee Strip, working as a cowboy and then becoming an outlaw. He rode with the Daltons near the end of
their days and then with Bill Doolin, who had been a
part-time member of the Dalton gang. During one train
robbery Newcomb put three lawmen-guards out of
commission, allowing him and his accomplices to get
away safely with their booty.
Newcomb always had a way with the ladies and was
noted for singing his own verse:
It is a fact that in this city there is SWINDLING in the
management. A certain gentleman in town received
intimation that a number named would be drawn on
Friday last and it was drawn that day! This number
was insured high in several different places. A similar
thing had happened once before in this same lottery;
and on examination of the managers’ files the number
appeared soiled as if it had been in the pocket several
days. . . .
Baldwin was sued for libel by several of the operators and a select committee was appointed to look into
the matter. What they found was that one of the complainants, John H. Sickles, was a secret supplier of the
lottery forms and had provided certain politicians with
the winning numbers in advance. By using political figures in the scheme, Sickles and others assured that the
lottery would enjoy general governmental approval and
support. Based on these findings, Baldwin was acquitted and became famous as the first of New York’s journalistic muckrakers.
I’m a wild wolf from Bitter Creek,
And it’s my night to howl.
It was apparently such sterling talents that turned
the head of l5(?)-year-old Rosa Dunn, whom he met at
a dance, and the pair soon became lovers. Young Rosa
was often in the company of various members of the
Doolin gang, and she evidently was the legendary Rose
of Cimarron, who allegedly intervened to aid the gang
when they were ambushed at the famous Battle of
Ingalls in the Oklahoma Territory. When Newcomb
took a bullet in the leg during that conflict, Rosa supposedly brought him more ammunition, shielded his
body with hers and helped him escape. Aside from the
fact that Newcomb was wounded and escaped, little of
the legend is true. According to most trustworthy
accounts by various combatants, neither Rosa nor any
other Rose of Cimarron was on hand to perform
“angel of mercy” rescue.
However, probably because of his legend rather than
his criminal deeds, Bitter Creek Newcomb soon sported
a $5,000 reward on his head. In May 1895 Newcomb,
with fellow outlaw Charlie Pierce, returned to Cimarron River country to visit his Rosa. An added inducement may have been the fact that Rosa’s brothers owed
him $900. Arriving at the Dunn ranch, the two had
barely dismounted when Rosa’s two brothers opened
up on them, dropping both men in their tracks. When
New York World’s Fair bombing
A baffling bombing case, one that the New York
police spent more man-hours on than any other, was
the attempt to blow up the British Pavillion at the
New York World’s Fair on July 4, 1940. Two days
earlier, on a Tuesday, an anonymous telephone call
warned a telephone operator of the coming explosion,
and immediately, a dozen extra detectives were placed
on duty at the building. On Wednesday afternoon, a
pavillion employee noticed a suitcase in the engine
room but disregarded it because, incredibly, he had
not been made aware of the warning. At about 4
o’clock Thursday afternoon, the man saw the suitcase
again, but this time, passing closer to it, he heard a
ticking sound coming from inside and informed officials. Within minutes four members of the New York
police bomb squad arrived on the scene and carried
the suspect suitcase to an open field, where two minutes later, as they started to inspect it, the case
exploded, killing two of the officers, Detectives
Joseph J. Lynch and Ferdinand A. Socha, and wounding the other two. Despite endless hours of police
work tracking down every possible lead, the case
649
NEWTON Massacre
the Dunns moved in on their victims, they found Pierce
still breathing and immediately shot him again.
The following morning the Dunn brothers had
loaded the two apparent corpses on a wagon and were
heading for Guthrie, Okla. to collect the reward money
when Bitter Creek started moaning and asked for a
drink of water. The Dunns responded with another bullet, this time a fatal one.
See also: DOOLIN GANG; INGALLS, OKLAHOMA TERRITORY, BATTLE OF; ROSE OF CIMARRON.
Newton Massacre
Kansas shoot-out
The great Western shoot-outs were seldom calculated,
eyeball-to-eyeball confrontations but rather spontaneous explosions of violence. Certainly, such was the
case with what became known as the Newton Massacre. The trouble developed in early August 1871,
when ex-railroad tough Mike McCluskie shot and
killed a gunfighter named Willie Wilson, apparently in
an argument over who was buying drinks for whom.
McCluskie was warned that Wilson had a lot of friends
who would be looking for vengeance, but he just
shrugged.
On August 11 McCluskie was in a saloon-dance
hall in Hide Park, Newton’s bordello area, talking to
some railroaders for the Atchison, Topeka and Santa
Fe. A group of Texas cowboys headed by Hugh Anderson, the son of a wealthy cattleman, stormed in, firing
as they came. Anderson shot McCluskie in the neck,
but the latter lived long enough to get off a shot that
wounded Anderson. For a moment there was a shocked
silence in the place and then a frail-looking youth of no
more than 18 got up from a table, picked up both
Anderson’s and McCluskie’s guns and walked to the
door. He locked it and whirled around shooting. In less
than two minutes four of the Texas cowboys were dead
and several others wounded. By the time the smoke
cleared, the youth, known only as Riley and dying of
tuberculosis, had vanished, leaving the citizens of Newton with a roomful of corpses. It was, in the words of a
local newspaper editor, “worse than Tim Finnegan’s
wake.”
Nicknames, criminal
More than the rest of us, criminals often pick up colorful nicknames, many of which spotlight their illegal
activities or, in effect, describe their modus operandi.
Thus, the Snowman is a notorious New York dope peddler. Bunko is an ace con man. And Kissing Sam is a
pickpocket who can perform the toughest trick in that
line of work, lifting a victim’s billfold from an inside
650
coat pocket while staring him right in the eye, close
enough, in fact, to kiss him.
Years ago, Billy the Clock was an arsonist who
developed a special celluloid timing device to touch off
fires, and slow-paying clients of a New York loan shark
called Gas Pipe Sam Bianculli soon found out, to their
regret, how he had earned his nickname. Waxey Gordon, who grew up to become one of the most powerful
bootleg kings, traced his nickname back to his youthful
days as a dip, slipping in and out of people’s pockets as
though his hands were coated with tallow. Jack “Legs”
Diamond gained his monicker as a youth by displaying
a speedy grab-and-run technique in New York’s fur and
garment district.
Other nicknames are bestowed in deference to a
prominent personal characteristic or appearance. Duck
Walk was a Chicago gun moll whose strut was greatly
affected by the two .38s she kept holstered to her knees.
“Tough Tony” was tough, and Nails was as hard as
same. Vince Coll, a wild killer, certainly earned the
sobriquet Mad Dog. Scarface Al Capone got his scar,
and his resulting nickname, from a fight with a Brooklyn longshoreman, although he always attributed it to a
bayonet wound he suffered in combat during World
War I, a distinction the military records did not bear
out. Golf Bag Sam Hunt, a Capone gunman, got his tag
because of his habit of packing an automatic shotgun
with his golf clubs. The accuracy of some nicknames in
describing those honored by them has been debatable,
to say the least. If Slick Willie Sutton, for example, was
so “slick” why did he spend most of his adult life
behind bars?
Prostitution has proved a rich source of quaint nicknames over the years. Jennie the Factory was a New
York brothel inmate whose name described her productivity. Mike “de Pike” Heitler was a top brothel keeper
who earned the label de Pike because he ran the cheapest fancy house in Illinois and was thus considered a
piker. Actually, Mike de Pike resented being so dubbed
because he thought of himself as a skilled manager who
had been able to hold prices down by the introduction
of modern, assembly line business methods. Also
appropriately named was Mike’s assistant, Monkey
Face Charlie Genker, who, in addition to being no
beauty, matched the agility of the jungle creature for
whom he was named by scampering up doors and peering over transoms to encourage the ladies and their customers to speed things along.
Women have won their own share of underworld
nicknames. Over the years there have been numerous
Kiss of Death girls, such as Mary Margaret Collins,
who was labeled Kiss of Death Maggie by reporters
because she had run through six husbands, all killed in
battles with either the underworld or the police. Several
NINETEENTH Street Gang
other women who traveled in similar company found
themselves tagged with the same nickname. Louise
Rolfe won fame in the press as the Blonde Alibi during
the trial of Machine Gun Jack McGurn for murder.
McGurn insisted he had been on an amorous trip out of
town with Louise, a nightclub entertainer. The alibi
won him his freedom, but the prosecution later found
proof that McGurn had been lying and indicted him for
perjury. Louise was slated to be the chief witness
against him, and his conviction seemed certain. But
McGurn solved that problem by making Louise his permanent Blonde Alibi; he married her, confident in the
knowledge that a wife could not be forced to testify
against her husband.
Many criminal nicknames have stemmed from a single but dramatic incident. “Titanic” Thompson was a
con man operating aboard the Titanic when it sank in
1912. Thompson and three of his confederates, who
had been fleecing passengers in card games, managed to
get aboard lifeboats and survive the tragedy. Thompson
not only put in maximum claims for lost baggage and
valuables but also obtained the names of deceased passengers so that fellow con men could make bogus
claims. Before Lucky Luciano achieved his high status
in organized crime, he earned his nickname by supposedly surviving a “ride” given him by a rival gang. Yet
there is some suspicion that Luciano had never been
marked for death by other gangsters but had been kidnapped and beaten by a family whose daughter he had
dishonored. According to this theory, when he was
finally let go, he contacted Meyer Lansky and together
they concocted the tale about Luciano surviving an
underworld hit because they felt a reputation for invincibility would be helpful in winning the respect of other
criminals.
Several underworld nicknames have been highly
laudatory, such as Frank (the “Prime Minister”)
Costello’s and Johnny (“the Brain”) Torrio’s. Complimentary in its own fashion was the sobriquet, Hot Stove
given to Jimmy Quinn, an ex-convict whose record did
not prevent his election as a Chicago alderman in the
early part of this century. Quinn was, as a saying of the
day had it, “so crooked he’d steal a hot stove.”
But some criminals have deeply resented their nicknames. Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel’s friends called him
Ben; he would go bugs if anyone called him Bugsy to
his face. Charles “Ice Wagon” Connors was equally
annoyed by his nickname, which was given after he
smashed a robbery getaway car into an ice truck.
Harry Guzik, a longtime procurer and the man who
handled payoffs to the police for the Capone mob,
was called Greasy Thumb Guzik because, according to
his version, he had to peel off so many bills from the
huge roll he always carried that he could never get the
grease off his thumb. The Chicago police had another,
more self-serving explanation for the origin of his handle. It went back to his days as a waiter, when he
couldn’t seem to serve a plate of soup without getting his thumb in it. Whichever the case, when Harry
died, the newspapermen transferred the nickname to
his younger brother Jake, who became the top payoff
man for the syndicate. Some nicknames are just too
good to die.
Night of the Sicilian Vespers
alleged Mafia killings
The purge of the old Mafia’s “Mustache Petes” that
began during the Castellammarese War was completed
on September 10, 1931 with the assassination of Salvatore Maranzano, the “boss of bosses.” An old myth
repeated by a number of crime historians, including
former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, was that on
the same day no less than “forty members of La Cosa
Nostra died by gunfire” around the country. It makes
for an intriguing tale, but Lucky Luciano, the supposed
mastermind behind this rash of killings, which came to
be called the Night of the Sicilian Vespers, often challenged anyone to present a list of supposed victims and
his challenge was never answered.
The only killings that could be tied in with Maranzano’s were those of Jimmy Marino, a Maranzano
underling who was shot six times that afternoon as he
stood in the doorway of a Bronx barbershop, and Louis
Russo and Sam Monaco, whose bodies washed ashore
in Newark Bay three days later. The men, who were
identified as Maranzano faithfuls, had had their throats
cut and their heads crushed. They were wrapped in
sash cord and weighted with sash weights.
Later, informer Joe Valachi asked Vito Genovese
why these men had been killed. He was told that when
a “big boss dies, all his faithful have to go with him.”
See also: CASTELLAMMARESE WAR, CHARLES “LUCKY”
LUCIANO, SALVATORE MARANZANO, MUSTACHE PETES.
Nineteenth Street Gang
pro-Catholic New York gang
In the 1870s a pack of juvenile criminals, whose members continued in the gang until they reached their
mid-twenties, terrorized New York City’s Poverty
Lane, the area from l9th to 34th Streets around Second
Avenue. The leader of this band, called the 19th Street
Gang, was an incredibly mean punk named Little
Mike. What made this gang of pickpockets, sneak
thieves and muggers unique was its unswerving religious affiliation. Violently pro-Catholic, it often
attacked Protestant missions and schools. But the
gang’s main purpose was stealing and its members victimized cripples, blind men and children as well as
651
NITTI, Frank
“Frank, you’re asking for it,” Ricca is said to have
raged at him during a gang conference in Nitti’s home.
Ricca’s words, Nitti knew, were as good as a death
sentence. The next day, March 19, 1943, Nitti took a
walk along some railroad tracks. He drew a pistol from
his pocket and shot himself to death.
storekeepers. The only defense against these attacks
was for a potential victim to prove he was Catholic.
Thus, a man being waylaid might be asked to give his
baptismal name, recite his catechism, name his parish
priest or reveal his Easter duty. Even this was not
always a complete defense. As Little Mike is quoted as
having said to one victim: “You’re a good Catholic all
right, but we haven’t made a score in a long time.
We’re taking half your money.” Happily for the public,
the gang faded away by the mid-1880s.
Nitti, Frank
nobles
labor musclemen
During the heyday of union organizing, especially in
the needle and allied garment industry trades, it became
common for both fledgling unions and employers to
hire thugs to win their battles. Employers used goons to
guard strikebreakers, slug union pickets and raid union
meetings; the labor unions used them to blackjack and
murder strikebreakers and pressure those workers who
did not wish to join the union. Yet even these thugs had
some loyalty, and although they seldom let their feelings interfere with business, they basically considered
themselves in sympathy with the workers.
During this period a group of workers in New York
haunted the employment agencies of the Bowery and
Sixth Avenue looking for work as strikebreakers, since
the pay for such efforts was much higher than normal
wages. Ironically, the thugs assigned to protect these
strikebreakers held them in such ill repute that they
referred to them as “finks.” They, on the other hand,
considered themselves so superior, despite their evil
work, that they called themselves “nobles.”
These nobles so preferred practicing their art on
behalf of the unions, which generally paid better than
the employers, many of whom were penny pinchers,
that from 1913 to 1915 they engaged in open warfare
among themselves for the right. This conflict came to
be known as the Labor Sluggers War.
See also: LABOR SLUGGERS WAR.
(1884–1943) Capone mob lieutenant
The importance of Frank Nitti, whom Al Capone supposedly chose as his successor when he went to prison,
has been highly exaggerated; in fact, his greatest claim
to fame probably was the television show “The
Untouchables,” which often cast him in the role of the
mob’s mastermind. Yet when the national crime syndicate was being established in the early 1930s, its
founders dealt with Paul “the Waiter” Ricca as the
head of Chicago’s Capone mob—without Nitti’s
knowledge. No one thought it important that he be
informed.
Born in 1884, Frank Nitti was a barber whose customers included a number of crooks. He became a
fence, eventually getting involved with the Capone
forces at the onset of Prohibition. He was a skillful
organizer and Capone relied on him to see that his
orders were transmitted and carried out. After Big Al’s
fall, the newspapers hailed Nitti as the new boss of the
Capone mob. Nitti probably thought he was, but men
like Ricca, Tony Accardo, Jake Guzik, the Fischetti
brothers, Murray Humphreys and others were not
going to follow him.
However, Nitti was valuable as a front man, someone who could take the heat from the authorities. In
1932 two police officers, under orders from Mayor
Anton Cermak, shot and severely wounded Nitti. Cermak was determined to wrest control of Chicago from
the Capone mob and replace it with his own group of
criminals, headed by Teddy Newberry.
Although near death at one point, Nitti survived and
the legend about him grew. When the mob became
deeply involved in its shakedown of the film industry,
Nitti’s name was often used by Willie Bioff and George
Browne to frighten movie moguls. Finally, federal rackets investigators succeeded in getting Nitti, Ricca and
several others indicted. Ricca, who with Accardo was
more openly assuming leadership of the Capone mob,
demanded that Nitti “take the rap,” but Nitti refused.
He had served 18 months in the early 1930s for income
tax violations and he was terrified by the thought of
going back behind bars.
No-Man’s Land
outlaw refuge area
Through a boundary quirk in the latter part of the
19th century, an area of some 800 square miles just
north of the Texas Panhandle was neither incorporated
into the states of Texas, Colorado or Kansas nor
included within the territorial limits of New Mexico or
the Indian Territory, which eventually became part of
Oklahoma. Thus, outside the law enforcement jurisdiction of either white or Indian law, it was referred to
as No-Man’s Land and became a safe refuge for
wanted men, such as Ned Christie and various other
outlaws. No-Man’s Land was eventually eliminated in
1890, not as an anti-outlaw measure but rather as a
consequence of the Oklahoma land rush, which also
resulted in the taking of the Cherokee Strip from the
Indians.
652
NORMANDIE, S.S.
Norcross, Henry L.
France and in the process of being converted into a
troopship. The vessel burned for days, finally listing
and turning on its side. There was much speculation
about the cause of the fire, ranging from worker
carelessness to possible Nazi sabotage. The truth was
not revealed until more than three decades later,
when the posthumous memoirs of Lucky Luciano
explained that the ship had been sabotaged by the
underworld.
The motive behind the act was to establish a climate
of fear that would force the military authorities to
request aid from the then-imprisoned Luciano in return
for certain considerations. During the early months of
the war, navy intelligence was all over the New York
waterfront seeking the aid of workers in protecting
ships and cargo. The first man to see the opening this
could provide Luciano was Albert Anastasia, Luciano’s
longtime doting underling. Albert consulted with his
brother, Tough Tony Anastasio, and then brought the
plan to Frank Costello, who immediately presented it
to Luciano in Dannemora Prison. Luciano agreed that
if the Normandie burned, the navy, fearful of similar
acts, would be forced to ask the underworld to help
guard the waterfront. And that would mean dealing
with Luciano.
The result was predictable. Years later, Luciano
said: “That god-damn Anastasia—he really done a job.
Later on, Albert told me not to feel too bad about
what happened to the ship. He said that as a sergeant
in the Army he hated the fuckin’ Navy anyway.” The
reaction by the navy and Washington was equally predictable. Almost instantly, Operation Underworld was
launched, with the intention of enlisting underworld
leaders to help the war effort. The navy soon found
final approval for such a plan lay in Luciano’s prison
cell, and the gang leader exacted a price for his cooperation, demanding to be moved from “Siberia,” as Dannemora was known in prison circles. He was
transferred first to Sing Sing and then to Great
Meadow Prison, considered the most pleasant of all
the state’s penal institutions.
It must be recorded that for the balance of the war
the New York waterfront remained immune to any
major security problems. After the war the rest of
Luciano’s price was met. On January 3, 1946
Thomas E. Dewey, the man who had put Luciano
away for 30 to 50 years on a charge of compulsory
prostitution, announced his approval of Luciano’s
release provided he was deported. Operation Underworld, born in a flaming ship at a New York pier, was
concluded successfully, at least from the underworld’s
point of view.
See also: ANTHONY “TOUGH TONY” ANASTASIO,
CHARLES “LUCKY” LUCIANO.
See RUSSELL SAGE.
Norfleet manhunt
In 1919, while stopping at a Dallas hotel, a Texas
rancher named Frank Norfleet was taken by a group
of confidence men. Using a variation of the “big
store” racket, they roped Norfleet in by letting him
“find” the lost wallet of an obviously rich man. When
Norfleet returned the wallet, he was offered a $100
reward, which he refused. The wealthy man, a supposed speculator on the Dallas Cotton Exchange,
then said that he would invest the money for him and
let him have the winnings. Soon, Norfleet’s “winnings” totaled $73,000. However, it developed he had
to post some $45,000 as security before he could get
his money. Norfleet was “put on the send,” i.e., sent
back home to empty his savings account and put a
mortgage on his ranch. He returned with the money
and gave it to the five crooks, who soon decamped
with it.
Norfleet so far had behaved like the ideal sucker, but
he didn’t continue to. Vowing vengeance, he went after
the gang. After raising another $30,000, he spent the
next four years on a private manhunt, running down
the confidence men one by one. His prize catch was the
gang’s leader, Joe Furey, a legendary swindler. In Denver, while on the trail of another of the crooks, W. B.
Spencer, Norfleet infiltrated a phony stock exchange
operation and gathered evidence that led to the arrest
and conviction of three dozen con men. But his quarry
was not among them. He later caught up with Spencer
in Salt Lake City. When caught, Spencer complained
bitterly, “None of us had a minute’s peace since you got
on our trail.”
Also caught in the Norfleet net were two lawmen
who provided protection for confidence operators. In
all, Norfleet covered 40,000 miles and spent $30,000 in
his four-year vengeance hunt. The Texas legislature
took note of the plucky rancher’s tenacity and daring
and appropriated a small amount of expense money for
him, but the action was ruled illegal. The matter was
taken under advisement in 1923 by the governor and
the legislature, seeking to find some way to reimburse
Norfleet. In 1960, at the age of 95, Frank Norfleet said
whimsically, “Far as I know, the thing is still ‘under
advisement.’”
Normandie, S.S.
sabotage case
On the night of February 11, 1942 a spectacular fire
at a pier in the Hudson River lit up the blacked-out
skies of New York. The blaze was aboard the French
luxury liner S.S. Normandie, interned after the fall of
653
NORRIS, Charles
During World War II the burning of the S.S. Normandie was considered by many to be Nazi sabotage. Later revelations
indicated it was more likely a case of Mafia sabotage, part of a successful effort to “spring” Lucky Luciano from prison.
police with the information that whoever had applied
the chloroform had exceptional strength and that “the
position of the body suggests that a hammerlock hold
had been applied.”
Both the Elwell and King murders remained
unsolved. But in hundreds of other homicides Dr. Norris
gave expert testimony that resulted in guilty verdicts.
In a number of other cases, he saved innocent men.
In 1919 Mrs. Bessie Troy was found dead on the sidewalk in front of her apartment on Amersterdam
Avenue. Her husband, Michael, was charged with murder on the complaint of Bessie’s relatives that he had
flung the body from a window to cover up her killing.
Dr. Norris was able to testify that the woman had been
alive when her body hit the pavement, and her husband
went free.
In an even more bizarre case, in 1926, a policeman
on patrol along the waterfront noticed a man carrying
a heavy bundle, which he flung into New York Bay.
The officer stopped the man, who insisted the bundle
had contained only old clothes, but the officer had the
bundle fished from the water. It contained parts of a
Norris, Charles (1867–1935) medical examiner
Charles Norris, New York City’s first medical examiner
after the city abandoned the outdated and generally
inept coroner system in 1918, became a living legend
who inspired an endless amount of material for feature
writers. He was a reliable source for authors of crime
material based on facts and was the model for the brilliant, philosophical medical wizard of many a detective
novel. Despite numerous difficulties, both financial and
political, Norris created the nation’s model medical
examiner’s office. As a pathologist, he provided evidence that altered many a police investigation.
When Joseph B. Elwell, a famous bridge expert, was
found slain in his West 70th Street apartment, the death
was described as a suicide until Dr. Norris ordered a
detailed study of the body at the morgue. He then
determined that Elwell had been shot by a revolver held
directly in front of his forehead, in a position that
would have made it impossible for the victim to have
pulled the trigger. In the Dot King murder case a few
years later, Dr. Norris not only deduced the cause of
death as chloroform asphyxiation but also supplied
654
NORTHFIELD, Minnesota bank raid
woman’s body. The man, Francisco Trapia, was taken
back to his flat, where the rest of the body was found.
Trapia immediately confessed that he had killed the
woman after a long drinking bout. By the time Dr. Norris arrived, he had been taken away.
“No doubt about this one, is there, Doc?” an officer
greeted the medical examiner.
Dr. Norris viewed the scene with an experienced eye,
observed the cherry-red color of the remaining torso
and agreed, “No doubt at all,” he said, “But it isn’t
murder, you know.”
Dr. Norris quickly determined that death had
resulted from carbon monoxide poisoning caused by
fumes from a faulty kitchen stove in the one-room flat.
As Norris reconstructed the events, Trapia awakened
from a drunken sleep (before he too was killed) and
found the woman’s body. He remembered slapping her
about and assumed he had killed her. He then decided
to get rid of the body.
It was one of the few cases in which the police took a
case to court in opposition to the medical examiner.
They had, they felt, a perfect case, complete with a confession. However, based on Dr. Norris’ testimony, the
defendant was cleared, or at least almost. He was
charged and convicted of transporting a body through
the public streets without a license.
A volatile individual, Dr. Norris zealously guarded
his domain from political encroachments. He
announced his resignation on a number of occasions,
the last time in 1932, when Acting Mayor Joseph V.
McKee ordered a 20 percent cut in his office’s budget.
Public outrage mounted, Mayor McKee retreated and
Dr. Norris returned. He died in 1935 at the age of 67
while still in office.
the dozen. North fled but was captured the next day
and hanged on a hill above the city, with most of the citizens in attendance. His body was left hanging with a
“fixed” roulette wheel tied to it, an indication that dishonest gambling may well have been just as much cause
for capital punishment as leading an insurrection.
See also: JOHN MURREL, VICKSBURG “VOLUNTEER.”
Northfield, Minnesota bank raid
downfall
James gang’s
The 20-minute raid on the First National Bank of
Northfield, Minn. on the afternoon of September 7,
1876 marked the virtual end of the James brothers’
gang. Ironically, the gang had originally intended to
hold up the First National Bank at Mankato, Minn.,
but street repairs outside the bank had caused a lastminute change in plans.
Riding south, the eight members of the gang—Jesse
and Frank James; Jim Cole and Bob Younger; Charlie
Pitts, Clell Miller and 19-year-old Bill Chadwell—
stormed into Northfield, never expecting to find strong
resistance from honest citizens who were not awed by
the “greatest revolver fighters in the West.” Inside the
bank, cashier Joseph Heywood insisted that the safe
could not be opened because of a time lock. Jesse
accused him of lying and pistol-whipped him to the
floor. Then one of the clerks made a mad dash out the
back door, escaping with a wound in his arm from a
bullet fired by Pitts.
That shot alerted the citizenry. Rather untypical for
a Western town of the era, Northfield had a limited
number of firearms. A citizen named Elias Stacy,
grabbed a shotgun loaded with only bird shot and
blasted one of the lookouts, Miller, off his horse. His
face bloodied, Miller remounted and charged at Stacey.
Meanwhile, a medical student on vacation from the
University of Michigan, Henry Wheeler, had located a
carbine and taken a position in a second-floor window
of the Dampier Hotel. When he saw Miller trying to
ride Stacy down, he shot him out of the saddle, this
time fatally.
Inside the bank the bandits prepared to flee, but on
the way out, Jesse James paused long enough to place
his revolver to the temple of cashier Heywood and
blow his brains out. Amidst chaos and gunsmoke the
desperadoes fought their way out of town, but not
before young Chadwell was shot through the heart by
the town’s hardware merchant, A. E. Manning. Manning also hit Cole Younger in the shoulder and Bob
Younger in the thigh.
As the gang thundered out of town, Bob Younger’s
horse was shot dead, leaving the dismounted outlaw
screaming: “Hold on, don’t leave me! I’m shot.” Cole
North, John (?–1835) alleged Vicksburg insurrection leader
Although John North may never have planned the capture and sacking of Vicksburg, Miss. in 1835, he was
definitely caught up in the hysteria over a plot that year
by John A. Murrel to combine a slave uprising with the
takeover by lawless elements of several southern cities.
North would have been the logical man to handle such a
plot in Vicksburg, being the big man of the Landing, the
pesthole that held most of the city’s large criminal element. North ran a dishonest gambling house and
saloon-brothel in the Landing area and controlled many
criminal endeavors. Word got out that on July 6, 1835
he was going to unleash a large army of thieves and
gamblers to loot the city. Whether the rumor was true or
false, vigilantes struck first and routed the criminals of
the Landing. Whether they really broke up a budding
revolt or simply got rid of a festering criminal mob is
debatable, but in any event, they hanged undesirables by
655
NOTCHED weapons
The disastrous bank raid in Northfield, Minn., as depicted in a contemporary print, marked the destruction of the JamesYounger gang, although Jesse James stayed alive and free for another six years.
cried out: “The boys are all shot to pieces. For God’s
sake, don’t kill me!”
The brothers were taken into custody and felt certain they would all be lynched. They weren’t and
seemed almost relieved when sentenced to life in the
state prison.
Jesse and Frank made good their escape but the
James gang was finished. Thereafter, Jesse formed a second gang but was forced to accept such unreliables as
Bob and Charlie Ford, who later killed him. The new
gang did pull off a few more train robberies but the
glory years were over. For the next six years their main
accomplishment was evading capture, a feat they
admittedly carried out with considerable flamboyance,
adding greatly to the James brothers’ legend. However,
the disastrous Northfield bank raid remained proof
that their day had ended.
See also: JAMES BROTHERS, YOUNGER BROTHERS.
Younger wheeled his horse and reached Bob just as the
latter had his left elbow shattered by a load of buckshot. Cole pulled his brother up on his mount and
raced to catch up with the rest of the fleeing bandits.
Following in their heels, citizens who lacked firearms
threw rocks at the raiders.
Only two of the gang had been killed but the battle
was not over. Aroused posses were formed throughout
the state, and the route the bandits were traveling was
reported by telegraph. Somewhere along the getaway
trail, the James brothers split off from the Youngers and
Charlie Pitts. Some of the friendlier Jesse James historians claim this was a deliberate tactic to split the pursuers, but it is more likely that Jesse and the slightly
wounded Frank James resented the fact that the badly
bleeding Youngers were slowing the flight. Jesse supposedly made a remark about “finishing off” the seriously
injured but was faced down by the Youngers and Pitts.
A few days after the split, the Younger group was
cornered in a thicket of willows and plum trees. In the
ensuing battle Pitts was killed and the three Youngers
all received multiple bullet wounds. Finally, only Jim
Younger, with five wounds, remained standing, and he
notched weapons
Western gunmen supposedly notched their six-guns
after each killing, but actually very few of them ever
656
NOVARRO, Ramon
did. Openly advertising their criminal record would
have served only to attract the attention of the law or
vigilantes. Many guns, however, were notched after a
gunfighter’s death to enhance his reputation. One celebrated fake is a Colt .45 initialed “W. B.,” which
allegedly belonged to Billy the Kid. Bat Masterson,
among others, did a thriving business in notched guns,
selling them to admirers even after he came to New
York to finish out his days as a sportswriter for a newspaper. He combed hock shops for suitable guns on
which to carve 20 or more notches. Today, there are
scores of collectors who own a notched six-gun
“belonging to Bat Masterson.”
One true tale of a notched weapon concerns the legendary turn-of-the-century New York City gangster
Monk Eastman, who began his career as a bouncer in
an East Side dance hall. Eastman enforced the peace
with a huge bludgeon and he proudly notched it every
time he laid open the skull of a rowdy customer. One
evening Eastman approached a quiet little man drinking a beer at the bar and cracked him over the head. As
they carried the man out, Eastman was asked why he
had made the unprovoked attack; he replied, “Well, I
had forty-nine nicks in me stick, an’ I wanted to make
it an even fifty.”
PICK UP
PICTURE
FROM FILM
Ramon Novarro, the great lover and the great lover of
films, faced a hapless death in real life.
the public’s lack of interest and took more to drinking
in his lavish home in North Hollywood. He was seldom
seen in the company of women and was well known to
young male prostitutes, who he picked up cruising Los
Angeles.
In October 1968 two runaway brothers from
Chicago, Paul and Tom Ferguson, accompanied
Novarro to his home. Their interests, however, were
not the same as those of Novarro. After several hours
of drinking, Paul Ferguson ended up naked in the
Novarro home, where he became enraged at the aging
actor. Paul was notorious for his contempt for “faggots.” In a vicious attack he seized Novarro’s trademark ivory-tipped cane and beat the film star into
unconsciousness. Paul continued battering Novarro
until finally Tom begged him to stop. By then Novarro
was certainly mortally wounded.
The panicky brothers tried to make the situation
look like a robbery, smashing furniture, emptying
drawers and binding the bloody Novarro’s wrists and
ankles and jamming the cane between his thighs. They
further sought to leave a false clue by scrawling
“Larry” around the house. In another tact, they wrote
on a mirror: “Us girls are better than fagits [sic].”
The pair dressed themselves in some of Novarro’s
elegant clothes and foolishly dumped their own bloody
clothes in a neighbor’s yard where the police readily
found them. The clothes aided the police search that
located the pair. Tried for murder, they were sentenced
Novarro, Ramon (1899–1968) Hollywood murder victim
During Hollywood’s golden age, revelation of a male
star’s homosexuality could destroy his career. Two stars
subjected to such sexual disclosure were the great
“Latin lovers” Rudolph Valentino and Ramon
Novarro. There is little doubt that the speculation was
correct. The two were fast friends and in 1923
Valentino presented Novarro with what was described
as “a black lead, Art Deco dildo inscribed with
Valentino’s silver signature.” Newsmen capitalized on
such intelligence to infer that the two great lovers were
not “real men,” and the more outspokenly homophobic referred to them as “faggots.”
Upon Valentino’s death in 1926, the dark, often
brooding Novarro inherited the mantle as the world’s
greatest Latin lover. The Hollywood publicity mill
linked him romantically with Greta Garbo and Myrna
Loy, which Novarro outspokenly denied. So publicists
switched to presenting him as a deep, pensive man.
They apparently both started then quashed the rumor
that Novarro was considering entering a monastery,
brooding over Valentino’s death. If he were indeed considering such a move, more likely it was by the mid1930s when Novarro’s popularity was on the wane. He
left Hollywood and performed for some years abroad
as a singer. When he returned to California to try to
reinvigorate his screen career, he was disappointed by
657
NUMBERS racket
to life imprisonment. The Fergusons, however, were
paroled after seven years, at the time a typical term,
especially in light of the prevailing homophobia.
numbers racket
The numbers game remains without doubt the biggest
and most profitable racket of all. It is estimated that at
least 20 million people a day engage in this illegal activity and that the total annual take is in the billions, with
organized crime reaping a quarter billion in profits in
New York City alone. The numbers game is not an
American invention, having been played, in one form
or another, in England since the 18th century. So-called
policy shops, where people went to play the numbers,
showed up in the United States in the 1880s. One New
York operator, Al Adams, had about 1,000 policy
shops in the city, and his bribery payments to Boss
Tweed’s Tammany Hall were said to be enormous.
With his protection thus assured, Adams not only ran
the game but rigged the results as well. After he finally
went to prison following the removal of Tweed by a
reform movement, the winning numbers were most
often based on Treasury Department figures, released
daily by telegraph, offering players the assurance that
the results could not be fixed.
The term “policy” derived from the penny insurance
that was then highly popular—both were a cheap gamble on the future. Each day the winning number was a
three-digit figure and a bettor was allowed to pick any
three numbers from 000 to 999. The payoff usually
was based on odds of 600 to one. Since the mathematical odds against winning were 1,000 to one, the operator’s potential profit margin was far higher than in any
other gambling venture.
Over the years this huge cut has allowed numbers
operations to support an entire bureaucracy, from the
“banker” on top down through operators, distributors,
658
agents and runners. Only the bottom two rungs face
any risk of arrest, and even then it is the duty of the
higher-ups to see that underlings are immediately bailed
out, that the fix is put in to prevent convictions and, at
worst, that the families of those sent to prison are provided for.
Because numbers could be played for as little as a
nickel (and in some places a penny), the game naturally
was embraced by the poor. From the turn of the century
on, New York’s Harlem has been the most lucrative
area for the numbers racket. One Harlem operator,
Madam St. Clair, offered a policy wheel that allegedly
also provided a magical potency to the players. After it
became known that the racket had made her a millionaire, she required several bodyguards.
Prohibition beer boss Dutch Schultz was responsible
for organized crime’s takeover of the numbers racket.
He moved into Harlem, which then had some 30 competing policy banks, with his accustomed fierceness,
terrorizing individual bankers into paying him protection and then simply announcing he was assuming control of their business. After Schultz was murdered on
orders from a new crime syndicate formed by Lucky
Luciano and Meyer Lansky, the numbers racket was
run by Vito Genovese, Luciano’s aide.
So lucrative has the numbers racket been that probably as many murders can be laid to conflicts generated
by it as can be attributed to the old bootleg wars. Numbers money is most likely still the greatest source of illegal payoffs to the police and politicians in most parts of
the country.
Today, the numbers racket is undergoing an ethnic
revolution. Using increasing force, black racketeers
have pushed the Mafia out of numbers operations in
New York’s Harlem and Brownsville sections and several similar ghettos around the country.
See also: ALBERT J. ADAMS, OTTO “ABBADABBA”
BERMAN.
O
O’Banion, the son of a Chicago plasterer, grew up
in a section of Chicago’s North Side known as Little
Hell. He was an altar boy and a choir boy at Holy
Name Cathedral, but outside the church he learned
the law of the street jungle in a tenement district
jammed with unruly saloons and whorehouses.
Thanks to his voice, trained in church, he launched
on a career as a singing waiter in a number of tough
dives, including McGovern’s Cabaret at Clark and
Erie. While bringing tears to the customers’ eyes
with sentimental ballads of the old country, he
would pick their pockets. After hours, young Deanie
was a street mugger. While pursuing this trade one
night, the 16-year-old met a youthful Lou Greenberg, who was destined to become the multimillionaire owner of the Seneca Hotel on Chicago’s Gold
Coast, when both sprang out of the shadows to
crack the skull of the same victim. A moment of suspense followed as each of the attackers tried to
decide who would get the proceeds of the mugging.
With the wisdom of Solomon, they divided the loot
evenly and formed an alliance for the rest of the
night, sharing the revenues from additional skull
rappings of unsuspecting revelers.
The O’Banion-Greenberg combine continued for
several months until Deanie was convicted of robbery
in 1909 and was sent to Bridewell Prison for three
months. In 1911 Deanie was arrested for carrying concealed weapons (a set of brass knuckles, a revolver, a
sheath knife and a leather blackjack) and sent away for
another three months. It was the last sentence O’Banion ever served, although he was arrested often thereafter. He learned how to work the fix, Chicago style,
O’Banion, Charles Dion “Deanie” (1892–1924)
gang leader
Of all the Prohibition-era Chicago gangsters, Dion
O’Banion is credited with the greatest number of
remarkable traits. Indeed, he may have been the most
pious killer in that city of gangsters, carrying his rosary
with him on murder assignments. He was a cheerful
swashbuckler who was never without a carnation in his
buttonhole and three pistols tucked away in special
pockets of his expensive made-to-order suits. Although
labeled by Chief of Police Morgan Collins as
“Chicago’s archcriminal” and declared the murderer of
at least 25 men, a figure that may have been underestimated by 35, O’Banion, at the pinnacle of his power,
was celebrated by the Democrats, who reveled in his
ability to get out votes until he switched to the Republicans for more money. A contemporary joke asked,
“Who’ll carry the Forty-second and Forty-third
wards?” The answer was, “O’Banion, in his pistol
pocket.”
The more cynical members of the city’s press corps
saw O’Banion as a man of humor. One of his funnier
stunts, at least from Dion’s viewpoint, was his shotgun challenge. The gangster would fill a shotgun with
hard-packed clay and then wager an unsuspecting victim that he could not hit the side of a barn some 30
feet away. Naturally, the challenge would be accepted
and O’Banion would load the weapon, hand the gun
to the sucker and move far away. When the man
pulled the trigger, the backfire would cause him to
lose an arm or an eye or perhaps most of his face. The
gang boss would still be laughing about it the next
day.
659
O’BANION, Charles Dion “Deanie”
Dion O’Banion and his bride on their wedding day. Deanie
was a devoted husband and churchgoer as well as a
bootlegger and murderer.
and spent the required funds to pay off police officers,
prosecutors and judges.
Quickly, O’Banion progressed from street mugging
and robbery to slugging newspaper dealers for Maxie
Annenberg, Moe Annenberg’s brother, when Maxie
was circulation manager for the Chicago Tribune. After
learning the techniques of this brutal trade, O’Banion
abandoned the Tribune for a higher-paying position
with the Hearst papers. At the same time, he became
adept at safecracking, picking up that art from the top
man of the era, Charlie “the Ox” Reiser. He got caught
cracking safes a few times, but he was so prized by his
newspaper employers that on at least one occasion an
executive of Hearst’s American put up $5,000 bail to
secure his release on a safecracking charge.
By the time Prohibition arrived, O’Banion had
formed an impressive gang on the North Side, including
such stalwarts as Bugs Moran, Frank Gusenberg, TwoGun Louis Alterie, Dapper Dan McCarthy, Hymie
Weiss and Schemer Drucci (the only Italian O’Banion
ever liked and vice versa). The O’Banions, who were
primarily Irish, ran the 42nd Ward and soon formed an
alliance with the Jewish gangsters of the old 20th Ward,
660
especially those attached to Nails Morton. Morton’s
demise in a riding accident resulted in the O’Banions’
execution of the horse that had thrown him.
Seeing the profits Prohibition promised even before
the law went into effect, O’Banion began hijacking
booze while its distribution and sale was still legal. At
first, O’Banion saw no great economic rewards in making his own booze. “Let Johnny Torrio make the stuff,”
he was quoted. “I’ll steal what I want of it.” However,
as soon as he realized that thievery would never be
enough to take care of the demand in the North Side,
he started buying up some of the area’s best breweries
and distilleries.
As O’Banion started making his own liquor instead
of stealing Torrio’s, a major irritant between the North
Siders and the Torrio-Capone mob was removed. As
aggressively as the Italian gangsters sought to take over
Prohibition rackets in Chicago and much of the surrounding suburbs, they were very content not to tangle
with the North Siders, who were known, justifiably, as
fierce killers. O’Banion could have continued operating
in peace, even though his refusal to allow any bordellos
on the North Side angered the Torrio-Capone combine
and cut the Chicago underworld’s revenues by millions
of dollars annually. O’Banion was too pious to allow
the sale of bodies, although he had no qualms about
filling them with bullets.
While he tolerated a wide variety of other ethnics
within his own gang, O’Banion bore an unabiding
hatred for Sicilians. He robbed and murdered bootleg
liquor deliverers employed by the Terrible Gennas, a
brutal family of Sicilians who organized moonshining
as a cottage industry in Little Italy and worked closely
with Torrio. O’Banion listened to and often agreed
with Torrio’s appeals for peace and tranquility to
allow all elements of the underworld to make their
profits without harassment, only to resume hijacking
the supplies of the other gangs almost immediately
thereafter.
The final affront to the Torrio-Capone forces came
when O’Banion, announcing his retirement from the
rackets, sold an illegal brewery to Torrio for $500,000.
Literally just minutes after the transaction was completed, federal agents swooped down on the brewery,
closed it and seized Torrio for violation of Prohibition
laws. Torrio, who later received a nine-month sentence,
was out the $500,000, which O’Banion refused to
return even after it was learned that he had received
advance warning of the raid. When Hymie Weiss
advised O’Banion to make peace with Torrio and
Capone and the Gennas, O’Banion, with huge contempt, rejoined, “Oh, to hell with them Sicilians.”
The phrase made war inevitable, although Mike
Merlo, an important Italian political figure and head of
O’BRIEN, John Patrick
Unione Siciliana, prevailed for a time in his efforts to
achieve a peaceful solution. However, when Merlo died
a natural death on November 8, 1924, no one else was
capable of maintaining peace among the various factions—the Italians, the Jews, the Irish, the Poles, the
Greeks, the blacks—reaping profits from Prohibition.
O’Banion did not understand how rapidly his opponents would strike.
Deanie ran a florist shop on North State Street,
directly opposite the cathedral where he had once been
an altar boy as well as a choir boy, partly because he
wanted a legitimate front and partly because he genuinely loved flowers and found he could make a small
fortune supplying them for many gangland funerals.
Merlo’s death supposedly cast a pall over underworld activities and O’Banion busied himself supplying
wreaths for the funeral, some of his creations selling for
hundreds or thousands of dollars. On the night of
November 9, O’Banion received a telephone order to
prepare a special wreath for the following morning.
The next morning three men, all apparently unknown
to O’Banion, entered the flower shop. “Hello, boys,”
Deanie said. “You from Mike Merlo’s?”
The man in the middle, decked out in an expensive
overcoat and fedora, nodded and grasped O’Banion’s
hand in a firm handshake, so firm that O’Banion could
not pull free. Immediately, the man’s two companions
pulled out pistols and pumped several bullets into the
Irish gangster. The last shot, through the left cheek, was
fatal. O’Banion was given one of the grandest underworld funerals in Chicago’s history.
The O’Banion murder was never officially solved,
although the killers were identified as two Capone gunmen named Albert Anselmi and John Scalise and the
man with the firm handshake as Frankie Yale, imported
specially for the job by Torrio and Capone.
The Torrio-Capone combine fought many bloody
battles with the remaining O’Banions until the new
leaders, first Weiss and then Drucci, came to violent
ends. However, in the process Johnny Torrio was badly
wounded and retired back to Brooklyn. The O’Banion
gang’s last leader, Bugs Moran, saw his power broken
by the Capone-ordered St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in
1929. The North Siders were finished and Chicago
belonged to Big Al.
The O’Banion assassination marked the beginning of
the great Chicago gang wars of the 1920s and led to the
eventual dominance of the Windy City by Al Capone.
But the real importance of O’Banion’s death was that it
and the resulting battles came to be viewed by the
Chicago underworld as senseless bloodletting which
prevented the formation of a national crime syndicate
in which all factions—Italians, Irish, Jews—could
achieve enormous profits.
“TWO GUN” ALTERIE, ANSELMI AND
“SCARFACE AL” CAPONE, VINCENT
“SCHEMER” DRUCCI, GEORGE “BUGS” MORAN, SAMUEL J.
“NAILS” MORTON, CHARLES “THE OX” REISER, JOHN TORRIO, HYMIE WEISS.
See also:
LOUIS
SCALISE, ALPHONSE
Oberholtzer, Madge (1897–1925) murder victim
While the death of 28-year-old Madge Oberholtzer was
billed in the newspapers as the KKK’s sex scandal murder, its real significance was that it resulted in a landmark legal decision which ruled the defendant was
guilty of murder even though his victim had died as the
result of a suicide attempt.
Thirty-four-year-old David Curtis Stephenson was a
maverick member of the Ku Klux Klan who rose to Grand
Dragon of the Realm of Indiana. He feuded with the
Klan’s Imperial Wizard, Hiram Evans, and led his group
out of the national organization. Stephenson was accused
of skimming off a portion of membership fees collected
from 300,000 Klansmen and of immoral behavior.
On March 15, 1924 he and two other men kidnapped 28-year-old Madge Oberholtzer of Indianapolis, drove her to a railroad station and put her in a
private berth aboard a train, where Stephenson, who
had been sexually attracted to the woman for some
time, stripped, beat and raped her.
The three men and their captive left the train at
Hamilton, Ind. and registered at a hotel. Because she
was in severe pain, Oberholtzer got one of the men to let
her buy some medication in a drug store. She then swallowed six bichloride of mercury tablets in an attempt to
commit suicide. On March 17 the kidnappers brought
their victim, now extremely ill, back to her parents’
home. They explained her bruises by saying she had
been involved in a car accident. Oberholtzer recovered
from her wounds but died the following year from the
effects of the poison she had swallowed.
Stephenson and his two accomplices were charged
with murder, although the woman had clearly died as a
result of her own suicide attempt. The prosecutor, however, argued that by their acts “D. C. Stephenson and
his cohorts became murderers just the same as if they
plunged a dagger into her throbbing heart.” Stephenson’s accomplices went free but the KKK leader was
sentenced to life imprisonment, his unusual conviction
upheld by higher courts.
O’Brien, John Patrick (1873–1951) New York mayor
In 1932 John P. O’Brien became a one-year mayor of
New York City, having succeeded Jimmy Walker, who
resigned in disgrace. O’Brien was another of the cor661
O’CONNOR, “Terrible Tommy”
rupt pre-La Guardia chief executives who took orders
from Tammany leaders like James J. Hines and Albert
Marinelli, who in turn got their orders from Prohibition gangsters. Thus, when the new mayor was asked
who his new police commissioner would be, he said, “I
haven’t had any word on that yet.”
In 1933 O’Brien was succeeded in office by Fiorello
La Guardia and underworld payoffs to City Hall and to
the police commissioner’s office ceased, with “business
as usual” not returning until the corrupt administration
of William O’Dwyer in 1945.
felt obliged to offer some measure of reassurance to the
public; so he announced the formation of an armored
car force to do battle with gangsters. He recruited volunteers from the ranks of policemen who had seen
action during the war and could handle machine guns.
His orders to the squad—probably the height of irresponsibility even for those zany times were:
Men, the war is on. We’ve got to show that society and
the police department, and not a bunch of dirty rats,
are running this town. It is the wish of the people of
Chicago that you hunt these criminals down and kill
them without mercy. Your cars are equipped with
machine guns and you will meet the enemies of society
on equal terms. See to it that they don’t have you pushing up daisies. Make them push up daisies. Shoot first
and shoot to kill. If you kill a notorious feudist, you
will get a handsome reward and win promotion. If you
meet a car containing bandits, pursue them and fire.
When I arrive on the scene, my hopes will be fulfilled if
you have shot off the top of their car and killed every
criminal inside it.
O’Connor, “Terrible Tommy” (1886–?) escaped
murderer
Although the electric chair became the mode of execution in Illinois in 1928, the scaffold it replaced remains
stored in a basement room of the Chicago Criminal
Courts Building, available for a final hanging should an
escaped murderer ever be caught. His name is Terrible
Tommy O’Connor, a convicted murderer who in 1921
escaped custody just four days before his scheduled execution by feigning illness and, while being taken to the
prison medical office, pulling a gun that apparently had
been smuggled to him. Since then the authorities have
been required by a court order to retain the gallows
until the gangster’s fate has been definitely determined.
For a time after his escape Terrible Tommy probably
received more newspaper coverage than any other
gangster except Al Capone. Speeches bemoaning his
escape were made in the U.S. Senate and there were
serious proposals that the army be used to hunt him
down, but despite the uproar, Tommy was never
caught. Through the years newspapers have run feature
stories on the manhunt and on the rope that still awaits
O’Connor. If he is still alive and if he is ever caught,
Terrible Tommy’s advanced age (he would be over 100)
and the Supreme Court’s ban on executions ordered
before 1972 make his hanging rather unlikely.
According to a stipulation made by the Illinois legislature at the time the electric chair was adopted, the
gallows will one day be removed from its storage room
and set up in the galleries of the Chicago Historical
Society. But before it could become an exhibit of grim
things long past, the death of Terrible Tommy had to be
a certainty. The law remained bound to enforce the
court’s sentence: “You shall hang by the neck until you
are dead.” Finally it was decided that the exhibit no
longer needed to be put on hold.
Some observers wondered about the possibility that
O’Connor’s Gunners, as they were called, might kill
some innocent bystanders. It proved to be a groundless
fear, as did any fears among gangsters; the Gunners
were seldom in the right place at the right time.
Ocuish, Hannah (1864–1876) America’s youngest
execution victim
Because records on criminal matters prior to the 20th
century were not adequately kept, it is difficult to determine with certainty the youngest person ever executed
in America. But it may well have been Hannah Ocuish,
a 12-year-old girl with Indian blood who was tried in
1876 for murder in New London, Conn. and sentenced
to death.
The girl, living on her own after having been long
abandoned by her parents, was apprehended for
killing six-year-old Eunice Bolles after the younger
child had accused her of stealing strawberries. Despite
a defense based on her tender age, Hannah was
quickly convicted and hanged on December 20, 1786.
A reporter on the scene noted “she said very little and
appeared greatly afraid and seemed to want somebody
to help her.”
O’Folliard, Tom (1859–1880) accomplice of Billy the Kid
O’Connor’s Gunners
police machine gunners
Like Charlie Bowdre, Tom O’Folliard is more famous
for the company he kept both before and after death
than he is for his crimes. O’Folliard is buried along
In 1927, when Chicago gang killings were at their
peak, the new chief of detectives, William O’Connor,
662
OHIO State Penitentiary fire
with Bowdre and Billy the Kid in a fenced-in grave at
old Fort Sumner, New Mexico Territory under a granite
marker inscribed, “PALS.”
O’Folliard, born in Uvalde, Tex. in 1859 and
orphaned the following year when both his parents died
of smallpox, was raised in a number of foster homes. At
the age of 17 he went off on his own to New Mexico.
Early in 1878 O’Folliard met up with Billy the Kid and
from then until his death he faithfully followed the Kid.
O’Folliard may have been as accomplished a killer as
Billy the Kid. He and the Kid took part in innumerable
gunfights after which it had been impossible to determine whose bullet had killed whom. O’Folliard was a
member of the ambush committee that gunned down
Sheriff William Brady, the sheriff of Lincoln County,
N.M. on April 1, 1878; although Billy the Kid was
officially charged with the crime the fatal bullet could
have been O’Folliard’s.
O’Folliard was so closely identified with Billy’s saga
that he was to share his young mentor’s fate, being shot
in the dark by the crafty lawman Pat Garrett. Garrett
had laid plans to ambush Billy the Kid one night in
December 1880, when the Kid would be leading his
outlaw band. At the last moment, the Kid dropped off
from the lead position and ordered O’Folliard to take
his place while he went for a chew of tobacco. Garrett
and his men opened up on O’Folliard, sure they were
aiming at Billy the Kid. After a murderous volley
O’Folliard lay dead in the winter snow. The Kid outlived his follower by a mere seven months. Then he too
was killed in the dark by Garrett.
See also: BILLY THE KID, CHARLIE BOWDRE.
Ohio Gang
on 16th Street. The Little Green House on H Street featured poker games, bathtub gin and women to convince
the dubious to join the graft game.
Daugherty and his Ohio henchman, Jess Smith, are
believed to have a hand in every payment of graft, and
there is little doubt that Harding knew much and suspected more. “My God,” he told William Allen White,
“this is a hell of a job. I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of them all right. But my damn
friends, White, they’re the ones that keep me walking
the floor nights.”
Harding didn’t really spend much time walking the
floors; he sat in on the poker games. Actually, the president didn’t know how to control Daugherty and was a
little afraid of him. Daugherty knew of Harding’s illegitimate child and he had also advanced him $100,000,
which he dropped in the stock market. As the stocks
dipped, Daugherty’s hold on Harding tightened.
The Ohio Gang’s plundering was so massive that
scandals started to break even before Harding died in
1923. There were rumors of frauds in the Veterans
Bureau running as high as $200 million. Eventually,
Colonel Charles R. Forbes was sent to prison for taking
kickbacks from contractors building veterans hospitals.
Jess Smith, the Ohio Gang’s bagman, killed himself and
the newspapers speculated whether it was because of
pangs of conscience or whether he had been murdered
to ensure his silence. Albert B. Fall, Harding’s secretary
of the interior, served his time for his part in the Teapot
Dome scandal along with oil man Harry Sinclair. Harry
Daugherty narrowly escaped conviction in a bribery
complicated case involving the alien property custodian. In the final analysis, the Ohio Gang could not
have functioned if Harding had been a strong president,
but Daugherty probably would not have promoted him
if he had possessed that potential. As Sen. Frank Brandegee of Connecticut said at the time of his nomination, Harding was “no world-beater but he is the best
of the second-raters.”
See also: WILLIAM J. BURNS, ALBERT BACON FALL,
TEAPOT DOME.
Harding Administration grafters
Without doubt, the so-called Ohio Gang, a group of
political cronies from Ohio who put Warren G. Harding in politics and eventually in the White House, took
more from the public coffers in their two-year and fivemonth stay in Washington than any other corrupt
group in American history. Including Teapot Dome,
their total depredations have been estimated to total as
much as $300 million, or five to 10 times what the
Tweed Ring made off with.
The unofficial head of the Ohio Gang was President
Harding’s attorney general Harry M. Daugherty, who
had guided Harding’s political career from 1900 until
his triumphant arrival in Washington in 1921. The
Ohio Gang, as the group was soon labeled, let it be
known that they had come to Washington for only one
reason, to make money. A price tag was placed on
everything they controlled. Judgeships, lucrative Prohibition-agent jobs, public lands and oil reserves were all
up for sale. Bribes and payoffs were made at the House
Ohio State Penitentiary fire
The most tragic fire in American penal history occurred
at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Columbus on April
21, 1930.
The ancient, fortresslike institution was situated in
the downtown area and was vastly overcrowded,
holding 4,300 convicts in accommodations originally designed for 1,500. Coping with this situation
and a recent rash of escapes had made the administration and guards extremely edgy. Recognizing that
such conditions could not continue, the state had begun
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O.K. Corral
about any other shoot-out in the history of the West.
Undoubtedly, the biggest lie of all was that the Earps—
Wyatt, Virgil and Morgan—and Doc Holliday were
heroes of the day in some sort of “moment of truth.”
Anti-Earp observers, then and now, have regarded the
shootings at the O.K. Corral as outright murder, and
one has to conclude that what happened was indeed
more homicidal than heroic. Popular versions of the
event often put guns in the hands of men who more
than likely had none and insist that some men fired
their guns before they themselves were hit when in fact
they had never drawn them.
The gunfight was in part an outgrowth of a longsmoldering feud between the Clanton gang and what
should be called the Earp gang, the same bunch that the
citizens of Dodge City referred to as the Fighting
Pimps. The out-country Clanton cowboys were not
welcome in Tombstone except to be taken in the gambling joints and whorehouses either run or protected by
the Earp crowd.
In previous months tensions had increased as more
and more people in the town started to suspect that the
Earps and Holliday, despite Virgil’s position as town
marshal, were behind a series of stage robberies and
other crimes. Holliday had actually been indicted for a
particularly vicious Wells Fargo stage robbery in which
two men had been killed, but he was released for lack
of evidence. Wyatt Earp saw in that robbery an opportunity to be elected sheriff of Cochise County—the
region’s prime graft position—if he could pin the
charges on others and, in the process, clear Holliday of
suspicion.
It was this motivation, rather than alleged desire to
clean up a rash of livestock rustling, in which the Clantons were clearly involved, that led directly to the confrontation at the O.K. Corral. One man had been
captured and charged with the stage robbery but he
had escaped under unusual and suspicious circumstances. The Earp brothers declared three known outlaws were responsible for the crime and, thereafter,
conducted an intensive hunt for them. After failing to
find the three, Wyatt went to Ike Clanton, the most
important of the clan, and offered to give him the
$6,000 reward money posted by Wells Fargo in return
for his help in capturing the outlaws. All Earp wanted
was the credit.
A deal was apparently struck whereby Clanton was
to betray the hunted men, but it collapsed when the
three outlaws were killed, one ambushed along with
Ike’s father while on a cattle-rustling foray into Mexico
and the other two during an attempted store robbery in
New Mexico. Now, the secret negotiations between
Wyatt and Ike posed a danger to both of them. Wyatt
attempted to extricate himself by having acquaintances
construction to expand the facility, which left many of
the cell blocks filled with scaffolding and littered with
piles of tar paper and wood scraps. After the prisoners
had returned to their cells following the evening meal,
flames suddenly spouted from the construction rubble
and flashed up the scaffolding. Within seconds the top
two tiers of the six-tier cell block were enveloped in fire
and smoke.
Dumbfounded by the conflagration and somewhat
suspicious that it was part of a planned breakout, the
guards failed to open the cell doors. The warden, Preston Thomas, shared their suspicion and his first call
for help did not go to the fire department but to the
National Guard, whose aid he requested to help contain the prisoners. Were it not for a passerby outside
the prison who sounded the alarm, there is no telling
when the fire department would have been called.
Finally, faced with a fire of frightening proportions,
the warden ordered the cell doors opened, but the
intense heat warped the locks and the keys would not
open them, leaving the prisoners trapped in their cages.
Finally, one convict managed to force his door open
and, seizing a sledgehammer, started smashing other
cell doors open. Some 135 prisoners were freed in this
manner before the flaming roof crumbled. A total of
320 men were burned alive.
In the prison yard guardsmen with drawn bayonets
broke the freed prisoners into small groups that could be
watched easily. Meanwhile, a new panic developed outside the prison walls, as those prisoners’ relatives who
lived in Columbus attempted to storm the jail to save the
threatened men. Soldiers had to be sent to all entrances
to keep people from breaking into the prison. If authorities did a poor job saving lives, they did an excellent one
maintaining security. Only one prisoner escaped; after
obtaining some civilian clothes, he managed to walk off
with some onlookers. Three and a half hours after the
fire started, it was brought under control.
The public uproar over the tragedy continued for
many months. It was found that the prison guards had
not been trained to handle such emergencies—at all.
Not a single fire drill had been held, and scores of fire
regulations had simply been ignored. There were a
number of cries for the dismissal of Warden Thomas,
but in the end, no action was taken. The warden and
his superiors insisted the fire had been started by the
prisoners, but evidence indicated the real cause had
been an electrical short circuit.
O.K. Corral
infamous gunfight scene
There have probably been more exaggerations and lies
told about the gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona Territory on October 26, 1881 than
664
O.K. Corral
At this point, Billy Clanton was definitely shooting
at and definitely missing Wyatt. Meanwhile, Tom
McLowery, seeing his brother hit, took cover behind
Frank’s horse. Billy Claiborne, who was farthest from
the action, kept it that way by dashing to the safety of
Fly’s Photograph Studio after firing off a few shots into
the street. Indeed, many historians consider Claiborne’s
activities so peripheral they do not include him in their
description of the gunfight.
The second man to go down was Billy Clanton, shot
by Morgan Earp, first in the right wrist and then in the
chest. He hit a wall and slid slowly to the ground but,
in the process, managed to shift his pistol to his left
hand. Half-lying, half-sitting, he rested the gun barrel
across his arm and kept shooting. Meanwhile, Ike
Clanton grabbed Wyatt Earp’s arm and tried to wrestle
away his weapon. Wyatt shoved him aside and said,
“Go to fighting or get away,” a fair enough challenge if
Ike had been armed.
Ike took it as an invitation to race for Fly’s, as Doc
Holliday sent a shotgun blast after him. The shooting
caused Frank McLowery’s horse to shy and then burst
out into the street, exposing Tom McLowery as he tried
to get Frank’s rifle out of the saddle scabbard. Holliday
had missed Ike but he didn’t miss Tom. Doc’s buckshot
ripped into Tom’s chest, and he stumbled to the street
and collapsed, dying.
Now, only Billy Clanton and Frank McLowery were
left. Somehow the latter, despite his stomach wound,
stood erect and as his horse rushed by, he attempted to
pull his rifle out of its scabbard. But like his brother, he
failed and finally drew his pistol. By this time Holliday
was almost upon him, having discarded his shotgun in
favor of a six-shooter. The two fired simultaneously
and Holliday went down, hit in the hip. Morgan Earp
then shot Frank just below the ear, finishing him off. At
the same instant, Billy Clanton shot Virgil Earp in the
leg and then turned his fire on Morgan Earp, hitting
him in the shoulder.
Billy tried to rise to his feet but shots fired by Wyatt
and the downed Morgan sent him crashing to the
ground again. Even as he lay dying, he kept trying to
cock his six-shooter. “Give me some more cartridges,”
Billy begged photographer Camillus Fly, who had
rushed to the scene. Fly solemnly pulled the pistol from
his weakening hold. Until he expired, Billy kept pleading for one more shot at the Earps.
The gunfight was over, to be embellished by historians in succeeding decades. It did not enjoy so fine a reputation for gallantry at the time, however. In fact, the
Tombstone Epitaph, the pro-Earp newspaper, reported
the event on page three and devoted less than two full
columns to it. The story failed to preempt the item in
the opening column, which reminded the readers that
spread the story that Ike had tried to sell out his
friends; Ike charged Wyatt with fabricating and circulating the story and vowed vengeance.
What followed were a number of clashes and near
gun battles involving adherents of both factions until
the morning of October 26, when the Earps “buffaloed,” i.e., pistol-whipped the heads of, both Ike
Clanton and Tom McLowery, a member of the Clanton
gang. Clanton was then hauled into court, had his
weapons confiscated and was fined $25.
The stage was thus set for further violence. In court
Morgan Earp had taunted Ike Clanton, offering to pay
his fine if Ike would agree to fight him. The reason was
obvious. Few of the Clantons or their associates were
considered adept in the use of handguns, while certainly all the Earps and Holliday were.
Thus, on October 26, having learned that Ike Clanton and Tom McLowery were rendezvousing near the
O.K. Corral with Billy Clanton, Ike’s younger brother;
Frank McLowery, Tom’s older brother; and Billy Claiborne, another Clanton gunman, the three Earps and
Holliday came hunting for them, determined to disarm
them because, they claimed, the Clantons wanted to kill
them. On their way to Fremont Street, where the corral
was situated, Virgil Earp deputized Holliday, thus making the shotgun he carried beneath his white duster a
legal weapon. The four men ignored the pleas of Sheriff
John Behan, who was friendly with the Clantons, to
stop and allow him to get the Clantons’ guns and persuade them to leave town.
The gunfight, or slaughter, lasted a mere 30 seconds.
It started with Virgil Earp’s somewhat confused command to the Clantons: “Give up your arms or throw up
your arms!”
In answer, Billy Clanton and Frank McLowery
touched their weapons but did not draw. “Hold,” Virgil
cried, “I don’t mean that. I have come to disarm you.”
At that moment Tom McLowery threw open his vest
and declared: “I have nothing.” Pro-Earp historians
later insisted Tom really had a gun concealed on his
person, but if he had, he never shot any of his enemies
with it. The best evidence indicates that he and Ike
Clanton, as Ike claimed, had no weapons.
In any event, the shooting started, although who
shot first is another matter of dispute. Some say Billy
Clanton drew and fired at Wyatt Earp first. If so, it was
a remarkable feat by the youth, outdrawing the great
Earp. And if he did shoot, he missed. More likely,
Wyatt drew first and, ignoring Billy Clanton, who was
a mere six to eight feet from him, fired at Frank
McLowery, considered to be the only adequate gunslinger among the Clantons. Earp’s shot hit McLowery
in the stomach and he staggered toward the street with
his gun still holstered.
665
O’KELLY, Edward
the Knights of Pythias were meeting that night at 7:30
for regular drill, or such newsworthy notes as “Winter
underwear, of every conceivable kind, at Glover’s.”
Clearly, the Epitaph played down “YESTERDAY’S
TRAGEDY” because it felt the Earps and Holliday
could well face murder charges. Indeed, when the three
corpses—the two McLowerys and Billy Clanton—were
laid out at the undertaker’s, a huge sign was placed
over the caskets reading, “MURDERED IN THE
STREETS OF TOMBSTONE.”
Eventually, Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday were
brought up on murder charges, but they were cleared
by a justice of the peace, ending the legal bickering. The
shoot-out, however, did not help the Earps’ standing in
the community, which was already divided in its opinion of them. Virgil Earp was fired from his post and, in
time, the Earps, after being subjected to a number of
assassination attempts, one of which (against Morgan)
was successful, finally pulled out—some would
describe it as ran out—of Tombstone.
Nonetheless, the legend of the gunfight grew over
the years, enhanced greatly by the colorful, if fanciful,
20th century writings of Walter Noble Burns and Stuart
N. Lake, who elevated the killings into an epic moment
of heroism in the history of the West.
See also: JOHN BEHAN, BUFFALOING, BILLY CLAIBORNE,
JOSEPH ISAAC “IKE” CLANTON, WILLIAM “BILLY” CLANTON, MORGAN EARP, VIRGIL W. EARP, WYATT EARP, JOHN
HENRY “DOC” HOLLIDAY, MCLOWERY BROTHERS.
Ford might be tolerated but committing other criminal
acts would not be. He was shot dead by a police officer
during a holdup in Oklahoma City in 1904.
See also: ROBERT NEWTON FORD.
Oklahoma City bombing
It was in many respects a bomb blast heard in every
corner of the country, so devastating were its results.
On April 19, 1995, the explosive fashioned into a
truck bomb in a Ryder truck literally vertically sheared
off half of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in
Oklahoma City, Okla. The death toll was horrendous,
numbering 150 men and women and 19 children. Hundreds more were wounded. Rescue workers did all they
could, in one case a rescuer trying to save a woman
yelled to a companion to turn off a dripping faucet. It
was not water, but blood.
Who could have caused such a horror? The instant
response by many Americans was that it could only
have been the work of foreign terrorists. But it was to
turn out to be a homegrown conspiracy, carried out by
two and probably not more than three men. Descriptions of the man with the rented Ryder truck quickly
made 27-year-old Timothy McVeigh the lead suspect.
McVeigh was described as a minor right-wing protester
known for his militant criticisms of government actions
against terrorists and heavily armed cultists such as the
Branch Davidian cult in Waco who were attacked by
government agents with the resulting death of more
than 67 men, women and children of the group.
Actually McVeigh was taken into custody less than
an hour and a half after the devastating explosion in
Oklahoma City, although he was not recognized as
having any connection with the bombing. He was
picked up by a state trooper, Charles Hangar, driving a
dirty yellow car outside Billings, Oklahoma. He was
charged with carrying a concealed gun and a six-inch
knife. Two days later, just as he was about to be
released on $500 bond, Trooper Hangar recognized a
composite sketch of the Oklahoma City bombing suspect, had him kept in custody and then turned over to
federal authorities.
Charged with the bombing, McVeigh admitted nothing but was outspoken in his rage toward the government for the raid on the Branch Davidian compound in
Waco. McVeigh was described as a model teenager
from a good family in Lockport, New York, near Buffalo. He joined the army and was awarded a Bronze
Star in the Gulf War. In the hours following the bombing, McVeigh’s army buddy, Terry Nichols, was seen
dusting his lawn in Herrington, Kansas, with ammonium nitrate fertilizer, the same substance that was used
to make the deadly bomb. Authorities declared he was
O’Kelly, Edward (?–1904) murderer of Bob Ford
Bob Ford, the “dirty rotten coward who shot Mr.
Howard,” i.e., Jesse James, outlived that noted outlaw
by 10 years. In 1892 he was running a tent saloon in
Creede, Colo. when, on the afternoon of June 8, a
woman came into the tent collecting money to bury a
local girl who had committed suicide. Ford donated
$10. As the woman left, a man carrying a double-barreled shotgun stepped inside and let Ford have it with
both barrels, killing him instantly. The murderer turned
out to be Edward O’Kelly (sometimes listed as Edward
O. Kelly), who was related by marriage to the Youngers
and thus, in a way, kin to Jesse. Whether O’Kelly killed
Ford to avenge his murder of Jesse is open to question.
There was some talk that Ford had accused O’Kelly of
stealing his diamond stickpin, but whatever the cause,
O’Kelly killed the man who had killed Jesse James and
was therefore a hero to some. He was sentenced to 20
years in the Colorado State Penitentiary. Because of his
popularity, the sentence almost immediately was
reduced to 18 years, and in 1894 he got a full pardon.
In all, he had served just two years for murdering Bob
Ford. O’Kelly didn’t seem to understand that killing
666
OLD Brewery
not interested in taking care of the lawn but rather
seeking to destroy evidence. Nichols was charged in the
case as well, although he had not been in Oklahoma
City at the time.
The two men were tried separately. One graphic
account apparently reflecting McVeigh’s mindset was
printed in a Texas newspaper, which said that where he
was asked by one of the lawyers defending him why he
had not bombed the federal building at night so that
the death toll would have been vastly reduced,
McVeigh dismissed the idea, saying, “That would not
have gotten the point across to the government. We
needed a body count to make our point.”
Both defendants were found guilty, and McVeigh
was sentenced to death. When the judge passed sentence on him, McVeigh quoted a dissenting opinion by
the late U.S. Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis:
“Our government is the potent, the omnipotent teacher.
For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its
example.” McVeigh added, “That’s all I have to say.”
For his part in carrying out the bomb plot, Terry
Nichols drew a life sentence. Many relatives of the victims of the bombing express anger that Nichols has not
been given the death sentence also.
Old Brewery
their customers there, at least the brave ones who
risked entry.
Throughout the upper floors ran a long corridor,
aptly called Murderers Alley, that led off to the individual rooms. In the 1850s, 26 people dwelled in one
room no more than 15 feet square. In this room a little
girl was once foolish enough to show a penny she had
begged and was promptly stabbed to death, her body
shoved in a corner for five days until her mother dug a
shallow grave in which to bury her. In 1850 an investigator discovered not one of the occupants had been
outside the room for a week, although some had stood
in the doorway waiting to attack a more fortunate
dweller passing through the alley with food.
Throughout the Old Brewery every imaginable criminal roamed—thieves, pickpockets, whores, murderers.
Twenty-four hours a day there were fierce fistfights and
drunken orgies; screams of luckless victims and cries of
starving children; and men, women and even children
writhing on the floor with delirium tremens.
While the police knew murder was common and that
many wanted criminals hid out in the Old Brewery, they
seldom entered its vile confines; when they did, they
went in groups of 40 or 50. If only five or six policemen
entered together, they knew they might never emerge
alive. More than likely, they would be murdered and
every stitch of clothing stripped from their bodies.
Just as the police could not enter safely in small
groups, the building’s residents could not leave safely in
daylight hours, unless they took some underground tunnels that snaked out through the Five Points. So greatly
were these residents hated and feared that
a denizen leaving the Old Brewery in daylight would be
pelted with brickbats thrown by pedestrians determined
to drive him or her back inside. Many of the inhabitants
of the Old Brewery had previously been persons of some
importance. It was said that the last of the Blennerhassetts, the second son of Harman Blennerhassett, who
had joined Aaron Burr in the great conspiracy to establish a Western dictatorship, vanished into the Old Brewery never to be seen again. He and other persons of
some consequence soon sank to the level of the rest of
the residents, living and dying amidst the violence,
insanity and sexual promiscuity that were accepted facts
of life within the Old Brewery.
Occasionally, missionaries tried to alter conditions in
the Old Brewery, but being mostly Protestant, they
were driven away by the Irish inhabitants who considered them heathens. Finally, the Missionary Society,
with money from a fund drive headed by Daniel Drew,
succeeded in buying the building for $16,000; the city
contributed $1,000 toward the purchase. In December
1852 the society asked the police to drive the inhabitants out so that the building could be razed in prepara-
tenement of death
No other building in America, perhaps the world, had
as many murders committed within its walls—a police
estimated average of one killing a day for 15 years, or
well over 5,000—as a 19th-century New York tenement called the Old Brewery. Built in 1792 as Coulter’s
Brewery in the old Five Points section of lower Manhattan, it produced a beer famous throughout the eastern states. Condemned for use as a brewery in 1837, it
was transformed into a filthy tenement of 100 rooms,
housing at least 1,000 persons. The building was five
stories in height but only three floors had windows;
many rooms had no windows and received neither
sunlight nor fresh air. Some children born there literally did not see the outside world until their early
teens.
In this nightmare existence, men, women and children committed murder and were, in turn, murdered,
their bodies often left to rot or buried under the floors
or in the walls. The occupants were divided about
equally between blacks and immigrant Irish. All the
basement rooms were occupied by blacks, many of
whom had white wives, while the Irish tended to populate the upper floors. On the first floor was a large
room called the Den of Thieves, where more than 75
men, women and children, black and white, lived
without furnishings of any kind or any conveniences.
Many of the women were prostitutes who entertained
667
OLD Shakespeare
The newspapers jumped at the opportunity to headline the case as the “arrival” of Jack the Ripper in New
York, direct from his awesome string of brutal killings
in London. These headlines presented a direct challenge
to New York Police Department’s Chief Inspector
Thomas F. Byrnes, who had previously chided Scotland
Yard for failing to apprehend the mass murderer of
London. If Jack the Ripper committed a murder in
New York, Byrnes had declared with his typical bombast, he would be apprehended and imprisoned within
36 hours. That being the case, the pressure was on
Byrnes’ police to solve the Old Shakespeare murder
forthwith. So they quickly arrested Ameer Ben Ali, an
Algerian Frenchman generally known as Frenchy.
The case against Frenchy was circumstantial at best,
consisting of little more than opportunity and the fact
that bloodstains had been found on both sides of the
door to his room, which was directly across the hall
from Room 31. Frenchy was convicted of second-degree
murder despite his protestations of innocence and sentenced to life imprisonment. He served 11 years before a
group of citizens dug up evidence that proved he was
the wrong man. First, they produced witnesses who said
there were no bloodstains on Frenchy’s door until many
hours after the murder had been discovered. Furthermore, no effort had been made to find the key to the
locked door of Room 31 or the man who was known to
have accompanied the victim to her room late the night
before. The committee of citizens found that this missing companion had been recognized from newspaper
descriptions as a man who lived in a New Jersey boardinghouse. He had disappeared but in his bureau drawer
a bloody shirt and a key to Room 31 had been discovered. Frenchy, who was clearly innocent, was released
and immediately sailed back to his native Algeria. Thus,
New York’s Jack the Ripper case remained just as
unsolved as any of its London counterparts.
See also: THOMAS F. BYRNES.
Probably more murders were committed within the walls
of the Old Brewery, a five-story tenement that had
windows on only three floors, than in any other building in
the United States.
tion for the construction of a mission house. The police
had to fight many battles at close quarters to clear out
the residents and gangsters, and at least 20 wanted
murderers fell into their net. Children, never having
seen the light of day, blinked in terror when brought
outside. As the building was ripped down, laborers carried out several sacks filled with human bones that they
had found inside the walls, beneath the floorboards and
in the cellars.
Although the destruction of such buildings was
hardly a solution to the problem of city slums, the Old
Brewery was beyond redemption.
See also: FIVE POINTS.
Old Shakespeare (?–1891) alleged American victim of
Jack the Ripper
Incongruous though it may seem, the killing of an
aged alcoholic prostitute in a run-down New York
hotel became one of the 19th century’s most-celebrated murders.
Old Shakespeare was an otherwise unidentified
Bowery habitue who won her nickname for her ability
to quote the bard once she had consumed sufficient
drink. Whatever slight fame her literary knowledge had
brought her was eclipsed by the notoriety over her violent end. On April 24, 1891 Old Shakespeare’s mutilated body was found in her locked room, Room 31, in
the squalid East River Hotel off the Bowery, where she
had registered as “Carrie Brown,” one of several names
she had used for business purposes.
O’Leary, Big Jim (c. 1860–1926) Chicago gambler
Jim O’Leary, the son of the Mrs. O’Leary of cow and
Chicago Fire fame, grew up to be one of the city’s most
prominent gamblers and a millionaire. He started out
as a handyman for the bookmaking syndicates, quickly
learned the ropes and soon made a try at operating a
gambling resort of his own. Its blueprints called for
stockades, barbed-wire fences, alarm boxes, lookout
posts for armed sentries, cages for ferocious watchdogs
and a whole network of tunnels. Situated in Long
Beach, Ind., 23 miles from the center of Chicago, the
ambitious resort failed to draw the crowds O’Leary
hoped for and it folded.
668
OLINGER, Robert
Olinger, Robert (1841–1881)
O’Leary moved back to the Windy City and opened
a gambling house on South Halsted Street near the
stockyards. He then set up a string of bookie operations and poolrooms. Big Jim, as he became known
because of his stature in the business, fostered the idea
of a floating gaming resort. He outfitted the steamboat
City of Traverse as the first vessel in American history
strictly devoted to gambling. Each afternoon about
1,000 horse players came aboard for a leisurely sail on
Lake Michigan and remained out on the lake until all
the day’s races were run. Results were flashed to the
boat by wireless. The police finally grounded the City
of Traverse by arresting passengers as they disembarked and by scrambling the wireless messages giving
the odds and results of the races.
O’Leary returned to his South Halsted Street house
determined to make it the premier gambling resort in
the country. It certainly became one of the most lavish,
complete with a restaurant, a Turkish bath, bowling
alleys and a billiard room. But its main attraction was
the horse parlor, outfitted with plush couches and
chairs, servants to provide refreshments and charts
showing the odds and results of every race in the
United States and Canada. Action was also taken on
every other kind of sporting event as well as on elections and even the weather. Big Jim once won a
$10,000 bet that there would be 18 days of rain during
the month of May.
What was amazing about O’Leary was that he prospered without the usual payoffs to the police. He once
was quoted by a newspaper reporter as saying: “I could
have had all kinds of it, [protection] but let me tell you
something. Protection that you purchase ain’t worth an
honest man’s dime. The police is for sale, but I don’t want
none of them.” His South Halsted Street resort boasted
massive iron-bound oaken doors layered over with zinc
and were, as Big Jim put it, “fire-proof, bombproof and
police-proof.” During the gamblers’ war of 1907, the
doors held against bombs from rival operators. At times
the police did breech the doors with sledgehammers and
axes and even arrested some of O’Leary’s bookies and
customers, but usually the reward for their efforts was
hilariously anticlimactic. Once they found the grand betting parlor devoid of furniture save for a kitchen table at
which an old man was sitting reading a prayer book.
When the police took to axing through his inner walls
looking for hidden rooms and exits, Big Jim countered by
loading the walls with red pepper. When the police axes
penetrated the wall’s zinc covering, they were so blinded
by the pepper that several required long hospital treatment for inflamed eyes. When Big Jim O’Leary died in
1926, he was a millionaire several times over and perhaps as famous in Chicago as the family cow.
victim of Billy the Kid
A killer both with and without a badge, Bob Olinger
has come down in the folklore surrounding Billy the
Kid as the young outlaw’s least lamented victim.
Most folks seemed to agree that Olinger deserved to be
shot.
A drifter from Ohio, Olinger punched cows all
around the New Mexico Territory until, in 1876, he
got the job of town marshal in Seven Rivers. When
word soon got around that Olinger was working with
outlaws, he was back punching cattle. As a lawman,
Olinger developed a knack for gunning down men
from ambush, and it is generally believed he used the
same method to commit a few murders for personal
reasons. His dispatch of Pas Chavez in Seven Rivers
in 1878 was an exception. The pair had had a violent
confrontation about a week earlier, and when they
met on the town’s main street, Olinger indicated all
was forgotten and he extended his hand. When
Chavez held out his hand, Olinger suddenly pulled
him off balance, stuck his revolver into Chavez’
stomach and pulled the trigger. Chavez died cursing
him.
Despite Olinger’s unsavory background, Pat Garrett
had no compunctions about enlisting him as a deputy.
When Billy the Kid was captured in 1881, Olinger was
assigned to guard him in jail. Olinger evidently
regarded this assignment as an opportunity to attain
lasting glory by killing Billy during an escape attempt,
and he went out and bought a brand new breech-loading shotgun. Taunting the Kid, he advised him to try to
escape and take a fatal load of buckshot, an easier
death than he faced shortly at the hands of the hangman. Just to add to the provocation, Olinger marked
off the days on a calendar until Billy’s hanging date and
then waved the shotgun in his face and again urged him
to try to escape.
As it turned out, on April 28 Billy the Kid did
attempt to escape, successfully. While Olinger was
across the street taking his meal at La Rue’s Bar, Billy
somehow got hold of a revolver and gunned down
his other guard, J. W. Bell. Olinger heard the shots
and came running across the street. By this time Billy
had grabbed Olinger’s shotgun and was waiting
in a second-floor window. As Olinger came into
view, Billy called out cheerfully, “Hello, Bob!”
Olinger barely had time to look up at his executioner before Billy cut loose with both barrels, dropping his tormentor in his tracks. Billy hurled the
shotgun at the dead man, shouting, “You won’t follow
me any more with that gun!” Billy the Kid then rode
off to freedom.
See also: BILLY THE KID.
669
OLIVE, Isom Prentice “Print”
Such was the mystique surrounding Billy the Kid that his murder of lawman Bob Olinger, shown in a contemporary print,
was rather popular.
Olive, Isom Prentice “Print” (1840–1886) murderer
bragged he would not remain in prison, and he proved
right. Within two years, during which he spent
$250,000 in legal fees, he was released and a new trial
was ordered. It was never held, however, because the
witnesses had “scattered.”
Print Olive soon moved on to Colorado, where he
gained a reasonable amount of acceptance over the
next few years. However, his code remained as violent
as ever. In 1886 in Trial City, Colo. Olive came across a
former cowhand employee named Joe Sparrow, who
owed him $10. Olive demanded the money in a saloon
confrontation. When the smoke cleared, the cattle
baron was dead.
The epitome of the arrogant big rancher, Texas-born
Print Olive and his brother Bob owned one of
Nebraska’s greatest spreads. For many years he was a
law unto himself, directing a brutal war against the
homesteaders who, in his view, were crowding his
range. Print Olive cut fences, destroyed crops and
employed a cowboy army of over one hundred to terrorize the homesteaders, but the state of Nebraska kept
siding with these settlers, a development that made the
Olive brothers even more violent.
In November 1878 Bob Olive was killed in a shootout with two homesteaders, Luther Mitchell and Ami
Ketchum. The two men were arrested but, while being
taken to a hearing, were handed over to Print Olive’s
men in exchange for cash. They were brought to the
Olive ranch, where Print meted out his own version of
frontier justice, shooting, hanging and—after dousing
them with whiskey—burning them. For this outrage,
which earned Print Olive the label “man burner,” the
cattle baron was brought to trial and, along with one of
his chief aides, Fred Fisher, was sentenced to life imprisonment. When Olive’s private army of cowboys threatened to break him free, President Rutherford B. Hayes,
at the behest of the governor of Nebraska sent in several companies of mounted soldiers. Still, Print Olive
omertà
Mafia code of silence
Omertà is, we are told, the time-honored underworld
code of silence dating back to the birth of the Mafia in
Sicily in the 13th century. The Mafia was formed to rid
the island of the Spanish and French invaders who
looted the Sicilians’ homes and villages. However, this
secret society soon began committing its own crimes
and, later on, hired out to wealthy landowners who
wanted to terrorize the farmers. The Mafia grew in
power until it began to corrupt the government of Sicily
and then that of Italy. The Mafia was able to rule
670
O’NEILL, William O.“Buckey”
Mafia members, I realize now that omertà—the code—
was just a lot of bullshit.”
because it was prepared to kill and was protected by
the code of omertà.
The code forbade all members to say anything to the
authorities or to call on the police for help in settling
accounts against others. They had to handle such matters themselves. However, far more importantly, omertà
sealed the lips of victims and witnesses alike. This was
the real power of omertà in Sicily, a power the Mafia
brought with it to America. It was through this code of
silence that the Mafia and various Black Hand extortionists could victimize hapless Italian immigrants. For
a minor violation of omertà, the penalty might be a slit
tongue; for a major violation, it was a slit throat or a
bullet-riddled body.
In America, omertà has become almost totally
reserved for Mafia victims and those of its lower echelon who believe it really exists. Nearly everything we
know about the Mafia comes from only one source: the
Mafia itself. The organization was quick to learn that
one of the simplest ways to get rid of criminal competition was to “rat” to the police. The cops would break
up the rival gang and the Mafia could then step in and
take over. Mafia leaders, schooled in treachery, learned
to break omertà to suit their own purposes. On one
occasion Lucky Luciano, having been caught with some
narcotics, is known to have “squared” the matter with
the police by fingering a big load of drugs that a rival
mob was moving. It was such maneuvers that enabled
Luciano to become the biggest of the big crime bosses.
While it is true that the mob punishes many informers with death, it is equally true that far fewer corpses
are found with a canary stuffed in their mouth, or their
genitals cut off and similarly placed than was the case a
few decades ago. In recent years informers have been
treated more gently, if they have value. A case in point
was Jack Mace, reputedly the biggest mob fence in the
East. He supposedly got in trouble with the law in New
York and squared accounts by fingering some crooks.
A few New York gangsters exacted punishment by
putting him in the hospital for a long time. He was not
killed because he was considered too valuable. Mace
had, after all, moved millions of dollars in mob money
and he had all the connections. Furthermore, he had
made a great deal of money for the underworld, and
since it has always honored money more than omertà,
he was merely taught a lesson for his infraction.
The extent to which omertà has collapsed within the
Mafia and, for that matter, outside of it is attested to by
the fact that during the late 1970s the federal government had under its protection about 700 informers,
including many Mafia men of the Joe Valachi stripe.
Omertà obviously doesn’t exert the power it once did.
As Vinnie Teresa, the biggest Mafia informer since
Valachi, said, “But looking back on my life with the
one-armed bandits
See SLOT MACHINES.
O’Neil, Jack (?–1898) innocent execution victim
On January 7, 1898 Jack O’Neil was hanged for the
murder of Hattie McCloud at Buckland, near Shelburne Falls, Mass. To the end, O’Neil insisted he was
innocent and that he was the victim of anti-Irish bigotry. Going to his death, he said, “I shall meet death
like a man and I hope those who see me hanged will
live to see the day when it is proved I am innocent—
and it will be, some time.”
Just a few months after the execution, a Shelburne
Falls soldier fighting the Spanish in Cuba with the Sixth
Massachusetts Militia confessed to the McCloud murder and cleared O’Neil. An ace reporter of the day,
Eddie Collins, interviewed the soldier and arranged to
have him sign a deathbed confession. He flashed the
story to Dan W. Gallagher of the Boston Post. By that
time, of course, it did O’Neil little good. Gallagher had
already covered his execution. But O’Neil’s dying
words proved true.
O’Neill, William O. “Buckey” (1860–1898) lawman
and Rough Rider
Generally regarded as one of the best lawmen the West
ever produced—a rather remarkable achievement for a
peace officer who never killed a man in the course of
his duties—Buckey O’Neill has been described by Western author William McLoed Raine as “the most manysided man Arizona ever produced.” Making his way
west in 1879 from his native Washington, D.C.,
O’Neill, in a short, crowded life, became famous as a
gambler, lawyer, journalist, lawman, judge, mayor, conservationist and soldier. His nickname Buckey derived
from his habit of constantly bucking the odds at the
faro tables.
O’Neill’s first experience as a lawman was his tour
as a part-time deputy to City Marshal Henry Garfias in
Phoenix. One day when a dozen Texas cowboys
“treed” Phoenix, i.e., ran citizens of the town up trees
by shooting at their heels, Garfias tossed O’Neill a
badge and the two went out to restore order. Garfias
killed two of the troublemakers, while O’Neill, perhaps
shooting a bit more carefully, wounded two others.
After becoming one of the Arizona Territory’s
youngest lawyers, publishers and judges, O’Neill was
elected sheriff of Yavapai County in 1888. During his
one-year term crime in the area declined. Even more
671
ONE-way ride
bombed and killed on union orders, specifically Haywood’s. Organized labor has always scoffed at
Orchard’s confession, pointing out he was assisted in
preparing it by Pinkerton detective James McParland
of Mollie Maguire fame. In any event, the trial of Haywood, Charles H. Moyers and George A. Pettibone
foundered when the prosecution failed to corroborate
Orchard’s charges. Furthermore, another man, who
had admitted taking part in the murder, Steve Adams,
repudiated his own confession, which he said was
Pinkerton-inspired. The Haywood trial in 1907 won
fame for Clarence Darrow, who, as defense attorney,
charged the prosecution with attempting to turn a
murder case into a condemnation of the American
labor movement.
Harry Orchard alone was convicted and sentenced
to hang, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. Years later, he would transmit a message to
William A. Pinkerton requesting aid in winning a
parole. Pinkerton refused, a startling move since the
agency generally attempted to win freedom for its
informers whether or not their testimony had helped
win the conviction of others. In an internal agency
memo Pinkerton wrote, “I know that McParland
always thought Orchard should have been released for
testifying, but I still regard Orchard as a cold-blooded
murderer who killed many innocent persons and who
testified only to save his own skin.” Orchard died in jail
on April 13, 1954.
See also: CLARENCE DARROW, WILLIAM D. “BIG BILL”
HAYWOOD, JAMES MCPARLAND, FRANK STEUNENBERG.
remarkably, the year passed without a single fatal
shooting by anyone connected with the sheriff’s office.
When four ex–Hashknife Ranch cowboys turned train
robbers, O’Neill went after them with a posse whose
members understood there would be no killings unless
absolutely necessary. The four were tracked down after
a 600-mile chase that ended in a nonfatal shoot-out in
the Utah Territory.
After his term as sheriff, Buckey O’Neill conducted
some highly valuable explorations of the Grand
Canyon, discovered a copper mine and ran several Populist political campaigns that culminated in his election
as mayor of Prescott, Arizona Territory in 1898. He left
that office to become a Rough Rider with Teddy Roosevelt in the Spanish-American War. After serving heroically in the skirmish at Las Guasimas, he was shot
dead by a sniper at San Juan Hill on July 1, 1898.
Roosevelt wrote glowingly of Buckey O’Neill on several occasions, and undoubtedly, his exposure to
O’Neill led to his later patronage of other former Western lawmen, such as Pat Garrett and Bat Masterson,
neither of whom were nearly as deserving as the
remarkable Arizona sheriff.
one-way ride
underworld euphemism
Hymie Weiss, the number two man in Dion O’Banion’s
gang, which dominated Chicago’s North Side in the
early 1920s, has been credited with coining this quaint
underworld euphemism. In 1921 Steve Wisniewski
offended the O’Banions by hijacking one of the gang’s
loaded beer trucks. Weiss was given the duty of imposing the proper punishment. He invited Wisniewski for a
drive in the country by Lake Michigan, from which the
latter never returned. Later, Weiss bragged to friends,
“We took Stevie for a ride, a one-way ride.”
Operation Underworld
Oregon boot
shackle for prisoners
The so-called Oregon boot was a cruel device that
made the Oregon State Prison one of the most feared by
19th century criminals. Invented by Warden J. C. Gardner, who required that all prisoners wear it during their
entire term, the contraption, which weighed over 15
pounds, consisted of a heavy iron band that fastened
around the leg above the ankle and held in place by a
steel ring with a pair of braces that were attached to the
heel of the wearer’s boot. While it no doubt cut down
on escape attempts, it could also produce permanent
deformities on those serving long terms.
Warden Gardner patented the device in 1866,
firmly expecting other prisons to adopt the shackle.
He was surprised when none did, most considering it
too sadistic. After another decade, as a result of
mounting criticism, the device was only applied to the
more desperate criminals in the Oregon State Prison.
Slowly and quietly, the use of the Oregon boot
tapered off and finally ended even in the state that
gave it its name.
See S.S. NORMANDIE.
Orchard, Harry (1866–1954) murderer
Either Harry Orchard, whose real name was Albert E.
Horsley, was the greatest labor assassin in history or he
cooperated in a monumental conspiracy with the
Pinkertons to frame America’s radical labor leadership
and save himself from execution in the process.
Orchard was convicted of the 1905 murder of exgovernor Frank Steunenberg of Idaho, and his confession made nationwide headlines when he insisted he
had killed Steunenberg on specific orders from William
D. “Big Bill” Haywood, a leader in the Western Federation of Miners, and others. Orchard eventually
admitted he was a paid labor bomber and had often
672
ORIENTAL Saloon and Gambling House
Little Augie and his lieutenants were arrested for the
murder, but Kushner insisted he had done the whole
thing on his own and proudly went off to prison for 20
years. Augie immediately took over the union slugging
racket. However, after assuming power, he was constantly harassed by the police. Moreover, the racket
was becoming less lucrative, as more sophisticated
union leaders moved away from using such brash violence to achieve their goals. Lepke, who had gauged
this decline, strongly urged Little Augie to move from
working for unions and employers to seizing control of
locals, milking their treasuries and exacting tribute
from employers who wished to avoid strikes or operate
nonunion shops.
Lepke saw the potential for untold riches in this
method of operation, but Little Augie was moving
more into bootlegging and was even thinking of retiring
within a few years, with the hope that he could again
win favor with his parents and family. He gave Lepke
strict orders to stay away from union rackets and stick
to bootlegging. Augie probably saw little reason to fear
Lepke as long as he had the murderous Legs Diamond
as a trusted bodyguard, but in October 1927 he was
murdered as he was walking on Norfolk Street with
Diamond at his side. It is to this day unclear whether
Lepke was behind the murder or whether it was the
work of bootlegging rivals.
Little Augie was buried in a satin-lined red coffin
bearing a silver plate that read:
Orgen, Jacob “Little Augie” (1894–1927) gang leader
and killer
Jacob “Little Augie” Orgen was one of the last big-time
independent gangsters to fall victim to the national
crime syndicate. When Little Augie was assassinated in
1927, his union racketeering in New York’s garment
district was taken over by the notorious Louis Lepke.
Lepke refined the racket into a smoother and more professional operation and gave it syndicate support, cutting in such Italian gangsters as Tommy Lucchese,
Lucky Luciano, Joe Adonis and Albert Anastasia and
such non-Italians as Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel.
Little Augie had failed to appreciate such grandiose
schemes, a shortsightedness that may well have proved
to be the death of him.
Jacob Orgen was the son of highly religious Jewish
parents, whom he shamed by becoming a labor slugger
for Dopey Benny Fein shortly before the outbreak of
World War I. Dopey Benny, the top labor racketeer of
his day, carried out sluggings and murders both for
unions seeking to recruit new members and terrorize
strikebreakers and for employers attempting to intimidate workers and introduce strikebreakers. By 1915
effective police action had put Dopey Benny out of
business, and for about four years thereafter, the labor
slugging racket almost ceased. During that period of
tranquility Little Augie returned to the bosom of his
family and was accepted as a reformed sinner.
In 1919 Orgen, tired of leading an honest life, organized a gang called the Little Augies. At that time, labor
slugging, which had recently resurfaced, and extortion
of employers were controlled by the premier New York
gangster of the day, Kid Dropper, who had attained his
success after a savage war that culminated in the assassination of another leading mobster and killer, Johnny
Spanish. Kid Dropper was notorious for not sharing
any of his income and for leaving only scraps for the
Little Augies of his entourage.
Augie learned the virtue of patience, slowly gathering around him some of the future big-name criminals
of the era. Among those who flocked to his banner
were Jack “Legs” Diamond, Gurrah Shapiro and Louis
Lepke. By 1923 the Little Augies initiated open warfare
with the Droppers, fighting vicious gun battles with
them to control the wet wash laundry workers and,
later, other groups of employees. In strength, firepower
and reputation, Kid Dropper seemed invincible, but
Orgen finally emerged victorious after convincing an
unimportant and gullible hood named Louis Kushner
that he could become a leading member of the gang by
killing the Dropper. Kid Dropper, then in police custody
for a minor charge, was being transferred by car from
one court to another when Kushner walked up to the
vehicle and shot Dropper through the windshield.
JACOB ORGEN
Age 25 Years
Actually, the gangster was 33 years old, but his
father had considered him dead since 1919, the year he
organized the Little Augies.
See also: LOUIS “LEPKE” BUCHALTER, KID DROPPER;
LABOR SLUGGERS WAR.
Oriental Saloon and Gambling House
Tombstone, Arizona Territory was long known as the
nastiest mining town the frontier ever saw, and in
Tombstone the place to go for drinking, fighting and
shooting was the Oriental Saloon Gambling House.
One Western chronicler estimated that “200 men held
their last drink, poker hand or conversation in and
around the Oriental’s precincts before being carted off
to a resting place in Tombstone’s Boot Hill, their
corpses filled with various bullet and buckshot holes.”
While it might be difficult to verify such an estimate,
there is no doubt that the Oriental was the site of some
of the West’s most memorable, if pointless, gun duels. A
case in point was the time Johnny Ringo invited Louis
673
OSBORNE, George O.
Hancock to have a drink with him. “All right,” Hancock said, “I’ll have a beer.” Whereupon Ringo replied:
“No man drinks beer with me. I don’t like beer.” It was
teeth-gritting time. “Well,” Hancock said, “I like beer.”
And Ringo responded, “I don’t.” Hancock faced Ringo
menacingly. “Barman,” he said, “I’ll have a beer.” The
two went for their guns and Hancock lost. They buried
the loser holding a bottle of beer. Some historians have
questioned that last touch, but Westerners liked their
anecdotes tidy and the ending provided a nice conversation piece for the Oriental.
The Oriental’s history began when Jim Vizina set up
for business in a canvas tent with two wagonloads of
whiskey. He later erected a building, which he eventually rented to Mike Joyce, who gave the Oriental a lavishness seldom found in Western saloons. The main
gambling hall and bar were decorated sumptuously and
a piano was hauled all the way from Denver through
blazing heat, storms, flash floods and Apache country.
After being shot in the arm by Doc Holliday, Joyce
sold out to a sharp operator named Lou Rickabaugh,
who then gave Wyatt Earp a one-quarter interest in the
Oriental. This was not as unselfish an act as it seemed.
Once the deal was struck, Rickabaugh did not have to
worry about getting shot up by Earp’s friend Holliday
or about providing security for the Oriental, which
came under Earp’s protection. The barman was a
skilled gunslinger named Buckskin Frank Leslie. Two
other proficient gunmen, Bat Masterson and Luke
Short, ran gambling tables, and the Earp brothers and
Holliday were often on the scene.
Clara Brown, a famous reporter of the era, visited
Tombstone in 1880 to describe it from a woman’s
point of view. She called the town a hellhole but she
was ecstatic about the Oriental. She wrote: “The Oriental is simply gorgeous. The mahogany bar is a marvel of beauty, the gaming rooms carpeted with
Brussels, brilliantly lighted and furnished with the latest reading matter and fine writing materials for its
patrons. Every evening there is the music of a violin
and a piano, and the scene is most gay.” Clearly, she
was happy to find one haven amidst the wretchedness
of Tombstone. The very day after Miss Brown left, the
entertainment at the Oriental picked up. Rog King
called Johnny Wilson a liar, as they stood at the bar,
and emphasized his point by putting a .45 slug through
Wilson’s forehead.
The Oriental was such a prize money-maker it
required firepower to keep it. In an attempt to seize
control of the establishment, Johnny Tyler sent one of
his ace gunslingers, Charlie Storms, to the Oriental for
the express purpose of getting into a shoot-out. Storms
picked on Luke Short, a little man but one of the West’s
deadliest duelists. They stopped outside where Storms
announced, “I’ll give you the first shot.” That was just
what Short had in mind, having already emptied his
holster as Storms was uttering his offer. He fired three
shots and then stepped over Storms’ body on his way
back into the Oriental to resume dealing faro. Shortly
thereafter, Tyler learned of Earp’s interest in the Oriental and backed off from further efforts to take over.
The Earps and Doc Holliday left Tombstone shortly
after the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Contrary to common belief today, it was not a voluntary departure,
especially since it meant giving up the Oriental, but
they were given strong hints to “git” and they got. The
day of the vigilantes had not yet passed.
When the silver ran out, the Oriental died along with
the town. The population of Tombstone dropped from
15,000 to a few hundred and the deserted saloon was
stripped clean.
See also: WYATT EARP; LUKE SHORT; TOMBSTONE, ARIZONA TERRITORY.
Osborne, George O. (1845–1926) Father of Prison
Reform
The first prison warden to make wholesale changes in
prison conditions, not simply to reduce cruelty but in
an attempt to reform inmates was George O. Osborne.
Warden of the New Jersey State Prison for more than
20 years in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
Osborne inaugurated a number of reforms that were
widely adopted in succeeding years. Among these were
establishment of prison schools with practical courses,
improvements in the parole system and more emphasis
on religious life. Osborne was perhaps the first warden
to eliminate a number of dehumanizing practices
found in virtually all prisons: the ball and chain,
shaved heads, striped uniforms and so-called dark
cells, or dungeons. Osborne’s work earned him the title
Father of Prison Reform. He died in retirement in
Florida.
Osborne, Thomas Mott (1859–1926) prison reformer
Perhaps the greatest prison reformer in America in the
20th century, Thomas Mott Osborne was a successful
manufacturer who left the business world to campaign
for prison reform. “The prison must be an institution
where every inmate must have the largest practical
amount of individual freedom because,” he said, quoting British statesman William Ewart Gladstone, “‘it is
liberty alone that fits men for liberty.’”
Osborne was appointed to the New York State
Commission on Prison Reform in 1913. To gain a better appreciation of the prisoners’ lot, he spent a week
inside Auburn Prison as inmate “Tom Brown.” The
674
OSWALD, Lee Harvey
Oswald, Lee Harvey (1939–1963) assassin of John F.
Kennedy
following year he was appointed warden of Sing Sing,
whose administration was subject to political influence and intrigue. Because he altered the status quo,
Osborne’s enemies had him indicted on a charge of
perjury and neglect of duty, but the case was dismissed and he triumphantly returned to his post. At
Sing Sing, Osborne introduced the Mutual Welfare
League, which was to be widely imitated. Under it
prisoners established their own system of discipline,
were paid for their work and received improved recreational and job-training services. While Osborne’s
pioneer work drew praise from other penologists, he
was constantly subjected to political criticism for
“coddling criminals” and in 1917 he resigned his wardenship. Ironically, when Lewis E. Lawes became warden of Sing Sing, he instituted almost all of Osborne’s
ideas.
Osborne’s three books, Within Prison Walls
(1914), Society and Prisons (1916) and Prisons and
Common Sense (1920), which answered the “coddling” charge, are considered classics of prison reform
literature. One of Osborne’s greatest contributions
was his critical analysis of Richard L. Dugdale’s
famous but highly suspect study of the Juke family, in
which Dugdale attempted to prove his theory of
hereditary criminality. After Osborne’s death in 1926,
his work was continued by the Osborne Association
of New York, a national organization dedicated to
prison reform.
See also: JUKES.
Oster gang
At 12:30 P.M. on November 22, 1963, President John
F. Kennedy was shot to death in Dallas, Tex. with a
mail-order rifle belonging to Lee Harvey Oswald.
Oswald was an employee of the Texas School Book
Depository and, as such, had access to a sixth-floor
window that provided a perfect vantage for the sniping.
As the motorcade passed, Oswald apparently fired
three times, killing Kennedy and badly wounding Texas
Gov. John B. Connally, who was sitting directly in front
of the president in the executive limousine.
Ever since, there has been a dispute over whether or
not Oswald was the only gunman and whether additional shots were fired by others. Critics of the Warren
Commission, which investigated the assassination and
concluded that Oswald had acted alone, have insisted,
with varying degrees of plausibility, that the commission’s reconstruction of the events was based on fallacies and physical improbabilities such as the
commission’s theory that a single bullet hit both
Kennedy and Connally.
After the shooting Oswald concealed his rifle among
some crates and casually walked from the building. He
went home, secured a pistol and went out again. When
stopped by Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit, Oswald shot
the police officer four times, killing him. He took
refuge in a movie house without purchasing a ticket
and was apprehended there by police officers. When
approached by the officers, he pointed his gun at them
but it misfired.
Oswald consistently denied having killed either
Kennedy or Tippit, although several witnesses identified him as Tippit’s killer and his palm print was found
on the weapon used to kill Kennedy. A check into
Oswald’s background produced a picture of a misfit
and an apparent on-again, off-again believer in communism. He had received a hardship discharge from the
marines in 1959 because of an injury his mother had
suffered, but he did not stay home long to help her.
Instead, he traveled to the USSR using funds the source
of which has never been identified. He gave up his
American citizenship, went to work for the Soviets on
radar installations and married the daughter of a KGB
colonel. After two and a half years Oswald tired of life
in the Soviet Union and decided to move back to America with his family. After obtaining a loan from the U.S.
State Department, he returned and settled in New
Orleans, where he seems to have divided his political
affiliations between such diverse groups as the rightwing China Lobby and the left-wing Fair Play for Cuba
Committee. He also had links with persons who were
known conduits for arms and money provided by the
CIA to counterinsurgency forces. Thus, Oswald may
counterfeiters
Among the great counterfeiting operations in this country, perhaps the most durable was a New Orleans band
formed in 1872. The gang, which lasted almost 50
years, was organized by Phil Oster, who started counterfeiting money in his mid-twenties and was still at it
in his mid-seventies. He was arrested many times, but
invariably, within 24 hours of gaining his freedom, he
would be back in business. Oster’s last appearance in
New Orleans, shortly before his death, took place in
November 1917, when the Secret Service caught him
with some excellent counterfeiting apparatus in his
room on Bourbon Street. The old counterfeiter told a
newspaper reporter:
I’ve been in the penitentiary five times. I’ve been pardoned as many times, and I’m proud of my record. I
started making counterfeit money forty-five years ago.
It took ’em fifteen years before they got me, and after I
had made and spent enough money—if I had it now,
well, there would be few, if any, men in New Orleans
more wealthy.
675
OSWALD, Lee Harvey
have been a Soviet agent, a CIA agent or plant or just a
plain kook.
Oswald did not live long enough to provide an
answer to that question or why he had killed the president. Two days after his apprehension he was shot to
death by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub operator, as
police were transferring him to the county jail. The
murder was shown live on television, as the media covered Oswald’s movements. That such a valuable prisoner could be so easily assassinated was shocking and
led to a bitter denunciation of Dallas law officials.
While the Warren Commission found that Oswald
had acted alone in his assassination of the president
and that Jack Ruby similarly had killed Oswald on his
own, the controversy was not stilled. Dozens of books
have been written attacking the conclusions of the commission, all pushing various conspiracy theories. New
Orleans District Attorney James Garrison put forth the
most fantastic claims of a vast plot to eliminate
Kennedy from power.
In December 1978 the House Select Committee on
Assassinations issued a report that challenged the Warren Commission’s findings. Much of the committee’s
conclusions that Kennedy “was probably assassinated
as a result of a conspiracy” was based on a study of the
noises in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza at the time of the murder.
The acoustical study led the probers to conclude “the
evidence established a high probability that two gunmen fired” at Kennedy that day. The panel said, however, that it was “unable to identify the other gunman
or the extent of the conspiracy.” Another conclusion,
based on the evidence available, was that the Soviet
Union, Cuba, organized crime or anti-Castro groups
had not been involved. The committee flatly stated that
none of the U.S. intelligence agencies—the CIA, the FBI
or the Secret Service—were implicated. However, the
agencies were criticized for their failings prior to and at
the time of the assassination and during the ensuing
probes.
At the time some members of the panel objected to
the findings, protesting that they represented a rush to
judgment precipitated by the acoustic evidence. After
the panel’s report, the matter was put in the hands of a
new scientific panel that became known as the Committee of Ballistic Acoustics of the National Research
Council and was funded by a grant from the National
Science Foundation. Staffed by top-drawer experts
from Harvard, MIT, the University of California,
Columbia and Princeton as well as from research centers at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Xerox, IBM and
Trisolar Corporation and an expert from the Firearms
National Laboratory Center of the Department of the
Treasury, the group concluded that there was no extra
shot fired that would have suggested a conspiracy. The
firm finding was, “The acoustic analyses impulses
attributed to gunshots were recorded about one minute
after the president had been shot and the motorcade
had been instructed to go to the hospital.”
It must be said, a number of conspiracy theorists
conceded the point. However, others did not. A story
made the rounds that they could not abandon their
claims concerning the acoustics since they had written
entire books on the premise. To concede the point
meant their books would have to be moved from the
nonfiction to the fiction shelves.
Similarly, conspiracy theorists who found Oswald
innocent, or misused or framed, pointed to the staggering fate of so many material witnesses in the affair. In
the three years following the Kennedy and Oswald
murders, no fewer than 18 witnesses died. Six were
shot to death, two committed suicide, three died in car
accidents, one was killed by a karate blow to the neck,
one bled to death from a throat slashing, three suffered
fatal heart attacks and two expired from natural
causes. The reserved London Sunday Times engaged an
actuary to determine the mathematical probability of
these occurrences. He concluded their odds were
100,000 trillion to one.
The newspaper killed the story after just one edition
and amended its findings, most probably having gotten
a storm of scientific protest. A spokesman for the Times
later told the House Select Committee on Assassinations, that the claim was “a careless journalistic mistake and should not have been published. . . . There
was no question our actuary having got his answer
wrong.”
He explained the actuary was asked about such a
number of people out of the United States dying within
a short period of time, to which he replied the odds
were very high. However, if he had more correctly been
asked about the odds of that happening from a pool
based on the Warren Commission Index dying within a
given period, the result would have been much lower.
The newspaper’s spokesman said, “Our mistake was to
treat the reply to the former question as if it dealt with
the latter—hence the fundamental error in our first edition report, for which we apologize.”
Indeed, a chief researcher for the HSCA reported,
“We had thus established the impossibility of attempting to establish, through the application of actuarial
principles, any meaningful implications about the existence or absence of a conspiracy.”
Despite the Sunday Times retraction and the Select
Committee’s findings, critics still cite the 100,000 trillion figure—typical is Robert J. Groden’s 1993 book
The Killing of a President, which sports a foreword by
Oliver Stone, which used the Sunday Times figures with
no reference to the newspaper’s retraction—or at least
676
OWENS, Commodore Perry
claim the death rate is far above the norm. Of course, a
supposedly abnormal death rate is a vital part of the
thesis of Stone’s movie, JFK.
It is rather easy to compile a collection of 100 theories that Oswald did not do it or most certainly, did
not do it alone. The problem is that these theories are
contradictory to one another, and that hardly makes
the remaining one any more right than the 99 others.
Thus we are left with Oswald, a man frustrated with
the idea that he was a failure and was sexually at odds
with his wife. And we are left with the conclusion of
Professor James W. Clarke in American Assassins: The
Darker Side of Politics, which views Oswald as “a mercurial, anxiety-ridden young man who, the facts suggest, could have been turned away from his deadly
assignment with a kind word and loving embrace.”
See also: JACK RUBY.
Outlaw Exterminators, Inc.
brimmed sombrero, hand-tooled chaps, a long-barreled
Colt .45 and a gunbelt that held a double row of
ammunition—put even Wild Bill Hickok to shame. At
gun play, he surpassed anything the more famous
Hickok ever achieved; in one classic Arizona gun battle,
Owens killed three men and wounded another in less
than a minute.
Born in Tennessee in 1852, he was christened in
honor of naval hero Commodore Oliver H. Perry.
After spending his youth in Indiana, he drifted west in
his late teens to follow the cattle trails. By the time he
rode into Apache County, Arizona Territory in 1881,
he was a skilled gunman. Having earned a reputation
for honesty, he was named sheriff in 1886. Apache
County was rough country, an area of big cattle
ranches like the Hashknife whose men enjoyed taking
apart saloons, and the home of a tribe of Navaho,
who engaged extensively in horse stealing. While he
was able to keep both these elements under control,
Owens had a major problem in quelling the GrahamTewksbury feud.
On September 4, 1887 Owens rode into Holbrook
in search of Andy Blevans, a member of the Graham
faction who was wanted for horse stealing. When
Owens found him on his porch and told him he was
under arrest, Blevans ran in the house, slamming the
door behind him. Andy fired one shot through the
door before the sheriff’s fatal answering blast knocked
him across the room. Owens jumped from the porch
just as brother John Blevans charged around the side
of the house firing at him. The sheriff felled John with
one shot and pivoted in time to shoot Moses Roberts,
a brother-in-law of the Blevans, through the head.
Almost at the same time, Sam Houston Blevans, the
youngest of the three brothers, came out the door, but
Owens cut him down before he could level his sixshooter. Of Owens’ four victims, only John Blevans
survived; he was sent to prison for five years.
The bloody shoot-out gained Owens a fine reputation, but over the next few years the public’s opinion
of him changed. The day of the gunfighter was passing, and a man who could or would kill so quickly
and so efficiently was more to be feared than honored.
In 1896 Owens quit, disgusted over the new attitude
toward him. He lived out his days working nondescript jobs and drinking heavily. He died on May
10, 1919.
See also: GRAHAM-TEWKSBURY FEUD.
western bounty hunters
Five hard-riding, fast-shooting bounty hunters, dubbed
Outlaw Exterminators, Inc. by the press because they
never brought ’em back alive, contributed greatly to
clearing the Arizona Territory of badmen in the 1870s
and 1880s as anyone.
Clay Calhoun and Floyd Davis were deputy sheriffs,
but the other three members of the group were parttimers—Ben Slack and Dick Hunter, cattlemen, and
Fred Beeber, a bartender—who laid aside their mundane jobs whenever the prospects of a nice reward
thundered across the mesa. Since rewards at the time
were paid on a “dead or alive” basis, the Exterminators
decided “dead” was easier and just as profitable.
The band’s prize catch was probably bad John Allman, so-called Cavalry Killer who went on an orgy of
murder in the Arizona Territory in 1877. When Clay
Calhoun brought in Allman, the body contained four
bullet holes: one in the groin, stomach, chest and
mouth. The holes were in such a perfect line that Calhoun’s story about a shoot-out was almost certainly a
fabrication. More likely, the bounty hunter had killed
Allman while the outlaw was asleep. But like the
dozen-odd other victims of the Exterminators, Allman
was not exactly popular and nobody worried much
about such details. Despite numerous gunfights and
the fact that they made a lot of enemies, the Exterminators lived out full lives, the last survivor, Clay Calhoun, dying on November 21, 1948, at the age of 97.
See also: JOHN ALLMAN.
Owens, Commodore Perry (1852–1919) lawman
As a flamboyant lawman, Commodore Perry Owens—
with blonde locks reaching almost to his waist, a wide677
P
Packer, Alfred (1842–1907) cannibal
tially so. According to one of several stories that Packer
then told, 60-year-old Swan had been the first to die of
starvation when the party ran out of food, and the others had eaten him to stay alive. Next, Shannon Bell,
Packer related, killed Humphrey to replenish the group’s
food supply. Then Miller was murdered, and a few days
later, Bell shot Noon. When Noon was finished, Bell
tried to kill Packer, but the latter got him first. Packer
said he carved off strips of Bell’s flesh to provide him
with enough food to make it back to the agency.
Packer was found guilty of murder and sentenced to
40 years at hard labor. So awesome was his crime that
he became a legend celebrated in story and song as The
Man Who Ate Democrats, an accolade given him by
the judge who leaned down from the bench and cried,
“Packer, you depraved Republican son of a bitch, there
were only five Democrats in Hinsdale County, and you
ate them all!”
Packer served 17 years before being released. He
died in 1907 at the age of 65.
The person who became famous in Colorado as The
Man Who Ate Democrats made his first recorded
appearance on the Western scene as a prospector in
southwestern Colorado; he was in his mid-twenties at
the time. In 1873 Alfred Packer guided a party of 20
men from Salt Lake into the rugged San Juan Mountains. Described as a “tall man, with long, dark curling
hair, dark mustache and goatee, deep set dark grey
eyes,” Packer had a reputation of knowing Colorado as
well as any man. Thus, it was surprising that, having
brought the party to Chief Ouray’s camp on the
Uncompahgre, near the Los Pinos Indian Agency,
Packer rejected the chief’s advice against pushing on
through the heavy snows. Because they offered to pay
him well, Packer continued the trek with five men,
Israel Swan, Frank Miller, Shannon Bell, George Noon
(or Moon) and a man named Humphrey.
Some weeks later, Packer staggered back to Los Pinos,
claiming his five companions had abandoned him when
he became footsore and snowblind. Suspicion, however,
buzzed around Packer. He was found in possession of a
Wells Fargo draft belonging to one of his companions as
well as the gun and skinning knife of another member of
the party. He seemed to have money enough to spend
freely at the bar. Perhaps the most damning comment
reported came from Chief Ouray, who looked at Packer
and grunted, “You too damn fat.”
Months later, search parties turned up the bodies of
the five missing men. Four had had their skulls crushed,
apparently while they slept, and the fifth appeared to
have been shot after a struggle. Four of the skeletons
had been totally stripped of flesh and the other was par-
Palmer Raids
roundup of alleged Red subversives
Two headlines run by the Boston Herald in 1920 probably best reflected the anti-Red hysteria then sweeping
the United States. They were “BOLSHEVIST PLAN
FOR CONQUEST OF AMERICA!” and “BRIDE
THINKS REDS KIDNAPPED MISSING GROOM.” In
the post-World War I period, violent strikes swept the
country and bombs were mailed to many prominent
citizens, most of whom had a well-known antipathy
toward organized labor. One bomb was sent to the
attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer. Although it
678
PANEL house
Located in a box canyon in the Panamint Mountains
just west of Death Valley, Panamint was virtually inaccessible other than by a narrow trail between towering
walls of rock. But for the silver find, it would never
have existed. Wells Fargo soon wished it didn’t exist;
stages and bullion shipments were held up with such
regularity that finally even that hardy express company
declined to handle Panamint’s business. In time, the
locals solved the problem by casting the bullion into
gigantic balls that could only be moved down the
canyon at an extremely slow pace. Seizing the bullion
in this form was pointless, since robbers couldn’t move
the loot fast enough to evade capture.
Panamint, set between confining canyon walls, was
a one-street town about a mile long. Within its narrow boundaries all the evils of a wild mining town
were contained. There were at least 40 gambling halls
and a somewhat greater number of saloons, with
much of the rest of the real estate taken up by institutions such as Madame Martha Camp’s fancy bordello
and an uncounted number of cribs operated by freelance bawds.
Legend has it that Madame Camp’s establishment
had a silver plaque to mark the spot where a character
named Barstow expired from three bullet wounds
inflicted by Bill McAllister, the owner of the Snug
Saloon, in a dispute over who would be the first to
enjoy the favors of one of the madam’s new arrivals.
The Oriental and Dexter saloons were famous for their
shoot-outs. Patrons of the adjoining establishments had
to face the disconcerting possibility that lead fired in
one saloon might penetrate the walls and kill an
imbiber in the other. To solve this problem, the two
managements jointly installed a wall of sheet iron
between their premises so that a man hit in the Oriental
could be sure it was Oriental lead and vice versa.
The silver boom in Panamint was short-lived, the
veins starting to run out in 1875. In 1876 a flash flood
destroyed the town.
exploded harmlessly on his stoop, Palmer swore
revenge, determined to quash the impending “Bolshevik revolution.”
On New Year’s Day 1920 Palmer, who harbored
strong presidential ambitions, utilized the wartime
Sedition Act to authorize hundreds of agents to invade
homes and union halls in 33 U.S. cities. More than
4,000 persons—American citizens and aliens alike—
were swept up in the net. In some places individuals
were kept in jail for up to a week without being
charged. In Hartford, Conn. people who came to visit
those arrested as suspected subversives were also placed
under arrest, on the theory that they too were likely to
be revolutionaries or “Bolshies.”
Palmer enjoyed considerable popular support but
soon became embroiled with the legal community and
various members of the Wilson administration over the
capriciousness of his acts. Secretary of Labor William
B. Wilson, authorized under the Sedition Act to deport
anarchists or other advocates of the violent overthrow
of the government, demanded fair hearings for the
accused. The result was that the overwhelming majority was released because of the total lack of evidence.
Although Palmer had assured the public that an insurrection was virtually at hand, the menacing horde had
yielded but three pistols and nary a bomb. Undeterred,
Palmer pressed on with his fight, warning that radicals
were planning a nationwide uprising on May Day,
1920. When the day passed quietly, Palmer’s star began
to wane, although he continued to make loud noises for
many months and was instrumental in the deportation
of some 600 aliens, including anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman.
Historians Charles and Mary Beard in The Rise of
American Civilization offer two conclusions concerning
the Palmer Red Raids:
The first is that not a single first-class German spy or
revolutionary workingman was caught and convicted
of an overt act designed to give direct aid and comfort
to the enemy. The second is that, as in England during
the period of the French revolution, the occasion of the
war which called for patriotic duties was seized by
emotional conservatives as an opportunity to blacken
the character of persons whose opinions they feared
and hated.
panel house
See also: J. EDGAR HOOVER.
Panamint City, California
brothel specializing in robbing customers
The panel house, a bordello designed more for robbery
than for prostitution, may not have been an American
invention, but its operation was certainly raised to a
fine art in this country. In these dens, sliding panels
were installed in doors and walls so that a prostitute’s
customer could be robbed while he was otherwise occupied. A chair for the customer’s clothing would be
placed right near a panel. If the man deposited his
clothes elsewhere, a hooked pole was used to retrieve
them. One advantage of the operation was that the
prostitute normally could not be charged with robbery,
since she clearly had not done the robbing.
lawless mining town
Born in the California silver boom of 1872, Panamint
City had four lusty years of existence, during which it
became known as a suburb of hell.
679
PANTAGES rape trials
He bought a run-down Seattle theater and staged
vaudeville entertainments. He was so adept at this, he
soon accumulated 60 very profitable theaters. Early on
he grasped the enormous profits to be gained by use of
Thomas Edison’s motion picture projector, and he
added movies to his theaters to complement his stage
shows. In the 1920s, Pantages merged his theaters with
those of Radio-Keith-Orpheum (RKO) into one of the
richest theatrical operations in America. Pantages
became a true financial powerhouse; when he talked
many in Hollywood listened and even quaked.
Slight at 128 pounds, the 54-year-old Pantages knew
how to run roughshod over other Hollywood giants
and made scores of enemies. One primary example was
Joseph Kennedy, the father of the future U.S. president.
Joe Kennedy was eager to become an important Hollywood player. He had a relatively small-potatoes investment in a studio—FBO Pictures—and if he could buy
the Pantages chain, he could realize his ambitions.
Kennedy approached Pantages with a buyout offer.
By that time—the late 1920s—Pantages had at least
mastered broken English, had no interest in selling his
theaters to Kennedy, but, he said, according to Hollywood scuttlebutt, “I sella you a ticket.”
Pantages was well known as a womanizer and had a
casting couch on which many would-be starlets secured
performances in his stage shows and perhaps the
movies. Following his affront to Kennedy, Pantages
became mired in scandal.
A 17-year-old stagestruck high-school dropout,
Eunice Pringle, claimed Pantages had raped her in his
office, or more exactly in a janitor’s broom and mop
closet in the office. The Hearst and Chandler newspapers had a field day with the story, as well as the subsequent trial with its graphic details of how the alleged
rape was carried out. At the trial the newspapers discovered “the sweetest 17 since Clara Bow” and “a fullblown beauty,” “An Innocent Defiled.” Descriptions of
Pantages offered different characterizations. He was
“The Great God Pan” . . . “His Foreign Goatedness
Caught Out!” . . . “Lechery Exposed” . . .
Pringle appeared at the trial as “Miss Innocent”
from Central Casting. She had a long bowed pigtail, a
blue dress with Dutch collar and cuffs, black stockings,
black felt “Mary Jane” shoes, gloves and a wee purse.
She could have passed, observers agreed, for 12 or 13.
And she sobbed throughout her testimony.
The defense was handled by a young Jerry Giesler,
who would become Hollywood’s most flamboyant and
effective defense lawyer. Giesler ridiculed Pringle’s story
of the rape—that the frail Pantages held her mouth
with his right hand, knocked her to the floor, managed
to undress himself and rip away her clothing with his
left hand alone without the healthy girl being able to
A 19th-century print warns readers to beware of panel
houses.
A New York and Philadelphia madam named Moll
Hodges, who operated during the 1850s and 1860s, is
generally credited with becoming the first panel house
operator. In 1865 Lizzie Clifford, a former employee
of Moll Hodges in New York, opened a panel house
in Chicago, and by 1890 there were an estimated 200
such establishments in that city. A police report in
1896 calculated the amount of money stolen in
Chicago panel houses at $1.5 million a year. For several years complaints of such robberies came in at the
rate of 50 to 100 every 24 hours. The establishments
were finally eliminated around 1900 thanks to the
efforts of a single Chicago police detective, Clifton
Wooldridge, a colorful and resourceful character who
came up with the idea of arresting the property owners who rented buildings to the panel houses operators. No property owner appears to have been
imprisoned, but as police bore down on them, the
practice came to a quick end.
See also: CREEP JOINT, CUSTOM HOUSE PLACE, CLIFTON
WOOLDRIDGE.
Pantages rape trials
Hollywood frame-up scandal
He was called Alexander the Great, perhaps a remarkable sobriquet for Alexander Pantages, who emigrated
from Athens, Greece, and worked as a shoeshine and
newspaper boy. Although he could hardly read or write
English, through cunning, hard work and a moderate
stroke of luck, Pantages made a small fortune in the
Alaska gold rush around the turn of the 20th century.
That gave him enough of a stake to become a leading
force in the American entertainment industry.
680
PARDON and amnesty
get away. Pervading this line was the fact that Pantages
could easily have had sex with any number of willing
females any day of his choice.
To break down Pringle’s Mary Jane pose, Giesler
insisted she wear the outfit she had on when the alleged
attack took place. Pringle appeared before the jury in a
provocative red dress, clinging and low cut, fully made
up and looking very much the sexy female rather than
the virginal little girl. Then Giesler sought to introduce
evidence that Pringle was a sexual sophisticate who
lived “in sin” with her agent, dancer Nick Dunaev, a
man reputed to skate on the line between right and
wrong, and that she had sexual affairs with many other
men. However, the judge ruled such matters irrelevant.
After being deadlocked for some time, the jury voted
to convict, and the judge sentenced Pantages to 50
years in San Quentin. Giesler appealed the conviction
on the basis that the judge had prevented him from presenting vital evidence and that three women jurors
claimed they had been pressured into voting to convict.
The California Supreme Court ordered a new trial.
This time around the jury found Pantages not guilty.
One juror described how the panel had gone through
the process of “eliminating the witnesses we believed
had not told the truth until we got to the testimony we
felt was acceptable.” None of the jurors believed
Pringle’s testimony.
Pantages left San Quentin a free man, his reputation
restored. In Hollywood there was much speculation
whether Pringle and Dunaev were capable of concocting the fake story on their own. There was strong belief
that someone else was behind the plot, and that person
was named in private but not in print.
Some years later when Pringle was on her deathbed,
she confessed that Joe Kennedy was behind the frameup and that besides paying her and Dunaev he had
promised that after he had absorbed Pantages’ empire,
he would take care of Pringle by making her a star performer on the Pantages circuit.
me long before.” Thereafter, Panzram spent his life robbing, sodomizing and killing his victims. He did time in
various institutions and frequently escaped.
Panzram said, “I don’t believe in man, God nor
devil. I hate the whole damned human race including
myself.” Many of his crimes were done in revenge for
the treatment he had received behind bars. At the Montana State Training School he had been beaten on the
bare back, legs and buttocks with a baseball bat; at
Leavenworth Prison he had been chained across the
chest and by the arms and left dangling for hours; at
the Oregon State Prison he had been chained naked to a
wall and given the water hose treatment with such
force that his eyes blackened, his genitals swelled enormously and his body welted all over. Also at Oregon he
had been tortured with the “humming bird,” which
involved placing an inmate in a steel bathtub filled with
water, chaining him hand and foot and rubbing him
down with a sponge electrified by a battery.
If such treatment was intended to reform Panzram, it
failed miserably. Each time he got free, he robbed,
sodomized and murdered.
Finally in 1928 Panzram was sentenced to Leavenworth for burglary and murder, whereupon he
announced, “I’ll kill the first man who bothers me.”
On June 20, 1929 Panzram bashed in the skull of the
prison laundry foreman. Sentenced to death for the
murder, he was incensed when the Society for the Abolishment of Capital Punishment sought a commutation
for him, citing as one of its arguments Panzram’s previous mistreatment. Panzram wrote to President Herbert
Hoover insisting on his “constitutional rights” to be
hanged. As for the reformers, he said, “I wish you all
had one neck, and I had my hands on it. . . . I believe
the only way to reform people is to kill them.”
On September 5, 1930 Panzram went to the gallows. When the hangman asked him if he had anything
to say, he replied: “Yes, hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard! I could hang a dozen men while you’re fooling
around!” He spat twice at his executioner before the
trap was pulled.
Panzram, Carl (1891–1930) mass murderer
Among America’s most vicious mass murderers, Carl
Panzram was a study in hatred and violence, a self-confessed killer of 21 persons and sodomizer of at least
1,000.
Panzram’s first arrest came at the age of eight, when
he was charged with being drunk and disorderly in his
native Minnesota. Many of his early years were spent in
correctional facilities, where the brutal treatment he
received almost guaranteed that his vicious instincts
would blossom. By the time he completed a term in Fort
Leavenworth Prison in 1910, he said, “All the good that
may have been in me had been kicked and beaten out of
Pardon and amnesty
The power to pardon or offer amnesty or commutation
of sentence resides with the president of the United
States and the governors of the states, within their specific jurisdictions, although in a number of states the
pardoning power is shared between the chief executive
and a council or board of pardons.
Commutation, or the reduction of a sentence to a less
severe one, is the most common modification of a criminal penalty, but it does not wipe away guilt in the eyes of
the law. In the past, many governors have used this power
681
PARISH, Frank
Parish, Frank (?–1864) outlaw
to change death sentences to life imprisonment. A pardon, on the other hand, excuses the person from all
penalties and often indicates removal of guilt and restoration of the full rights and privileges of citizenship. President George Washington established the broad precedent
when he granted a blanket pardon, or amnesty, to all
those involved in the Whiskey Rebellion provided they
swore allegiance to the government. In individual cases
James Madison pardoned, reluctantly, Jean Lafitte and all
his pirates who could prove they had fought with Andrew
Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans; Warren G. Harding
pardoned labor leader and Socialist Eugene V. Debs, who
was imprisoned for opposing World War I; and President
Gerald Ford granted a full pardon to former President
Richard M. Nixon for all federal offenses he might have
committed in office. President Ford also offered limited
amnesty to about 28,500 Vietnam war draft evaders provided they return to the United States and perform up to
two years of some community work. Some observers feel
the latter move was intended to make the Nixon pardon
more acceptable.
In the past pardons were most frequently used as a
way to rectify judicial wrongs, offering the simplest way
for innocent persons to be restored to freedom and the
rights of citizenship. In practice, pardons have been used
as a method of extending mercy to convicted persons
believed to have suffered sufficient punishment. At times,
this use of pardons had brought charges of corruption or
misuse of power. Such misuse was alleged against retiring
Gov. Ray Blanton of Tennessee in January 1979, during
the final days of his administration, when Blanton outraged the public and stunned state officials by granting
pardons to or drastically reducing the sentences of 52
prisoners, including 24 convicted murderers.
Among those released were a 32-year-old man who
had shot his ex-wife and her lover 18 times, reloading his
two-shot derringer eight times to do so; two men who
had tortured a cabbie for a whole night before shooting
him to death, and a woman who had poisoned her
mother and father-in-law by spiking their Jell-O with
arsenic. Because it was feared that Blanton would release
even more felons, Lamar Alexander, the governor-elect,
took office three days earlier than had been scheduled.
Meanwhile, Nashville’s country music industry memorialized Blanton’s deeds in a tune that swept Tennessee:
When the Montana Vigilance Committee was in its
prime, Frank Parish was one of its less important victims, but one whose final word spoiled the intended
effect of his execution.
The vigilantes had no evidence connecting Parish
with any crimes, but they nonetheless voted to hang
him one day in January 1864 along with five other
proven criminals. In their deliberations the vigilantes
thought it would be wise to hang one man with a bad
reputation even though he was not known to have
committed any crimes. Such a “preventive hanging”
would serve as an example for others, they reasoned.
Since Parish associated with the wrong sort of people
and was an “outsider,” he was regarded as well cast for
such an object lesson. The point of the plan, however,
was lost when Parish used his last moments to confess
his sins, including livestock theft and a $2,500 stagecoach robbery the year before. To their disappointment, the vigilantes discovered they were hanging just
another guilty man.
See also: VIGILANTES OF MONTANA.
Parker, Bonnie
See BONNIE AND CLYDE.
Parker, Ellis (1873–1940) detective
Often referred to as the county detective with a worldwide reputation and the Cornfield Sherlock, Ellis
Parker, as chief of detectives of Burlington County,
N.J., was one of this country’s leading investigators.
Over a career that spanned four decades, he solved
thousands of crimes—226 murder mysteries out of
236—using a combination of scientific detection methods and brilliant deductive reasoning. His reputation
was such that homicide investigators in all parts of the
country asked his advice when stumped on a case.
Often, Parker would decide during the early part of an
investigation who the guilty party was and stubbornly
pursue only that party. In his stubbornness he was
almost always right, but his career was to end in shambles because of one case in which he was wrong.
One of Parker’s key tenets was that professional
criminals always have alibis whereas innocent persons
often do not. He once quickly solved the murder of a
soldier at Fort Dix, N.J. in a case that involved well
over 100 soldiers as likely suspects. Three months after
the soldier’s disappearance, his body was found. After
it was established that he had been murdered, the soldiers in his outfit were asked to come up with alibis and
only one was readily able to do so. Parker found it difficult to believe anyone could remember what he had
been doing that far back. So he immediately concen-
Pardon me, Ray
Are you the cat that signs the pardons?
Cause you’re an old friend of mine
Just put your name on the line.
Double-murder and rape
That’s all the jury put me in for.
And I’m sure you’ll agree
They took advantage of me.
682
PARKER, Isaac C.“Hanging Judge”
who had so often relied on him failed to ask for his help
in solving the nation’s most important case. Partisan
politics in the state administration and in the state
police force were partly responsible. Parker brooded
over this snub and then exploded to reporters about the
incompetence of the investigation. When Bruno Hauptmann was arrested for the kidnapping, Parker stubbornly held to the theory that he was the wrong man
and that the real culprit was a Trenton man named Paul
Wendel.
In his investigations Parker had often broken into
the homes and offices of suspects in the search for
clues. In the Lindbergh case he went even further, actually kidnapping Wendel and holding him captive in various hideaways in Brooklyn, New York City and parts
of New Jersey until he extracted a “confession.” In
court Wendel was able to repudiate the so-called confession, and Parker was open to a federal charge of
abduction. He was convicted and sentenced to six years
in federal prison and died in confinement in 1940,
while a number of his admirers were conducting a campaign to get him a presidential pardon.
See also: HAROLD GILES HOFFMAN, LINDBERGH KIDNAPPING.
trated on that soldier, produced holes in his alibi and
developed enough evidence to charge him with the
crime and obtain a confession.
In 1920 Parker solved the David Paul murder, a case
that students of crime consider to be a classic example
of detective logic. When Camden County, N.J. authorities couldn’t solve the case, they asked Parker to help.
Paul, a 60-year-old runner for a Camden bank, had disappeared with a pouch containing about $100,000 in
cash and securities; the logical assumption was that he
had absconded. His friends said they had not seen him
since the night before his disappearance. Then, 11 days
after his disappearance, Paul’s body was found in a
shallow grave near a stream. Mysteriously, while the
ground around the corpse was dry, Paul’s overcoat and
clothing were sopping wet. He had been shot through
the head, and a medical examination showed he had
been dead from 48 to 72 hours. It now appeared that
Paul actually had absconded with the money and was
later killed for it by others or that he had been kidnapped at the start but was kept alive for eight or nine
days before being killed.
Stubbornly, Parker refused to accept this latter theory. He was convinced Paul had been murdered eight or
nine days earlier than the date set by the medical examination and soon came to believe the solution lay in
Paul’s wet clothes. At this point the police theorized
that Paul’s killers, probably unsure about whether the
gunshot had killed him, had made certain he was dead
by “drowning” his body in a nearby stream, Bread and
Cheese Run. Parker found that illogical and stupid and
said so. Finally, he discovered there were a number of
tanning factories upstream from where the body was
found. That gave him the key. He had a chemical analysis made of the water from the stream and learned it
had a high percentage of tannic acid, enough to act as a
preservative on a human body, so that after a week or
more in the water it would show hardly any sign of
decomposition.
Now, Parker could zero in on Paul’s friends, especially on two men named Frank James and Raymond
Schuck, both of whom had alibis for the time when the
medical examination estimated the murder had taken
place. James had been in a convention in Detroit and
Schuck had gone downstate to stay with friends for several days. It was another case of criminals having alibis,
according to Parker’s pet theory. But they had no alibis
for the real time of death, which they had gone to such
great lengths to try to hide. That and the fact they had
spent a considerable amount of money right after Paul’s
disappearance strengthened the case against them. Both
later confessed and went to the electric chair.
The Lindbergh kidnapping proved to be Parker’s last
case. A vain man, he was offended when authorities
Parker, Isaac C. “Hanging Judge” (1838–1896)
jurist
The famous “hanging judge” of Arkansas, Isaac Parker
was named to the federal bench in 1875 by President
Ulysses S. Grant after serving four years as the Republican congressman from Missouri. During the first session of his court, which lasted eight weeks, he tried 91
defendants, including 18 for murder. Of the latter, 15
were convicted, and of these, eight got long prison
terms, one was shot trying to escape and the remaining
six were sentenced to death. When pronouncing the
death sentences, Parker bowed his head and declared:
“I do not desire to hang you men. It is the law.” Then
he started weeping. In time, people came to realize that
Judge Parker really enjoyed weeping.
The jurisdiction of his court was the Western District
of Arkansas, including the crime-ridden Indian Territory. Over the next 21 years, Parker would sentence
172 persons to death, 88 of whom were executed.
Parker’s will in the remaining cases was frustrated by
presidential pardons and by the acts of other judicial
officials. His record of imposing the death sentence was
unequaled by any other jurist. Those defending Parker
have always claimed that his was a rough jurisdiction
and, consequently, a rough court. While 88 men were
hanged, no less than 65 of his deputy marshals, “the
men who rode for Parker,” were killed in the performance of their duty. As a judge, Parker leaned more
683
PARKER, William H.
toward the Bible’s eye-for-an-eye precept than toward
the finer points of American jurisprudence.
He clearly let everyone in his court, especially the
jurors, know where he stood during a case. “I have
been accused of leading juries,” he once remarked. “I
tell you a jury should be led! If they are guided they will
render justice. They must know that the judge wants
enforcement of the law.” Parker’s juries certainly knew.
The conviction ratio in his court, again a record, was
about 8,600 convictions to 1,700 acquittals, or an
astonishing 5 to 1.
The one charge he was absolutely rigid on was
murder. While hanging was not the only possible sentence for this offense, it was the one Parker insisted
on. He would, of course, weep while passing sentence
and then weep again as he watched the hanging from
the window of his chambers—but he always watched.
It would be difficult to read through Parker’s sentencing speeches without detecting a strong sense of
sadism. Multiple hangings became common and thousands flocked to see three, four, five or even six men
do their “dance of death” under the watchful eye of
George Maledon, Parker’s trusty hangman. Such exhibitions brought Parker nationwide publicity; what
surprised him was that very little of it was favorable.
His court was referred to as the Court of the Damned,
and legal authorities demanded his conduct be tempered.
After 1889 the Supreme Court for the first time
allowed appeals from Parker’s Indian Territory court,
and the results were astonishing. Of 46 doomed persons whose cases reached the High Court, 30 were
found to have had unfair trials; of these, 16 were later
acquitted and the rest received only prison terms. At
one point the Supreme Court informed Parker that the
rules of evidence were the same in all parts of the country, despite his well-known concern for rigorous law
enforcement in his particular jurisdiction. Angrily,
Parker responded, in an interview in the St. Louis
Globe-Democrat, “During the twenty years that I have
engaged in administering the law here, the contest has
been one between civilization and savagery being represented by the intruding criminal class.” Parker railed
on, expressing criticism still heard today, about “the
laxity of the Courts” and the Supreme Court’s preoccupation with the “flimsiest technicalities.” In a sense,
Parker was in the same category as the old gunfighter
of the West, who also could not see that his day had
passed.
Even as Parker held their life in the balance, prisoners began to sneer back at the judge. In 1895 he was
about to embark on one of his dramatic death-sentence
pronouncements when the defendant, a bandit named
Henry Starr, broke in:
Don’t try to state me down, old Nero. I’ve
looked many a better man than you in the eye. Cut out
the rot and save your wind for your next victim. If I am
a monster, you are a fiend, for I have put only one man
to death, while almost as many men have been slaughtered by your jawbone as Samson slew with the jawbone of that other historic ass.
Parker was struck speechless, for in a sense what had
just happened reflected the change in his court over the
past two decades. He sentenced Starr to death, but the
case was later reversed by the Supreme Court. Finally,
in 1895 Congress had had enough and removed the
Indian Territory from Parker’s jurisdiction. Parker
became ill and died before the formal transfer of
authority took place.
In the Fort Smith jail news of his death was greeted
with jubilation: yet a number of distinguished citizens
throughout the country came forward to praise Parker
as the greatest judge in the history of the West. Among
those with the highest praise for the Hanging Judge
were the Indians under his jurisdiction, and a chief of
the Creeks attended his funeral. The Indians, like many
whites of earlier years, understood the justice Parker
imposed.
See also: DANCE OF DEATH, ANN MALEDON, GEORGE
MALEDON.
Parker, William H. (1902–1966) Los Angeles police chief
For 16 years, until his death in 1966, Chief William H.
Parker led the Los Angeles Police Department, shaping
it into what many reformers regarded as the nation’s
preeminent law enforcement agency. Although he was a
crusty cop and often accused of “shooting from the
lip,” Parker was, in his time, probably the mostrespected law enforcement official in the country after
J. Edgar Hoover, and his views on law enforcement,
Parker on Police, became required reading for officers
in all parts of the country.
Parker, a teetotaler and nonsmoker, joined the force
at the age of 25 and later won a law degree studying at
night. Not well liked by other officers in what was then
a pretty loose department, Parker nonetheless rose
rapidly, becoming chief in 1950. It was a position with
less than glowing prospects; the average tenure of his
predecessors was 18 months. Parker lasted 16 years,
through three city administrations, and was still going
strong when struck by a fatal heart attack.
He did much to raise the level of professionalism and
efficiency of his officers. Parker set a minimum IQ of
110 for members of the force. A survey in 1965, a year
before his death, showed the department had one officer with a doctorate, 15 with master’s degrees, 15 with
684
PARKHURST, Reverend Charles H.
law degrees, 208 with bachelor’s degrees, 228 with
two-year college certificates, 375 with police academy
diplomas and 2,000 officers taking college courses.
This was a level of educational achievement that few
police departments of any size had attained. Chief
Parker created TV’s “Dragnet” image and firmly
believed his men were carrying it out.
After the Watts riots Martin Luther King remarked
that “there is a unanimous feeling that there has been
police brutality,” a statement that incensed Parker. In
1962 a Civil Rights Commission delegation investigating the riots was unable to cite any specific evidence of
flagrant physical brutality by the police. A frequent
charge by blacks at the time was that most of the officers were southerners, but in fact, the vast majority
were from the West Coast.
Chief Parker produced a wholesome improvement in
his police department and thanks to his efforts the Los
Angeles police were rated near the top of any list of
good big-city police forces.
aid of a private detective, Parkhurst transformed himself into a dandy who could pass without suspicion.
The private detective who accompanied Parkhurst
related, in a pamphlet called The Doctor and the Devil,
that “Dr. Parkhurst was a very hard man to satisfy.
‘Show me something worse,’ was his constant cry. He
really went at his slumming work as if his heart was in
his tour.” A case in point was Parkhurst’s visit to Hattie
Adams’ brothel on 27th Street near Fifth Avenue,
where he and the detective hired five girls to perform a
“dance of nature.” Parkhurst and the detective seemed
to get into the spirit of things by engaging in a game of
leapfrog with the young ladies, an incident that caused
considerable consternation among Parkhurst’s parishioners and led to a ribald tune that became extremely
popular. It went:
Parkhurst, Reverend Charles H. (1842–1933)
reformer
The detective provided earnest assurances that the
clergyman removed none of his clothing other than his
hat and permitted none of the usual variations in this
form of recreation. Indeed, during most of the exercise,
the detective assured his readers, “the Doctor sat in a
corner with an unmoved face, watching us and slowly
sipping at a glass of beer.”
When on Sunday March 13, 1892 Dr. Parkhurst
preached his second sermon on vice and corruption, he
was armed with a number of affidavits from private
detectives to back up his charges. Despite the feelings of
some that he had demeaned his cloth by his visits to
such awful dens of iniquity, his charges could not be
ignored and led directly to the famed Lexow and Mazet
committees, which based much of their evidence on
Parkhurst’s findings. In the wave of reform, 14 police
officers were indicted or dismissed and many more
resigned. Reformers swept into office over Tammany
Hall candidates, but the movement proved short-lived.
By 1897 Tammany forces were back in power, and they
celebrated their victory with an all-night torchlight
parade, featuring anti-Parkhurst signs and snake-dancing men and women who chanted, “Well, well, well,
reform has gone to hell!”
Parkhurst continued his fight against crime, vice and
corruption, and his efforts were very much responsible
for the removal from office of Chief of Police Big Bill
Devery. Parkhurst retired as a preacher in 1918, and in
1930, at the age of 90, he was honored by a gathering
of leading new reformers. He called for the overthrow
of the “new Tammany,” which he denounced for being
as corrupt as the forces he had exposed in the 1890s.
Dr. Parkhurst on the floor
Playing leapfrog with a whore,
Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-ay
Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-ay.
In the 1890s the chief spokesman against all forms of
urban vice, especially police corruption, was the Rev.
Charles H. Parkhurst, head of the Society for the Prevention of Crime in New York City.
After preaching in New England for a number of
years, Parkhurst became pastor of the Madison Square
Presbyterian Church in 1880. He attracted very little
attention until 1892, when he delivered a blistering sermon against New York City’s municipal government in
general and Tammany Hall in particular, denouncing
the men who ran them as “a lying, perjured, rumsoaked and libidinous lot.” Parkhurst also lashed out at
the police department for giving protection to and making profit from the city’s racketeers, gamblers and prostitutes. He thundered, “While we fight iniquity, they
shield or patronize it. While we try to convert criminals, they manufacture them.”
When the New York World printed almost the entire
sermon, Parkhurst’s charges took the city by storm.
Astonishingly, much of the newspapers’ comments
about him were unfavorable. The press and various
public officials demanded substantiation of his charges,
and the following week, when he was hauled before a
grand jury, he was ridiculed because he could not present legal evidence to back up his charges. In the end,
the grand jury denounced the clergyman for making
unfounded charges.
The experience, however, did not silence Parkhurst,
who was determined to gather all the evidence he
needed by going disguised into the devil’s den. With the
685
PARKS, Robert F
had thrown the gun against the grille and it had fired,
hitting Parks. The gun had then dropped to the floor
and slid across the dining room, coming to rest against
the far wall from the bedroom.
The murder charge against Mrs. Parks was dismissed.
Parkhurst lived long enough to watch the Seabury
Investigations confirm his charges. He died in 1933
after plunging from his second-floor bedroom window
while sleepwalking.
Parks, Robert F. (1910–1950) alleged murder victim
Police files are filled with examples of attempts to make
murders seem like accidents, but there also have been
cases in which accidents have appeared to be murders,
resulting in the near conviction of innocent persons.
The death of Robert F. Parks in 1950 is often cited by
criminologists as a case in point. On the night of February 13 police in Luray, Va. were summoned to the
Parks home, where they found Parks, a former army
captain, dead in a bedroom, an open door of which led
to the dining room. He had been shot, and because of
the absence of powder burns and the direction in which
the bullet had entered his body, it appeared that Parks
couldn’t have shot himself. A bullet had gone through
his right arm, passed through his heart and halted in his
right side. In the dining room the police found an automatic pistol lying against the far wall from the bedroom door. A cartridge case had jammed in the gun.
Given the circumstantial evidence, the tale Mrs.
Parks told was not very convincing. “I was in the
kitchen,” she said, “when I heard the shot. I ran to the
bedroom and Bob was standing there. He looked at me
and said, ‘Honey, the gun backfired.’ And then he fell.”
Because the statement didn’t square with deductions
the police had made about the shooting and because
evidence was found that the couple had had violent
arguments on a number of occasions, Mrs. Parks was
charged with murdering her husband. In all likelihood,
the case would have been handled as a typical domestic
quarrel leading to homicide had not a sharpeyed policeman noticed a fresh dent on a metal grille over a hot-air
duct in the doorway between the two rooms. The
brown paint on the grille had been chipped, and there
was brown paint on the rear of the gun slide.
The police sent everything—gun, bullet, cartridge
case and grille—to the FBI laboratory. There, experiments showed that the gun would go off if it was
dropped on the rear part of the slide and hammer if
that part of the gun hit against something. The brown
paint on the grille and the gun slide proved to be identical, and the indentations in the grille could have been
made by the rear sight and knurling of the hammer.
When scientists fitted the rear sight and hammer into
the markings on the grille, it was obvious that in the
Parks home the gun would be pointing in the direction
of the bedroom where Parks had been standing.
The truth was now apparent. Parks had managed to
kill himself accidentally. In an apparent fit of temper, he
parole
Of the 200,000-plus adults confined in the nation’s
prisons about 140,000 are eligible for parole in any
given year. Approximately 50,000 are granted parole
annually, and almost two-thirds will be paroled before
completion of their sentences. Parole is, in a manner of
speaking, American in origin in that English felons,
beginning in the 1650s, were granted early release from
their prison sentences provided they went to America,
where they were sold to the highest bidders as indentured servants. In effect, this was a parole system. Our
contemporary parole system developed out of the concept of “good time” laws, which shortened prisoners’
sentences for good behavior. This led to the introduction of indeterminate-term sentences (e.g., one to 10
years) with the opportunity for release before completion of the sentence. Under this system, which began
about 1870 and still exists, the prisoner was required to
adhere to certain rules after his release and was subjected to supervision.
Within a half century the system of parole became
an ingrained part of all American prison systems.
Invariably, when concern over crime has risen, attacks
on the parole system have increased. Edward R. Hammock, chairman of the New York State Parole Board,
said the public has a “silly notion” that such a board
“releases criminals back into the community willy-nilly.
It’s not true but we’re still getting the blame for the fact
that people don’t feel safe on their streets and in their
parks.”
Experts insist the idea that parolees commit a great
number of new crimes is false. In New York state in
1979 only 3.4 percent were returned to prison for committing new crimes while on parole. Another 8.5 percent were sent back for parole violations. This
compares favorably with the overall figure of 30 percent of all ex-prisoners being sent back to prison within
five years of their release. Despite these statistics, the
parole system is under stronger attack now than at any
time during the last 50 years. There has been an obvious shift in national opinion about the method and
purpose of sentencing. Concluding that prisons simply
do not rehabilitate, more and more judges, prosecutors
and even penologists now insist that if criminals cannot
be reformed, they should be given uniform, predictable
jail sentences and kept off the streets until they have
686
PAT Lyon at the Forge
paid for their crimes. Of course, this theory raises the
problem of prisons becoming even more crowded and
more costly to maintain without much assurance that
the public will really be any safer. By 1980 the number
of inmates in state prisons had doubled in less than 10
years. “But we’re still scared to get on the subway at
night,” chairman Hammock noted.
In the final analysis, the parole system will probably
survive because of recognition that its screening process
and supervision of released convicts provides a measure
of control over ex-prisoners that would be abolished by
a system of fixed jail terms.
See also: PROBATION.
Further reading: Crime and Punishment by Aryeh
Neier, Encyclopedia of Criminology edited by Vernon
C. Branham and Samuel B. Kutash.
mob out of his East Harlem headquarters, walked into
a few restaurants and expressed outrage at this disgraceful recycling of parsley. On the spot one steak
house owner ordered 150 new bunches. New York
Daily News columnist Jimmy Breslin commented,
“That night, as they will forever, the steak house and all
other midtown restaurants served meals that appeared
to be growing lawns.”
There has never been much doubt that New York’s
fondness for parsley will eventually spread around the
country. At the same time the mob squashed the parsley
rebellion in Manhattan, the Montana State Crime Control Commission was investigating the bombings of
two restaurants in Butte. The commission reported it
had intelligence that a New York “parsley king” was
involved in the bombings.
Un Occhio is reported to control vast acres of parsley in Ventura County, Calif. that can be cut five times
a year, enough to feed not only New York but a greenhungry nation.
Parrot pimp
For some 25 years around the end of the 19th century,
Carrie Watson’s brothel at 441 South Clark in Chicago
was famed for its beautiful inmates, its luxurious trappings and its high prices. So renowned was the resort
that Carrie Watson never had a need to advertise. There
were no red curtains on the windows and certainly no
red light over the doorway. However, Miss Watson did
feel a need to add a touch of homey distinction to her
premises, so she placed an expensive trained parrot in a
cage outside the door. This hustler, who soon was
dubbed the Parrot Pimp, would beckon: “Carrie Watson. Come in, gentlemen.”
parsley racket
Pat Lyon at the Forge
painting of accused criminal
Virtually none of the visitors to Boston’s Museum of
Fine Arts who pause to admire an early 19th-century
painting, Pat Lyon at the Forge, by John Neagle, are
aware that the blacksmith it portrays was, in his time,
famous as one of America’s first “wrong men,” accused
of a crime he did not commit.
Pat Lyon was a leading Philadelphia-area blacksmith
who did many jobs for local banks and wealthy citizens,
designing strongboxes and repairing locks and bars.
Shortly after he performed this latter task for a Philadelphia bank, it was entered surreptiously and looted.
The police could think of only one likely suspect,
blacksmith Lyon. Despite his anguished denials, he was
thrown into jail on the theory that he alone could have
gotten by those locks and bars. After three months the
real criminals were caught and Lyon was released. But
he had much to be bitter about. There were still whispers that he must have been involved, and he discovered his business suffered because of this rumor. Finally,
after enduring the malicious talk for some years, he
brought suit against his more virulent defamers. The
courts ruled in the blacksmith’s favor, and he was
granted $9,000 in damages.
It was an enormous sum of money in that day, and
Lyon could have retired on his fortune, but he found a
better use for a large portion of his new-found wealth.
He commissioned John Neagle, the finest portrait
painter he could locate, to paint the real Pat Lyon, an
honest blacksmith toiling at his honest labors. Pat Lyon
at the Forge is the way this wrongly accused man
wished to be remembered by posterity.
underworld extortion method
One of the underworld’s fastest growing, if littleknown, rackets is the parsley shakedown. For years in
New York many Manhattan restaurants have been
forced to buy mob parsley to use as a garnish for their
meals. In addition to serving it with meats and salads,
they have been under considerable pressure to put it in
some mixed drinks as well.
As the price was jacked up from 5¢ to 40¢ a bunch,
some restaurateurs found their parsley tab amounting
to $150 a month. In the early 1980s a number of
restaurant owners hit on a money-saving tactic. Since
most diners simply shoved aside the greenery, they
ordered busboys to put the parsley aside, and then it
was washed for reuse.
This affront to good health and the Mafia caused
considerable anguish to a 75-year-old mafioso known
to New York restaurateurs as Un Occhio, or One Eye,
a name given him because of an injury suffered back in
1934 in the bombing of an East Side bakery. Un
Occhio, who handled both parsley and murders for the
687
PATRIARCA, Raymond L. S.
Patriarca, Raymond L. S. (1908–1984) New England
Mafia boss
Patterson, Nan (1882–?) accused murderer
The Mafia boss of New England, Raymond Patriarca
was probably almost as feared as Vito Genovese was;
like Genovese, he was able to keep running his crime
empire even while serving time in prison for his part in
a murder conspiracy in the early 1970s.
He was regarded as totally ruthless, as he demonstrated during the Irish wars in Boston when a young
upstart Irish gangster named Bernard McLaughlin tried
to muscle in on the mob’s loansharking rackets.
McLaughlin and his supporters were totally eradicated.
On one occasion, Patriarca allegedly even threatened
his own brother with death because, while in charge of
mob security, he had failed to catch an FBI bug planted
in Patriarca’s office.
As a young gangster, Patriarca showed a remarkable
ability to avoid trouble with the law, only going to
prison once, for armed robbery in 1938. He was sentenced to five years but won a pardon after serving only
84 days. The resulting newspaper publicity forced an
examination of the facts surrounding the pardon. It
was found that a key factor behind the pardon was an
imploring letter from one Father Fagin, who turned out
to be a nonexistent priest. Patriarca was ordered back
to prison to do his time.
During the 1940s and 1950s, Patriarca set about
building his crime empire from his base in Providence, R.I., concentrating on vice, gambling and
loansharking enterprises. Remarkably, as his empire
grew over the next 25 years, he was seldom mentioned in the press. Finally, though, because of Joseph
Barboza, a hit man turned informer, Patriarca was
convinced of conspiracy to commit murder for ordering an underling in 1966 to kill Rocco DiSiglio, a
young mafioso who was fingering mob crap games
for a stickup gang.
After a number of appeals he went to prison in 1970
to serve five years. During that time Patriarca continued to run Mafia affairs in New England, and he
warned other Mafia bosses to stay out of his area. They
did.
When he came out, Patriarca resumed full leadership
of the organization. He controlled his people through
fear, yet he did enjoy loyalty where it might not be
expected. A new informer, Vinnie Teresa, who crippled
much of the mob with his testimony in a number of trials, refused to testify against him. Raymond, he
informed prosecutors, had always treated him fairly,
and he would not cross him. There were very few men
who would have said that about Patriarca. He died in
1984.
See also: VINCENT CHARLES TERESA.
688
The 1904 case, one the New York newspapers dubbed
The Girl in the Hansom Cab, had everything the readers of the new yellow journalism could want: a Floradora Girl, at the time the most dazzling of Broadway
figures; a big-spending gambler and race horse owner; a
jealous wife, and a murder mystery.
Gorgeous Nan Patterson was a Floradora Girl, not a
member of the original sextette but a replacement for
one who had married a millionaire. All Floradora Girls,
the public believed, were destined to marry millionaires.
Nan, a doll-faced, stagestruck young thing, had made it
to the Great White Way after eloping in her teens. She
later fell for, instead of a millionaire, a married gambler,
Francis Thomas Young, known to his friends as Caesar.
Young, who was what might be called a cad, and Nan
were constantly seen together at the races, at gambling
spas and at all the top hotels and restaurants. However,
Young also had a wife, whom he wouldn’t or couldn’t
give up. He kept his wife in one New York hotel and
Nan in another on the same block. It made the gambler’s life a hectic one. He paid for Nan’s divorce, and in
1904 he finally decided to divorce his wife and run off
with Nan. But his wife talked him out of that plan and
the couple reconciled. Feeling she could win back her
husband from Nan by separating them, she convinced
Young to sail to Europe with her on June 4.
The day before his departure, Young spent his time
with Nan Patterson. The pair drank heavily and quarreled, Nan still trying to get him to change his mind.
Early the following morning, they had a make-up
breakfast and entered a hansom cab for a ride down
Broadway. Suddenly, there was the sound of an explosion inside the cab. Nan was heard to cry out: “Look at
me, Frank. Why did you do it?”
What Nan Patterson claimed Young had done was
shoot himself in the chest, out of anguish over having
to leave her. It was a peculiar story in that, as newspaper sketches would explain to their eager readers,
Young would have had to have been a contortionist to
have inflicted the wound that had killed him. In addition, somehow the dying man had managed to put the
gun back in his pocket.
Nan was arrested for murder. The state’s version
was that she had pulled out a gun, and when Young
grabbed it, she had pulled the trigger. During two sensational trials Nan took the stand and stuck to her
story despite vigorous cross-examination. In neither
case could the prosecution get better than a hung jury,
and speculation arose that the state simply would
never be able to get a jury of 12 men to visualize a
smoking pistol in such a lovely woman’s hand. The
district attorney’s office tried a third time, with the
PEACOCK, Dr. Silber C.
Peach, Arthur (?–1638) murderer
same predictable result. In her prison cell Nan was
deluged with messages of sympathy and not a few
offers of marriage. It was all too much for the authorities. Ten days after the third trial, the judge granted a
motion that she be discharged, and a crowd of 2,000
persons cheered her as she was released. Children
sang in the streets:
The first white man executed in America for the murder of an Indian, Arthur Peach was, according to a contemporary account, a “lustie and desparate yonge
man” who murdered an Indian youth of the “Narigansett” tribe returning from the Massachusetts Bay
Colony with cloth and beads he had acquired in trade.
Three runaway servants had helped Peach commit the
crime; two of them were caught with him. The capture
of Peach and his two confederates led to an argument
about whether three white men should be executed for
the killing of one Indian. Gov. William Bradford wrote
that during the affair “some of the rude & ignorante
sorte” among the colonists raised the question as to
whether “any English should be put to death for the
Indians.”
It was finally decided that Peach and his confederates should die, and most certainly, the decision was
not made on moral grounds alone. The more levelheaded colonists warned that if the crime was not
quickly avenged, “it would raise a war.” The authorities invited a number of Indians to the hanging, “which
gave them & all the countrie good satisfaction.” It was
an application of justice seldom repeated over the next
250 years in this country.
Nan is free, Nan is free,
She escaped the electric chair,
Now that she’s out in the open air.
That night Nan Patterson got gloriously drunk at
one plush Broadway spot after another. She soon was
offered starring roles in top musicals, but her career
collapsed when theatergoers discovered she had no acting or other talent. Nan then reconciled with her exhusband and they remarried. However, the union again
soon ended in divorce, and The Girl in the Hansom
Cab just faded away.
Peacemaker, The
Wild Bill Hickok’s gun
Certainly one of the most-storied weapons of the Old
West was Wild Bill Hickok’s Peacemaker, a singleaction Colt, serial no. 139345. Wild Bill reportedly
killed 14 men with the gun in the two years he owned
it before his death on August 2, 1876, when Jack
McCall shot him in the back of the head while he was
playing poker in Deadwood, Dakota Territory.
Hickok’s personal belongings, including the Peacemaker, were sent to his sister, Mrs. Lydia M. Barnes of
Oberlin, Kan.
Over the next six years nothing was heard about
Wild Bill’s famous pistol. On the night of July 14,
1882, it was fired in a darkened room in old Fort Sumner, New Mexico Territory and a youthful man lay
dead on the floor. The dead man was Billy the Kid. The
man holding the Peacemaker was Sheriff Pat Garrett.
Legend has it that when Hickok was killed by McCall,
Billy the Kid had been riding to Deadwood with the
intention of forcing a duel with Wild Bill. In an extraordinary coincidence, the gun that might have killed the
Kid then was responsible for his death six years later. It
turned out that Wild Bill’s sister had given the Colt to a
family friend, Pat Garrett, who wore it while hunting
down Billy the Kid.
When Garrett retired from law enforcement, he
gave the weapon to Fred Sutton of Oklahoma City, a
collector of historical firearms. Since then the Peacemaker has passed from one eager gun collector to
another, becoming perhaps the most famous gun in
Western history.
Peacock, Dr. Silber C. (1896–1936) murder victim
Few murdered persons have ever been more unjustly
maligned than was Dr. Silber C. Peacock, a successful
and wealthy Chicago pediatrician who was killed on
the night of January 2, 1936.
Dr. Peacock had left his home at 10:05 P.M. to
answer what was to prove to be a fake emergency call
about a sick child. Hours later, he was found dead in
his Cadillac, shot, slashed and viciously clubbed. Dr.
Peacock did not appear to have been robbed of his
money or valuables (it was subsequently discovered
that $20 had been taken), and the public and the newspapers soon began a series of speculations about him.
Among other things, he was said to have been the victim of a narcotics robbery, a leading narcotics dealer,
the keeper of a secret love nest, a habitue of underworld dives and a society abortionist. All these allegations eventually proved groundless. For example, the
charge of keeping a “swank love nest,” as one newspaper put it, started because his wife could not identify an
apartment key that was found in his possession at the
time of his death. Eventually, the police discovered it
was the key to the apartment of the parents-in-law of a
Chicago deputy coroner, who, during his investigation,
had somehow inadvertently dropped it among the
effects found on the dead man.
689
PEDIGREED dog swindle
Finally, 10 weeks after the slaying, four young men
were arrested and confessed to the murder. They had
plotted to rob a physician, selected Peacock’s name
out of hundreds of doctors listed in the classified telephone directory and lured him to his death with a
telephone call. When he had resisted, they killed him
and fled. Three of the culprits—Emil Reck, Robert
Goethe and Durland Nash—went to prison for 199
years plus four consecutive terms of one year to life.
The fourth, 17-year-old Mickey Livingston, drew a
30-year sentence.
liking, he would explain, and was willing to pay $100
for it. The dog owner wouldn’t consider it, again
pointing out how valuable the animal was. The bartender would have to raise the bid to $300 before the
owner would agree to part with the valuable animal,
but only with the proviso that he could buy the dog
back the following month for $400 if he solved his
financial problems. That detail wouldn’t worry the
bartender. He could always say the dog had been
trampled by a horse.
The bartender would take the money from the register and exchange it for the mutt. Now, with the original
owner gone, he only had to wait for the return of the
prospective buyer to realize a $200 profit. Of course,
this proved to be a wait considerably longer than the
dog’s life span.
The pedigreed dog swindle was a favorite with
the short con operators for decades, and eventually,
it evolved into a bigger con, with the profits increasing 10- to 100-fold. The victim changed from a
bartender to a greedy banker or businessman, and
instead of selling a pedigreed dog, the con man
would offer a gold mine or some oil stock, invariably
worthless, which, for some reason, he could no longer
keep.
pedigreed dog swindle
A short con, or quick hustle, the pedigreed dog swindle
is less important for its own sake than it is for the more
lucrative swindles it fathered.
The 19th century victim of such a caper was often a
bartender, who was approached by a strange customer
with a dog, most often a mongrel terrier. The customer
would explain that the dog was a prize winner and produce some impressive-looking papers to prove the
point. “Look,” he might say, “this dog is really valuable and I have an important meeting with some
bankers and I can’t take him with me. I’ll give you ten
dollars to watch him for a couple of hours.”
Naturally, the bartender would agree. After the dog
owner left with a final word about how valuable the
dog was, another customer would walk in. He would
pretend to be very impressed by the dog, declaring he
really liked the animal and that his kids would be wild
about it. After this buildup he would offer the bartender $50 for the animal. The bartender would
explain the dog was not his, but the man would only
grow more insistent, raising the offer to $100.
Patiently, the bartender would refuse and keep refusing
as the ante was raised. Finally, the customer would say,
“Listen, I’ll stop conning you. I know my dog flesh.
That’s a valuable dog. If you’ll sell it, I’ll go to five hundred dollars.”
By now the bartender would be in agony, turning
down such an offer. The customer would then say,
“Look, I’m from out of town. If you can swing a deal
for me for the dog, I’ll give you the five hundred, but I
have to catch a train in an hour and I’ll stop back just
before I have to leave.”
A half an hour later the dog’s owner would reappear,
looking downcast, and order a drink. The bartender
would serve him, asking if anything was wrong. Sorrowfully nodding, the dog owner would explain that
his business deal had fallen through. “I was really
counting on that deal, now I don’t know what I’ll do.”
The bartender, trying to curb his enthusiasm, might
then offer to help the poor dog owner. He had taken a
Peel, Fanny (1828–1858) famous 19th-century prostitute
Perhaps the most famous 19th century American prostitute was “the notorious Fanny Peel,” as the New
Orleans newspapers labeled her.
The daughter of a Troy, N.Y. clergyman and a graduate of the Troy Female Seminary, she had been
“soiled” at the age of 15 and thereafter became a prostitute, at the time virtually the only fate possible for
one so ruined. After working in a number of brothels,
her uncommon beauty attracted the attention of a rich
man and he made her his mistress. Thereafter, she
became the mistress of a number of millionaires from
New York to Chicago, acquiring a considerable fortune for herself in the process.
In 1857 Fanny came to New Orleans rich enough
to employ a coachman, a free black. Ever on the
lookout for more money, she sold him as a slave to a
Louisiana planter and entered a fashionable brothel
on Dauphine Street. She was soon hailed by the
press as easily the most beautiful courtesan ever to
appear in New Orleans. Disenchantment set in
rather quickly, however, as Fanny rejected the
money of the city’s leading bloods, declaring the
men visiting the brothel were not good enough for
her. Finally, she was dismissed by the brothel and
left New Orleans for Mobile, Ala., where she died
the following summer.
690
PEONAGE
killed not because they had murdered Nash but
because they knew who had ordered his execution.
This version was backed up by the later statements of
underworld figure Blackie Audett, who said that
almost everyone in power in Kansas City knew about
the impending rub-out. At the time, one of Pendergast’s closest associates was City Manager Henry
McElroy. Audett stated that Mary McElroy, Henry
McElroy’s daughter, knew about the shooting hours
before it occurred and, in fact, invited him to come
with her to Union Station to watch the execution. He
said they had witnessed the massacre from about 50
yards away. Even if Audett’s story was apocryphal, it
still captured the flavor of Pendergast’s domain, where
anything could happen.
For a time it seemed Tom Pendergast’s hold on
Kansas City’s politics and underworld was untouchable, but the federal government started a massive
crackdown in the late 1930s thanks to the machine’s
effrontery in the 1936 elections. Although the city had
a population of under 400,000, it managed to come up
with an astonishing total of about 270,000 registered
voters. Federal Judge Albert L. Reeves ordered a grand
jury investigation, stating:
Pendergast, Thomas Joseph (1872–1945) Kansas City
political boss
For several decades Boss Tom Pendergast of Kansas
City ran a political machine whose record for graft,
fraud, strong-arm tactics and murder probably surpassed that of any other machine in the country. During
the underworld meetings of the 1920s and 1930s that
culminated in the formation of the national crime syndicate, Pendergast was the only political boss invited to
take part in the deliberations. Generally, he was represented in crime circles by the king of Kansas City’s
North Side wards, Johnny Lazia. Pendergast, who
became a power in state and national politics, once
said, “People work for a party because they can get a
job or get a favor.”
The Pendergast machine was first organized around
the turn of the century by Tom’s older brother James, a
former saloon keeper who built a base in the Catholic
blue-collar wards of the city. When James died in 1910,
Tom took charge and slowly extended his influence
throughout the city. By the 1920s he was in firm control. He quickly converted Kansas City into a truly
open town, parceling out control of horse racing wires,
liquor, vice and gambling. In 1922 Pendergast launched
the political career of Harry S. Truman by aiding his
election as county judge. Later on, many opponents of
Truman attempted to tar him with the Pendergast
brush, failing to understand that most political
machines utilize a few incorruptible types to provide a
touch of class to their operation. Almost inevitably,
these individuals are backed, as Truman was, for positions such as U.S. senator or others of little importance
to a machine compared to those at city hall or at the
state house.
While the Pendergast machine mainly achieved its
goals by fraud, it made use of violence if deemed necessary. When Lazia was convicted of tax evasion in
1934 and was threatening to inform on the machine,
his lips were sealed by machine-gun bullets in an execution almost certainly ordered by the Pendergast
forces. It has long been theorized that the infamous
Kansas City Massacre in June 1933 was actually a
planned rub-out of Frank “Jelly” Nash, the man
whom the machine-gunning gangsters were allegedly
trying to free. Nash knew the ins and outs of the
machine as well as all facets of crime in Kansas City; if
he had talked, many important figures would have
faced jail. While the FBI charged the crime to Verne
Miller, Pretty Boy Floyd and Adam Richetti, considerable evidence developed later indicated the agency was
wrong and that the real killers were Miller, Maurice
Denning and William “Solly” Weissman. The bodies of
Miller and Weissman turned up later that year but
Denning disappeared. It seemed evident that they were
I can’t sit quietly in my district here, charged with
responsibility as I am, and allow my fellow countrymen
who stand for the law, and the citizens who stand for
the law, to witness some man going with dripping fingers to the ballot box. A corrupt vote is akin to a gun
pointing at the very heart of America.
The FBI uncovered damning evidence of vote theft,
stuffed ballot boxes and intimidation of voters. There
was clear proof that erasures had been made on ballots.
Indentations on many ballots revealed they had been
marked one on top of the other. One precinct captain,
complaining about his hard day, stated: “I’ve been in
the basement and those damn Republicans certainly
write heavy. It was a tough job erasing.”
No less than 256 Pendergast followers were convicted in the vote fraud case, marking the beginning of
the end of the Pendergast machine. The boss himself
was convicted of tax evasion in 1939. Although he
served only a year, his control over Kansas City was
broken. He died in 1945.
See also: KANSAS CITY MASSACRE.
peonage
As a method of forced labor to pay off debts, peonage
continued in the United States after the end of slavery.
The system, introduced in the New World by the
Spaniards, was applied in both North and South Amer691
PEPPERBOX revolver
ica. Well into the 20th century it was possible for an
employer in some states in this country to swear out a
warrant against a poor, unsophisticated workman,
arrange his release on bail and force him to work on a
plantation or farm under the threat of being sent back
to prison. In certain states employers were allowed to
pay off a prisoner’s fine and then require him to work
off the debt. The federal government finally moved in
to protect the civil rights of such laborers.
The case that probably caused more public revulsion
over the practice and led to a major crackdown
occurred in Georgia in 1921. A farm owner, John S.
Williams, “bought” black prisoners from state and
county road gangs and bound them to work out the socalled purchase price on his farm. When agents of the
Bureau of Investigation (the forerunner of the FBI)
started probing into Williams’ operations, evidence
indicated he had killed at least a dozen of the ex-prisoners in an attempt to eliminate witnesses who might testify against him. He was convicted of murder and
imprisoned for life. To this day reports of peonage continue to turn up in connection with various share-cropping systems in the South.
The newest form of peonage involves the illegal
importation of Mexican workers. Produce growers of
California’s lush San Joaquin and Imperial valleys pay
smugglers to bring in the illegal aliens at so much a
head. These smugglers also collect money from the
aliens, who are unaware they are being sold into a form
of near-slavery. The growers and ranchers find these
imported workers to be docile and pliant. They are
totally isolated on the farms and remain under the
threat of arrest and deportation. They are not permitted to read newspapers and are generally worked 10 to
12 hours a day for incredibly small pay and their keep.
Prosecutions for this crime have been virtually nonexistent, certainly in view of the scope of the activity.
See also: POLLOS.
was very inaccurate beyond a few feet, holdup artists
found sticking four barrels into a victim’s face was a
most effective convincer.
As a result of the 1968 Gun Control Act, a 20th century copy of Sharps’ four-barrel model using .22-long
ammunition and selling for under $30 was placed on
the embargo list.
See also: DERRINGER, SATURDAY NIGHT SPECIAL.
Percy, Valerie (1945–1966) murder victim
Senatorial candidate Charles H. Percy’s 21-year-old
twin daughter Valerie was killed in the family’s mansion in Kenilworth, Ill. on September 18, 1966. At
about 5 A.M. Percy was awakened by his wife’s screams.
He immediately turned on a switch that set off a piercing burglar alarm atop the 17-room suburban home
and rushed to Valerie’s bedroom, where he found the
girl still alive but mutilated by numerous stab wounds.
She died shortly thereafter. Hearing a noise, Valerie’s
stepmother had investigated and come upon a shadowy
intruder standing over the girl’s bed. He had shined a
flashlight in the woman’s face and, while she was temporarily blinded, successfully made his escape.
The case shocked the country and for a time its
political impact in the Senate race between Percy and
74-year-old Senate Democrat Paul Douglas was hard to
gauge. Some political observers concluded the tragedy
produced a significant sympathy vote for Percy that
helped him win the election although Douglas later
admitted that Percy had already pulled ahead of him in
the summer.
From the beginning, there appeared to have been a
sexual motive behind the Percy murder, indicating the
act of a person harboring a strong sexual animosity
toward the girl. Over the next several years the case
remained unsolved despite Sen. Percy’s offer of a
$50,000 reward and an intensive police investigation,
in which 14,000 persons were questioned and 1,317
leads followed up. A total of 19 confessions were
made—all false. A youth in Tucson, Ariz. confessed to
the murder in October 1966 but later denied it. In 1971
police in South Yarmouth, Mass. reported that a 24year-old man had admitted committing the Percy
killing and 17 other murders as well. Confession number 18, another phony, was made by a 26-year-old suspect in a Las Vegas murder case. The final one came
from a 27-year-old man in Miami, who not only
claimed he had killed Valerie but John F. Kennedy,
Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King as well.
By 1973, the authorities considered the murder
solved, although they agreed there would probably
never be a prosecution. Reporter Art Petacque of the
Chicago Sun-Times broke the case by obtaining a
pepperbox revolver
The pepperbox revolver was one of the most popular
small handguns of the 19th century, generally selling
for about $5.75, which today would be considered the
price range of a Saturday Night Special. Only two and
a half to three inches long, this multibarrel weapon
generally came in two styles: stationary barrels with a
rotating firing pin or with barrels that revolved into a
position over the firing pin. The caliber of the gun varied from .22 to .36, the larger size certainly enough to
blow much of a victim’s head off at close range. Christian Sharps produced the most popular pepperbox, a
four-barrel model, in 1859; over a 20-year period
Americans bought 150,000 of them. While the weapon
692
PERRY, Oliver Curtis
statement from a Mafia operative, 58-year-old Leo
Rugendorf, who oversaw the activities of a gang of
cat burglars that had robbed the homes of wealthy
people all over the country. Rugendorf, near death
from heart disease, fingered burglars Francis
Hohimer and Frederick Malchow, who had plunged
to his death from a railroad trestle in 1967 after
escaping from a Pennsylvania prison. Hohimer at the
time was doing 30 years in the Iowa State Penitentiary for armed robbery.
Rugendorf said Hohimer told him shortly after the
murder: “They’ll get me for the Valerie Percy murder.
The girl woke up, and I hit her on the top of the head
with a pistol.” In addition, the reporter was able to get
corroboration of Rugendorf’s claim from Hohimer’s
younger brother, Harold, who reported Frank was
“real nervous and uptight” the day after the murder.
Harold said his brother had told him he “had to ‘off’ a
girl.”
Harold Hohimer further stated: “I asked him why he
had to do someone in, and he said it was because the
girl made a lot of noise and they got in a fight. I asked
him, ‘What score are you talking about?’ and he said,
‘It’s all in the newspapers and on the radio today.’ He
was talking about the Valerie Percy thing.”
Yet another acquaintance of Frank Hohimer claimed
Frank had told him two weeks before the murder that
he had cased the Percy mansion and intended to rob it.
After maintaining his silence for a while, Frank
Hohimer consented to answer questions put to him by
Petacque and investigators. He denied killing Valerie
and denied being in the Percy mansion. Instead, he
accused Malchow of the murder, stating that on the
morning of the crime Malchow had come to his flat in
blood-soaked clothes.
In 1975 Frank Hohimer wrote a book about his
criminal past, The Home Invaders, admitting a number
of burglaries, including a robbery of Elvis Presley’s
mansion in Memphis, but holding to his version of the
Percy murder.
Without physical evidence linking Malchow or
Hohimer to the murder, officials admit, there is no
chance anyone will ever be prosecuted for the murder
of Valerie Percy. The offer of $50,000 reward has been
withdrawn. Reporter Petacque won a Pulitzer Prize for
his work on the story.
toward becoming notorious as America’s first female
horse thief. In 1839 she published her confession,
which included the following description of herself:
A young woman, who, in early life was deservedly
esteemed for her exemplary behavior, yet for three
years last past (friendless and unprotected) has been
unhappily addicted to a criminal propensity, more singular and surprising in its nature (for one of her sex)
than can be found on record; in the commission of
which, she has been four times detected, twice pardoned on account of her sex, once for reasons of supposed insanity, and the fourth and last time, convicted
and sentenced to two years imprisonment in Madison
county jail, Kentucky. Annexed is a well-written
Address to Parents and Children.
She did not total up her thefts but they apparently
numbered in the hundreds.
Since horse-theft was considered no minor crime,
Perkins apparently decided any future infractions
would bring severe punishment, and so far as the
record shows, she appears to have retired from the profession in 1841.
Perry, Oliver Curtis (1864–1930) train robber
Train robbery was often thought of as a western crime,
but probably the greatest train robber of all practiced
his art in the East. His name was Oliver Curtis Perry
and he was described by the New York World as “one
of the most spectacular train robbers the country has
ever known.” The accolade was well-deserved. Perry
was a former Wyoming cowboy who had come east to
make his dishonest fortune. In a series of incredible
one-man capers, he displayed a daring never equaled by
any other train robber.
Perry, who claimed to be a descendant of Oliver
Hazard Perry, the hero of the Battle of Lake Erie in
1812, committed his first train robbery on September
29, 1891. With a small saw, he cut out a square in the
wooden end of the express car of the New York Central’s Fast Flyer No. 31 out of Albany and crawled
through a pile of packages to overpower the messenger
inside. After tying up the messenger, he broke open the
safe and took $5,000 in cash and $3,000 in jewelry.
Then, hanging by one hand, sawed through the air hose
between the express car and the adjoining car, bringing
the crack train to a halt. Perry jumped down and fled
into the nearby woods, making good his escape.
Pinkerton detectives learned the identity of the robber when he turned up in Rochester spending too much
money in saloons and whorehouses and dropping
boastful hints. Knowing Perry’s identity and catching
Perkins, Josephine Amelia (1818–?) horse thief
Following a series of misadventures in her native England, a young woman named Josephine Amelia Perkins
arrived in New York in the 1830s without any money
or a place to stay and only the clothes on her back. She
immediately stole a horse, thereby taking the initial step
693
PERRY, Oliver Curtis
him, however, were two different matters. The Pinkertons just missed catching him after each of two more
robberies he pulled.
Perry’s wildest train robbery took place near Lyons,
N.Y. in 1892, a spectacular attempt that even Hollywood would have rejected as too far-fetched. Having
learned that a New York Central train departing Syracuse on September 20 would contain $100,000, he
somehow got on top of the icy roof of the train’s
express car during the height of a hailstorm, slid down
a rope and kicked in a side window. Firing a shot over
the head of the messenger in the car, he jumped through
the window. In a savage fight Perry pistol-whipped the
messenger into unconsciousness, but not before his victim managed to pull the bell rope. The bandit worked
feverishly at cracking open the safe until he was interrupted by an investigating conductor. Perry fired a shot
at the conductor and fled, stopping just long enough to
rifle the unconscious messenger’s pockets and empty
the petty cash box.
Flinging open the door, he jumped out of the train,
which had ground to a stop near Jordan, N.Y. He
intimidated the crew and passengers with several more
shots and ordered the train to move, warning that otherwise he would shoot to kill. The train picked up
speed and headed for Lyons, N.Y. When it got there, a
50-man posse was formed to return to Jordan and hunt
for the train robber. Just as the posse was about to
leave on a special train, the conductor who had interrupted Perry in the express car spotted him moving
briskly through the station. After he had ordered the
train to pull out in Jordan, Perry had hopped aboard
the last car and pretended to be a passenger. But for the
conductor noticing him, he would have made good his
escape in Lyons.
Perry wasn’t through yet. He raced through the train
yards, with the posse after him, and jumped aboard a
freight engine already moving out under a full head of
steam. He forced the engineer and fireman to jump and
took off with the throttle wide open. His pursuers
mounted a faster engine on a parallel set of tracks and
gave chase, quickly closing ground on him. As they
neared several members of the posse opened up with
pistols and shotguns. Perry threw his engine in reverse
and headed in the opposite direction. As the two
engines passed each other, Perry exchanged shots with
the posse men, who then put their engine in reverse.
Again the two cars met, with more shots exchanged.
Perry’s engine and that of his pursuers flew back and
forth through the train yards, bullets filling the air.
Finally, the steam supply in Perry’s locomotive dropped
and he was forced to make a run for the woods.
The posse chased Perry into the swamps. He probably still would have escaped had not another posse
A newspaper sketch illustrates one of Oliver Curtis Perry’s
most spectacular train robberies
under Wayne County Deputy Sheriff Jeremiah Collins
cut him off. Interviewed by a reporter after his capture,
Perry said, “I had to take a bold stroke with big
chances and I guess I lost.”
He was sentenced to 49 years in Auburn Prison.
Even following his confinement the press continued to
fawn over him, quoting Pinkertons Superintendent
George Bangs’ description of the Lyons caper as “the
most daring train robbery attempt in criminal history. I
would call Perry the nerviest outlaw I ever heard of.
There are few western badmen who possessed his
courage.”
In prison, Perry was deluged by mail from women,
including many proposals of marriage. One even sent
him a saw hidden inside a Bible. After causing a number of disturbances, he was removed to the State Hospital for the Criminally Insane at Matteawan. In 1895
Perry received another saw hidden in a Bible from the
694
PETERS, Frederick Emerson
stolen from Palm and waylaid Phenie as she was coming home from a movie. He did it at a time when he
knew Palm was home alone, while Mrs. Palm was visiting friends on church business. After killing his wife,
Perry left one of Palm’s shoes at the scene of the crime.
He also had stolen some papers and personal letters
from Palm as well as one of his shirts. He then ripped
the pocket from the shirt and planted it and the papers
under the body so that it would appear Phenie Perry
had ripped off the pocket in her death struggle. All
Perry had to do then was slip back home with one
shoeless foot and plant the remaining shoe and the torn
shirt in one of Palm’s closets while he was sleeping.
It was an intricate and cunning plot and it almost
worked. At first, investigating officers had little doubt
that Palm was their man. The only thing that bothered
them was the deacon’s strong denials and his spotless
reputation. That made them look at Arthur Perry a little more closely, and they eventually found evidence
that he had staged the murder to make it look like the
act of his neighbor. Perry had slipped on one minor
point, which proved enough to send him to the chair.
Dirt particles on his sock were found to match a sample
of dirt taken from the scene of the murder.
young lady who had sent him the same type of gift
while he was in Auburn. He sawed through the bars of
his cell and, after releasing a number of other prisoners,
slid down 80 feet of drainpipe to freedom.
With no money and a huge posse tracking him, Perry
made his way to New York City and then slipped
aboard a ferry to Weehawken, N.J. The town policeman there caught him as he huddled sick and hungry
over a small fire.
Perry was sent to the maximum-security prison at
Dannemora, but he still dreamed of making another
escape. After several futile efforts he was put in solitary confinement, where he was to remain for a quarter of a century. In 1920, having long since given up
hope of escaping, Perry constructed a device consisting
of a block of wood and two nails and used it to pierce
both of his eyes. Permanently blinded, he dictated a
letter to his lawyer: “I was born in the light of day,
against my will of course. I now assert my right to shut
out that light. In plain words I wanted to tear out my
eyes.”
Perry tried to starve himself to death during his last
six years but was kept alive by forced feedings until he
passed away in 1930. In those final years he refused to
say a word to his guards. It was a gruesome end for a
man who, according to the New York World, had
“electrified the nation with his daring exploits.”
Peters, Frederick Emerson (1885–1959) check passer
Probably the most prolific passer of bad checks in
American history, Frederick Emerson Peters, starting at
age 17, cashed thousands of bad checks all over the
United States, using hundreds of different names. One
of his favorite ploys was to pose as the son or some
other relative of a well-known figure, especially
Theodore Roosevelt, whose appearance he could somewhat emulate. He would engage a shopkeeper in conversation, casually let drop his identity and then make a
purchase with a check for a somewhat larger amount.
Few small shopkeepers, impressed by having a celebrity
as a customer, would turn him down; in fact, any number of them would eventually frame the bad check and
proudly recall the time they “got took by Teddy Roosevelt’s kid.”
Asked once why he continued to write bad checks
after a number of convictions, Peters shrugged and said
it was so easy that it would take the “rock-like
willpower of the Sphinx to resist such temptation.” He
stated his record achievement was to pass 30 worthless
checks in one day in a small Indiana town whose name
he could no longer remember. Much of his life was
spent behind bars; during those tours he often helped
establish prison libraries. One day while he was making
his check-passing rounds in New Haven, Conn., he suffered a fatal stroke; Peters was 74 years old at the time.
He was given a pauper’s funeral, although it was
Perry, Phenie (1917–1937) murder victim
Few killers have ever gone to such great lengths to
frame someone else for their crime as 23-year-old
Arthur Perry did for the murder of his 20-year-old wife,
Phenie. In the event his wife died, Perry stood to collect
$1,000 in insurance money, a not inconsequential sum
in the Depression year of 1937. A passing pedestrian
found the body of Phenie Perry in a lot on 157th St. in
Jamaica, New York City. Her dress was torn down the
front and her knees were dirt-smeared and scarred. She
had been bludgeoned and kicked to death, and her
body lay in a pool of blood. There were plenty of footprints belonging to the murderer. Better yet, there was
even one of his bloodstained shoes.
All this was part of Arthur Perry’s unique plot. The
Perrys shared a home with another couple, the Ulysses
Palms. Perry had decided to frame Palm, a church deacon, precisely because he was an unlikely suspect and
an illogical choice for anyone to attempt to frame.
First, he forged a love letter to his wife and signed
Palm’s name to it. In the letter Palm demanded that
Phenie Perry be nice to him. It was an excellent forgery
and respected handwriting experts would dispute
whether Palm or Perry had written it. On the night of
the murder, Arthur Perry put on a pair of shoes he had
695
PETERS, Philip
coming from the top of the house, but whenever the
police investigated, they found nothing, as Coneys,
hearing them arrive, would flip off the tiny light he
maintained in his lair. The police were sure children
were playing in the house and deliberately attempting
to frighten passersby. Still they made periodic checks on
the house and on July 30, 1942 two detectives heard a
lock click on the second floor. They charged upstairs
just in time to see the legs of the Spiderman slip
through the trapdoor.
The most bizarre case in Denver’s history was
solved, and Coneys was sent to the penitentiary for life.
observed that with some advanced warning he could
have given the undertaker a handsome check.
See also: CHECK PASSING.
Peters, Philip (1868–1941) murder victim of Denver’s
Spiderman
On the evening of October 17, 1941, a Denver, Colo.
couple became worried about an elderly neighbor, Philip
Peters. They broke into his home and found him murdered. It turned out to be one of the most bizarre cases
in that city’s history, with the killer to become famous as
the Spiderman of Moncrieff Place. What the police
couldn’t figure out was how the murderer had escaped.
All the doors and windows had been locked from the
inside, but no one was found hiding in the house.
About a month earlier, 59-year-old Theodore
Coneys, a tramp who had known Peters years before,
approached the house to beg for food. Just then Peters
came out and entered a car to visit his sick wife in the
hospital. Coneys slipped into the house to steal money
and food but made an opportune discovery: a trapdoor,
only about 2 1/2 times the size of a cigarbox lid, which
led to a narrow attic cubbyhole. Rounding up a pile of
rags, some food and an old crystal radio, Coneys settled into his newly found hiding place.
He planned to become a permanent uninvited
boarder. Whenever Peters left the house, Coneys would
descend from his attic hideout and eat, bathe and shave,
using Peters’ razor. On October 17 Coneys was in the
kitchen eating. He thought Peters had gone out, but the
old man was just taking a nap. Suddenly, the kitchen
door popped open, and Peters stood there gaping.
Coneys panicked. He grabbed an iron stove shaker and
attacked Peters, who was screaming and had obviously
not recognized him. Peters collapsed on the floor dead.
Coneys did not flee the house, feeling he had
nowhere to go. He climbed back up into his hiding
place and was there when the murder was discovered
and the police searched the house. The officers had
noticed the trapdoor but decided a man could not fit
through it. They were partially right: an average-sized
man couldn’t but a thin man—like Coneys—could.
When Mrs. Peters returned from the hospital, she
and her housekeeper kept hearing strange sounds in the
house, and the tale soon spread in the area that the
house was haunted. One night the housekeeper caught
a glimpse of a shadowy figure creeping around. She
convinced herself that it was Mr. Peters’ ghost and
talked Mrs. Peters into moving.
Even with the house vacant, Coneys did not leave.
The electricity was left on and he had stored up some
food and could get water by scraping snow from the
gutters. Often, a passerby would notice an eerie light
Philadelphia anti-Catholic riots
Perhaps one of the worst series of anti-Catholic riots in
the United States took place in Philadelphia over a twomonth period in 1844.
The initial battles erupted on May 3, when several
thousand Protestants, calling themselves Native Americans, attempted to stage an anti-Catholic street rally in
the Irish section of Kensington. Forced out by the
Catholics in the first round of fighting, the Protestant
mob stormed back into the area on May 8, setting fire
to a number of houses, churches, a Catholic rectory
and a schoolhouse. The violence was finally controlled
after the cavalry was called out and martial law
declared. During the next several weeks sporadic fighting broke out, and there was much ill-feeling on the
part of the Native Americans, who resented the fact
that the military was being used to protect the
Catholics. The Nativists and the army fought the final
battle of the conflict on July 4, with each side making
use of batteries of cannon. The soldiers proved better
cannoneers, scattering the Nativists. The next day a
dazed city totaled up the casualties in the two-month
confrontation: 30 dead, 150 wounded and 220 families
burned out. The financial losses were put in the millions of dollars.
Phillips, David Graham (1868–1911) murder victim
David Phillips, one of the most popular novelists of the
first decade of the 20th century, achieved posthumous
fame as the only writer ever to be murdered because of
a character he created.
One day late in 1910 a neurotic 21-year-old member
of Philadelphia society, Fitzhugh Goldsborough, picked
up one of Phillips’ novels, The Fashionable Adventures
of Joshua Craig, which was plotted largely around a
scatterbrained, selfish young socialite. Goldsborough
had an elder sister, a frivolous member of Philadelphia
society who seemed to match Phillips’ character in one
unflattering detail after another. He also had an explo696
PICKPOCKETING
sive temper and had often come to blows with persons
who had said anything he took to be unkind about his
sister. Goldsborough whipped himself into a murderous
frenzy over Phillips’ apparent insult.
On January 23, 1911 Phillips left his Gramercy
Park apartment in New York City; as he walked
through the park, he was confronted by a disheveled,
haggard-looking young man. Fitzhugh Goldsborough
pulled out a pistol and screamed, “Here you go!” and
then shot the author several times. As Phillips fell to the
ground mortally wounded, Goldsborough glanced at
horrified passersby and said, “Here I go!” He put the
gun to his temple and pulled the trigger, killing himself.
Police soon uncovered the motive for Goldsborough’s
act, but never found any indication that the victim had
ever known or even heard of the murderer’s sister.
stall stops dead in his tracks, as though realizing he is
about to get on the wrong train. As he turns to get off,
there is a pileup and the victim, nailed between the stall
and the mechanic, is stripped clean. The handoff is
made to the caretaker and the three take off. The victim
rides away on his train, probably cursing out that stupid
fat man under his breath. He will curse even more when
he discovers he’s been robbed, but by that time he will
be far from the scene of the crime.
It is very difficult to estimate how much money is
lost to pickpockets. Authorities in New York City
roughly estimate the losses there are probably at least
$1 million annually. Not everyone reports such a theft;
many victims never know they’ve had their pockets
picked, believing they simply lost their money through
carelessness.
The bluebloods of pickpocketing are the “live cannons,” or “pit workers,” who can flip your wallet out
of your “pit,” or pocket, as easily as they can peel a
banana. The best of them can “kiss the sucker,” which
means face the victim directly—close enough to kiss
him—and lift his wallet from his inside coat pocket, the
hardest location of all. Naturally, in such an operation
the pickpocket needs some “togs,” or cover for his nimble hands. It may be a coat over his arm, a package or a
newspaper.
pickpocketing
It happens very quickly. The “stall” bumps the
“mark” and makes him look his way. The second that
happens the “hook,” or “mechanic,” comes along on
the other side and “fans” his pockets. The hook immediately “dukes the poke” to the “caretaker,” who
starts traveling.
There in a nutshell is a typical pickpocketing operation. It can happen on a subway platform, in a crowd
at a racetrack or any place else a victim can be easily
jostled.
It’s really quite simple. The first man bumps into or
may even speak to the victim to distract him. The second man, the actual pickpocket, expertly brushes the
victim’s pockets to locate his wallet in the event the trio
hasn’t already spotted its location, as is more often the
case. Once the pickpocket takes the wallet, he has committed a crime, and the evidence is on him. If he is inexpert in his movements, the victim will notice and
probably grab him and start yelling. So, almost in the
same motion, the pickpocket passes the wallet to the
third man, who is never close enough to the victim to
come directly under suspicion. It is the third man’s
assignment to get away quickly with the loot.
There are many different pickpocketing operations.
One that is often used in subways involves a caretaker
who is also an initial spotter, noting in which pocket a
potential victim has placed his wallet or roll of bills. A
good place to make this observation is the token booth.
The spotter follows the victim to the platform and stuffs
an envelope into the same pocket in which the victim
has his money. This signals the stall and the mechanic,
who wait for the train to pull into the station before
making a move. As the train doors open, the stall, often
a fat man, crowds in front of the victim, blocking his
entrance, and the mechanic comes up behind him. The
Some tips from the New York City Transit Police
Pickpocket Squad on foiling light-fingered thieves.
697
PIERRE hotel robbery
deposit boxes. Each employee was handcuffed and
bound and their mouths taped. The side door was left
locked so that any late-arriving guests would have to
use the Fifth Avenue entrance to enter the hotel.
At that late hour, only three hotel guests came into
the area where the robbery was taking place; they too
were bound and gagged and shoved in with the other
prisoners. No shots were fired at any time and none of
the prisoners was hurt. After two hours of steady labor
the satisfied thieves walked out with their loot. Had
they had more time they could have opened the remaining 146 boxes, which would have made the haul even
more monumental. Still at the rate of at least $2 million
an hour, their time was rather well rewarded.
Although the robbery has never been solved, the
police did capture one man in possession of approximately $1 million worth of the stolen gems and another
when he attempted to pass a smaller amount of the jewels to a fence who made the mistake of dealing with an
FBI informant. However, the two could not be connected with the actual robbery and were liable to conviction only for possession of stolen property, a minor
charge. Both men plea-bargained for second-degree
burglary and got off with very short sentences.
The police have never identified the rest of the robbers, and it is now too late. The statute of limitations
has passed.
When a top cannon starts losing his “grift sense,” or
nerve, he has to limit his action to that of a “moll
buzzer,” one who specializes in opening women’s handbags and lifting a wallet or change purse. The lowest a
pickpocket can fall is to the ranks of a “lush worker,”
i.e., one who rolls drunks who have passed out or, if
need be, conked out.
According to police, few women make good pickpockets. Most women pickpockets are lush workers,
but some are good moll buzzers. The reason for this is
that in most cities there are laws against jostling, a must
for a dip. “If a guy jostles a woman, she thinks he’s on
the make,” one detective says. “She screams and the
dip’s facing a morals charge. A woman bumps a woman
and they both let it pass with maybe an icy stare.”
There is no such thing as a pickpocket who doesn’t
get caught. They are usually arrested scores of times,
but seldom with the loot in their hands. So they are
generally convicted of no more than jostling and usually they plea-bargain for a suspended sentence or possibly a small fine.
Perhaps the dean of pickpockets was Thomas “Butterfingers” Moran, who died in 1971. He stole an estimated $500,000 over a career of more than four
decades. He also had the distinction of being arrested in
every continental state of the union plus Canada.
Some rules for foiling pickpockets that were developed by the New York City Transit Police Pickpocket
Squad are shown in the accompanying illustration.
To this should be added one more: beware of
“BEWARE OF PICKPOCKETS” signs. Dips deliberately
hang around these signs because many persons will automatically touch their money or wallet when they see such
a warning. It is thus a boon for pickpockets.
See also: DUTCH MOB, EDDIE JACKSON, THOMAS B.
“BUTTERFINGERS” MORAN.
pigeon drop
con game
Probably the most-practiced confidence game of all
time, the so-called pigeon drop comes in many varieties
but all follow a basic pattern. Con man number one
finds a wallet, purse, attache case or even a paper bag
apparently filled with money. An unsuspecting victim
standing nearby witnesses the discovery. Just then con
man number two appears and claims he is also entitled
to a share of the booty as much as the other two. If it
hasn’t occurred to the victim as yet, he now realizes he
ought to share in the proceeds. An argument ensues
about whether they should divide the money immediately or first check to find out if it is stolen. Con man
number one says his “boss” has police connections and
can check. This is done by phone and the report comes
back that the money was probably dropped by some
big gambler or tax evader and that the three should
share it. The “boss” offers to hold the money until all
three can produce a substantial amount of their own
money to demonstrate that they are acting in good faith
and are responsible enough to keep the secret. Con man
number two, apparently determined not to be cut out
of the deal, produces a large sum of money on the spot
to prove his reliability. Con man number one and the
victim then hurry off to get their money. When the vic-
Pierre hotel robbery
The greatest hotel robbery in history was that of the
stately Hotel Pierre on New York’s Fifth Avenue in the
early morning hours of January 2, 1972. Six robbers
with dyed hair and wearing false beards and mustaches
and rubber noses stole, according to most estimates, $4
million in jewels, cash and securities from 54 safedeposit boxes. An assistant district attorney felt as
much as an additional $4 million in cash might have
been taken and not reported by the victims.
At 3:45 A.M. the robbers pulled up in a limousine at
the side entrance of the hotel and stepped to the door.
They stuck a .38 into the doorman’s chest, pushed their
way inside, where they rapidly rounded up 18 hotel
employees who were on the ground floor and pushed
them into an office near the room containing the safe698
PINEAPPLE Primary
an offender, it became one of the most common methods
of punishing criminals in early America. New Orleans
had two such devices, used, in turn, by the Spanish,
French and Americans. One was the standard head and
hands arrangement; the other held only the fingers of
one or both hands with the first joints bent. A convicted
man sentenced to the pillory sat on a platform, usually
with a sign dangling from his neck that read:
tim returns and hands over his share, it is the last he
sees of the two con men or the “boss.”
While the plot appears almost incredible, it must be
remembered that the acting is high powered; in particular, the bickering between the two con men makes the
victim fearful he will be “left out” unless he abides by
all the conditions of the agreement. The reliability of
the employer—in some scams he is alleged to be a
police detective—is the convincer. The money involved
is always so great that the victim wants to believe. In a
1979 incident in the Bronx, New York City, two sisters
in their sixties leaped to their deaths in a joint suicide
after realizing they had been swindled out of their life
savings of $17,000 by a version of the pigeon drop.
Miss Piggott Special
My name is ———.
I am a thief [or whatever].
I stole from ———.
Sentenced to ——— days exposure at the pillory.
Someone undergoing such punishment was subjected
to the ridicule of the town, and it was common practice
for young boys and various riff-raff to hurl rotten fruit
or garbage at the prisoner. The pillory fell into disfavor
first in the South, where it was considered bad form to
allow blacks to see whites so abused. Generally speaking, it continued as a punishment for whites until about
1839. New Orleans abandoned the practice in 1827 for
whites but used it to punish blacks for another two
decades.
See also: COLONIAL PUNISHMENT.
knockout drink
During the 1860s and 1870s a ferocious old woman
known only as Miss Piggott operated one of the worst
saloon-boardinghouses on San Francisco’s Barbary
Coast, from which men were regularly shanghaied for
long sea voyages. The secret of her success was the Miss
Piggott Special, which was generally enough to lay any
man low. She employed a runner to lure likely victims
into her Davis Street saloon, where they would be
served the Special, a drink composed of equal parts of
gin, whiskey and brandy with a liberal lacing of laudanum. Such a drink would almost instantly leave a
man shivering and defenseless, whereupon Miss Piggott
would reach over the bar and clout the helpless man
with a club. The victim would always be positioned
over a trapdoor, and as he crumpled to the floor, Miss
Piggott would push a lever that would open the trap
and send the victim hurtling down to the basement
onto a mattress, generously provided to safeguard the
merchandise. When the man awoke, he would find
himself aboard a ship standing out to sea from the
Golden Gate, usually with no memory of what had
happened to him. Regulars at Miss Piggott’s saloon
were aware of where the trapdoor was and never stood
on it, because it was understood that anyone fool
enough to do so deserved to be dropped. Even when
Miss Piggott passed from the scene in the 1870s, the
Miss Piggott Special lingered on for many years as a
tool of most shanghai operators until the advent of the
more powerful Mickey Finn.
pillory
Pineapple Primary
1928 Chicago election
A rash of political violence marred the 1928 Republican primary in Chicago, one that the press dubbed the
“Pineapple Primary” because of the wholesale use of
“pineapples,” or bombs, to intimidate voters and office
seekers alike. Professional terrorists were employed by
both sides, with the Capone gang supplying many or
most of the tossers. The homes of candidates were
bombed and several campaign workers killed.
In the primary, Sen. Charles S. Deneen’s wing of the
party opposed the faction headed by Mayor Big Bill
Thompson and State’s Attorney Robert E. Crowe. The
latter forces, combined with those of Gov. Len Small,
who was known as a friend of mobsters, controlled
much of the patronage jobs in the state. On March 21,
1928 cafe owner and racketeer Diamond Joe Esposito
was killed by a bomb. Esposito, the power behind the
Genna bootlegging gang, was also close to Sen. Deneen.
On the day of Esposito’s funeral, bombs were placed at
the homes of Sen. Deneen and Judge A. Swanson,
Deneen’s candidate for state’s attorney.
In addition to attracting worldwide attention, the
violence of the Pineapple Primary roused Chicago voters the way no other of the city’s recent disruptive
elections had, and the Deneen forces won easily
despite Al Capone’s backing of the Thompson-Crowe
machine. It was a stunning upset and one that sobered
colonial punishment method
Within the first year of its establishment, every new
colony in America is believed to have used the pillory as
a form of punishment. Usually consisting of a wooden
frame with boards containing holes through which were
placed the head and hands, and sometimes the legs, of
699
PINKERTON, Allan
descriptions of known criminals, including physical
characteristics, peculiarities, background, friends and
hideouts. He also devised methods of psychological
warfare to use against offenders. Brought in to solve
the 1856 murder of a bank teller, Pinkerton assigned a
detective very similar in looks to the dead man to
shadow a suspect named Drysdale. Faced with the constant sight of what appeared to be the man he had
killed, Drysdale finally confessed and then, still shaken,
committed suicide.
Pinkerton won a contract with the Illinois Central
Railroad to supply it with guards and, in the process,
became acquainted with its lawyer, Abraham Lincoln.
At this time Pinkerton probably could have been
described as being to the left of Lincoln. In 1859 John
Brown hid out in his home with 11 runaway slaves.
Pinkerton gained national fame when he uncovered a
plot to kill Lincoln on a train scheduled to take Lincoln to Washington for his first inauguration and
outwitted the plotters by putting Lincoln on an earlier train. He was then put in charge of Civil War
secret service operations under Gen. George B.
McClellan.
After the war Pinkerton came to be regarded as the
ally and tool of big business interests in the North,
especially by the unreconstructed Confederates of the
border states and by workingmen attempting to organize. Pinkerton’s men were also involved in unsuccessful hunts for the James-Younger gang. The James gang
killed a Pinkerton spy trying to infiltrate the group,
and in 1874 a top Pinkerton agent, Louis J. Lull, and
Sheriff Ed Daniels of Osecola, Mo. died following a
shoot-out with the Younger Brothers. Pinkerton
earned the personal enmity of Jesse James when in
1875 his agents, thinking they had found the gang’s
hideout, open fired on a cabin and killed Jesse’s eightyear-old half-brother and wounded his mother. On
one occasion James went to Chicago expressly to kill
Pinkerton but gave up when he was unable to corner
the detective alone. James later said, “I known God
some day will deliver Allan Pinkerton into my hands.”
After Pinkerton died in 1884, the firm continued
under the leadership of his sons, William and Robert.
See also: WILLIAM D. “BIG BILL” HAYWOOD, TOM
HORN, JAMES BROTHERS, JAMES MCPARLAND, MOLLIE
MAGUIRES, HARRY ORCHARD, ALLAN PINKERTON, RENO
GANG, CHARLES SIRINGO.
Capone. In the autumn of that year, crusader Frank J.
Loesch, the 75-year-old president of the Chicago
Crime Commission, called on Capone in an effort to
ensure peaceful elections. He asked the gangster if the
Pineapple Primary indicated what would happen in
the general election.
Capone’s response was flamboyant and arrogant.
“I’ll give you a square deal if you don’t ask too much
of me.”
“Now look here, Capone,” Loesch said. “Will you
help me by keeping your damned cutthroats and hoodlums from interfering with the polling booths?”
“Sure,” Capone responded. “I’ll give them the word
because they’re all dagos up there, but what about the
Saltis gang of micks on the West Side? They’ll have to
be handled different. Do you want me to give them the
works, too?”
If Capone was trying to shock Loesch, he failed. The
crusader said that would make him very happy.
“All right,” Capone said. “I’ll have the cops send
over squad cars the night before the election and jug all
the hoodlums and keep them in the cooler until the
polls close.”
Capone, who had often bragged, “I own the police,”
kept his word. On election day, police squad cars
toured the polling places, and there was not a single
irregularity. Actually, there was little need for Loesch to
make the appeal, which only gave Capone a chance to
grandstand, since the candidates were all anti-Thompson and thus anti-Capone. The mobster was merely
making the best of a bad situation. Besides, he knew his
position would not be significantly altered by the election; he would remain top man in Chicago until federal
agents nailed him for income tax evasion.
Pinkerton, Allan (1819–1884) private detective
Although he was later to epitomize the establishment
private detective, Allan Pinkerton, the founder of the
agency that still bears his name, was something of a
revolutionary in his youth. An agitator for labor
reforms in Scotland, he evaded arrest only by emigrating to America at the age of 23. Settling in Kane
County, Ill. he supported himself as a cooper while
becoming an ardent abolitionist and an important cog
in the “underground railroad” that smuggled runaway
slaves to Canada. Pinkerton joined the Chicago police
force and was appointed its first detective. Gaining
fame in a number of cases, including the smashing of a
large counterfeiting ring, he opened his own agency in
1850.
As a private detective, Pinkerton developed new
police methods and techniques. He devised what was in
effect the first rogues’ gallery, compiling detailed
Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency
Started in 1850 by Allan Pinkerton, Pinkerton’s
National Detective Agency remains the premier organization of its type in the United States. Its organizational
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PIRACY
structure was used as a model for the Federal Bureau of
Investigation.
Initially, the Pinkertons handled cases that were
criminal in nature and were called on by many communities whose own law enforcement capabilities were
limited, corrupt or incompetent. In later years the
agency accepted labor-management assignments. As
numerous court cases were to prove, Pinkerton agents
employed by management did not hesitate to promote
violence that would discredit unions and frame and
convict union leaders. Included among the agency’s
more unsavory episodes were Jay Gould’s use of dozens
of spies to break a strike against his Texas and Pacific
Railroad in 1888; the infiltration of the mine workers
organization at Coeur d’Alene, Idaho by agent Charles
Siringo in 1894; and the efforts of the Pinkertons to
involve labor leader William “Big Bill” Haywood in the
murder of ex-Gov. Frank Steunenberg of Idaho in
1905. Finally, after a 1937 resolution by Congress
declared labor spying unfair and illegal, the agency officially abolished its industrial division.
Church, and the murderer, 26-year-old Thomas W.
Piper, the church sexton, had been seen taking her
there. After the girl’s body was discovered, Piper was
arrested and soon confessed not only Mabel’s murder
but the previous murders as well.
Piper was tried and convicted only for the murder of
little Mabel and sentenced to hang; he had in the
meantime retracted all his confessions. Before he died,
Piper once more admitted his crimes to Chief Savage,
who asked him to commit them to paper. “I’ll be
hanged if I will,” Piper snapped. Then he was hanged.
There was no doubt Piper was the mass murderer, for
the brutal killings by a man in a black cape ceased
after his execution. In due course, opera cloaks
returned to favor.
pipers
police spies
The use of spies within police departments has been a
rather common practice. Generally, such operators are
referred to as “shoo flies” by police officers. In
Chicago, however, they have been known as “pipers.”
The origin of the term goes back to 1903, when the
Chicago City Club brought in Capt. Alexander Piper of
the New York Police Department, a former U.S. Army
officer and future deputy police commissioner of New
York, to conduct a secret study of the local force. The
study, released to the newspapers on March 19, 1904,
found that on the whole, the Chicago police force was
both insufficient and inefficient. Many policemen were
declared unfit for work “by reason of viciousness and
bad habits.” Ten percent of police personnel were
either too fat or decrepit for active duty. Even worse,
Piper concluded, the force was operating with no discipline, officers were afraid of crooks and lacked the
intelligence to cope with criminal minds and many officers loafed and spent most of their tours of duty in
saloons or soliciting bribes.
Under such severe criticism police officials gave
Piper authority to establish a spy system within the
department to root out wrongdoing. The work of these
undercover operatives, who became known as
“pipers,” was hardly an unqualified success. While a
few dishonest officers were identified, the pipers were
often tricked by frame-ups of honest cops, who were
then thrown off the force so that they would no longer
interfere with various “fixes.” Capt. Piper left Chicago
hoping that curing the ills of the New York police
would prove an easier task.
Piper, Thomas W. (1849–1876) mass murderer
In the 1870s, about 90 years before the Boston Strangler began his rampage, a mass murderer terrorized the
city of Boston with a series of sex-related murders.
He committed four brutal murders and raped a number of young girls. The first victim was a girl named
Bridget Landregan, who was attacked as she passed
some bushes lining a snow-covered road on the night of
December 5, 1873. The killer had clubbed her to death
and was about to attack her body when a passerby happened along. The murderer, with black cloak flowing,
fled. Later that same night, apparently the same
assailant beat another girl bloody and raped her before
being frightened off. Again, he was described as a black,
batlike figure with a flowing cape. At the time, Boston
Chief of Police Savage remarked to the press, “It was
unseemly queer that only the nicest and most modest
young ladies seem to get themselves raped.”
When this fiend in black later killed two other girls,
one in her own bedroom, the police and the public
knew they had a real crime wave on their hands. As
hysteria gripped the city, Chief Savage issued an order
that all lone men seen wearing cloaks about the streets
after dark were to be stopped and questioned, and for
the following season opera cloaks fell out of fashion
among the young blades of the town.
It was only after the killing of yet a fourth victim, a
five-year-old girl named Mabel Hood Young, that the
strange killer was found. His identity was a terrible
shock to proper Bostonians. Little Mabel was murdered in the tower of the old Warren Avenue Baptist
piracy
Piracy plagued the United States from early colonial
days until almost the middle of the 19th century, when
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PIRATES’ Home
its practitioners were finally eliminated not so much by
legal suppression as by advancing technology. Fastmoving steamships simply proved too large and quick
for pirate attack.
Boston-based Dixey Bull, who raided the Massachusetts coast during the 1630s, is regarded as the
first American pirate, and the 1632 expedition that
unsuccessfully tried to catch him was the first effort
by colonists to deal with piracy. Colonial sea lanes
were a natural preying ground for pirates and the
North American coastline provided an endless number of islands where the pirates could find sanctuary.
Furthermore, colonial merchant vessels were, at best,
lightly armed. During wartime the governors of various colonies licensed privateers to plunder enemy
ships, and these violent men simply continued their
activities against friendly shipping when peace
arrived. Others, like Capt. William Kidd, who were
commissioned to hunt down pirates simply turned to
the activity themselves, finding it far easier to prey on
helpless shipping than risk death in battle against genuine pirates. Pirates received aid from corrupt colonial
governors, who offered their protection in exchange
for a portion of the booty taken. Typical was the
arrangement between the notorious Blackbeard
(Edward Teach) and Carolina Gov. Charles Eden.
Blackbeard was finally rooted out of his sanctuary on
Ocracoke Island when Gov. Alexander Spotswood of
Virginia, whose shipping the pirate often attacked,
commissioned an expedition against him. Blackbeard
was killed in 1718.
The early 18th century was the golden era of piracy
along the North American coast, marked by the activity
of Kidd, Stede Bonnet, the so-called Gentleman Pirate,
and Capt. Calico Jack Rackham, whose crew featured
two infamous woman pirates, Anne Bonney and Mary
Read. The two women, who fought alongside the men,
were finally captured by a British government ship in
October 1720. Rackham was hanged but both women
escaped the noose by claiming, falsely, to be pregnant, a
condition that legally precluded their execution. Read,
however, died of “prison fever” in her cell.
A new wave of piracy developed in North American coastal waters during the post-Revolutionary
period, especially by privateers once again turned
pirate. The actions of French “privateers” led to an
undeclared naval war with France in the late 1790s. In
the early 1800s the Gulf of Mexico was the preying
ground of a number of pirates, the best known being
Jean Lafitte, who received a pardon for his role in
defeating the British at the Battle of New Orleans in
1815. However, a number of Lafitte’s followers continued to plunder American shipping. Between 1814
and 1825 they and other pirates mounted over 1,500
attacks on U.S. ships, operating from the Gulf islands,
Cuba and Puerto Rico. By 1827 they were finally driven from the last of their Caribbean strongholds by
the U.S. Navy. Thereafter, thanks to the arrival of
steamboats, piracy steadily diminished, although the
last American pirate, Capt. Nathaniel Gordon, was
hanged as late as 1862.
See also: BLACKBEARD, MAJOR STEDE BONNET, CAVE-INTHE-ROCK PIRATES, CHARLTON STREET GANG, COLONEL
PLUG, VINCENT GAMBI, CAPTAIN NATHANIEL GORDON, CAPTAIN WILLIAM KIDD, JEAN LAFITTE, PIRATES’ HOME.
Pirates’ Home
corsair refuge
During the early years of the 19th century, an entire
section of Louisiana shoreline, especially the many
islands in the Bay of Barataria as well as the island of
Grand Terre, became known collectively as Pirates’
Home. Headquartered here were pirates, privateers and
smugglers, including not only the legendary Jean Lafitte
but also Rene Beluche, Dominique You (Captain
Dominique), Cut Nose and the bloodthirsty Vincent
Gambi. The Bay of Barataria afforded them a safe
anchor for their ships from which they could sweep out
and attack Spanish vessels in the Gulf of Mexico. U.S.
shipping was not molested since Americans were the
prime buyers of the stolen loot. Merchants from New
Orleans and other southern cities trekked regularly to
Pirates’ Home to buy the expensive merchandise at bargain prices. The high point of local pirate activity
occurred from 1810 to 1813, but in the following year
the U.S. Army destroyed the pirate settlements. This
action was not taken to accommodate other seagoing
nations but because the illicit trade in Pirates’ Home
was materially reducing the governmental tax-revenues
on incoming goods. Afterward, only those pirates who
fought with Jean Lafitte at the Battle of New Orleans
were allowed, for a time, to operate off the American
coast.
See also: VINCENT GAMBI, JEAN LAFITTE.
Pittsburgh Phil (1908–1941) Murder, Inc.’s top hit man
Probably the most prolific and certainly the most coldblooded professional hit man this country has ever
seen, Harry Strauss, better known as Pittsburgh Phil,
was the top killer of the national crime syndicate’s
enforcement arm, Murder, Inc. So far as is known,
Strauss was never in Pittsburgh in his life, having been
born and bred in Brooklyn; he just liked the sound of
the name. He also liked committing murder; he often
volunteered for murder contracts, as Brooklyn District
Attorney William O’Dwyer once said, “sometimes just
for the lust to kill.”
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PITTSBURGH Phil
The commissioner was wrong about that. Phil was
working very hard. In fact, he had the Brooklyn police
toiling over one of his murders at that moment. The
victim was George Rudnick, whom labor extortionist
Louis Lepke had suspected of being an informer.
After getting a contract to hit Rudnick, Phil and a
few of his confederates snatched the suspected stoolie
one afternoon as he walked along Livonia Avenue. It
was a short drive to the execution chamber, a garage at
Atlantic Avenue and Eastern Parkway. A few hours
later, Rudnick’s body turned up in a stolen car on the
other side of the borough.
Deputy Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Edward
Marten’s autopsy report detailed Phil’s savagery.
“Like a ballplayer, that’s me,” he once told a friend,
explaining his enthusiasm. “I figure I get seasoning
doing these jobs. Somebody from one of the big mobs
spots me. Then, up to the big leagues.”
And that’s just what happened. He made it into the
Murder, Inc., and it got so that whenever a call came in
from one of the out-of-town mobs for someone to fill a
special “contract,” Phil was almost always the one
requested. Phil would pack his briefcase with a shirt, a
change of socks, underwear, a gun, a knife, a length of
rope and an ice pick—he was an artist at a multitude
of murdering methods—hop a plane or train to his
port of call, pull the job and catch the next connection
back to New York. More often than not, Phil didn’t
even know the name of the person he had killed, and
generally it didn’t matter to him. It was the killing that
counted. If, by chance, he was curious about or particularly proud of a job, he would buy an out-of-town
paper when he got back to New York and read all
about it.
When the Murder, Inc. story broke wide open in
1940, O’Dwyer’s staff had concrete evidence linking
Phil to 28 killings. In addition, an equal number of
murders had been positively identified as Phil’s work by
law enforcement officials from Connecticut to California. And those were just the known killings. A presentday crime historian gives serious credence to an
estimate that Phil killed at least 500 persons from the
late 1920s until 1940. The figure is sheer nonsense, but
there seems little doubt his total kills probably
exceeded 100. This is an incredible figure, especially
considering the next two most active killers in the
“troop”—Kid Twist Reles and Happy (so called
because of his surly expression) Maione, probably did
no more than 30 apiece.
Phil was the dandy of the troop. His love affair with
Evelyn Mittleman, a Brooklyn beauty who was to be
dubbed the Kiss of Death Girl, was one of the underworld’s more touching affairs, climaxed by Phil’s eradication of a rival for her affection. Tall, lean and
handsome, Phil was a fashion plate. He wore the best
suits $60 could buy—$60 in Depression times—and
became known to the police and his colleagues alike as
the Beau Brummel of the Underworld. Phil and his
dandy dress, in fact, were what led to Police Commissioner Lewis J. Valentine’s famous “muss them up”
orders against hoodlums. One day the commissioner
had come over to Brooklyn to look at a lineup and
blew his top when he saw Phil standing against the
white wall radiant in a well-fitting Chesterfield, pearlgray fedora, blue shirt with tie to match, blue striped
suit and gleaming black shoes. “Look at him!” the
commissioner raged. “He’s the best dressed man in the
room and he’s never worked a day in his life!”
This was a male adult, somewhat undernourished;
approximate weight 140 pounds; six feet in height.
There were 63 stab wounds on the body. On the neck,
I counted 13 stab wounds, between the jaw and collarbone. On the right chest, there were 50 separate circular wounds. He had a laceration on the frontal region
of the head. The wound gaped, and disclosed the bone
underneath. His face was intensely cyanic, or blue. The
tongue protruded. At the level of the larynx was a
grooving, white and depressed, about the width of the
ordinary clothesline. When the heart was laid open,
the entire wall was found to be penetrated by stab
wounds. My conclusion was the cause of death was
multiple stab wounds, and also . . . asphyxia due to
strangulation.
When the Purple Gang in Detroit marked a local
gangster, Harry Millman, for death, they found him
hard to kill; one attempt failed, and Millman thereafter
was on his guard. Outside talent was needed and Pittsburgh Phil was one of two killers sent from Brooklyn.
Millman was in a crowded restaurant eating dinner one
evening when two men walked in, fired 12 slugs into
him, wounding five other diners in the process, and
paraded out. Sweet, direct and simple was the way
Pittsburgh Phil liked it.
Phil could, at times, carry out a job with a touch of
poetic irony. Walter Sage ran the syndicate’s coin
machine racket in the Catskills until he became what
the mob called a trolley car conductor, shortchanging
the organization on its profits. Phil ice-picked him 32
times. He got rid of the body by lashing it to a pinball
machine and dumping it in a lake. Phil was very proud
of that touch. “It’s a symbol,” he asserted proudly.
A week later, however, the grisly package rose to the
surface because of buoyancy from gases in the decomposing body. As Phil learned, perforations made with a
small weapon, like an ice pick, are virtually sealed by
blood pumping from a still-beating heart. “How about
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PITTSBURGH Phil
that,” Phil philosophized. “With this bum, you gotta be
a doctor, or he floats.”
So far as is known, Phil failed on only one job. Traveling to Florida to fill a contract, he followed his
intended victim into a movie theater, where the man sat
down in the last row. Rather than use a gun, which
would attract attention, Phil secured the fire ax kept in
a glass case. However, by the time he’d gotten the ax,
his intended victim had moved ahead several rows.
Angered, Phil walked out. As he complained later to
the troop, “Just when I get him set up, the bum turns
out to be a goddamn chair hopper.”
Usually, though, he could get the job done regardless
of any obstacles. In another Florida hit assignment, the
victim was a Mafia old-timer who couldn’t speak a
word of English. That didn’t faze Phil at all. Conversing
with the man in sign language, Phil showed him his
briefcase of weapons and led him to believe he’d come
to kill someone else and wanted advice. The old-timer
picked a rope and showed the hit man a dark street
where the killing could be done safely. Phil strangled
him there and went home.
How long Phil would have gone on with his killing
had Kid Twist Reles not turned stoolie is something
awesome to contemplate. Today, it seems incredible he
could have operated for a decade without getting
caught. Reles talked because he figured the law was
closing in and if he didn’t, someone else in the troop
would and he would get the chair.
Reles later horrified a Brooklyn jury with a description of how Phil had killed one Puggy Feinstein. Puggy
was decoyed to Abe Reles’ house, where Phil was hiding behind the door, his trusty ice pick in hand. When
Puggy walked in, Phil threw him on the couch and went
to work with the pick. Puggy, fighting for his life, managed to bite Phil’s finger. Enraged by such foul play, Phil
yelled: “Give me the rope. I’ll fix this dirty bum.”
Reles then described Phil’s mastery of the art of rope
murder.
chest. His knees are folded up against his chest. His
hands are in between. The rope is around his neck and
under his feet. If he moves the rope will tighten up
around his throat more.
And so Puggy Feinstein died with Phil kicking him
for biting his finger. “Maybe I am getting lockjaw from
being bit,” Phil yelled defensively.
Later, they dumped Puggy’s body in a vacant lot and
set it ablaze. But even after the boys adjourned to
Sheepshead Bay for a seafood dinner, Phil was unhappy
about his finger and barely finished his lobster.
The break in the Murder, Inc. case came when a few
minor hoods were arrested and started talking. Phil,
Reles, Maione and Goldstein were picked up on suspicion and the word went out that one or the other was
“ratting.” None had, but Reles decided to tell all, and
when he did, Murder, Inc. was smashed. Big shots like
Louis Lepke, Mendy Weiss and Louis Capone were to
die in the electric chair before Reles’ trilling came to a
sudden end when he “went out the window” of a
Brooklyn hotel while under police guard. Pittsburgh
Phil was also doomed. He and Buggsy Goldstein were
indicted for the Puggy Feinstein murder.
The authorities secured five more murder indictments and, if necessary, were ready to try him on those
as well. It wasn’t. Since he had no real defense, Phil did
the next best thing: he feigned insanity. He refused to
shave or change his clothes. When put on the witness
stand and asked to give his name, he merely licked his
lips. Sent back to the defendant’s chair, he spent most of
the rest of the trial nibbling on the leather strap of a
lawyer’s briefcase. It was a great act. The newspapers
loved it. The jury didn’t. They found him guilty.
Phil kept up his crazy act in the death house in the
hope of winning a commutation. It wasn’t until his last
day that he gave up the act, combed his hair and
became his old swaggering self. He said goodbye to
Evelyn, the Kiss of Death Girl. On June 12, 1941 Buggsy Goldstein went to the chair. Moments later, at
11:06 P.M., Phil followed him. The best enforcer the
syndicate ever had was dead.
Only later was it revealed that prior to his trial Phil
had offered to turn state’s evidence if he was allowed to
talk to Reles first. The request was rejected. The
authorities had no intention of letting Phil get in the
same room with informer Reles. It was a wise precaution. As Phil said on his last day in the death house, he
really had no intention of singing. “I just wanted to
sink my tooth into his jugular vein. I didn’t worry
about the chair, if I could just tear his throat out first.”
No one doubted he would have tried to.
See also: KISS OF DEATH GIRLS; MURDER, INCORPORATED; ABE “KID TWIST” RELES.
I give Phil one end of the rope, and I hold the other
end. Puggy is kicking and fighting. He is forcing his
head down, so we can’t get the rope under his throat.
Buggsy [Buggsy Goldstein, another of the murder
troop] holds his head up, so we can put the rope under.
Then me and Phil exchange ends . . . cross them, so
we make a knot . . . a twist. Then we cross them once
more. Then we rope around his throat again, to make
two loops.
Buggsy gets Puggy by the feet, and me and Phil
get him by the head. We put him down on the floor. He
is kicking. Phil starts finishing tying him up . . . [and]
gets his feet tied up with the back of his neck. He ties
him up like a little ball. His head is pushed down on his
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PLASTIC surgery for criminals
Place, Etta (1880?–?) “associate” of Wild Bunch
Probably the most beautiful woman in the outlaw
West, Etta Place was described in a Pinkerton dossier as
an “associate of outlaws.” More precisely, she appears
to have been associated with two prime members of the
Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy and Harry Longbaugh, the
Sundance Kid, although most of her affections seem to
have been reserved for Sundance. She was tall and
stately with raven black hair. Even the other women at
Robber’s Roost commented on her beauty when she
first appeared there during the winter of 1896–97.
Some historians insist she was a schoolteacher at the
time she first met Butch and Sundance and rode with
them on the outlaw trail. That hardly seems likely considering that she was, by fairly reliable accounts, born
in or near Denver about 1880, making her a bit young
for that profession. According to other historians, Etta
was a former prostitute from Fanny Porter’s bordello in
Fort Worth, Tex., a far more logical place than a
schoolhouse for Cassidy and Sundance to find a female
companion.
Etta is credited with having been an expert rider and
a first-rate shot with both a Colt .45 and a Winchester.
She rode with the gang on a number of jobs but hung
back from direct involvement. Her total devotion to the
pair may best be illustrated by the fact that she always
tagged along with them on their fleshpot forays, waiting dutifully in a hotel room for their return. Her forgiving or unjealous nature is further attested to by the
Sundance Kid’s known propensity for “catching cold,”
a whorehouse euphemism for contracting venereal disease, and Etta’s understanding aid in caring for him
during such periods of illness.
In 1901, with the law hot on their trail, Cassidy and
Sundance decided to leave outlaw country and, with
Etta in tow, headed first for New York City and then,
the following year, for South America. From here on,
the Cassidy-Sundance-Place story is conjecture. One
account has Etta sticking with the pair for some time
while they hit the South American bandit trail and
finally returning to New York to get medical treatment
for “acute appendicitis”—quite likely an ailment more
social in nature. The Sundance Kid supposedly accompanied her to New York but returned to Cassidy in
time for the two of them to get killed in a battle with
Bolivian soldiers. In this version, Etta Place simply
fades away.
Another version states that she stuck with the pair
until she and Sundance got separated from Cassidy
with no way of resuming contact. Years later, according
to Butch Cassidy’s sister, Lula Parker Betenson, the outlaw returned to the West and drifted down to Mexico.
One day he was sitting in a bar in Mexico City when
suddenly he felt a grip on his shoulder. His first thought
Etta Place and the Sundance Kid posed for this formal
portrait in New York City before sailing to South America.
was that after all this time the Pinkertons had finally
run him to earth, but he turned to see . . . Etta Place.
The same old Etta, beautiful as ever, and living in Mexico City with Sundance. The three old Wild Bunchers
had a long, happy reunion, if one chooses to believe
this story.
See also: BUTCH CASSIDY, SUNDANCE KID, WILD BUNCH.
plastic surgery for criminals
criminality “cure”
Many criminals, such as John Dillinger, Alvin “Creepy”
Karpis and several of the Barkers, among others, have
attempted to alter their appearance by undergoing plastic surgery so as to avoid detection. Overall, these
attempts have been failures, but plastic surgery has
been used quite successfully to rehabilitate criminals,
both professionals and amateurs.
Does an ugly face or a disfigured body help mold an
ugly character? Ever since the time of Homer, poets and
novelists have contended as much and today psychiatrists and criminologists tend to agree. One leading
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PLASTIC Surgery for criminals
department store in New York City employs a psychiatrist to examine persons caught shoplifting provided
they are not known professional crooks. Very often,
these persons are respectable middle-aged women with
no economic pressures forcing them to steal. This is not
an unusual phenomenon, according to psychiatrists.
Shoplifting, they recognize, is largely a woman’s crime
that often stems from psychological problems related to
a growing dissatisfaction with marital relations. As a
wife grows older and wrinkles start to develop, they
theorize she may feel she is losing her husband and turn
to shoplifting as an exciting way to forget her gnawing
self-doubts.
The New York department store psychiatrist frequently gives such women what may seem like odd
advice: have your face lifted. “Where such recommendations are followed, I have never heard of the woman
reverting to shoplifting,” the psychiatrist observes.
For many years a unique plastic surgery program
run by Dr. John Pick was instrumental in rehabilitating
inmates in the Illinois prison system. The theory is that
a new face makes a new man, and the records of hundreds of released convicts bear out that claim. On average, only about one in 25 returns to prison, an
impressive record compared to the general rate of
recidivism. Typical of those Dr. Pick reformed through
surgery was a man who had led an entirely respectable
life until he lost his nose in an accident. He soon wound
up in prison. Then there was the man with a broken
nose and mastiff jowls who took to crime after his
seven-year-old son remarked: “Daddy, you look just
like a bad man. Why don’t you change your face?” Pick
did precisely that at Joliet, and Daddy became a lawabiding delicatessen owner.
When Dr. Pick first started taking a day off from his
lucrative private practice in the 1940s to help out convicts while testing his theory that ugliness breeds crime,
he met considerable official indifference. Most prison
officials were concerned with only three things, in the
following order: keeping prisoners safely behind bars;
controlling unruly prisoners, and rehabilitating prisoners, very often with programs that had been scaled
down as a result of insufficient funds.
Fortunately, the warden of Joliet at the time Dr. Pick
began his work was James E. Ragen, then regarded as
one of the most enlightened wardens in the country.
Ragen gave Pick his full support and cooperation. The
doctor’s first patient was a youth who was born with
upside-down ears. It seemed hardly surprising that
someone with such a disfigurement would wind up a
criminal. Pick’s surgery was a success and the young
man, for the first time, lost his hostility toward society.
Once the door of Joliet swung open for him, he never
returned.
“Ultimately, of course,” Dr. Pick once recalled, “the
fellows down at Springfield [the state capital] heard
about the project and began to wonder if we were lifting faces and changing fingerprints. Naturally, we take
careful before-and-after pictures, recording all changes
in appearance.”
The project won over the doubters as its astounding
results gradually became more evident. Warden Ragen,
for one, reported that convicts who had undergone plastic surgery became much more manageable prisoners.
The files at Joliet bulge with hundreds of testimonials from released prisoners. Some typical messages have
been: “I have a new life,” “Nobody laughs at me any
more” and “I can hold a good job now.”
Once asked why he had ever started his prison work,
Dr. Pick explained:
First of all there was a chance to make a contribution
to society which also might bear scientific fruit. Then
there was a sense of guilt. I long ago became convinced
that the reasons why a man becomes a criminal rest
only half within himself. The other half of the story is
within society. We do nothing about the fact that society rejects the deformed, but at least we owe them
understanding.
Of course, Dr. Pick did not always succeed in
bringing about a reformation of his patients. Sometimes the physically improved criminals went right
back to their wrongful ways, and formerly ugly criminals who had worked as sneak thieves and burglars
were able to promote themselves into dapper confidence operators and rubber check artists. This did not
destroy Dr. Pick’s basic beliefs, however, nor alter the
fact that most of his operations were successful.
Among those criminals who did not reform, physical
disfigurement was obviously not the basis for their
criminal behavior.
Still, Dr. Pick realized his work was to some extent
too little and certainly too late. Physical disfigurements,
he found, weigh most on children from six to 16 and
this is the critical period in determining whether or not
a child goes bad. “The reform school is the place to
begin,” he once said. “We could hope thus to stop a
criminal career right at the start.”
A survey conducted in the 1950s by Dr. Anna Brind,
a consulting psychologist on the staff of the American
Institute of Family Relations, supported Dr. Pick’s
observations. Brind made a detailed analysis of the
cases of 180 children who were suffering from personality disorders. All of them had a facial disfigurement
of one sort or another. In 85 percent of the cases, it was
concluded that facial defects were the main cause of the
children’s misbehavior.
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PLEA bargaining
It should be noted that Bonnie Parker of Bonnie and
Clyde fame was often called horse face when she was a
girl, and as a child, Pretty Boy Floyd had sought to dandify himself because he was unhappy about his appearance. Had Pretty Boy Floyd actually been pretty he
might never have become a public enemy.
The unfortunate aspect of the Illinois plastic surgery
rehabilitation program is that to this day it remains
almost unique despite a long record of remarkable
achievement.
the rule in prosecutors’ offices. To induce plea bargaining, many district attorneys deliberately file excessive
charges against a defendant to frighten him. Another
trick used by prosecutors is to ask for extremely high
bail, because it is well established that a prisoner kept
in jail for a time is more likely to accept a lesser charge.
And a system geared to plea bargaining arrangements
actually is more prone to convict innocent persons. An
innocent man, opponents of plea bargaining argue, is
even more frightened of the prospect of going to jail
than a guilty person and will tend to grasp at any offer
that suggests the possibility of a mere suspended sentence. It has been shown that fear of the death penalty
has led innocent suspects to plea bargaining.
In recent years probably a majority of judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys have felt that plea bargaining is a poor practice, but they also feel trapped by
the sheer volume of cases and the shortage of courts
and personnel.
In 1980 it was revealed that more than 99 percent
of all persons subjected to felony arrests in New York
state—not an atypical jurisdiction—never served a
day in a state prison. The chance of a given felony
arrest ending in a sentence to state prison was put at
about one in 108. The year before in New York City,
88,098 felony arrests out of a total of 104,413 were
dismissed by district attorneys or treated as misdemeanors. In trying to determine who is to blame for
the excessive use of plea bargaining, disputes have
broken out between prosecutors and the police. District attorneys insist police tend to “overcharge” (one
explanation for this practice is that officers win promotions for felony arrests, not for misdemeanor
arrests), while the police deny this and point to the
classification by prosecutors of certain offenses as
“technical felonies,” which are charges the DAs simply refuse to prosecute.
A spokesman for the Queens County district attorney in New York City said: “Every felony is not a
felony when someone looks at it in detail. A judgment
has to be made. How serious was it? Does the guy have
a record? All this has a bearing on it.”
Yet essentially, in deciding not to prosecute certain
charges, i.e., technical felonies, the district attorney is
substituting his judgment of what constitutes a crime
for that of the legislature. Asked to justify this, Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau stated:
“We try to make the best use of limited resources. The
public does not benefit from presenting a case to the
grand jury, getting an indictment and having it end up
as a misdemeanor plea.”
Clearly, the trend throughout the nation is more and
more toward plea bargaining. A typical case might be
that of a burglar caught breaking into a building with
plea bargaining
The principle of plea bargaining, the reduction of a
criminal charge to a lesser offense in exchange for a
guilty plea, has long been accepted in the criminal justice system, although not without misgivings by many
judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers and defendants.
The Supreme Court has in effect approved of the
process. In a 1970 case it said:
For a defendant who sees slight possibility of acquittal,
the advantages of pleading guilty and limiting the probable penalty are obvious—his exposure is reduced, the
correctional processes can begin immediately, and the
practical burdens of a trial are eliminated. For the State
there are also advantages—the more promptly imposed
punishment after an admission of guilt may more effectively attain the objective of punishment; and with the
avoidance of trial, scarce judicial and prosecutorial
resources are conserved for those cases in which there is
a substantial issue of the defendant’s guilt or in which
there is substantial doubt that the State can sustain its
burden of proof. It is this mutuality of advantage that
perhaps explains the fact that at present well over
three-fourths of the criminal convictions in this country
rest on pleas of guilty.
Against this might be the view of Alice in Wonderland, who was offended by the Queen of Heart’s logic
that the sentence should come first and the verdict and
trial later. What is plea bargaining other than setting
the sentence first with the trial and verdict not simply
postponed but eliminated from the process? In effect,
plea bargaining is seldom a “bargain” for either side;
usually, the prosecution has the best of it because it can
set the standards to be applied in each case. It does not
bargain if it does not want to, and the system allows a
prosecutor to insist one defendant must be brought to
trial while another is not. Even if the decisions in both
cases are right, only one side is making them.
In every jurisdiction in the country the percentage of
felony cases reduced to misdemeanors is enormous, but
this does not necessarily indicate excessive leniency is
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PLUG Uglies
the intent to steal silver. Facing a charge for which he
could be sentenced to seven years in prison, he would
probably be allowed to plead guilty to trespass and
possession of burglar’s tools, both misdemeanors, and
get off with no more than a few months in jail. Only
the most enthusiastic supporter of plea bargaining
would argue that such an arrangement would “more
effectively attain the [State’s] objective of punishment.”
Further reading: Crime and Punishment by Aryeh
Neier.
Plug Uglies
mid-twenties—killed 102 victims during its brief existence.
Plummer was a handsome, well-spoken and ingratiating young man who had a magnetic effect on the pioneer people of several regions. When he ran away from
his New England home at age 15, Plummer showed little of his future tendencies. He worked his way to California, where he went into partnership in a bakery. In
1856, when he was only 19 years old, he became marshal of Nevada City, Calif. While in office he killed an
irate husband who objected to the young lawman having an affair with his wife and was sentenced to 10
years in prison. Within a year Plummer had wrangled a
pardon and went back to the bakery business. His troubles with the law multiplied as he continued sweeping
ladies off their feet and committing various mayhems.
He apparently robbed a Wells Fargo office in Washoe
and eventually murdered another man. He was apprehended but escaped by bribing a jailer before being
brought to trial.
Plummer moved on to Oregon, where he is believed
to have shot a sheriff to death. He later carried out a
number of criminal and amorous affairs in Washington
and then turned up in Orofino, Idaho, where he definitely took part in the murder of a man. In the spring of
1861 Plummer worked in a gambling emporium in
Lewiston, Idaho but spent his spare time recruiting a
band of thieves and road agents. As the gang’s depredations grew, the local citizenry organized a vigilance
committee, of which Plummer was a leading member.
In an effort to break up the vigilantes, Plummer had
one of their leaders assassinated.
In the fall of 1862, Plummer shifted his base of operations to Bannack, Mont., where miners were making
rich strikes. Portraying himself as a fearless vigilante
from Lewiston and a former lawman in California,
Plummer was soon elected sheriff. As the Plummer
gang, or Innocents, as they were called, increased its
activities, the sheriff somberly erected a scaffold from
which to hang malefactors. The few who were executed
by Plummer were not his henchmen, some of whom
served as deputy sheriffs. The Innocents were such a
huge organization that not every member knew all the
others, so that they had to operate with secret identifications and handshakes. Some worked only as spies,
learning which stagecoach or wagon carried loot worth
robbing and marking them with coded symbols.
Plummer soon expanded his operations into Virginia City, becoming the town’s marshal by forcing
the previous holder of the post to flee the area. Plummer’s fatal flaws, which were shared by his gang, were
that he operated with what one historian called “an
almost juvenile fervor” and that he failed to cover his
tracks sufficiently. The end came when a former con-
19th-century New York gang
One of the very first gangs spawned by the notorious
Five Points section of New York, the Plug Uglies were
fierce both in action and in appearance. They looked
like tall, black-clad versions of Uncle Sam. Some writers insist they maintained membership standards on
height that prohibited anyone who was not at least six
feet tall. More likely, it never occurred to a short thug
to try to become a Plug Ugly. The gangsters got their
name because of the high plug hats they wore, which,
stuffed with wool and leather scraps, was pulled down
over the ears to serve as a most effective helmet. Nothing could stir quite as much fear in 1825 New York as
the sight of an approaching Plug Ugly looking for trouble or loot. In one hand the giant gangster might carry
a brick, in the other a heavy bludgeon. He would have
a pistol tucked in his belt and he would be wearing
heavy hobnailed boots, ideal for trampling a fallen victim or enemy gangster.
The Plug Uglies remained awesome figures in the
New York underworld for decades, taking an active
part in the Civil War Draft Riots of 1863. They began
disappearing toward the end of the 19th century, being
merged into the then dominant gangs, such as the
Whyos and the Five Points Gang.
See also: DRAFT RIOTS, GANGS AND GANGSTERS.
Plummer, Henry (1837–1864) renegade lawman
Probably the inspirational protagonist of more tales,
novels and films than any other American, Henry
Plummer was the original devious sheriff unmasked at
the end of a drama as the villainous leader of the badmen. However, few novelists or screenwriters have
dared to ascribe to their characters all the villainies
attributable to Plummer himself. While not all of
Plummer’s depredations have been unearthed, the
popularly held belief that he personally killed 15 men
may be reasonably accurate. There is little doubt that
his gang of outlaws—most of whom were several
years younger than Plummer, who was only in his
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POLICE
Poker Alice, as she was by then known, worked the
railroad gambling circuit, beating fellow travelers in
high-stake card games. She later settled in Creede, Colorado and dealt cards in a saloon belonging to Bob
Ford, the man who killed Jesse James. From there
Poker Alice moved on to Deadwood, S.D., where she
demonstrated her shooting prowess one night when a
drunken miner accused another dealer, William Tubbs,
of cheating and went at him with a bowie knife. Poker
Alice drew her gun and fired, shooting the miner in his
arm and knocking the knife from his hand.
Alice and Tubbs were married in 1899 and retired
from gambling to run a chicken farm until 1910, when
Tubbs died of pneumonia. Poker Alice then took up her
gun, cigars and cards and headed back for the gaming
tables, opening her own place near Fort Meade, S.D.
Realizing that men do not live by gambling alone, she
stocked the second floor with ladies who offered other
diversions. Poker Alice’s place was a gold mine, relying
on a clientele of soldiers from the fort. But Alice held to
her old-fashioned ways. On Sundays drinks were
served but there was no gambling and the ladies
upstairs did no entertaining. It was this reluctance to be
completely accommodating that got Poker Alice in
trouble. One night in 1920 a bunch of drunken soldiers
tried to break into her place after closing time. Alice
fired through a door and a soldier fell dead. She was
tried and found guilty of killing the soldier, but the
judge let her go, saying, “I cannot find it in my heart to
send a white-haired lady to the penitentiary.” Once
outside the court and beyond the judge’s view, Poker
Alice lit up a victory cigar.
The army was not so compassionate, however, and
declared Alice’s place off limits. That and Prohibition
drove Poker Alice out of business and she retired to a
ranch to smoke cigars and recall the good old days. She
died in 1930.
federate, Jack Cleveland, attempted to blackmail
Plummer into giving him a large portion of the profits
from the gang’s lucrative crimes. Plummer gunned
him down in a saloon but didn’t realize he was still
breathing. A local butcher, Hank Crawford, took
Cleveland to his home, where, over the next several
hours the dying outlaw whispered a number of facts
about Plummer.
Crawford, in turn, began whispering these same
facts to others until Plummer drove him from the area.
Soon, the settlers of the Bannack and Virginia City
area formed another vigilance committee, one that did
not include Sheriff Plummer in its counsels. What followed was one of the most notable outbreaks of lynch
law in America. From late 1863 through the end of the
following year, the Vigilantes of Montana hanged
dozens of Innocents and other suspected criminals.
Oddly, even when some of his key men were strung
up, Plummer himself made no effort to flee, apparently convinced he could brazen it out. A theory
embedded in Montana folklore holds that Plummer
made a deal, or thought he made a deal, with some of
the leading vigilantes: immunity in exchange for a portion of the outlaw loot. If that was the case, he was
double-crossed.
On January 10, 1864 a weeping Plummer and two
of his henchmen were hauled to the very gallows the
rogue lawman had built himself. Plummer begged for
mercy, pleading that instead of hanging, he should have
his tongue cut out and his legs or all his limbs cut off
and be left in a cabin in the hills. Unimpressed, the vigilantes placed a rope around the neck of each man,
hoisted them on their shoulders and flipped them into
the air; they slowly strangled to death.
See also: BANNACK MONTANA; THOMAS J. DIMSDALE;
INNOCENTS; VIGILANTES OF MONTANA.
Poker Alice (1851–1930) gambler and madam
police
One of the few great female gamblers of the West,
Poker Alice Ivers was also one of the few gamblers who
was an accomplished gunfighter.
Born in England the daughter of a schoolmaster,
Alice came to America with her family at the age of 12
and married an engineer named Frank Duffield in Colorado Territory when she was 19. Her husband died in
a mining accident the following year, and Alice began
supporting herself by teaching school. She also took up
poker and was soon dealing cards in a saloon on a percentage basis. Any traces of schoolmarm decorum soon
vanished completely as she began toting a gun and
smoking big black cigars. She became famous for two
sayings “I’ll shoot you in your puss, you cheating bastard!” and “I never gamble on Sundays.”
The colonies and later the young nation muddled
through with rather amateurish crime-fighting methods
until the 1830s, when in city after city near anarchy
forced the introduction of more professional techniques. The police department system that developed at
this point was intended to battle mob rule rather than
what is recognized as ordinary, or pedestrian-type,
crime: theft, mayhem and murder.
The first policing procedures adopted by the colonies
were patterned after the English parish constable system. In England noblemen appointed constables, that
country’s first local law enforcement figure, to police
rural parishes. The counties traditionally were policed
by a sheriff.
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From 1608 to 1783 American sheriffs and constables
were large landowners appointed by the colonial governors. Many of them had the added duty of being the
chief local financial officer, who collected taxes and
other fees and kept 10 percent of the proceeds as recompense. This method of policing was sufficient only until
the crime problem started to increase. In Boston additional means of policing proved necessary in the 1630s,
when the first night watch was formed, consisting initially of a military officer and six soldiers. Later, the
night watch was expanded and, probably as an economy measure, was staffed with citizens appointed by
the town government. Philadelphia and New Amsterdam armed their night watches with rattles, probably
the first effort at crime prevention, rather than crime
detection. The ratelwacht, or rattlewatch, as the patrols
came to be known, used their rattles not so much to
corner felons as to warn of their own presence and thus,
hopefully, put any nocturnal marauders to flight.
These methods continued to be used throughout the
18th and into the 19th century, although some localities hired their night watchmen and supplemented them
with special “day forces” to assist the constable. Of
course, more stringent measures were adopted in areas
where the crime problem became more acute. In Virginia’s backwoods frontier during the 18th century, the
practice of lynching won its name as a result of the
activities of Colonel William Lynch, whose band of law
enforcers exacted their own punishment, including the
ultimate penalty, on a number of evildoers.
Overall, however, through the 17th century criminality was not a major problem in most localities. In
New Amsterdam the first recorded police activity was
by one Johan Lampo, a provincial Dutch authority
who had arrived in 1620. His first known arrest was
the collaring of a pig thief. In post-Dutch New York
the first salaried officers on the night watch were
known as leatherheads, because of the heavy leather
helmets they wore, similar in style to those worn by
today’s firemen. The leatherheads were supposed to
patrol the streets but some spent far too much time in
their sentry boxes.
This relatively peaceful era ended a few decades into
the 19th century with the appearance of the first great
city gangs, mostly immigrant Irish toughs jammed into
the new slums. New York’s Cherry Street, where
George Washington and John Hancock had strolled so
peacefully just a few decades earlier, was now the
domain of criminals. These gangs made the area unsafe
not only by night but by day as well. In the mid-1830s
riots took place in city after city. There were food riots,
election riots and the first mob attacks on abolitionists.
At the same time, Catholic immigrants fought Protestant nativists in street battles that lasted for days. Since
the constables and watches could not cope with such
anarchy, professional police forces came into being.
These new police were generally a ragtag, motley
crowd. Law enforcement jobs were given strictly on a
political basis, and officers usually served only a oneyear term and could thus be fired at whim by local
aldermen. No training was given to them and they usually had no uniforms, which were considered too European and undemocratic in style. An officer could only
be recognized by the badge he wore, and when prudence dictated, he could hide the symbol of his authority. These policemen were, at best, only marginally
more successful than their predecessors, and it was not
until the 1850s that reform movements succeeded in
making police forces efficient and effective crime fighters. In 1855 the Boston Police Department was reorganized and reformed into what became a fairly efficient
organization.
The evolution of the police department in New York
City was somewhat more troubled. The Municipal
Police were formed in 1853 but by 1857 they were considered so corrupt and inefficient that the state legislature set up a new force called the Metropolitans. Many
officers remained loyal to the Municipals, who refused
to disband, and soon, they and the Metropolitans faced
each other in open warfare on the streets, much to the
benefit of criminals and the detriment of the public.
The rivalry between the two forces led to a great battle
at City Hall, in which 52 officers were injured. Public
pressure and a Supreme Court decision finally led to
the disbanding of the Municipals.
State police forces held sway for the next 13 years,
with such cities as Baltimore, St. Louis, Kansas City,
Detroit, Cleveland and Chicago utilizing state-controlled police. Eventually, local forces reappeared in virtually every jurisdiction in the country.
Often in the West formal policing methods were
unavailable and citizens banded together to protect
their lives and property through such institutions as
miners courts and vigilante committees, both of which
dealt out instant justice. Many of the latter groups were
not lynch mobs but honest men forced to take collective action. Later on, more formal policing took place
under the leadership of such legendary law officers as
Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Wild Bill Hickok, Pat Garrett and others, whose achievements were often wildly
exaggerated. Many lawmen habitually crossed over to
the outlaw trail and back again, their final reputations
often being determined on which side of the law they
were operating at the time of their demise.
Women were slow to enter police work and were initially restricted to police matron duties. Lucy Gray, the
first Los Angeles police matron, was a pioneer woman
in the criminal justice system. By the 1880s Gray, who
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POLICE
had come west with her family in a covered wagon, had
set up a police department position to aid women and
children, both victims and offenders, who were not getting appropriate care. Fearless and kind, she was
renowned for her ability to calm unruly prisoners and
eventually earned the title of City Mother. Technically,
she was not a policewoman, although she performed
many of the duties associated with that job.
The first uniformed policewoman in the United
States, and most likely in the world, was Mrs. Alice
Stebbins Wells, who joined the Los Angeles police force
in 1910. Within six years 16 other departments that
had monitored the Los Angeles experiment hired
policewomen. Buffalo hired the first black policewoman in 1924. (There seems to be no accurate record
of where the first black policeman appeared.)
Police scandals and reform movements have
occurred in almost every major city. In New York,
investigations of the police department take place
about once every generation; the next one should be
due about 2000. Two future U.S. presidents led local
police reform movements and occupied law posts themselves, Grover Cleveland in Buffalo, N.Y. and Theodore
Roosevelt in New York City.
Lewis J. Valentine stands out as a towering figure in
uprooting corruption in the New York Police Department during the tenure of Fiorello La Guardia. William
H. Parker, head of the Los Angeles force for 16 years
until his death in 1966, is credited by many reformers
with building the nation’s preeminent law enforcement
agency and substantially raising the professional quality of his men. Undeniably, J. Edgar Hoover accomplished miracles in upgrading the FBI to a position of
national respect from the morass of venality, corruption
and incompetence that characterized the agency during
the Wilson and Harding administrations, when it was
known as the Bureau of Investigation.
Through the decades cases of police brutality continued to escalate. And in the 1990s, they could be
said to have reached a crescendo on the night of
March 3, 1991, when a black motorist named Rodney King was savagely beaten by four policemen while
a number of other members of the Los Angeles Police
department looked on. In many respects the case
should have remained routine, with police denying
any untoward actions. Indeed King himself told his
lawyer that he doubted him claims would be accepted—the word of a black man against a number of
white officers.
However, there was a unique wrinkle in the case. It
turned out an amateur videotape of the incident had
been made by George Holliday. The sight of the policemen, at least three of them, repeatedly clubbing and
kicking the prostrate King became one of the most
viewed videos, not only in this country but around the
world. After a disputed first trial, King was vindicated
by a jury verdict that convicted two officers and won
King a multimillion dollar award. The city of Los
Angeles also had been wracked by social disorder, and
possibly for the first time the vast majority of Americans of all hues condemned police brutality. A
Newsweek poll indicated that 62 percent of those
polled believed that police brutality was a significant
problem for minority communities.
A case that would be regarded even more horrendous occurred in New York in 1997 when 32-year-old
Haitian immigrant prisoner Abner Louima was brutalized in a police station house bathroom. Officer Justin
A. Volpe, white, was convicted of ramming a stick up
Louima’s rectum, inflicting severe internal injuries that
required three operations, an attack that inflamed
racial tensions in the city. Volpe was sentenced to 30
years, a penalty that did not please many in the black
community who thought a more appropriate punishment would have been life without parole. A second
white officer, Charles Schwarz, was convicted of aiding
Volpe in the bathroom and faced a lengthy sentence.
The Louima case crystallized other charges against
the New York police by minorities that officers constantly engaged in aggressive suppression against them
an resulted in a number of unwarranted deadly shootings against blacks and Hispanics. A case that heightened minority tensions was the shooting death
February 4, 1999 of Amadou Diallo, a West African
immigrant. Police gunned Diallo down in a fusillade of
41 bullets in the vestibule of the victim’s apartment
building. The police claimed their shooting was not
excessive since they mistakenly thought Diallo, who
had no criminal record, was reaching for a gun. Diallo
was guilty of no offense.
When the trial was ordered moved out of the Bronx,
a community with only 35 percent whites and 38 percent African-American and 51 percent Hispanic (who
could be of any race) to Albany with 88 percent whites
and only 12 percent African-American or Hispanic,
outrage consumed the New York minority community.
They were ever mindful when such a transfer of a case
to what they called a “lily white” community had
resulted in the state acquittal of Rodney King’s attackers in their first trial. Although the court handed down
an acquittal, the verdict did not lead to the predicted
wide-scale violence in protest.
If so certainly minority tensions with the police tactics could only increase, as it has in what AfricanAmericans feel is also the case in matters of “racial
profiling.” For years black voices have protested a
police tactic whereby black motorists appeared to be
far more likely to be stopped on highways than were
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POLICE dogs
department stores keep them to sniff out thieves who
try to hide until after closing time, loot the store and
slip out the following morning.
whites. In some such cases shooting deaths resulted.
Standardly, police agencies have consistently denied
racial profiling, but finally in New Jersey the Whitman
administration admitted that the state police had done
so on a regular basis. This followed in the aftermath of
two troopers shooting four minority men on the New
Jersey Turnpike. Lawyers for the men insisted the men
had be stopped in a racial profile tactic. The two troopers faced trial on charges of attempted murder in the
matter in 2000, and in another case they were indicted
on charges of falsifying records to conceal racial profiling in other traffic stops.
Polls showed the public in general thought law
agencies had engaged in racial profiling in many
areas.
Despite many continuing charges of police corruption and brutality, there is little doubt that the policeman of today is far superior, professionally and
morally, to his counterpart of earlier years. Much of
today’s abuse of power by the police is directed at such
ethnic groups as blacks and Hispanics, but the fault
may lie less in the role of the policemen than in the prejudice and indifference of society in general.
See also: BOSTON POLICE STRIKE; COOPING; DEEP
NIGHTSTICK; KNAPP COMMISSION; LEATHERHEADS; LEXOW
COMMITTEE; WILLIAM H. PARKER; PIPERS; POLICE RIOTS OF
1857, NEW YORK; POLICEWOMAN, FIRST KILLED; POLICEWOMEN; RATELWACHT; ROTTEN APPLE THEORY; SEABURY
INVESTIGATION; LEWIS J. VALENTINE.
Police Riots of 1857, New York
warring police forces
The Police Riots of 1857 in New York between two
rival forces of law officers climaxed several months of
terror in New York City during which policemen battled policemen while criminals attacked citizens with
impunity. Even when apprehended, a criminal could
escape if a member of the rival police force happened
on the scene and got into an altercation with his counterpart.
The Municipal Police was formed by the state legislature in 1853, but within four years, during the second
term of Mayor Fernando Wood, it was considered so
chaotic and corrupt that the legislature intervened to
abolish the force it had created. In its place the state
lawmakers installed the Metropolitan Police, with the
governor appointing a board of five commissioners,
who in turn named a superintendent, Frederick Talmadge. The new Metropolitan Police Board then called
on the mayor to disband the Municipals. Mayor Wood
refused, however, even after the Supreme Court ruled in
May 1857 that the law creating the new force was constitutional. Superintendent George W. Matsell of the
Municipals stood by the mayor, as did 15 captains and
800 patrolmen.
Things came to a head when Capt. George W.
Walling, who had pledged his loyalty to the new force,
was sent to place Mayor Wood under arrest. When
Wood refused to submit, Walling tried to take him in by
police dogs
It is estimated that about 400 police agencies in the
United States employ police dogs, or K-9 squads, as
they are popularly known. The first use of dogs in
police work occurred in Ghent, Belgium in 1900. Since
then the duties of police canines have expanded. Each
year “pot hounds” for the U.S. Customs Service sniff
out a minimum of $100 million to $200 million in contraband narcotics. Intrepid, a golden retriever, became
the Florida drug-sniffing champion by uncovering $16
million worth of drugs in Dade County in less than two
years.
The most-used breed of police dog is the German
shepherd, which has an excellent nose and can pick up
scents as tiny as one-millionth that discernible by a
human. Dogs have a better record of locating explosives than do bomb-detecting machines, and at a total
cost of about $4,000 for training and $3 or $4 per day
for maintenance, they have proved to be a bargain for
cost-conscious police departments, which have also
found that a policeman accompanied by a dog is a far
greater crime deterrent than two officers. The armed
forces use a great number of dogs for sentry duty and
The Metropolitan Police battled the Municipal Police in
several bloody confrontations in New York City during
1857.
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POLICEWOMEN
force, but with 300 Municipals inside City Hall, he had
no chance and was tossed into the street. Immediately
thereafter, a troop of 50 Metropolitans marched on
City Hall, a striking image in their plug hats and frock
coats. The Municipals swarmed out of the building and
attacked them and the battle was on, eventually extending to the corridors of the City Hall. Finally, the Metropolitans were routed. In all 52 policemen were injured,
one Metropolitan was so badly beaten he was invalided
for life.
The mayor and his police supporters held out until
the members of the Metropolitan Police Board used the
power granted them to call out the National Guard.
The Seventh Regiment surrounded City Hall. Only
when a platoon of infantry with fixed bayonets
marched into the building and surrounded Mayor
Wood in his office did he submit to arrest. He was
released on nominal bail on a charge of inciting to riot
and returned to his office.
Confrontations continued the entire summer, with
each of the two forces attempting to carry out its functions. The public itself was to bear the heavy brunt of
the dispute. When a Municipal arrested a criminal, a
Metropolitan would come along and release him and
vice versa, as the feud became more important than the
protection of the citizenry. While the police argued the
criminals simply went about their business. Pedestrians
were held up on Broadway in the middle of the day,
while rival officers attacked each other with clubs to
determine who had the right to interfere. Soon, large
gangs of thieves plundered stores and other places of
business and robbed passengers on stagecoaches in the
city’s midst. The gangs turned on each other, fighting
for the robbing rights in certain areas, and a great battle between rival gangs broke out in the Bowery. A
handful of Metropolitans tried to stop the fighting but
were severely beaten. The Municipals simply said the
battle was none of their business, leaving it to the Metropolitans.
Whenever a Metropolitan arrested a criminal and
succeeded in bringing his charge to the police station,
he would find an alderman and magistrate who supported the mayor waiting there to hold an immediate
hearing and release the prisoner on his own recognizance. Officials who favored the Metropolitans did
the same thing in Municipal station houses.
Such was the public outcry over this breakdown in
police protection that an appeal of the Supreme Court
decision was rushed into court. When the original decision was upheld, Mayor Wood abolished the Municipals. Several months later, about 50 of the officers,
both Municipal and Metropolitan, who had been
injured in the City Hall riot filed suit against the mayor.
Each received a judgment of $250 but Mayor Woods
never paid. Finally, the city paid the claims, together
with the legal costs involved.
policewoman
first killed in line of duty
Not for 64 years after Mrs. Alice Stebbins Wells
became the first uniformed policewoman in the United
States was a female officer killed in the line of duty. In
September 1974 Gail A. Cobb, 24, a member of the
District of Columbia police force, was shot and killed
by a robbery suspect whom she had pursued into a
garage. Officer Cobb’s distinction was based on FBI
files that dated back only to 1960, when apparently it
was first deemed possible that a policewoman might
someday be killed. Only in recent years has it become
more common for policewomen to be assigned to general “line” duty.
policewomen
While some use was made of women police matrons in
the 19th century, police officials generally were greatly
biased against female officers. Indeed, authorities usually reacted with horror to such suggestions, not merely
because women were considered too “weak” for such
work but also because of the opinion that they would
be “too sympathetic” to defendants. When they finally
made the ranks, policewomen proved such fears
groundless.
A former social worker, Mrs. Alice Stebbins Wells,
became the first uniformed policewoman in the United
States, and probably the world, when she joined the
Los Angeles Police Department on September 12,
1910. Her chief duties consisted of enforcing the regulations concerning “dance halls, skating rinks, penny
arcades, picture shows and other similar places of public recreation.” Other duties specifically assigned to her
were “the suppression of unwholesome billboard displays, searches for missing persons, and the maintenance of a general information bureau for women
seeking advice within the scope of police departments.”
The official enthusiasm over having a policewoman on
the force was reflected in a regulation that read: “No
young girl can be questioned by a male officer. Such
work is delegated solely to policewomen, who, by their
womanly sympathy and intuition, are able to gain the
confidence of their younger sisters.”
Mrs. Wells encountered difficulty when she
attempted to ride free on street cars, as the city’s police
officers were entitled to do. She was constantly accused
by conductors of misusing her husband’s badge and
was threatened with arrest if she did so again. To rectify
this problem, she was issued “Policewoman’s Badge
No. 1” and allowed to design her own official uniform.
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POLLARD, Edward
Mrs. Well’s performance was watched closely by other
law enforcement agencies, and because of her record 16
other police departments added women in the next six
years. In 1924 Buffalo hired the first black policewoman.
Some sources list a Mrs. Marie Owen as the first
policewoman, hired by Superintendent Morgan A.
Collins of the Detroit Police Department in 1893.
However, the Detroit police have no record of Superintendent Morgan A. Collins much less a Mrs. Owen.
pollos
illegal Mexican immigrants
Pollos, or “chickens,” are impoverished migrants
attempting to sneak into the United States. The name
was given to them by border bandits, who consider the
migrants no more than chickens to be plucked and, at
times, slaughtered.
Most pollos attempt to enter the country through
the so-called corridor, a stretch running five and onehalf miles along the California border from the San
Ysidro-Tijuana port of entry to the Pacific Ocean. Since
the chain-link fence separating the two countries is full
of holes, three times as many illegals get in as are captured by the border patrol. However, evading the border patrol hardly means the pollos have made it. Far
greater danger is posed by the border bandits, young
Chicanos from San Diego and Los Angeles who waylay
the migrants in the corridor at night. These bandits are
out to seize the migrants’ money and pitifully small
possessions, knowing the pollos can hardly call on the
authorities for protection.
Border crossings by pollos are carefully organized
affairs. They pay a “coyote” in Mexico to arrange for
their transportation and for a “mule,” or guide, to lead
them. The coyote often collects another bounty of
about $15 a head from California growers to deliver
the migrants straight to their farms where they are paid
wages well under the legal minimum. Again, the pollos
can hardly complain to the authorities, since the alternative is deportation.
Before the pollos reach this stage of exploitation,
they first face the treachery of the mule. He too looks
for an extra payment and will often lead them to an
ambush by the border bandits in return for a portion of
the loot. These robberies are generally brutal affairs,
marked by bone-breaking, pistol whippings and an
occasional fatal knifing. In a recent two-year period the
reported crimes in the corridor included 251 robberies,
seven rapes and seven murders. Of course, the unreported crimes are many times greater.
See also: PEONAGE.
Pollard, Edward (c. 1845–1885) murder victim
The biggest mistake Edward Pollard and George Brassfield ever made was taking on two hired hands, James
Lamb and Albert O’Dell, at harvest time in 1885 on the
farm they leased together in Lebanon, Indian Territory
(later Oklahoma). Had the ensuing events occurred in a
major city and enjoyed massive news coverage, it
would have doubtless have become a legendary American murder case.
Mrs. Pollard took Lamb as a lover and Mrs. Brassfield couldn’t stay away from O’Dell. The affairs could
not be kept secret in an area where everyone knew
everyone’s business, and finally, Brassfield took off,
leaving his wife and his share of the farm to O’Dell.
Edward Pollard was more stubborn and refused to
leave, remaining “in possession of his chattels, if not his
wife.”
On December 30, 1885 a preacher was called to the
Pollard home to marry Lamb and Mrs. Pollard, the
woman explaining her husband had deserted her and
“would not be back.” The preacher refused to perform
the marriage under those circumstances, and the next
day the two couples left the area. Two months passed
before the murdered body of Edward Pollard was
found in a shallow grave off the trail, and warrants
were issued for the two farmhands and the two errant
wives. The quartet were found 50 miles away at Buck
Horn Creek, where they had set up house. Both women
were pregnant by their lovers.
O’Dell and Lamb had been close throughout their
period of courtship and crime, but now each hired his
own counsel. The two men were tried before the
famous Hanging Judge, Isaac C. Parker, who seemed as
much taken aback by their outrageous romantic behavior as by the murder. Each defendant’s lawyer seemed
to be prosecuting the other defendant along with the
prosecution, which was armed with the testimony of
the two women. Sitting in judgment of them, Hanging
Parker was determined to see legal vengeance wrought.
It was a case with no defense, and both men were
hanged together on January 14, 1887.
polygamy
Few marital practices have engendered more violence in
America than that of polygamy as engaged in by the
Mormons. It resulted in the mob murder of Joseph
Smith in 1844, after that Mormon leader had enunciated the religious concept of pluralism. Actually, what
Smith had advocated was polygyny, plural marriage for
men only, which he saw as a solution to the problems
of adultery and prostitution. The 1856 Republican
platform called for the elimination of “the twin relics of
barbarism,” slavery and polygamy, and a number of
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U.S. border guards comfort two pollos stranded in the Arizona desert by alien smugglers.
murder at the age of 16, young Pomeroy of Boston was
sentenced to be hanged, but after two years of controversy the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment
in solitary confinement. The stipulation of solitary confinement was to satisfy those who wanted to exact the
death penalty because of Pomeroy’s long record of previous offenses. He spent 41 years in solitary before
finally being permitted to mingle with the general
prison population. Although still imprisoned, Pomeroy
was, in a sense, reborn when he came out of solitary
into the new world of electricity, moving pictures, the
automobile, the phonograph and the telephone.
laws were passed calling for heavy fines and long
prison sentences against practitioners of polygamy.
Between 1885 and 1900 more than 1,000 Mormon
men were convicted of the crime of polygamy. The
practice did not cease until the closing years of the 19th
century, when court tests upheld laws that disincorporated the Mormon church, forcing Mormon President
Wilford Woodruff to issue a manifesto directing church
members to cease engaging in pluralism. Certain fundamentalist Mormon sects, officially excommunicated,
have continued the custom in isolated parts of Utah
and Arizona. However, some recent, and no doubt
exaggerated estimates, have claimed that perhaps
30,000 Mormons today live in secret polygynous marriages despite the ever present threat of fine and long
imprisonment.
See also: JOSEPH SMITH.
Porvenir Massacre
murder of Mexican-Americans
The Porvenir Massacre was probably the worst instance
of police murder in American history, an early equivalent of the more recent police Death Squads in Brazil.
During World War I the exposure given to such alleged
plots as the Plan of San Diego and the Zimmerman
Note, both calling for Mexican uprisings and the annexation of portions of the United States and both almost
Pomeroy, Jesse H. (1860–1932) murderer and prisoner
Jesse Pomeroy’s prison sentence is often cited as one of
the cruelest ever imposed in this country. Convicted of
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PONZI, Charles
Ponzi, Charles (1877–1949) swindler
certainly hoaxes, created hysteria among superpatriotic
vigilante groups, particularly in the Texas borderlands
and especially among the Texas Rangers. A virtual reign
of terror was launched against local Chicanos. The lowest estimate of the number of Mexicans killed was 500,
and some counts put the death toll at 5,000.
In 1919, acting on charges brought by State Rep. J.
T. Canales, a Texas House-Senate committee found that
the Texas Rangers had widely violated the civil rights of
Mexicans, entered private houses illegally, made
improper arrests, killed needlessly while making arrests
and executed prisoners. An uncontested charge was
that the Rangers had executed five prisoners arrested
after a train robbery near Brownsville. The local sheriff
managed to save the lives of two other prisoners by
refusing to turn them over to the Rangers. In Cameron
County the sheriff had threatened to arrest any Texas
Ranger who illegally took firearms belonging to a Chicano without just cause. The most serious charge of all
involved the massacre in the little village of Ponvenir in
Big Bend country.
On December 25, 1917 between 40 and 50 bandits
raided Brite’s store, located outside Porvenir, killing
two Mexican passengers and the driver of a stagecoach
when they happened along at the wrong moment. The
bandits also attempted to raid a ranch house but were
repelled, suffering heavy losses. The Texas Rangers
were called in to investigate and supposedly learned
that Chicanos in the village of Porvenir were wearing
new shoes of the same type stolen from Brite’s store.
Capt. J. M. Fox then organized a group consisting of
eight Rangers and four civilians to conduct a raid on
the village.
It was later determined that the raiders had terrorized
the town. While getting drunk, they had rounded up 25
men and tortured them. In addition, the raiders had
commissioned professional Mexican bravos to shoot a
couple of villagers and worst of all, had brought
together 15 unresisting villagers and massacred them.
The Rangers’ version differed considerably. They
stated that after they had taken a number of prisoners,
other Chicanos had opened fire on them from the cover
of brush, beginning an all-night firefight. By morning
the Chicanos had disappeared. The Rangers claimed
they had then gathered up some stolen goods as evidence and returned to their headquarters. They said
they were not in a position to know if they had killed
anyone during the long fight but assumed they had.
The Texans had suffered no losses themselves.
The Rangers’ defense was one that very few could
swallow. Although no murder charges were ever
brought against any of the raiders, Capt. Fox and all
his men were dismissed from the Rangers.
See also: TEXAS RANGERS.
Among the greatest swindlers ever to prey on the American public was Charles Ponzi—ex-dishwasher, exforger, ex-alien smuggler—who came to America from
his native Italy in 1899. And for a time, he was also the
most-beloved, especially among those who got in early
on his fantastic scheme and actually made money. Once
when Ponzi was being hauled before an official hearing
to explain his money-trading operations, he was
cheered by crowds in front of the State House in
Boston. A voice from the crowd called out, “You’re the
greatest Italian of them all!”
“No, no,” Ponzi responded, “Columbus and Marconi. Columbus discovered America. Marconi discovered the wireless.”
“Yes, but you discovered money!”
That last claim was to prove debatable indeed. Not
that Charles Ponzi didn’t have money-making acumen. He discovered he could buy up international
postal-union reply coupons at depressed prices in
some foreign countries and sell them in the United
States at a profit of up to 50 percent. It was, in fact, a
classic get-rich-slowly operation, and as such, it bored
Ponzi. So he figured out a better gimmick. He simply
told everyone how he was making the money and said
he needed a lot of capital to make a lot of money. For
the use of their funds, he offered investors a 50 percent profit in three months. It was an offer they couldn’t refuse, and the funds just came rolling into Ponzi’s
Boston office. In a short time, he had to open offices
in neighboring states.
When Ponzi actually started paying out interest, a
deluge followed. On one monumental day in 1920,
Ponzi’s offices took in an incredible $2 million from
America’s newest gamblers, the little people who
squeezed money out of bank accounts, mattresses,
piggy banks and cookie jars. There were days when a
Ponzi office looked like a hurricane had hit it.
Incoming cash had to be stuffed in closets, desk
drawers and even in wastebaskets. Of course, the
more that came in, the more Ponzi paid out. In that
sense, Ponzi was merely following the example of the
legendary Billy “520 percent” Miller who had pulled
the same caper in Brooklyn, New York some two
decades earlier.
As long as investors kept pouring in new funds,
Ponzi could continue to pay the interest on the old
funds. After about six months the newspapers started
to investigate his operation, but he was able to buy
more time by hitting them with huge lawsuits. Meanwhile, Ponzi became a great dandy. His wardrobe consisted of 200 suits; he sported more than two dozen
diamond stickpins; and he owned an elegant mansion.
But Ponzi’s bubble had to burst. The Boston Post dug
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POPULATION density and crime
the estimated number of criminals represented almost
10 percent of the entire population. If that percentage
held true today, the term “crime wave” would not be
adequate to describe what American cities would be
facing.
Crime in New York and in other major cities has
merely reflected the activity of the criminal element in
the ghettos. In an attempt to categorize the Draft Riots
of 1863 as strictly a criminal matter—a contention that
need not be accepted—historian Herbert Asbury
argued that the reason the rioters were mostly Irish was
“simply because the gangsters and the other criminal
elements of the city were largely of that race.” Then, as
now, it was the ghettos that produced crime, and the
shifting ethnic and racial composition of their occupants determined the ethnic and racial composition of
criminals as a whole. Today’s ghetto residents are
blacks and Hispanics and, to a large extent, so are the
cities’ arrestees.
Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark notes in his
book Crime in America that on the average an American is likely to be the victim of a violent crime only
once in 400 years, but that the estimated figure for a
resident of the black ghettos is once in 80 years, or five
times more probable. However, since ghetto crime is
vastly under-reported, Clark raises the possibility that a
slum dweller may well be a violent crime victim about
once every 20 years.
By contrast a white middle-class urban dweller,
living in a good section of the city, will probably be
a violent crime victim only once in about 2,000
years, and among the upper middle class and rich
suburbanites, the odds dip to once in 10,000 years.
Ironically, it is the perception of crime by these latter
two groups that leads to the heralding of “crime
waves.” Today, much of white New York eschews
traveling in the city’s subways. Yet it has been established that the subways are safer than the city streets
and a person is far less likely to be murdered, robbed,
assaulted or raped on a subway platform than above
ground.
Fear of crime is said to be the prime reason for middle-class flight from the cities to the suburbs (actually,
such factors as soaring rents and housing costs, racial
bias and filth are also major considerations). If so, the
migration is proving to be a mistake. The suburbs are
becoming less and less havens from crime, and murders
in even rural areas are rising so rapidly that they now
run only about 20 percent below the figures for the
standard metropolitan statistical areas. Clearly, where a
person lives affects his or her vulnerability to crime, but
the tensions that produce crime, especially violent
crime, are becoming universal.
See also: RACE AND CRIME.
up his past record, which showed he had spent time in
prison in Montreal for forgery and in Atlanta for smuggling aliens. It was enough to make large numbers of
eager investors hesitate to put in more money; the
moment that happened, Ponzi’s fragile scheme collapsed, since it required an unending flow of cash. His
books, such as they were, showed a deficit of somewhere between $5 and $10 million, or perhaps even
more. No one ever knew for sure.
Ponzi went to federal prison for four years for using
the mails to defraud and was then sentenced to seven to
nine years in Massachusetts for theft. When he emerged
from prison in 1934, he was sent back to Italy. At this
point the picture of Ponzi blurs. Some accounts, apparently not all fanciful, have him furnishing his “financial
genius” to the Mussolini regime. If he did, the Fascists
obviously did not profit from the experience, for within
a few years Ponzi had to leave the country. He ended up
in Rio de Janeiro, working for an Italian company until
1939, when the war put him out of work. Ponzi’s last
years were filled with extreme privation. He became
partially blind and paralyzed and ended up in the charity ward of a Brazilian hospital, where he died in January 1949.
population density and crime
A person living in an American city of 250,000 or more
has a three to 10 times greater chance of being a crime
victim than someone living in a rural area. This is
hardly surprising since urban life in the United States is
more and more one of anonymity, crowded living conditions and a spirit of alienation. Middle-class flight
from the inner cities to the suburbs results in an eroded
tax base and forced cuts in police protection, as the
crime problem worsens. Naturally, crime is most pervasive in the ghetto sections. In the 28th precinct in New
York’s Harlem section, about one out of every 500 residents will become a homicide victim. The nationwide
ratio is one in 10,000.
Cities in all modern societies, in this country and
abroad, have always been the breeding ground for
crime. Comparisons between 19th and 20th century
crime rates in the United States are hampered by the
lack of anything near reliable crime figures for the
period before the 1930s. The one thing that is apparent even from fragmentary figures, however, is that
there is less crime in the cities of today compared to
those of yesterday. In 1862 New York City, then comprising only the island of Manhattan, had a population of about 815,000. In that year the police
arrested 82,072 men and women and estimated the
number of criminals residing in the metropolis at
between 70,000 and 80,000. Both the arrest total and
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PRAIRIE Queen
Prairie Queen
fancy Chicago brothel
superseded legal precedents and niceties; so on January
6 Prescott was hanged.
In the 1850s Chicago was still a frontier town, a fact
apparent in the rough quality of its brothels along Wells
Street. A few more pretentious houses appeared, but
none to match the luxurious bordellos that would soon
become a municipal legend. The first of the fancy
brothels, opened in 1854, was the Prairie Queen on
State Street, run by Eleanor Herrick, more generally
referred to as Mother Herrick, a mainstay in Chicago’s
red-light district for 30 years. Besides such attractions
as plush carpeting and melodeons in the parlors, the
Prairie Queen was renowned for its entertainment.
There was dancing every night, of a type shocking to
Chicago’s more genteel element, and a special erotic
show once a week. In a further effort to attract clients,
the Prairie Queen added regularly scheduled prizefights, fought with bare knuckles and for a purse of $2
and a night with one of Mother Herrick’s ladies. The
police had been ignoring the dancing and the erotic
shows, but the fights were too much to be tolerated. On
June 3, 1857, they swept down on the Prairie Queen
and arrested the two fighters, Billy Fagan and Con
McCarthy, on that night’s card and shut down the
brothel for going too far.
See also: SANDS, WHORE WAR.
prisoner—longest term
See PAUL GEIDEL.
prisons and prison riots
One of the first institutions brought to the New World
was the jail, a place where lawbreakers could be held
while awaiting trial and punishment, which for about
150 offenses was death. Lesser crimes were punished by
whipping, branding, maiming or public humiliation.
The jail was basically not a place where prisoners were
kept for punishment. In fact, the idea of a penitentiary
or state prison was a purely American invention that
was to have a profund effect on correctional policy in
this and many other countries.
The first state prison was the notorious Newgate,
established at Simsbury, Conn. in 1773. It was actually
an abandoned copper mine in which prisoners were
chained together to live and labor some 50 feet beneath
the earth. Many of the prisoners were Tories incarcerated there during the Revolution. The first prison riot
at Newgate occurred in 1776, when prisoners set fire to
a massive wooden door in an attempt to reach a
drainage channel that led to freedom. The riot failed, as
smoke filled the mine, choking a number of prisoners
to death and disabling the rest.
Newgate set the pattern of hellhole prisons in this
country. Almost immediately, prison reformers
appeared, but it is debatable whether their early efforts
to achieve humane treatment of those imprisoned benefitted or harmed prisoners. The first reform of prison
practices was attempted in 1790 at Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Jail, which was renovated through the efforts
of a group of Quakers called the Philadelphia Society to
Alleviate the Miseries of Public Prisons, an organization that exists to the present day as the Philadelphia
Prison Society. A 19th-century historical account
describes the unreformed Walnut Street Jail in its early
days as a scene of “universal riot and debauchery . . .
with no separation of those accused but yet untried,
nor even of those confined for debt only, from convicts
sentenced for the foulest crimes . . . no separation of
. . . age or sex, by day or night.”
After the jail was remodeled in 1790, men and
women for the first time were housed separately in
large, clean rooms. Debtors were segregated from other
prisoners, and children were removed from the jail
entirely. Hardened offenders were placed in solitary
confinement in a “penitentiary house” and prisoners
were given work and religious instruction. Within a
Prescott, Abraham (1816–1836) murderer
Eighteen-year-old Abraham Prescott was a New Hampshire youth who committed an ordinary crime of passion and then made legal history with the first claim of
sleepwalking as a defense.
On June 23, 1833 Mrs. Sally Cochran rejected
Prescott’s advances, and the enraged youth beat her to
death with a stake. He was quickly identified and
arrested as the killer. At his trial Prescott’s defense
lawyers announced the defendant was a confirmed
somnambulist and that whatever he had done had
occurred while he was asleep. News of the claim
evoked general outrage. Of course, this was an era
when any defense based on lack of mental competency
received short shrift. Not surprisingly, the jury quickly
rejected the defense and found Prescott guilty. However, because of the novelty of the claim, Prescott’s
lawyers were able to keep the case on appeal until the
first days of January 1836.
At last, Prescott was slated to die, and a great mob
attended his scheduled execution. When a short time
before the start of the proceedings it was announced
that the condemned man had been granted a temporary
stay of execution, the crowd rioted, resulting in a number of injuries. Prescott was moved to Hopkinton,
N.H., where authorities decided public tranquility
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PRISONS and prison riots
short time, however, the Walnut Street Jail became
overcrowded and a new institution had to be built.
About the same time, two new prisons were built,
which were soon to function as the models for what
became known as the Pennsylvania and Auburn prison
systems. Eastern Penitentiary was built at Philadelphia
in 1829 to further the Quaker idea of prisoner isolation. Prisoners were confined in windowless cells about
eight by 12 feet with running water and toilet facilities.
Each prisoner had his own “exercising yard,” about
eight by 20 feet, surrounded by a high brick wall. The
walls between the cells were thick and virtually sound
proof, so that an inmate never saw another inmate,
only a few guards, chaplains and an occasional pious
person who came by to pray and offer spiritual advice.
Needless to say, great numbers of prisoners went insane
under the Pennsylvania system, but that did not stop it
from becoming popular both elsewhere in the United
States and around the world.
Also in 1829, a rival system, which eventually
gained wider acceptance, was launched with the building of a new prison in Auburn, N.Y. The trouble with
the Pennsylvania system, said the New York prison
experts, was that the convicts spent too much time
praying and working alone and thus could not “pay for
their keep” through convict labor. At Auburn the prisoners were permitted to work together by day fulfilling
convict labor contracts, but in all other aspects the isolation of the Pennsylvania system was maintained.
Inmates were forbidden ever to talk to one another,
even when working together in the prison’s shops. The
prisoners marched in lockstep, their gaze always downward. In Warden Elam Lynds, the system had a devoted
champion. Lynds felt the purpose of the system was to
break the prisoners’ spirits. He personally flogged prisoners and urged his guards to treat the men with contempt and brutality. A typical, and sometimes lethal,
punishment instituted by Lynds was the water cure.
The punishment consisted of fastening a prisoner’s neck
in an iron yoke and then pouring a stream of icy water
on his head. In a variation of the water cure, the prisoner was shackled naked to a wall and a high-pressure
water hose was turned full blast on his back. The man
was plastered to the wall by the force of the water and
the pain was almost unbearable. However, the torture
left no marks.
The Auburn system was rapidly adopted throughout
America because it was more economical to operate
than the Pennsylvania system. In Auburn the cells were
only seven feet high, seven feet long and 3 1/2 feet
wide. As the Auburn system spread, the methods of
repression mushroomed. The striped uniform was
introduced at Sing Sing, and floggings, the sweat-box,
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Prisons, whether of the old wooden variety or the more
modern type, have had the same general effect—
nonreformation of the convict.
the straitjacket, the iron yoke, the thumbscrew and the
stretcher became widespread. The latter device had a
number of variations. A man could be handcuffed to
the upper bars of his cell so that his toes barely touched
the floor, and usually he would be left that way the
entire day. In another version, inmates had their ankles
chained to the floor and their wrists tied to a rope that
was passed through a pulley attached to the ceiling.
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PRISONS and prison riots
When the rope was pulled, the prisoners were stretched
taut. Some prisons built sweatboxes right into the cell
door, actually a double door in which a prisoner could
be placed in a space so small that he could barely move.
In other prisons this type of sweatbox was not considered stern enough. It was, after all, much more effective
if the sweatboxes were placed near a fireplace so that
the suffering could be intensified.
The Auburn system was based on cruelty and repression, with the idea that such treatment would reform
the prisoners. It was a failure, but some of the Auburn
system’s practices have been adopted in varying degrees
by more modern prisons.
In the post–Civil War period, however, penologists
did begin experimenting with the new ideas. In 1870,
mainly through the efforts of penologists like Enoch
Cobbs Wines and others who formed the American
Prison Association, the reformatory system came into
being. Because of these penologists the Elmira Reformatory opened in New York in 1876. Although the
reformatory plan was originally intended for all ages, at
Elmira it was limited to prisoners between the ages of
16 and 30. The chief principle of the Elmira system was
reformation, rather than expiation of guilt, and it was
hailed as the greatest advance in penology since the
substitution of the prison for the medieval method of
maiming and/or execution.
When a prisoner entered Elmira, he was automatically placed in the second of three grades. If and when
he showed improvement, he was moved to the first
grade, and upon continued improvement he won
parole. If he turned out to be a troublemaker, he was
dropped to the third grade and had to work his way
back up. Many of the prisoners were sentenced to indeterminate terms so that they could be afforded the full
benefit of the reformatory concept.
By the turn of the century, 11 states had adopted
the reformatory system, but by 1910 this innovation
was all but dead. Most guards and even wardens
proved incapable of administering a complex grading
program, and in the majority of systems, the advancement of prisoners was based on favoritism or their
ability to get along in the institution rather than their
progress in achieving a full-scale reformation. As a
result, most reformatory graduates went out and committed new crimes.
Today, many prisons retain the name of “reformatory” but are merely part of the general prison system.
Despite the claims of penologists, there has been little
general advance in prisons since the introduction of
the reformatory. Currently, prisons are divided into
three classes: maximum security, medium security and
minimum security. Because of reform wardens like
Thomas Mott Osborne and Lewis E. Lawes, both of
Sing Sing, who had an impact on penological theories,
much of the blatant cruelty and squalor of the 19th
century prisons has been considerably reduced. Still,
extremely punitive concepts have persisted, as indicated in the 1930s by the establishment of Alcatraz as
a “super prison” for the worst federal prisoners, an
American Devil’s Island. It proved a total failure.
According to some estimates, almost 60 percent of the
inmates went stir crazy there. Alcatraz unquestionably
left its mark not only on many of the prisoners but on
many of the guards as well. The prison soon lost its
original purpose as a place of confinement for escapers
and other troublemakers and became a place to lodge
inmates simply deemed deserving of harsher treatment, such as Al Capone and, later on, Morton Sobell,
of the Rosenberg atom bomb spy case. By 1963 Alcatraz was abandoned, having proven an unqualified
failure.
Yet there are those who consider the entire American
prison system a failure. Overall, various critics have
charged, prisons have failed to reform criminals or even
to act as a crime deterrent. Moreover, prisons are generally conceded to be schools for crime, where lesser
offenders learn from their “betters.” It is this last fact
that makes unfeasible the idea of simply using prisons
as places of confinement and retribution. Sooner or
later, prisoners must be released, if for no other reason
than a shortage of space.
And without rehabilitation programs the problem of
prison riots would increase manyfold. Such riots have
become commonplace in the 20th century, evidenced
especially in the three great waves—1929–32,
1950–56, 1968–73—of prison rebellion. The most
tragic riot, if indeed it was one, occurred at the Ohio
State Penitentiary in Columbus on April 21, 1930.
More than 300 prisoners died in a fire that, prison officials claimed, was started by inmates. More likely, an
electrical failure caused the fire, which the prison
guards were poorly trained to handle. Certainly, there
was reason enough for a riot, since the prison was
jammed with 4,300 inmates in accommodations
designed for 1,500.
The worst riot of the 1950s occurred at the overcrowded Southern Michigan State Prison at Jackson.
Guards were seized as hostages and prisoners roamed
the prison setting fires and smashing thousands of windows. The damage toll was put at $2.5 million.
The worst two-year span of prison rioting occurred
in 1970–71. Among the major disturbances were the
following:
January 1970: Soledad Prison, Salinas, Calif. Three
black convicts and a white guard killed during a race
riot among prisoners.
720
PROBATION
July 1970: Holmesburg Prison, Philadelphia, Pa.
Eighty-four prisoners and 29 guards injured in riot
with pronounced racial overtones.
The father of the probation movement was a
wealthy Boston businessman named John Augustus,
who, because of his interest in drunkards, persuaded a
judge in 1841 to release a “common drunkard” in his
custody. Augustus took him home, gave him clothes
and found him a job. Weeks later, Augustus returned to
court with the man, now totally changed in both
appearance and manner, and the judge, thoroughly
impressed, released the prisoner from the charge with a
fine of 1¢.
Over the last 18 years of his life, Augustus won probation for almost 2,000 persons. At first, he labored
solely on the behalf of drunks but then expanded his
activities to include defendants charged with more serious crimes. Augustus’ record was superb, far better
than those achieved by later probation programs. Less
than a dozen of his charges ran away and only a few
committed new crimes. Another Bostonian, Fr. Rufus
W. Cook, and a Philadelphian, William J. Mullen, who
eventually worked as a prison agent for the Philadelphia Prison Society, became leading exponents of probation.
Probation departments today generally claim a rehabilitation success rate of more than 70 percent. The
National Probation and Parole Association states:
October 1970: Tombs Prison, New York, N.Y. Convicts hold 26 hostages to protest overcrowded conditions.
November 1970: Cummings Prison Farm, Grady,
Ark. About 500 convicts riot to demand separate
facilities for whites and blacks.
August 1971: San Quentin, Calif. Three inmates,
including black militant George Jackson, and three
guards killed in what was described as an escape
effort.
September 1971: Attica Prison, Attica, N.Y. Thirtytwo prisoners and 11 guards being held hostage
killed by prison guards and state police rescuers in
aftermath of four-day protest over prison conditions.
Various studies indicate that there are many causes
for prison riots, some of the main ones being inconsistent sentencing and parole policies; prisoner-perceived
unfair sentencing; overcrowding; pent-up anger; racial
tensions; public and official indifference to conditions;
idleness; lack of rehabilitative programs; and most
recently, the activity of radical and revolutionary
groups in the inmate population that regard all convicts
as political prisoners.
See also: ALCATRAZ PRISON, ALCATRAZ PRISON REBELLION, ATTICA PRISON RIOT, JAMES A. JOHNSTON, LEWIS E.
LAWES, ELAM LYNDS, OHIO STATE PENITENTIARY FIRE,
GEORGE O. OSBORNE, THOMAS MOTT OSBORNE, SENTENCING OF CRIMINALS, WELFARE ISLAND PRISON SCANDAL.
prisons—good time
private eye
Far more effective than deterrence as an objective of
sentencing is rehabilitation, the satisfactory adjustment
of the offender to law-abiding society. Whether it takes
the form of probation—proved to be the most practical
approach where circumstances warrant its use—or of
commitment and ultimately parole, it is based on the
principle that the best way to protect society is to
change convicted offenders into law-abiding citizens.
Not all observers accept in full the rehabilitative
value attributed to probation. Aryeh Neier, executive
director of the American Civil Liberties Union, notes:
See GOOD-TIME LAWS.
slang for private detective
There is no evidence that probation rehabilitates people
any more than if people were simply left alone. Probation is punitive, however, and its principal use should
be as an alternative to prison for people who have committed minor crimes and who deserve some punishment.
The term “private eye” originated from the symbol of
Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, founded in
1850, which featured an eye and the slogan “We never
sleep.” As the fame of the agency spread, criminals
began expressing fear of the “Eye” and later of the
“private eye,” as distinguished from the eyes of the
police.
One of the actual motives for granting probation is
to reward police informers. But it is also used to allow
the probationer to work and provide restitution to the
victim for his or her loss or injury or to keep the prisoner’s family intact and off the charity rolls.
Probation is considered an effective way to promote
guilty pleas, and most judges agree it is necessary to
provide them with a way to invoke a relatively mild
probation
It would seem that probation, rather than imprisonment, is the standard method of punishment used in
this country; far more people are on probation than
behind bars.
721
PROCURESSES
By 1805, however, the gang was wiped out as a result
of assassinations carried out or instigated by a colorful
reformer named Carlos White, the scourge of fleshpots
from St. Louis to New Orleans.
In the 19th century New Orleans was probably the
most tolerant of procurers with several of that city’s
famed procuresses being allowed practically a free hand
in recruiting and despoiling young virgins, some barely
in their teens. The New Orleans procuresses supplied
not only houses of prostitution in the French Quarter
and elsewhere in the city but also bordellos in Atlanta,
Memphis, Galveston and a number of other southern
cities. In their lavish brochures “fresh stock” indicated
inexperienced girls, who thus commanded the highest
prices. In time, fierce competition drove the prices of a
virgin down as low as $50, but by the late 1860s
Louisa Murphy, a schoolteacher-procuress, was commanding $800 for a young girl. Murphy had little trouble with the police whom she paid off regularly.
Similarly, Nellie Haley, considered the Queen of the
Procuresses in the 1880s, was never arrested in New
Orleans; later in her career Nellie did run afoul of the
law when she attempted to ply her trade in Chicago.
Chicago gave a mixed welcome to procurers; many
operated without interference but others were harrassed whenever certain policemen experienced a sudden infusion of righteousness. Still, Chicago’s vice trade
required so many women that procurers operated there
with or without approval, and the city became the supply point for many other cities in the Midwest.
Some procurer gangs dealt solely in foreign women,
among them the band headed by French Em Duval and
her husband. The Duvals ran their own brothel in
Chicago on Armour Avenue but maintained a stockade
outside the city on Dearborn Street, where women
shipped in from New York were kept awaiting sale to
buyers. The stockade had barred windows and the
inmates were not permitted any street wear until they
were being transported to the brothel which had purchased them. The Duval operation was broken up in
1908 by federal authorities utilizing immigration
statutes, the only legal weapon available for use against
vice operations prior to the Mann Act.
Another important procurer mob of the era was the
Dewey Hotel Gang, considered the most efficient operation in the city. The gang, comprised of Russian Jews,
specialized in providing, not surprisingly, Russian Jewesses, a prize attraction in American bordellos. The
gang maintained break-in rooms and a stockade on the
top floor of a hotel on Washington Boulevard. They
held regular auctions, at which women were stripped
and inspected by brothel keepers and sold to the highest bidders. At an auction in 1906, 25 women were sold
for sums ranging from $25 to $100 apiece. This sale
form of punishment for first offenders. Above all, probation is necessary to reduce prison overcrowding. The
cost is about one-tenth that of maintaining him or her
in a penal institution. This last fact alone should guarantee the system a future.
See also: PAROLE.
procuresses
See NEW ORLEANS PROCURESSES.
procuring
A double standard toward vice held by much of society
views prostitution itself tolerantly but regards procuring, the recruitment of girls and women to serve as
prostitutes, a vital part of the overall business, as far
more unwholesome. In almost every major city in the
United States during the 19th century, vice operators
had no trouble paying off crooked police officers, and,
indeed, entire police units and departments for permission to run houses of prostitution, but the enforcers of
the law were less accommodating when it came to
allowing procurers to supply young girls for these
establishments. Some corrupt officers who accepted
payoffs for almost anything else rebelled when happening upon “break-in” houses, where male specialists
indoctrinated, by repeated rapes, young victims lured
to the big city by the promise of well-paying jobs.
In New York’s so-called Grabber Scandal in 1875,
the notorious Hester Jane Haskins, better known as
Jane the Grabber, was arrested by enraged police
because she was recruiting girls from the better portion
of society to satisfy the demands of higher-priced bordello patrons for young ladies of refinement and education. Jane the Grabber had been allowed to operate for
years, recruiting gullible girls right off the boat or from
upstate farm country and publishing a monthly circular
that advertised her wares to whorehouse clients. But
when she started kidnapping the daughters of the wellto-do, she was carted off to prison.
Procurers emerged in America shortly after the
arrival of the white man. Their first victims were Indian
maidens, who were bought or stolen from their tribes
to be used as prostitutes. Soon, they flourished in every
port city, attracting an endless stream of young girls
and women, including those who spoke not a word of
English. Other procurers, operating sometimes in
gangs, worked the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, again
either kidnapping or buying young females from their
impoverished parents and selling them down river at
the infamous flatboat auctions in Natchez and New
Orleans. Perhaps the most famous of the procurer
gangs was the one led by white slaver Sam Purdy,
whose heyday was around the start of the 19th century.
722
PROFACI, Joseph
After Harry Guzik joined the Capone syndicate, he
was put in charge of prostitution and procuring and
became the chief funnel for much of the mob’s payoffs
to police and politicians. Eventually, brother Jake
Guzik handled even bigger payoffs for the Capone
gang, and upon Harry’s death the Greasy Thumb monicker passed on to him.
Two Chicago newspapermen once overheard a conversation between Guzik and a young Willie Bioff, then
primarily a procurer known for slugging whores who
attempted to hold out on him. It was Guzik’s observation
that “they’re so dumb (prospective prostitutes) you have
to teach them never to give away what they can sell.”
The pair then discussed the best technique for convincing
women to “go horizontal.” The first step was to seduce a
woman, then lavish money on her and finally wake up
one morning and declare bankruptcy. Bioff told Guzik:
“Then I hint that if she really loved me, she’d lay a friend
of mine who wanted to give me a hundred dollars if he
could just get in her pants once. She always cries. She
always tells me she loves me and she could not possibly
lay anybody else. But I tell her I wanted to buy such
wonderful things for her—and here we are without even
breakfast money. She comes around.”
“And,” rejoined Harry Guzik, “once she’s laid one
other guy for money, she’s hooked. After that you can
put her right into a house and she’ll turn over her earnings to you every night. If she tries to hold out, you just
slap her around a little.”
A mistaken belief today is that most procurers are
black, a perception fostered, according to Richard Milner, coauthor of Black Players, perhaps the most definitive study of black pimps, by the fact that the blacks are
primarily street operators and thus more visible than
white procurers. In New York the role of black procurers in recruiting runaway girls around the Port Authority bus terminal on Eighth Avenue has been the subject
of numerous studies.
According to Milner, most important procurers are
whites. It is they who recruit women for the legalized
whorehouses in Nevada and for the “massage parlors”
in various major cities. By abandoning the streets to the
blacks, the same as has occurred in drug distribution,
the white procurers have been able to shift attention
away from their activities.
See also: BECKETT SISTERS, WILLIE MORRIS BIOFF, GRABBERS, JOSEPH “ROWDY JOE” LOWE, MANN ACT, NEW
ORLEANS PROCURESSES, PROSTITUTION, SAM PURDY, WHITE
SLAVE.
did not constitute the gang’s total profits, however,
since for a considerable time thereafter each woman
had to turn over her share of the money she earned to
the procurers.
No account of procuring in this country would be
complete without mentioning Harry “Greasy Thumb”
Guzik and his wife Alma, perhaps the most proficient
procurer couple in America. One of five brothers who
as youngsters earned nickels running errands and hustling for Chicago prostitutes in the Levee district,
Harry was a full-time pimp before he reached his
teens. After getting busted early in his career, he started
paying off virtually every politician and policeman
who came into view. A ward politician once said,
“Harry’s fingers are always greasy from the money he
counts out for protection.” Thus, he won the nickname Greasy Thumb.
Harry eventually accumulated a string of whores in
the Levee and married one of them, Alma. Thereafter,
the couple became the chief procurers for all the important brothel operators in the city, men like Big Jim
Colosimo and women like Victoria Moresco.
Harry and Alma combed the rural areas of Illinois,
Indiana and Wisconsin in search of new girls, particularly those who dressed “city style” and obviously
wanted no part of farm living. After finding a likely
prospect, Harry would go to bed with her and be
joined by Alma. Afterwards, Alma would regale Harry
about being a cheapskate and insist he give the girl
$10. Later the girl would be invited to visit Chicago.
Once again, she would end up in bed with the couple,
but this time a male friend of Harry’s would show up
and the threesome would become a foursome. Upon
leaving, Harry’s friend would insist on giving Alma
and the girl $10 each. Generally, by the next day the
girl was working in a whorehouse. The Guziks sold
each recruit for $100 plus expenses and a percentage
of the girl’s future earnings. They often procured some
10 girls a month in an attempt to keep up with the
demand for “fresh bodies.”
In 1921 the Guziks had trouble convincing a farm
girl to turn prostitute; so they made her a prisoner, took
away her clothes and had her forcibly indoctrinated.
After many months the girl got word out to her family
and was rescued by her brothers. The couple tried to fix
things by bribing the father of the girl, now a mental
and physical wreck, not to press charges. But the
attempt didn’t work and they were convicted and sentenced to the penitentiary. Out on bail while the case
was being appealed, the Guziks stepped up their
recruiting activities to raise a large sum of money.
These funds found their way to Illinois Gov. Len Small,
who abruptly granted them a full pardon before the
judicial process was completed.
Profaci, Joseph (1896–1962) Mafia family head
Of all the longtime crime family bosses of the New
York Mafia, the least Godfatherly was undoubtedly Joe
723
PROHIBITION
Profaci, one of the original five bosses who formed the
modern Mafia after the assassination of the boss of
bosses, Salvatore Maranzano, in 1931.
A vicious young gunman, Profaci became the head
of the Mafia family in Brooklyn while in his twenties
and ruled it in the strict old Sicilian manner, requiring
every member of the family to kick in $25 in monthly
dues to him. In theory, this was to build a slush fund to
take care of legal fees, bribes and support money for a
soldier’s family in the event he was sent to jail. It was
an old custom that had long been abolished in other
families, but Profaci, a multimillionaire with a huge
mansion on a 328-acre estate on Long Island, complete
with hunting lodge and private airport, could not resist
gathering up extra pennies in this fashion. The gang
boss ran all the rackets hard and leaned on his men for
a heavy percentage of their illegal profits. In other families the smarter operators cut the head of the family in
for a slice of whatever racket they ran, but it was
offered as a form of “affection” or a “token of
respect.” Profaci demanded it, and he demanded plenty.
Profaci was able to run his family with an iron hand
because he killed ruthlessly whenever anyone objected
to his techniques. For years Brooklyn was littered with
corpses of those who did not play according to Profaci’s rules.
But while the Brooklyn underworld knew the dark
side of Profaci, the respectable community had a different view of him. Probably more than any other top
mafioso, Profaci was a religious man. He regularly
attended St. Bernadette’s Catholic Church in Brooklyn
and even had a private altar built in his cellar so that
mass could be celebrated at family gatherings by a
priest who was a close friend of the Profacis. In 1949 a
group of leading Italian-Americans petitioned Pope
Pius XII to confer a knightship on Profaci, a “son of
Sicily” who had become America’s leading importer of
tomato paste and olive oil and who, as the principal
owner of more than 20 other prominent businesses,
was a kindly employer of hundreds of his fellow countrymen. Profaci was also cited as a generous donor to
many Catholic charities. The petition was denied after
Miles McDonald, the Brooklyn district attorney,
pointed out to the Vatican that Profaci was a top racketeer, extortionist, murderer and Mafia leader.
While this may have left Profaci disappointed, it did
not dampen his religious zeal. When a young thief stole
a jeweled crown from St. Bernadette’s, an act that in his
eyes was probably the greatest possible sacrilege not
only against the church but against the mob itself, the
word was passed that the crown had to be returned or
blood would flow. The thief returned the crown but
first removed a few diamonds. Thus, the matter
remained a capital offense, and a death sentence was
issued and carried out. Vincent Teresa, the biggest
Mafia informer since Joe Valachi, summed up the rationale: “If Profaci hadn’t had the kid put to sleep, Profaci
would have lost a lot of prestige in the community.
After all, he owned Brooklyn, he was the boss.”
During the last three years of his life, from 1960 to
1962, the Brooklyn Mafia boss was involved in the
famed “mattress war” with the Gallo brothers, young
upstart members of the family who resented Profaci’s
greed and the fact that he had not rewarded them for
services rendered, especially carrying out the execution
of the dreaded Albert Anastasia on orders passed down
from Vito Genovese. The Gallos were under the
assumption that this hit would entitle them to a piece of
Brooklyn’s gambling and narcotics action. Finally, open
warfare broke out when the young rebels kidnapped
five of Profaci’s leading gang members. They were
returned when Profaci promised to deal with the Gallos’ complaints. Instead, in typical Profaci manner, he
attempted to have them killed. In the later warfare far
more Gallo men were murdered than were Profaci
gangsters, but the aging Profaci did not live to see the
eventual demise of the Gallos. He died in 1962 of
quickly advancing cancer, and his family was eventually
taken over by Joseph Colombo.
See also: CRAZY JOE GALLO.
Prohibition
“Goodbye John. You were God’s worst enemy. You
were Hell’s best friend. . . . The reign of tears is over.”
Using those words, the Rev. Billy Sunday held a mock
funeral in Norfolk, Va. for John Barleycorn when the
18th Amendment took effect on January 16, 1920.
The supporters of Prohibition were confident that it
was the panacea for all the social ills in America. In retrospect, Prohibition accomplished the exact opposite.
As far as crime was concerned, the cure proved far
worse than the ailment; in part, this was because Prohibition simply wouldn’t work and, to a larger extent,
because it fostered corruption. Law enforcement agencies became open to bribes to an extent unheard of even
in the less than pristine years that preceded it. Worse
yet, Prohibition was the midwife of organized crime in
America.
The great gangs of America—born in the 1820s and
continuing up to World War I—operated in two major
fields, committing various forms of violent crimes and
acting as bully boys for the political machines of the big
cities. By 1914 these violent gangs had just about been
wiped out. In New York City the 1,500-member Eastman gang was in disarray, with their leader in prison.
The Eastmans’ arch rivals, the Five Pointers, were scattering and their leader Paul Kelly, understanding that
724
PROHIBITION
Good old “mountain dew” was a problem in backwoods America before, during and after Prohibition.
prominent Prohibition gangster. It has been estimated
that Capone himself made $60 million from bootlegging and rumrunning.
With the incredible profits from Prohibition rackets,
the mobs found they could corrupt federal agents,
police, politicians and judges to an extent never before
considered possible. In fact, in the pre-Prohibition era it
was the politicians who controlled the gangsters. With
their newfound wealth the gangsters were able to
reverse this role; they now gave the orders and the
politicians jumped.
Disrespect for the law grew as it became fashionable
for respectable citizens to drink bootleg liquor in their
homes and in speakeasies. After all, President Warren
G. Harding paid lip service to Prohibition while turning
the White House into a private saloon. It was widely
and correctly assumed that most Prohibition agents
themselves violated the law and accepted enormous
bribes. The Treasury Department reported that
between 1920 and 1928 the government fired 706
agents and prosecuted another 257 for taking bribes.
Head T-man Elmer L. Irey called the agents a “most
extraordinary collection of political hacks, hangers-on
and passing highwaymen.” In New York, Capt. Daniel
an enlightened public would no longer tolerate gang
violence in elections, moved into relatively minor labor
racketeering activities. Prostitution, another gang operation, was also in decline. During World War I the federal government shuttered the country’s most infamous
vice centers, especially those in San Francisco, New
Orleans and Chicago.
However, now the huge profits of illegal activities
spawned by Prohibition gave criminal organizations a
new lease on life. Across the country 200,000
speakeasies sprang up and giant bootlegging organizations were required to supply them. In New York City
alone, 15,000 saloons were replaced by 32,000
speakeasies. Bootleggers and rumrunners brought in
liquor from outside the borders. The production of alcohol became a cottage industry in many cities, producing
foul odors that lay heavy over entire neighborhoods.
The Purple Gang of Detroit, up until then more
interested in robberies and murders, became one of the
most important of the Prohibition gangs, controlling
much of the liquor supplies smuggled in from Canada.
In Cleveland, the violent Mayfield Road Gang emerged
as an extremely potent force, and of course, Chicago’s
Al Capone gained recognition as the nation’s most
725
PROSTITUTION
ing females believed to be prostitutes. However, when
in the early 1700s both the English and French began
sending over their bawds along with criminals,
vagrants and beggars, the New World was simply overwhelmed. Soon, New York, New Orleans and other
port cities sported large European-style brothels. By the
time of the American Revolution, some leaders considered the fight against prostitution hopeless. To Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson it was an
inescapable aspect of life. In his proposal for the establishment of the University of Virginia, Jefferson boldly
included a house of prostitution, arguing a well-regulated house would be better than the unregulated ones
that would otherwise develop. But he was forced to
drop that part of his proposal.
As the nation moved west during the 19th century,
prostitution became more tolerated in “man’s country,”
and indeed, it was much more of a civilizing force there
than in all the large eastern cities, where prostitution
was tolerated and even encouraged by the politicians
and police because of the tremendous graft involved.
Scarlet women first tamed the rough miners of the West,
who visited not only for the pleasures of the flesh but to
have their socks mended and buttons sewed on as well.
A look at the numbers quickly reveals why prostitution was inevitable in the West. In San Francisco, after
gold was discovered, the population consisted of
65,000 men and only 2,500 women, and those figures
were hardly as disparate as the ones in other communities. In 1880 Leadville, Colo. had an even poorer malefemale ratio than San Francisco and boasted a bordello
for every 148 inhabitants. The town that was an exception to the rule was Salt Lake City, where the Mormon
male and female populations were almost even and
there was no prostitution.
During Prohibition, the well-shoed lady could carry a tube
of liquor in her heel for emergency partying.
Chapin ordered a lineup of all agents and announced,
“Now everyone of you sons of bitches with a diamond
ring is fired.” Half were.
By 1928 a large segment of the population realized
that Prohibition had to be abolished. New York Gov.
Al Smith, a vocal opponent of the 18th Amendment,
won the Democratic nomination for president. Smith
lost but Prohibition was doomed, although it lasted
another five years. In 1931 President Herbert Hoover
established a bipartisan panel, the Wickersham Commission, to study the question. It found that Prohibition
was unenforceable but still suggested it be maintained.
Finally, in 1933, with the Democrats in power, Prohibition was repealed by passage of the 21st Amendment.
The effects of Prohibition however, did not end with
its repeal. The great gangs that had fed on it were so big
and powerful and had such excellent political connections that they simple moved into new rackets, especially
those that enjoyed considerable public approval, such as
gambling. With the end of Prohibition, the national
crime syndicate was organized to save the mobs from
destruction. The expertise the criminals gained during
that era has helped them to thrive ever since.
See also: BOOTLEGGING, IZZY AND MOE, CARRY A.
NATION.
prostitution
Prostitution came to America with the white man; the
Indians had never heard of the custom, but they were
soon to learn it. The first colonists in Massachusetts
and Virginia tried to suppress the practice, and Virginia
had a set policy of shipping back to England any arriv-
Tokens like these were used as currency in the pleasure
houses of the Old West. (From the Milner Collection.)
726
PROSTITUTION
With the influx of “respectable women,” advocacy
or tolerance of prostitution was replaced in some Western towns by active opposition. In Denver an ordinance
was passed requiring prostitutes to wear yellow ribbons
on their arms as a mark of shame. The city’s madams
ordered their women to wear nothing but yellow, from
bonnets to shoes, and to carry yellow parasols. It created such a bizarre sight that the law had to be
rescinded.
In other cities and towns prostitution was deeply
rooted and appreciated. A Topeka newspaper commented on the attitude in Ellsworth, Kan.:
grim reality of prostitution, its almost exclusive
reliance on exploiting poorer girls, often immigrants
who spoke no English. They lived drab lives, often
entertaining as many as 50 men a day and ending up
with very little money after paying off madams,
pimps, drug pushers, and the police. A great myth
was that many prostitutes eventually married and settled down to raise families, but these were the exceptions. The more common experience was for such
women to deteriorate, moving lower down the scale
of whorehouses as their bodies and looks showed the
ravages of years at the profession. When they were
unacceptable to the madams of brothels, they were
thrown out to survive as best they could as streetwalkers. Suicide exceeded alcoholism and drug overdoses as a cause of death among prostitutes. In
Denver it was common for at least two or three girls a
week to take poison.
The passage of the Mann Act in 1910, forbidding
the transportation of women across state lines for
immoral purposes, marked the swing of public opinion
in favor of suppressing prostitution. Over the next
seven years law enforcement agents closed down most
organized vice areas in big cities. Naturally, such moves
didn’t wipe out prostitution, and houses of ill repute
continued to thrive although in lesser numbers. They
still exist in some big cities, sometimes in the form of
“massage parlors” or “rap studios,” but the trade no
longer draws the traffic it once enjoyed. Some modern
madams attribute the decline to the Sexual Revolution,
specifically objecting to the amateurs who are “killing
business by giving it away.”
Occasionally, a madam has been lionized in recent
years, as was the case with Polly Adler, whose doings
and quotes were dutifully reported by the Broadway
columnists of the 1930s and 1940s. In 1980 a lesser
madam in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., Ethel Brand,
received nationwide publicity—and an increase in
patronage—when it was revealed that she paid all taxes
due on her income and that of her women.
The only state that allows prostitution is Nevada,
which had outlawed the practice for a time during and
after World War II. Now, it is considered one of the
state’s most important tourist attractions. In 1980 Joe
Conforte, the owner of the state’s most famous brothel,
the Mustang Ranch, sold it to Madam Gina Wilson for
a reported $19.8 million. Even allowing for considerable hype in the price quoted, it is evident that the
wages of sin remain most rewarding.
See also: POLLY ADLER, JOSIE ARLINGTON, CHICKEN
RANCH, “COMPANY GIRLS!”, BABE CONNORS, EVERLEIGH
SISTERS, FLOATING HOG RANCHES, MANN ACT, PROCURING,
RED-LIGHT DISTRICT, MATTY SILKS, STORYVILLE, WHITE
SLAVE.
The city realizes $300 per month from prostitution
fines alone. . . . The city authorities consider that as
long as mankind is depraved and Texas cattle herders
exist, there will be a demand and necessity for prostitutes, and that as long as prostitutes are bound to dwell
in Ellsworth it is better for the respectable portion of
society to hold prostitutes under restraint of law.”
When the noted muckraker Julian Street witnessed
blatant prostitution on Market Street in Cripple Creek,
Colo., he wrote a scathing denunciation of the town in
Colliers magazine. In response, the city fathers changed
the name of the bawdy thoroughfare to . . . Julian
Street. But in a sense, that was open prostitution’s last
hurrah. The celebrated madams of the 19th and early
20th century were passing from the scene—Julia
Bulette of the Comstock, Tessie Wall and Madame
Atoy of San Francisco, Josie Arlington of New Orleans,
the Everleigh Sisters of Chicago, Mattie Silks and Jennie Rogers of Denver and Babe Connors of St. Louis.
While these women gave the illegal activity a certain glamour and mystique, they could not hide the
A depression-era sign that was a bit more blatant than
most.
727
PROSTITUTION—legal
prostitution—legal
vived by burning, plundering and confiscating the
property and livestock of Confederate citizens. While
virtually all Southerners, the members of these so-called
prowling brigades occasionally took in a stray Union
deserter as well. They maintained a number of strongholds, especially in western North Carolina and
Alabama, and were very active in the wake of Sherman’s march through Georgia. Many of the prowling
criminals were able to go back to their homes after the
war by simply posing as returning soldiers or former
prisoners of war, but others chose to head for the outlaw trails of the West.
See MAISON COQUET.
prostitution, male
It is perhaps one of the archetypal male fantasies that
there be houses of prostitution staffed by male harlots
who would service female clients. The first such brothel
for this purpose was Aunt Josie’s Place in San Francisco. In 1906 Aunt Josie, an old black madam, opened
her unique brothel on Mason Street, in what was
known as the Uptown Tenderloin area. Madam Josie
hoped to attract the ladies of society as clients but
appears to have had only limited success despite a relatively lavish two-story setup with great guarantees of
privacy, including the furnishing of silk masks to clients
so that even the lady’s partner did not have to see her
face unless she wished it.
Customers were offered a book of photographs of
male harlots along with related copy that supplied pertinent physical statistics. Once the woman made her
selection, the lover was then summoned to the house by
telephone or runner. The fee for his services was set at
$10, two to 40 times the going rate in female brothels.
Quite naturally, the story spread that many of these
men refused to take any money, feeling their reward
was already sufficient.
It was never determined how many women availed
themselves of the exotic offerings of Aunt Josie’s place
other than female prostitutes who enjoyed the idea of
having their usual role reversed. The brothel closed in
1907 mainly because of threats from pimps who said
their girls were spending too much of their (the pimps’)
money on such silly diversions, whereupon Aunt Josie
ended her experiment and converted her place into a
more normal house of sin.
In more recent times male prostitution has continued to a minor extent. Advertisements in the underground press in such cities as New York, San Francisco
and Las Vegas offer male prostitutes for women, usually on an outcall arrangement, but these are more
often homosexual operations. In the 1930s Hollywood
was reputed to have a number of gay houses, but in
actuality, gay prostitution activities are generally more
suited to “bath houses” than to brothels as such.
While Hollywood has contributed films about the
male prostitute who services women, the fact remains,
as Aunt Josie discovered, that this type of brothel
product just won’t sell.
prowling brigades
Pruiett, Moman (1872–1945) attorney of criminal law
There are those who maintain that Moman Pruiett was
the greatest practitioner of criminal law this country
has ever produced, far superior, they say, to Clarence
Darrow. It was a sentiment Pruiett himself always
shared. He was an ex-convict who had never spent a
day in law school; in fact, his formal education, accomplished in his boyhood, added up to a mere nine
months. He became a lawyer without passing a bar
examination, but his record shows that out of 343
defendants charged with murder—the majority of
whom he later freely admitted had been guilty as could
be—won acquittals for 303. Of the other 40, only one
was given the death sentence, and afterward, Pruiett
went to Washington to present President William
McKinley with a phony record of the case and had his
client’s sentence commuted to life.
In the Oklahoma-Texas panhandle, where Moman
Pruiett set up practice, families would travel from miles
around to attend court when he was slated to be the
defense counsel in a murder case. And Old Moman, as
he became affectionately known, never disappointed his
fans, always putting on a good show. At the beginning
of a trial, Moman made an impressive appearance, nattily dressed in a custom-tailored suit with a high batwing collar. But by the time he reached summation, one
of his contemporaries recalled, he was partly disrobed,
his collar was always awry and his disheveled hair fell
over his forehead to meet his bushy eyebrows. His
piercing black eyes automatically sought and stared
unwaveringly into a juror’s eyes, holding them until
Moman felt that he controlled the person. He reenacted
death struggles with grunts and shouts. While explaining how one of his clients had killed a rival, supposedly
in self-defense, he lunged at the jury with a metal-tipped
pencil as he claimed the victim had done with a knife at
the defendant. Several jurors were so under Moman’s
spell that they became convinced he had a knife and
bolted out of the jury box in fright. On returning, they
promptly brought in a verdict of not guilty.
Civil War plunderers
Probably the worst crime wave ever to hit the Southern
states occurred during the Civil War, when groups of
deserters and draft dodgers hid out in the hills and sur728
PRUIETT, Moman
an acquittal. “If he’s crazy, then he belongs in an institution,” the prosecutor told Pruiett. Moman was flabbergasted. “You know that defense is just so much
words,” he said, making it clear he felt the prosecutor
wasn’t playing fair. Contradiction didn’t really bother
Pruiett. A week after he convinced one jury his client
was insane, he went back to the same courtroom and
proved to another jury the man was absolutely sane.
While awaiting a verdict in another case, Pruiett
admitted his client was a murdering maniac and a menace to peace and safety. “Then he ought to be hanged,”
a listener noted.
Pruiett shook his head. “If the jury says you’re not
guilty when you are, why then you’re not guilty.”
He would use any means to gain a not-guilty verdict.
In one case he had the defendant’s half-sister seduce a
juror to win an acquittal. He could always spot the
troublesome juror. Once hearing that a jury was deadlocked 11 to one for acquittal, he smuggled a note to
the recalcitrant juror, allegedly in the hand of the juror’s
employer, reading, “Don’t hold out any longer, turn the
poor devil loose.” The juror did.
In another case Pruiett defended a woman who was
accused of shooting her husband, a popular Klansman,
on a Miami street. After allowing the jury to be packed
with members of the Ku Klux Klan, he put his client on
the stand and had her reveal her husband was born in
Sicily. That statement brought the xenophobic Klansmen to attention. Then the woman told how her husband, this alien, had beaten her and sent all her money
to his relatives back in Sicily. During his summation
Pruiett argued it was the duty of American manhood to
protect American womanhood from the alien beast. He
ended his summation by shouting the secret password
of the Klan, “All’s well on the Potomac.”
The jury freed the woman, only learning much later
that the victim’s body had been shipped back to his
birth place in Davenport, Iowa, to be buried by his
Anglo-Saxon family.
Pruiett became rich in his practice. The woman who
had killed her Klansman husband willed him her home
and her husband’s life insurance policies. He received a
1,600 acre farm for winning another acquittal and
stocked it with 200 head of cattle given him by a couple
whom he had defended from a charge of poisoning
their own child. In another case he demanded $25,000
from a man accused of killing his father. The client at
first offered him $10,000 but finally agreed to a sporting proposition. If Pruiett got him off scot free, the
lawyer would get $40,000. If the man were found
guilty and got any kind of a sentence, the lawyer
wouldn’t get a dime. Pruiett got the full $40,000. Yet,
while he relished a high fee, he never forgot his oath to
“empty your damned jails.” The same week he col-
Pruiett was born prematurely on a steamboat on the
Ohio River in 1872. His childhood was troubled and at
the age of 16 he was convicted of forging bills of lading
in connection with a freighting job he had. He served
six months and then he and his mother moved to
Texas. Two years later, he was convicted of rolling a
drunk for $3,000, a charge Pruiett insisted to his dying
day was false. He was convicted and sentenced to five
years in prison. The 18-year-old was stunned at the verdict. He shook his fist at the judge and jury and cried:
“You’ll all regret this. I’ll empty your damned jails, and
I’ll turn the murderers and thieves loose in your midst.
And I’ll do it in a legal way.”
Pruiett served two years before his mother’s tearful
pleas to the governor won his freedom. Upon his
release he went to work for some lawyers. A federal
judge took an interest in his case, became convinced he
was innocent and, because of his work in lawyers’
offices, granted him permission to practice law before
the federal courts, not an unusual procedure in the 19th
century. Young Pruiett then won the right to practice in
state courts and launched what was to be an astounding 50-year legal career. Throughout it his credo was to
win his cases, no matter how. In a candid autobiography published shortly before his death, Moman Pruiett,
Criminal Lawyer, he admitted faking evidence, jury
tampering and suborning perjury. More than once, he
was forced to flee a town to escape an angry mob
because he had succeeded in acquitting an obvious
killer. But Pruiett did not always have to utilize trickery
and illegal means; he was extremely well versed in the
law and knew the intricacies of every legal argument.
In the 343 murder cases he handled, Moman never
pleaded a client guilty. When Clarence Darrow waived
a jury trial and admitted the guilt of Leopold and Loeb,
Pruiett snorted derisively. He said he would have taken
the case to a jury. “I would have got them off with a
defense of temporary insanity mixed up with a few
other things.”
Among the other defenses used by Pruiett was justifiable homicide. When Lottie Baker shot her husband for
carrying on an affair with another woman, Moman
defended her right to shoot him. He crouched before
the jury box, holding an imaginary pistol. “I’d have
taken my gun and shot him through the heart,” he
cried. “As he fell to the earth, I would have placed my
ear over his bloody bosom and listened with relish and
satisfaction while I heard his soul yelping its way into
hell.” He ended his summation on his hands and knees,
head cocked sideways, with an ear over an imaginary
bosom. His client was found “free of guilt.”
Insanity was Moman’s favorite plea and he got
scores of killers off with such a defense. One prosecutor
refused to release a prisoner after Pruiett had won him
729
PSYCHIC detection
Possibly the closest the FBI came to nailing an organized crime figure was the case they made against
Roger “the Terrible” Touhy, who was convicted of kidnapping in the early 1930s. However, the agency work
in trapping Touhy proved futile years later when the
courts freed him, labeling the kidnapping charge an
underworld fabrication accomplished with connivance
of the victim.
lected the $40,000, he provided his services free to a
prostitute who had killed a lover. She too went free.
Moman never kept track of how much money he
earned. He lived lavishly, provided for his parents and
his own family in grand style and was always a sucker
for a touch. Many of the clients he defended for free
ended up putting the bite on him after the trial. When a
hurricane hit Florida and the land boom there collapsed, Pruiett lost almost all of his considerable fortune. He returned broke to Oklahoma, where a short
time later, he was accused of trying to shake down a
wealthy hotel owner. He was disbarred, but in 1935 the
Oklahoma Supreme Court changed the penalty to a
one-year suspension. Pruiett, however, never practiced
again. Wracked by illness, he lived out his last years in
frugal retirement, alleviated only by the publication of
his autobiography in 1944, a year before his death.
psychic detection
Puente, Dorothea (1929– ) mass murderess with a
“heart of gold”
Dorothea Gray, or, to use her third of four married
names, Dorothea Puente, was in the 1980s much celebrated in Mexican-American circles as a rich woman
who did much to help the down and out in Sacramento.
She made large contributions to the Mexican-American
Youth Association and was much respected at social
events connected with the Mexican-American community and called “La Doctera” for her solicitude of the
needy, especially men and women facing a lonely old
age. The fact that she danced at charity balls with Governor Jerry Brown increased her status in the eyes of the
Mexican community.
In reality Dorothea, in her fifties, was a killer, in
many respects similar to the infamous Belle Gunness,
who at the turn of the 20th century killed would-be
suitors for their money and buried them in her farmyard in La Porte, Indiana. Dorothea buried her victims
in the yard of her mansion. Her victims weren’t suitors
but down-and-outers she made so much a show of giving care and comfort in their declining years.
Dorothea had been an outlaw in many ways for
many years, but no one knew that, as she had gone
through several marriages with new identities. She
came from a family of cotton pickers and was raised off
and on by a drunken mother. She was sent to an
orphanage when she was nine and later lived with a
variety of relatives, including some of her older brothers and sisters.
In her teens she worked as a waitress and later
moved on to prostitution. She engaged in various confidence games and more prostitution so that by the
1960s she owned a half-dozen brothels. In fact, her
mansion previously had been a rather imposing bordello. She ran through four husbands but in her supposed good works for the lonely aged, she had hit upon
a good thing.
She lived lavishly on the top floor of her white Victorian mansion while all her “boarders”—as she liked to
call them—lived below. Her lodgers seemed to have few
complaints. They received good care, good food and
their own color TV sets. To them Dorothea was an
angel, the soul of compassion. Dorothea lived well her-
See DOROTHY ALLISON.
public enemies
A term invented by J. Edgar Hoover, director of the
FBI, the “public enemies” were little more than armed
stickup men of the 1930s who had thousands of predecessors in the big-city gangsters of the previous century
and those who rode on horseback in the Wild West. To
magnify such creatures into supervillains took the
cooperation of a story-hungry press. Many crime
experts view the immediate post-Prohibition period as
marking the breakup of the old bootleg mobs and the
formation of the new criminal syndicate. Had the full
energies of the FBI at the time been devoted to the more
difficult task of containing this emerging element, it has
been argued, the effectiveness of organized crime today
would be greatly reduced, if not eliminated.
Instead, Hoover and his men concentrated on the
likes of John Dillinger, a holdup man of considerable
flair to be sure but hardly the menace to society that the
syndicate was (and is). The total loot accumulated by
the Dillinger mob probably came to far less than
$300,000—the Chicago syndicate made that in a day.
Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker were the bloodiest of
the public enemies, killing 13 to take the highest estimate; yet Al Capone was responsible for killing 500
victims, directly or on his orders, but was not troubled
by the FBI. While the likes of Baby Face Nelson, Pretty
Boy Floyd, the Barkers and Alvin “Creepy” Karpis
were being either killed or imprisoned by the FBI, mobsters like Frank Costello, Lucky Luciano, Louis Lepke,
Albert Anastasia and Meyer Lansky were consolidating
their power, claiming more victims in a month than all
the public enemies managed in their criminal careers.
730
PURDY, Sam
self and was also an ardent gardener. The source of her
seemingly endless wealth was that garden. It was where
she buried her victims.
Dorothea saw to it that her lodgers filed their Social
Security payments when they were due, but she would
show up at the Social Security office to arrange that she
be named payee on the checks, explaining that her
lodgers were not competent to handle their own money
and that, as a relative, she was taking care of them. A
typical instance was that of Alvaro (Burt) Montoya,
who was, Puente informed the government, her cousin
and somewhat retarded. So Montoya’s $637 stipend
went directly to Dorothea and would keep on coming
until Montoya died.
That was a problem for Dorothea; she had to ensure
that Montoya and her other lodgers went on living, or
better still, that they died without the government
knowing. This created the best circumstance for
Dorothea, since it left her with vacancies to fill in her
mansion—and additional payments from more retirees.
The only hitch would be if a pensioner died outside of
the mansion, on the street or in a hospital, and a death
certificate was made out. That would end Puente’s control of the money. Therefore, Dorothea killed her
boarders and while everyone else in the mansion was
asleep, she would plant the bodies in holes other
lodgers dug in her ever-expanding garden to accommodate more new “plants.”
For a time various social workers were quite happy
to send their clients to Dorothea, but in time they found
the elderly persons were disappearing. Sometimes,
Dorothea explained this away by saying they had gone
to stay with relatives in Mexico—or in fact with some
of Dorothea’s in-laws who seemed to have the same
desire to help the unfortunate of the world.
The juggling of so many disappearing oldsters had to
make some social workers suspicious, and eventually
the police were notified. At first the authorities were
thrown off by the very fine surroundings Puente offered
the lonely oldsters, but finally her criminal past
emerged, and while she insisted she had turned her life
around years earlier, authorities asked for permission to
do some digging in her yard.
Puente had to comply, and soon searchers turned up
a deposit of lime 18 inches from the surface in a corner
of the yard. Digging further, they found bits of clothing
and a leg bone with bits of skin. That, however, was
not sufficient evidence to prove Puente had committed
murder. She explained that a shallow hole had been dug
where the bone was recovered and that she had poured
lime in it merely to soften the earth.
Before any charges could be filed, the law would
have to find more evidence of foul play. Crime scene
technicians, heavy-equipment operators, forensic
anthropologists and other diggers scoured the yard. In
the meantime, Puente left the mansion with one of her
lodgers, allegedly to meet a cousin. She didn’t return.
Just after she left, a second body was uncovered, then
another and another. In a few days a total of seven bodies were found, and there was every indication that
more were to come, one lodger ending up in a box on
the side of the Sacramento River.
Puente had escaped the city by taxi, first to Stockton
and then, by Greyhound bus, to Los Angeles. Even with
the hunt for her on, Dorothea could not resist trying a
scam on a retired handyman named Charles Willgues.
Her intended victim grew suspicious and called the Los
Angeles CBS news bureau, which sent out a film crew
together with local police. Puente was captured and
brought to trial, and on August 26, 1993, a jury—after
almost six weeks deliberation—found her guilty of
killing three of the victims, making use of the drug flurazepam.
The jury’s real hangup was agreeing on a sentence.
The judge then sentenced Puente to life imprisonment
without parole.
“pulling a Dick Merrick”
See “MERRICK, PULLING
A DICK”
Purdy, Sam (?–1805) white slaver
The most notorious white slaver operating in America
at the beginning of the 19th century, Sam Purdy has
been given credit by some writers with being the originator of the phrase “sold down the river” referring to
the practice of “stealing” young girls along the Ohio
and upper Mississippi and selling them down river,
especially at Natchez. The most infamous of these sales
took place on flatboats with spirited bidding from bordello keepers and “floating hogpen” operators. Not all
the girls sold had been kidnapped; many were purchased from their impoverished farmer parents. Purdy,
an unscrupulous Kentuckian, was the king of the trade,
specializing in particularly good-looking girls and commanding sums well in excess of the average $125 price.
In one case Purdy’s ring of procurers, which included
Lou Evans, Blackie Coe, James Feeney, Johnny Gaines,
Joe Bontura and Tommy McMurren, collected the
astonishing sum of $1,650 for an 18-year-old girl.
Purdy finally ran afoul of a reformer named Carlos
White, who effectively destroyed his operations by rescuing a number of girls, including the famed Beckett
sisters, whom he spirited out of a New Orleans den of
iniquity known as The Swamp. How rough reformer
White got is a matter of conjecture, but in 1805 Sam
Purdy was found stabbed to death in his own bed. After
731
PURPLE gang
blacks and seek to establish supremacy in New York
and, in fact, on the entire East Coast. In December
1977 the New York Times attributed to the gang the
following activities: (1) large-scale distribution of drugs
in Harlem and the South Bronx; (2) muscle jobs for two
organized crime families’ extortion networks; (3) the
murder, and often the dismemberment of 17 individuals
with criminal backgrounds, including two police
plants; and (4) international gunrunning, with alleged
ties to Latin-American terrorists.
Membership in the gang is restricted to young Italian-Americans who were raised on Pleasant Avenue
between 110th and 117th streets. This membership
policy is much more restrictive than those of the five
established New York crime families and could have an
explosive impact within the crime establishment, even
leading to warfare with Mafia groups who seek to
import new blood from Italy.
that, one after another of the Purdy gang was shot to
death, either in bed or from ambush. The exception to
this bloodbath was 60-year-old James Feeney, who was
given a 10-year jail term after being hauled into court
by White. The Purdy white slavers having been eliminated, Carlos White moved to the Louisiana countryside and established a sprawling cotton plantation,
which, it must be noted, was worked by black slaves.
See also: BECKETT SISTERS.
Purple gang
Detroit bootlegging gang
One of the most vicious bootlegging mobs of the Prohibition era, the Purple Gang, under the notorious Abe
Bernstein, dominated the rackets in Detroit. In the city’s
bootleg wars the gang was responsible for upwards of
500 killings. Detroit was an important prize because it
was the funnel for supplies of liquor coming in from
Canada.
The killers of the Purple Gang became legendary as
the most proficient in the underworld, and three of
them, George Lewis and the brothers Phil and Harry
Keywell, were believed to have been borrowed by Al
Capone for use in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in
1929. In addition to bootlegging, which earned the gang
millions of dollars, the Purples’ major interests included
extortion, hijacking and jewelry thefts plus an occasional foray into another city to pull off a big robbery.
When the national crime syndicate was formed in
the 1930s, the Purple Gang was invited to join. It was
strictly an invitation, since the gang was considered too
dangerous to be forced into anything. The Purples
accepted willingly and assumed a strong position in the
crime cartel’s gambling empire.
Purple gang
purse snatching
Purse snatching is an increasingly common crime.
There is an estimated 50 to 100 purse snatchings each
month in the New York City subways, the number
often swinging widely because of the depredations of a
single teenager. When such a professional is in custody,
the snatchings decrease by more than 50 a month. One
of the favored techniques is to stand between two subway cars and, as the train starts pulling out of the station, reach out and pull free a woman’s purse.
Recently, a crime analysis officer for the New York
Police Department found that purse stealing in Manhattan’s top restaurants was up 35 percent over the previous year. When a woman puts her purse on a vacant
chair at a table or at her feet beside her chair, she is
inviting a purse snatcher to take it. Purse snatchers
often work in pairs. When a target in a restaurant is
sighted, one of them will create some kind of disturbance to gain the victim’s attention. While the woman
is looking away from her table, the actual snatcher will
lift the purse. A popular technique is for the thief, man
or woman, to carry an umbrella with the curved handle
down. The umbrella handle suddenly hooks the bag
and in an instant it is on the thief’s wrist, or under the
coat over his arm if he is a man, and on its way out of
the restaurant. Police advise that women in restaurants
keep their purses either on their laps or on the floor
between their legs.
Other purse snatchers who operate in theaters are
called “seat tippers,” victimizing women who put their
purses down on an adjacent empty seat. Yet others specialize in snatching purses from ladies’ rooms. When a
woman is in a toilet stall, her purse should never be
placed on the floor or hung on the coat hook on the
modern New York gang
A new crime gang that arose in Manhattan in the late
1970s, the Purple Gang, named after the Prohibition
mob of the same name, has reached the point of becoming New York’s sixth crime family.
A decade earlier, its members had been no more than
teenage errand boys for major narcotics traffickers, but
they had organized, according to a 1976 report by the
Drug Enforcement Administration, with an “enormous
capacity for violence” and a “lack of respect for other
members of organized crime.” The gang, with an estimated strength of 110, is an outgrowth of an ItalianAmerican youth gang from Pleasant Avenue, an
underworld stronghold in East Harlem, that served as a
link between the old-line crime families and the new
black gangs that had taken over the street sale of drugs.
Law enforcement agencies fear that the Purple Gang
will declare war on both the Mafia families and the
732
PURVIS, Melvin
the start, with no material evidence, that the Touhy
gang was responsible for the crime.”
Some observers were not sure whether Factor had
really been kidnapped or not. Touhy was sentenced to
99 years in prison, and it was not until many years later
that the truth came out: the Capone mob had faked the
Factor kidnapping in order to use the FBI to get rid of
Touhy, an uncooperative competitor.
Probably Purvis’ most trying experience was the
famed shoot-out between FBI agents and the Dillinger
gang at the Little Bohemia resort in Wisconsin in April
1934. In the gun battle an FBI agent was killed by Baby
Face Nelson and a local police officer was wounded.
All the agents captured were three of the gang’s molls,
but they shot two innocent bystanders, a salesman and
a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) cook and killed
another young CCC worker.
The day after the debacle newspapers demanded
Purvis’ badge. Somberly, he offered his resignation,
which Hoover refused to accept, as much to save the
agency as Purvis. Even when Purvis did trap and kill
Dillinger, he and the FBI were subjected to considerable
abuse. A Virginia newspaper editor commented: “Any
brave man would have walked down the aisle and
arrested Dillinger . . . why were there so many cowards afraid of this one man? The answer is that the federal agents are mostly cowards.”
It was a bad rap on Purvis, who frequently had
exhibited (and would continue to exhibit) great personal courage—trading shots with Baby Face Nelson;
dragging then-Public Enemy No. 1 Verne Sankey out of
a Chicago-area barbershop with lather still in his ears;
stalking Pretty Boy Floyd across an open cornfield;
tackling, together with another agent, gangster Volney
Davis as he was about to drive off in a stolen car. However, it was not unwarranted criticism that led to
Purvis’ resignation from the FBI in July 1935.
There is little doubt that this departure was the
result of continuing friction with Hoover, especially in
the aftermath of the Dillinger case. Dillinger had been
betrayed by a madam named Anna Sage, “the Lady in
Red,” who had made a deal with the FBI to deliver
Dillinger in exchange for a promise that a deportation
move against her would be dropped and that the
reward money would be given to her. Purvis agreed to
help her on these matters. She got most of the reward
money but was deported despite Purvis’ intervention. It
was widely believed that Hoover had not joined in the
effort to save the Sage woman so that Purvis would be
placed in an awkward position. Hoover was also
believed to have been behind the decision by Attorney
General Homer Cummings to prohibit the making of a
Hollywood movie about Purvis’ career. When Purvis
tendered his resignation “for purely personal reasons,”
door. Thieves simply dive under the door and grab the
purse on the floor or stand on the toilet in the next stall
and reach over and take the purse off the hook. The
snatcher has ample time to escape since the victim can’t
immediately pursue the thief.
Purvis, Melvin (1903–1960) FBI agent
In 1934 Melvin Purvis, the young special agent in
charge of the Chicago office of the FBI, was voted
eighth in a Literary Digest poll of the year’s outstanding
world figures, coming in ahead of Rear Adm. Richard E.
Byrd and Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins. He was
hailed by the New York Times as the nemesis of public
enemies. Purvis captured more public enemies than any
other FBI man, directing the hunts that netted such
gangsters as Baby Face Nelson, Verne Sankey, Thomas
H. Robinson, Jr., and Pretty Boy Floyd. He won the
most acclaim, however, as the man who set the trap for
John Dillinger outside a Chicago movie house on July
22, 1934. It was Purvis who called out, in his famed
squeaky voice, “Stick ’em up, Johnny, we’ve got you
surrounded.” As Dillinger went for a gun in his trousers
pocket, he was shot to death by FBI agents.
As acclaimed as he was, Purvis’ years with the FBI,
from 1927, after a brief law career in his native South
Carolina, until 1935, were not always happy ones. He
had his share of failures and his ego, as towering as that
of his superior, J. Edgar Hoover, put him in constant
conflict with the director. Of all the regional offices of
the FBI, the Chicago office was the only one that did
not begin its press releases with the obligatory “J.
Edgar Hoover announces. . . .” Purvis’ name was
substituted for Hoover’s in such releases.
This competition between Purvis and Hoover developed after Purvis was appointed to the Chicago office
in 1932, following five years of duty in various field
offices. Chicago was the hub around which both the
great Prohibition gangs and the more flamboyant of the
desperado-type “public enemies” worked. The latter
were typified by members of the Dillinger gang and the
Terrible Touhys. The Touhys’ leader, Roger Touhy, represented one of Purvis’ greatest failures. In 1933 Purvis
arrested Roger Touhy and three henchmen for the
$100,000 kidnapping of St. Paul millionaire brewer
William Hamm, announcing, “We have an ironclad
case.” A jury acquitted them, however, and later, the
Hamm job was found to be the work of the BarkerKarpis gang.
Immediately after that failure, Purvis charged Touhy
and his men with kidnapping a mysterious figure, Jake
“the Barber” Factor. “This case,” Purvis said, “holds a
particular interest for me because it represents a triumph of deductive detective work. We assumed from
733
PURVIS, Will
Hoover had to issue a denial that a rift existed between
them.
After that, Purvis picked up some quick money organizing the Melvin Purvis Junior G-Man Corps for a
breakfast cereal firm, an act that further strained relations with Hoover.
Purvis also wrote a book on his FBI career entitled
American Agent, fully demonstrating the ill feelings
between him and Hoover by never mentioning the director’s name. Hoover did not get a chance to answer in
kind until 1956, with the appearance of The FBI Story,
a best-seller by Don Whitehead. The book is as near to
an “authorized” history of the agency as has ever been
written and one that Hoover obviously exerted considerable control over. In Whitehead’s book Hoover’s pride
and prejudices show through. For example, Hoover
hated William J. Burns, his predecessor in the Bureau of
Investigation, which was replaced by the FBI. Whenever
Whitehead touches on Burns’ many successes, credit is
given only to some unnamed former Secret Service operative. It would have been impossible to drop all reference to Purvis in discussions about the agency’s war on
the public enemies but the agent’s name is omitted from
the extremely thorough index.
During World War II Col. Melvin Purvis was
assigned to the U.S. Army War Crimes Office. In
November 1959 Roger Touhy was released from prison
following a ruling by a federal judge that the kidnapping charge against him had been a fabrication of organized crime. Twenty-three days after he was freed,
Touhy was murdered by underworld assassins. A few
months later, on February 29, 1960, Purvis, who had
been practicing as a lawyer, committed suicide in his
home in Florence, S.C. At the time he was 56 years old
and had been in poor health.
See also: JOHN DILLINGER, CHARLES ARTHUR “PRETTY
BOY” FLOYD, ROGER “TERRIBLE” TOUHY.
Purvis’ execution by hanging was scheduled for February 7, 1894, and on that day about 3,000 persons
jammed the area around the scaffold to watch the
events. Many in the crowd, however, still insisted
Purvis was being executed for a crime he had not committed and were there to show their support for him. At
the moment a preacher implored heaven, “God save
this innocent boy,” the hangman severed the rope holding the trapdoor shut, but Purvis just tumbled to the
ground below, as the rope around his neck unwound.
His hands still tied, Purvis jumped back up the gallows steps, crying, “Let’s get this over with!” Officials
were about to oblige, but the crowd grew unruly. The
preacher asked for a show of hands of “all who are
opposed to hanging Will Purvis a second time.” A sea
of hands rose and hundreds of men moved forward
menacingly. Purvis was then returned to his jail cell.
After a time, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled
that Purvis had to be executed, but before the second
attempt could be made, friends of the condemned man
helped him to escape. He remained in hiding until
1896, when a new governor, A. J. McLaurin, took
office. McLaurin had campaigned on a promise to
reduce Purvis’ sentence to life imprisonment. In 1898
Purvis was pardoned when Jim Buckley admitted he
was not sure Purvis had been the killer.
Then in 1917, 24 years after the murder, an old man
named Joe Beard came forward at a religious revival
meeting to purge his soul before taking to his deathbed.
He said he and another White Capper, Louis Thornhill,
had been chosen by lot to kill Will Buckley. Beard
offered enough independent proof to indicate he had
information about the crime that only the real murderer or murderers would have. In 1920 the Mississippi
legislature awarded Will Purvis $5,000 compensation
“for a great wrong done you” and removed “all stain
and dishonor from your name.”
Purvis, Will (1874–1943) wrong man
pyramid schemes
Will Purvis’ escape from execution in Mississippi in
1894 has long been cited by opponents of capital punishment as an example of the danger of error in dealing
out the death penalty.
A 19-year-old farmer in Mercer County, Miss.,
Purvis was arrested and charged with the murder of
Will Buckley in what appeared to have been an internal
dispute within the White Caps, a Ku Klux Klan-type
organization of the period. Purvis had joined the White
Caps some three months before Buckley was shot to
death. After Buckley’s murder bloodhounds traced a
cold trail to near the Purvis farm. Jim Buckley, the dead
man’s brother, identified Purvis as the murderer, and he
was indicted and quickly found guilty.
Among the oldest con games, pyramid rackets have
been used to swindle millions of dollars annually,
employing everything from dollar bills in chain letters
to more sophisticated schemes that sell franchises to
unsuspecting individuals who then must sell more franchises to other victims and so on. In theory, pyramid
schemes can continue on indefinitely, but in reality, the
bubble eventually collapses from the sheer weight of
the numbers involved.
A typical operation was the pyramid financial
scheme that swept California in the late 1970s, leaving
a trail of broken families and wrecked friendships. In
the scheme each player paid an entry fee of $1,000.
Then that player was required to bring in two new
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confidence racket
PYRAMID schemes
players on the bottom rung, and it takes 32 players to
get them to advance to the next rung. Each of these 32
players must now recruit two players, or a total of 64.
The 64 then must recruit a total of 128. The total
jumps to 256, at which point the first set of 16 players
have reached the top of their pyramids. However, for
the next set of players who started on the 16 rung, the
total of new recruits needed jumps to 512, and for the
next group the number required is 1,024.
It is thus apparent why, by June 1980, the mass
pyramid craze in California collapsed. Even that state
ran dry of enough gullible people to keep the scheme
going. A member of the state attorney general’s office
reported that a number of operators had been arrested
attempting to start new pyramids in New York, Florida
and Canada. Ironically, such pyramid rackets even
attract sophisticated victims who fully understand that
a scheme must eventually collapse. No matter what the
actual stage of recruitment is, they are told they are
“getting in at the start, so there’s no way you can lose.”
players, who contributed $1,000 apiece. Half of this
amount, or $500, went to the top of the pyramid while
the remaining $500 from each of the two newer players
went to the player who recruited them. Thus, the first
player got his money back and then waited to move up
another rung on the pyramid as each of the second two
players recruited two more players so that they could
recover their original $1,000 investment. As each such
step on the pyramid was mounted, the initial player
moved from the number 16 rung, to the number eight
rung, to the number four rung, to the number two rung
and finally, to number one rung. Upon reaching number one or top rung, the player received the money that
accumulated at the top for him, $16,000.
While it might seem simple for each player in a pyramid scheme to induce two others to join, the mathematics soon become astronomical. In essence, each
player on the number 16 rung is responsible for the creation of two new pyramids and this progression of
twos keeps getting bigger and bigger, for there are 16
735
R
Rablen, Carroll (1895–1929) murder victim
had been found in Carroll Rablen’s body. Consequently, the prosecutor called in one of the most
famous chemists in the nation, Dr. Edward Heinrich,
who was recognized as a brilliant forensic expert.
Heinrich found traces of strychnine in the dead
man’s stomach as well as in the coffee cup. He also theorized that since Eva Rablen had carried the coffee
through a packed dance hall, she might have spilled
some on the way. An appeal for help produced a
woman who remembered that Eva had bumped into
her and spilled coffee on her dress. The coffee stains on
the dress also contained traces of the poison. Faced
with this damning evidence, Eva Rablen changed her
plea to guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The murder of Carroll Rablen in 1929 resulted in one
of California’s most sensational murder trials, so sensational it had to be held in an open-air dance pavilion to
accommodate all those eager to attend.
Carroll Rablen of Tuttletown, Calif. was deaf
because of an injury received during World War I. His
wife Eva was a vivacious, fun-loving woman who
enjoyed dancing. While Carroll didn’t dance, he took
her to affairs and didn’t object to her dancing with
other men. On April 29, 1929 the couple went to the
town’s weekly ball. Carroll stayed outside in their car
while Eva went inside to enjoy herself. About midnight
Eva pushed through the crowd to bring her husband a
cup of coffee and then returned to the dance. Moments
later, Carroll was writhing in agony on the floor of the
car; his cries brought his father and several others to his
side. He complained of the way the coffee had tasted. A
doctor was summoned but Carroll died before he
arrived.
Carroll’s father was sure Eva had poisoned her husband for his insurance, but when the contents of the
dead man’s stomach were sent to a chemist for analysis,
no trace of poison was found. However, a subsequent
search of the dance hall area uncovered a bottle
marked, “Strychnine.” The bottle was traced to a pharmacy in a nearby town, where records showed it had
been bought by a Mrs. Joe Williams, allegedly to kill
some gophers. The druggist identified Eva Rablen as
Mrs. Williams. She was charged with her husband’s
murder and her trial drew one of the largest crowds
ever to attend a formal judicial hearing in the state. The
weakness in the prosecution’s case was that no poison
race and crime
Even a cursory study of criminal statistics makes it
apparent that blacks, comprising less than 13 percent
of the population, commit a high proportion of most
crimes, especially those of a violent nature. Despite
their inferior numbers, blacks commit more murders
than whites (generally about a five to four ratio), more
robberies (a five to three ratio) and more rapes (a 10 to
nine ratio). On a proportional basis, blacks also commit more aggravated assaults, burglaries, larceny-thefts
and car thefts. Probably the only serious crime with a
low black participation is kidnapping. These figures,
however, are based on arrest records as compiled by the
FBI, and most crime experts admit that blacks are
arrested more frequently and on less evidence than
whites and are more often victims of mass, or sweep,
arrests. On the other hand, it is well-established that
736
RAGEN, James M.
violent crime is less frequently reported in the ghetto
than elsewhere, and since this is clearly black-committed crime, the aforementioned black-white ratios
should probably be more pronounced than they are.
The figures do not prove that blacks are any more
crime-prone than other ethnic groups. They are simply
behaving the way every other ethnic group behaved
when it dominated the ghettos. The Irish were the
main residents of the big-city ghettos in the 19th century, and they were far and away the prime perpetrators of crime. Until late in the century, most of the
great gangs were Irish. When the Irish were replaced or
supplemented in the ghettos by the Italians, Jews and
Poles, these ethnic groups were responsible for most of
the crime.
Perhaps the most salient point about any study of
ethnic crime is that whoever occupies the ghettos commits the crimes and almost always against their own
kind. The Jews victimized Jews; Italians victimized Italians. This was somewhat less true of the Irish, who
brought with them certain basic hatreds that put them
in conflict with many “native Americans,” which in the
early 19th century often meant those of British descent.
Today, ethnic or racial crime follows the same pattern. Blacks victimize blacks; Hispanics victimize Hispanics. This is not necessarily what the media report,
for the simple reason that black victimizing black is not
considered important, but black victimizing white—
especially in a white-oriented media—is.
While it is widely reported that more than half of all
murders are committed by blacks, it is seldom added
that nine times out of 10, the victims are also black.
The statistics of ghetto crime, now and in the past, are
frightening. Among young blacks aged 10 to 14, homicide is the second leading cause of death, exceeded only
by motor vehicle accidents. From ages 15 through 34
homicide is the number one cause of death among
black males. It is also the leading cause of death among
black females between 15 and 29.
Overall, a ghetto black male is 10 times more likely
to be murdered than a white man. A black female is
five times as likely to be raped as a white woman, and
both black males and females are four times as likely to
get assaulted than are whites of either sex. Among
females, white women are murdered at a higher rate
than black women, a ratio of 5 to 3. Indeed this is in
contrast to male murders when more blacks are murdered than whites. Among women, of course, the vast
number of offenders are whites. Among black women
the offenders are vastly black.
Contrary to popular opinion, black women are the
least likely murder victims. They constitute about 19
percent of black victims; white women by contrast represent over 30 percent of white victims. In short, whites
are more homicidal toward white women than blacks
are to black women—and to women in general.
As John Godwin notes in Murder U.S.A.:
The newspapers of both races tend to skirt the psychic
impact of this black-on-black carnage, albeit for different reasons. The white press knows that its readers
worry about black crime only when it affects them.
Black papers prefer to dodge the issue because they
consider it “too sensitive”; they fear it may cause further stigmatization of their race. Together they have
created what resembles a conspiracy of semi-silence
surrounding one of the most explosive problems of our
time. They are chiefly responsible for the wondrous
ignorance of most whites concerning the terror haunting black communities—terror far starker than what
they suffer.
While it is difficult for white America to reject the
contention that blacks are simply more “criminal,” the
fact is that the black experience to a great extent mirrors that of other ethnic groups in earlier periods, typically the Irish and Italians before they left the ghettos. It
is readily apparent that the black crime rate varies with
socioeconomic status and geographic region. As Peter
W. Lewis and Jack Wright, Jr., professors of criminal
justice, state in Modern Criminal Justice: “Criminologists generally consider race to be a significant factor in
the explanation of crime rates insofar as it affects the
nature of social experience and social interaction.”
See also: POPULATION DENSITY AND CRIME.
Ragen, James M. (1881–1946) gambling czar and murder
victim
From 1940 to 1946 James M. Ragen was the most
powerful man in gambling in America, having taken
control of the horse-racing wire business following the
imprisonment of Moe Annenberg. Ragen waged war
with the Chicago syndicate and held his own for a time
until he became the victim of a mob execution.
Like many other members of the Chicago underworld in the early years of the 20th century, Ragen got
his start as a circulation slugger for the Chicago Tribune during the period of the great newspaper wars,
when Max Annenberg, Moe’s older brother, was circulation manager. Among Ragen’s coworkers were such
criminals as Dion O’Banion, Frankie and Vince McErlane, Walter Stevens, Mossy Enright and Tommy
Maloy—part of the roster of killers who kept the city of
Chicago bloody for decades thereafter. Ragen managed
to outlive most of his fellow sluggers and future gang
bosses while maintaining a certain independence from
the Capone mob.
737
RAGEN’S Colts
When Moe Annenberg went to prison in 1940, the
federal government was sure that the dismantling of his
Nation-Wide News Service would be a crippling blow
to illegal race horse betting throughout the country. But
Ragen quickly moved in to fill the void. His Continental Press Service became the dominant racing wire in
the nation, providing the latest results from scores of
tracks directly to thousands of bookie joints. The
Chicago mob had never tried to move in on Annenberg,
perhaps because he was considered too powerful or
because of some secret accommodation, but it soon
informed Ragen they were dealing themselves in.
Ragen had survived the Chicago scene too long to
just give up his business, even when he was offered a
fine price to sell out. He told acquaintances he knew
the ways of the mob, that even if he sold, he would not
be permitted to live to enjoy his profits. Under Bugsy
Siegel the mob set up Trans-American Publishing and
News Service and forcibly gained control of the California market, supplying bookies with the necessary
racing information for $100 a day. Ragen, however,
held on to the rest of the country, and it soon became
apparent that the only way to take over his empire was
to kill him. In June 1946 he was hit by a fusillade of
bullets from a passing car, but he survived and was
rushed to a hospital.
From his hospital bed Ragen accused the mob of trying to eliminate him in order to assume control of his
racing wire. His accusations proved an embarrassment
to the mob. In September he died, apparently of his
wounds. An autopsy later revealed he had been poisoned by mercury. The mob obviously had found a way
to penetrate Ragen’s around-the-clock police protection, and his death was listed as a gangland slaying.
Several leaders of the mob were questioned, especially
Jake Guzik, but nothing much developed from the
investigation.
Ragen’s murder became just another digit added to
the column of unsolved gangland killings, which, during a period of a little over three decades, totaled more
than 970.
See also: MOSES L. ANNENBERG.
Ragen’s Colts
as did a number of others in that era, as a baseball
team. Frank Ragen was the star pitcher and also the
star political operator. He soon was offering the gang’s
services to Democratic Party candidates throughout the
entire city. With the Colts’ muscle and firepower, elections proved easy to win and many members of the city
council and state legislature owed their victories to the
gang. “When we dropped into a polling place,” one
Colt bragged, “everybody else dropped out.”
By 1902 Ragen’s Colts numbered 160, and by 1908
the gang’s motto was “Hit Me and You Hit 2,000.”
Over the years the gang launched the careers of aldermen, sheriffs, police brass, county treasurers and
numerous other officeholders as well as some notable
ballplayers. Ragen himself became city commissioner.
However, the Colts’ main product was accomplished
criminals. Its notables included Gunner McPadden,
who committed a long string of homicides; Harry
Madigan, the owner of the notorious Pony Inn, a
Cicero saloon, who was charged—but never tried
because of the Colts’ political connections—with several kidnappings and assaults during various elections;
Dynamite Brooks, another saloon keeper who often
killed in a drunken rage; Danny McFall, who was made
deputy sheriff, in the mysterious ways of Chicago politics, despite having murdered a couple of business competitors; Stubby McGovern, a deadly triggerman whose
assignment to a hit was a guarantee of success; Yiddles
Miller, a boxing referee and notorious white supremacist who once called the members of the Ku Klux Klan
“nigger lovers”; and Ralph Sheldon, a fearless bootlegger and hijacker.
In addition to furnishing political strong-arm services and running a number of South Side rackets, the
Colts took it upon themselves to defend the white
race, provoking a great race riot in 1919. It started
one day when a black youth swimming off a South
Side beach encroached on segregated waters. He was
stoned and drowned by white bathers. As tensions
mounted between the races on the South Side, members of Ragen’s Colts baited blacks. Later that night
the Colts stormed through the Black Belt, shooting
blacks on sight, firing and dynamiting homes and
looting shops. Black war veterans dug out their service weapons and returned the fire. Rampaging blacks
overturned autos and streetcars carrying whites and
destroyed property belonging to whites. Before the
fury on both sides subsided from sheer exhaustion
after four days, 20 whites and 14 blacks were dead
and the injured toll stood at 1,000, about equally
divided between the races.
After the riot the Colts turned to more profitable
pursuits, namely bootlegging, although a contingent of
the gang under Ralph Sheldon exhibited little interest in
Chicago gang
One of Chicago’s huge Irish gangs, Ragen’s Colts
achieved their height of power during the first two
decades of the 20th century. The gang’s fate was typical
of the pattern of absorption of Irish gangs into what
became part of the national crime syndicate.
Dominating Chicago’s South Side around the stockyards, the Colts were political sluggers, racists, jingoists, bootleggers and killers. Formally called Ragen’s
Athletic and Benevolent Association, the gang started,
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RANGE detectives
making booze, preferring simply to hijack it from others. Despite having to fight a number of bootlegging
wars with the gang, Al Capone showed considerable
patience toward the Colts and eventually a large portion of the gang was absorbed into his organization.
The descendants of the original Colts are important
members of organized crime today.
The seeming stalling of the case did not please public
opinion which by vast majorities wanted a criminal
trial to proceed. In the ensuing furor, Colorado Governor Owens announced he was considering appointing a
special prosecutor to continue the case. However, in the
end it appeared there was at the moment no credible
evidence with which to proceed, and the governor later
dropped this plan. He did however point the finger at
the Ramseys, which proved popular with the public if
not with considerable segments of the legal community.
By the turn of the century the murder remained
unsolved. If a helpless child was not accorded justice,
she did suffer yet another indignity. On October 21,
1999 it was reported that vandals had defaced JonBenet’s tombstone.
Ramsey, JonBenet (1990–1996) young beauty pageant
queen murder victim
Few murders during the late 1900s drew more attention—and public outrage—than that of JonBenet Ramsey, the six-year-old beauty pageant queen. Her body
was found the day after Christmas 1996 in her family’s
opulent home in Boulder, Colorado. John Ramsey, the
girl’s father, told authorities he found a ransom note
but then discovered the little girl’s lifeless body in a
windowless basement room. The child had been beaten
and strangled, but had not, as later often stated,
showed signs of sexual assault.
Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey informed investigators that
they frequently left their doors unlocked at night, a
common behavior in the area. The house did have an
alarm system but it generally was not set since JonBenet
and her older brother had accidentally set it off on a
number of occasions.
JonBenet’s murder achieved international notoriety,
because she had been brought up as an adult-style
beauty pageant queen and to many as a sex symbol.
Rumors fed on rumors that she had been sexually
abused for some time. Indeed for many the exhibiting
of the beautiful young child in such pageants was in
itself a form of child abuse.
However, the criminal investigation foundered over
the next years. There were reports of deep friction
between police investigators and the prosecuting attorney’s office. It was claimed that the initial police investigation was so flawed and the crime scene so
compromised the gathering of credible forensic evidence was impossible. After working on a number of
avenues, investigators kept returning to the parents
since there seemed to be no one else to investigate.
There were charges made in the media that the Ramseys had failed to cooperate with the authorities in their
investigation. More than a year after the murder, John
and Patsy Ramsey turned over the clothing they had
been wearing the night before their daughter’s body
was found. The long continuing inquiry got no further
in a grand jury investigation which failed to come up
with any finding.
Finally the Boulder County D.A. Alex Hunter concluded the grand jury proceedings, although the word
was the investigation was “not over by any means.”
range detectives
hired guns
They were known as range or cattle detectives or stock
inspectors, but most Westerners simply called them
hired guns. They enforced the rules as laid down by
their employers, the big ranchers who wanted the range
cleared of “rustlers,” and a rustler was anyone the boss
labeled as such. In the infamous Johnson County War,
every small rancher and nester on the range who ever
roped an unmarked maverick was considered a rustler,
or bandit, to be killed on sight, and common whores
were lynched as “bandit queens.”
The stockmen who employed these hired guns, of
course, had money and influence. They could fix matters if a so-called stock inspector did anything that the
law took exception to. Equally important, they could
pay very well. Range detectives earned $100 to $150 a
month, which was two to three times what a deputy
U.S. marshal could hope to earn. In some cases the pay
went as high as $250 a month, plus bonuses for every
horse thief or cattle rustler who was convicted. And if a
suspect was arrested and somebody organized a necktie
party for him, the bonus came through all the quicker.
With these premium pay scales the stockmen got the
best gunslingers money could buy, including the notorious Tom Smith; Frank Wolcott; Frank Canton (a
wanted killer gone “respectable”); Pat Garrett, the
slayer of Billy the Kid, and former Texas Ranger John
Armstrong, the captor of Wes Hardin.
The most notorious range detective of all was Tom
Horn, a former roving gunman for the Pinkertons. His
score in four years with the detective agency was put at
17. When he later showed up in Wyoming, he denied
having killed anyone for the detective agency and, at
the same time, offered his services to Wyoming cattlemen, pegging his rate at $500 for each rustler shot. He
was finally hanged for killing a 14-year-old boy while
on an assignment to kill the boy’s father. A leading
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RAPE
Wyoming cattleman paid him tribute: “He died without ‘squealing,’ to the great relief of many very
respectable citizens of the West.”
See also: FRANK CANTON, TOM HORN, JOHNSON
COUNTY WAR.
rape
The incidence of rape, as a graph for an average year
illustrates, increases as the temperature rises.
Statistics on rape are probably the least reliable of all
crime figures. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime
Reports, the rate of forcible rape virtually doubled
from 1970 to 1979. This finding, however, is probably
unreliable, as is the FBI’s report of 75,989 such offenses
per year. The figure is generally regarded as a gross
underestimate. In fact, rape is so consistently underreported that all such statistics are meaningless. It may
well be that the entire doubling of the rape average during the 1970s is attributable to the fact that more
women have been reporting such offenses, mainly
because many police departments now have more sympathetic rape squads and complaints are more frequently handled by female officers.
Still, even with these improvements, the fact remains
that the vast majority of rapes are not reported. Among
the main reasons are the public embarrassment facing
the victim if she presses charges and a fear, often not
unfounded, that the offender will take revenge. It is
therefore hardly surprising that some rapists commit
hundreds of rapes before ever being arrested. Of rapes
reported to the police, about half are “cleared by
arrest.” Of these, approximately three out of five are
brought to trial and about half of the defendants are
found guilty of rape or a lesser charge.
Despite talk of a new attitude on the part of the
police, they still are often suspicious of rape claims,
feeling there is frequently a hazy line between a
woman’s “yes” and “no” and “please.” In about 15
percent of all cases reported, according to law enforcement officials, the charge of forcible rape is ultimately
determined to be unfounded. Some of these cases
involve complaints made by jilted sweethearts, and others are charges lodged by prostitutes who have not been
reimbursed for services rendered.
The public’s greatest misconception about rape
concerns the reasons behind it. Many people view the
rapist as someone overcome with sexual desire. Others believe the fault lies with the victim: she was
dressed too seductively; or she “asked for it”; like all
women, she wanted to be raped. On the contrary,
rape is basically a crime of violence, a hostile attack,
motivated by a desire to hurt and humiliate. Sex is
only the weapon. When someone asks, “What kind of
creep would be turned on by an 80-year-old
woman?” he or she is missing the point. As targets of
violence, anyone can be a rape victim—children,
mothers, grandmothers.
Another false notion is that rape only happens in
certain high-risk situations—walking alone at night,
going alone to a bar, hitchhiking. While rapes do occur
in such situations, they also take place in ordinary,
seemingly safe places. One-third happen in or near the
victim’s home. Rapists are not always strangers to the
victims. In over one-third of the cases reported, the
rapist is an acquaintance, neighbor, friend or relative. It
is suspected that an enormous number of such cases are
never reported to the police, and many, in fact, are not
even revealed to other members of the victim’s family.
The public tends to remember rape cases involving
celebrities, such as Hollywood’s Fatty Arbuckle or
Errol Flynn; those with a bizarre or unusual twist, such
as the crimes of William “Theo” Durrant; or those with
racial overtones, such as Hawaii’s Massie case or
Alabama’s Scottsboro Boys case. Readily forgotten are
rapists responsible for committing literally hundreds of
rapes. Among the less-publicized rapes are those of
black women, who are five times more likely to be
raped than white women.
One typical mass rapist was Colorado’s Richard
Turner, who ran up a string of rapes in the mid-1970s
before being convicted of the rape and brutal assault of
two teenage girls. In 1976 he murdered a family of five
and raped the three female members—the mother and
her two young girls—before or after killing them.
Turner always committed his crimes under the influence of liquor and it was clear his real desire was to
hurt people.
See also: ROSCO “FATTY” ARBUCKLE, RICHARD TURNER.
ratelwacht
first American police force
On August 12, 1658 New Amsterdam established the
first police force in America. Called the ratelwacht, or
rattlewatch, because of the rattles they carried as signal
devices, members of this force were little more than
night watchmen. They were paid 24 stuyvers, or about
50¢ a night, with the levy for their services collected
each month from the city’s inhabitants. A guard caught
740
RAY, James Earl
came back to London and was about to fly to Brussels
when he was apprehended on June 8. He was returned
to the United States in July.
Over the years Ray has continued to be a controversial figure. Certainly, a number of details appear to
indicate the existence of a broad plot to kill King. Some
have even claimed that the FBI was involved in his
death and that Ray was merely a scapegoat. Nothing of
the sort has ever been proved, although there is no
doubt that the agency did much to besmirch King’s
character both before and after his death.
A retired FBI man who had worked in the agency’s
Atlanta office at the time of the King assassination told
of deep anti-King feelings prevalent there and how one
agent literally had leaped for joy when he learned King
had been killed. The FBI was forced to admit it had
wiretapped King’s home and sent Mrs. Coretta King
letters that implied her husband was involved sexually
with several other women. When King was scheduled
to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, the FBI had
even sent a letter to him intimating he should commit
suicide before the award was given. It read in part:
“King—there is only one thing left for you to do. You
know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do
it. It has definite practical significance. You are done.
There is but one way out. . . .”
J. Edgar Hoover had been incensed by the thought
of King getting the Nobel Peace Prize and had called
him “the most notorious liar in the country.” Hoover
had authorized the investigation of King’s sex life and
ordered many of the illegal harassments used against
him. The director had even inspired a news story that
caused King to switch from his initial choice of a
white-owned hotel to the Lorraine Motel, where he
was shot.
James Earl Ray seemed too much of a misfit to be
involved in so monumental a case as the King assassination. A 10th-grade dropout, he held nothing but
menial jobs until 1946, when he joined the army. He
was discharged in December 1948 for “ineptness and
lack of adaptability to military service.” After that, he
had a string of arrests for some bush-league armed robberies, small-time smuggling and burglaries. He also
served three years for forgery. He broke out of the Missouri State Prison in April 1967 but was considered
such an unimportant criminal that the reward for his
capture amounted to only $50. While Ray was being
hunted for the King murder, his father insisted that if he
had done the job, “he couldn’t have planned it alone;
he wasn’t smart enough for that.”
After he was apprehended and brought back to the
United States, Ray pleaded guilty to murdering King
and drew 99 years. Within 24 hours he attempted to
reverse his plea and insisted on dropping his original
sleeping on duty was fined 10 stuyvers, and there were
varying penalties for such on-duty offenses as swearing,
drinking and fighting.
Rawley, R. C. (?–1864) Montana vigilante victim
The life and death of R. C. Rawley, which is believed to
have been an assumed name, provides a good example
of the virtue of knowing when to keep one’s mouth
shut. Rawley arrived in Alder Gulch, Montana Territory in late 1863 and became a habitue of the town’s
saloons. Allegedly, he had been a merchant elsewhere
and was looking for a business to buy. Actually, it
seems quite likely that he functioned as a spy for Sheriff
Henry Plummer and his Innocents, who ravaged the
area with their robberies and murders. Rawley made a
wise move when he disappeared a few months before
Sheriff Plummer was hanged by vigilantes in January
1864. In September Rawley returned, satisfied that the
Montana Vigilantes had finished their grisly business.
He guessed right; the vigilantes had forgotten their earlier suspicions about him. For two months Rawley
drank unmolested in saloons in Bannack and Virginia
City. Unfortunately for him, however, his elbow bending loosened his tongue, and he made some tactless
comments about the “strangling bastards” who’d killed
Plummer. Now that was a capital offense and Rawley
was seized and hanged from the same gibbet where
Sheriff Plummer had swung.
Ray, James Earl (1928– ) assassin of Martin Luther
King, Jr.
On April 4, 1968 the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.,
the acknowledged leader of the black civil rights movement and an advocate of Gandhian principles of nonviolent resistance, was in Memphis, Tenn. to lend
support to a controversial strike by the city’s sanitation
workers. That evening King stepped out onto the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel and was shot
and mortally wounded by an assassin firing from a
bathroom window of a nearby rooming house. A
30.06-caliber rifle bullet struck King in the right side of
the jaw, penetrated his neck and severed his spinal cord.
The force of the bullet was so powerful it ripped his
necktie completely off his shirt.
Items left by the assassin were traced to cities as far
away as Los Angeles and Atlanta. Through fingerprints
the murderer was identified as a white man named
James Earl Ray, a minor criminal who had no apparent
reason for killing King. After the murder Ray fled to
Canada and in May he went to London on a Canadian
passport, showing a remarkable sophistication at eluding capture. He took a mysterious side trip to Lisbon,
741
RAYNOR, William P.
Reading Game
attorney, Percy Foreman, and getting a new lawyer. He
maintained he was innocent and that “Raoul,” a shadowy figure known only to Ray, had sent him to Memphis to take part in a gun-smuggling operation and had
passed him money and orders. He said he did not know
who had killed King.
During hearings on the King murder held by the
House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978, a
St. Louis man, Russell G. Byers, told the panel he had
been offered $50,000 in late 1966 or early 1967 to
arrange King’s death. He said the offer had come from
two men, John Kauffmann and John Sutherland, acting on behalf of a group of businessmen. Both Kauffmann and Sutherland were now dead and their
widows said they did not believe they could have taken
part in such a plot. It developed that the FBI had been
aware of Byers’ allegations in 1973, but the information had not been passed on to agents investigating the
King assassination. A spokesman for the FBI said that
the handling of the information was in “violation of
established rules and procedures,” but that the bureau
was satisfied a simple misfiling had occurred through
“administrative error,” rather than a deliberate
attempt to block the investigation. Since the agent
responsible for handling the information had retired,
there was, the spokesman said, no need for a formal
inquiry into the matter.
In any event, Byers said he suspected that Sutherland
and Kauffmann had planned to recruit him as a dupe
who would take the blame for the murder but not actually carry it out. Byers’ story prompted House investigators to look for links between Byers or Kauffmann
and Sutherland and Ray’s escape from the penitentiary
in April 1967. The committee heard testimony that Ray
had committed the murder in the hope of collecting a
$50,000 bounty, and in December 1978 it concluded
there was a “likelihood” of a conspiracy. The panel
found that “no federal, state or local government
agency was involved in the assassination of Dr. King,”
although it did say the Domestic Intelligence Division
of the FBI was guilty of “gross” abuse of its legal
authority in its surveillance of King and that the Justice
Department had “failed to supervise adequately” that
division.
James Earl Ray remains the only person ever convicted in the King murder case and has been behind
bars since 1969 save for a three-day period when he
escaped from prison. On that occasion his escape
lacked the financing and planning which had marked
his flight following the murder of King and he was
quickly retaken.
Raynor, William P.
famous illegal crap game
The biggest crap game in the history of gambling on the
East Coast, and perhaps in the country, was the socalled Reading Game, operating out of Philadelphia
from 1959 to 1962, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation finally smothered it.
Each night big gamblers from all over the East would
gather at a restaurant in the heart of Philadelphia.
There, they would be picked up by “luggers” and driven
50 miles to Reading, where a million dollar dice game
was played on three high-rolling “California tables.”
A reformed hood later commented: “Everybody
made a buck on that game. They rented their limousines from a funeral director, because they only used
them from ten at night until seven in the morning.” He
indicated how much freedom organized crime had in
Philadelphia at the time, stating: “They even had a cop
out in front of the restaurant—he’d blow a whistle like
a hotel doorman to signal a limo when he had a full
load coming in for the game. It looked like opening
night on Broadway. The cops never touched them.”
Reagan, President Ronald
See JOHN W.
HINCKLEY, JR.
Reavis, James Addison (?–1908) swindler and baron of
Arizona
A former St. Louis streetcar conductor, James Addison
Reavis went on to become the most colossal swindlerforger in American history, laying claim in 1881, as
baron de Arizonaca and caballero de los Colorados, to
10.8 million acres of the Arizona Territory, including
all of its largest city, Phoenix. As such, his claims were
recognized as legitimate for over a decade, and he
would point out to railroad executives, mine owners
and big ranchers that they were trespassing on his
property. However, he was willing to discuss rents. The
tab for the Southern Pacific’s right-of-way was set at
$50,000 annually.
The origin and intricacies of Reavis’ amazing fraud
were never fully learned because he steadfastly refused
to make a confession. However, it was revealed that as
a youth in the Confederate Army, he had developed a
knack for forging his commanding officers’ signatures.
After the Civil War, while working as a streetcar conductor in St. Louis, he used his skillful writing ability to
forge a fraudulent real estate document that earned him
a large sum. He moved west before he could be caught.
In Santa Fe Reavis got a clerical job in the records
division of a special governmental commission that
handled claims on property annexed by this country
following the Mexican War. A treaty settlement
See GEM SALOON.
742
RECIDIVISM
required the United States to honor all legitimate claims
of Spaniards and Mexicans and return to them the title
of their lands. It was in this office that Reavis laid the
groundwork for his incredible claim. He learned the
pure Spanish used on ancient documents and eventually
produced one that indicated he was the undisputed
owner of a grant given by the Spanish Crown in 1758
to a nobleman, Miguel Silva de Peralta de la Cordoba,
for military services rendered in the New World. In
addition, Reavis presented himself as the husband of
the last of the mythical Peraltas, a young woman he
found working as a serving girl on a California ranch.
The girl became convinced she really was a long-lost
Peralta.
Government experts and others studied Reavis’ documents, which he had forged, and checked them
against historical records, which he had doctored over
a five-year period, in Madrid, Seville and Mexico City.
They concluded his claims were valid. As a result, until
he was exposed in 1894, Reavis collected some $10
million in rent from hundreds of companies and thousands of families.
Finally, two tiny errors he had made were discovered. Reavis had used old inks and had found paper
that appeared to be old, but a printer who was suspicious of him discovered that the watermark on the
paper had not been designed until 1878. In addition,
part of Reavis’ hoax rested on proof that a pair of Peralta twins had been born long ago near San Bernardino,
Calif. Their births were listed in the birth register at the
Mission of San Salvador. Somehow Reavis had
removed an entire page from the register and forged a
substitute that included the names of the twins in place
of the names of two other babies. What Reavis did not
know was that births were also recorded each day in a
separate volume that was kept hidden. Instead of the
names of the twins, the secret volume listed two different names.
Reavis fought the case against him with the great
wealth he had accumulated, but in the end, he was convicted and went to prison for six years. When he came
out, he was a broken man, with no money left from his
years of lavish living. He returned to Phoenix, once the
scene of his great criminal triumph, as a vagrant. Until
his death in 1908, he spent most of his time in the
library reading old newspaper accounts of himself during his period of grandeur.
had been imprisoned for three months or more. Among
those arrested for murder, rape, robbery and felonious
assault, 75 percent had already been convicted of a
crime. Other studies also showed a high repeater rate.
Eighty-five percent of male felons imprisoned in California in 1969 and the same percentage imprisoned in
Massachusetts in 1971 had been in correctional institutions before.
By contrast, most studies of recidivism among
parolees put the repeater rate at 25 percent. However,
this is not considered a reliable calculation since it represents only those cases of recidivism known to parole
officers, and in many areas the parole staff simply does
not have the manpower needed to assemble complete
information. In states where there is more supervision,
the percentage of reported crime repeaters increases significantly.
All agencies involved in various forms of custody,
prisons, probation or parole, experience a large number of recidivists, a situation that often provokes public cries for “throwing the book” at criminals and the
elimination of parole. Objective studies comparing
the recidivist rate among like groups of prisoners
serving long and short terms have been difficult to set
up. However, a landmark decision of the U.S.
Supreme Court presented a unique opportunity for
analyzing just such a situation. The court, in Gideon
v. Wainwright, threw out the convictions of more
than 1,000 indigent Florida prisoners on the ground
that they had not been represented by lawyers. The
Florida Corrections Department used this special situation to set up two groups of 110 recently released
inmates, the first 110 being composed of those who
had completed their original sentence and the other
110 being composed of inmates who had been
abruptly released far short of their original sentences
as a result of the Gideon decision. Care was exercised
to match up the individual characteristics of the members of the two groups as much as possible. In the 28
months following their release, 25.4 percent of those
who had fulfilled their sentences had committed
another crime. During that same period the prisoners
freed by the Gideon ruling showed a repeat crime rate
of only 13.6 percent.
Many who considered long imprisonment as the
answer to the recidivism problem have, in the words of
Leonard Orland, professor of law at the University of
Connecticut, found the “logical conclusion of this
research . . . shocking.” The researchers ar the Florida
Corrections Department concluded, “Baldly stated, it is
that if we, today, turned loose all the inmates of our
prisons without regard to the length of their sentences
and, with only some exceptions, without regard to their
previous offenses, we might reduce the recidivism rate
recidivism
A massive study by the FBI of almost 88,000 persons
arrested in 1966 and 1967 revealed that at least 82 percent had been arrested previously, 70 percent had been
convicted previously and 46 percent of those convicted
743
RED-light district
over what it would be if we kept each prisoner incarcerated until his sentence expired.”
Clearly, studies in the future need to focus on the
repeat crime rates under programs of amnesty and
pardon.
red-light district
In August 1881 a cowpoke named Charlie Davis
rode into town to savor the pleasures of the Red Light.
During the evening he got into an argument with one of
the bawds. George Woods intervened and Davis put a
pistol to his chest and shot him dead. Davis rode off
and was never caught, even though a tearful Mag
Woods put a $500 reward on his head.
Compared to his wife, George Woods had been relatively inoffensive, and after his death the Red Light
became an even worse den of sin without his restraining influence. On June 22, 1882 two celebrating cowboys killed young Marshal George Brown when he
came after them. It was the last straw as far as Caldwell
was concerned. A regular headline in the Caldwell
Standard was, “The Red Light Must Go.” The new
marshal was given authority to clap down on bawdy
entertainment in the saloons, mainly the Red Light, and
an ordinance was passed allowing the local courts to
run undesirables out of town. Mag Woods realized it
was only a matter of time until she was banished, so
one August morning in 1882 she sold off all her liquor
and fixtures, boarded up her resort and headed for the
train station with her women and bartenders, amid
jeers from the townspeople. The citizens, however, did
not have time to give her a final hoot as her train pulled
out. Suddenly, they were aware of flame and smoke and
had to rush back to contain the fire Mag Woods had set
to burn down the Red Light. Her vengeance was not all
that successful: the saloon burned to the ground but the
fire was extinguished before more than minor damage
occurred to the buildings surrounding it.
name for vice areas
The custom of calling a place of prostitution a red-light
house appears to have started in Dodge City, Kan., one
of the most wide-open towns in the Old West. It was
the custom of train crews of the Santa Fe to leave their
red lanterns outside when entering a Dodge City bordello so they could be located quickly in case of an
emergency. The enterprising brothel keepers soon realized this was excellent advertising comparable to the
flashing neon lights of the 20th century—and the redlight custom spread quickly, becoming a national code.
It was one of the few early American customs to work
its way from west to east.
See also: PROSTITUTION.
Red Light Saloon
Called “violent, obscene and godless” and the “worst
whorehouse in Kansas,” Caldwell’s fabled Red Light
Saloon had a mere two-year run, but for sin and violence its record was hard to match anywhere in the
West. Two town marshals were murdered on its
premises while a third was killed as he staggered from it
after a night of carousing.
Mag and George Woods, who had run an establishment of low repute in Delano, arrived in Caldwell in
1880 and opened a two-story saloon, dance hall and
bordello on Chisholm Street. Just so there would be no
doubt as to the entertainment offered, they called the
place the Red Light. The first floor was occupied by a
saloon and ballroom and the couple’s living area in the
rear; the entire second floor was given over to the resident whores.
Caldwell was a wide-open town but the blatant
violence of the Red Light was too much even for it,
and numerous attempts were made to shut the establishment down. While sharpers skinned cowboys
inside, women lured some of them outside to be
knocked unconscious and robbed. The whores of the
Red Light were as hard a bunch as could be found
in any resort in the West. Once after a cowboy was
shot and killed at the bar, a harlot who had entertained him earlier stripped off his bandana and dipped it in his blood. Although she had bewailed the
fact that he had paid her so poorly, she seemed placated because “now I have a souvenir from the cheapskate.”
Red Sash Gang
County War
alleged rustling gang during Johnson
The Red Sash Gang remains a controversial subject in
Wyoming to this day, but the weight of evidence seems
to indicate it was a figment of the imaginations of the
Pinkertons and the great cattle barons of the lush
Cheyenne Club to justify a bloody effort to clear the
Johnson County range of plows and barbed wire.
According to the charges, a small rancher named
Nathan Champion, later murdered by the cattlemen’s
hired guns, was the head of a gang of rustlers who wore
red sashes around their waists, a rather silly practice
since it would only have helped to identify them.
See also: THE BANDITTI OF THE PLAINS, FRANK CANTON,
NATHAN CHAMPION, JOHNSON COUNTY WAR.
red shirts
prison toughs
In convict lingo, a “red shirt” is a prisoner whose spirit
cannot be broken even when consigned to the “hole,”
or dungeon, and can in fact by his or her own measure
744
REED, Nathaniel “Texas Jack”
fact that Belle was always whipping Ed because of his
dishonesty.
At 20 Reed was doing time in prison for horse stealing. Within three years, in one of those minor miracle
conversions in the Old West, he turned up as a deputy
marshal at Fort Smith. His most famous accomplishment as a lawman was the killing of two former deputy
marshals for the crime of being drunk. At age 24 lawman Reed was shot dead in a drunken tavern brawl.
See also: JIM REED, BELLE STARR.
cope with guards on a more equal basis. The term may
have originated in the 1920s in the Michigan City state
prison, where determined convicts effectively countered
the deadly boredom, the beatings and privations to
which they were subjected. Even when forced to sleep
naked on bare cement floors in the hole, these rebellious prisoners hardened themselves by not eating their
daily ration of a half-loaf of bread, instead molding a
few of them into a pillow. They suffered severe pangs of
hunger during the first three days of this strategy but by
then were said to have achieved an almost pleasant
state of euphoria that would numb them and left them
unconcerned by other harsh treatment. The secret was
they had found they were capable of punishing themselves more severely than the establishment.
The red shirts also used play to endure solitary confinement, using the game of Battleship for one. Two
prisoners in separate cells could mark off 100 squares
numbered A to J laterally and 1 to 10 horizontally.
Each man had five groupings valued from one to five
ships, which could be positioned along connecting
squares. One of the contestants would “commence firing” by calling out something like “B-8.” And if the
opponent had a ship located on that square, he would
announce it was hit. Says one description of this prison
game: “For years the more obtuse guards wondered
what was being plotted when they heard men calling,
‘B-7.’ ‘Miss.’ ‘C-8.’ ‘Destroyer sunk.’ ”
The game of course depended on the personal honesty of the players, a trait not usually associated with
convicted criminals, but prison old-timers insisted the
game was on the square since the convict code regarded
the game itself as a flouting of the prison’s “no communication” rules. Some convict-historians insist the game
of Battleship was invented behind bars, but this probably can be disputed. Nevertheless it did prove to be a
valuable weapon in the red-shirt arsenal.
Red-shirt tactics continue to the present in updated
versions. In some maximum-security prisons convicts
use a special form of sign language, such as eye movements, to get around prison rules.
Reed, Jim (1845?–1874) outlaw
Jim Reed is remembered as one of the many “husbands” of Bandit Queen Belle Starr, but of the two
Reed was much more the outlaw. Belle was infatuated
with him, as she later was with so many others, mainly
because she simply adored badmen.
Born in Vernon County, Mo., Jim Reed was occasionally a lawman, but more often an outlaw who rode
with old Tom Starr’s band of killers. After he started
living with young Myra Belle Shirley, Reed killed a man
named Shannon, and he, Belle and their young daughter fled to California. There, Jim supported his family
and a newborn boy named Ed (who 18 years later was
suspected of murdering his mother) by the best trade he
knew, highway robbery. Finally identified in a stagecoach holdup, Reed took his family back east. He and
two other outlaws made a big score by torturing an old
Creek Indian until he revealed where he’d hidden a
$30,000 gold hoard. With that loot Reed took Belle to
Texas, where she first began playing the role of the
Bandit Queen. Belle opened a livery stable while Jim
rode off to Oklahoma Indian Territory with the Tom
Starr gang of horse thieves. The result was that Belle
always carried a handsome supply of stock.
Reed was killed in August 1874 by Deputy Sheriff
John T. Morris of Lamar County, Tex., who shot him in
the back. Just a few years earlier, Morris had been
Reed’s partner in various stock thefts and stagecoach
robberies. After she buried Reed, Belle parked her two
young children with relatives and rode off to enhance
her own legend.
See also: ED REED, BELLE STARR, TOM STARR.
Reed, Ed (1871–1895) murderer
Although he was never convicted of the crime, there is
little doubt that Ed Reed murdered his own mother,
Belle Starr. Reed was the offspring of a common law
union between Belle and Jim Reed, an outlaw-lawman
who rode with the infamous Tom Starr. Like both his
parents, Ed Reed was a bad character. He was an alcoholic at 13, a bootlegger at 14, a horse thief at 15 and
the murderer of his mother from ambush at 18. The
crime most probably resulted from their incestuous
relationship, although some folks said it was due to the
Reed, Nathaniel “Texas Jack” (1862–1950) train
robber
Texas Jack Reed was one of a very few Western badmen who had more than modest success, especially in
later years after his reformation.
A long-haired Arkansas youth, Reed turned outlaw
at the age of 23 after punching cattle for a few years in
the Oklahoma Territory. To go along with his new745
REES, Melvin David
found profession, he adopted an alias, Texas Jack. He
was successful from the start, joining in with several
others to hold up the express car of a train in Colorado,
earning some $6,000 for his first criminal effort. By
comparison, the notorious Reno gang of train robbers
netted less than $2,000 per man in their inaugural
caper. From then on, Texas Jack pulled a few bank and
stage robberies in Texas interspersed with other lucrative holdups in the Arizona Territory, Colorado and
California.
After a decade of criminal activity, Texas Jack finally
came to grief during an attempted train holdup in the
Oklahoma Territory. Instead of looting what they
expected would be $60,000 in the express car, he and
accomplices Buzz Luckey, Tom Smith, Tom Root and a
few others were greeted by an ambush party under the
command of Deputy U.S. Marshal Bud Ledbetter.
Texas Jack was badly shot up in the fracas and limped
home to Arkansas. Root and Luckey stopped to battle
pursuers a short time later and killed lawman Newton
LaForce. When they were captured, however, Root
turned informer, leading to a murder charge against
Luckey and the capture of Texas Jack.
Luckey was sentenced to death by Hanging Judge
Parker and Texas Jack faced a stiff sentence, which was
put off while Luckey’s appeal was heard by the U.S.
Supreme Court. Luckey’s murder conviction was overturned, and he was convicted solely of involvement in
the train robbery. Texas Jack got a lighter sentence than
Luckey because he had not been present at the time of
the LaForce killing.
Jack served only about two years before being
released on parole. He did not go back to the outlaw
trail, instead setting out with a crime-does-not-pay
roadshow entitled Texas Jack, Train Robber. It was
even more profitable than his crime career, and the
reformed outlaw followed that up with an autobiography. The Life of Texas Jack sold 70,000 copies, and
Nathaniel Reed became living proof that there were
indeed ways to make crime pay. The redoubtable Texas
Jack died in 1950 in Oklahoma City.
called the police. They found Margaret Harold’s body
and the car, but no trace of the deadly marauder, whom
the sergeant had described as tall and thin-faced.
Nearby, the police found the basement walls of an
unoccupied cinderblock building literally papered with
pornographic photographs. They theorized that the
murderer might have been using the basement building
as his hideaway.
The Harold murder was still unsolved in January
1959 when a 29-year-old truck driver, Carroll Jackson,
driving his wife and two young children home after a
stay with relatives, was forced by another car to the side
of a road near Fredericksburg, Va. The driver ordered
the family at gunpoint to climb into the trunk of his car
and drove off with them. Two months later, the body of
Carroll Jackson was discovered in some underbrush.
There was a bullet in his head. The Jacksons’ 18-monthold girl was found suffocated under her father’s body. A
few weeks after that discovery, the bodies of Mrs. Jackson and her four-year-old daughter were found near the
scene of Margaret Harold’s death. The child had died of
a fractured skull while Mrs. Jackson had been strangled,
after having been repeatedly raped.
A massive manhunt followed, based on the description given in the Harold killing. Finally, the widespread
publicity produced information from a Norfolk, Va.
man who said he suspected a young musician named
Melvin David Rees had committed the murders because
of things Rees had said to him. Rees was arrested in
West Memphis, Ark., where he was working as a piano
salesman. He denied the charges but was identified by
the army sergeant in the Margaret Harold case. When
investigators searched the home of Rees’ parents near
Washington, D.C., they turned up the murder gun and
long, written accounts of his treatment of Mrs. Jackson
before he murdered her. He had killed the woman in a
most brutal fashion. Other evidence linked Rees—now
known in the press as the Sex Beast—to four other
murder victims not originally connected with the
Harold and Jackson cases. Marie Shomettee, 16, and
Ann Ryan, 14, both of whom had been sexually
assaulted and murdered near College Park, Md., and
Shelby Jean Venable, 16, and Mary Elizabeth Fellers,
18, whose naked bodies had been found floating in
Maryland rivers.
For his Maryland crimes Rees got a life sentence, but
he was then tried in Virginia for the Jackson family
killings, found guilty and executed in 1961.
Rees, Melvin David (1933–1961) mass murderer
In the late 1950s Melvin David Rees, a professional
musician, terrorized Maryland and Virginia with a total
of nine murders, most accompanied by sexual assault
on his women victims.
In June 1957 near Annapolis, Md., Rees drove
alongside a car bearing an army sergeant and his girl,
Margaret Harold, and forced their car off the roadside.
When Rees tried to caress the woman, she resisted and
he shot her. The sergeant bolted and, after running
about a mile, reached a farmhouse, from which he
regulators and moderators
historic vigilante factions
One of the earliest forms of vigilantism in America
appeared in the backwoods of South Carolina in 1767
following a militia campaign against the Cherokee Indi746
REISER, Charles “The Ox”
ans. A great number of poorer settlers and farmers who
had been uprooted by the conflict turned to various
forms of disobedience against authority, including outlawry. This soon aroused the ire of many of the large
property owners, who determined to bring about a
return to tranquillity by organizing as “regulators” and
summarily executing several of the “troublemakers.”
While other men of wealth and standing shared a common hatred for the backcountry settlers, the violent
behavior of the Regulators and the fact that they acted
without legal authority frightened them into organizing
as “moderators.” The Moderators also operated outside the law but substituted the lash for the hangman’s
rope. Colonial justice never brought a single Regulator
or Moderator to the dock, and by the time the American Revolution began, the backcountry had been violently pacified by their efforts.
Throughout the history of America, the establishment of Regulator groups in various parts of the country has often resulted in the formation of Moderator
groups. The most prominent cases were in eastern
Texas in 1840–44, southwestern Missouri in 1842–44
and southern Illinois in 1846–50. At times the struggle
between the two groups became so intense that shooting erupted between them, and the lawbreakers were
virtually ignored; in fact, especially in eastern Texas,
the lawbreakers would often join one side or the other.
See also: EAST TEXAS REGULATOR WAR.
During World War I he became friends with O’Banion and used that deadly Irishman and a number of his
pals in several safecrackings. All this time, Reiser was
living a double life under the name of Shopes and pouring his ill-earned money into real estate, becoming the
owner of a large apartment building. He was known to
tenants as a prince of a landlord; while he expected his
rent, he did not hound a man if he got a little behind.
He was considered to be a fine husband to his second
wife. His first wife had not fared so well. Reiser
boasted to his underworld acquaintances that when the
woman had threatened to get the law after him, he
promptly beat her to death. The coroner’s jury thought
she had died of asphyxiation.
Clarence White, who aided the Ox in the cracking of
a Standard Oil Co. safe, was invited by the police to
come in for questioning. White said he would but first
telephoned the Ox, who rushed right over to White’s
apartment and shot him through the heart, making it
look like a suicide. This intelligence came from another
errant gang member, John Mahoney, who turned
informer after being caught cracking safes on his own.
Mahoney provided considerable evidence against
Reiser, all of which proved useless when Mahoney was
murdered in April 1921.
On October 10, 1921 the Ox entered the
premises of a cold storage firm, planning to bust
open its safe after first killing the watchman. He shot
the watchman but took two bullets himself, one
through the lung. Reiser was hospitalized and
charged with murder. He became the subject of some
bizarre newspaper stories, in which reporters
informed their readers that if Reiser was convicted,
his property would be confiscated and turned over to
some of his past robbery victims. Although untrue,
the stories may in some way have contributed to
Reiser’s death. His wife, who found the prospect of
his property being confiscated rather souring,
showed up at his hospital room and was admitted
even though the police guard stationed outside the
room had been instructed to let no one enter. A few
moments later, there was “a rattle of shots.” Mrs.
Reiser-Shopes tearfully related that her husband had
committed suicide. One thing was certain: the Ox
was very dead, with 10 bullets in him.
Understandably, the police found the death suspicious, especially since Reiser had had both his right
hand and his left arm broken in the storage firm robbery, making use of a gun rather difficult. Murder
charges were brought against the widow, but Chicago
being Chicago, a coroner’s jury ruled Reiser’s death a
suicide after all. Reiser’s estate of over $100,000 went
to his wife.
See also: CHARLES DION “DEANIE” O’BANION.
Reiser, Charles “The Ox” (1878–1921) Safecracker and
killer
Charlie “the Ox” Reiser led a Jekyll-and-Hyde existence. Under the name of Shopes he was known as a
reliable family man and a friendly landlord. Yet the
underworld and the police regarded him as the premier
safecracker in America during the early 20th century.
He was also a brutal killer and indoctrinated many of
the notorious Chicago gangsters of the 1920s into the
ways of big-time crime, among them Dion O’Banion,
Bugs Moran, Hymie Weiss and John Mahoney.
The Ox, a mountain of a man, could single-handedly
shove a safe from one end of a room to the other. He
was a brilliant “peterman,” or handler of nitroglycerine. Reiser first ran afoul of the law in Chicago in 1903,
when he was charged with safecracking. Out on bail,
he killed the witnesses against him, and the case was
dropped. In 1905 he was arrested again. The witness
disappeared and there was no case. He beat another
rap in 1907 and then was convicted of assault with a
deadly weapon and did 30 days. In 1909 police from
Seattle, Wash. apprehended him on a charge of burglary and murder. Thereafter all the witnesses died, and
Reiser returned to Chicago.
747
RELES, Abe
Reles, Abe (1907–1941) Murder, Inc. killer and informer
a homicide charge, he feared someone else would talk.
The Kid decided to save his own skin by talking first.
Reles revealed that he and other members of the
troop, such as Pittsburgh Phil, Happy Maione, Dasher
Abbandando, Chicken Head Gurino and Buggsy Goldstein, were given assassination assignments not only in
New York but elsewhere around the country, at times
not even knowing the identities of their victims. He
made a deal with the prosecutors that he would walk
away clear from any murder he had participated in provided he furnished them with all the details including
the names of his accomplices, an easy task for the Kid
since he had the most phenomenal memory of any
informer prior to John Dean.
It was Reles’ testimony that doomed Abbandando
and Maione for the brutal killing of a loan shark
named Whitey Rudnick. They had stabbed him more
than 60 times, cracked open his skull and then, just to
be sure, strangled him. With a perfectly straight face,
Kid Twist said Rudnick had deserved his fate: he had
been a stoolpigeon.
Reles gave chilling testimony against Pittsburgh Phil,
who also took part in Rudnick’s murder plus perhaps
100 others, and Buggsy Goldstein that sent them to the
chair for the vicious garroting of a minor gambler
named Puggy Feinstein. He provided key information
about Charlie Workman, accused of murdering Dutch
What was so amazing about the criminal career of
Abe Reles, better known as Kid Twist within Murder,
Inc., was how long he remained out of serious trouble
despite the fact that he personally took part in at least
30 murders. Until the Kid started “singing,” the law
did not even know about Murder, Inc., the enforcement arm of the national crime syndicate that committed an estimated 400 to 500 murders during
roughly the decade of the 1930s. Once Reles went
into what was called the most famous “canary act in
underworld history,” goggle-eyed investigators
cleared up no less than 49 murders in Brooklyn alone,
some of which they hadn’t even known about. Reles
was in a position to know. He was a second-rung
leader of Murder, Inc., ranking just below the top
leaders of the extermination “troop”: Louis Lepke
and Albert Anastasia. As an underworld stoolpigeon,
he was much more highly placed than Joe Valachi, for
instance.
Reles’ police rap sheet in 1940 listed 42 arrests over
16 years, including many charges of assault, robbery,
burglary, possession of narcotics, disorderly conduct
and murder (only six). He had done six minor stretches
but had never once talked to the authorities. However,
when he was picked up in 1940, along with a number
of other major and minor members of Murder, Inc., on
Informer Abe Reles jumped, fell or was pitched out a sixth-floor window of a Coney Island hotel.
748
RENO Gang
same manner the evidence against Anastasia was
heretofore “put in the files.”
Schultz, so that when Workman heard all the testimony
against him, he switched to a plea of guilty to get a life
sentence instead of the electric chair.
The Kid’s testimony helped build a successful case
against the great crime boss Louis Lepke as well as
underlings Mendy Weiss and Louis Capone, who were
accused of murdering a garment industry foe named
Joseph Rosen, even though Reles was no longer around
to testify by the time of their trial.
Reles appeared at a number of trials for more than a
year, during which time he was kept under protective
custody in the sixth-floor wing of the Half Moon Hotel
in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn. Then, in the
early morning hours of November 12, 1941, despite
the fact that he was always guarded by six officers and
never left alone in a room even while he slept, Reles
jumped, fell or was tossed out the window to his death.
Several sheets tied together were found, and the police
theorized that Reles had climbed out the window to
escape; to climb down one floor in order to play a
prank on his guards; or to commit suicide, although the
sheets were hardly necessary for that option. One problem with all the police theories was that the Kid’s body
had landed a good 20 feet away from the wall of the
hotel building.
Twenty years later, an ailing Lucky Luciano, the
chief founder of the national crime syndicate in the
early 1930s, stated that Frank Costello had arranged
for Reles’ demise and that $50,000 had been distributed within the police department to have Reles sent
out the window. The murder had been necessary
because at the time the Kid was about to give information that would have doomed two leading underworld
leaders: Albert Anastasia and Bugsy Siegel. Subsequently, William O’Dwyer, then Brooklyn district attorney and later mayor of New York City, received much
criticism for failing to proceed with the prosecution of
Anastasia in what was described as a “perfect case”
based on Kid Twist’s testimony. O’Dwyer claimed that
case “went out the window” along with informer
Reles.
In 1945 a Brooklyn grand jury charged that there
had been “negligence, incompetence and flagrant irresponsibility” in O’Dwyer’s handling of the Anastasia
prosecution. The jury stated O’Dwyer was
Other ugly rumors swirled around Reles’ death,
including the charge by Ed Reid, a prize-winning
reporter for the Brooklyn Eagle, that “Reles served several purposes besides being a fount of information about
gang activities. Some of the information he gave out was
used by unscrupulous persons connected with law
enforcement in Brooklyn—to shake down gangsters.”
In any event, Reles did not live long enough to fulfill
his potential as a stoolpigeon. While Murder, Inc., or at
least its Brooklyn branch, was destroyed, the crime syndicate continued in business.
See also: LOUIS “LEPKE” BUCHALTER; MURDER, INC.,
PITTSBURGH PHIL.
Remus, George (1874–1952) murderer
Often cited as one of the most farcical murder trials in
American history, the conviction of George Remus for
the murder of his wife, Imogene, in Cincinnati on October 6, 1927 should have been a cut-and-dried affair.
When Remus finished a prison term in the federal
penitentiary at Atlanta for bootlegging, he returned
home convinced his wife had been unfaithful during his
years behind bars. So he shot her. As a lawyer, albeit
disbarred, Remus insisted on his right to handle his
own defense and won the judge’s agreement despite his
plea of not guilty on the basis of his own insanity.
While the prosecution paraded alienists to the stand
to testify to Remus’ sanity, the defendant set about
proving, by his own behavior and by the testimony of
his witnesses, that he was insane. The jurors were
treated to the spectacle of a defendant getting his witnesses to say he was deranged and dangerous. In the
end, they were convinced by his performance, taking
only 19 minutes to bring in an acquittal by reason of
insanity. The prosecution was not caught off guard by
the verdict, however, moving quickly to get the judge to
commit Remus to a state asylum on the basis of his witnesses’ testimony that he was dangerously insane.
The Remus case was to have one more astonishing
twist. Just four months later, Remus stood before the
Ohio Court of Appeals, proved he was totally sane and
walked out a free man.
in possession of competent legal evidence that Anastasia was guilty of first degree murder and other vicious
crimes. The proof admittedly was sufficient to warrant
Anastasia’s indictment and conviction, but Anastasia
was neither prosecuted, indicted nor convicted. . . .
The consistent and complete failure to prosecute the
overlord of organized crime . . . is so revolting that we
cannot permit these disclosures to be filed away in the
Reno Gang
The Reno brothers—Frank, John, Simeon and
William—led a gang of about two dozen outlaws, who
had previously limited their activities to saloon
holdups, burglaries and highway robberies on the first
train robbery in this country, near Seymour, Ind., on
749
RESTELL, Madame
known—100 masked vigilantes took over the town of
New Albany, wounded the sheriff, dragged Carl
Anderson and Frank, William and Simeon Reno from
their cells and hanged them from an iron ceiling beam
in the jail. After the vigilantes left, Simeon Reno
revived and, clawing at the rope, tried to pull himself
up to relieve the pressure on his neck. The other prisoners screamed for the jailers but all had fled. Simeon
Reno kept up his struggle for almost half an hour
until his strength gave out and he slowly strangled to
death.
In the meantime the vigilantes pulled out of New
Albany by train, giving a local official a cell key so that
the wounded sheriff could be freed and treated by a
doctor.
Ten days after the Night of Blood, the vigilance committee issued a warning:
October 6, 1866, taking $10,000 from the express car.
Over the next two years they robbed a number of
banks and trains; in 1868, e.g., they boarded a train as
it paused to take on water at a whistle stop outside
Marshfield, Ind., and seized the unheard of sum of
$96,000, much more than Jesse James and his gang
ever got.
While many later train robbers developed a romantic
air about them and achieved an uncommon popularity
with the public, such was not the case with the Renos.
They tended to be too brutal and too kill-crazy. Relying
on sheer terror, the Renos operated rather openly
around Seymour and often met in the train station. Private detective Allan Pinkerton and six of his men managed to arrest John Reno during a lightning attack at
the station and hustle him aboard an outbound train.
When the rest of the gang realized what had happened,
they jumped on another train and forced the engineer
to give chase. The frantic race continued into Illinois,
where Pinkerton was able to divert his prisoner to
authorities and John Reno was sent to prison.
In March 1868 Pinkerton tracked the gang after a
bank robbery and, with a huge posse, surrounded them
at Council Bluffs, Iowa. After their apprehension the
prisoners were jammed into a small local jail, but they
escaped on April 1, after painting the words “APRIL
FOOL” on the side of the building.
Outraged at the law’s inability to contain the Renos,
and agreeing with the Seymour Times that “Seymour
has a carnival of crime,” a number of citizens formed a
vigilance committee. Shortly afterward, the Pinkertons
nabbed three of the gang—Lefty Clinton, Volney Elliott
and Charlie Roseberry—and were moving them by rail
to Seymour when the train was flagged down by
masked vigilantes, who seized the prisoners and hanged
them from the nearest tree. The Renos were outraged
and sent threats to known vigilance committee members and accused the Pinkertons of having cooperated
with the lynchers.
Meanwhile, the Pinkertons tracked down the rest of
the Reno brothers and several other gang members in
Indianapolis and Canada and brought them back to
stand trial. They were first placed in the Jackson
County Jail, but because of vigilante rumblings, they
were shifted to the more substantial Floyd County Jail
in New Albany. The fugitive members of the gang
declared open war on suspected members of the Southern Indiana Vigilance Committee. There were night
ambushes, beatings, unspeakable tortures and mutilations. Messages attached to rocks thrown through windows of local and state officials’ offices warned, “If the
Renos are lynched you die.”
Such moves did not deter the vigilantes, and on
December 11, 1868—the Night of Blood as it became
We are well aware that at the present time, a combination of the few remaining thieves, their friends and
sympathizers, has been formed against us, and have
threatened all kinds of vengeance against persons
whom they suppose to belong to this organization.
They threaten assassination in every form, and that
they will commit arson in such ways as will defy detection. The carrying out in whole, or in part, of each or
any of these designs, is the only thing that will again
cause us to rise in our own defence. The following
named persons are solemnly warned, that their designs
and opinions are known, and that they cannot,
unknown to us, make a move toward retaliation.
Wilk Reno, Clinton Reno, Trick Reno, James
Greer, Stephen Greer, Fee Johnson, Chris. Price, Harvey Needham, Meade Fislar, Mart Lowe, Roland Lee,
William Sparks, Jesse Thompson, William Hare,
William Biggers, James Fislar, Pollard Able.
If the above named individuals desire to remain
in our midst, to pursue honest callings, and otherwise
conduct themselves as law abiding citizens, we will protect them always.—If however, they commence their
devilish designs against us, our property, or any good
citizen of this district, we will rise but once more; do
not trifle with us; for if you do, we will follow you to
the bitter end; and give you a “short shrift and a
hempen collar.” As to this, our actions in the past, will
be a guarantee for our conduct in the future.
That marked the end of the Reno menace.
Restell, Madame (1812–1878) Madame Killer
“The wickedest woman in the city,” Ann Trow
Lohman, better known as Madame Restell, was New
York’s most infamous abortionist in the 19th century.
750
REYNOLDS Gang
The following month, however, Madame Restell was
trapped by Anthony Comstock of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, who purchased a number of contraceptive items from her. He then had her
arrested for possession of articles used for “immoral”
purposes. Facing a sensational trial and fearing the
publicity would lead to estrangement from her grandchildren, Madame Restell climbed into her bathtub and
slit her throat with a carving knife. She left an estate of
$1 million, a stupendous sum for that era.
Born in poverty in England, she emigrated to the
United States in 1831 with her first husband, a tailor
named Henry Summers who died two years later as a
result of yellow fever, typhoid and alcoholism. In 1836
she married “Doctor” Charles R. Lohman, a former
compositor who had prospered as a quack physician
selling medication that supposedly inhibited conception
and aborted unwanted fetuses. Soon, Lohman’s new
wife turned up in newspaper advertisements as
“Madame Restell, female physician and professor of
midwifery.”
Madame Restell opened an establishment on Greenwich Street where she sold various contraceptive
devices, performed abortions and delivered babies who
were later put up for adoption by their single mothers.
To stay in business, Madame Restell paid enormous
sums to the police. The superintendent of police,
George W. Matsell, was widely believed to have been
on her payroll. Concurrently, Matsell’s private company was proprietor of the National Police Gazette,
which regularly ranted about Madame Killer and her
establishment. Clearly, Matsell used his publication as
leverage to raise the ante on his bribes. Madame Restell
became so notorious that while Boss Tweed allowed
her to operate, he refused, in a rare burst of virtue, to
take her money and declined invitations to parties at
her lavish Fifth Avenue mansion.
Madame Restell prospered despite her numerous
expenses. It was said, for example, that more than 100
wealthy men paid regular tribute to her establishment
for the right to send young girls there for various forms
of “treatment.” She was arrested on a number of occasions, especially when a young girl sent to her died
from an abortion, but she never served more than a
year in prison for any offense. A far more serious threat
to her were the angry mobs that frequently gathered
outside her establishment and threatened to destroy it.
Whenever she went forth in her carriage, street boys
followed it shouting: “Yah! Your house is built on
babies skulls!”
While Madame Restell could hardly stand as a tragic
heroine, she was probably less of an abortionist than a
purveyor of contraceptives and the operator of an
undercover maternity hospital and adoption center. In
the 19th century there was a great semantic confusion
concerning abortion and contraception, both officially
viewed as the same evil.
After her husband died in 1876, Madame Restell led
a lonely life. Because of her notoriety she was abandoned by her brother and a stepdaughter by her first
marriage. She lived for the affection shown her by her
two grandchildren, for whom she entertained high
social ambitions. She was elated when her granddaughter married extremely well in 1878.
Reynolds Gang
Colorado outlaws
The Reynolds gang, a moderately successful group of
Civil War bandits, or Confederate “irregulars,” won a
permanent niche in Colorado folklore in part because
of the belief that they buried a great treasure but also
because of the way they were eradicated. As historian
Henry Sinclair Drago put it, their execution “stands as
one of the blackest pages in Colorado history.”
Jim and John Reynolds, two brothers, first appeared
in the Colorado Territory around Bayou Salado (South
Park) about 1863. Although they never worked, they
always seemed to have good horses and money, and the
suspicion grew that they were highwaymen. There was
no hard evidence against them, but since the Reynolds
were from Texas, it seemed like a good idea to put them
in an internment compound in Denver for Confederate
sympathizers. The brothers soon escaped and returned
to their native Texas, where they came up with the idea
of functioning as Confederate irregulars in the Colorado Territory, stealing gold for the cause.
Whether the Reynolds gang, which consisted of 20
members, ever intended to turn over any loot to the
South is moot. Their first strike on the Santa Fe Trail
netted some $40,000 in gold. Then the gang moved
into Colorado’s Spanish Peaks section. Here, Jim
Reynolds mumbled something about the loot belonging
to Jeff Davis, a contention disputed by most of the
gang. In the end, about a dozen men pulled out, each
taking his own share. According to some accounts, the
Reynolds brothers buried the balance of the gold; other
reports maintain it was divided among the remaining
members of the gang. The Reynolds outfit pulled several more robberies with moderate success, including a
stagecoach holdup that yielded $10,000 in gold dust.
In the late spring of 1864 the gang was badly shot
up; one man was killed and Jim Reynolds and four of
his men were captured. Only John Reynolds and Jake
Stowe got away. Tried in Denver, Jim Reynolds and his
four accomplices were sentenced to life imprisonment
(the death sentence was not considered because the
gang had never killed anyone). They were kept in jail in
Denver until the middle of the summer, although local
751
RIBICOFF, Sarai
authorities expressed the fear that Southern sympathizers might try to break them out.
In August, Col. John M. Chivington of the 3rd Colorado Cavalry took charge of the prisoners and had
them tried secretly. They were sentenced to be hanged
as conspirators against the United States. However,
because the military tribunal feared it was exceeding
its authority, an announcement was made that the
prisoners would be sent to Fort Leavenworth, Kan. for
a review of their case. A troop of the 3rd Cavalry
under Capt. George Cree set off with the prisoners on
August 19.
A few days later, Capt. Cree returned to report the
five prisoners had been shot trying to escape. The truth
came out when Dick Wooten, the famous scout, discovered the bodies of the five men lashed to trees and filled
with bullet holes near the ghost town of Russelville,
Colorado Territory. Capt. Cree then tried to explain his
actions by claiming he’d been given oral orders to shoot
the prisoners at the first opportunity. That claim was
not believed because it obviously reflected on Chivington, a fine officer and also a Methodist preacher. Three
months later, after Chivington’s infamous massacre of
Cheyenne Indians at Sand Creek, a wave of revulsion
over the barbarous execution of the Reynolds gang had
swept the territory.
A final chapter in the Reynolds gang saga occurred
in 1871, when John Reynolds returned to the Colorado
Territory, it was said, to retrieve the gang’s hidden loot
in Spanish Peaks and Handcart Gulch. He committed a
number of additional holdups and was finally mortally
wounded, but not before allegedly imparting the secret
of the hiding places to his companion, a two-bit outlaw
named Brown. Since he died a drunken vagrant in the
Wyoming Territory, it’s almost certain Brown never
found the loot.
Thus, the story of the Reynolds gang remains both a
blot on the history of Colorado and a tantalizing tale of
lost treasure. On this last point, Perry Eberhart was to
write, about a century after the Reynolds gang rode, in
Treasure Tales of the Rockies: “Fortune hunters have
torn down fences and fence posts, trampled fields and
dug holes up and down three gulches. They [the Colorado natives] wish they had never heard of ‘The Bold’
Reynolds and his infernal treasure.”
Graduated from Yale the previous year, Sarai had
become a staff reporter for the Los Angeles Herald
Examiner and was recognized as a talented member of
the staff. On November 12, Sarai had dinner with
John Shoven, 33, a Stanford economics professor, at
Chez Hélène, a fashionable French restaurant on a busy
thoroughfare in Venice. They left the restaurant about
10 P.M. and were but a few steps outside when a horrific incident ensued. They were confronted by two
African-American youths, one of whom was waving
almost nonchalantly a 9-mm automatic. It was obvious
that the gunman was under the influence of some sort
of drug.
In an effort to avoid a confrontation, Shoven led his
date into the street, in the hope there would be oncoming traffic. The two youths followed menacingly. The
couple then moved, ill-advisedly, in the shadow of an
unfenced lawn. Thinking better of the situation, they
made a beeline back toward the restaurant but were
overtaken as they reached the sidewalk. The gunman
had clearly been studying Shoven’s gold watch and
Sarai’s gold chain with a small gold pendant with a diamond chip. It had been a gift from her mother.
Cut off from the restaurant, the couple was menaced
by the gunman, who kept saying repeatedly: “This is
for real. This is for real.” As the gunman’s companion
grabbed Shoven’s wallet containing about $200 in cash,
the latter asked that his assailants leave his credit cards
and I.D.
Meanwhile the gunman shoved Sarai to the sidewalk
and demanded her purse, which she did not have. She
struggled as her attacker seized the pendant. Shoven
stared in horror, as perhaps did his assailant who was
yanking his gold watch free, when the gunman cocked
the pistol poised in Sarai’s back. He pulled the trigger
and the shot echoed off the pavement. Sarai gasped
what were to be her dying breaths. The gunman fired
two more shots into his helpless victim and took off
with his booty, as did his companion.
Next door in a crêpe restaurant kitchen, 22-year-old
Oscar Benitez, an illegal immigrant from Salvador,
heard the shots and took off after the fleeing pair. He
saw them run into a nearby vacant building on Fifth
Avenue. Police, informed by Benitez when they arrived,
followed a trail of blood to the second floor but found
no one. They did recover Shoven’s empty wallet.
Back at the crime scene a clue turned up. There was
a bloodstain just below Sarai’s knee, where she had not
been hit. It turned out to be Type O blood; the victim’s
blood type was A. The bullet that had killed Sarai had
bounced off the concrete and nicked the killer’s arm.
Checking at nearby emergency rooms, the police
found one where Frederick Jerome Thomas, having
Type O blood, had been treated. Thomas was well
Ribicoff, Sarai (1957–1980) murder victim
The murder of Sarai Ribicoff, a 23-year-old member of
the socially prominent Connecticut Ribicoffs and the
niece of Senator Abe Ribicoff, was to have an immense
affect on the attitudes of Californians toward crime and
indeed led to a surge in the purchase of guns for personal use in the state which was to last for years.
752
RICCA, Paul “The Waiter”
known to police. A high school graduate, although
functionally illiterate, he was baron of the Venice angel
dust pushers and a leader of the Crips, the city’s most
dangerous street gang. He was taken into custody at
midnight. His accomplice, Anthony LaQuin McAdoo,
surrendered the following day. McAdoo, 19, had never
been in serious trouble and had never been known to
use drugs, unlike Thomas, who was popularly held to
have consumed almost as much PCP as he sold.
McAdoo had been in Thomas’ company because he
desperately needed cash to repair his car.
The murder of Sarai Ribicoff sent shock waves
through Los Angeles’ citizenry, including the liberal
community that counted Sarai as one of their own. The
Herald Examiner, noted as a liberal voice, became outspoken in favor of vigorous prosecution of criminals. It
fueled more outrage when it dug up the fact that
Thomas had been arrested six months earlier for possession of four ounces of PCP and that the district
attorney’s office had not prosecuted him.
The prosecution made a deal with McAdoo to testify
against Thomas in exchange for a sentence of 25 years
with the chance of parole in 17. Thomas seemed to be a
certain candidate for the gas chamber, but he escaped
the death penalty. McAdoo’s testimony proved to be an
aid to Thomas when he explained to the jury that just
before Thomas shot Sarai she tried to resist as he
attempted to pull the gold pendant free of her neck.
Apparently, that was regarded by the jury as a somewhat extenuating circumstance for Thomas. The jurors,
including seven women, voted narrowly to decline the
death penalty, opting to sentence Thomas to life imprisonment with no chance for parole.
Now once again shockwaves swept the city, the outrage perhaps equaling that felt by whites years later
when O. J. Simpson was acquitted on criminal murder
charges. Belle Ribicoff, Sarai’s mother, expressed her
horror: “Have we reached the point as a society where
someone who struggles with an attacker becomes
responsible for his own murder?”
Even Los Angeles’ large liberal community, long in
favor of gun control, now focused increasingly on the
city’s crime rate, which was exceeding that of New
York City. Actor Sylvester Stallone became one of the
cofounders of the Beverly Hills Gun Club, which
showed patrons how to pick calibers for maximum
stopping power as well as the secrets of fast and accurate shooting. And in the half-year following Sarai’s
murder, the number of women in California applying
for tear gas permits soared from 26,000 to 341,000.
Eventually, support for gun control soared as the
memory of the Ribicoff murder faded against the spate
of more recent violent shootings. By 1999 however,
California was easily in the forefront for gun control
and in that year the state enacted the nation’s toughest
and most comprehensive ban on assault-style weapons.
Ricca, Paul “The Waiter” (1897–1972) Chicago mob
leader
For 40 years after the fall of Al Capone in 1931, the
newspapers argued about who was in charge of the
Chicago mob, with speculation centering first on Frank
“the Enforcer” Nitti, followed by Tough Tony Accardo,
Sam “Momo” Giancana and Paul “the Waiter” Ricca.
Ricca was a power even in the Capone days, with
Big Al standing up as best man for him at his wedding
in 1927. In the mid-1930s Nitti assumed control, but
Ricca’s influence continued to grow and by about 1939
he had gained the leadership. Within the Chicago syndicate power always fell to the man strong enough to
seize and hold it, not only by force, but by sheer personality. That was Al Capone’s strong suit; it was
Ricca’s as well. He could dominate almost any planning
session of the mob and was regarded, along with
Accardo and Jake “Greasy Thumb” Guzik, as one of
the most intelligent and cunning mobsters.
Ricca’s power was based on force. He had a long
string of syndicate killers allied with him, many of them
psychotics who would do anything to curry his favor.
And Ricca never hesitated to use violence. It was not so
much his ability to order executions but the quiet manner in which he did so that made him so feared.
“Make’a him go away,” he would order softly and the
object of his rage was a dead man.
Ricca came to America in 1920. In 1917 he had been
sentenced to 2 l/2 years in prison in Ottavino, Italy,
near Naples, for the murder of Emilio Parrillo. The
chief witness against him was Vincenzo Capasso. The
first thing he did when he got out was kill Capasso.
Then he fled. Ricca was tried in absentia for the murder
and given a 2l-year sentence. Arriving in Chicago, he
worked first as a theater usher and then did a short
stint as a waiter. He earned his nickname the Waiter not
so much because he had briefly waited on tables but
because that occupation was cited in testimony at
immigration hearings to prove he was a worthwhile citizen and not a criminal. Ricca and Capone had mutual
friends in Italy, and Capone soon took Ricca into his
organization.
Throughout his career Ricca was known as a great
fixer. He paid off politicians at almost every level of
government. Although he went to prison several times,
Ricca always seemed to get off with very short sentences. Along with almost the entire top leadership of
the Chicago mob, he went to prison for the huge shakedown of the motion picture industry in the early 1940s.
Ricca and most of the others were sentenced to 10
753
RICE, William Marsh
years in 1943 but released in August 1947 because of
the intercession of Attorney General Tom Clark. The
early paroles enraged the Chicago newspapers, which
published Ricca’s claims that his influence reached into
the White House. Printed accounts had Ricca telling his
lawyers to find out who had the final say in granting
him a speedy release, adding: “That man must want
something: money, favors, a seat in the Supreme Court.
Find out what he wants and get it for him.”
Granted that several of the Chicago newspapers
were bitter enemies of President Harry Truman, the
facts were that Attorney General Clark had allowed the
early parole of Ricca and the others to go through and
that Clark was appointed to the next opening on the
Supreme Court. In 1952 the Chicago Tribune called for
Clark’s impeachment because of his “utter unfitness for
any position of public responsibility and especially for a
position on the Supreme Court bench.” The editorial
went on to state: “We have been sure of [his] unfitness
ever since he played his considerable role in releasing
the four Capone gangsters after they had served the
bare minimum of their terms.”
In any event, Paul Ricca was back in circulation and
became the real power in the Chicago underworld.
While he was in prison, Tough Tony Accardo had visited him in his cell by masquerading as his attorney.
Accardo had kept Ricca informed of syndicate activities
and had gotten his decision about whether to go ahead
or to pull back. After his release Ricca, when he was so
inclined, allowed Sam Giancana to give syndicate
orders but later took away that power. In its hearings
on organized crime, the Kefauver Committee in 1950
labeled Ricca “the national head of the Crime Syndicate” and the McClellan Committee in 1958 referred to
him as America’s “most important” criminal. Ricca’s
testimony on the witness stand before each committee
was punctuated by frequent citings of the Fifth Amendment.
In 1957 Ricca was stripped of his citizenship and
two years later he was ordered deported. Ricca started
all sorts of appeals and delaying actions. He got a court
stay on deportation to Italy by bringing an action
before an Italian court, demanding that his Italian citizenship be dropped. In what can only be described as
an incredible action, the Italian government decided
that Ricca was such a despicable character and had
been so unwholesome of behavior in America that it
did not even want him back to serve out his old murder
sentence, presumably because he would contaminate its
prisons. Immigration authorities then ordered Ricca to
find a country to which he wished to be deported.
Ricca dutifully obeyed and sent letters to more than 60
countries, supposedly seeking asylum but always
including a packet of news clippings to indicate how
undesirable he was in the United States. No country
expressed any willingness to accept him. The government was still trying to get rid of Ricca when he died in
1972 at the age of 74.
See also: FRANK NITTI.
Rice, William Marsh (18l6–l900) murder victim
One of Texas’ more famous millionaires, William
Marsh Rice had but one ambition in his later years: to
give his adopted state, which had made him rich, an
institution of higher learning as a memorial to himself.
His life was ended by a bizarre murder plot to rob his
estate, most of which was intended for the founding of
that institution.
Rice had garnered a fortune in oil, land and hotels.
At the age of 80, he had buried two wives, had no children and was living alone in New York. He hired 23year-old Charles F. Jones as a combination nurse and
secretary and by 1900 he so trusted Jones that he
allowed him to handle all his banking affairs.
At the time, Rice was involved in a legal dispute over
part of his fortune. Before his second wife died, she
made up a will disposing of half of Rice’s money, to
which she was entitled under the community property
law in Texas, where the couple had been living. Rice
countered that he was actually a resident of New York
and only visited Texas and that therefore all the money
rightfully was his. Nonetheless, he made out a will leaving almost all of his estate to establish “The Rice Institute.” One of Rice’s adversaries was a brash Texas
lawyer with a shady past, a man named Albert T.
Patrick, who went to New York to gather proof that
Rice’s claim of residency in that state was a fraud. In
fact, Patrick had something else in mind. He was out to
get the Rice millions for himself. After promising secretary Jones a fortune, he drew him into the plot.
Although Rice had made a will in 1896 for the
establishment of the school, Patrick set about producing a new will that would name him the chief beneficiary. In this new will Rice’s relatives would receive
much more money, making them far more likely to support it than the original. He also left $5,000 to each of
the prospective trustees of the new school, whom Rice
had named in the authentic will. “They’ll be glad to
forget about the school,” Patrick told Jones. “Every
man has his price. You know, any man in Houston can
be bought for five thousand dollars.”
On September 24, 1900 Patrick sent an office boy
to Rice’s bank with a check for $65,000. It was made
out to Abert T. Patrick but endorsed by Albert T.
Patrick. Because of the faulty endorsement, it was
rejected. When the boy returned with the correct
endorsement, the bank became suspicious and called
754
RICH Men’s Coachmen’s Club
He shuttled back and forth to various courts with all
sorts of arguments. In one court he argued that he was
legally dead and, as such, could not be kept in Sing
Sing. It could be that everyone wearied of the entire
matter, but in any event, on November 28, 1912 Gov.
John A. Dix gave Patrick a complete pardon, noting in
a brief comment that “an air of mystery has always surrounded the case.” The governor’s act was, to say the
least, controversial, but so was the fact that Jones, the
actual killer, had not even been tried for the murder.
In a certain sense, all the parties in the case came out
fairly well off. Rice Institute was endowed and grew to
be the nation’s wealthiest school on a student per capita
basis. Patrick eventually became a man of property
before he died in 1940 at the age of 74. Ironically, even
Jones ended up with a fair sum of money, which he
inherited from his family. When he committed suicide
in 1954 at the age of 80, his neighbors in Baytown,
Tex. had no idea he was the Jones who had been
involved in the Rice murder. However, it was not a
guilty conscience that prompted him to take his life but
fear of becoming an invalid and dependent on
strangers.
See also: JOHN F. TYRRELL.
Rice to verify his signature. Jones answered the phone
call and said the check was authentic, but he was nevertheless asked to put Mr. Rice on the phone. The secretary replied that Rice was not available. Later that
same day the bank called again; this time Jones said his
employer had died.
As a matter of fact, Rice had been dead when the
check was first presented for payment. Jones had tiptoed into Rice’s room while he was asleep and covered
his face for 30 minutes with a sponge soaked in chloroform. Then he called Patrick, who in turn arranged for
a Dr. Walter Curry to examine the body. Dr. Curry
signed a death certificate that declared Rice had succumbed to “old age, weak heart and collocratal diarrhea with mental worry.”
Meanwhile, Patrick informed Rice’s bank that he
held another check for $65,000 as well as an assignment
of all his bonds and securities. The bank wondered why
Rice had left everything to Patrick. Patrick said:
“Frankly, the old gentleman admired me. He was just
stuck on me. He thought I was the most wonderful man
in the world. Said he never met anyone he liked better.”
Nevertheless, the bank and a number of Rice’s relatives and proposed trustees of the school insisted on a
post-mortem, which revealed traces of mercury in the
dead man’s organs and congestion of the lungs caused
by “some gas or vapor.” On October 4 Patrick and
Jones were arrested on charges of forgery and confined
in the Tombs Prison. Patrick, who until then had exercised considerable authority over Jones, ordered his
accomplice to confess to the murder and assume the
entire guilt. Jones slit his throat with a pen knife and
spent two weeks recuperating in Bellevue Hospital.
When he was returned to the Tombs, Jones first
stated that Patrick had administered the fatal chloroform to the old millionaire. Then he admitted he had
done it after Patrick had showed him a picture of his
two smiling daughters and said he could not kill anyone.
Patrick was brought to trial for murder in January
1902. The proceedings lasted 10 weeks and the testimony filled 3,000 pages. Jones turned state’s evidence
and, in exchange, was not charged with anything. He
spent five days on the witness stand. Patrick was convicted and sentenced to death in the electric chair.
Patrick’s long fight for freedom has been described
as one of the blackest chapters in New York’s legal history. A wealthy brother-in-law reportedly poured thousands into the battle. Patrick spent four years and seven
months in the death house, during which time he saw
17 others go to the chair. Finally, in December 1906
Gov. F. W. Higgins commuted his sentence to life
imprisonment. Patrick, the star boarder on death row,
announced: “I refuse to accept the governor’s commutation. I propose to continue my fight for freedom.”
Rich Men’s Coachmen’s Club
criminal organization
One of the strangest criminal organizations in history
was the Rich Men’s Coachmen’s Club, which appeared
in Chicago in the 1880s. Among the city’s coaching set
the true sign of social importance was to have English
grooms and coachmen, since English fashion still represented the ultimate authority in the Gem of the Prairie.
The social order became somewhat scrambled as many
of these English grooms and coachmen who flooded
Chicago attempted to exploit and bully their employers, getting away with such behavior, because the
crowning disaster in the city’s society was to lose one’s
English servant.
The field became so lush that a number of Yankee
imposters posed as Englishmen to get coachmen’s jobs.
A leading faker of this ilk was one John Tilbury, who
won a position with Victor Fremont Lawson, the
owner of the Chicago Daily News. Tilbury’s real name
was James McGraw and he really hailed from New
York City, but he affected a perfect accent and had provided himself with impressive forged credentials.
Tilbury saw there were enormous opportunities for dishonest coachmen if their activities could be properly
organized.
He formed the Rich Men’s Coachmen’s Club, headquartered in Lawson’s barn, where both business and
social meetings were held. The latter activities included
drinking and carousing and betting on dog and cock755
RICHARDSON, George
for some 30 years. Moench had been shot twice but the
police were unable to learn the identity of his killer or
killers. Then two years later, on May 10, 1933, business associates of Ridley found that the millionaire’s
office phone was not being answered. They investigated
and discovered the bodies of Ridley and Lee Weinstein,
Moench’s successor. Weinstein had been shot seven
times and Ridley had been beaten to death with a stool.
Ballistics tests revealed the same weapon that had killed
Moench two years previously had also killed Weinstein.
The murders of Moench, Weinstein and Ridley, who
left an estate of $3 million, have never been solved.
fights. Business meetings consisted of reports on mansions that could be burglarized; valuable dogs that
could be stolen and sold, trained as fighters or returned
to their owners for ransom; and family secrets that
could be used for blackmail. Honest servants of rich
families were appalled by the actions of Tilbury’s gang.
They informed their employers and wrote anonymous
letters to the police accusing various coachmen of being
former inmates of British jails or deserters from the
British army. However, most employers refused to
believe such charges against their coachmen, restrained
by their own pride in having British servants or the
threat of blackmail. Nonetheless, Lawson may have
breathed a sigh of relief when Tilbury left his employ to
join the staff of Mrs. Hollis M. Thurston, a leading figure in Chicago society. No doubt Mrs. Thurston was
proud of her catch of a coachman who claimed to be a
former guards officer and the disinherited member of a
titled family.
Some three months later, Tilbury had gathered
enough dirt on the Thurston family to approach his
mistress and inform her he wanted $12,500 to remain
silent about certain family scandals. Mrs. Thurston was
made of stern stuff and informed private detectives,
who seized Tilbury at the mansion as the blackmail
money was paid to him. The detectives then turned him
over to the police. When the story broke in the newspapers the next day, the Chicago Times reported:
“Chicago society has turned white with dread.”
At Tilbury’s trial, Mrs. Thurston was subjected to a
withering cross-examination, which attacked her conduct and character. In the end, Tilbury was freed on the
ground that the private detectives hired by the woman
had violated his rights. However, the police thereafter
hounded Tilbury and some other crooked coachmen
until they finally left town and the Coachmen’s Club
was dissolved.
Richardson, George
“right to bear arms”
As the wording reveals, this article relates entirely to
the militia—a fact that was made even clearer by a
clause dropped from Madison’s original wording: “but
no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms
should be compelled to render military service in person.” It was made clearest of all in the congressional
debate on the amendment. Why was a militia necessary
to “the security of a free state”? Elbridge Gerry asked
and answered that question: “What, sir, is the use of the
militia? It is to prevent the establishment of a standing
army, the bane of liberty.” Thus the purpose of the Second Amendment was to forbid Congress to prohibit the
maintenance of a state militia. By its nature, that
amendment cannot be transformed into a personal
right to bear arms, enforceable by federal compulsion
upon the state.
See SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS,
RACE RIOT.
Ride
gun owners’ slogan
Opponents of gun control legislation frequently cite
what they insist is a fundamental right guaranteed by
the Constitution: “the right to bear arms.” However,
few constitutional scholars find any such “right” in the
document, insisting that meaning is derived only when
the words are taken out of context. The Second
Amendment reads: “A well regulated Militia, being
necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the
people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Historian Irving Brant notes:
Of course, if the opponents of gun control laws
really feel there is merit in their claim, there are any
number of gun restrictions on the law books that could
be challenged, thus allowing a final determination on
the matter by the courts.
See ONE-WAY RIDE.
Ridley, Edward Albert (1847–1933) murder victim
Few unsolved murders in America have provoked as
much speculation as that of 86-year-old millionaire
Edward Albert Ridley.
A New York real estate tycoon, Ridley maintained
his office in the subcellar of a garage on Allen Street. In
1931 Ridley entered his office and found the body of
Herman Moench, 60, his bookkeeper and rent collector
Riley, James “Butt” (1848–?) San Francisco hoodlum
Butt Riley grew up as a hoodlum in New York and
then, after a stint as a sailor, ended up in San Francisco,
where police soon labeled him King of the Hoodlums.
756
RINGO, John
on Mondays he would make a picture-selling tour of the
red-light areas, his merchandise in a black satchel slung
over his shoulder.
In 1871 Riley butted the wrong victim, a 22-year-old
carriage painter named John Jordon, who took two
vicious butts to the stomach and then pulled a revolver
and shot Riley in the chest. Doctors at the county hospital said the wounds were fatal but Riley recovered.
Unfortunately, his health was poor thereafter, and he
lost the strength and beauty the harlots admired. He
also lost his standing with the hoodlums and degenerated to a common housebreaker. In 1876 he was caught
breaking into a house and sent to San Quentin Prison
for 15 years. After that San Francisco’s King of the
Hoodlums disappeared.
Certainly, he was one of that city’s principal, if less
sophisticated, criminals. He never led any specific gang,
but most of the city’s toughs would flock to join him
whenever he called.
Riley was known as a vicious fighter who was always
armed with a long knife, brass knuckles, a slungshot
and a hickory bludgeon. However, his principal weapon
was his head, which he claimed had the thickest skull in
Christendom. He would disable a foe by charging him
and butting him in the stomach or on the chin, rendering the man helpless. When Butt Riley led raids on Chinese opium houses or slave dens, he always batted the
doors down with his head, and when his men grabbed a
Chinese victim, Riley would see how far he could butt
him. Records were kept on such matters, and according
to them, Riley once butted a 160-pound man exactly 10
feet. Riley has been described as an extraordinarily
handsome man, and it is a matter of record that he was
eagerly sought after by prostitutes and that when he
bestowed his favors, the usual procedure was reversed
and he collected a fee. He even sold female admirers his
photograph for 25¢; for his favorite harlots only, a
photo of him in the nude was available for 50¢. It was
quite common for clients of some of the city’s most popular prostitutes to find themselves making love under an
autographed picture of the King of the Hoodlums. Riley
would have new photos taken of himself each week and
Ringo, John (1844?–1882) outlaw
Little is known of the early life of outlaw Johnny
Ringo, who, with the possible exception of Curly Bill
Brocius, was the most dangerous member of the Clanton gang, the bitter foe of the Earps in Tombstone, Arizona Territory.
Ringo, whose real name may have been Ringgold, is
believed to have been the black sheep of a leading
southern family and is definitely known to have been
college educated. Cultured, able to quote Shakespeare
at length (in their desire to make the “good guys”—the
Earps—good and the “bad guys”—the Clantons—bad,
some historians of the Tombstone legend transferred
this literary attribute to Doc Holliday), Ringo epitomized the ideal gentleman outlaw. He was known to be
a man of his word, and when he promised to surrender
to the law, he did so. However, none of these laudable
characteristics prevented Ringo from being a murderous bandit. His record, though shadowy at times,
included participation in Texas’ bloody Hoodoo War in
the 1870s, during which he did his share of killing as a
sidekick of the notorious Scott Cooley.
Later, as a member of the Clanton gang, Ringo ran
up a string of vicious and often senseless killings. One
Louis Hancock came to a bad end in a Tombstone
saloon for having the temerity to order beer when
Ringo offered to buy him whiskey. Ringo participated
in the bloody Guadalupe Canyon Massacre of Mexican
silver miners by the Clantons, took part in the attempt
on the life of Virgil Earp and was the lookout when
Morgan Earp was assassinated. He was the only member of the Clantons with the nerve to challenge Doc
Holliday to a one-on-one duel, a confrontation prevented by the arrival of lawmen. In the Tombstone
area’s twisted political setup, Ringo was a sheriff’s
deputy in the posse that chased the Earps out of the
county for the last time.
James “Butt” Riley was frequently used by contemporary
newspaper artists as a model for what the “more
exquisite-type” hoodlum looked like.
757
RIPPER gangs
Despite his rather checkered and deadly career,
Ringo won a sort of admiration from Tombstonians as
a brooding, silent and tragic loner with a past that
probably outshone his present and future. That future
seemed to be short in 1882 when Ringo turned more
dependent and started drinking heavily. Early in July of
that year, Ringo went off on a long drinking bout with
Frank Leslie, a gunman with a reputation for killing a
number of Clanton supporters. The two had not been
on friendly terms earlier, particularly after Ringo had
asked Leslie, “Frank, did you ever shoot someone not
in the back?”
Ringo was soon found dead in Turkey Creek
Canyon with a bullet in his head. Leslie was a prime
suspect, although officially the death was classified as a
suicide, an odd verdict since no powder burns were
found around the entrance wound. Pony Deal, an outlaw friend of Ringo’s, felt the likely murderer was a
gambler named Johnny Behind the Deuce and shot him
to death in retribution. Years later, Wyatt Earp claimed
he had killed Ringo for his involvement in the plots
against his brothers, but most historians have written
off Earp’s claim as the words of a “blowhard” who was
in Colorado when Ringo died. In any event, the true
story of Ringo’s demise remains as steeped in mystery
as much of his earlier life.
See also: JOSEPH ISAAC “IKE” CLANTON, GUADALUPE
CANYON MASSACRE, JOHNNY BEHIND THE DEUCE, FRANK
“BUCKSKIN” LESLIE.
ripper gangs
intended victims or ripped them out of their shoes and
sped away in their van, called their “Murder Mack.”
The Murder Mack’s radio blared loudly to cover the
victim’s screams as they drove into the mountains to
complete their crimes at leisure.
The Gecht rippers in Chicago were more brazen, not
hesitating to rip women right off North Lake Shore
Drive along Lake Michigan. One such victim was Rosemarie Ann Beck, abducted, tortured and left to die in a
building along the Drive. Most of his followers were of
more limited intelligence than Robin Gecht, who some
said dominated his gang with his eyes and hypnotic
ways. He was 28 years old in 1981, five to seven years
or so older than most of his followers. As the mutilated
bodies of some of their victims started turning up,
newspaper speculation ran rampant, but one sure thing
was that there seemed no way to conduct an accurate
body count. The full extent of Gecht’s predations was
never really determined, and the media had to be satisfied by reporting a near-endless string of “cannibal
murders,” a description that was not inaccurate.
The rippers’ last attempted kill involved a female
hauled into the gang’s van, stuffed with drugs and then
mutilated and dumped still alive from the vehicle. She
survived and identified some of the abductors while still
in the hospital. One by one the rippers were picked up
by police. Several of them broke and talked. Soon a
trail led to Gecht. Gecht was found mentally competent
to stand trial in March 1983 and in September he confessed to murder in court. One identified victim of the
gang was 42-year-old Carole Pappas, the wife of the
Chicago Cubs’ pitcher. However, her remains were
never found.
Robin Gecht was convicted and sentenced to 120
years in prison. Other members of the gang got life sentences, and one, Andrew Kokoraleis, drew a death sentence.
serial killers acting in concert
Among serial killers, so-called ripper gangs are considered by many law officials to be the most frightening.
Because they operate in a group, one member can frequently egg his companions into more and more terrifying acts. Probably the most hideous ripper gang of
the 1980s was one in the Chicago area, headed by
Robin Gecht, a terror who was to be called the Midwest’s Charles Manson. While the gang’s victims were
often disfigured before or after they were killed, the
term “ripper” seems to have gained its meaning in
part from the way women victims were “ripped” off
the street. In some cases the victim was ripped right
out of her shoes and driven away in a van to a gruesome fate, the only clue to her disappearance was the
shoes left in a mall parking lot or at the side of a highway where she might be waiting to be picked up by a
friend or relative.
The shoe routine was also the mark of another ripper gang, led by Lawrence Sigmund Bittaker and Roy
Lewis Norris, operating in California. Besides luring
young girls into their new silver GMC van with promises of drugs or job offers, the boys simply maced their
Ritter, Halsted Lockwood (1868–?) impeached judge
As of 1981, the last federal judge to be impeached and
removed from office by Congress was Halsted L. Ritter,
who had supplemented his $17,300 salary with kickbacks.
After appointment to the bench by President Calvin
Coolidge in 1929 despite bipartisan opposition, Ritter
continued to practice law, receiving a $2,000 fee from
the Mulford Realty Corp., which had considerable
holdings in his Florida judicial district. He gave his former law partner, A. L. Rankin, an excessive $75,000
fee for acting as receiver for a bankrupt Palm Beach
hotel. In return, Ritter accepted $4,500. Other kickbacks on receiverships netted him at least $7,500. In
one case he made his sister-in-law manager of another
758
RIVERBOAT gamblers
bankrupt hotel and then received free room and board
as well as valet service there. Ritter, however, neglected
to report any of these “supplementals” on his income
tax returns and was eventually charged with tax evasion for the years 1929 and 1930.
In 1936 Ritter became the 13th government official
in American history to be impeached by the House of
Representatives, which passed seven articles of
impeachment against him. In the Senate, he escaped
conviction on the first charge by one vote. Acquitted of
the next five articles by larger margins, he was then
narrowly convicted of an omnibus charge, including
major features of the previous six charges, and thus
removed from office. But by a unanimous vote of the
Senate he specifically was not “disqualified from holding any office of honor, trust, or profit under the
United States.”
Ignoring the order of the Senate, Ritter refused to
leave his office and had to be ousted by a federal marshal. He took his case to the U.S. Court of Claims,
declaring his ouster unconstitutional because he had
been convicted on a composite charge but cleared on
the individual counts. His petition was denied. Ritter
faded into obscurity thereafter and no public
announcement was made of his death, which apparently occurred some time in the 1950s.
See also: JUDICIAL CORRUPTION.
art. Naturally, such overhead required most card sharks
to ensure that winning wasn’t left to mere luck or skill.
One contemporary expert on the subject estimated that
of the 2,000-odd gamblers, he could think of only four
who were honest all the time.
Tom Ellison, a gambler turned honest in his later
years, said:
I’ve seen fellows pick every card in a pack, and call it
without missing once. I’ve seen them shuffle them one
for one all through from top to bottom, so that they
were in the same position after a dozen shuffles that
they were in at first. They’d just flutter them up like a
flock of quail and get the aces, kings, queens, jacks and
tens all together as easy as pie. A sucker had no more
chance against those fellows than a snowball in a redhot oven. They were good fellows, free with their
money as water, after scheming to bust their heads to
get it. A hundred didn’t bother them any more than a
chew of tobacco would you.
Ellison told of a planter who lost
his whole tobacco crop in one night and get up and
never mind it particularly. Many a time I’ve seen a
game player just skin off his watch and ring and studs
and play them in. Men often lost their goods playing in
their way bills. I’ve seen them betting a bale of cotton
at a crack, and it wasn’t at all uncommon to hear an
old planter betting off his Negroes on a good hand.
Every man who ever ran on the river knows that these
old planters used to play in their lady servants, valuing
them all the way from $300 to $1,500. I saw a little
colored boy stand up at $300 to back his master’s faith
in a little flush that wasn’t any good on earth.
riverboat gamblers
During the heyday of the riverboat on American waterways in the mid-19th century, it was estimated there
were between 2,000 and 2,500 riverboat gamblers plying their trade. The first of the breed had appeared
along the Mississippi near the beginning of the century.
Far from the courtly gentlemen of Hollywood legend,
they were tough, slovenly dressed characters who serviced the rugged flatboat sailors of the day both ashore
and afloat. These gamblers were murderous types who
would often kill those they couldn’t cheat.
When the first steam packets appeared on the river
to cater to higher strata of society, professional gamblers were not wanted and were usually heaved over
the side or stranded on some lonely shore or sandbar.
Slowly, the boat operators began to realize that during
a long card session, players tended to spend huge sums
on liquid refreshments. During one poker game in 1858
the liquor tab for the players came to $791.50. Soon,
the gamblers, now often done up in exquisite finery,
were welcomed with great respect and many ownercaptains would not cast off until they were sure there
was one aboard.
There is little doubt that some gamblers paid off captains for the privilege of being allowed to practice their
Few riverboat gamblers exercised their dishonesty
alone. They either paired up or operated in groups of
up to half a dozen. Often, one member of a crooked
combination would disembark at a stop to be replaced
by another gambler coming aboard there, thus allaying
any suspicions that might be building up among the
victims. A common procedure would be for a confederate to stand among the interested spectators and signal
his partners what cards the suckers held. This trickery,
known as “iteming,” might be achieved by puffing on a
cigar or by scratching certain parts of the anatomy to
indicate certain hands. One such confederate used a
walking stick as a signal, indicating various hands by
the angle of the stick. Perhaps the most ingenious was a
gambler’s partner who played coded snatches of music
on a violin while masquerading as a half-wit.
Among the top riverboat gamblers were Canada Bill
Jones, perhaps the greatest practitioner of three-card
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RIZZO, Frank L.
monte; George Devol; and Dick Hargraves, the richest
of the square gamblers. Another honest gambler was
John Powell, the beau ideal of his river colleagues. Tall,
handsome and always strikingly, though not vulgarly,
dressed, Powell was well educated and a close friend of
Andrew Jackson and Stephen A. Douglas. Although he
turned down a chance to run for Congress from his
native state of Missouri, Powell took a keen interest in
politics. His advice was sought frequently by Louisiana
politicians when he was ashore in the lavish home he
maintained in New Orleans.
Powell once took part in a three-day poker game
aboard the steamer Atlantic, during which he won
more than $50,000 from a rich Louisiana planter
named Jules Devereaux. It was said that in his most
successful years—from 1845 to 1858—he netted at
least $100,000 a year. In the fall of 1858 Powell won
$8,000 from a young Englishman, who turned up on
deck the next morning, shook hands with fellow passengers and, putting a pistol to his temple, blew his
brains out. The gambler was so unnerved by the event
that he sent the $8,000 and the lad’s luggage (he had
won that as well) to his family in England and retired
from gambling for an entire year. When he returned to
the river, his luck and skill deserted him and he went
through his entire fortune within a year. Powell died in
extreme poverty a few years later, a symbol to other
gamblers of the perils of a guilty conscience.
See also: JAMES ASHBY, GEORGE DEVOL, DICK HARGRAVES, WILLIAM “CANADA BILL” JONES.
will get to them while I’m mayor.” Included among the
“errors in judgment” charged against the police was a
record of interrogating suspects in a way that produced
confessions out of innocent men. According to sworn
testimony, police interrogators would put a telephone
book on a suspect’s head and then hammer on it. In
some cases questioning would continue for 24 hours
straight, with many suspects allegedly beaten in the
back, ribs, kidneys and genitals.
A few of Rizzo’s pithy comments reflected his
regime’s attitude toward law and order. When a mentally retarded white man was proved to have been
wrongfully convicted of murder because of police intimidation and beatings, Rizzo kept the guilty officers on
duty, saying, “These were good men who did nothing
wrong.” When 10 policemen broke nightsticks over a
prostrate black man, Rizzo was led to a whimsical
observation: “It’s easy to break some of these nightsticks
nowadays.” During a religious pilgrimage to Rome in
the midst of student riots, he drew worldwide attention
when he invited Italian officials to send some of their
police to Philadelphia for training on such disturbances.
“We’ll show them how to eat those guys up,” he said,
adding in Calabrese, “Spacco il capo!” Roughly translated the phrase means, “Break their heads.”
Reelected easily to a second term in 1975, Rizzo
moved in 1978 to put through an amendment to the
city charter that would have allowed him to run for a
third term the following year. At first, his proposal was
considered a shoo-in, but as the campaign progressed,
the issue of police brutality came to the fore. Rizzo’s
proposal lost by two to one.
See also: DEEP NIGHTSTICK.
Rizzo, Frank L. (1920–1991) Philadelphia police chief and
mayor
A longtime police chief who became mayor of Philadelphia for eight years, Frank Rizzo built, nurtured and
protected that city’s police force until some regarded it
as one of the toughest and most effective crime-fighting
forces in the country while others, including officials of
the Justice Department, regarded it as “the most brutal
in the nation.”
The son of a policeman, Rizzo left high school without graduating and joined the force in 1943, becoming—in his own words—“the toughest cop in
America.” Immensely popular with the public because
of his outspoken calls for law and order, he moved
steadily up the ladder to the post of commissioner and
in 1972 became mayor, the first incumbent police chief
ever elected to that office.
Although the department then came under the nominal rule of Joseph F. O’Neill, in fact it remained the
exclusive province of Rizzo. “When it comes to the
police department,” Rizzo said, “I’ll be there to defend
them even if they make errors in judgment. Nobody
Roach Guards
early 19th-century New York City gang
Originally formed in the 1820s as a street gang that
protected certain New York liquor sellers in the Five
Points section, the Roach Guards were Irish toughs
who would often rampage through the city committing
robberies and murders.
When not working as murderers and thieves, the
Roach Guards fought pitched battles with other gangs,
especially the hated Bowery Boys and the Dead Rabbits, the latter being an offshoot of their own organization. The Roach Guards, who could call on perhaps
500 warriors, even had a battle uniform consisting of
pantaloons with a blue stripe. The Dead Rabbits were a
group of dissidents who wanted a more-disciplined attitude toward organized crime activities and more
onslaughts into the Bowery area. Of about equal size,
the two gangs fought many great “slugger battles,” but
whenever some hated outside gang would invade the
Five Points, they would immediately unite against the
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ROBERT’S Hill stagecoach robbery
new threat. The Roach Guards started to decline in
importance in the 1850s and failed to survive the Civil
War as an important gang.
See also: DEAD RABBITS.
dance Kid, Black Jack Ketchum, Elza Lay, Bob Lee,
George Curry, O. C. Hanks, Harry Tracy, Dave Lant
and the Logans of Missouri.
See also: HOLE IN THE WALL.
road agent spin
Robert’s Hill stagecoach robbery
until Great Brink’s robbery
gunman’s trick
A Western gunman’s deadly deception when surrendering his shooting iron, the “road agent spin,” or “border
roll,” involved extending the weapon butt first but
keeping the index finger in the guard and suddenly
spinning the gun back into firing position. It was not an
easy maneuver and many who tried fumbled it and lost
their lives in the process.
Perhaps the most famous feat of this type—real or
imaginary—involved the notorious Texas killer Wes
Hardin and Marshal Wild Bill Hickok of Abilene.
According to the legend, Hickok found Hardin and
some buddies playing tenpins in a bowling alley. Seeing
the Texan was wearing pistols in defiance of a local
ordinance, Hickok ordered Hardin to surrender them,
at the same time drawing his own six-gun.
“I said all right,” Hardin recalled later, “and pulled
them out of the scabbard, but while he was reaching for
them, I reversed them and whirled them over on him
with the muzzles in his face, springing back at the same
time. I told him to put his pistols up, which he did.”
Hickok’s more ardent admirers were enraged that
someone could make such a claim about their hero, but
the story may well have been true. Hardin apparently
wore his guns quite a bit in Abilene and evidently the
marshal never, or never after that incident, attempted to
take them from him.
robber’s roost
biggest holdup
Stagecoach robberies were common in the Old West,
but the really successful jobs, including the greatest of
all, were the holdups of “six-horse limiteds” carrying
gold dust—a cargo that shippers tried to keep secret—
to the mint in San Francisco.
A special 10-horse limited belonging to the Oregon
and California Stage Co. left Jacksonville, Oregon Territory in May 1857 carrying the almost unheard-of sum
of $500,000 in gold dust. The company’s deception, or
attempted deception, was even more elaborate than
usual in such cases: while the stage was scheduled to
arrive in San Francisco, it would instead head for Portland, and from there the cargo, and the fooled passengers as well, would be sent on by boat to San Francisco.
The added horsepower would make the stage
almost immune to road agents trying to catch it in the
open expanse of the Rogue River Valley, especially
since it would be driven by the legendary Jack Montgomery, just about the best driver in the business. As
added protection, extra guards had joined the stage
outside of Jacksonville, so as not to attract attention.
The only danger would be in hill country, where an
ambush was possible.
By the time the stage thundered toward Robert’s Hill
in the middle of the night, only 10 minutes away from
the Mountain House Stage Station, Montgomery and
the guards relaxed. The road on Robert’s Hill was too
narrow to allow for an ambush; and once down the hill
the stage would again be in open country and unstoppable under Montgomery’s drive.
But at the bottom a band of road agents waited
while one of the gang climbed high above the road. As
the stage passed beneath him, the man detonated a
large explosive charge that set off an avalanche of rock
and dirt, burying the horses. Montgomery managed to
save his own life by dropping the reins, kicking the
boot cover loose, drawing his knife and cutting the driver’s belt—all in one motion. He leaped clear and tumbled down a steep grade, a lighted cigar still clenched in
his teeth. His shotgun rider was a bloody, mangled
corpse and the hind-boot guard was thrown clear but
left unconscious. Three of the passengers were killed
while the rest were also knocked unconscious.
As the road agents charged up Robert’s Hill, only
Montgomery was in any shape to offer resistance. As
the driver later revealed, he fired until he ran out of
western outlaw hideout
Along with Hole in the Wall and Brown’s Hole, Robber’s Roost was one of the nearly impregnable hideouts
used by the bandits of the West.
Located in Wayne County in southeastern Utah,
Robber’s Roost lay high on a plateau on the summit of
the San Rafael Swell. Bounded on the east by the Green
River, it was a desolate and arid place with no more
than four or five springs where water could be
obtained. Other than the Green River, there were only
two routes into Robber’s Roost: by way of Hanksville
and the other from Dandy Crossing. It was futile for
lawmen to enter Robber’s Roost, because their quarry,
perched in their vantage point, would have too much
advance warning and the chances of even a large party
making it out safely were poor. Bandits could enter the
roost, lick their wounds and plan new jobs in safety.
Among the many leading bandits who often made
Robber’s Roost home were Butch Cassidy, the Sun761
ROBLES, Richard
bullets and then he fell silent, as several road agents
came down the grade looking for him. One stumbled
over him in the darkness, and the pair struggled until
Montgomery jammed his still burning cigar into the
man’s eye. As the bandit screamed in agony, Montgomery pulled a knife from his boot and plunged it
between the man’s shoulder blades. The stage driver
then tossed himself further down the grade. The other
outlaws found their comrade and threw him across one
of the team mules they had brought to haul off the gold.
By the time Montgomery reached the stage station
and a posse could be mounted, it was dawn and the road
agents and their mules had vanished. The bandits’ trail
lasted only a short distance before the mule tracks
divided in several directions, moving into hill country.
The gold or parts of it could have gone in all, several, few
or only one of the directions the tracks indicated; there
was no way of telling and the robbers got away clean.
The Robert’s Hill holdup galvanized the citizens of
Oregon and, as much as any single event, led to the formation of the famed Oregon Vigilantes. Far more secretive than other vigilante groups, the Oregon Vigilantes
were noted for meting out swift and terrible punishment and never revealing their deeds. There are few
written accounts of their acts. Rumor had it, however,
that the Robert’s Hill bandits were eventually caught
and punished.
According to the story, in 1869 some Umpqua Indians reported to the vigilantes that a group of suspicious-looking whites were holed up in a cave in the
Siskiyou Mountains. The vigilantes caught them and a
fair amount of gold dust in their possession. The suspects claimed they had accidently stumbled across the
hoard in the cavern. However, according to a longheld
theory, the road agents had buried their loot in several
spots and would return from time to time to retrieve
parts of it. What really doomed this band was the fact
that one of them was missing an eye, as though it had
been burned out, perhaps with a cigar. That was proof
enough for the vigilantes and they strung up their prisoners on the spot.
The story may well be apocryphal. What is certain is
that the Robert’s Hill stage robbery was the largest of
its kind and held the record as the most lucrative armed
holdup in this country for 90 years until the Brink’s job
in 1947.
Robles, Richard
of 183 acquittals in murder cases against less than a
score of convictions and became known as an attorney
who had a penchant for freeing murderers. In California courtroom circles the saying went, “A guilty man is
guilty unless he hires Earl Rogers.” Some prosecutors,
no doubt in part out of pique, insisted that around the
turn of the century Rogers seldom went to a murder
trial without having bribed at least one juror on a murder panel. When he secured an acquittal in a case that
the prosecution had considered ironclad, an assistant
prosecutor is said to have cracked, “The bastard has
bought all twelve this time!”
Rogers did play fast and loose with facts and evidence and could drive judges and prosecutors wild by
the way he juggled testimony; swiped or switched
incriminating exhibits; and went through fits of anger,
passion, hysteria or ecstasy, as the situation required, to
divert the attention of the jury from important elements
of the case. However, he was also a brilliant lawyer,
quick, sharp, resourceful. When he was sober, which
probably was less than half the time, he was virtually
unbeatable. As Bill Fallon, at the time noted as the
Great Mouthpiece of Broadway, put it, “Even when
he’s drunk, Earl Rogers is better than any other stonesober lawyer in the whole damned country.”
Fallon no doubt was attracted to his West Coast colleague because of their great similarities. He, like
Rogers, was addicted to the good life, liquor and the
ladies, and both had the oratorical ability to cast a spell
over jurors. But Rogers went one step better than Fallon: he really studied his cases and his juries. He was a
pioneer in compiling files on prospective veniremen and
generally knew plenty about a prospective juror before
he even asked him a question. Often he ingratiated
himself with a juror-to-be by asking him not a single
question, as though he found the man’s appearance and
demeanor most acceptable.
Rogers had a knack for throwing the prosecution off
the scent by sometimes querying a prospective juror
about a phase of the case that he intended to ignore.
While the prosecution scurried about gathering facts on
that element, Rogers struck elsewhere.
There never was a client too venal for Rogers to
defend or for whom he would not try every trick, honest or not, to win an acquittal. Once, Rogers conned a
jury into releasing a procurer who had murdered his
wife, and then brushed away the man’s ardent thanks.
“Get away from me, you slimey pimp,” he said. “You
know you’re guilty as hell!”
Another of his defendants was a man named William
Alford, who had shot and killed a prominent attorney,
Jay E. Hunter, after an altercation in an office building
corridor. Alford, who was seen by several witnesses
standing over the victim with the smoking gun in his
See JANICE WYLIE.
Rogers, Earl (1870–1922) defense lawyer
One of the most colorful defense lawyers ever to grace
a courtroom, Earl Rogers compiled an enviable record
762
ROGERS, Earl
hand, quickly confessed to the police. Then Rogers, a
young lawyer still in his twenties and much in need of
clients, entered the case. He had not graduated from
law school, having first worked as a reporter on several
California papers and then served an apprenticeship
with a law firm. Admitted to the bar in 1897, he took
cases most lawyers refused to handle, considering them
lost causes. Rogers quickly gained a reputation by
pulling miracles in a number of them, including the
Alford case. Preparing for the trial, he studied medical
texts day and night and consulted with a number of
doctors about a man’s insides. He even visited a hospital to examine a human stomach in a glass jar.
Alford retracted his confession. It had, Rogers
announced, been beaten out of him. The lawyer did not
bother to dispute the prosecution’s contention that bad
blood had existed for some time between the victim
and the defendant. What he demanded was that the victim’s stomach be brought into court. Why was that necessary? the judge asked.
“Why, to prove that the state’s case is false. My
client, Your Honor, was not standing when he shot
Hunter. He was lying face up on the floor. Hunter
knocked him down with the heavy cane he always carried and was leaning over beating him when my client
shot in self-defense.”
When the victim’s stomach was presented in court,
Rogers demonstrated to the somewhat awed jurors
how the bullet could have entered the victim’s navel
and traveled upward through the intestines if the man
had been bent over administering a beating to his poor
client. The prosecution made the mistake of trying to
counter Rogers’ claims, so that in the end the jury was
so fascinated about how the killing could have occurred
that it did not consider how it had occurred. Selfdefense was the verdict.
Rogers had his own way of riding roughshod over
opposing witnesses, in an era when restraints on lawyers
were somewhat less strictly enforced than in later years.
Often, he would ask a witness if it were not a fact that
he was in the pay of the district attorney. When the witness indignantly denied the accusation, Rogers would
then mention a name and ask if it was not true that the
witness had been convicted under that alias in another
state on some charge in “the year of 1904.”
The witness would scream a denial, and Rogers
would say: “My mistake. I meant 1905.”
Another denial and Rogers would ask, “1906?” Yet
another denial and Rogers would smile. “1907?”
The point was driven home to the jury that somehow the witness was unsavory, without the presentation of any facts to substantiate the implication.
One time, Rogers accused William J. Burns, founder
of the Burns International Detective Agency, of pulling
a sword out of a cane as he was cross-examining him.
Rogers was standing near Burns and Burns shifted in
the witness chair, causing the cane he carried to rise in
the air a bit.
“Your Honor!” Rogers shouted. “The witness has a
sword in that cane!”
Burns was stunned, too stunned to respond as
Rogers continued: “Make him open that cane, Your
Honor! Make him take out the sword and give it to the
bailiff.”
Burns surrendered his cane, finally finding words to
deny the preposterous charge.
Rogers shrugged. “My mistake,” he said. “But he
does carry a sword in a cane that looks just like this
one.” Then Rogers glanced at the jury. He had scored
points with a very silly charge.
Rogers was just as flamboyant in his private life as
he was in court. He affected wine-red dressing gowns.
In restaurants he selected his own steaks and mixed
his own salads. He used perfume. By 1911, however,
he was more a drinker than a bon vivant, but his reputation was still great enough that Clarence Darrow
hired him as his main defense counsel when he was
brought to trial in the aftermath of the Los Angeles
Times bombing case, in which 21 persons had died.
Darrow was accused of having his associate, Bert
Franklin, offer a $5,000 bribe to a juror. Under pressure from Burns detectives, Franklin, a former law
officer who had set up an agency to investigate
prospective jurors, said he had done so on orders from
Darrow.
The case reeked of frame-up, and Rogers jumped at
the chance to defend the great Darrow. “I’ve been slipping somewhat,” he told acquaintances, “and I need
Darrow almost as much as he needs me. Selecting me to
defend the nation’s acknowledged premier criminal
lawyer will eventually place me in Darrow’s class.”
As it was, Darrow got off, but it is a moot question
as to who was responsible. Darrow and Rogers feuded
constantly about courtroom tactics and the former
became upset with Rogers because of his constant
drinking and the fact that he acted like a lawyer who
considered his client guilty. By the end of the trial, Darrow had taken over much of his own defense and made
an eloquent l l/2 day summation in his own behalf that
is generally credited with winning him an acquittal. Yet
Rogers added a terse few sentences to the jury that
obviously made a most telling point. He said:
Will you tell me how any sane, sensible man who
knows anything about the law business—and this
defendant has been in it for thirty-five years—could
make himself go to a detective and say to him: just
buy all the jurors you want. I put my whole life, my
763
ROGERS, George W
reputation, I put everything I have into your hands. I
trust you absolutely. I never knew you until two or
three months ago and I don’t know much about you
now. But there you are. Go to it.
In Rogers’ last trial he lost his client to the gallows.
A few days later, he was picked out of the gutter dead
drunk and sent to an institution. When he came out,
he opened a shabby little law office but was evicted for
nonpayment of rent. In February 1922 Rogers died.
He was living in a cheap lodging house on the edge of
Los Angeles’ Chinatown. A few minutes before he
died, he had bummed a quarter from the house clerk to
get a drink.
See also: CLARENCE DARROW.
That made for a solid one-two punch that brought
victory, but the two lawyers parted less than friends.
Thereafter, Rogers scored more courtroom wins but
took some losses as well, especially when he was “on
the sauce.”
Late in 1918 his second wife left him because of his
drinking, the second spouse to do so, and the rest of the
way was downhill. Sometimes, Rogers had funds after
a legal victory but more often he did not. In one of his
last notable wins, he cleared a man charged with willfully avoiding the draft during World War I. The man
had gone to a professional nurse who was a scout for
an optometrist who specialized in supplying glasses
that weakened rather than improved the sight of
wealthy cowards.
The optometrist and the nurse were tried along with
the alleged draft dodger but the pair had their own
counsel. When Rogers finished with the jury, they
agreed with him that it was not his client’s fault he went
to an eye man who was so incompetent that he was fitted incorrectly. Why had he gone to the optometrist to
get his vision improved so he could fight for his country. The jury cleared the defendant but convicted both
the optometrist and the nurse.
Rogers, George W. (1898–1958) hero and murderer
Few men have gone from such heights of heroism to
depths of villainy as dramatically as George Rogers. He
first achieved national fame when the luxury liner
Morro Castle caught fire enroute back to New York
from Havana, Cuba on September 8, 1934. One hundred thirty-four passengers perished. Rogers, the ship’s
radioman, sent the SOS that brought help and saved
many lives, remaining at his post with flames licking
close to him and his shoes actually starting to smoke.
He suffered superficial but very painful burns. When
Rogers returned to his hometown of Bayonne, N.J., he
was greeted by a brass band, heaped with flowers,
embraced by the mayor and presented with a $200 gold
medal.
Rogers was hired by the Bayonne police force as an
assistant to Lt. Vincent J. Doyle, chief of the police
George Rogers (right) emerged as the hero in the Morro Castle tragedy, having to be dragged from his wireless key
aboard the burning ship. He testified against William Warms (left), the acting captain, and the chief engineer, both of
whom were sentenced to prison but subsequently had their verdicts reversed. Later evidence also pointed to Rogers as
the real villain in the ship fire.
764
ROGERS, Mary Cecilia
were James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving.
Fitz-Green Halleck was so taken with her that he wrote
a poem to her loveliness.
On Sunday morning July 25, Mary left her mother’s
boardinghouse on Nassau Street to visit her sister.
Three days later, her body was found in the Hudson
River near Hoboken. The case was never solved,
although there were several theories about the murder.
According to one popular version, Mary had been
abducted, raped and strangled by one or more
unknown assailants. Another theory had her going
aboard a ferry to Hoboken with “a dark complexioned
young man,” perhaps a naval officer, who choked her
to death for some unexplained reason. Yet another theory was that she had died during an illegal abortion
and her body had been dumped in the river. An autopsy
performed by a coroner indicated she had been sexually
attacked several times just prior to her death and before
that time she had been “of chaste character.” Later, the
coroner was to say the autopsy had been rushed and
not performed under optimum conditions and that
some of his findings might have been wrong. Exactly
which ones it was never made clear.
Very little was revealed by the so-called police investigation of the affair. First, the New York police didn’t
even want to investigate the murder because the body
had been found in New Jersey and was thus none of
their affair. New Jersey felt the body had simply been
dumped there and it was New York’s problem. Such
was the sorry state of the police system at the time. The
city had no real crime-fighting forces. At night, the
streets were patrolled by leatherheads, who were little
more than night watchmen and not even very effective
at that, earning a little over $1 a day. During the day
protection was provided by roundsmen, who were
unsuccessful stevedores, wagoneers, laborers and
porters and certainly not criminologists. They got no
salary at all, making their living from the fees they
received serving legal papers and from the rewards they
might get from robbery victims whose property they
recovered. Murder cases got short shrift from the
roundsmen since there was no profit in them unless the
city or some private party posted a reward.
In the case of Mary Cecilia Rogers, the newspapers
caused such a storm of protest that the roundsmen
were forced to make an investigation. Not surprisingly,
they made no arrests. The closest they came to a solution was bringing in for questioning a young married
man who had picked up a girl, taken her to Staten
Island, caused her to miss the last ferry back by manipulating her watch and then made some advances. The
young lady spurned him, and he left her peevish with
frustration. After the murder was revealed, he told a
friend he feared the girl might have been Mary Cecilia
radio bureau. Four years later, he was on his way to
prison after seriously wounding Doyle with a planted
bomb in an effort to take over his job. Labeled a “psychopathic personality” by a psychiatrist, Rogers got 12
to 20 years. In 1942 he was released from prison
because his skills as a radio technician were needed by
the armed forces to aid the war effort. However, once
the services got a look at Rogers’ record, they refused
to take him. Nevertheless, the disgraced hero was permitted to remain on parole.
In sentencing Rogers for the attack on Lt. Doyle, the
judge accused him of having “the mind of a fiend,” and
after his release the former hero went about proving
him right. In 1953 in Bayonne Rogers murdered 83year-old William Hummel, to whom he owed $7,500,
and Hummel’s 58-year-old unmarried daughter. Just
before the killings, Hummel had been pressing him for
the money because he was preparing to retire to
Florida. Hummel had drawn his savings from a bank
and had $2,400 in his home when he and Rogers had
an argument about the debt. Rogers picked up a footstool and crushed the old man’s skull with it. He then
went upstairs and did the same to Hummel’s daughter,
who was unaware of what had happened.
Well-known to the Bayonne police, Rogers, who had
been deeply in debt just before the murders, was
quickly identified as the slayer of the Hummels when
he went on a spending spree with the stolen $2,400.
For the second time Rogers was sent to the New Jersey
State Prison at Trenton, this time for life, which proved
to be a little over four years. He died there of a heart
attack on January 10, 1958. Obituary writers at the
time felt obliged to repeat the facts about his heroism
aboard the Morro Castle, but a 1972 study of the disaster, Shipwreck: The Strange Fate of the Morro Castle by
Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts, produced
some very damning evidence which indicated that
Rogers, the much-acclaimed hero, may well have been
the villain behind it all. They suggested he had poisoned the ship’s captain and then started the fatal fire
with a small time bomb. His supposed heroism at the
radio, according to their version, had been nothing
more than a cover-up.
Rogers, Mary Cecilia (1820–1841) murder victim
Twenty-one-year-old Mary Cecilia Rogers was a celebrated New York murder victim in 1841 who gained
immortal fame as the model for the victim in Edgar
Allan Poe’s classic story The Mystery of Marie Roget.
Mary, a beautiful woman, worked as a clerk in a
tobacco shop and it seemed that Poe and several other
famous literary lights patronized the place just to
exchange a few words or a smile with her. Among them
765
ROGER’S Barracks
dives. It was said that the underworld’s first bomb was
manufactured in a room in the barracks, leading the
Chicago Times to comment in December 1870, “Such a
discovery in a civilized community seems almost incredible, but there is not the slightest doubt of its truth.”
Plant collected exorbitant rents for making his
premises available for such nefarious purposes, but he
also garnered considerable revenues from so-called
straight rackets, including dance halls, brothels and
deadfalls, i.e., saloons that specialized in robbing
strangers. Special cubicles were rented out to streetwalkers, male degenerates and procurers, who would
have young girls raped in the cells by a half-dozen men
as a preparation for their assignment to bordellos.
Plant weighed barely over 100 pounds but was
known as a vicious fighter. Although always armed
with knife, pistol and bludgeon, his favorite weapon
was his own teeth, which he would readily use on a
foe’s ears or nose with maiming efficiency. The only
person Plant could not control was his wife, a fearsome
creature of 250 pounds who would often pick him up
with one hand and spank him with the other. Mrs.
Plant ran the family’s brothel interests and lent a hand
herself during peak hours. She also produced an estimated 15 children, all of whom were cunning little rascals credited by journalists with being able to pick a
pocket almost before they could walk.
Roger’s Barracks was seldom bothered by the police
because, as Cook recorded, “Roger paid his toll with
exemplary regularity.” By 1870 Plant had collected a
fortune, and he abruptly shuttered all his establishments and moved to the country to become a gentleman of leisure and patron of the turf. The Plant
children, however, appear to have carried on the criminal tradition of the family, several finding their way
onto the police blotters for robbery and sundry other
crimes while in their teens. In 1894 English journalist
William T. Stead published the Black List of Chicago
property, which named Roger Plant, Jr., as the operator
of three saloons and two bordellos and listed two sisters, Daisy and Kitty Plant, as the operators of adjoining brothels on South Clark Street. It was said that a
secret passage allowed harlots to pass from one of these
establishments to the other as needed and that it was
quite possible a customer venturing from one place to
the next might well find himself being entertained by
the same female clad in a different colored wig.
Rogers and that he was fleeing the city because he didn’t wish to get involved. He was apprehended and
returned to New York, but the real lady of that misadventure came forward and cleared him, quite proud
that the newspapers had duly informed their readers of
her most honorable behavior.
A year after the murder Poe published Marie Roget,
setting the story in Paris. He solved the Roget murder
with some brilliant deductive processes that had little
relevance to the Rogers case, although several of the
characters were clearly copied from real life. Later on,
Poe’s editors appended a footnote to the story claiming
that the author’s version was fully confirmed in the
Rogers case by two subsequent confessions. In fact,
there never were any confessions worthy of belief. Over
the years interest in the case was revived periodically
whenever a principal or assumed principal died or otherwise came to public attention. When Mary’s employer
in the cigar store died, it was revealed that he had said
he knew the identity of her killer. But it turned out
Mary’s ghost had been the source of his information and
the octogenarian was more than a touch senile.
While the Mary Cecilia Rogers case remained
unsolved, it had an important impact on New York.
The stir over the lack of effective police protection and
the inefficiency of the roundsman system sparked a
reform movement. By 1845 the police force was
entirely reconstituted. It did not become a totally efficient operation at once, but at least a start was made in
the development of a professional police system.
See also: LEATHERHEADS, ROUNDSMEN.
Roger’s Barracks
underworld refuge and vice area
In the 1850s a diminutive Englishman from Yorkshire,
Roger Plant, came up with the idea that what Chicago
needed was the Compleat Underworld Refuge, which
he set about establishing at the northeast corner of
Wells and Monroe streets. He started with just a single
two-story house and then expanded straight down the
block, adding one rookery after another until he had
what a journalist of the day called the “very core of
corruption.” By the mid-1860s Plant’s dives lined both
sides of the street for almost a block. The police came
to call the conglomeration Roger’s Barracks. Journalist
Frederick Francis Cook described it as “one of the most
talked about if not actually one of the wickedest places
on the continent” and as “a refuge for the very nethermost strata of the underworld—the refuse of the
Bridewell.”
A tunnel led from Roger’s Barracks under Wells
Street to the various underworld strongholds between
that street and the Chicago River. All sorts of stolen
goods were funneled through it and out the various
Roosevelt, Theodore (1858–1919) would-be
assassination victim
On October 14, 1912 Theodore Roosevelt, then running for the presidency as the Bull Moose candidate,
left a dinner at Milwaukee’s Hotel Gilpatrick to deliver
766
ROSE, Della
Inspector Alexander S. Williams and Big Bill Devery,
who for a time even held the post of chief of police.
Roosevelt won acclaim for starting the process of
promotion based on merit rather than politics, a revolutionary idea in 19th century New York. He also
pioneered a bicycle squad, a telephonic communications system and special training for new recruits,
another unheard-of procedure. Later, Roosevelt lent
powerful support to the Pennsylvania State Constabulary, which was to become the model for modern
state police organizations. In 1908, as president, he
set up the Bureau of Investigation, the forerunner of
the FBI.
An admirer of men of action, Roosevelt made some
lamentable mistakes, for example, naming Pat Garrett,
the killer of Billy the Kid, to the post of customs collector. Garrett was murdered in 1908. In 1905 he had
tried to appoint the aging Bat Masterson to the post of
U.S. marshal for the Oklahoma Territory. Masterson,
who realized the president did not understand that an
era had ended, declined the offer as diplomatically as
possible. “I am not the man for the job,” he wrote Roosevelt, “. . . and if I were marshal some youngster
would try to put me out because of my reputation. I
would be bait for grown-up kids who had fed on dime
novels. I would have to kill or be killed. No sense to
that. I have taken my guns off, and I don’t ever want to
put them on again.”
a campaign speech at the Milwaukee Auditorium. As
he entered an open car, a plump, short little man with
receding light brown hair stepped to within six feet of
him and fired a .38 Police Positive. The bullet hit Roosevelt in the chest, and he lurched into the backseat of
the car. When the assailant leveled his gun for a second
shot, an associate of Roosevelt, Elbert E. Martin,
downed him with a flying tackle. Several policemen
pounced on the would-be assassin and dragged him off.
Fortunately for Roosevelt, the bullet had penetrated
a metal spectacles case in his breast pocket and gone
through a 50-page speech manuscript that had been
folded twice. It had then smashed into a rib but most of
its lethal force had already been spent.
Roosevelt’s assailant was a 36-year-old ex-saloon
owner named John Nepomuk Schrank, who was suffering from a severe mental illness. On September 15,
1901, the day after William McKinley had died of an
assassin’s bullet and Roosevelt succeeded to the presidency, Schrank dreamed that McKinley’s ghost came to
him and accused Roosevelt of the murder. From that
day on, Schrank hated Roosevelt, and when Roosevelt
dared to run for what Schrank considered to be a third
term, he loathed him even more. Then one night in
1912 McKinley’s ghost reappeared in Schrank’s dreams
and begged him not to let a “murderer” become president. Schrank determined to kill Roosevelt, and he left
his home in New York and followed the candidate
around the country. He got close enough in Chicago
and Chattanooga to get in a shot, but he lost his nerve.
In Milwaukee his nerve did not fail him.
The bullet had entered Roosevelt’s chest so deeply
that doctors decided against removing it and the expresident carried it in his body until his death from natural causes in 1919. He said the bullet bothered him no
more than if he were carrying it in his vest pocket.
Schrank was declared insane and spent the rest of his
life in mental institutions in Wisconsin. When
Theodore Roosevelt died, Schrank said he was sorry
because “he was a great American.” However, when
Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran for a third term in
1940, Schrank was enraged. He told doctors that if he
were free he would shoot this Roosevelt also. Schrank
died of a heart ailment on September 15, 1943, exactly
42 years after he first dreamed of McKinley’s ghost.
Rose, Della (1873–?) dance hall girl and Wild Bunch
companion
Della Rose was more of a hard-riding lass than Etta
Place, the companion of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (Harry Longbaugh). She shared a sleeping
bag with many a Hole-in-the-Waller after her husband,
real or assumed, Edward Bullion, brought her to the
outlaw hideout in 1889.
Della was a veteran dance hall girl from the
Wyoming Territory. Her real given name was Laura,
and she had grown up near Austin, Tex. She had six
brothers, at least two of them rustlers, and three sisters.
Her mother was an industrious, God-fearing ranch
widow who in one letter complained she could not
cope with her litter. “I can’t stand another minute of
it,” she wrote Laura, whom she regarded as the prize of
the brood, perhaps indicating the extent of her ordeal.
Shortly after taking up residence in the Hole, Della
started making the rounds with the boys, Bullion either
disappearing or getting lost in the shuffle. Around
|1896 she made a permanent alliance with a bank robber named Bill Carver, who had recently joined up with
the Wild Bunch. Thereafter, she and Carver rode side
by side when the gang went out on raids. This happy
Roosevelt, Theodore (1858–1919) New York police
commissioner
Theodore Roosevelt’s reputation as a reformer originated during his three years as a police commissioner
in New York City, from 1895 to 1897. He was instrumental in rooting out departmental corruption in the
entrenched, politically protected regimes of Chief
767
ROSE man of Sing Sing
partnership ended abruptly in April 1901, when Carver
was killed in Sonora, Tex.
Della grieved suitably for some weeks before attaching herself to another Buncher, the Tall Texan, Ben Kilpatrick. This romance was definitely the real thing, but
it was to last only until November of that year, when
she and Kilpatrick were caught in a St. Louis hotel
room with $7,000, what was left of their share of the
loot from a Wild Bunch train robbery in Montana. Kilpatrick got sentenced to 15 years and Della to five.
Naturally, the Rose of the Bunch promised the Tall
Texan she would be waiting for him upon his release.
That turned out to be in 1911, but by that time Della
Rose had just faded away.
See also: BEN KILPATRICK.
yacht, even a couple of race horses, but they were all
gone now. He managed to hold off creditors only by
borrowing heavily from his employer, Joseph Pulitzer.
Finally, one night in September 1918 he shot Mrs.
Chapin in her sleep, putting the revolver to her head as
they lay in bed together. In the morning Chapin dressed
and set off for Central Park, where he was determined
to shoot himself. Instead, he wound up the next day in
Prospect Park reading his own press notices after his
wife’s body had been found. Then he surrendered,
telling police: “This is the first time in five years that I
have been happy. The sooner I go to the electric chair
the better.”
Chapin did not get the chair but rather 20 years to
life in Sing Sing, where he was to become a most
unusual prisoner. He was made editor of the prison
newspaper, The Star of Hope, later called The Bulletin.
It became a prison version of the flamboyant World,
filled with spicy confessions of Sing Sing inmates.
Among the typical stories was one of a bigamist named
Wilson who had had seven wives at the same time.
Chapin urged Wilson to keep his tale “heavy on the
human interest; tell ’em all about love.” Chapin headlined the account, “The Man with the Seven Wives.”
Wilson told too much and a stir was created in Albany,
the state capital. The Bulletin folded, and Chapin was
out of his last editorial job. However, he claimed
proudly that under his tenure circulation of the prison
newspaper had soared.
Warden Lawes kept a file of letters he received about
Chapin, few of which were favorable. One read:
Rose Man of Sing Sing (1858–1930) editor and
murderer
Warden Lewis E. Lawes once described murderer
Charles Chapin as “among the outstanding personalities of Sing Sing’s prison population.” Chapin has gone
down in prison folklore as the Rose Man of Sing Sing.
For 20 years before he entered prison, Chapin was
known as the most autocratic and tyrannical city editor
in the New York newspaper industry, famed as the
New York Evening World executive who would fire a
reporter on Christmas Eve. Once when his men uncovered a murder that had been labeled an accident, he
chortled that it had “been a good day. . . . I’ve started
a man on the way to the electric chair.”
Staffers repaid Chapin in kind. When he was
reported as too ill to come to work one day, a member
of his staff, reporter Irvin S. Cobb, volunteered, “I hope
it’s nothing trivial.”
Chapin loved to hobnob with the extremely wealthy
and lived far beyond his means; early in his life he ran
through $50,000 left to him by his great-uncle, Russell
Sage, the famous Wall Street financier. Chapin lost far
more than he could afford in the stock market, and in
the summer of 1917 he was faced with a mountain of
debt. He was also not in the best of health and worried
about leaving his wife, Nellie Beebe, penniless. He had
been married to her for 35 years and had been an affectionate, though neither a faithful nor a particularly
thoughtful, husband.
Chapin took his wife on a trip to Washington, D.C.
after borrowing a revolver from an aide to the New
York City police commissioner. He planned to put a
gardenia in his buttonhole, escort his wife to a musical
show and then kill her and himself. However, he lost
his nerve and the couple returned to New York. Somehow, Chapin survived another year on his job while his
financial situation worsened. He had owned a car, a
I knew Mr. Chapin long and from a certain angle intimately in the years he was at the New York World.
That is, I knew intimately the anguished stories of the
hundreds and thousands of young writers whose lives
he made a living hell. He was the worst curse our
reportorial craft ever enjoyed. I used to think him a sort
of devil sitting on enthroned power in the World office
and making Park Row gutters flow red with the blood
of ambitious young men. If you enjoy him I hope you
keep him long and carefully.
Yet over the years Lawes and his wife and, indeed,
the inmates of the prison saw a different Chapin.
Although for a time despondent at losing his prison
newspaper, he came to the warden with another suggestion, asking that he be allowed to replace the gravel, cinders and crushed rock on some of the prison grounds
with “a little garden.” Lawes agreed but said there were
no funds available. That was no problem for Chapin.
He wrote to garden magazines and soon bone meal,
fertilizer, rose plants, tulip bulbs and hundreds of
pounds of seed rained down on Sing Sing from manu768
ROSELLI, John
facturers and suppliers. Chapin grew rose plants, cannas and dahlias all over the prison, even around the
death house. Both Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray paused
in turn to inhale the fragrance of Chapin’s roses before
entering the death house in 1928.
Some of Chapin’s old coworkers visited him in
prison and stared in disbelief at the gardens of the nowfamed Rose Man of Sing Sing. Cobb, Arthur Brisbane
and others made the trek up the Hudson to visit and
marvel at the new Chapin, a man whom scores of convicts now called Uncle Charlie. Horticulturists visited
Sing Sing to view Chapin’s work. So did Adolph
Lewisohn, the philanthropist, who then sent a truck
load of plants from his own gardens.
Then in 1930, while a new drainage system was
being installed in the prison, a steam shovel gutted
much of Chapin’s beloved gardens. In 20,000 Years in
Sing Sing Lawes wrote: “I think it affected him deeply.
He was never the same. He was suddenly the helpless
invalid, unable to carry on.”
Chapin died on December 13, 1930. His last words
to Lawes were: “I want to die. I want to get it over with.”
Lawes got scores of letters from journalists around
the country who had once served under Chapin. After
his death, none were critical of him. One wrote, “As an
old Evening World man who owes whatever success he
has attained to the fact that he received his early training under the greatest newspaper general in the world, I
send you this word in memory of Charles Chapin.”
Rose of Cimarron
virtue to Bitter Creek Newcomb when she was 12, 13,
14 or 15 years old or thereabouts, according to various
chroniclers.
Bitter Creek Newcomb himself gave some credence
to the heart-rending tale of the Rose of Cimarron
when, some 20 months after the gunfight, on May 2,
1895, the much-hunted outlaw returned to the Dunn
Ranch on the Cimarron River to visit with Rosa. Here,
the tender tale ends in harsh reality. Bitter Creek was
shot dead by Rosa’s brothers, who then claimed the
$5,000 reward on his head. Rosa went off and married
another beau.
See also: INGALLS, OKLAHOMA TERRITORY, BATTLE OF;
GEORGE “BITTER CREEK” NEWCOMB.
Roselli, John (1905–1976) Mafia leader
Like his mentor, Chicago mafia boss Sam Giancana,
John Roselli was tied closely, by his own admission, to
CIA plans to assassinate Fidel Castro of Cuba, who
had closed down the mob’s gambling operations in
Havana upon taking power. Roselli at the time was
running the swank Sans Souci gambling casino in that
city. In July 1975 he testified before a special hearing
of the Senate Intelligence Committee that he and Giancana had been recruited to kill the Cuban leader, something he looked upon as a “patriotic” endeavor.
According to his testimony, both poisoned pills and
poisoned cigars had been considered by the CIA, but
for some reason the mobsters had bungled the mission.
Roselli’s testimony came five days after Giancana was
murdered in his Oak Park, Ill. home. Apparently,
Roselli felt he was safe about implicating the CIA but
refused to discuss Mafia matters.
Being one of the more adventurous of the Mafia
leaders, Roselli had long been successful at carrying off
daring missions. In the late 1930s Roselli, as the
Chicago mob’s Hollywood man, had extorted $1 million from movie companies by threatening to have a
Mafia-controlled stagehands union slow down production. He did three years in prison for that caper but
remained a Hollywood luminary, helping to produce
some crime films, such as He Walked by Night.
Despite his past, Roselli made it into the Friars Club,
much to the regret of a number of other members. In
1968 he and four others were convicted of swindling a
number of Friars, including singer Tony Martin and
comedians Phil Silvers and Zeppo Marx, out of some
$400,000 in a typical Mafia crooked card game.
Observers on an upper floor used peepholes to read
the cards the players were holding; they then signaled
key information to a confederate in the game, who
picked up the messages on equipment he wore in a girdle under his clothes.
western outlaw heroine
Fabled in story and song, the Rose of Cimarron provided sundry joys and a touch of glamour to the Oklahoma Territory’s Doolin gang. She became a legendary
figure following the Battle of Ingalls on September 1,
1893 by going to the aid of her lover, Bitter Creek
Newcomb, after he had been downed with a leg
wound. Most sources claim she dashed to his side with
a new supply of ammunition and/or shielded his body
with her own as lawmen tried to finish him off. According to other reports, she picked up a gun and covered
Bitter Creek as he hobbled to safety. There are many
more versions, some who were there in the thick of the
fighting even contending that there was no woman on
the scene at all.
Such doubts have never dampened the enthusiasm of
the myth makers and balladeers, and they have trotted
forth several likely females as the genuine Rose. One
was named Rose O’Leary, who has been characterized
variously as a tough Western gun moll or a tender angel
of mercy. Then again, the Rose of Cimarron was said to
have been Rosa Dunn, who at least had some connection with the Doolin gang and supposedly lost her
769
ROSS, Charles Brewster
After his CIA testimony Roselli laughed at his
lawyer’s advice to hire a bodyguard. He still apparently
was supervising the Chicago mob’s gambling interests
while living quietly in Plantation, Fla. “Who would
want to kill an old man like me?” he said. Whoever did
went about it in the classic manner. Sometime in the
summer of 1976, he was killed and his body was sealed
in an empty 55-gallon oil drum. Heavy chains were
wrapped around the drum and holes punched in its
sides. It was dumped in the waters off Florida and
should have stayed down indefinitely, but decomposition of the body produced gases that lifted the drum to
the surface.
See also: SAM “MOMO” GIANCANA.
William Mosher and Joey Douglas were both shot in
a burglary attempt in Brooklyn. Before dying, Mosher
admitted the pair had been involved in the Ross
kidnapping, but he would not reveal the whereabouts
of the child.
Ross, Charles Brewster (1870–?) kidnapping victim
When four-year-old Charley Ross was taken from his
Philadelphia home on July 1, 1874 and held for ransom, it was the first case of this type to achieve nationwide notoriety; “poor little Charley Ross” soon became
a household phrase.
The boy’s wealthy father, Christian K. Ross,
received a note demanding $20,000 and immediately
contacted the police, although he had been cautioned
not to. Ross then entered into tortuous negotiations
with the kidnappers, who set up three separate meetings over the next few months to collect the ransom.
The criminals did not keep any of these appointments,
apparently because they correctly suspected the police
had set traps.
Meanwhile, New York City police identified a
known criminal, William Mosher, as one of the kidnappers by matching his handwriting with that on the ransom notes. On the night of December 13, 1874,
Mosher and another notorious burglar, Joey Douglass,
were both fatally wounded while attempting a burglary
in Brooklyn. Before dying, Mosher admitted the kidnapping and named Douglass as an accomplice. He
would not reveal the whereabouts of the child, however. Suspicion now centered on William Westervelt, an
ex-New York policeman with an unsavory reputation.
Westervelt was soon identified as the man seen near the
Ross home before the crime who had asked numerous
questions about the financial worth of Christian K.
Ross. Despite this evidence, Westervelt would admit
nothing about the kidnapping, even after being found
guilty of charges related to the abduction and sentenced
to seven years.
Upon his release Westervelt faded into obscurity,
but the Ross case would not, despite underworld
rumors that Westervelt had definitely been in charge
of holding the child and, as the hunt had intensified,
had panicked and drowned the boy in the East River.
The Ross family spent the next 20 years tracking
down leads, spending a fortune on some 500 separate
journeys. But the era’s most haunting question, “What
happened to poor little Charley Ross?” remained
unanswered.
“What happened to poor Charley Ross?” became one of
the most haunting and persistent questions of the late
19th century.
770
ROTHSTEIN, Arnold
Ross, Mrs. Hannah (c. 1880s) medium
man and owner of the New York Giants baseball team.
Baseball was, in a manner of speaking, one of Rothstein’s passions, especially considering his involvement
in the so-called Black Sox Scandal in 1919, when several players of the Chicago White Sox succeeded in
throwing the World Series to the underdog Cincinnati
Reds. It has never been clear whether Rothstein
financed the big bribe and betting coup through exfeatherweight boxing champion Abe Attell or turned
down the deal when it was offered to him and then,
knowing the fix was in, simply bet $60,000 on Cincinnati and won $270,000.
That was always A. R.’s way—staying in the background while taking a major portion of the loot. Realizing early in Prohibition that bootlegging was too big
to be dominated by one man or one gang, he took control of the importing racket, the safest part of the business and one in which he could also insulate himself
from arrest. He closed deals with European distilleries
and made himself immune to gangland assassination—
if he was killed, the flow of good liquor would stop. A.
R. made himself too valuable to be allowed to die.
He kept the various gangs happy by cutting all of
them in for a share of the supplies, especially filling the
needs of Luciano and his young associates. Luciano
saw firsthand how Rothstein separated himself from
personal involvement and paid heed to Rothstein’s lectures on the need to remain less visible. It was A. R.
who got Luciano to drop the loud dress, which marked,
for example, members of Chicago’s Capone mob, in
favor of the refined attire of a gentleman. It was no
simple task. Once, Rothstein told Luciano, “I want you
to wear something conservative and elegant, made by a
genteel tailor.”
Luciano was taken aback. “What the hell are you
talkin’ about?” he said. “My tailor’s a Catholic.”
Still, Luciano paid Rothstein a noteworthy compliment. “If Arnold had lived a little longer, he could’ve
made me pretty elegant; he was the best etiquette
teacher a guy could ever have—real smooth.”
By the mid-1920s Rothstein was probably completely out of the booze racket—selling out for a huge
sum—save perhaps for lending money to a bootlegging
operation or arranging a fix. He immersed himself in
his first love, gambling, operating a number of betting
parlors in many of the city’s best speakeasies.
For some reason Rothstein seemed to come apart in
1928. Physically, he started to deteriorate, and as a
gambler, he suddenly became a heavy loser. From September 8 to 10 A. R. took part in a fabulous poker
game with two gamblers from California, Nigger Nate
Raymond and Titanic Thompson, and lost $320,000.
The story shocked Broadway but not nearly as much as
the news that Rothstein then refused to pay up, claim-
Fake spirit mediums have used many tricks to make
“spirits” appear before gullible victims, but none have
matched the feat of a noted Boston medium, Mrs.
Hannah Ross, in 1887. She actually seemed to make a
long-dead baby materialize literally in the flesh. Mrs.
Ross would seat herself in a cabinet in a darkened
room and call the baby back from the beyond, and
sure enough the baby’s image would appear at the
front of the cabinet. The grieving and awestruck parents of a departed baby would be able not only to see
their baby but touch and kiss it as well. The baby
would actually appear to be alive. And for good reason, as reporters from a Boston newspaper and the
police discovered when they uncovered Mrs. Ross’ act.
She had a baby’s face painted on her breast and would
poke her breast through a slit in the curtain on the cabinet. With this exposure of her racket, Mrs. Ross
decamped from the Boston area, undoubtedly to ply
her trade in another venue.
Rothstein, Arnold (1882–1928) gambler and fixer
He was Mr. Big, the Brain, the Big Bankroll, the Man
Uptown and the Fixer. Arnold Rothstein was all of that
and more, the man to see on Broadway for about a
decade and a half until his murder in 1928. Operating
strictly in the background, Rothstein may well have been
the leading criminal in America at the time, but he always
managed to avoid trouble with the law. At various times
he bankrolled the operations of such criminal kingpins as
Waxey Gordon and Legs Diamond, and he was one of the
early tutors of such young underworld types as Lucky
Luciano, Meyer Lansky and Frank Costello. He preached
to them the virtues of forming alliances independent of
ethnic consideration and of remaining behind the scenes
to pull the strings and, above all, taught them the ins and
outs of the political fix.
Rothstein was known on Broadway as the man who
could fix anything. His political and police contacts
were the best and he could clear almost any nefarious
activity with the right powers. He proved his mettle
during Prohibition, when for a fee he would fix almost
any bootlegging rap. He was close to Tammany boss
Charley Murphy and his heirs. In fact, during the Rothstein years, of the 6,902 liquor-related cases that went
before the New York courts, 400 never made it to trial
and another 6,074 were dismissed. The largest individual credit for these incredible statistics went, of course,
to A. R., as knowing court observers referred to Rothstein.
For a time A. R. was the biggest illegal importer of
Scotch whiskey in the country, an activity he often pursued in partnership with Charles A. Stoneham, sports771
ROTTEN apple theory
measure the extent of police corruption throughout the
country, ordered a clipping service survey. In two
months, clippings accumulated from 30 states reported
allegations of corruption at all levels, in small-town,
suburban, big-city, county and state police forces. In
Philadelphia it was reported that police felt they were
“operating in a world where ‘notes’ are constantly
floating about, and only the stupid, the naive, and the
fainthearted are unwilling to allow some of them to
stick to their fingers.”
Not unreasonably, police sometimes attempt to justify corruption by pointing out that police graft is a trifling part of a pattern that includes much greater graft
taking by public officials in such fields as building permits, liquor licenses, zoning ordinances, franchises,
condemnation cases, land and waterfront leases and the
like. It is clear that elimination of police corruption
would require a general improvement of ethics at all
levels of public government.
See also: KEFAUVER COMMITTEE, KNAPP COMMISSION,
LEXOW COMMITTEE, SEABURY INVESTIGATION.
ing the game had been fixed. The word that A. R. was
welching really shook up the town.
On November 4, 1928 Rothstein sat in Lindy’s
restaurant making election bets. He wagered almost
$600,000 that Herbert Hoover would beat Al Smith
and that Franklin Roosevelt would win the governorship. In a few days he would have collected more than
enough to pay off his poker losses, and indeed, he could
have anyway, since he held assets, mostly in real estate,
totaling $3 million. In any event, later that night A. R.
was shot to death at the Park Central Hotel.
The prime suspects were Thompson and Raymond.
But both of them had perfect alibis and were never
prosecuted. Yet on Broadway there was no doubt who
had been behind Rothstein’s murder.
See also: BLACK SOX SCANDAL.
Rotten apple theory
police corruption
Following any exposure of widespread police corruption a standard defense offered is that such evildoing is
the work of no more than “a few rotten apples” in an
otherwise good barrel. However, most major investigations of police corruption have found that the opposite
was true.
In New York the Lexow Committee of 1894–95 discovered graft to be part of the system itself rather than
the acts of individual wrongdoers. A generation later,
the Seabury Investigation reached the same conclusion.
In 1950 the Kefauver Committee revealed an unchanging pattern of graft and payoffs by criminals to law
enforcement officials. Twenty years later, New York’s
Knapp Commission found police corruption widespread instead of merely the product of a few rotten
apples. The commission found almost all policemen
accepted various favors as a “natural prerequisite of
the job.” Some officers were found to be “grass
eaters,” i.e., they took payoffs under the right circumstances, and others “meat eaters,” i.e., they aggressively sought out shakedown situations. Within the
Narcotics Division extortion had been developed to a
fine art, with a number of officers automatically sharing in a “score” whenever a drug dealer was victimized.
Indeed, the general understanding among Greenwich
Village dealers was that a bust could be “squared” by
the police appropriating two-thirds of a pusher’s inventory and allowing him to keep one-third. The police
share was then funneled back into trade through other
pushers. As has generally been the case, gambling
payoffs involved the most-sophisticated system, with
specific amounts paid to individual officers according
to rank.
The New York story has been constantly retold elsewhere. In 1973 the Police Foundation, attempting to
Rough and Ready, California
lawless mining town
Rough and Ready was a wild mining camp in California’s Grass Valley that more than lived up to its name.
It was probably the most rebellious of the gold towns
that sprang up in the California Mother Lode country
in 1849.
The Rough and Readyites believed in only two
things: gold and the gun. Nothing took precedence over
the former. On one occasion the townspeople had gathered on the local cemetery hill to bury a recently
departed citizen when the gravedigger revealed a high
amount of “color.” The burial service was instantly forgotten as the mourners hustled about staking out
claims amid the graves and heaving out corpses that
interfered with their hunt for gold.
In 1850, before the Civil War, Rough and Ready
“seceded” from the Union. What upset the populace
was not the slavery issue but rather the fact that nearby
Nevada City had been named the seat of Nevada
County, a distinction Rough and Ready had wanted. To
show their displeasure, the citizens drove all federal
employees out of town, destroyed the post office and
all its mail and burned all governmental furnishings.
Eventually, the Rough and Readyites got over their
pique and accepted the return of federal authority. The
U.S. Post Office Department, however, was not about
to let bygones be bygones and refused to furnish the
town with a mail-handling facility for an entire century,
finally relenting in 1954.
See also: COUNTY SEAT WARS.
772
RUBINSTEIN, Serge
roundsmen
early detectives
revamped the police force. Other cities copied the New
York system and the day of the modern policeman
dawned as the era of the roundsmen dimmed.
See also: LEATHERHEADS, MARY CECILIA ROGERS.
The first nighttime police protection in American cities
was provided by watchmen, who in most places were
referred to as leatherheads because of the leather helmets they wore. These leatherheads were only capable
of watching property and perhaps apprehending a
criminal in the performance of a crime. Solving crimes
was supposed to be the work of the day men, or
roundsmen, as they were called. These men were considered detectives, or plainclothesmen in the sense that
they did not wear helmets that would have identified
them as police officers. But they certainly were not
detectives in the modern sense of the word, being seldom able to solve a real crime and, in fact, having little
incentive to do so.
The average roundsman was no more than an unsuccessful stevedore, porter, cartman or laborer, and he
drew no pay. While a leatherhead was paid about $1 a
night, a roundsman was expected to earn his keep
strictly from the fees he garnered for serving legal
papers and from rewards posted by citizens for the
return of stolen property. But since roundsmen rarely
solved crimes, collecting such rewards by legitimate
means proved difficult. Most roundsmen overcame
their problem by forming alliances with gangs or individual thieves. First, the criminals would steal some
goods and then the victim would post a reward for the
return of the loot. The roundsman would magically
recover the goods and collect the reward, which he
would then split with the thieves. This, to a very large
extent, was the basis of law and order in the 18th and
19th century in most American cities.
Under such a system the crime of murder got a low
priority since rewards were rarely posted in such cases
and someone would have to be arrested. In that era
most murderers who were caught either were captured
in the commission of their crime or had murdered
someone from a family that could afford to post a
reward. Occasionally, a case got enough publicity to
make its solution worthwhile. After all, if a roundsman
could find a murderer, an unlikely prospect, he might
be counted on to serve a summons on some elusive
bounder.
When a crime did receive widespread publicity, it
often served to underscore the incompetence of the
roundsmen. Such was the case in the famous New York
murder of Mary Cecilia Rogers in 1841, an incident
later immortalized in American literature when Edgar
Allan Poe used it as the basis of his brilliant story The
Murder of Marie Roget. Poe solved his mythical case;
the New York authorities failed miserably with the real
one. The public at last came to understand that the
roundsmen system hardly ensured the maintenance of
law and order, and by 1845 reformers had entirely
Rubinstein, Serge (1909–1955) financier and murder
victim
In 1955 financial wizard and convicted draft dodger
Serge Rubinstein was not considered a very likable person. In fact, the government was trying to deport him
as an undesirable. Someone considered him even less
desirable and on January 27 bound and strangled him
to death in his luxurious five-story home on New
York’s Fifth Avenue.
A White Russian émigré, he burst upon the American scene a few years before World War II as the enfant
terrible of the financial world and fattened an already
swollen personal fortune by destroying, through devious means, a succession of companies and their stockholders. He was forced to take time from that unsavory
activity to do 2 1/2 years in prison for failure to serve in
the army during World War II, having falsely claimed
Portuguese citizenship.
Upon his release Rubinstein went right back to his
financial double-dealing. In 1949 he was indicted for
stock fraud, mail fraud and violation of the Securities
Acts. It was charged that he had made $3 million profit
by buying Panhandle Producing and Refining stock at
less than an average of $2 a share, driving the price up
with false rumors and having the company pay dividends it hadn’t earned and then, after he had liquidated
his holdings, selling short when the public found out
the truth and the stock started to fall. After a vigorous
two-year battle, Rubinstein was acquitted of stock
fraud and was ready for more capers.
He also led the life of a man-about-Manhattan,
recruiting a large selection of lady friends, most of
whom had keys to his home and whom he would often
summon in the middle of the night to make a quick visit.
Early on the morning of January 27, 1955, Rubinstein returned home with a blonde he had taken to dinner. After a short time the blonde left. Apparently,
Rubinstein read for a while and then telephoned
another blonde acquaintance and asked her to come
over. The woman, roused from her sleep, said she was
too tired.
Excluding his murderer or murderers, the second
blonde was the last person Rubinstein spoke to in his
life. A little after 8 A.M. Rubinstein’s butler brought a
breakfast tray to his bedroom and found him dead.
Clad in black silk mandarin pajamas, he lay sprawled
on his back, his hands and feet bound with Venetianblind cord. Strips of wide adhesive tape were plastered
773
RUB-out
across his mouth and wound around his throat. It was
obvious he had been strangled and the early theory was
that the adhesive tape had done the job, perhaps inadvertently. At first, it was thought Rubinstein had been
the victim of a kidnap attempt and had been killed in
error. However, the autopsy showed he had died by
manual strangulation. He had been throttled by someone with powerful hands.
Police developed many theories. One postulated that
business enemies had been responsible; another claimed
it had been “a mob job—a syndicate job”; yet another
attributed the murder to a robbery attempt gone awry.
The previous August, Rubinstein had filed charges
against three men for attempting to extort $535,000
from him. In all, the police questioned literally thousands of persons whose names Rubinstein had written
in several loose-leaf notebooks. It appeared he was in
the habit of writing down the name of every person he
met who might ever be useful to him, either for business
or pleasure. Business contacts, friends, enemies, associates, prison mates and girlfriends, both past and present, were hauled in and interrogated, all to be caught in
the limelight of intensive newspaper coverage.
The more sensational newspapers had a field day
with several of the murdered man’s lady friends because
of his written comments about them or because of the
fact that he seemed to have kept a number of them
under surveillance. In one case Rubinstein had even
hidden a small battery-operated transmitter under a
woman’s bed to record her bedside conversations.
Later, he had confronted her with the recording of her
amorous conversation with a date. When the story of
the recorder broke in the newspapers, the girl said, with
a certain ingenuousness, “Now everyone in New York
knows my bed squeaks.”
Despite a flurry of investigative activity, the murder
remained unsolved.
rub-out
television as the president’s accused killer, Lee Harvey
Oswald, was shot to death in the Dallas, Tex. city jail
on November 24, 1963. The murderer was 52-year-old
Jacob Rubenstein, better known as Jack Ruby, a local
nightclub operator.
Oswald, flanked by lawmen, was being escorted
through the basement of the municipal building to a
waiting armored truck that was to take him to the
county jail when Ruby stepped out from a cluster of
newsmen, thrust a snub-nosed .38-caliber revolver at
Oswald’s left side and fired a single shot. Clutching his
side, Oswald slumped to the concrete floor, writhing in
pain. He lost consciousness without saying a word and
86 minutes later, at 1:07 P.M., he died while undergoing
emergency surgery.
Ruby was described as an ardent admirer of
President Kennedy and his family who had become
distraught about his murder. In the ensuing controversy over the assassination and whether or not
Oswald had acted alone, as the Warren Commission later found, Ruby was pictured as a player
involved in an intricate plot to kill Kennedy and, later,
to silence Oswald, who may have been the actual
killer or merely a scapegoat. Despite several scenarios arriving at these various conclusions, no positive
link between Oswald and Ruby has ever been established.
Ruby was convicted of Oswald’s murder. While
awaiting a retrial on appeal, he was transferred in
December 1966 to a hospital where he was found to be
suffering from cancer. He died the following January 3
of a blood clot in his lung.
That same day a three-minute conversation between
Ruby and his brother Earl tape-recorded in the hospital
in December was made public. In it Ruby said he had
known that Oswald was going to be transferred to the
county jail the morning of November 24 but added
that his presence at the jail was due to his having
made an “illegal turn” behind a bus that put him in
the jail parking lot. He said he had no recollection of
the moment he shot Oswald. “It happened in such a
blur . . . before I knew it . . . the officers had me on
the ground.”
Ruby angrily denied a rumor that he had met
Oswald at his nightclub before the assassination, saying, “It’s fabrication.” He told his brother he always
carried a gun because of various altercations he had
had in his club and because he carried fairly large
amounts of cash at times.
Ruby’s demand that he be given a lie detector test to
prove he had acted alone in the murder of Oswald was
denied because, it was said, his physical condition
would make such a test valueless.
See also: LEE HARVEY OSWALD.
slang for a killing
Although well known as the underworld term for gangster killings, the word “rub-out” goes back much further in American history. According to Samuel Eliot
Morison’s The Oxford History of the American People,
the term was used by white trappers in the early 1800s,
with the same meaning it has today. Presumably, since
rub-out connotes a certain disdain or lack of respect for
the victim, it may be that it was first applied to the
killing of Indians.
Ruby, Jack (1911–1967) killer of Lee Harvey Oswald
Even as the nation was still in shock over the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, millions watched on
774
RUEF, Abraham
ors from the University of California at age 18. He
earned a law degree and then entered politics as an
enthusiastic Republican reformer. However, witnessing
the depredations of machine rule during the period of
the Southern Pacific Railroad’s domination of California, he soon lost his reformer zeal and turned opportunist.
In 1901 Ruef gained leadership of the newly formed
Union Labor Party and seized control of the city government, installing musicians union head Eugene E.
Schmitz as mayor. Then the Ruef machine proceeded to
loot the city in every way possible. Boss Ruef even
described his handpicked members of the Board of
Supervisors as “being so greedy for plunder that they’d
eat the paint off a house.” Of course, he did all right
himself. Typical was the graft derived from a “cowyard” on Pacific Street, which housed 48 prostitutes in
little cribs and was operated by six politically connected individuals, including a cousin of the mayor. The
operators paid city officials $440 a week for protection
and Ruef $250 a week.
Ruef apportioned grafting rights in almost every
field of endeavor, with much of the vice operations
run by one of the San Francisco underworld’s most
colorful, if distasteful, characters, Jerome Bassity. The
political boss handled the more important illegal revenue sources personally. As investigations by reformers, such as special prosecutor Francis J. Heney and
his assistant, Hiram Johnson, and by private undercover operatives of William J. Burns showed, Ruef
received incredibly large lawyer’s fees from public
utilities and doled out part of these funds to most of
the supervisors.
The final destruction of the Ruef machine must be
credited to the newspapers and, especially, to editor
Fremont Older of the San Francisco Bulletin, which ran
almost daily exposés of local government machinations. In 1908, with a reform administration now in
power, Ruef was convicted of bribery and eventually
served time in San Quentin from 1911 to 1915. He had
been sentenced to 14 years but his term was considerably shortened because of the intercession of the Bulletin, which by then was convinced of his reformation.
The newspaper published his jail cell memoirs, entitled
The Road I Traveled; an Autobiographic Account of
My Career from University to Prison, with an Intimate
Recital of the Corrupt Alliance between Big Business
and Politics in San Francisco. Upon his release from
prison Ruef entered the real estate business.
The destruction of the Ruef machine presaged the
abandonment of San Francisco’s gold-rush tradition,
which had required it to be a wide-open town. The Barbary Coast soon withered away.
See also: JEROME BASSITY.
Rudabaugh, Dave (1841–1886) western outlaw
One of the few outlaws ever to ride with Billy the Kid
on a more or less equal basis, Dave Rudabaugh began
his criminal career while still in his teens, first in his
native Missouri and then in Kansas. In the 1870s, while
doing a bit of cattle rustling and highway robbery, Rudabaugh hit on a lucrative career holding up the construction-gang pay trains of the Atchison, Topeka and
Santa Fe Railroad. Finally tracked down in 1878
through combined manhunts led by Wyatt Earp and
Bat Masterson, Rudabaugh won his freedom by implicating his accomplices and then moved on to Texas and
the New Mexico Territory. Together with Billy Wilson,
a Texas outlaw who later won a presidential pardon
from Theodore Roosevelt and lived out his days as a
lawman, Rudabaugh formed the Dodge City gang,
committing a number of crimes in Texas and the New
Mexico Territory.
In 1880 Rudabaugh joined up with Billy the Kid,
considering himself the Kid’s equal. Both were captured
together at Stinking Springs, New Mexico Territory, in
December 1880, and both were to make separate
escapes, the Kid eventually being killed by Sheriff Pat
Garrett. Rudabaugh was sentenced to 40 years imprisonment, but an old murder indictment was still pending
against him and he faced the possibility of being
hanged. He solved that problem by tunneling his way
out of jail in San Miguel on December 3, 1881.
Crossing the border into Mexico, Rudabaugh organized a gang of gringos and Mexicans that terrorized
the province of Chihuahua for the next five years. On
February 19, 1886, he and his band made the mistake
of trying to victimize the village of Parral, whose citizens, in an uncommon display of resistance, met them
with gunfire. Rudabaugh was shot dead. In a subsequent town fiesta, his head was cut off and stuck up on
a pole.
Rudabaugh, like many other criminals in American
history, was resurrected by the popular imagination. In
his case, the tale was that just one of his men had been
killed in Parral and that he had returned north of the
border and lived out his days as an honest rancher in
Oregon. Similar stories have also been told about Jesse
James and John Dillinger, among others.
See also: BILLY THE KID, PAT GARRETT, BILLY WILSON.
Ruef, Abraham (1864–1936) political boss
Abe Ruef, the political boss of San Francisco in the
early 1900s, ran his domain as a “wide open city” that
rivaled such bastions of sin and corruption as New
Orleans and Chicago.
Born of moderately wealthy French-Jewish parents,
Ruef was a brilliant student, graduating with high hon775
RULE of silence
rule of silence
prison disciplinary method
became known as Rum Row, always visible and embarrassing proof that Prohibition was unenforceable.
Probably the harshest form of discipline ever attempted
in American prisons was the so-called rule of silence,
which was first enforced at Auburn Prison in the 1830s
and later refined at Alcatraz Prison in the 20th century.
As originally practiced, the rule of silence was
imposed on inmates when they were let out of their
cells by day to work in the shops. Maintaining silence,
they had to march in lockstep with downcast gaze. Violators of the rule were flogged. But at least prisoners
were allowed to talk in the cell blocks.
Such was not the case at Alcatraz, where it was first
used in 1934 as a punishment for problem prisoners.
The rule of silence was to be enforced to the extent that
it was conceivable a convict could forget what his own
voice sounded like. Prisoners could not talk in the dining room; they could not talk in the workshops; they
could not talk in the cell blocks. The attempt was ludicrous; prisoners still found ways to talk to one another
despite the risks of punishment, which could take the
form of being sent to the hold.
But the prisoners could use the rule of silence against
the authorities at critical times. During an early escape
attempt at Alcatraz, one convict hit a prison guard over
the head with a hammer seven times, and then two others dragged the bleeding, dying victim across the floor
into a corner, where they covered him with some old
work clothes. A half-dozen other convicts were present
at the time, but none stirred or said a word. They were
obeying prison rules.
Within four years of its opening, Alcatraz greatly
modified the rule of silence, as a number of areas were
eliminated from the no-talking restriction. Still, long
periods of silence were enforced and Alcatraz maintained its premier spot as the hellhole of federal prisons,
where enforced monotony drove many inmates insane.
See also: ALCATRAZ PRISON.
Rum Row
Rupolo, Ernest “The Hawk” (1908–1964) Genovese
murder victim
Before his last arrest in 1958, Vito Genovese slowly
schemed and murdered his way to the top post in the
Mafia following the deportation of Lucky Luciano. He
achieved his position with little interference from the
law because very few individuals were ever willing to
testify against him. One who did testify was a lowly
New York hoodlum named Ernest “the Hawk”
Rupolo, whom Genovese had hired to carry out the
murder of Ferdinand Boccia in 1934. Harassed by the
numerous charges lodged against him, Rupolo implicated Genovese, who fled the country in 1937. Finally
brought back to stand trial in 1945, Genovese beat the
rap after the only witness other than Rupolo who could
tie him to the crime, Peter LaTempa, conveniently swallowed some poisoned pills in his jail cell. The crime
boss was released for lack of evidence and that left
Rupolo, as the boys said, “with the meat in his mouth
and the sauce on his shirt.”
As a reward for his useless testimony, Rupolo was
set free, but the authorities warned him that he was
practically committing suicide by leaving prison. For
years Rupolo led a terror-filled life, never knowing
when Genovese would take his vengeance. Within the
Mafia it was recognized that Genovese was delaying
the death sentence just to increase Rupolo’s suffering.
Finally, in August 1964 Rupolo disappeared. On
August 27 his mutilated corpse washed ashore from
New York’s Jamaica Bay; his body was pockmarked
with ice pick holes and the back of his head had been
blown away. Not surprisingly, the case has remained
unsolved.
bootleg fleet
Russian Bill (1855–1881) outlaw
With the onset of Prohibition in 1919, the easiest way
to smuggle liquor into the United States was along the
Atlantic coastline, especially from Maine to New Jersey. Vessels carrying liquor could drop anchor just outside the three-mile limit, where they were safe from
government interference, and await the arrival of
smaller, speedier boats to take on their illicit cargo and
make a fast dash for shore. These little craft were
known as rumrunners and engaged in many duels with
government gunboats known as rumchasers. Meanwhile, the long line of liquor-laden vessels, often
stretching for miles, rolled on the swells awaiting completion of unloading. This line of vessels, everything
from old fishing boats to luxury yachts and cruisers,
William Tattenbaum was a colorful character who
turned up in Tombstone, Arizona Territory in 1880
claiming to be the son of Countess Telfrin, a wealthy
Russian noblewoman. He also said that as a young
lieutenant he had deserted the Czar’s Imperial White
Hussars when faced with a court-martial for striking a
ranking officer. Decked out in the finest and flashiest
Western clothing and gear, Tattenbaum was quickly
dubbed Russian Bill by the citizens of Tombstone,
who did not believe a word he said about himself.
Nevertheless, Russian Bill managed to ingratiate himself with Curly Bill Brocius, the head of the notorious
Clanton gang, and rode with the outlaws for about a
year. There is no record of Russian Bill engaging in
776
RUSTLING
any overt banditry and he seems to have served
mainly as a “horse holder,” but Curly Bill insisted on
keeping him around so that he could watch him
groom his own hair for hours “just like a Chinaman”
and listen to him quote the classics. Russian Bill
comes down to us, thanks to Hollywood depictions,
as a comic character. Quite possibly to escape that
very reputation in Tombstone, he struck off for the
New Mexico Territory on a horse-stealing enterprise
of his own. The result was not a happy one, as he was
soon captured by the Law and Order Committee of
Shakespeare, New Mexico Territory. Russian Bill and
another malefactor named Sandy King were given a
fast trial by the committee in the banquet room of a
local hotel. In keeping with the group’s reputation for
quick justice, he was hanged from a beam in the room
without further ado.
In 1883 inquiries from the Countess Telfrin about
her son confirmed that all of Russian Bill’s tales had
been true. The town of Shakespeare was a mite chagrined about having hanged “an honest-to-God son of
a countess.” To spare the Countess’ feelings and a troublesome investigation by Washington, it was duly
reported to the authorities that Russian Bill had met
with an accidental death.
rustling
777
See CATTLE RUSTLING, HORSE STEALING.
S
Sacco-Vanzetti case
anarchists
murder trial and conviction of
tion to authorities in recent years has probably
exceeded in importance that supplied by Joe Valachi.
Despite all the prosecution’s claims, its tenuous case
against the defendants centered on the testimony of two
ballistics “experts.” One expert was state police Capt.
William Proctor, who demonstrated on the stand that he
could not even take apart and reassemble Sacco’s pistol.
Proctor said that one of the murder bullets had mark-
No murder trial in America has ever caused more
worldwide turmoil than that of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two acknowledged anarchists who
were convicted of being members of a five-man bandit
gang that held up a shoe factory in South Braintree,
Mass. on April 15, 1920. The gang robbed the factory’s $15,776.51 payroll and killed the paymaster and
a guard. Sacco and Vanzetti were found to be in possession of two guns, and supposedly expert ballistics testimony tied their weapons to the crime.
In retrospect, no fair judging of the facts can deny
that the two men were prosecuted more for their politics than their alleged crimes; they were foreign-looking, Italian-looking, and worst of all, they were
anarchists. After one of the most unfair trials in
American history, Sacco and Vanzetti were found
guilty on July 14, 1921 by a jury sitting under Judge
Webster Thayer, a rock-ribbed pillar of Back Bay aristocracy and opponent of anything he deemed radical,
and sentenced to death. Out of court the judge often
referred to the defendants as “dagos” and “sons of
bitches.” During a Dartmouth football game he asked
a friend, “Did you see what I did to those anarchist
bastards?”
Ignored at the trial were instances of possible perjury
committed by state police officers and strong indications that the crime had been committed by members of
the Boston Mafia, a version alleged by a professional
criminal during Sacco and Vanzetti’s years in the death
house and later confirmed by underworld informer
Vinnie Teresa, a New England gangster whose informa-
The trial and execution of Nicola Sacco (right) and
Bartolomeo Vanzetti (left) caused more national and
international turmoil than any other murder case in
American history.
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SAFECRACKING
sworn statement that before the trial the man later
picked to be foreman of the jury had said, “Damn
them, they ought to hang anyway.”
Subsequent accusations about doctored evidence,
testimony by phony experts and the like led to worldwide demonstrations against the verdict and the death
sentence. Finally, in 1927 Gov. Alvan Tufts Fuller
appointed a special commission to study the case. It
included Abbot Lawrence Lowell, president of Harvard
University; Dr. Samuel Stratton, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Robert Grant, an
ex-probate judge.
The Lowell Commission studied the official record
of the trial, which some witnesses protested contained
errors made by the court interpreter in translating key
testimony, and heard some prosecution witnesses
recant their original statements to the jury. However, in
the end, the commission found nothing to indicate a
miscarriage of justice, although it seemed rather upset
by Judge Thayer’s “grave breach of official decorum.”
The governor accepted the Lowell Commission findings and, on August 10, 1927, granted a legal 12-day
reprieve to allow for final, though obviously futile,
legal moves. Around the world the protests turned violent. Forty persons were hurt in a demonstration in
London and there were disorders in front of the U.S.
consulate in Geneva. Street fights broke out in Paris
and an American flag was burned in Casablanca. Other
riots occurred in Berlin, Warsaw, Buenos Aires, Brest,
Marseilles and various localities in Japan, Mexico,
Argentina and Cuba. Among the voices raised in
protest were those of George Bernard Shaw, H. G.
Wells, Romain Rolland, John Galsworthy, Anatole
France and Albert Einstein. Up to the last minute
throngs marched in Boston and New York.
On August 23, 1927 Sacco, the factory hand, and
Vanzetti, the fish peddler, were executed.
Their deaths did not still the controversy about the
case. It would be impossible to compile a complete bibliography of all the books and magazine and newspaper
articles written about the case. In 1977 Sacco and
Vanzetti had their names cleared in a special proclamation signed by Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis.
ings “consistent with being fired by that pistol,” but he
later admitted in an affidavit that he merely had meant
the bullet “could” have been fired by Sacco’s weapon—
but that he did not believe it had been. He also revealed
that he had been coached by the prosecution.
The state’s other ballistics authority was Charles Van
Amburgh, who presented much of the damning evidence against the defendants. By 1924 Van Amburgh
was exposed in other cases as an expert witness who
fitted his testimony to the needs of the prosecution if he
thought other evidence had already proved the defendant guilty. Many ballistics experts and legal authorities were certain that in one case he knew he was giving
false evidence but felt it did not matter because he was
convinced of the defendant’s guilt. Later, the defendant
was proved totally innocent.
The real question surrounding the case is not whether
a certain bullet was fired from a certain gun barrel—the
subject of much scientific inquiry over the years—but,
more basically whether the evidence against the pair
was rigged by the substitution of a bullet.
None of this mattered at the time, however. More
significant was the tenor of the era, which dictated the
verdict that was reached. One of the witnesses made a
safecracking
Few crimes have gone into such a precipitous decline in
recent years as that of “box busting” or safecracking.
It’s not difficult to see why given the following recent
news items:
Armed plainclothes guards, such as this one, ringed the
Massachussetts court during the Sacco-Vanzetti trial to
repel any “attack by anarchists.”
• In New York a safecracking gang used too much
explosives trying to blow a safe and set off more
than two dozen alarms in surrounding buildings.
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SAFECRACKING
• In the Chicago area a so-called torch man burned
his way into four safes in a row and succeeded in
burning the money inside all of them to a crisp.
• In New Jersey a pair of “yeggs” worked over a
safe with acetylene torches for three hours and
managed to weld the safe permanently shut.
a funnel of powder at the top and then the rest of the
crack was puttied up. When the pump sucked air from
the safe and created a vacuum, the powder was sucked
around the crack. A pound of powder set off by a cap
blew the door.
A top safecracker, Langdon Moore, developed a safebusting tool consisting of a back brace with adjustable
extension legs. The brace was bolted to the floor and
adjusted to dial height, and a crank with a one-quarter
inch diamond-pointed drill was then fitted into a head
piece at the top of the legs. The drill could bite through
two inches of solid chilled steel and lock casing in about
a half hour. Using a small bellows, a charge of powder
was blown through the hole into the lock, a short fuse
was attached and lighted. There would be a very dull
blast, and the door would swing open.
No less inventive and a little more subtle was safecracker George Bliss, who found an easy way to open
safes. He would remove the dial knob of a lock, adjust
a tiny instrument of thin steel wire inside the surface of
the dial and replace the knob. Some days later, he
would return to the safe and remove the knob. By
examining the marks made by the wire, he could determine the combination numbers and then had only to
try them in different order until he found the correct
sequence—all in a matter of minutes.
For a time safe makers were sure they had come up
with an uncrackable box nicknamed the cannonball.
The money container was a large egg-shaped compartment attached to a lower stand of four-foot-thick steel.
The door consisted of 12 steel plates, each two inches
thick and bolted to another. Instead of swinging open,
the door “unscrewed” when the wheel attachment was
turned according to the combination. The way the door
was made, it was impossible to penetrate the first door
to place explosives inside. The cannonball was the bane
of safecrackers for years until perhaps the greatest safecracker of all, Herb Wilson, recalled his Boer War days
in South Africa and the way soldiers would break open
large ostrich eggs found on the veld. “With a small
hatchet we’d crack the shell on the large end, going
completely around the egg. Then one last blow with the
hatchet, a little pressure with one hand while the other
seized the opposite end of the egg, and the two pieces
came apart as the contents went into the frying pan.”
Wilson imagined the cannonball as a giant ostrich
egg. Using a specially designed oxygen-acetylene torch,
he cut a one-inch groove around the big end of the
“egg,” pouring cold water on the heated metal. Holding the edge of a specially-made hatchet in the groove,
he had an accomplice bang the hatchet with an eightpound copper hammer (copper against steel makes little noise). Once a full circle had been completed,
Wilson took aim with the hatchet and delivered a sharp
Yeggs is the word generally used to describe the crop
of modern-day safecrackers, shadows of the old-timers
who accomplished crooked miracles and had safe makers and law enforcers in a state of nervous anxiety for
decades.
There indeed have been safecrackers who could open
some safes by manipulation, and there have always
been fewer manipulation-proof safes than manufacturers have claimed. There are a few men with such skills
today, but there is no need for them to be dishonest.
They command top fees performing legal “safecrackings,” such as opening safes for tax officials investigating evasion cases and for estates when the deceased has
failed to leave a record of the safe combination. Of
course, it takes years of practice and an intimate
knowledge of combination locks—thousands of
them—to be successful at manipulation. On the outside
of a safe there is a knob and dial and inside the lock a
set of metal disks, or tumblers. The tumblers have a
small cut out of them and revolve on a spindle controlled by the knob. When the correct combination is
dialed, the slots fall in line and a metal level drops into
the opening and releases the bolt mechanism, allowing
the safe to be opened. Good safes have at least 100
numbers on the dial and four tumblers, creating some
100 million combination possibilities. Spending one
minute on each combination possibility of a four-tumbler, 100-number lock, a safecracker could take something like 200 years to get the right one. As a result
there are indeed few Jimmy Valentines in real life.
Through the years the safe maker and the safecracker have battled for the technical advantage. When
combination locks were first introduced a century or so
ago, crooks developed the “drag,” a screw setup that
mashed the walls around the lock. Safe manufacturers
got around this by strengthening the walls. The box
busters retaliated with the “jackscrew,” a rig that by
the turn of a screw forced the safe door with a series of
steel wedges of varied thicknesses, from the thinness of
a razor blade to the thickness of a fist, until the door
popped from its hinges. The manufacturers responded
by making doors that shot bolts into the jamb of all
four sides and devising dovetailed arrangements joining
the door to the jamb to block the wedges. The crooks
countered with an air pump that distributed a fine
grade of gunpowder all around the crack of the door.
The air pump was placed at the bottom of the door and
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ST. Paul layover
reporter for the New York World sifted through the
wreckage and found a button. He washed if off and
determined it bore the identification of a Boston tailor.
In time, White was able to identify the bomber as
Henry L. Norcross, a frustrated inventor. The World
broke the story with a huge picture of the bearded head
and a one-word headline: “IDENTIFIED!” It was one
of the most sensational scoops in American newspaper
history.
See also: IKE WHITE.
blow to the groove at the top of the safe. Just as happened to ostrich eggs, the big end of the cannonball safe
cracked off. Wilson’s largest bust netted $170,000.
For Wilson safecracking was an art, a compulsion.
The same was true of Dion O’Banion, a top Chicago
mobster of the 1920s who made millions annually out
of bootlegging and other rackets. O’Banion had started
as a safecracker and could never give it up, even when
he no longer needed the money. Captured on one such
a caper (which he promptly bought his way out of),
O’Banion was asked why he bothered. “Aw,” he said,
“it’s like playing the horses. Once it’s in your blood you
can’t give it up.”
The old-fashioned approach to safecracking has
not entirely disappeared. When the Mosler Safe Co.
put out a booklet titled “What You Should Know
About Safes,” it got a request for a copy from a man
whose return address was TSPF, Snipe, Tex. TSPF
stood for Texas State Prison Farm, and the man was a
safecracker still trying to further his knowledge of the
field. Unlike the new yeggs, however, he is of a vanishing breed. The old-timers complain the new crop
just don’t take the trouble to really learn their trade
properly.
See also: BANK ROBBERIES, GEORGE LEONIDAS LESLIE,
LITTLE JOKER.
St. Paul layover
hideout arrangement for criminals
From the beginning of the century to the 1930s, St.
Paul, Minn. was regarded as the safest hideout town
for American criminals, even better protected than such
places as Hot Springs, Ark. and Joplin, Mo. Some
insisted that this distinction was of enormous benefit to
local citizens, since for 30 years St. Paul was free of
gangland violence and robberies.
Around the turn of the century, Police Chief John J.
O’Connor let it be known to out-of-town criminals that
they were welcome to “lay over” in St. Paul and spend
their money freely. The only proviso to the St. Paul
Layover, as it became known, was that no crime of any
sort was to take place in the city. As a result, the city’s
crime statistics were absolutely unbelieveable. Burglaries were almost nil, and St. Paul was one of the few
cities during the era where lone women could walk the
streets late at night without fear.
When an out-of-town criminal visited the city, he
reported to Paddy Griffin’s lodging house on Wabasha
Street, where he was assigned a place to stay at a
healthy rental. Griffin kept Chief O’Connor informed
on all visitors, and the chief saw to it that the criminals
did not misbehave and, just as importantly, were not
subject to any police interference. O’Connor’s operation was made possible by the political clout of his
younger brother, Richard O’Connor, the boss of the
city and state Democratic Party. Richard O’Connor
was known for his dedication to protecting the poor,
something the layover system complemented.
It is believed the O’Connor brothers never
accepted any protection money from these out-oftown criminals, content to run the system simply for
the satisfaction expressed by the public at living in a
crime-free community. The O’Connor family income
came from the saloon business—they were the official
and unofficial owners of an entire string—and from a
well-regulated prostitution industry that paid large
sums to the police for the privilege of operating without harassment. A particularly lavish brothel was
allowed to conduct business directly behind police
headquarters.
Sage, Russell (1816–1906) would-be murder victim
On December 4, 1894 a bearded stranger entered the
offices of Russell Sage, the financial tycoon. He carried
a carpetbag containing, he informed a secretary, bonds
from John D. Rockefeller for personal delivery to Mr.
Sage. There was a small meeting going on in Sage’s
office, but Mr. Rockefeller’s bonds were always welcome and the messenger was ushered in. Silently, the
bearded man handed Sage a typewritten note that
read: “I hold in my hands ten pounds of dynamite. If I
drop it on the floor it will tear the building to pieces
and everyone with it. For $1,250,000 it shall not drop.
Yes or no?”
Sage reacted with the ruthlessness for which he was
infamous. He grabbed one of his low-paid clerks,
shoved him toward the bearded man and, at the same
time, broke for the door. There was a deafening explosion. A secretary and the bearded stranger were killed.
Five others, including the clerk Sage used as a human
shield, were badly injured. The clerk later sued Sage
and was awarded $40,000.
The only clue the police had was the head of the
bearded stranger, but they could not identify him.
Investigators theorized that there was a gang of mad
anarchists on the loose aiming “to rid the country of
millionaires.” Meanwhile, Ike White, a legendary
781
ST. Valentine’s Day Massacre
The golden era of the layover system ended around
1920. By then Dapper Hogan had taken over Griffin’s
role and ill health had forced Chief O’Connor to retire.
Richard O’Connor shifted his interests to national politics, paying little attention to St. Paul matters. The layover system was so ingrained, however, that it
continued even under a police chief who opposed it; the
operation was supervised by other brass, and incoming
criminals now checked in at the Green Lantern saloon
on Wabasha Street, within sight of the state capitol.
Hogan’s supervision of the layover system came to
an explosive conclusion on December 5, 1928, when a
bomb went off as he stepped on the starter of his car.
He was succeeded by his ambitious partner, Harry
Sawyer, who indeed had a motive to dispatch Hogan.
Hogan’s death marked the end of the peaceful era of
the layover system, and once the lid came off, the violence continued. Sawyer lacked the muscle Hogan had
used to maintain the peace and soon was making less
and less out of layover revenues. Outside elements no
longer saw any reason to exempt St. Paul from criminal
endeavors, and in time, Sawyer joined with various
underworld gangs in planning many local capers. He
threw in with several kidnap mobs that worked the St.
Paul area and later went to prison on a life sentence for
his part in the Barker-Karpis gang’s kidnapping of
banker Edward Bremer. With his departure the St. Paul
Layover passed into memory.
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
unmarked cars used by police, and rushed into the
garage. Quickly, they lined the men they found there
against a wall: six Moran henchmen—Adam Heyer,
John May, brothers Frank and Pete Gusenberg, Al
Weinshank and James Clark—and Dr. Reinhardt H.
Schwimmer, an optometrist and something of a gangster groupie who just happened to be on hand. Then
two of the raiders cut loose with Thompson submachine guns, killing all seven.
The only foul up was that the killers had not gotten
Moran. He and two others, Willie Marks and Teddy
Newbury, had just rounded a corner near the garage
when they saw what appeared to be policemen entering
it. Figuring it was a police shakedown, they remained
out of sight, waiting for the officers to leave. When the
machine gunning started, they fled.
The killings broke the power of the North Siders,
and all Moran could do was wail, “Only Capone kills
like that.”
Actually, it was a long time before the theory that
Capone had ordered the massacre won acceptance.
There was much public speculation that the killings had
been the work of real policemen. The Chicago police
were held in such disrepute that Frederick D. Silloway,
the local Prohibition administrator, was quoted as
telling the press:
The murderers were not gangsters. They were Chicago
policemen. I believe the killing was the aftermath to the
hijacking of 500 cases of whiskey belonging to the
Moran gang by five policemen six weeks ago on Indianapolis Boulevard. I expect to have the names of these
five policemen in a short time. It is my theory that in
trying to recover the liquor the Moran gang threatened
to expose the policemen and the massacre was to prevent the exposure.
gangland killings
No underworld atrocity, not even the Kansas City Massacre, in which a number of lawmen were killed in an
allegedly botched attempt to rescue an arrested gangster, ever upset the public more then the St. Valentine’s
Day Massacre in Chicago on February 14, 1929.
There is no doubt that the crime, technically never
solved, was the work of the Capone mob, although
none of the actual killers, except for Fred “Killer”
Burke, could be definitely linked to the job.
The massacre was the outgrowth of a long-standing
war between the Capone mob and the heirs of the
North Side Gang organized in the early 1920s by Dion
O’Banion. By 1929 a number of the North Siders,
including O’Banion, had been killed and only George
“Bugs”Moran remained to oppose Capone’s takeover
of the gang’s lucrative area.
The North Siders were set up for the kill by a Detroit
gangster who told Moran he had a load of hijacked
booze available. Moran agreed to take delivery of the
stuff at the gang’s headquarters, a garage at 2122
North Clark Street. Early on Valentine’s Day, a group
of five men, three in police uniforms, pulled up in front
of the garage in a black Cadillac, similar to the
The next day Silloway retracted the charge, insisting
he had been misquoted, certainly a monumental misquotation if there ever was one. His superiors in Washington transferred him out of Chicago as a sop to the
local authorities, but a cloud of suspicion continued to
hang over the police. The country’s leading authority
on forensic ballistics, Major Calvin H. Goodard, was
brought in from New York to clear up the situation. He
announced that according to his tests the bullets used in
the massacre had not been fired from any machine gun
in the possession of the Chicago police, still not a definitive exoneration. Almost a year later, the police located
the murder weapons in the home of a professional
killer, Fred Burke. In April 1930 Burke was captured in
Michigan. Instead of being brought to trial in Illinois
for the massacre, where if convicted he could have gotten the death penalty, he was tried in Michigan for the
782
ST. Valentine’s Day Massacre
The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre shocked the nation as few other Capone mob excesses had. So great was the public
interest in the massacre that many helpful publications ran an upside-down version so readers could identify the dead
without having to turn their newspapers around.
murder of a policeman and sentenced to life there. This
led some underworld sources to whisper that the Illinois authorities had been fearful of trying him because
testimony would have revealed the weapons had been
planted in his home.
Despite such accusations, the St. Valentine’s Day
Massacre was a Capone operation. Through the years a
changing cast of characters has been listed as the actual
killers. Almost certainly, the chief planner of the job
was Machine Gun McGurn, one of Capone’s mosttrusted henchmen.
Chicago, in its own style, memorialized the massacre. The garage on North Clark became a tourist
attraction. Newspapers printed close-ups of the
corpses upside down so that readers would not have
to turn the page around to identify the victims. In
1949 the garage was bought for use as an antique fur-
niture storage business and in 1967 it was finally
ripped down. However, the bricks from the bulletpocked wall were saved for posterity by a Canadian
businessman. In 1972 he opened a night spot with a
Roaring 20s theme and rebuilt the wall, for some odd
reason, in the men’s room as a tourist attraction.
Three nights a week women patrons were allowed to
enter that sanctum for a quick peek. The club continued for a few years, and then the businessman supposedly put the bricks in storage, preparing to market
them together with a written account of the massacre
for $1,000 apiece. Of course he couldn’t possibly
afford to sell the bullet-scarred bricks at that bargain
price.
See also: ANSELMI AND SCALISE, ALPHONSE “SCARFACE
AL” CAPONE, MACHINE GUN JACK MCGURN, GEORGE
“BUGS” MORAN.
783
SALEM witchcraft trials
Salem witchcraft trials
eventually released. In all, 19 persons were hanged and
one, 80-year-old Giles Corey, was pressed to death
when he refused to plead guilty or not guilty.
By September 1692 the witch delusion had faded
away. People had become concerned that innocent persons had been executed. The girls continued their hysterics but were generally ignored. One of them, Anne
Putnam, declared that she had accused guiltless persons
and had her confession read from the pulpit. As opinion turned against the girls, judges and jurors publicly
declared they had been mistaken. The jurors signed a
declaration that they had been “under the power of a
strong and general delusion.” For many years thereafter a day of repentance and fasting was held in Salem.
See also: GILES COREY, GALLOWS HILL, COTTON
MATHER.
The witchcraft executions in Salem, Mass. in 1692
were not the first in America—a witch was hanged in
Charlestown in 1648 and another in Boston in 1655—
but they were the most awesome. It all started when a
group of young girls suddenly gave every evidence of
having been bewitched. Ten girls, aged nine to 17, gathered in the kitchen of the Rev. John Parris’ house and
listened to the stories of his West Indian slave, Tituba.
Although Tituba had been converted to Christianity,
she had grown up steeped in the secrets of magic and
voodoo. She taught the girls fortune-telling and palm
reading and told bloodcurdling tales of spells and murder. The stories seem to have had a terrifying effect on
the girls, who grew up in a particularly God-fearing
society. Little Elizabeth Parris, the minister’s daughter,
awoke one night in a screaming frenzy and insisted
there were awful creatures in her room. The doctor was
called and he quickly gave his diagnosis: an evil spell
had been cast on the child. Someone in Salem was practicing witchcraft. The news rocked Salem. Then the
other girls who had been involved in the meetings with
Tituba began having seizures. It has long been debated
whether the girls were simply pretending or had actually deluded themselves into thinking they had been
bewitched. Perhaps with most, what had started out as
a way to get attention developed into a form of hysteria. All the girls no doubt believed in witchcraft, as did
the townspeople, who were also mindful of the biblical
injunction, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”
At first, three women—Tituba, Goodwife Osburn
and Sarah Goode—were charged, and the mad frenzy
of the witch hunt began. Trials were held and a number
of men and women were accused of practicing witchcraft. When the impact of what was happening hit her,
one of the girls, Mary Warren, confessed that it was all
pretense. But the other girls then accused her of witchcraft and said they had seen her ghost. Mary withdrew
her confession, but no one had believed her in any case
because of the fact that she had been bewitched. Far
more impressive to the people of Salem was the spectacle of the other girls proving their affliction by convulsing on the floor of the courtroom, biting their arms and
screaming, and accusing witch after witch.
A five-year-old girl, Dorcas Goode, confessed to
being a witch and admitted keeping a black snake as a
familiar spirit. Little Dorcas was kept in heavy chains
in jail for eight months. The restraints were considered
necessary to keep her from casting evil spells. She was
the daughter of Sarah Goode, who had been hanged,
along with Tituba and Goodwife Osburn, after denying
she was a witch. Only those who denied being witches
were executed. Although some who confessed died in
jail, all the others who admitted being witches were
salting
mine swindle
Easily the most prevalent form of larceny in the Old
West and later in Alaska was the “salting” of worthless
mining i.e., making an area of land appear to be rich in
gold ore or other minerals. As Mark Twain once put it,
“There was nothing in the shape of a mining claim that
was not salable.”
There were many ingenious ways to salt an area, a
quite common one being to shoot gold dust into the
ground with a shotgun. This method worked well in
mine shafts, where the gold specks would convince a
potential buyer/victim that a particular vein was not as
yet played out. Shotgun salting on the surface could
only be successful if some way was found to induce a
sucker to search in the right area; salting a huge area
would have been an expensive proposition.
According to one California mining legend, some
prospectors stuck with a poor-paying claim devised an
ingenious scheme to unload it on a group of Chinese
fortune hunters. Unable to guarantee that the would-be
buyers would look in the right spots, the miners hid one
of their number in a gulch with a dead snake. When the
Chinese arrived, the miners suggested areas for them to
search, and as was to be expected, the potential victims,
wary of a salting plot, said no and pointed into a far
corner of the claim. As they approached the spot, the
miner with the snake heaved it out of his hiding place.
Quickly, a miner with the Chinese leveled his shotgun
and shot the reptile. The fortune hunters became convinced of the miners’ trustworthiness, for not only had
they been saved from the snake but, after digging the
area, they also found strong traces of gold.
One of the greatest silver saltings ever was that of a
worthless hole called the North Ophir in the Comstock
field in Nevada. During the 1860s great nuggets of silver turned up there and stock belonging to the North
784
SANDS
Ophir claim went through the ceiling. The bogus
claim’s promoters had cut silver dollars into pieces,
pounded them into lumps, blackened the lumps and
then salted the claim. The bubble burst when a
“nugget” turned up with “ted States of” printed on it.
Many miners, looking ahead to the day when their
claims would be played out, used a special technique
to prepare a salting for a future sucker. Since in the
last century gold salts were widely used in the patent
medicines miners took religiously for kidney ailments
brought on by heavy drinking, they would urinate
over large stretches of their claim so that traces of
gold would still show up when they were ready to
move on.
No tale was too tall for gold salters. A Calistoga
Springs, Calif. promoter advertised that the local water
was so rich in tiny particles of gold that he was filtering
$5 to $10 worth out of each barrelful. While so-called
flour gold was sometimes so fine that it would float in
water, the Calistoga Springs water had none—except
what this promoter had put there. It remained for
Mark Twain to demolish the scam as only a master storyteller could. In response to an account about the
claim, Twain wrote:
The time that William Abrahams was disappointed in
love he used to sit outdoors when the wind was blowing, and come in again and begin to sigh, and I would
extract over a dollar and a half out of every sigh.
I do not suppose a person could buy the water
privileges at Calistoga now at any price, but several
good locations along the course of Catgut Canyon goldbearing trade-winds are for sale. They are going to be
stocked for the New York market. They will sell, too.
Twain was right; almost any kind of salting plot
would work because of the irresistible lure of easy treasure that had affected Western prospectors ever since
the gold rush of 1849.
See also: GREAT DIAMOND HOAX.
Samoots, Sam
See SAMUZZO “SAMOOTS” AMATUNA.
Sandbar Duel
birthplace of bowie knife
Probably the most famous, and certainly the bloodiest,
duel ever fought on the Mississippi was the so-called
Sandbar Duel of September 19, 1827. Although many
men died the battle is remembered chiefly as marking
the debut of the bowie knife.
In August of that year a duel was arranged between two Natchez men, a Dr. Maddox and Samuel
Well, to be fought on the Vidalia sandbar in the Mississippi near Natchez. Each combatant appeared with
a number of supporters, all heavily armed. The
duelists fired two exchanges without suffering injury,
but before the affair could be ended, heated quarrels
started among the supporters of the two men. Suddenly, mass shooting broke out. One of the participants wounded by the gunfire was frontiersman Jim
Bowie. Although badly hurt, Bowie drew a homemade
knife, fashioned either by himself or his brother
Rezin, and killed Major Norris Wright, a local banker
with whom he had been having a financial dispute. In
all, six men died and 15 others were severely wounded
in the post-duel melee, but the main notoriety went to
Bowie and his fearsome weapon, with which he had
so efficiently, as one account stated, “disemboweled”
his opponent.
See also: BOWIE KNIFE.
I have just seen your dispatch from San Francisco in
Saturday evening’s Post. This will surprise many of
your readers but it does not surprise me, for once I
owned those springs myself. What does surprise me,
however, is the falling off of the richness of the water.
In my time the yield was a dollar a dipperful. I am not
saying this to injure the property in case a sale is contemplated. I am saying it in the interest of history. It
may be that the hotel proprietor’s process is an inferior
one. Yes, that may be the fault. Mine was to take my
uncle (I had an extra one at that time on account of his
parents dying and leaving him on my hands) and fill
him up and let him stand fifteen minutes, to give the
water a chance to settle. Well, then I inserted an
exhaust receiver, which had the effect of sucking the
gold out of his pores. I have taken more than $11,000
out of that old man in less than a day and a half.
I should have held on to those springs, but for
the badness of the roads and the difficulty of getting the
gold to market, I consider that the gold-yielding water
is in many respects remarkable, and yet no more
remarkable than the gold-bearing air of Catgut Canyon
up there toward the head of the auriferous range. This
air, or this wind—for it is a kind of trade-wind which
blows steadily down through 600 miles of richest
quartz croppings—is heavily charged with exquisitely
fine, impalpable gold.
Nothing precipitates and solidifies this gold so
readily as contact with human flesh heated by passion.
Sands
Chicago vice area
In the 1850s the worst vice district in Chicago was
called the Sands, lying just about where the Tribune
and Wrigley buildings are now situated. At the time,
the Sands consisted of about 40 buildings, every one of
785
SANDY Flash
Sangerman’s Bombers
which was a brothel, a gambling den, a thieves’ hideout
or a saloon partly used for prostitution. The Chicago
Tribune called the Sands
the vilest and most dangerous place in Chicago. For
some years past it has been the resort or hiding place of
all sorts of criminals, while the most wretched and
degraded women and their miserable pimps [are] there
in large numbers. A large number of persons, mostly
strangers in the city, have been enticed into the dens
there and robbed, and there is but little doubt that a
number of murders have been committed by the desperate characters who have made these dens their homes.
The most beastly sexuality and darkest crimes had their
homes in the Sands. . . .
Typical of the establishments found there was a
saloon-bagnio operated by Freddy Webster. It was
noted for both its viciousness and vileness. One of Webster’s inmates was a prostitute named Margaret
McGuinness, who was described as never having been
sober or out of the house in five years and never having
had clothes on in three years. She entertained anywhere
from 15 to 40 men a night. When she died on March
8, 1857 of “intemperance,” hers was the seventh death
to occur in the Sands in the previous seven days.
The Sands, or at least its women, were the cause of the
so-called Whore War of 1857, when a group of madams
on State Street attempted to lure away some of the area’s
star prostitutes. Led by a brutal young prostitute, Gentle
Annie Stafford, the forces of the Sands prevailed.
Numerous political figures vowed to wipe out the
Sands but never did, mainly because its inhabitants
insisted they would fight to the death to remain there.
Finally, in 1857 Mayor Long John Wentworth accomplished the deed on a day when all the men and many of
the women had left the Sands to attend a great dog fight
at a nearby racetrack. Accompanied by some 30 policemen and two horse-drawn wagons loaded with hooks
and chains, the mayor ordered the flimsy structures of
the Sands pulled down. As the work progressed, a fire
company arrived and destroyed several shanties with
streams of water. Some of the buildings were burned,
and by the time the inhabitants of the Sands returned,
they found nothing left but rubble and ashes. The area
eventually became a prime business location, but
whether the destruction of the Sands represented civic
progress is debatable. Its several hundred undesirable
residents simply spread themselves around Chicago.
See also: ANNIE STAFFORD, WHORE WAR.
Sandy Flash
bombers-for-hire gang
While bombings in late 19th and early 20th century
America were always considered the work of foreign
elements, such as Black Hand extortionists or blackbearded anarchists, the fact is that the bombers were
just as often dyed-in-the-wool Americans.
The first criminal gang of bombers was Chicago’s
Sweeney gang, which carried out wholesale bombing
attacks during and after World War I until its members
were arrested by police in 1921. Sweeney’s Bombers, as
the newspapers labeled them, were succeeded by Sangerman’s Bombers, who raised the practice to new technical
heights, carrying out terrorist labor bombings as well as
selling their services to politicians and elements of organized crime. The kingpin of the operation was Joseph
Sangerman, a leading manufacturer of barber shop supplies as well as head of the barbers’ union. The Illinois
Crime Survey called him “the directing genius of the
bombing trust, the contractor of bombing.” As an officer
in the barbers’ union, he began by hiring bombers to discipline barber shop owners who refused to operate their
stores in accordance with union rules. Finding that this
gang could do a job effectively and escape detection, he
began to accept commissions in other fields. Arrested in
1925, Sangerman admitted to police that he maintained
a full-time staff of six bombers, including one woman,
and that his rates ran from $50 to $700 a job.
One star member of Sangerman’s crew was George
Matrisciano, described as the best bomb maker in
Chicago’s history. Matrisciano always carried two
sticks of dynamite in his pockets. When several indictments were drawn against him, fear grew that he might
talk, as Sangerman had, and he was killed, according to
the crime survey, by “the guns of the officers of the barbers’ union.”
With the breakup of Sangerman’s Bombers, the incidence of bombing in Chicago started to decline. The
bombings in the 1916–21 Aldermen’s Wars and the
1928 Republican primary proved to be too loud in
more ways than one. As the Capone mob and its successors learned, bombings were spectacles that drew
too much attention. The gun, knife and ice pick were
more pedestrian but, in the long run, safer.
See also: ALDERMEN’S WARS, PINEAPPLE PRIMARY,
SWEENEY’S BOMBERS.
Saturday Night Special
cheap handgun
Saturday Night Special is the name applied to the small,
easily concealed, usually illegal handguns that have
been used in millions of crimes by persons, including
youths, who cannot afford to spend more than $5 or
$10 for a weapon.
See JAMES FITZPATRICK.
786
SCALP hunting
cants. When Anastasia heard the accusations against
his aide, he immediately ordered his murder, and Scalice was cut down by four bullets in the neck and head
as he stood in front of a Bronx fruit store. Anastasia’s
motive for acting with such unseemly haste apparently
was due to a widely circulated rumor that he himself
was getting a cut of Scalice’s kickbacks.
One theory has it that Scalice was innocent of the
charge and that it resulted from a frame-up by Vito
Genovese, then involved in a struggle with Anastasia
for the top position in the New York Mafia. Genovese
is believed to have formulated the plot to discredit
Anastasia, but the latter simply outwitted him by
killing Scalice. In any event, the official police report
on the slaying summed up the only hard facts ever
determined about the crime: murder bullets were
“fired by two unknown white males who fled in an
automobile.”
See also: VITO GENOVESE, ALBERT ANASTASIA.
Its birthplace was Detroit, Mich., one of the nation’s
most violent cities but not necessarily one where guns
were easy to purchase. In the late 1950s and early
1960s mayhem-minded Detroiters began making onehour car trips to Toledo, Ohio, a gun buyer’s paradise
where weapons could be bought at shoeshine stands,
filling stations, candy stores and even flower shops.
Harassed Detroit lawmen found that the purchases
made during these trips were often used in stickups on
Saturday nights and thus dubbed the weapons Saturday
Night Specials.
It is wrong to try to categorize these handguns as
merely cheap foreign imports, since many of them are
produced by American gun manufacturers.
Testifying before a Senate committee in 1971, New
York City’s police commissioner, Patrick V. Murphy,
spoke of the perils of Saturday Night Specials and other
guns as well.
What kind of guns are used by our criminals? . . . Of
the 8,792 illegal weapons seized by the New York City
Police Department in 1970, 24 percent of them were
classified by our ballistics section as of this type. In one
recent sixteen-month sampling we were able to establish that such weapons, retailing for as little as five or
ten dollars, were used in at least 36 murders, 68 robberies, and 117 felonious assaults.
There is absolutely no legitimate reason to permit
the importation, manufacture, or sale of these
weapons, or their parts. They are sought only by people
who have illicit motives, but who may have some difficulty securing a better gun. . . .
But Saturday Night Specials are only one part of
the handgun problem, and by no means the most significant part. Most of the guns we seized are quality
weapons manufactured by reputable foreign and
domestic companies. . . .
Scalise, John
See ANSELMI AND SCALISE.
scalp hunting
Contrary to what has now become the widely accepted
view, American Indians did not learn scalping from
white settlers. But while they indeed started the practice, the introduction of steel knives and tomahawks
by Europeans made scalping easier and helped spread
the custom. Scalp hunting became a business when
whites introduced a system of paying for scalps as a
way of getting rid of hostile or unwanted Indians. The
bounties offered at various times by colonial governments and then by Mexican and U.S. government
agencies in the West were pretty much standard: $100
for a male Indian scalp; $50 for a female; $25 for a
child. Naturally, such a system was an invitation to
commit wholesale slaughter. One of the more terrible
instances occurred in 1837, when a scalp hunter
named James Johnson devised a scheme whereby the
Mimbreno Apaches were invited to a lavish feast in the
town plaza of Santa Rita del Cobre, just south of the
Rio Grande. After the Indians had been plied with
food and whiskey and were no longer alert, two howitzers as well as rifles, pistols and bowie knives were
used to slaughter them. Four hundred scalps were
taken.
Besides Johnson, probably the most proficient of the
Western scalp hunters were John Glanton, James Kirker
and Jim Hobbs, none of whom was known to be above
taking the hair of Mexicans or dark-skinned Americans. Operating under the doctrine of Manifest Destiny,
See also: DERRINGER, MUFF PISTOL, PEPPERBOX SPECIAL.
Scalice, Frank “Don Chreech” (1894–1957) Mafia
underboss
The number two man in Albert Anastasia’s New York
crime family, Frank Scalice died in a web of Mafia
intrigue that probably will never be unraveled.
As second in command to Anastasia in what had
originally been the Mangano crime family, Scalice
became most active in recruiting new members into the
Mafia beginning in 1954, when the “books,” or membership rosters, were opened for the first time since the
early 1930s. It was later charged that Scalice was taking kickbacks of up to $50,000 from successful appli-
787
SCHMID, Charles Howard
as were French and Saunders, The latter two turned
state’s evidence against their bizarre hero. Schmid
got 55 years for the rape-murder of Alleen Rowe
and the death sentence for the slayings of the Fritz
girls. French got four to five years and Saunders life
imprisonment for their parts in the Rowe crime. When
the Supreme Court abolished capital punishment,
Schmid was resentenced to two terms of life imprisonment.
On November 11, 1972 Schmid escaped from the
Arizona State Prison along with another triple murderer, Raymond Hudgens. The pair held four hostages
on a ranch near Tempe, Ariz., and then separated. Both
were recaptured within a few days and returned to
prison.
government bounty payers seem to have been not very
particular.
See also: JOHN GLANTON, JAMES HOBBS, JAMES KIRKER.
Schmid, Charles Howard (1942– ) mass murderer
Often called the Pied Piper of Tucson, Charles Schmid
was 22 years old in 1964 when he led a weird clique
of admiring young people on forays of rape and
bizarre behavior, ending in a series of meaningless
murders.
Even in his high school days Schmid behaved
strangely. Only five feet three inches, he padded his
cowboy boots to make him taller, dyed his red hair
black, wore cosmetics and designed a phony mole on
his face to make him look meaner. He told wild tales
that somehow made him very popular, attracting a
number of girls who prostituted themselves to provide
him with money. One girl went to work in his parent’s
nursing home and faithfully deposited most of her
week’s pay in Schmid’s bank account.
Schmid rented a cottage on the outskirts of Tucson,
bought a beat-up car and became a fixture of the
Speedway Boulevard area, a strip that attracted racehappy motorcyclists, souped-up car enthusiasts and
rock-and-roll music lovers. On May 31, 1964 Schmid
was drinking with two young friends, Mary French and
John Saunders, when he announced he felt like killing a
girl. “I want to do it tonight,” he said. “I think I can get
away with it!”
Mary French invited 15-year-old Alleen Rowe to
join them late that night and they went for a drive in
Schmid’s car. After stopping in the desert, Mary stayed
in the car while Schmid and Saunders took the girl to a
secluded spot. Schmid raped her and then casually told
Saunders to “hit her over the head with a rock.” Saunders started to obey but the horrified girl ran off. After
catching up with her, Schmid knocked her to the
ground and smashed her skull in with a rock. They
buried the girl in a shallow grave and went off to do
some more drinking.
In August 1965 a girlfriend of Schmid’s, 17-year-old
Gretchen Fritz, disappeared with her 13-year-old sister,
Wendy. Like Alleen Rowe, the Fritz girls were listed as
runaways by the police, but a short while later, Schmid
boasted to a friend, Richard Bruns, that he had strangled both sisters and thrown their bodies into a ditch.
Since Bruns refused to believe the story, Schmid showed
him the corpses.
Bruns kept silent about the matter for a while
until he got it into his head that Schmid was going
to kill his, Bruns’, girlfriend. He started having
nightmares about Schmid and finally went to the
police. Schmid was arrested on November 11, 1965,
school killers
rampage of the 1990s
In 1993 a Kentucky high school teacher found out
something about an honor student in her English class,
something that few others appeared to have grasped.
The teacher, Deanna McDavid, was convinced that the
student, Scott Pennington, was extremely dangerous.
She found that thoughts of death ran through the student’s journals. McDavid told a fellow teacher that
someday the young student was going to bring a gun to
school and shoot himself—or somebody else. She was
right.
On a Monday afternoon Scott Pennington shot
English teacher McDavid to death. It was one of the
nation’s first school shootings. Pennington was sentenced to life imprisonment. That verdict was hardly a
deterrent to school killing sprees that permeated the
1990s, climaxing in the April 20, 1999, massacre of
12 students and a teacher and the wounding of 23 others at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.
The killers were two students, Eric Harris, 18, and
Dylan Klebold, 17. Most of the shootings took place in
the school library and cafeteria. The pair shot some
students they knew and some they knew only casually.
One girl, wounded in their attack, begged for help.
She was asked if she believed in God. When she said
she did, she was blown away. The pair had clearly
determined to kill as many as they could, and they
expected to be killed themselves. Instead, they killed
themselves in an apparent double suicide.
The sheer horror of the massacre shocked the
nation, and for that matter the entire world, as news
media from many nations descended on Littleton. But
except for the scope of the tragedy, the student killings
had previously reached almost a monotonous drumbeat, Scott Pennington’s 1993 attack being merely a
forecast of tragedies to come.
788
SCHOOL killers
Over a timespan of just about a year and a half prior
to the killings at Columbine High, there was a frightening parade of similar murder sprees:
offered troubled and misguided kids a new way to grab
attention for themselves. Said Elissa Benedek, professor
of clinical psychiatry at the University of Michigan, of a
considerable number of school students, “. . . there
are lots of unhappy ones who want their moment in the
sun, and this is one way to do it.”
Some of the Columbine copycats were very serious
in their plans but were thwarted. A quartet of 14-yearolds in Wimberly, Texas, were arrested just three days
after the Colombine incident for allegedly plotting to
blow up a local junior high school. They were turned
in by other students, undoubtedly affected by the
killings in Littleton, after they heard the four eighth
graders bragging about their plans. Searches of their
homes by authorities turned up gunpowder and bombbuilding instructions downloaded from the Internet.
The boys were charged with conspiracy to manufacture explosives and commit murder and arson. There
were other cases where boys were arrested and charged
with conspiracy despite their claims they were only
joking. And in Bakersfield, California, a 13-year-old
boy was taken out of school after other students
noticed him loading a .40-caliber handgun. He was
carrying a hit list of 30 names with “they deserve to
die” written at the bottom.
All these cases led to what some saw as a near-hysterical and not-well-thought-out reaction to the problem. The American Civil Liberties Union received a
flood of complaints from parents around the country
whose children were suspended for wearing black
(since Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had done so in
their deadly rampage). There were calls in Congress
for the posting of the Ten Commandments in schools
despite the dubious constitutional aspects of the
move. Among those supporting such acts was George
W. Bush, then the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for president. When newsmen asked
him which Ten Commandments he favored—the
Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or Muslim—Bush
appeared nonplussed, then replied, “The regular
ones.”
At the same time it was revealed the Secret Service
began a detailed review of the various school shootings
that was said to complement their findings about political assasins. The Secret Service developed a number of
caveats to various effects to improve security at
schools. These included the use of armed guards, video
cameras, metal detectors, dress codes and the use of
special phone numbers for reporting threats.
Concerning the use of police officers to patrol the
halls: The worry was that since many school killers
later told investigators and psychologists that part of
their motive is to be killed, such security could be either
a deterrent or a “magnet for suicide.”
October 1, 1997—A 16-year-old boy in Pearl,
Mississippi murdered his mother, then went to his
high school and shot two students to death and
wounded seven others. The boy was sentenced to
life imprisonment, and the alleged mastermind of
the affair was still awaiting trial. According to
authorities, the teenagers were part of a cultlike
group.
December 1, 1997—A 14-year-old boy killed three
students and wounded five others in a hallway of
Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky.
The boy pleaded guilty but mentally ill and following trial, drew a life sentence. Asked the reason for
his crime, he said he did not know.
March 24, 1998—At a middle school in Jonesboro,
Arkansas, four female students and a teacher were
killed and 10 other people were wounded from gunfire coming from adjacent woods following a false
alarm that brought students outside. Two boys, aged
11 and 13, were convicted in juvenile court for murder and could be held to age 21.
April 24, 1998—A 14-year-old was charged with
having shot a science teacher to death in front of students at an eighth-grade dance at a banquet hall in
Edinboro, Pennsylvania. Awaiting trial, the student’s
motive was unclear.
May 19, 1998—Three days before graduation, an
18-year-old honor student was charged with opening
fire in a parking lot at a Fayetteville, Tenn. high
school and killing a classmate who was dating his
ex-girlfriend.
May 21, 1998—Two teenagers died and more
than 20 were wounded when a 15-year-old boy
allegedly opened fire at a Springfield, Oreg. high
school. The boy’s parents were murdered in their
home. On a police videotape, the boy was asked
why he began firing. He said, “I had no other
choice.”
If these preludes to the Columbine massacre were
frightening enough, they were matched by the “copycat” shootings that followed. Just eight days following
the events in Colorado, a 14-year-old dropout in Taber,
Alberta, Canada, came to his high school wearing a
three-quarter length parka. Someone smirked, “Do you
have a gun under there?” Moments later, the boy
whipped out a .22-caliber rifle, killed a 17-year-old boy
and wounded another. The Columbine shooting had
789
SCHULTZ, Dutch
Concerning surveillance cameras: The worry was
that since many killers wanted to become famous, such
cameras could be either a deterrent or a way to record
on film the acts that were planned to make the potential killers famous. This could make them stars of a
morbid video, almost a “yearbook video,” some said.
On dress codes and the like: One member of the
Secret Service study noted, “It would be much easier if
all the people who did this dressed weirdly or were outcasts.” But most killers themselves said they sought to
blend in, rather than give such “warning signs.”
In its own method of preventing political assassination, the Secret Service has studied all 83 people who
tried to kill a public official or a celebrity in the United
States in the last half century and they found not one of
them had actually made a threat. Still, the Secret Service must take all threats seriously. What does turn up
is that political assassins and school killers do have
some common traits. Killers study security and acquire
weapons. They become knowledgeable about the history of assassination. They make plans for their escape
or their own deaths.
The Secret Service once looked out for people who
fit a popular profile of dangerousness: the hater, the
loner, the threatener, the lunatic—as being potentially
dangerous. That profile has been more or less shattered. There is a recognition today that it is not a matter of whether a person is capable of violence. In the
new view people can be more or less violent as determined by circumstances. People have to make a decision to kill.
Thus what is looked for is whether a person is on a
path toward attacking someone. Then it has to be
determined how likely it is that they will attack. The
question becomes how might they be prevented from
doing so. Harris and Klebold gave many signs of danger. They copied school keys, acquired weapons, made
bombs and put their plans in a diary. They also apparently changed their mind about who their victims
would be—not uncommon among school killers. In
the case of Columbine a student who previously had
been hated was warned to leave the school before the
massacre.
Of other such school killers, a psychologist involved
in Secret Service studies said, “Some write about their
ideas and activities, in a journal or diary. Others tell
friends, family or colleagues—but usually not the target—about their thoughts and intentions. Often their
plans go on hold until some painful event occurs—a
lost opportunity or the end of a relationship. This sends
them into despair.”
Eric Harris was the son of a career military man and
laid out his plans for a full year. His attack came within
a week of his being rejected by the U.S. Marine Corps.
Concerning those special phone numbers for the
report of threats or concerns, the Secret Service is concerned that almost no schools or the police have gotten
any training on assessing a possible violent act. The
goal is to provide training materials that the schools
and police can utilize.
The Secret Service is recommending asking a number
of questions about a person’s motivation and behavior.
Besides learning what a person has said about his or her
intention, it should be determined if he or she shows an
interest in assassins and weapons and militant groups.
Does the person have a history of mental illness or acting on delusions or hallucinations.
There is no sure answer to how to end school
killings, but in the meantime, one question must be
asked: “Is this something that might do more harm
than good?”
Schultz, Dutch (1902–1935) underworld leader
Among the great underworld leaders spawned by Prohibition, Dutch Schultz was one of the flakiest, probably the cheapest and often the most cold-blooded. In
the end, he had to be executed by his fellow gangsters
because he threatened the status quo established
between organized crime and the law. Born Arthur Flegenheimer in the Bronx, New York City, he tended bar
and had only a minor criminal record until the mid1920s, when he formed a gang and took over much of
the beer trade in the Bronx. Tough, aggressive and
probably keener in his appreciation of potential sources
of illicit revenues than even Lucky Luciano, he was the
first to see the fortune to be made out of the numbers
racket in Harlem. He moved in on the independent
black operators there and, using force and violence,
turned them into his agents in a new multimillion dollar racket. Through a mathematical genius named Otto
“Abbadabba” Berman, he figured out a way to fix the
numbers game so that the smallest possible payout was
made when someone hit.
Few other gangsters, including most of his own men,
either liked or respected him, but they feared him.
Schultz was a miser who paid his gangsters as little as
he could get away with, and he would almost fly into a
rage whenever he was asked for a raise. The only man
in the organization he paid really well was Abbadabba,
who got $10,000 a week, though only after he threatened to take his mathematical skills elsewhere.
Schultz never spent more than $35 for a suit or $2
for a shirt. “Personally,” he once told an interviewer, “I
think only queers wear silk shirts. I never bought one in
my life. A guy’s a sucker to spend fifteen or twenty dollars on a shirt. Hell, a guy can get a good one for two
bucks!”
790
SCHULTZ, Dutch
killing, he was forced into hiding by the Schultz organization’s superior firepower. On February 8, 1932 he
ventured forth to use a telephone booth and was
gunned down by Schultz’ machine gunners.
After that, no one really wanted to take on Schultz.
He would fight to the last man and had powerful political protection, mainly through Jimmy Hines, the Tammany boss who would later go to prison for his
protection of the Schultz forces. Although Luciano,
Meyer Lansky and the other founders of the national
crime syndicate dealt the Dutchman in, considering him
too powerful to leave out, they secretly sought to get rid
of Schultz because they considered him too erratic and
because they wanted to take over his lucrative beer and
policy rackets. While Schultz was awaiting trial after
being indicted on tax charges, Luciano and his associates moved quickly to take over his rackets through the
cooperation of Schultz’ top aide, Bo Weinberg. Amazingly, Schultz beat the case against him and returned to
reclaim his domain. Rather than fight him, the syndicate
leaders gave back large chunks they had gobbled up,
explaining they had been simply minding the Dutchman’s holdings in his absence. Schultz was almost forgiving, but not toward Weinberg. Shortly thereafter,
Weinberg became a permanent missing person. According to one underworld report, Schultz personally put a
bullet in his head, but in another version Weinberg was
fitted with a “cement overcoat” and dropped—still
alive—into the Hudson River. Either story could be true.
Schultz’ demise came about because of his desire to
get rid of special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey, whom
Gov. Herbert Lehman had appointed in 1935 to investigate racketeering and vice. When Dewey started
cracking down on the mobs, particularly on Schultz
and his gang, the Dutchman, seeing his revenues
decline, went before the national board of the syndicate
to demand that Dewey be assassinated. The proposal
was quickly turned down by Luciano, Lansky, Louis
Lepke, Costello and others, who were convinced it
would bring an avalanche of police pressure on the
entire underworld.
Undeterred by the strong vote against him, Schultz
stormed out of the meeting, defiantly declaring: “I still
say he ought to be hit. And if nobody else is gonna do
it, I’m gonna hit him myself.”
When the syndicate learned Schultz was really going
ahead with the plot and had even picked a murder site,
they quickly put out a quick contract on him.
On October 23, 1935 Schultz, Abbadabba Berman
and two bodyguards, Abe Landau and Lulu
Rosenkrantz were in a favorite hangout, the Palace
Chop House and Tavern in Newark, N. J. Schultz left
his three henchmen sitting at a table in the back and
went into the men’s room. While he was in there, two
Lucky Luciano once said of him: “Dutch was the
cheapest guy I ever knew. The guy had a couple of million bucks and he dressed like a pig, and he worried
about spending two cents for a newspaper. That was
his big spending, buying the papers so’s he could read
about himself.”
Schultz was somewhat of an expert on newspapers.
He admitted that he took the name of Dutch Schultz
because “it was short enough to fit in the headlines. If
I’d kept the name of Flegenheimer, nobody would have
heard of me.” Once, he raged at Meyer Berger, the star
crime reporter of The New York Times, because Berger
had described him as a “pushover for a blonde.”
Actually, only one offense truly enraged Schultz. His
famous “mouthpiece” Dixie Davis, later said of him:
“You can insult Arthur’s girl, spit in his face, push him
around—and he’ll laugh. But don’t steal a dollar from
his accounts. If you do, you’re dead.”
Among those who did and died for it was the murderous Jack “Legs” Diamond, who became known as
the underworld’s clay pigeon in his wars with various
gangsters, especially Schultz. When Diamond expired
in an upstate New York hotel room with several bullets
in his head, Schultz was quoted as saying, “Just another
punk caught with his hands in my pockets.” Vincent
“Mad Dog” Coll, a former underling with a fiery temper and raging ambitions, also challenged Schultz. Coll
staged wholesale raids on Schultz’ beer drops and policy joints, and while he matched the Dutchman at
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Dutch Schultz lingered for two days after being shot, but
he did not name his killers. Instead he talked mostly
gibberish, including some mysterious mumblings about
all the money he had hidden.
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SCHUSTER, Arnold
killing of Anastasia on the grounds of his maniacal
rages and his capacity to have almost anyone murdered
at any time. The Schuster killing was clearly one of the
things Genovese had in mind.
See also: ALBERT ANASTASIA, APALACHIN CONFERENCE,
WILLIE “THE ACTOR” SUTTON, FREDERICK J. TENUTO.
gunmen entered the Palace. One of the two burst into
the men’s room and shot to death a man standing at a
urinal, not realizing the victim was Schultz. He then
charged at the table where Berman and the two bodyguards were seated and, with two guns blazing, killed
them all. Only at that point did the gunmen discover
that Schultz was not among the three. However, when
they checked the men’s room, they found Schultz was
the man who had been shot simply to ensure that the
pair were not surprised from behind. The gunman who
had done all the shooting lifted a considerable amount
of cash from Schultz’ pockets and then fled.
Schultz lingered in a hospital for two days before
dying. Eventually, one of his killers was identified as
Charles “the Bug” Workman. He was tried and sentenced to 23 years for the crime.
See also: OTTO “ABBADABBA” BERMAN, MEYER BERGER,
THOMAS E. DEWEY, CHARLES “LUCKY” LUCIANO, JACOB
“GURRAH” SHAPIRO.
Schwartz, Charles Henry
See WARREN GILBERT
BARBE.
scolds
Punishment of women for being common scolds, i.e.,
vituperative females who rebuke others so rudely and
loudly that they frequently disturb the public peace,
was long practiced in America right up to the middle of
this century.
A typical example was Anne Royall of Washington,
D.C., who in 1829 was made to pay a $10 fine and
post a $50 good-behavior bond. In 1947 a woman in
Greensburg, Pa. was forced to pay court costs and was
given a suspended sentence for being a scold. That
same year three sisters in Pittsburgh were sent to jail on
scolding charges for terms ranging from three to 23
months.
Schuster, Arnold (1928–1952) murder victim
In February 1952 Arnold Schuster, a 24-year-old
Brooklyn clothing salesman, made the front pages of
newspapers from coast to coast after he spotted the
notorious bank robber Willie “the Actor” Sutton while
riding on a New York City subway. He followed Sutton
out of the subway, watched him enter a garage and
then notified the police. Sutton was captured on the
street as he was removing the battery from his stalled
car. On March 9, 1952 Arnold Schuster was back on
the front pages: a gruesome picture displayed his corpse
lying on the Brooklyn street where he lived. He had
been shot four times: twice in the groin and once in
each eye.
An unsuccessful police manhunt was organized for a
37-year-old murderer and escaped convict named Frederick J. Tenuto after he was tentatively identified by a
witness who had seen the assassin leaving the site of the
crime. Tenuto was already on the FBI’s list of the 10
most-wanted criminals. Years later, an unexpected
source, Mafia informer Joe Valachi, confirmed that
Tenuto had killed young Schuster on orders from the
Mafia’s most-feared executioner, Albert Anastasia.
Watching Schuster being interviewed on television after
Sutton’s capture, the crime boss had become enraged
and had exploded, “I can’t stand squealers!” He
ordered Schuster executed for informing on Sutton,
even though the bank robber had no connection with
organized crime. Anastasia removed any risk of being
connected with the Schuster murder by having Tenuto
assassinated.
At the Mafia’s famous Apalachin meeting in November 1957, Vito Genovese justified the barber shop
Scopes, John T. (1900–1970) “monkey trial” defendant
In 1925 John T. Scopes, a 24-year-old biology teacher
in Dayton, Tenn., violated state law that forbade the
teaching of “any theory that denies the story of the
Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to
teach instead that man has descended from a lower
order of animals.” Since there was no question that by
teaching evolution Scopes had broken the law, he
played only a minor role in the ensuing criminal trial,
which pitted three-time presidential candidate William
Jennings Bryan, age 65, against defense lawyer
Clarence Darrow, age 68.
The trial became a worldwide media event, as more
than 100 journalists descended on the small hamlet to
watch the philosophical battle, which reached its
highest drama when Darrow called the great believer,
Bryan, to the stand. Bryan based his testimony on a
literal interpretation of the Bible, accepting the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib. When Darrow asked,
“Did you ever discover where Cain got his wife?”
Bryan answered, “No, sir; I leave the agnostics to
hunt for her.” As Darrow proceeded with questions
about the origins of the earth and the ages of rocks,
Bryan was reduced to shambling contradictions,
finally falling back completely on fundamentalist
beliefs.
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SCOTTSBORO Boys
By the time the 11-day trial ended, newspapers
around the nation and around the world were treating
Bryan with contempt. Nonetheless Scopes was convicted and fined $100, and fundamentalists cheered the
news that the monkey was on the run. The decision was
later reversed on a legal technicality, and the authorities
didn’t dare bring the matter to court again.
Bryan was shocked at the scorn heaped on him and
drowned his sorrow in food. Five days after the trial, he
sat down to a breakfast that consisted of a large stack
of hotcakes soaked in syrup, six fried eggs, three thick
slices of ham, an immeasurable amount of fried potatoes, seven corn muffins and six cups of coffee with
sugar and cream. Then he died.
Darrow was quite solicitous of his rival’s death and
mumbled a few words of respect until a reporter told
him, “They say that Mr. Bryan died of a broken heart
and that you were the cause of it.”
Darrow snorted. “Broken heart, hell,” he snapped.
“He died of a busted belly.”
See also: CLARENCE DARROW.
who had testified as character witnesses at his trial
were Gov. Carey, and two former New York mayors,
Robert Wagner and John V. Lindsay. Convicted along
with Scotto was his father-in-law, Anthony Anastasio,
the late Tough Tony Anastasio’s nephew.
Scottsboro Boys
accused rapists
The greatest civil rights battle of the 1930s was the
Scottsboro Case, in which nine black youths, aged 13
to 20, were tried and convicted of raping two “Southern ladies” aboard a freight train in Alabama in 1931.
The incident started on a Memphis-bound freight
train when the nine blacks got into a fistfight with a
number of white youths also riding the rails in search of
work. The blacks defeated the whites and tossed them
off the slow-moving train. One of the whites reported
the clash to authorities and the order was given to
“round up every Negro on the train and bring them to
Scottsboro.”
The freight was halted and the nine youths were
taken in by deputies. Also netted were two white
females clad in overalls: Victoria Price, 19, and Ruby
Bates, 17. Fearing they would be charged with
vagrancy, the two declared they had been gang-raped
by a dozen blacks, three of whom had jumped from
the train. The nine were tied together and hauled to
Scottsboro to await Alabama justice, while Victoria
Price and Ruby Bates were transformed into the epitome of Southern womanhood. As the story spread, the
youths were nothing but “black brutes” who had,
among other things, chewed off one of Ruby Bate’s
breasts.
A whirlwind trial took place within 12 days of the
alleged crime. During the trial the defendants were
under constant threat of being lynched and National
Guardsmen were sent to protect them. Lawyers were
finally provided for the nine on the day the trial began;
one of the counsels appeared to be drunk during the
entire proceedings. At one point in his presentation to
the jury, the prosecutor declared, “Guilty or not, let’s
get rid of these niggers.” The jury voted guilty despite
medical evidence that while both females had had sexual intercourse, the acts had not occurred as recently as
the day of the alleged incident and there was none of
the usual signs indicating force had been used. Eight of
the nine were sentenced to death, and the youngest,
aged 13, was given life imprisonment because of his
age, although seven jurors had voted for his execution.
In the succeeding months and years the Scottsboro
case was in and out of various courts, with the defendants now represented by attorney Samuel S. Leibowitz, the “New York Jew nigger lover,” as he was
called. The original verdict was thrown out by the
Scotto, Anthony M. (1934– ) union leader
Anthony M. Scotto emerged as a force in New York
longshoremen’s union affairs during the 1960s after the
death of Anthony “Tough Tony” Anastasio, to whom
he was related by marriage. At the time, Scotto was
hailed as a new-breed leader who would bring
respectability to waterfront unionism. It was not to be
so. In 1979 federal investigators, insisting labor racketeering was still a way of life on the waterfront,
arrested Scotto, then general organizer of the AFL-CIO
International Longshoremen’s Association and president of the union’s Local 1814 in Brooklyn, one of the
top three posts in the 100,000-member union, representing dock workers from Maine to Texas. He was
charged with labor racketeering.
In November, Scotto was convicted of taking more
than $200,000 in cash payoffs from waterfront businesses despite his claim that he had “never taken a
cent” for himself from anyone. He insisted he had
accepted a series of political contributions, not payoffs,
totaling $75,000, which he claimed he then gave to
New York Lt. Gov. Mario M. Cuomo for his unsuccessful 1977 bid to become mayor of New York City
and to New York Gov. Hugh L. Carey for his successful
1978 campaign to win reelection.
In 1980 U.S. District Judge Charles E. Stewart, Jr.,
sentenced Scotto to five years in prison and fined him
$75,000. The judge said he had been “extremely
impressed” by letters from prominent politicians and
labor and business leaders requesting leniency for
Scotto, who could have gotten 20 years. Among those
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SEABURY investigation
Supreme Court in 1932 on the basis that the defendants
had been denied adequate counsel.
Several trials ensued involving various of the defendants. In that of Clarence Willie Norris, Leibowitz
charged that Victoria Price was a prostitute, and Ruby
Bates admitted no rapes had occurred. Nevertheless,
Norris was convicted. Leibowitz then succeeded in getting several of the convictions set aside by winning a
Supreme Court decision that the exclusion of blacks
from jury service was unconstitutional. More trials followed. The so-called ringleader, Haywood Patterson,
was convicted and given 75 years.
Meanwhile, international protests mounted. Albert
Einstein and Theodore Dreiser were in the forefront of
the protests. Europeans stoned a number of U.S. consulates and an American bank in Cuba was bombed.
Finally, the state, under intense pressure from the public and the press, dropped charges against four defendants, and by the 1940s four more had been paroled. In
1948 Patterson escaped from prison and fled to Michigan, where two years later he was convicted of
manslaughter in the stabbing death of a black man. He
died in prison in 1952.
By 1980 Norris was the only Scottsboro boy known
to be alive. He had jumped parole in 1946, escaped to
Ohio and eventually moved to New York. In July 1976
Norris, still a fugitive under Alabama law, applied to
Gov. George Wallace for a pardon, which was granted
in October. When he went to Alabama early in 1977 to
accept his pardon, Norris was hailed by blacks and a
great many whites as something of a hero. A few
months later, the Alabama House Judiciary Committee
voted down a bill to pay him $10,000 compensation.
See also: SAMUEL S. LEIBOWITZ.
Seabury investigation
Seabury determined that bribery of public officers
was vital to obtaining special privileges for waterfront
leases, bus franchises and variances from building zoning law and in condemnation cases, and was needed to
conduct many other activities as well. Day after day the
Seabury hearings exposed payoffs, venality and crime,
linking the worst criminal elements with the political
powers of Tammany Hall, various police commissioners and, especially, Mayor Jimmy Walker. Magistrates
squirmed as they tried to explain the special considerations shown to gambling figures and others possessing
good political connections.
Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt was accused in some
quarters of giving Seabury less than full support, causing Walter Lippmann to write, “Franklin D. Roosevelt
is no crusader.” Roosevelt at the time was campaigning
for the Democratic nomination for president and was
wary of offending Tammany. While denouncing civic
crime, Roosevelt said he did not feel a strong enough
case had been made against Mayor Walker to warrant
executive action on his part. However, once the nomination was locked up, with the support of Tammany’s
Jimmy Hines, Roosevelt reversed himself and fully
backed Seabury, declaring that Walker and all other
city officeholders had to answer all questions put to
them or get out of office.
Seabury hauled a parade of city officials and politicians before the committee and grilled them relentlessly.
Caches of money, clearly bribes, turned up all over, and
many were linked to the mayor. Walker appeared in the
hearing room and brashly announced, “Little Boy Blue
is going to blow his horn—or his top.” He did neither,
proving to be an unimpressive witness as one juicy
piece of evidence after another was placed before him.
Walker was forced to admit that at one time he had
shared a joint bank account with a broker who had made
a $246,692 cash deposit to the account, allegedly the
profits from stock transactions, although there was no
evidence of this. Later, the mayor had withdrawn the
money and put it in his safe. “Not in a tin box,” he said,
not without a measure of charm. What happened to the
money? he was asked. He and his wife had “just spent it.”
As more and more evidence piled up against Walker,
he lost a lot of his jauntiness. When Roosevelt gave
strong indication he was preparing to remove the
mayor from office, Walker acted quickly, sending off a
telegram to Albany: “I HEREBY RESIGN AS MAYOR
OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK . . . JAMES J.
WALKER.”
The Seabury probe was credited with paving the way
for the reform administration of Mayor Fiorello La
Guardia. After the investigation Seabury returned to
private practice. He died in 1958.
See also: VIVIAN GORDON, JAMES J. WALKER.
New York corruption probe
In 1930 a former jurist, Samuel Seabury, took leave
from his lucrative private legal practice to launch a
series of probes into New York City’s scandal-wracked
administration, the first important such probe since the
much-heralded Lexow Committee investigation of
1894–95. Essentially, the Seabury Investigation arrived
at the conclusion that little had improved in a generation, that graft taking, for instance, was a common
practice within the police department rather than the
acts of a few corrupt officers, or “bad apples.”
Seabury’s probe of the vice squad was sidetracked
for a time when the leading potential witness, a highpriced prostitute and blackmailer named Vivian Gordon, was found strangled to death in Van Cortlandt
Park after she had started providing investigators with
extensive evidence of corruption. Eventually, 20 members were dismissed.
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SECRET Service
Secret Band of Brothers
syndicate
reputed 19th-century crime
extortion rackets, espionage rings and land frauds and
even foiling a plot to steal Lincoln’s body from its
tomb. These duties were transferred over the years to
newer agencies, leaving the Secret Service solely concerned with anticounterfeiting activities until 1901,
when presidential protection was added to its chores in
the aftermath of the McKinley assassination.
In succeeding years the agency’s presidential protection function was expanded to cover the president-elect,
the president’s immediate family, the vice president and
vice president-elect, the former presidents and their
wives and widows and their children until they reach the
age of 16. In 1968 Secret Service protection was
extended to include major presidential and vice presidential candidates and, in 1971, the protection of visiting heads of state and other foreign dignitaries.
As such, the Secret Service is seemingly immune
from budget-cutting efforts. In 1963, when John F.
Kennedy was assassinated, the Secret Service had 389
agents and a budget of $5.4 million. In 1980 it had
1,552 agents and a budget of $157 million. The
agency’s Protective Research Section processes some
14,000 cases a year, and in 1978, a typical year, it made
406 arrests and secured 351 convictions or commitments of persons found guilty of threatening the lives of
the people—chiefly the president—whom the section is
assigned to protect.
Much of the service’s time is consumed checking on
potential assassins from a computer list of about
30,000 “risk types” and an even more closely screened
roster of “400” prime suspects. Before the president
visits a city, the agency checks on each of the “400,”
many of whom are mentally disturbed and/or have a
history of violence, and puts several under 24-hour surveillance, which may require the use of 14 or 15 agents
full time.
The Secret Service had successfully guarded all presidents in its care until the Kennedy assassination in
1963, after which it was severely criticized by the Warren Commission for being ill prepared in manpower
and facilities to handle presidential protection under
complex modern conditions. This resulted in rapid
increases in budget and staff.
Today, the agency considers its protective procedures
about as foolproof as they can be made.
The president is often shielded by bulletproof glass
shields on stands and the floor of his review stand is fitted with heavy armor plating to protect against bombs.
Helicopters fly overhead to keep the sky safe and to
watch for rooftop snipers. Secret Service agents have
perfected a car with bulletproof hood, windows and
tires and now arm themselves with powerful miniature
walkie-talkies, .357 magnum revolvers and Israelimade Uzi submachine guns or M-16 rifles. They are
The first “Mafia” in the United States may not have
been the one that originated in Sicily but a mysterious
organization said to have started in the 1830s. Not
much is known about it other than what appeared in a
modest book published in 1847, The Secret Band of
Brothers by Jonathan F. Green, who could be described
as a 19th-century Joe Valachi. According to Green’s
thesis, this secret band was set up and run almost
exactly the way Valachi would describe the operations
of the Cosa Nostra more than 100 years later. The band
had initiation rituals, codes and orders that had to be
obeyed without question. Within the ruling organization there were grand masters and vice-grand masters
and, above all, a boss of bosses called the worthy
grand. The group, Green said, was “pledged to gambling, thievery and villainy of all kinds” and members
“wandered from place to place, preying upon the community in the character of barkeepers, pickpockets,
thieves, gamblers, horse players, and sometimes murderers.” Orders from the top were written in secret ink
and left at message drops in caves and hollow trees.
Among those who believed the story of this secret
band was Horace Greeley, who employed Green as the
chief undercover agent for his New York Association
for the Suppression of Gambling. Green was a
reformed gambler and passer of “queer,” or counterfeit
money. The Secret Service considered him reliable
enough to use as a plant in New York’s Tombs Prison
to seek evidence about counterfeiting.
The Secret Band of Brothers was never fully
exposed, but that does not necessarily cast doubt on
Green’s story. It must be remembered that in this period
there was no national police organization to counter
such a group and that local police organizations, even if
not corrupt, were not equipped to handle such a task. If
Green fantasized his secret band, he was a clairvoyant
of some skill, given what is known today about the
workings of organized crime.
Secret Service
federal law enforcement agency
The fastest-growing federal law enforcement unit, the
Secret Service is charged with protecting the president
of the United States, detecting and arresting counterfeiters and guarding the buildings and vaults of the
Treasury Department, of which it is a branch.
Created in 1865 to combat counterfeiters, the Secret
Service was the first general law-enforcement agency of
the federal government. Abraham Lincoln approved the
establishment of the organization during his last cabinet meeting. At various times the service took on added
duties, battling opium smuggling, the Ku Klux Klan,
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SEDUCTION
ity. Presidents are generally strong-willed individuals
used to having their own way, at times forcing agents to
cope with situations as best they can. After the two
attempts on his life, Gerald Ford proved more amenable
to Secret Service dictates, but other presidents have been
notoriously uncooperative. Most guilty of wading into
crowds on the spur of the moment was Lyndon Johnson. Even Truman, no paragon of security-consciousness himself while in office, lectured Johnson on his lack
of cooperation with the guards assigned to protect him.
When John Kennedy was shot, no agents were perched
on his automobile because of his request. Had they been
there, they conceivably could have blocked the assassin’s
line of vision to the president.
While it is hardly ever discussed, many agents come
to realize that some presidents exhibit latent hostility
toward their protectors simply because they resent their
constant presence. Even Calvin Coolidge was known to
play cruel jokes on the Secret Service.
During his early days in the White House, Coolidge
happened to poke behind some curtains and noticed a
button on the wall. He pressed it and sat down at his
desk to see what would develop. Suddenly, the door
flew open and a flock of agents bounded into the room.
Coolidge looked up innocently and asked what the
rumpus was all about. The men mumbled their apologies and left.
Coolidge had happened on to an alarm the agents
had installed throughout the building to signal danger. He immediately pressed the button again. Over
the next week, one remembered by the service as a
nightmare, he tormented his guards, making the puffing agents charge and recharge into his office while
he kept a straight face. Finally, a suspicious agent
stayed behind out of sight and watched the president
in action. The agent said nothing to Coolidge, but the
wires to the button were cut. Thereafter, whenever
Coolidge pushed the button, nothing happened,
much to his disappointment. And that, at least
according to Secret Service folklore, is why Silent Cal
never smiled again during the rest of his White House
years.
See also: ASSASSINATION, COUNTERFEITING, “FOUR
HUNDRED” ASSASSINATION LIST.
regularly schooled by psychiatrists on the profile of an
assassin, although until the two attacks on Gerald Ford
in 1975 the classes did not cover females.
Before the president goes near any water, military
frogmen check undersea for bombs and the Coast
Guard provides vessels for offshore patrols. A week
before any presidential visit to a city, agents pour into
the area to construct a “sanitized zone.” They work out
routes where motorcades can flow freely with a number
of sudden turnoffs, should they prove necessary, and
crowds can be easily observed. Travel time is computed
and the number of men needed to watch rooftops and
windows is estimated. Agents closest to the president
memorize the faces of “400” suspects believed to be in
the area so that they can spot them in a crowd. To prevent the crowd from knowing where agents are looking, they often wear sunglasses, even during heavy rain.
The agency probably feels it can handle threats close
to the president as well as those from rooftops. As in
the case of Oswald, the biggest danger is spotting a
window sniper in time.
White House protection is generally considered to be
impregnable. Agents closely examine all food and packages that enter the White House and scrutinize the long
lines of tourists. The visitors are constantly watched by
TV cameras buried in the ground, hidden under bushes
and disguised as lanterns. There is no way anyone can
slip across closed-off sections of the White House
lawn—seismic sensors planted in the grass will pick up
even a baby’s footsteps. Ever since a helicopter unexpectedly came down on the South Lawn, White House
police have been armed with Redeye shoulder-fired
antiaircraft guns. All the White House gates have been
reinforced ever since an intruder crashed through them
one Christmas. And if things ever got really serious,
there is a bomb shelter in the East Wing and a tunnel
leading from it to a helicopter waiting nearby for sudden evacuation.
Proof of the thoroughness of White House protection was furnished in 1950, when an attempt was made
on the life of Harry Truman. At the time Truman was
staying across the street in Blair House while repairs to
the White House were being made. Two Puerto Rican
terrorists, Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola, tried
to storm Blair House and kill Truman. They managed
to kill one guard and wound two others before Torresola was killed and Collazo was brought down
wounded. However, the would-be assassins had failed
to penetrate even the outer rim of presidential protectors. Had they gotten into Blair House, they would
have had to kill at least 20 agents before reaching the
president.
The ability of the Secret Service to dictate to a president what he can and cannot do is more myth than real-
seduction
Generally speaking, there are relatively few prosecutions today for the crime of seduction, which is the act
of persuading a chaste female to have sexual intercourse under a promise of marriage or by means of a
fraudulent representation.
In recent years seduction prosecutions have declined
as a result of the Sexual Revolution. In addition, the
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SELMAN, John
crime is effectively and legally erased if the man marries
the woman. When a man has taken this escape hatch,
however, the courts have been loath to release him from
his commitment even if he subsequently was able to
prove fraud. In cases where the man suddenly developed proof that he was not the only recipient of the
woman’s favor, the courts have generally held that only
a fool involved in an illicit relationship would believe
he was the sole individual so favored.
A New Jersey court used a different rationale in the
case of an ex-prostitute who had convinced a man to
marry her by telling him that she had been chaste and
that he had seduced her. After the marriage the man
discovered the truth, but he failed to make legal headway in having the union dissolved. The court declared:
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Certainly it would lead to disastrous consequences if a
woman who had once fallen from virtue could not be
permitted to represent herself as continent and thus
restore herself to the rights and privileges of her sex,
and enter into matrimony without incurring the risk of
being put away by her husband on discovery of her previous immorality. Such a doctrine is inconsistent with
reason and a wise and sound policy.
Sometime lawman, sometime badman John Selman shot
Wes Hardin in the back of the head. The shooting proved
to be a solid case of “self-defense.”
Obviously, seduction cases are shunted off court calendars as expeditiously as possible and simply not permitted to return.
first in the New Mexico Territory and then in Texas. In
Fort Griffen, Tex. Selman became acquainted with such
frontier gunmen as Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Bat
Masterson, Killin’ Jim Miller, Pat Garrett and Jesse
Evans. He also became an aide of Sheriff John Larn,
whose previous occupation was cattle rustling, and the
pair hit it off famously. In a typical case Selman handled for Larn, he shot to death a man named Hampden
in a “gun duel.” Since Hampden was half-deaf and
unarmed at the time, it was murder rather than a duel.
Selman had called on Hampden to stop, and when he
kept on walking, the lawman emptied his pistol into
him.
When Larn retired from office, the pair started a
ranch in partnership and built up their herd by the simple and inexpensive method of lassoing other ranchers’
mavericks. Eventually, Larn was arrested and lynched
for these transgressions. Selman fled.
After that, he organized a gang known as Selman’s
Scouts and hired out to ranchers who wanted their
range cleared of rustlers. They would do an excellent
job and then with the field to themselves, start their
own rustling operation. When army pressure caused
the gang to break up, Selman shifted to West Texas,
where he organized another gang of robbers and
Selman, John (1839–1896) gunman and lawman
Many Western historians have puzzled over the fact
that lawman John Selman, with an estimated 20 kills to
his credit, never won the mass recognition given to
other gunfighters. It may be that his record was just too
unsavory to gain admirers, even of the perverse sort
who honored badmen, such as Jesse James or Billy the
Kid, or lawmen of questionable character such as
Wyatt Earp or Wild Bill Hickok.
Selman’s most famous kill, which was also typical of
his others, was the assassination of the notorious gunfighter Wes Hardin in an El Paso, Tex. saloon in 1895.
Selman, then a town constable, walked up behind
Hardin, who was standing at the bar, and shot him in the
back of the head. At the time, Hardin possessed a full
pardon and was not wanted for any crime. According to
Selman’s novel defense, Hardin had seen him in the mirror, and since the constable was fearful that Wes would
whirl and draw, he simply shot first. With that flimsy
explanation, Selman managed to beat a murder rap.
With or without a badge, Selman boasted a long line
of such murders. When he was not working as a lawman, he was generally committing crimes. After growing up in Arkansas and Texas, Selman tried ranching,
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SENTENCING of criminals
rustlers. He was arrested in June 1880 along with his
brother, Tom Cat Selman, who was subsequently
lynched. On his way back to Shackleford County for
trial, he bribed his guards and escaped.
Selman fled to Mexico and moved between that
country and the New Mexico Territory until 1888,
when he learned the old charges against him in Texas
had been dropped. He returned to wide-open El Paso,
where he stayed relatively honest for a while, leading
cattle drives and working in a smelter. He successfully
evaded an attempt on his life and, on the basis of being
such an upright citizen, was elected constable in 1892,
a job he was to hold for the rest of his life, which wasn’t for very long.
On April 5, 1894 Selman and Frank Collinson
encountered Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Outlaw and the
trio repaired to Tillie Howard’s well-known sporting
house for some free entertainment, which their high
station entitled them to. Outlaw was mean when drunk
and he was almost always drunk; in the whorehouse he
went wild, put a gun against the head of Texas Ranger
Joe McKidrict and shot him twice. Then he started
shooting blindly, hitting Selman in the leg twice. Selman shot the crazed lawman in the chest and Outlaw
staggered off to die. It was just about Selman’s most
popular kill.
The following year Selman gunned down Wes
Hardin, although that killing wasn’t popular. After
beating the charges against him he continued as constable until April 1, 1896, when he got into a dispute with
yet another lawman, George Scarborough. The pair
stepped out into an alley and Scarborough shot him
dead. Ironically, the shooting was reminiscent of duels
Selman had won—no gun was found on the dead
man—and it too was listed as “justifiable homicide.”
That didn’t seem to upset folks too much. Most felt
that Old John had simply been paid back for some of
his previous duels. It might also be noted that Scarborough got his in 1900, when he was killed by Kid Curry
of the Wild Bunch.
See also: JOHN WESLEY HARDIN.
Two boys fail to report for military induction—one is
sentenced to five years in prison, the other gets probation and never enters a prison. One judge sentences a
robber convicted for the third time to one year in
prison, while another judge on the same bench gives a
first offender ten years. One man far more capable of
serious crime than another and convicted of the same
offense may get a fine, while the less fortunate and less
dangerous person is sentenced to five years in the state
penitentiary. One judge, because of his personal values,
thinks homosexuality the most heinous of crimes and
gives long sentences. Another hates prostitution. A
third judge would never jail juveniles for either offense.
Some judges regularly give juvenile offenders prison
terms for first-offense car theft, while others turn them
over to the custody of their parents.
Inevitably involved in the process are diverse judicial
temperament and philosophy as well as varying geographical attitudes. Willard Gayling, in his book Partial
Justice, relates a story often told by Judge Edward
Lumbard:
A visitor to a Texas court was amazed to hear the judge
impose a suspended sentence where a man had pleaded
guilty to manslaughter. A few minutes later, the same
judge sentenced a man who pleaded guilty to stealing a
horse, and gave him life imprisonment. When the judge
was asked by the visitor about the disparity between
the two sentences, he replied, “Well, down here there is
some men that need killin’, but there ain’t no horses
that need stealin.”
Certain crimes draw varying penalties depending
on the economy of the area. Thus in Oregon, Gaylin,
notes, 18 of 33 Selective Service violators were let off
with probation and none of the others got a prison
term of more than three years. Yet, in southern Texas,
a defense-oriented state, 16 of 16 got prison terms, 14
of them the maximum five years allowed under the
law.
One of the leading voices against the disparity of
prison sentences was James V. Bennett, director of the
Federal Bureau of Prisons for 27 years. He cited an
almost endless string of unfair sentences. In one case a
32-year-old unemployed man whose wife had just suffered a miscarriage forged a government check. Despite
the fact that he had no previous criminal record, he was
sentenced to 15 years. In his memoirs, I Chose Prison,
Bennett quoted the judge in that case as saying, “This
court intends to stop the stealing and forging of government checks.” Yet that same year, another federal judge
in the same circuit gave a defendant just 30 days for a
like crime.
sentencing of criminals
The sentencing of convicted persons remains to this day
one of the most trying procedures of the criminal justice system. Perhaps no other aspect—interrogation,
arrest, trial or conviction—of the system is more rife
with error and lack of balanced judgment than the sentencing process. Some judges sentence “long” and others “short.” In Crime in America former Attorney
General Ramsey Clark offers some illustrations of
inequality in sentencing, often in different courtrooms
in the same courthouse:
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SEPTEMBER Morn
In an attempt to answer such inequities, Bennett was
instrumental in the establishment in 1959 of “sentencing institutes,” where judges could exchange views on
sentencing theories. There have been other limited
advances. In Crime and Punishment Aryeh Neier, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union,
notes, “‘Sentencing councils’ are another relatively
recent innovation. The councils bring together probation officers and judges in an area to review recommendations for sentences by trial judges before the
sentences are imposed. While the trial judge can reject
the views of his colleagues, the discussions tend to circumscribe extreme disparities in sentencing.” Unfortunately, Neier adds, such programs are only moderately
popular in the federal court system and are not used “in
most court systems where the great majority of criminals are sentenced.”
There was a period recently when indeterminate sentencing was viewed by reformers as the only viable
alternative to sentencing inequities. Ramsey Clark was
a promoter of the idea as late as 1970. Since that time
the idea of sentencing without a fixed term has fallen
into disfavor, although it lifted a great burden off many
judges. In 1976 Alan M. Dershowitz, professor at Harvard Law School, wrote: “The era of the indeterminate
sentence . . . is quickly drawing to a close. Reaction is
beginning to set in.”
Many criminologists now agree that indeterminate
sentences actually tend to result in longer prison terms
than most judges would mete out and that the disparity
in sentencing is often increased rather than reduced.
Additionally, such sentences tend to give correctional
officials too much control over prisoners’ lives and are
psychologically dangerous to many prisoners because
they can never be sure when they will be released.
These factors are often cited as the reason behind many
prison riots.
The most recent proposal calls for the abolishment
of the federal parole system and a reduction in the sentencing latitude given judges. Under this proposal,
probably best articulated by former Attorney General
Edward H. Levi, a permanent federal commission
would establish sentencing guidelines for judges. In
1976 Levi said, “If a judge decided to impose a sentence inconsistent with the guidelines, he would have to
accompany the decision with specific reasons for the
exception, and the decision would be subject to appellate review.”
Of course, even without such a system, appellate
review of a sentence is possible, but it is extremely rare.
“When it happens,” notes Neier, “it is generally
because judges have gratuitously offered their reasons
for particular sentences and included impermissible
considerations, as when a New Jersey judge cited an
antiwhite poem by LeRoi Jones [Imamu Baraka] as the
reason for giving him an extended prison term.”
In other cases judges have refused to give shorter
sentences or probation because a defendant insisted
on a jury trial. It is obvious that justice often goes
awry the first instant society attempts to apply fitting
punishment. Few experts on crime today would deny
that an unfair sentence started John Dillinger down
the road to becoming Public Enemy No. 1. In 1924
Dillinger and an older man, Ed Singleton, were
quickly apprehended attempting to rob an Indiana
grocer. The 21-year-old Dillinger pleaded guilty and
drew a sentence of 10 to 20 years, although he had
been assured by the local prosecutor that as a first
offender, he would be treated lightly if he entered a
guilty plea. Singleton, 10 years older than Dillinger,
was brought before a different judge and drew a far
shorter sentence; he was released after doing two
years. Dillinger ended up serving nine years. As
Wayne Coy, a state official said in 1934: “There does
not seem to me to be any escape from the fact that the
State of Indiana made John Dillinger the Public
Enemy that he is today. . . . Instead of reforming the
prisoner, the penal institutions provided him with an
education in crime.”
September Morn
“pornographic” painting
In the early years of the 20th century the most famous
American “pornographic” painting was born. It was
September Morn, a picture of a somewhat immodest
young lady taking a bath in a pond. Alas, September
Morn really wasn’t a very notable work of art, being a
lithograph turned out for a brewer’s calendar, but it fell
victim to, and became famous because of, Comstockery, the puritanical view of Anthony Comstock, the
“great American bluenose” and head of the New York
Society for the Suppression of Vice.
In fact, the guiding genius behind making the work a
commercial success was Harry Reichenbach, the great
publicist. Reichenbach was just beginning his career
when he was hired by a Fourth Avenue art dealer to
promote a picture of a naked girl taking a bath in a
pond. The dealer was stuck with 2,000 prints and had
not made a single sale. Reichenbach telephoned Comstock, passing himself off as a minister, and said he had
to report a disgraceful situation, the painting of a
naked woman. “She’s in the window of an art store on
Fourth Avenue, and little boys are gathering around
there to look at her.”
Reichenbach rounded up several boys and gave them
a quarter a piece to stand in front of the art
store and gape at the picture. Comstock arrived and
nearly choked in rage. “Remove that filthy picture!” he
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SERIAL killers
fumed, and when the dealer refused, he commenced
legal action.
Comstock lost the legal case because even in that era
the picture was found to be about as suggestive as one
of a baby in a family album. But the censorship effort
against September Morn made it a national issue. It
became the source of songs and jokes as well as the target of attacks by reformers. Over seven million copies
were sold at a dollar a piece, and to this day enjoys
good sales.
See also: ANTHONY COMSTOCK.
serial killers
What then is an appropriate estimate of the death
toll resulting from serial murders? There are experts
who accept an FBI estimate that is truly staggering. Of
the approximately 5,000 killers who go unapprehended
each year, the agency has indicated that 3,500 could be
the work of serial killers, such as the so-called “Green
River Killer” who has never been apprehended. Some
observers insist we are in the midst of an “epidemic of
homicidal mania,” especially as to the barbarity of the
crimes committed. Other researchers are less convinced, noting that the depredations of mass murderers
of an earlier era, such as at the turn of the century, were
probably equally gruesome. What has changed, they
feel, is the loss of inhibitions by the media in reporting
bizarre sexual practices of the serial killers. Oddly, the
Victorian era eschewed such frightful details but
allowed descriptions of cannibalism, which was presumed to be nonsexual.
Today we frequently accept the media’s description
of a recent carnage as “the crime of the century” to the
extent that we can embrace one or more annually,
although, some murders achieve this status due to the
social significance attached to them.
See also: BIANCHI AND BUONO; TED BUNDY; DOUGLAS
CLARK; JEFFREY DAHMER; THE GREEN RIVER KILLER.
the new mass murderers
The annals of crime provide an endless parade of mass
murderers, but in the early 1980s the public perception
grew that there was a new type of mass murderer on
the loose, the “serial killer” who seems to engage in
homicide for mere “recreation.” It is doubtful that this
really was a new phenomenon, but if we accept that
perception, one might describe Theodore Bundy as the
“godfather” of this new ilk. In an effort to categorize
serial killers, researchers have come up with numerous
theories of or behavior patterns in such killers. True
serial killers, say experts, are “recreational” killers, for
whom profit or sexual motives do not exist or are of
minor consequence. They take their victims at random,
literally for the “sport.” Only about 10 percent of serial
killers are “social killers,” that is, operating with one or
more accomplices in either the same or mixed sexual
groupings.
More important, we are told, is the fact that serial
killers—far more than their counterparts among average murderers—have histories of aberrant symptoms in
childhood, such as persistent bed-wetting, arson, and
cruelty to pets and other animals. However, as psychologists have pointed out, human behaviors and character traits are usually well set between the ages of two
and five. To expect society to mobilize for a war on serial killers on the basis of such theories demands too
much from the criminal justice system and especially
from the police, whose abilities to investigate strong
evidence of potential serial killers is woeful, to say the
least. When the parents of youths who turned out to be
victims of Dean Corll, an infamous serial killer of the
1970s (somewhat before the term came into usage),
complained to Houston, Texas, police by the dozens
that their sons were missing, the force took little pains
investigating, simply informing the worried parents
that the boys had probably run off and “joined those
hippies in California.” Before he was himself killed,
Corll proceeded to murder at least 27 youths—with the
Houston police oblivious to the threat of a mass murderer or serial killer loose in the city.
serial killers—female
If one acknowledges that a new type of serial killer,
more prolific, more twisted, and perhaps more puzzling,
appeared since the 1980s, one must recognize the phenomenon of the female serial killer. Found occasionally
in novels and movies, an example being the crazed prostitute who kills her johns, she does exist in real life. In
the early 1990s a Florida hooker named Aileen
Wournos was apprehended for murdering seven of her
johns and, evidence to the contrary, was labeled by
some as the first documented female serial killer. When
she was convicted of a first murder, Wournos swore at
the jury and stated that she had been a victim of rape.
The hallmark of a female serial killer is that she
tends to get away with her crimes over an extended
period. Certainly that was true of Stella Williamson,
who in some cases kept her crimes hidden for more
than a half-century. No one in Gallitzin, Pennsylvania,
knew much about Stella other than the ordinary talk
between neighbors. Stella tended to keep generally to
herself. She attended church and other social functions
but never imparted much information about her own
life. When she died in 1980 at the age of 76, one of her
few acquaintances found a letter in her house that was
marked not to be opened until after her death.
The letter informed police to open a battered old
trunk in the attic. Inside police found the pathetic
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SHAME of Abilene
shipments, and the organizations could then easily
handle any freelance hijackers who might still try to
operate.
It is not clear who originated the idea of the Seven
Group, but among those pushing it in 1927 were Lucky
Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Arnold Rothstein and Johnny
Torrio. As originally constituted, the Seven Group were
made up of seven distinct power groups. The seven
were Luciano and Frank Costello from Manhattan; Joe
Adonis from Brooklyn; Longy Zwillman from Long
Island, N.Y. and New Jersey; Meyer Lansky and Bugsy
Siegel, the bootleg “enforcers”; Waxey Gordon and Nig
Rosen from Philadelphia; Nucky Johnson from Atlantic
City; and Torrio, who came out of retirement to act as
an adviser and counselor.
As the Seven Group quickly proved its viability, it
attracted other gangs around the country, such as those
headed by Moe Dalitz in Cleveland; Danny Walsh in
Providence and King Solomon in Boston. Even Al
Capone saw the value of the setup, but the bloodletting
in Chicago had gone on too long to be halted by reason. In much of the country, excluding Chicago, a new
peace was achieved among the 22 gangs that joined the
Seven Group.
However, the historic importance of the Seven
Group was that it represented the first real step in
establishing nationwide criminal links that would lead,
in just a few years, to the creation of the national crime
syndicate. The Atlantic City Conference of 1929, at
which plans for new criminal enterprises following the
end of Prohibition were first discussed, would never
have been held were it not for the success of the Seven
Group, which was regarded by the conferees as a model
for future cooperation.
See also: ATLANTIC CITY CONFERENCE.
withered remains of five infants wrapped in newspapers dated from 1923 to 1933. So far as was known,
Stella who had never married, apparently bore the
children and disposed of four of them soon after they
were born (one was a few months old). The story
shocked the town of Gallitzin, the residents having no
experience of serial killers, and certainly not a female
one.
Starting in the eighties there seemed to be a perceptible increase in female serial killers. Marybeth Roe
Tinning of Schenectady, New York murdered eight of
her children, and there was a rash of caregiver murderers. Genene Jones, a Texas nurse, killed several babies.
A much-publicized serial killing case involved
Dorothea Puente, a wealthy California woman who
gave much-heralded sanctuary to needy old people in
her mansion. Since her borders often had little ability
to run their own affairs, Dorothea arranged to get
their Social Security checks sent to her. Her only problem was collecting the checks if and when the people
died. There was the chance they would go to the hospital and die there so that a death certificate would be
made out. Or they might be walking on the street and
collapse and die with the same troubling result.
Dorothea found it more prudent to kill them herself
and bury the bodies in her garden. No complications
and the checks kept coming.
One of the more bizarre examples of the new-wave
female serial killers was Gwendolyn Graham, a
Michigan nursing home nurse who smothered five
elderly victims with the assistance of her female lover
in 1987. The accomplice, Catherine Wood, made a
deal for a conviction of second-degree murder and
offered testimony against Graham. According to prosecutors the partnership in the killings was part of a
lover’s pact.
See also: DOROTHEA PUENTE.
Shame of Abilene
Seven Group
“pornographic” painting
In the days before September Morn was to become the
most notorious painting in America, the Shame of Abilene was the West’s most shocking work of art and one
that indirectly added a notch to the gun of Wild Bill
Hickok, the famous lawman of Abilene, Kan.
In 1871 two of the West’s most colorful characters,
Ben Thompson, a pathological gunman, and Phil Coe,
a dapper Texas gambler, arrived in Abilene and opened
the Bull’s Head Tavern and Gambling Saloon. The
establishment was typical of the town’s other recreational outlets except for its facade. The owners of the
Bull’s Head had a representation of a giant bull painted
across the front of the building. It was a bull of monumental proportions, with certain anatomical features
enlarged even beyond the enormous scale of the rest of
the painting.
forerunner of the National Crime Syndicate
The bootleg wars of the 1920s were the bloodiest
underworld battles in American history, with a death
toll that climbed into the thousands. In many parts of
the country, peace came with the establishment of the
Seven Group.
During the first years of Prohibition various underworld mobs faced a scramble for liquor and had to
constantly protect their supplies from being hijacked
by other gangs. What was needed was an organization that would set up a central liquor buying
office, which would handle all orders for booze and
give everyone a fair share. This system would reduce
the bloody competition for supplies and cut down on
the enormous expense involved in protecting booze
801
SHAKUR, Tupac
The fame of Abilene’s bull spread with telegraphic
speed, and cowboys from hundreds of miles around
spurred to Abilene to see the big bull and tarry at the
saloon’s gambling tables. By the time news of the
Shame of Abilene had reached the East, the more
straight-laced elements of the town had demanded that
the marshal do something about it. Wild Bill had words
with Coe, Thompson being out of town at the time,
and gave the gambler 24 hours to remove the bull, or at
least the objectionable parts. Coe stood pat. The following day, armed with a can of paint and a brush,
Hickok painted over the offending section of the picture.
Decency prevailed but bad blood remained. Within
days, on October 5, 1871, a shoot-out of sorts developed between Coe and Hickok. It was no contest; Coe
was fatally wounded. Puritans and defenders of Wild
Bill Hickok have always claimed the cause of the gunfight was the painting. Another group has held that
other, monetary reasons caused the battle and that it
was pure murder on Hickok’s part.
See also: PHIL COE, WILD BILL HICKOK, BEN THOMPSON.
ended quickly, Tyson being declared the winner after
only 109 seconds. Shortly after the fight Shakur and his
bodyguards engaged in a scuffle with a man near the
hotel’s Grand Garden. Around 11 P.M. Shakur was riding in a new black BMW sedan belonging to and being
driven by Suge Knight of Death Row Records to the
club where the Shakur-Tyson party was soon to get
under way.
About a mile from the Strip a light-colored Cadillac
occupied by three or four men pulled up beside the
BMW and a man in the backseat of the Cadillac aimed
a semiautomatic pistol from the window and let loose a
barrage of an estimated 13 shots. One shot grazed
Knight’s head. Five other slugs ripped into Shakur.
Three other cars were in the entourage with the BMW
occupied by Shakur’s bodyguards and friends, and
these vehicles and a couple of others took off in pursuit
of the killer Cadillac but that car made it away through
heavy Las Vegas traffic.
Shakur and Knight were taken to University Medical
Center where Shakur underwent a total of three operations. During the first just after the shooting, Shakur’s
right lung was removed to halt internal bleeding. In the
next days Shakur would have two more operations but
on September 14 he died.
Police had no dearth of possible motives, including
street gang revenge for the quarrel Shakur had after the
match. It turned out that person was allied with the
Crips while Knight was a friend of the Bloods. Police
also theorized about the group Shakur had accused of
the New York City attack on him. There was also speculation that the motive might have been money since
Knight had not long ago taken out a $1 million dollar
policy on Shakur’s life. Other observers felt there probably was yet another motive hidden in Shakur’s violent
life. In any event the murder of the rap star went
unsolved.
Shakur, Tupac (1971–1996) unsolved murder victim
It has been observed by many that in some cases at least
rap music and crime are soul mates. Certainly the point
could be made concerning rap star Tupac Shakur.
Shakur had frequently romped on the very edge of
deadly violence.
Within the parameters of the violent elements in the
rap world, Shakur had more than one scrap with violence. In 1994 he was the victim of a shooting at Quad
Records in New York. Shakur made no bones about a
rap group being involved in setting him up for that near
fatal attack.
When Shakur was 10 years old he told a minister of
his ambition to be a revolutionary when he was older.
His mother, Afreni Shakur, was a founding force of the
New York branch of the Black Panther Party, and his
father was once suspected in a plot to blow up police
stations and department stores. His stepfather was convicted in planning the robbery of a Brink’s armored
truck in which two guards were killed. If nothing else,
Shakur’s history helped explain why he was considered
to have done a brilliant acting job as a gangster in a
1992 movie, Juice.
By 1996 Shakur was at the top of the heap in the rap
music world, but had built up a full line-up of Shakur
haters. Some of those haters were obviously in Las
Vegas on September 7, 1996 when Shakur arrived to
attend the heavyweight battle between Mike Tyson and
Bruce Seldon at the MGM Grand Hotel. Shakur and
Tyson were to appear later at Club 662. The match
Shanghai Chicken (1839–1871)
shanghaier’s runner
The most famous of the runners who supplied bodies
for the shanghaiers of San Francisco was Johnny
Devine, better known as the Shanghai Chicken.
Little is known of the Shanghai Chicken except that
he was born in New York and was shanghaied at age
18, turning up two years later in San Francisco, where
he became an ornament of the waterfront. He quickly
emerged a jack of all crimes, working industriously as a
pickpocket, sneak thief, burglar, footpad and, eventually, pimp. He also hired out as a maimer and hit man
for anyone who would pay his price, which was around
$50. Although he was arrested seven times during his
first nine months in San Francisco, he served no more
than 50 days in jail.
802
SHANGHAIING
With a record like that it was inevitable that Devine
would soon attract the attention of Shanghai Kelly,
probably the greatest kidnapper of sailors the world
has ever known. In a few short years the Shanghai
Chicken rose to be Kelly’s chief of staff. He was one of
the few in the trade who violated the rule that forbade
stealing another runner’s captives. Once, he tried to
hijack a drunken sailor from Tommy Chandler, a particularly rough runner for Shanghai Brown. Chandler, a
brute of a man, flattened the Chicken with a mighty
punch to the jaw. The Chicken climbed to his feet and
felled the sailor with a slungshot and then pulled a pistol and put two bullets into Chandler, leaving him incapacitated for months. The Chicken then lugged his
prize off to Shanghai Kelly’s boardinghouse.
In 1869 the Shanghai Chicken met his match in the
person of Big Billy Maitland, another one of Shanghai
Kelly’s rivals. In an altercation at Maitland’s saloon,
Big Billy came after the Chicken with a knife; when the
latter raised his arm to protect himself, Maitland neatly
slashed off his hand at the wrist. Big Billy then tossed
him out of his saloon. The Chicken brushed himself off
with his one good hand and then screamed out to Maitland: “Hey, Billy, you dirty bastard! Chuck out me fin!”
Maitland flipped the severed hand out to the sidewalk, and the wounded Chicken staggered to Dr. Simpson’s drugstore at Pacific and Davis, where he flung the
gory hand on the counter. “Say, Doc,” he said, “stick
that on again for me, will you?”
He fainted before he could be informed that surgery
had not yet advanced to that level of sophistication.
The Chicken recovered from his wound and medical
men attached a large iron hook to the stump of his left
arm. Thereafter, he became an even more dangerous
battler on the waterfront. While he earlier had earned
the name of the Shanghai Chicken for some unknown
reason, the hook now allowed him to fight in the manner of a battling cock. Keeping his hook honed to needle sharpness, the Chicken could cut open a foe with
one quick thrust. But after his injury he drank so heavily that Shanghai Kelly fired him. Ever looking for ways
to make an extra dollar, Kelly promptly attempted to
shanghai the Chicken. Kelly’s men got the Chicken as
far as the boat landing, where he broke his bonds and
started slashing away with his iron hook. The kidnappers fled, many bleeding profusely. The Chicken then
made off with Kelly’s boat and sold it to another shanghaier.
As a loner, the Chicken now had to make a living by
rolling drunks and committing small thefts. He made
the mistake of thinking a German sailor wouldn’t
resist; when the sailor did, he shot and killed him. The
Chicken stowed away on a steamer scheduled to leave
San Francisco but was discovered before the ship sailed.
He was still wearing the victim’s cap, since he had left
his own hat at the murder scene. The Shanghai Chicken
was hanged in 1871.
See also: SHANGHAI KELLY, SHANGHAIING.
Shanghai Kelly
See KELLY, SHANGHAI.
Shanghai Smoke
In the heyday of the San Francisco shanghaiers, various potions were used to knock out likely victims.
Most, like the Miss Piggott Special, were concoctions
of various whiskeys and brandies with a goodly
amount of opium or laudanum added. It remained for
the legendary Shanghai Kelly to come up with something really novel, in the form of a cigar known as the
Shanghai Smoke, which he had specially made for him
by a Chinese cigar maker. Heavily laced with opium, it
rapidly dulled the senses of a potential victim to the
point that he could be led into an alley and waylaid,
eliminating the need to lure him into a saloon and
thereby saving time. The Shanghai Smoke became very
popular on the Barbary Coast until cigars became so
notorious that men would not accept a stogie unless
the donor would smoke one also. Ultimately, the widespread wariness led to the Shanghai Smoke’s decline in
popularity.
shanghaiing
The custom of kidnapping seamen to fill out a ship’s
crew was practiced worldwide, but nowhere was the
art so perfected as along the San Francisco waterfront.
In early times there were no ships sailing directly
from San Francisco to Shanghai and back to San Francisco; the round trip involved a long dangerous cruise,
which became known as a Shanghai voyage. When a
man in San Francisco was forcibly impressed into a
ship’s crew, he was thus described as being “sent to
Shanghai.” This in time was shortened to just plain
shanghaied.
By 1852, 23 known gangs in San Francisco were
engaged in the shanghai trade. Some, of course, would
waylay men foolish enough to walk the shadowy
waterfront alone, but few shanghai gangs would wait
so patiently for a fly to enter their web. The gangs
employed runners to board incoming ships and induce
sailors to come to boardinghouses they operated. As
the San Francisco Times of October 21, 1861 reported:
They swarm over the rail like pirates and virtually take
possession of the deck. The crew are shoved into the
runners’ boats, and the vessel is often left in a perilous
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SHANNON, Robert K. G.“Boss”
left over for the sailor when the boardinghouse master
figured out the bill.
Shanghaiing could exist on such an organized basis
only because most sailors were brutalized men, long subjected to harsh treatment aboard ship and thus conditioned to receiving the same when ashore. Finally, with
the rise of unions and a federal law against shanghaiing,
the vicious practice began to disappear after 1906.
See also: JOSEPH “BUNCO” KELLY, SHANGHAI KELLY,
MISS PIGGOTT SPECIAL, SHANGHAI CHICKEN, SHANGHAI
SMOKE.
situation, with none to manage her, the sails unfurled,
and she liable to drift afoul of the shipping at anchor.
In some cases not a man has been left aboard in half an
hour after the anchor has been dropped.
The runners would all carry the standard gear of
their trade: a pair of brass knuckles, a blackjack or
slungshot, a knife, a revolver, obscene pictures, several
bottles of rum and whiskey spiked with Spanish fly
and a flask of liquid soap. If the runners swarmed
aboard at meal time, the soap would be slipped into
soup or stew simmering on the galley stove. When this
awful mixture was served, the seamen would be disgusted and much more receptive to the runner’s spiel.
First, the runners would offer the sailors some doctored liquor. After that began to take effect, the seamen would be shown obscene pictures and given an
enticing, graphic description of what awaited them at
a certain boardinghouse as well as the brothels of the
Barbary Coast.
Usually, this was enough to convince at least one
sailor, and he would be ushered to a runner’s boat,
where the boatman would give him more to drink. If
the sailor showed signs of wavering or attempted to
fight, the runner and boatman would club him into
silence. Sailors who insisted on staying with their ship
were often brass-knuckled or threatened with knives or
guns. Often competing runners would settle on the
same sailor and each would seize an ear with his teeth
and bite down until the frightened man shouted out the
boardinghouse he wished to go to. It was considered a
serious violation of the runner’s code for one runner to
steal another’s victim.
Some captains would try to protect their crew, but
they were helpless when as many as a score of armed
men stormed aboard. In addition, shipmasters were
often warned by “certain interested parties,” as the
San Francisco Times put it in 1861, meaning the politicians and city officials who received payoffs from the
boardinghouse masters, to look the other way or they
would not be allowed to raise a crew when they were
ready to sail.
Once a sailor reached the boardinghouse, his bag of
possessions would be locked up and he would virtually
be held prisoner until he was resold to an outgoing vessel. Captive sailors were sold whiskey laced with opium
to keep them docile and, on occasion, prostitutes would
be brought in to service them; the boardinghouse master would get a percentage of the prostitutes’ fees and
whatever they could steal from the sailors. A shipmaster would pay the boardinghouse master between $25
and $100 for each crewman he supplied plus a customary two-months’ advance salary to cover the seaman’s
bill in the boardinghouse. There was seldom any money
Shannon, Robert K. G. “Boss” (1877–1956) criminal
hideout proprietor
For the gangsters of the 1920s and 1930s in need of a
safe refuge after a prison escape or a big job, the man to
see was Robert K. G. Shannon in Wise County, Tex.
The so-called boss of the county, Shannon was a gifted
political operator who could deliver votes on demand
and thus generally had the run of the county. He established his comfortable Paradise ranch as an underworld
haven, charging felons hefty sums for the use of a hideout where no local law officials would snoop.
Boss Shannon was the stepfather, late in life, of
Kathryn Kelly, and it was through his connections with
the underworld that Kathryn’s husband, George
“Machine Gun” Kelly, finally made it into big-time
crime. Shannon’s ranch was used to hide Charles
Urschel, kidnapped and held for a $200,000 ransom by
the Kelly couple and Albert Bates. During this time
Shannon irritated Kelly and Bates by giving refuge to
three prison escapees, thus endangering a big-money
operation for “small potatoes.” Bates and Kelly were
able to roust two of the fugitives by simply ordering
them to leave but were less successful with the third, a
leading public enemy named Harvey J. Bailey, who was
suffering from a leg wound. Heavily armed, Bailey
informed them he was not yet in shape to leave. The
kidnappers then tried a different tack, giving Bailey
$1,000 traveling money. Bailey took the money and
said he would leave when he was able. He was still
there when Bates and the Kellys pulled out.
Shannon was so awed by the big-time kidnapping
operation that he refused to take any money for providing the kidnappers with a hiding place, saying it would
be wrong to take from “family.” Later, Shannon and his
wife, Ora, Kathryn Kelly’s mother, drew life sentences
for their part in the crime. Eventually, Shannon’s sentence was reduced to 30 years. In 1944 he was pardoned
by President Franklin Roosevelt on the grounds of ill
health and advanced age. He died at the age of 79 on
Christmas Day 1956 at a hospital in Bridgeport, Tex.
See also: GEORGE “MACHINE GUN” KELLY.
804
SHEELER, Rudolph
Shapiro, Jacob “Gurrah” (1899–1947) labor racketeer
One of the most fearsome of all labor racketeers, Jacob
“Gurrah” Shapiro worked New York’s garment industry in the 1920s and 1930s with all the finesse of a
gorilla run amok. Shapiro was the chief lieutenant of
Louis Buchalter, better known as Louis Lepke. The pair
had met as teenagers in 1914, when they attempted to
rob the same pushcart one day on the Lower East Side.
It was the beginning of a murderous friendship. Lepke
relied on Shapiro’s muscle and Shapiro certainly needed
Lepke’s brain.
Lepke’s plan, developed in the early 1920s, called for
the pair to move into the union field and terrorize certain locals by the judicious or even indiscriminate use
of beatings and murders. The next step would be to
seize control, which would put them in a position to
take kickbacks, or skim dues, from union members and
then extort big payoffs from garment manufacturers
who wanted to avoid strikes. At the same time, Lepke
and Shapiro joined with the top labor racketeer of the
day, Jacob “Little Augie” Orgen, to provide strikebreaking crews for employers. When Little Augie was
assassinated in 1927 (according to one account,
Shapiro was behind the wheel of the assassins’ car
when Augie was machine-gunned to death on the
street), Lepke and Shapiro inherited a major part of the
labor extortion racket.
Always, Lepke supplied the strategy and Shapiro the
brawn. He was a lumbering hulk, growling orders in
rasping bursts of sound. His stock phrase was, “Get
out of here,” but in his guttural snarl it came out
“Gurra dahere.” So his acquaintances took to calling
him “Gurrah.”
Although Gurrah became enormously rich in the
rackets, he could never forsake the jobs of the blackjack, the knife, the gun, the bottle of acid—the “persuaders” used by labor racketeers. He was always in
the forefront of the skull smashers when anyone tried
to organize a legitimate rival union.
When Lepke led his forces into the emerging
national crime syndicate, organized mainly by Lucky
Luciano, he was put in charge of Murder, Inc., the
enforcement arm of the syndicate. His chief aides were
Shapiro and Albert Anastasia. Gurrah handled a number of assignments personally and spent the rest of his
time searching for the proper young talent to carry out
other murders. When racketeer Dutch Schultz, a genuine devotee of violence, went before the syndicate’s
ruling board in 1935 to propose killing an ambitious
special prosecutor named Thomas Dewey, only Gurrah
and Anastasia sided with him. Luciano and Lepke
rounded up the votes against the proposal arguing that
such a murder would generate too much heat. Gurrah
immediately fell in line behind his mentor, as did Anas805
tasia. That left only Schultz holding to the insane plot,
but he insisted he would carry out the job alone. As a
result, Schultz was wiped out by syndicate killers.
Later, Gurrah saw the syndicate’s decision not to kill
Dewey as folly, especially when the special prosecutor
turned on the Lepke-Shapiro union rackets. In 1936
Gurrah was sentenced to life for labor racketeering and
in 1944 Lepke went to the chair for murder. During
Lepke’s trial Gurrah had managed to smuggle a message to him from the federal penitentiary at Atlanta. Its
sulfurous introduction recalled Schultz’ 1935 plan to
assassinate Dewey and it ended with a triumphant “I
told you so.”
The embittered Gurrah died in prison in 1947, still
convinced his only failing was not being violent
enough.
See also: LOUIS “LEPKE” BUCHALTER, DUTCH SCHULTZ.
Sheeler, Rudolph (1916– ) victim of false confession
When Officer James T. Morrow was shot and killed
by an unknown gunman on November 23, 1936 the
Philadelphia homicide squad swung into action to solve
the cop killing. They demonstrated a remarkable ability
to extract confessions from a number of suspects. First
to confess was a man named Joseph Broderick, but on
second thought, the police released him and arrested
George Harland Bilger, a criminal well known to them.
Obligingly, Bilger also confessed and was sent off to the
penitentiary. After about three years the police had
another thought: they decided a mad-dog gunman
named Jack Howard was the killer. However, they
could not extract a confession, since sometime previously Howard had been shot dead in a gun battle with
a detective. Thereupon the police apparently concluded
that Howard had had an accomplice, one Rudolph
Sheeler, who at least was still alive.
Sheeler vanished into the recesses of police headquarters. A week later he confessed and was in due
course sentenced to life imprisonment. After that, Bilger was pardoned and released.
It took Sheeler 12 years to clear himself. After seven
years in prison, he told the institution’s chaplain how
he had been battered with questions for hours on end
until he could no longer stand it. Sheeler’s wife had produced records that proved her husband was at work in
New York at the time of the killing in Philadelphia. The
priest promptly passed the facts on to the authorities,
but they took no action. Sheeler stayed in jail for five
more years until he won a new trial through the efforts
of a University of Pennsylvania criminal law professor
named Louis B. Schwartz. Finally, in 1951 Sheeler got a
directed verdict of not guilty from Judge James Gay
Gordon, Jr., who called the case “a black and shameful
SHEEP killing
page in the history of the Philadelphia police department and an ominous counterpart of what occurs daily
behind the Iron Curtain.”
Further reading: Not Guilty by Judge Jerome Frank
and Barbara Frank.
5,000 sheep, murdering three herders and killing dogs
and sheep with kerosene and fire, Herbert Brink and six
others were indicted. Four confessed and Brink was sentenced to death, but his punishment was later reduced
to life imprisonment. Organized sheep killing nonetheless continued for a number of years until cowmen
finally discovered that sheep could indeed share the
same range with cattle. The sheep actually improved the
sod with their hoofs, and their droppings fertilized the
ground. The cowmen started raising sheep along with
their cattle and found them an economic lifesaver in the
years beef prices fell.
sheep killing
Some of the bitterest conflicts in American history were
the sheepmen-cattlemen wars that embroiled the West
well into the 20th century, spawning a rich trove of literature and films. However, it is doubtful that many
more than 20 or 30 murders can be attributed to such
range wars. The true barbarity of the struggle was the
incredible slaughter of sheep. Essentially, the conflict
was started by cowmen who were determined not to be
“sheeped out”; the sheep allegedly destroyed the grass
and polluted the streams to the detriment of cattle and
horses. The cattlemen wouldn’t listen to the claims of
sheepmen that with proper management both animals
could be grazed on the same land without problems.
Instead, they launched terror raids in which sheepmen
were driven off and sometimes killed, but primarily
they focused on the sheep themselves. The animals were
shot, clubbed, stabbed, dynamited, poisoned, burned,
drowned and stampeded over cliffs, a tactic called rimrocking.
In the 1880s, Charles Hanna, who had introduced
sheep to Texas, one morning found his entire herd of
300 dead with their throats cut, and in the Arizona
Territory cattlemen drove some 4,000 sheep into the
Little Colorado River, causing hundreds to perish in
quicksand. In Garfield County, Colo. raiders stampeded 3,800 sheep over a bluff into Parachute Creek
in 1894. In another raid in that same county, only one
sheep survived the slaughter of a flock of more than
1,500. The greatest killings occurred in Wyoming,
where raiders once slaughtered 12,000 sheep in a
single night. At Tie Siding the raiders set fire to the
wool of 2,600 sheep, killing virtually all of them.
In 1905 the secretary of the Crook County Sheep
Shooters Association in Oregon boasted that the
group had slaughtered 8,000 to 10,000 sheep the previous season and promised they would improve on
that record in the year ahead. The same year, 10
masked Wyoming raiders shot or clubbed to death
more than 4,000 sheep belonging to Louis Gantz.
They destroyed the sheepman’s wagons and provisions
and tied two sheepdogs to the wagons and burned
them to death. Gantz did not attempt to prosecute the
raiders, knowing they would not be convicted in a
Wyoming court.
By 1909 public opinion had started to turn against
the raiders. After a score of them attacked a herd of
shell game
swindle
The shell game—under which of the three shells is the
pea?—is as old as America itself. Gambling authority
John Scarne insists the first “thimble-rigger,” as an
operator of the shell game was called, arrived on these
shores shortly after the Mayflower. The game itself is
much older and was no doubt practiced by crooked
gamblers in ancient Egypt and perhaps earlier in other
places. Alciphron of Athens wrote an excellent description of the cups and balls, a forerunner of the shell
game, in the 2nd century A.D.
In its standard form the game can never be won by
the sucker, since the pea is not under any of the shells
when he is making his selection. After the operator
clearly places the pea under one shell and starts shifting
all three around, he gingerly lifts the shell so that the
pea is stuck between the back of the shell and the table
top (generally a felt surface). He then pops the pea out
between his thumb and first finger, and when he takes
his hand away, his finger is covering the pea. After the
sucker makes his pick of the shells and loses, the operator pulls the other two shells back toward him as he
turns them over, in the process slipping the pea under
one of them and announcing, “If you’d picked this
shell, you would have been a winner.”
The principle of the shell game is never to allow the
sucker to win even once, the theory being that a loser
will become more desperate and bet even greater
amounts in a futile effort to get even. The greatest
thimble-riggers were such 19th century gamblers as
Canada Bill Jones (“Suckers have no business with
money, anyway”), who is reputed to have won the
deeds to several plantations with the shell game, and
Soapy Smith, who made a fortune with the game
before being shot dead by a vigilante in Alaska in
1898. There is only one recorded case where Smith lost
at a shell game. A knowledgeable victim placed a gun
on the little table, made a huge bet and announced he
was wagering on which two shells the pea was not
under. He turned them over himself and, naturally,
806
SHEPPARD, Samuel H.
found no pea. “I reckon there’s no need to turn over
the last shell,” he said, taking his money. Smith folded
up his table and left.
There have been numerous exposés of the shell
game, the first by a reformed Mississippi gambler
named Jonathan F. Green, who, beginning in 1843,
wrote several books on cheating. Despite this exposure,
the shell game has continued to prosper and can still be
seen at carnivals, horse races and other sporting events
and, in recent years, on the streets of major cities. The
shell game is often played in New York’s Wall Street
area, especially on paydays.
See also: WILLIAM “CANADA BILL” JONES, SOAPY SMITH.
found in Alabama with his throat slashed, his head
smashed open with an ax-handle and his body set
ablaze on kerosene-soaked tires. Just a few weeks later,
Henry Edward Northington suffered decapitation with
his severed head toted a mile from his body to be
placed on a busy footbridge in a noted gay cruising
area.
Judy Shepard was shocked by the number of such
killings, saying, “We should all know about these deaths.
It’s unfortunate that the media isn’t reporting them.”
The fact remains that homophobic reactions, violent
or otherwise, remain alive and well throughout the
country. At the very time Matthew Shepard lay dying a
group of students at Colorado State University spray
painted antigay graffiti on a scarecrow on a Homecoming parade float, as reported by Salon Newsreal.
See also: HATE CRIMES—HOMOSEXUAL ATTACKS.
Shepard, Matthew (1977–1998) gay murder victim
The 1998 murder of 21-year-old University of
Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, an acknowledged
homosexual, has in recent years come to signify the
true horrors of murderous “gay bashing.” Shepard was
picked up in a bar by three young men who took him to
an isolated area, robbed him and abused him horribly,
and trussed him up to die a slow pitiful death.
Eventually, all three perpetrators were convicted of
murder, during which the judge in one trial tossed out
one defendant’s claim that his fear of gays caused him
to suffer “sex panic.”
Public sympathy in Wyoming was for the most part
favorable for the murder victim—with some exceptions—and while many Wyoming citizens petitioned for
the addition of a hate crimes bill that included sexual
orientation, others insisted the legal status quo was sufficient, little really changing because of the horrible
murder of Matthew Shepard.
Undoubtedly most Wyoming citizens were truly
upset by Matthew Shepard’s fate, but there was a public sense by many people around the country who held
the view that gay bashing remains a relatively isolated
occurrence. Speaking for the National Coalition of
Anti-Violence Programs, Jeffrey Montgomery noted
that the number of gay bashings appeared to be holding
relatively constant but “what we’re seeing has been a
marked and terrible increase in the severity, viciousness
and brutality of the crimes.”
Reflecting on this, Judy Shepard, Matthew’s mother
and now a spokesperson in antigay bashing activism,
said, “I think some people are feeling more threatened
now. I’m just hoping it’s a last gasp.” What the public
does not fully grasp is that gay bashings are exceedingly
common. In the year since Matthew Shepard’s murder,
there were no less than 28 others of equally horrendous
characteristics, most hardly reported in the media.
Only the truly ghoulish seem to pass muster as worthy
of publicity. In February 1999 Billy Jack Gaither was
Sheppard, Samuel H. (1924–1970) accused wife
murderer
A leading osteopath in the Cleveland area, Dr. Samuel
Sheppard was convicted of murdering his wife, Marilyn, on July 3, 1954 after a sensational trial that
attracted national and international attention.
Marilyn Sheppard had been slain with more than 25
blows to the head in the upstairs bedroom of the couple’s
suburban home, which fronted on Lake Erie. She was 31
at the time and four months pregnant. Dr. Sam, as the
newspapers labeled him, said he had been awakened by
his wife’s screams and the sounds of a terrible fight.
When he came to his wife’s aid, he said, he had been
knocked unconscious by a “bushy-haired stranger.”
The murder took on a sex scandal tone when Sheppard admitted he had been having an affair with Susan
Hayes, a young, attractive medical technician at Bay
View Hospital, where the doctor worked. Both Dr. Sam
and Miss Hayes admitted their relationship on the witness stand. Probably this fact as much as any of the evidence resulted in a guilty verdict and a life sentence for
Sheppard. Meanwhile, many voices were raised proclaiming Dr. Sam’s innocence. Newspapers and magazines took up the crusade, as did the noted mystery
writer Erle Stanley Gardner. With the aid of a new
lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, Dr. Sam was released from the
Ohio State Penitentiary in 1964 pending a new trial.
The Supreme Court upheld his release, sighting “prejudicial publicity” and a “carnival atmosphere” at the
first trial.
Bailey kept his client off the stand at the second trial,
which was held in 1966, and attacked the prosecution’s
case as “ten pounds of hogwash in a five pound bag.”
The jury agreed, finding Dr. Sam innocent 12 years
after his first conviction.
807
SHERIFF’S ball
sheriff’s ball
hanging
Before the Civil War many executions gave local sheriffs in big cities the opportunity to make considerable
sums of money. The sheriff or other high officer
charged with sending out invitations to hangings, called
sheriff’s balls, would sell tickets for on-the-scaffold or
front-row seats to scalpers who would resell to the
highest bidder, often for sums of $5 to $25, a significant amount of money in the period. It became customary for underworld friends of the condemned man to
buy these choice tickets, either to pay their final
respects to a fellow criminal or to ensure by their presence that the condemned man would not offer a lastminute confession naming them.
The hanging of Albert Hicks, a noteworthy murderer, in New York City on July 13, 1860 was one
such ball for which tickets went at a premium. Some
10,000 onlookers watched the hanging, mostly from
boats since the execution site on Bedloe’s Island was
less than 30 feet from shore. Another lucky 1,000 got
invitations to the island, many of which were sold
through scalpers. It was said that the federal marshal,
Capt. Isaiah Rynders, who was in charge of the
arrangements, made a profit well in excess of $1,000
after paying out all commissions to his agents.
Sam Sheppard had to be wheeled to his wife’s funeral
with his neck in a brace, allegedly the work of a “bushyhaired stranger” who had murdered his wife. Sheppard
was convicted of her murder but cleared 12 years later.
Shinburn, Mark (c. 1833–?) aristocrat of bank burglars
Perhaps the most colorful of all New York criminals in
the 1860s, Mark Shinburn was a dapper bank burglar
who complained at length that he was at heart an aristocrat and that he was repelled by the crooks with
whom he was forced to associate. Shinburn was a particular favorite of Marm Mandelbaum, the great fence,
and would attend her famous dinner parties, where she
entertained society’s better half with a number of
underworld personalities mixed in for spice. Shinburn
always acquitted himself perfectly when the wife of a
judge or an important City Hall figure happened to be
sitting next to him. He would inform them, with
somber earnestness, that he was involved in banking.
Some of Shinburn’s crimes were truly spectacular.
After he and a confederate robbed a bank in Saint
Catharines, Ontario, they found all routes across the
border blocked by Canadian police. The only
unguarded point was a half-constructed suspension
bridge over Niagara Falls. The pair started across on a
snowy and sleety night after tying ropes around their
waists and securing another rope to a girder. If one
slipped off, his partner was to try to pull him back, but
if the task proved impossible, each agreed to cut the
other loose, letting him drop into the chasm below
rather than letting him remain suspended in the air to
freeze to death. Twice Shinburn slipped over the side
Following his acquittal, Sheppard married a woman
who had befriended him by mail during his time in
prison, and regained his medical license. However, in
1968 Sheppard’s second wife sued for divorce, saying
she feared for her safety living with him. Subsequently,
Dr. Sam turned professional wrestler, but his health
began to fail and he died in 1970.
In 1995 Sam Reese Sheppard filed suit seeking monetary damages for his father’s 10 years of wrongful
imprisonment. In 1998 Sheppard’s body was exhumed
and, according to the son’s attorney, new DNA evidence excluded Dr. Sheppard as a suspect. However, the
State of Ohio, which had apparently exhibited little
interest in doing DNA checks earlier decided to exhume
Marilyn Sheppard’s body to check her DNA, an official
saying, “Right now, there is no positive profile of Mrs.
Sheppard’s DNA, and we need that so we can start
answering some of the questions being raised by the
plaintiffs.”
Under Ohio law, the state could be required to pay
$25,000 for each year of imprisonment, plus lost
income and other expenses. In 2000 a court ruled in
favor of the state, but the ruling was subject to appeal.
808
SHOCKLEY, Sam Richard
but was pulled back to safety by his partner. Amazingly,
the pair made it across to American soil and escaped.
Shinburn was also a member of the infamous Bliss
Bank Ring, which corrupted the New York Police
Department detective bureau and paid off officers
following every big caper pulled by the gang. However,
Shinburn did not like sharing in big operations because
he wanted to accumulate as much loot as he could
in the shortest possible time in order to return to his
native Prussia. He engaged in several two-man jobs,
the largest being a $170,000 Maryland bank caper
with gang leader George M. Bliss, one of the few
criminals he respected. Shinburn then announced his
retirement from crime and, after being bid a fond
farewell from Bliss and Marm Mandelbaum, set sail
for Europe.
Using some of his loot, Shinburn managed to buy a
title and became Baron Shindell of Monaco. He lived
quite well for many years, but his lavish lifestyle eventually took its toll and he was forced to return to crime.
He was caught attempting to rob a Belgium bank and
imprisoned. When finally released he managed to
scrape up enough money to return to the United States,
where he apparently intended to return to his version of
the bank business. However, he soon discovered that
some of his real estate holdings in Chicago had grown
enormously in value, and he was once more able to
retire in luxury under another assumed name. Since no
more was heard of him, it is assumed his second retirement was permanent.
See also: BLISS BANK RING, FREDERICKA “MARM” MANDELBAUM.
ship schools
confinement method for juvenile delinquents
At the beginning of the 1860s, a new experiment
aimed at rehabilitating young male juvenile delinquents was tried. It was felt that what these errant
youngsters needed was the discipline and training of
military life, not in any army-style camp but at sea,
aboard a ship, from which there obviously could be no
escape. On these so-called ship schools, boys under the
age of 16 divided their time between studying and
working. At the latter their time, according to one contemporary account, was spent in “domestic employments; in repairing sails and rigging; in going through
sheet and halyard, brace and clewline, and the technical language of sailors; in short, in becoming practical
seamen.”
The ship schools proved to be disasters. There were
rumors of these young gangsters often seizing control
of the vessels, putting into shore and staging mass
escapes. The system limped on into the post-Civil War
period before being abandoned because of the discipli809
nary problems, enormous operating expenses and anger
over honest adult seamen being thrown out of work.
See also: JUVENILE DELINQUENCY.
Shirt Tails
early 19th-century New York gang
One of the meanest and most brutal of the early gangs
to appear in New York City in the 1820s was the notorious Shirt Tails. So called because they wore their
shirts outside their trousers in the Chinese style, the
Shirt Tails never looked as violent as, for instance, the
Plug Uglies, who carried brickbats and clubs and glared
menacingly from under their plug hats. But in a murderous brawl or street mugging the Shirt Tails were just
as well armed and just as deadly as other gangs. They
had discovered that concealing their weapons under
their long shirt tails did much to allay the suspicions of
would-be victims. It is doubtful that the average Shirt
Tail would venture abroad with less than three or four
weapons on him. Fierce battlers, whose total number
was somewhere in the low hundreds, the Shirt Tails
finally disappeared as an organized force before the
Civil War. The members joining other gangster organizations.
Shockley, Sam Richard (1909–1948) bank robber and
murderer
One of the first two men to die in San Quentin’s gas
chamber, Crazy Sam Shockley was executed for his role
in the famous Alcatraz Prison Rebellion of 1946.
By any norm, Sam Shockley was crazy. No authoritative estimate was ever made of the percentage of Alcatraz prisoners who were insane or went stir crazy while
there, but interviews with former inmates show that
they considered at least 60 percent to have been
deranged. It is amazing that Shockley—who believed the
police had given him stomach cancer by using special
light rays on him and who constantly heard “radio
voices” in his head—was ever sent to Alcatraz at all and
even more so that he was not transferred to an asylum.
In 1938 Shockley, a farm laborer, had robbed $2,000
from a bank in Paoli, Okla. and kidnapped the bank
president and his wife to use as hostages during his
escape in their car. Shockley had a special need for
hostages since he didn’t know how to drive. He
released the couple unharmed eight hours before he
was caught. Convicted of bank robbery and kidnapping, he drew a life sentence and was sent to Leavenworth. There, doctors determined he had an IQ of 54,
the level of an eight-year-old. He frequently erupted in
throwing, yelling and breaking fits, thereby earning the
nickname Crazy Sam. It was decided he was incapable
of coping with the stress of a normal prison environ-
SHOPLIFTING
ment; so Leavenworth solved the problem by sending
him to Alcatraz.
In 1941 Crazy Sam joined the one convict who had
befriended him, Dutch Cretzer, a former Public Enemy
No. 4, in an unsuccessful escape attempt. For the next
five years Crazy Sam was in and out of solitary confinement. In 1946 he participated in the great escape
attempt organized by Bernie Coy and Cretzer. The
would-be escapees took nine guards hostage, and when
it was apparent the escape was going to fail, Crazy Sam
and another convict, Buddy Thompson, goaded Cretzer
into shooting the hostages. Cretzer shot several, killing
one. Later court testimony revealed that Crazy Sam
cackled for joy over the shooting. Both Coy and Cretzer were killed in the breakout attempt.
Thompson and Shockley were tried and sentenced
to death for their parts in the escape and murder. As
they left the courtroom, Shockley grinned moronically
at reporters and said confidently: “They’ll never gas
me. I’m crazy.” He died on December 3, 1948, along
with Thompson, to the disgust of his fellow prisoners,
who regarded Sam as insane even by Alcatraz standards.
See also: ALCATRAZ PRISON REBELLION, JOSEPH
“DUTCH” CRETZER.
There have been some attempts at estimating the
percentage of persons who enter the larger department
stores in a city in order to steal something. In one survey in New York City, it was found that about one person in 10 who were followed swiped something.
However, the study was conducted by a private security
agency offering its shoplifting prevention services to
stores; so it could well have had a vested interest in the
results. Since the average shopper may well visit three
or four stores on a shopping expedition, the one in 10
ratio would have a devastating effect on mercantile
operations.
Women shoplifters outnumber men by four or five to
one. Some shoplifters are said to net as much as $1,000
a week. Well known to New York police is a female
“booster” who dresses herself exclusively in originals
hand-picked at the very best stores. “I always wear my
boosting drawers”—king-sized bloomers slung by suspenders under her full skirt—“just in case I see something I want,” she has been quoted as stating. Like
many other ladies of her profession, she sells to
fences—and to individual customers who have placed
specific orders with her.
While professionals steal for profit, amateur
shoplifters steal for their own use—or for family or
friends—and the profit motive never enters into it.
They steal for “kicks,” to balance the budget, to “get
back” at the store for some previous unsatisfactory
purchase or simply to get back at the “Establishment.”
Quite logically, shoplifting thefts increase dramatically
in periods of high inflation. To the shoplifter some
items are just not worth the purchase price.
The most popular shoplifted merchandise are
clothes, especially sportswear and knits, portable TV
sets, fur coats, air conditioners, radios, small electrical
appliances, liquor, cosmetics and health products.
For a time during the height of the miniskirt craze,
fashions were in favor of the store, since the short skirts
cut down on “legging,” sticking small items under the
skirt between the legs and walking out of the store.
Among professionals, this dodge is known as the crotch
walk.
Store detectives are particularly on the lookout for
women carrying shopping bags, especially empty ones,
large handbags and umbrellas. Also subject to close
scrutiny is a woman pushing a baby carriage, a convenient conveyance for hauling away a goodly amount of
loot. Next under suspicion are young persons,
teenagers and subteens. The average young person, like
many parents, sees nothing wrong in stealing from a
big store. If caught, he or she usually acts like it’s a
joke; if the store does decide to prosecute, most judges
will let the offender off with a reprimand, particularly
for a first offense.
shoplifting
Shoplifting is a major problem in all types of retail
stores. Its precise extent is difficult to measure, complicated by the fact that “inventory shrinkage” also
results, to a great extent, from employee theft. In 1970
J. Edgar Hoover called shoplifting “the fastest growing
larceny in the country,” and most recent estimates put
the take at upwards of $2 billion a year. Undeniably,
shoplifting arrests have soared, but this is more due to
an attempt to discourage additional practitioners of the
art by having offenders arrested and publicizing arrests.
Previously, most stores preferred not to make arrests,
letting the offender off with a stern lecture and, in
many cases, even urging him or her to return as an honest customer.
There are two basic types of shoplifter: the professional and the amateur. The professional steals for
profit and generally has a fence waiting to take the loot
off his hands. The professional concentrates on higherpriced, resalable items and can cause a store heavy
losses, but it’s the amateur who gives retailers the greatest headaches. No one can say how many Americans
indulge in shoplifting, either regularly or occasionally.
Stores in college towns know to beware of student
shoplifters late in the month, when many students are
low on funds and awaiting their next allowance check
from home.
810
SHORT, Luke
take off on the double when the women get back with
the loot.”
Perhaps the greatest shoplifting family in history was
the White, or Weiss, family of Chicago, which from the
1890s to World War I was probably the most proficient
clan in the business. One member of the family, Eva
Gussler, was in charge of teaching the children to steal
as soon as they could walk. A typical dodge involved a
woman member of the family strolling through a store
with a little child hidden under her long skirt. When the
woman found an item worth stealing, she’d knock it to
the floor and the child would retrieve it and slip it into
specially sewn pockets in the lining of the skirt.
Things have not changed much since then. In San
Francisco gaping store detectives recently watched two
shoplifting mothers showing their little daughters “how
to roll a suit” so that it would be as compact as possible.
See also: WHITE FAMILY.
While many stores have adopted a new “get tough”
policy, others are reluctant to take a shoplifter to court.
For one thing, it means the store detective or guard
who made the arrest must be away from the job to testify, thus leaving the store that much shorter of protection. However, the main worry is false arrest suits.
Juries are notoriously sympathetic toward false arrest
plaintiffs, and awards have gone as high as $100,000.
Even the fact that more than 40 states have changed
their shoplifting laws so that shoplifters can be picked
up inside the store by detectives, instead of being followed out to the street, has not resulted in many convictions. It remains difficult to prove to a jury that the
person had not intended to pay for the merchandise. A
particularly telling defense is a woman’s claim of having become so exasperated over her inability to get the
attention of a salesperson that she walked out without
paying for the item she wanted.
Still, there have been some successful prosecutions.
Take the case of the four Hoboken housewives who
ventured to New York City each week for lunch and a
matinee. They also set aside an hour or so of their outing for shoplifting. All were prosperous-looking
matrons and thus drew no suspicion for some time, but
they were finally caught in the act. All were from comfortable backgrounds and could easily have paid for the
items they stole. Their defense was that the store would
hardly be affected by their pilfering. All were convicted
and given jail sentences.
In recent years shoplifters have been foiled by various electronic transistorized plastic devices attached to
store items. These devices set off buzzers and blinking
lights when a customer attempts to wander off with
the goods. Some stores have found that many customers resent such devices and complain they prevent
them from trying on clothing properly to judge how
the items look and fit. In deference to this complaint,
the devices are sometimes attached to a garment’s
edge. Resourceful shoplifters have used razors to snip
them off.
The traditional protection against shoplifting has
been the old-fashioned convex mirror. It is, however, a
method that often helps a thief more than it hinders
him. Some thieves insist they will not steal in a store
without such mirrors. Merchants tend to overlook the
fact that while the mirror will let them see what a person is doing, the shoplifter can just as well look up and
see whether the merchant is watching.
Cases of family “togetherness” in shoplifting are an
old story, with all the children, from the youngest to the
oldest, “working” a store while mom or dad wait outside in the getaway car. Recently, a member of Atlanta
police larceny unit said: “Men haul women around in
cars, park and wait while the women shoplift. Then
Short, Elizabeth
See BLACK DAHLIA.
Short, Luke (1854–1893) gambler and gunfighter
Luke Short, an undersized gambler, legitimately won
the sobriquet the Undertaker’s Friend by being one of
the quickest, trickiest and meanest gunfighters who
ever settled an argument with a fast draw—fair or otherwise. Once, a man he was arguing with objected
when Short put his hand under his coat. Short said:
“I’m not trying to pull a gun. I haven’t got a gun there,
see!” Then Short pulled a gun and shot the man dead.
Luke Short was one of the Dodge City Gang, headed
by Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson, which either controlled or protected much of the vice in the Gomorrah
of the Plains. After growing up in Texas, he hit the cowboy trail at about the age of 16 and by 1876 he had
become a bootlegger, selling whiskey to the Sioux Indians—a federal offense. It was also a deadly profession,
and Short had to kill at least six men defending his selfproclaimed franchise. He was finally put out of business by the army and barely escaped a troop of
arresting soldiers.
With a little distance and time behind him, Short
turned army scout. Tiring of that occupation, he took
to the gambling tables at Leadville, Colo. In a manner
of speaking, he came up with one of the surer winning
systems. When he won, he collected; when he lost, he
welshed; when men he owed money to protested, he
outdrew and killed them.
In late 1879 he drifted into Dodge City, Kan., where
he befriended Wyatt Earp, and when Earp later moved
on to Tombstone, Arizona Territory, Short ended up
there as a dealer at the Oriental Saloon. Short did his
811
SHORTCHANGE artists
share of gunfighting at the saloon, and seldom needed
help. Once, though, a hard case named Charley Storms
called Luke a cheat and got the drop on him. Bat Masterson intervened and got Storms to leave the place
peacefully. Later that afternoon Storms returned and,
before Short noticed his presence, walked up to him
and began tracing the outline of Short’s mustache with
his .45. Short watched his tormentor through slitted
eyes, and then in a lightning movement that was to
make him a shooting legend, he whipped out his Colt
and fired three bullets into Storms, who died without
being able to squeeze the trigger.
In 1881, weary of dodging lead for small pay, Short
went back to Dodge City, where in time he purchased
the Long Branch Saloon and turned it into one of the
town’s great moneymakers, offering everything a man
could possibly want: liquor, gambling and women.
About this time a “reform” movement took over the
government of the town. The first thing it ordered was
a ban on women employees in saloons. Such a law
would have had the effect of putting Short out of business, especially since the ordinance was not enforced
against saloons owned by the so-called reform element.
Short tried to fight the enforcement of the law the
way he fought everything—with his gun. However, he
and his supporters, clearly outnumbered, were run out
of town. The angry Short lodged a complaint at the
state capital, Topeka. When he got no satisfaction from
the governor, he started sending wires around the West.
Soon, the townspeople nervously watched the arrival of
a stream of Short’s friends—Earp, Masterson, Doc Holliday, Charlie Bassett, Shotgun Collins, Neal Brown
and others—all gunmen.
Dodge City panicked. Short’s enforcers adopted the
name of the Dodge City Peace Commission, but in fact,
they threatened war. Each day more fierce gunmen
came to town to back up the “commissioners,” who
had taken such effective control of the town that folks
said not even the state militia could dislodge them.
While a nervous governor hesitated, the Dodge City
reformers caved in. They “invited” Luke Short to
reopen the Long Branch and run it the way things had
been run before.
After a time Short sold out and took his gambling
business to Fort Worth, Tex., where he ran the White
Elephant Saloon and a number of other places in outlying sections. When gambling was declared illegal, Short
became the most prosperous of the underground gambling house owners. In 1887 Longhair Jim Courtright,
a former city marshal in Fort Worth and by then head
of his own detective agency, started shaking down
saloons and gambling places for protection payoffs.
Despite Courtright’s reputation as a top gunslinger,
Short laughed him off and easily beat him to the draw.
He shot off Courtright’s thumb as Longhair Jim tried to
trip back the hammer of one of his guns. When Courtright attempted to draw his other gun, Short killed him
with three shots.
In 1890 Short had to defend his empire against a
local saloon owner named Charles Wright. As Wright
came at him with a shotgun, Short put the challenger
out of commission by shooting him in the wrist. In
1893 Short died of natural causes; he was 39 years old.
See also: LONGHAIR JIM COURTRIGHT, DODGE CITY
PEACE COMMISSION.
shortchange artists
Shortchanging has long been a highly developed American swindle. As late as 1900 it was common among a
number of small circuses traveling the country not to
pay ticket sellers and in fact to charge them as much as
$35 a week for the job because it gave them such a
lucrative opportunity to shortchange the excited
patrons. Police bunco squads have estimated there are
as many as 5,000 professional shortchange artists who
frequently take jobs as cashiers, ticket sellers, bartenders, checkout clerks and check cashiers simply
because of the opportunities for stealing these jobs
afford. However, probably an even more common form
of shortchanging involves cheating clerks in stores.
The classic con of this type is the twenty and one. It
calls for a gypster to make a purchase in a store for less
than 50¢ and pay with a $20 bill. He starts talking
about something: the weather, the news, anything.
When the clerk puts the change down, it’s usually in a
standard form: a $10 bill, a five, four singles and a dollar in silver. The crook then makes another purchase of
10¢ or so, paying for it with a quarter from the silver
change lying on the counter. He has made no effort to
pick up the paper money. While this is going on, the
slickster finds an apparently overlooked $1 bill in his
pocket. He tells the clerk he’s sorry for having forced
him to change a twenty when he had the single. The
customer then acts as though he is going to pick up the
$10 bill from the paper money while putting down the
single, but he does neither and continues talking.
Next, he shoves the $10 in bills across the counter
and requests a $10 bill in exchange for the pile. When
the clerk gives him the $10 bill, the con artist pretends
he’s going to leave. At this point the customer seemingly has been gypped out of $9. Most of the time the
clerk doesn’t even realize he or she is shorting the customer. And it makes no difference if they do or not, for
at that moment the gyp pretends to have discovered the
error. He asks the clerk to check on the money he has
given him. The clerk does so and, red-faced, realizes the
customer is right. Psychologically, the clerk has been
812
SIEGEL, Benjamin “Bugsy”
Black Handers supposedly paid the Shotgun Man
extremely well for his services, since he made a fearsome walking advertisement for them. It may have been
that he had accumulated all the wealth he wanted or
just that the Black Hand menace was starting to recede
anyway, but after a period of eight or nine years the
Shotgun Man left Little Italy.
See also: BLACK HAND, DEATH CORNER.
put on the defensive, as the mistake is obvious. The gyp
brushes off the matter but keeps up a steady flow of
words to further confuse the clerk.
Now, he once more withdraws a dollar bill from his
pocket and this time puts it on the bills on the counter
and says: “Actually this whole mixup is my fault. I
never should have given you the twenty in the first
place. Here’s twenty in change. You give me back the
twenty and we’ll be square.” By this time the clerk,
either still embarrassed or exasperated, is ready to do
anything to be rid of the troublesome customer. He
usually will hand over the twenty at this point, completely forgetting about the $10 the gyp has already
picked up. Only a very alert clerk can keep up with
such banter and not be talked out of the money. Even if
the clerk does so, he does not accuse the customer of
trying to swindle him, since the customer has already
demonstrated his confused state of mind by almost getting gyped out of $9.
Despite the fact that security firms urge stores to
educate employees to this most basic shortchanging
racket, it remains perhaps the most successful of all
such stings, with a success rate of far better than 50
percent. It accounts for a large amount of the estimated
$500 million a year taken by all types of shortchangers.
Siegel, Benjamin “Bugsy” (1906–1947) syndicate
leader
“We only kill each other,” the notorious Benjamin
“Bugsy” Siegel once told construction tycoon Del
Webb. Whether or not Webb took this assurance on the
mores of syndicate gangsterism at full value is not
known, but Siegel’s own life and death certainly gives
his statement some credence. Bugsy Siegel was simultaneously the most colorful, the most charming and the
most fiery-tempered of all syndicate killers. As the saying went, he charmed the pants and panties off Hollywood, while at the same time functioning as a mob
killer. It was an incredible act right up to the moment
he got his head blown open by three 30.30 caliber bullets from a hit man’s rifle.
Bugsy grew up on the crime-ridden Lower East Side
and formed an early alliance with a runty little youth
four years his senior, Meyer Lansky, already a criminal
genius in his teens. By 1920 the Bug and Meyer Gang
was running gambling games, stealing cars and getting
into bootlegging. On occasion the gang hijacked booze
shipments from other outfits until Lansky and Siegel
realized it was a lot easier to hire out their gunmen as
protectors for these shipments. They soon began working with rising young Italian gangsters such as Lucky
Luciano, Joe Adonis, Frank Costello and Tommy Lucchese. The gang provided much of the muscle and, in
Lansky’s case, the brains for Luciano’s big push to topple the old “Mustache Petes” of the Mafia: Giuseppe
“Joe the Boss” Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano.
The emerging national crime syndicate assigned
Siegel to carry out numerous murders aimed at gaining
control of the important avenues of crime. He was so
enthused about killing, he was called “Bugsy,” but not
in his presence. Face to face, he was just plain Ben.
Bugsy was sent to California to consolidate the syndicate’s West Coast operations. There, in his quieter
moments, he was a genuinely suave, entertaining sort,
hobnobbing with Hollywood celebrities and becoming
close friends with such personalities as Jean Harlow,
George Raft, Clark Cable, Gary Cooper, Wendy Barrie,
Cary Grant and many others, some of whom invested
their money in his enterprises. Siegel sometimes left his
“class” friends at a party to go on a murder mission,
Shotgun Man (?–?) unidentified Black Hand hit man
America’s best-known murderer, in the sense that literally thousands of people could have identified him—
but didn’t—was Chicago’s infamous Shotgun Man, an
assassin who worked for Black Hand extortionists. If
the police were aware of his name and identity, no case
could be built against him, and little of his past was
known in Chicago’s Little Italy, even though he openly
plied his trade there. Most Black Hand gangs did not
do their own killings but farmed them out to free-ance
hit men who owed no loyalty beyond doing the job
they were paid for. Between January 1, 1910 and
March 26, 1911, the Shotgun Man killed 15 Italians
and Sicilians on orders from various Black Handers. By
comparison, the total number of unsolved Black Hand
murders during that period was 38. In March 1911 the
Shotgun Man assassinated four victims within a 72hour period, all at the intersection of Milton and Oak
streets. Before and after his killings he walked freely
through the streets of Little Italy, his gun always for
rent to the highest bidder. Although he was well
known, no one in Little Italy identified him to the
Chicago police. It was generally believed that the Black
Handers who hired him had considerable political
influence and that if arrested, the Shotgun Man would
be back on the streets within a short time, a prospect
likely to give any potential informer second thoughts.
813
SILENCE in prisons
which he did one night in 1939 when he, Frankie
Carbo, later the underworld’s boss of boxing, and Murder, Inc. wheelman Allie Tannenbaum assassinated an
errant criminal named Harry Greenberg, better known
as Big Greenie.
Big Greenie had had the death sentence passed
on him by the syndicate board in New York. When
Greenie fled to Los Angeles, it was decided to “let
Ben handle it.” Siegel was happy to, doing the job personally, although he was only supposed to arrange
matters. Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Arthur Veitch later explained why Siegel had to
lend a hand personally: “In gangster parlance Siegel is
what is known as a ‘cowboy.’ This is the way the boys
have of describing a man who is not satisfied to frame
a murder but actually has to be in on the kill in person.”
Others would say Siegel’s craziness explained his
bizarre actions. For example, there was the time he and
one of his mistresses, Countess Dorothy diFrasso,
trekked to Italy to sell Benito Mussolini a revolutionary
explosive device. While staying on the diFrasso estate,
Siegel met top Nazi officials Hermann Goering and
Joseph Goebbels. According to underworld legend,
Bugsy took an instant dislike to the pair—for personal
rather than political reasons—and planned to knock
them both off, relenting only because of the countess’
frantic pleas. When the explosive device fizzled, the Bug
returned to Hollywood.
His main syndicate business was running the rackets
and directing narcotics deals on the West Coast as well
as overseeing the delivery of West Coast racing results
to East Coast bookmakers. In the process Siegel
dreamed up the idea of turning Las Vegas into a legal
gambling paradise. He talked the syndicate into investing some $6 million in the construction of the first truly
posh legal gambling establishment in the United States,
the Flamingo (which was the nickname of Siegel’s mistress, Virginia Hill). Unfortunately for Bugsy, he was a
man ahead of his time, and the Flamingo proved to be a
financial white elephant. Reportedly, the syndicate
demanded he make good its losses, but Bugsy was
guilty of more serious infractions than just losing the
mob’s money. He had skimmed off the Flamingo’s construction funds and had been dipping into its gambling
revenues.
The syndicate passed the death sentence on Siegel,
the key vote being cast by Meyer Lansky, Bugsy’s lifelong buddy (“I had no choice,” Lansky reputedly said
later). Lucky Luciano approved the decision at a 1947
conference in Havana, Cuba. On June 20 Siegel was
sitting in the living room of the $500,000 Beverly Hills
mansion of Virginia Hill, who had been sent on a syndicate mission to Europe, when a killer pumped nine
shots through the window. Three hit Siegel in the head,
killing him instantly.
See also: FLAMINGO HOTEL, HAVANA CONVENTION, VIRGINIA HILL, MEYER LANSKY.
silence in prisons
See RULE OF SILENCE.
Silks, Mattie (1847–1929) madam
One of the “grand madams” of American prostitution,
Mattie Silks brought “class” to harlotry in Denver, a
city whose fleshpots for a time rivaled those of New
York, New Orleans, Chicago and San Francisco. By
1911 her House of Mirrors, at 1942 Market Street,
was almost as famous in the West as was Chicago’s
Everleigh Club in the Midwest and points east. At that
time, Mattie was in her sixties and considered one of
Denver’s most famous, if perhaps not most upstanding, citizens.
Other than that she was born in Indiana, little is
known of her early years, including her real name,
which she never revealed to anyone. It is established
that she “turned tricks” in Springfield, Ill. while still
a teenager. Thereafter, she traveled the western mining camp route, going to wherever the discovery of
gold or silver allowed men to enjoy some leisure
entertainment. About 1876 Mattie, at the age of 29,
decided there was much more money to be made in
operating houses of pleasure than in handling all the
business personally. She opened her first whorehouse
in Denver and kept at it for the next four decades.
Each time she opened a new house it was a step up in
grandeur, climaxing in the House of Mirrors, a threestory mansion that included four parlors, a ballroom
and 16 bedrooms. Its prize attraction was the main
parlor of mirrors, with floor-to-ceiling mirrors on all
sides and a large crystal chandelier. A five-piece black
orchestra offered every kind of music from the classics to ragtime.
Mattie offered clients a small but select group of
“boarders,” never more than a dozen, and competition
for employment at one of her houses was intense.
Although she may or may not have first coined the
phrase, her credo definitely was that each of her
women had to “be a lady in the drawing room and a
whore in the bedroom.” Consequently, her boarders
were not permitted to smoke or curse and they were
never allowed to sit on a customer’s lap in the grand
parlor or any of the other open rooms. A customer was
to be treated like a gentleman and shown the same
respect he would receive at home from his wife and
children. Only in the upstairs bedrooms could Mattie’s
women play the role of whore.
814
SIMPSON case
After retiring, Mattie, at age 79, granted a newspaper interview, in which she stated:
Nicole’s condominium at 875 South Bundy Drive in
Brentwood. The evidence appeared to be that Goldman had been savagely stabbed first, and then Nicole.
After the crime Los Angeles police followed Simpson’s
car in what became known as the “slow speed chase.”
There was speculation that Simpson, a passenger in the
car driven by an old football buddy, was near to killing
himself—the pro-Simpson people insisting that was
because he was suffering from the loss of his wife
while the anti-Simpson group attributed his despair to
guilt resulting from what he’d done. The chase became
a long spectacle, with viewers along the freeway cheering Simpson and yelling “Juice!” an old accolade from
his football days. Finally Simpson in effect gave himself up, and the whole spectacle shifted to the legal system. While Simpson did remain the center of attention,
other players from Judge Lance Ito to colorful prosecution figures as well as defense attorneys hired by
Simpson and dubbed by the media as the “dream
team,” became very recognizable and in some cases
idolized or reviled.
The prosecution insisted Simpson had the time and
inclination to commit the murders in a jealous rage,
while the defense made the investigators into sort of
defendants themselves. The defense claimed the police
used shoddy investigative techniques and fabricated
evidence. They sought to dismiss the DNA evidence
submitted by the prosecution as not credible and compromised by controversial handling of evidence, such as
by one detective carrying around with him for more
than a day a vial of Simpson’s blood. The defense
mocked Detective Mark Fuhrman’s claim that he found
a glove containing blood carrying the DNA of Simpson
and the victims. (In one trial highpoint, Simpson was
asked to put on the glove, but he could not, because it
was too small, giving birth to a famous quote to the
jury by lead defense attorney Johnnie Cochran Jr.: “If it
doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”
The defense lawyers claimed Fuhrman was a racist
and that the white officer harbored a grudge against
Simpson stemming from a 1985 incident in which he
smashed the windows of his wife’s car with a baseball
bat. The defense inferred to the jury that Fuhrman had
sprinkled blood found on the crime scene from a
blood sample Simpson had given when the bodies
were discovered.
The jury acquitted Simpson quickly, which brought
charges that since 10 members of the panel were
African-American, the jury was itself prejudiced. The
reaction to the verdict followed racial lines, with 64
percent of whites and only 12 percent of blacks believing Simpson was probably guilty, while 59 percent of
blacks and 11 percent of whites thought he was probably innocent.
I went into the sporting life for business reasons
and for no other. It was a way for a woman in those
days to make money, and I made it. I considered myself
then and I do now—as a businesswoman. I operated
the best houses in town and I had as my clients the
most important men in the West.
I kept the names of my regular customers on a
list. I never showed that list to anyone—nor will I tell
you the names now. If a man did not conduct himself as
a gentleman, he was not welcome nor ever permitted to
come again. My customers knew I would not talk
about them and they respected me for this. . . .
My houses were well kept and well furnished.
They had better furnishing than any of my competitors—gilt mirrors, velvet curtains.
I never took a girl into my house who had no experience of life and men. That was a rule of mine. . . . No
innocent young girl was ever hired by me. And they
came to me for the same reasons that I hired them.
Because there was money in it for all of us.
By this time, 1926, the former Queen of the Red
Lights had achieved dowager status. She died three
years later.
Simpson case
“Trial of the Century”
The trial for murder of former football star O. J.
Simpson was not without reason called the “Trial of
the Century.” In the “starring role” was O. J. Simpson, who gained well-deserved fame in college and
professional football and later remained in the public
eye as a television sportscaster and pitchman and as a
supporting actor in a number of films, especially the
comic Naked Gun movies. Clearly he had hurdled the
color barriers and was a huge and popular success in
the world at large. He had a beautiful wife, Nicole
Brown Simpson, and seemed to live an ideal life
among the rich and famous in the Los Angeles–Hollywood scene.
That clearly changed when Simpson’s wife was murdered and he was charged with the crime. There were
other unusual aspects to the case, such as the preponderance of DNA evidence introduced and discussed.
Above all, the Simpson trial became a media event, millions of people from coast to coast listened to every
word of the trial broadcast in what was undoubtedly
television overkill.
The violence in the case was gruesome enough.
Nicole, 35, and her friend Ron Goldman, 25, were
killed on June 12, 1994, outside the doorway of
815
SILVER, Frankie
After the murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman, the most famous picture of O.J. Simpson was not of any of his
football exploits, but the LAPD mug shot of his arrest.
Silver Street
As time passed, public opinion against Simpson
solidified and when Simpson was sued in civil court by
relatives of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman,
he was convicted, a result that involved no criminal
consequences. However, a judgment for $33.5 million
for wrongful death was imposed on Simpson, and virtually all his wealth was taken from him by law, and he
was stymied in various efforts to resume any kind of
career.
It could not be said that the racial divide widened by
the case narrowed subsequently.
Capone mob stronghold
For several decades one of the most vice-ridden streets
in America was Silver Street in Hurley, Wis. Starting in
the 1920s, the Capone mob ran a crime school there
that thrived as long as the organization remained a
power in B-girl bars and brothels. Silver Street was
largely given over to honky-tonks in which teenage
girls, imported from Canada and elsewhere in the Midwest, were taught the fine arts of “mooching and dipping.” From there they were sent out to underworld
dives all over the country.
Some of the girls were lured from Canada by the
promise of dancing jobs. When they got to Silver Street,
they were told the jobs were gone. Stranded without
return fare home, the girls were ripe for offers to pick
up some change drinking with honky-tonk customers.
After a time it was suggested to the girls that if the customers were drunk, they wouldn’t notice someone picking a few bucks from their wallets. A woman “dip”
taught the girls in dressing rooms backstage how to
“swift dip” a man’s wallet—taking it, removing the
money and returning it to his pocket. The girls who
proved to be apt pupils were taught the subtle uses of
the Mickey Finn. Those with less intelligence were
forced to become prostitutes.
Silver, Frankie (?–1831) murderess
Although many historians refer to Mary Surratt of the
Lincoln assassination conspiracy as the first white
woman hanged in America, that fate befell Frankie Silver some 35 years earlier in North Carolina.
Frankie hacked her husband to death with an ax as
he slept before the fireplace. She then cut his body into
small pieces, burned all she could and stuffed the
unburnable portions into a hollow log.
Mounting the gallows, she showed little remorse. In
fact, she munched on a slice of cake and held up the
execution until she had eaten every last crumb.
816
SIRHAN, Sirhan Bishara
primary, defeating Senator Eugene McCarthy, and
emerged for the first time as the likely winner of the
Democratic nomination. That evening he delivered a
victory speech in Los Angeles’ Ambassador Hotel.
After the speech the senator was walking toward a rear
exit when a 24-year-old Palestinian, Sirhan Bishara
Sirhan, approached carrying a Kennedy campaign
poster, behind which he had concealed a .22-caliber
eight-shot Iver Johnson pistol. He fired several shots at
Kennedy, three of which hit home. Two struck Kennedy
in his armpit and would not have been fatal. The third
entered the side of his head behind the right ear.
Kennedy fell, mortally wounded, while his assailant
was wrestled into submission by the senator’s bodyguards, including former sports stars Rafer Johnson
and Rosey Grier. As they did so, Sirhan wildly emptied
his weapon into the crowd, wounding five persons.
Kennedy died at 1:44 the following morning.
Sirhan was proud of his act. He joked with police
officers, made them taste his coffee to make sure it was
not poisoned and even spoke sorrowfully about how
violent the society had become. He was particularly
upset about the terrible things the Boston Strangler
had done.
Meanwhile, some witnesses claimed 10 shots had
been fired, leading to speculation that Sirhan might not
have acted alone. A possible explanation was that some
of Kennedy’s bodyguards’ guns had been accidentally
discharged in the melee.
During Kennedy’s speech, a campaign worker, Sandy
Serrano, stepped out onto a hotel balcony to escape the
smoke and heat. While she was there, two men and a
young woman in a white polka-dot dress went by her
into the building. Later, after the shooting, the trio
rushed out and Serrano was “nearly run over.” The
woman wearing the polka-dot dress shouted, “We shot
him!” When Serrano asked whom they had shot, the
woman replied, “We shot Kennedy!”
The police eventually turned up a woman named
Cathy Fulmer, but Serrano was unable to identify her as
the one in the polka-dot dress. Fulmer was found dead
in a motel room some days after Sirhan was convicted
of the assassination.
Sirhan freely confessed his act and was convicted
and sentenced to death, a fate he escaped when the
Supreme Court abolished capital punishment in 1972.
In the streets of Arab capitals throughout the Middle
East, posters appeared hailing “Sirhan Bishara Sirhan,
a commando not an assassin.” “Commando sources”
were quoted as saying the posters were designed to convey the idea that in shooting Kennedy, Sirhan was acting on behalf of all dispossessed Palestinians by striking
at a supporter of Israel—Kennedy.
Especially eyed as promising recruits were young
runaway girls, who were suckers for a get-richquick line. Many were held as virtual slaves, kept
in tow by their mob masters as long as they were
pro-ductive. Some became strippers on the underworld’s burlesque lounge route. Attempts to leave were
met with violence, usually simple beatings or knifings
but sometimes acid in the face, if the girl was to be
made into an example for others. Eventually, most of
the girls were put on dope to make them more compliant.
The heirs of the Capone mob have long since abandoned Silver Street, not because of a reform drive or
their own consciences but as a result of the changing
nature of vice, which largely has moved away from
whorehouses to independent call girl operations that
are much more difficult to control.
See also: PROSTITUTION.
Sing Sing Prison
See LEWIS E. LAWES, ELAM LYNDS.
Singleton, Ed (1893–1937) John Dillinger’s first partner
A small-time hoodlum and drunk, Ed Singleton was
young John Dillinger’s first partner in crime and a man
whose treatment by the law probably did much to turn
Dillinger into a public enemy.
In 1924 the 30-year-old Singleton talked 20-year-old
Dillinger into attempting to rob a 65-year-old grocer
named Frank Morgan, whom John had known since
childhood. Together they slugged Morgan, but when
the elderly man fought back, they ran. Eventually, both
were caught. Dillinger was tried first and sentenced to
10 to 20 years in prison. Singleton later claimed he was
drunk and was released after serving only a two-year
term. Dillinger brooded in prison about the lighter sentence given to a man 10 years his senior and the
acknowledged planner of the crime.
When Dillinger became a leading gangster, Ed Singleton gained a measure of fame as the public enemy’s
first partner. In 1937 Singleton, in a drunken stupor,
fell asleep on a railroad track and was run over.
See also: JOHN DILLINGER.
Sirhan, Sirhan Bishara (1944– ) assassin of Robert F.
Kennedy
The early morning of June 5, 1968 was a moment of
triumph for Senator Robert F. Kennedy, brother of
President John F. Kennedy, who had been assassinated
in 1963. He had just won the California presidential
817
SIRINGO, Charles Angelo
Currently, Sirhan remains in prison, actively pursuing a parole.
In time, Skaggs became a master, perhaps the greatest of his profession. He traveled the Mississippi from
St. Louis to New Orleans and soon had a gang of confederates working the river boats with him, fleecing the
gullible. Biographers agree that Skaggs’ income at times
hit $100,000 a month, especially after he began operating crooked faro games.
By the mid-1840s Skaggs was a millionaire and
retired, clearly knowing when to quit. He had become
notorious; it was said that no honest man was allowed
to leave one of his games a winner. At 37 Skaggs
became a gentleman planter in Louisiana. During the
Civil War the master gambler made his worst bet,
investing heavily in Confederate bonds, and lost his
entire fortune. He died an impoverished alcoholic in
Texas in 1870.
Siringo, Charles Angelo (1855–1928) range detective
Regarded by many, including Butch Cassidy, as the
greatest of the Pinkerton detectives, Charles Siringo
started working as a cowhand in his native Texas at the
age of 13. At 22 he first exhibited his taste for manhunting by going out alone in search of a 17-year-old
killer known as Billy the Kid. He was forced to abandon the chase after being separated from his money at a
gaming table. It was back to the range for Siringo, followed by two dull years working as a grocer in Kansas.
Then, on a visit to Chicago, Siringo was told by a blind
phrenologist that his skull indicated he had the makings
of a detective; shortly thereafter, he joined the Pinkerton agency.
Siringo proved to be a masterful bloodhound with
an incredible record of getting his man. He tracked desperadoes through blizzards and across scorching
deserts; he lived with moonshiners; he masqueraded as
a wanted man to persuade Elfie Landusky, a Hole in
the Waller, to tell him the hiding place of the notorious
Harvey Logan; he infiltrated the union involved in the
Coeur d’Alene labor riots of the 1890s, escaping assassination by minutes.
After 20 years with the Pinkertons, Siringo retired to
write about his experiences. He turned out a number of
fairly successful books but died “in poor circumstances”
in Los Angeles in 1928. He had always worked as a
loner, and he died the same way. Perhaps the title of a
pamphlet he wrote summarized his views most succintly: Two Evil Isms: Pinkertonism and Anarchism.
See also: BUTCH CASSIDY, HARVEY LOGAN, PINKERTON’S
NATIONAL DETECTIVE AGENCY.
Skinner, Cyrus (?–1864) outlaw
One of the most important members of Sheriff Henry
Plummer’s gang of Innocents during the days when they
terrorized what is now Montana, Cyrus Skinner was a
California and Idaho area saloon owner whom Plummer imported in the early 1860s to open a similar business in Bannack. The clapboard saloon Skinner bought
became a meeting place for the Innocents, but it also
served Plummer in a more practical sense. It was an
ideal place to learn when gold was being shipped out
from the mines by wagon or stagecoach. A bit too
much liquor would loosen a man’s tongue, and Skinner
would hear enough to tip off the Innocents. Because of
the importance of Skinner’s information, there has been
a tendency among some writers to refer to him as the
brains behind Plummer, but that description is not
accurate.
Skinner himself seldom went on jobs, but on one
occasion he learned, on very short notice, about a shipment which sounded so lucrative that he joined an
Innocent named Bob Zachery in holding up the stagecoach and murdering the driver; the loot was $250,000
in gold.
Skinner was a cold-blooded character. When another
gang member shot a friendly Bannack Indian, Skinner
promptly lifted the dead man’s scalp and displayed it
over the bar to add atmosphere.
It is inexplicable why Skinner remained in the Bannack area after Henry Plummer was hanged by vigilantes on January 10, 1864. As the lynching continued,
it was obvious that some of the condemned men would
talk and implicate the saloon keeper. Apparently, Skinner thought he could brazen it out. The vigilantes came
and got him the morning of January 25 as he was sunning himself in front of his cabin. Despite his insistence
that all they had was a “heap of suspicions” but no
Skaggs, Elijah (1810–1870) crooked gambler
Few dishonest gamblers or swindlers went through
more pains to learn their craft or left such a mark as did
a 19th century Kentuckian named Elijah Skaggs. In
fact, before the Civil War the term “Skaggs patent
dealer” came to mean any practitioner of fraud and
deception at a gaming table.
Before reaching the age of 20, Skaggs had determined to become the country’s greatest dishonest gambler. He worked hard at his ambition, learning various
card tricks and studying other successful dishonest
gamblers until he learned their tricks. If he could not
discover their techniques, he would pull them aside and
offer them large sums of money to teach him. If they
refused, seeking to protect their secrets, he would
threaten to expose them to their victims.
818
SKYJACKING
proof, the vigilantes thought otherwise and led him to
the gallows the same day. Faced with imminent death,
Skinner broke and ran, begging his captors to shoot
him rather than subject him to the often lingering death
by the rope. They dragged him back and hanged him.
See also: INNOCENTS, HENRY PLUMMER.
Mexico on a combination honeymoon and horse-buying trip and were never seen again. Some months later,
the badly decomposed body of a woman was found on
the road the pair had taken. It was never officially identified as that of Sally Skull, and it may well be that her
saga did not end there.
Skull, Sally (1813–1867?) multiple murderess
skyjacking
Her name was Sarah Jane Newman, but through a succession of marriages—or as near as it got to that in the
Wild West—she became Sarah Jane “Doe”-RobinsonSkull-Doyle-Watkins-Harsdoff. However, she was generally called Sally Skull, the surname of one of her
several husbands who came to mysterious and/or violent ends.
In 1821 Pennsylvania-born Sally and her family settled in what would become the state of Texas. By the
age of 13 the future Sally Skull had blossomed enough
to catch her first husband, whose name is unrecorded.
So is his fate. Sally said he went off to fight Indians.
Whatever the reason for his departure, he was never
seen again. Her second husband was one Jesse Robinson, who married Sally in 1838 and left her bed and
board in 1843, describing her as a “common scold”
and a woman with a violent temper apt to shoot a little
too close to him. Sally found her next husband within a
few months, a horse trader named George Skull. He set
Sally up on a ranch near Goliad, Tex., where the couple
ran a profitable horse business and Sally became one of
the area’s more colorful sights, sporting her six-gun and
bullwhip. George Skull disappeared but no one ever
knew exactly when. All of a sudden he just wasn’t
around and hadn’t been for some time. Sally simply
said she wasn’t going to talk about him. In 1852 John
Doyle became another of Sally’s ill-fated husbands.
Folks said it was kind of predictable what would happen to him after blonde Sally was seen in the company
of the famed Mexican bandit chief Juan Cortina. In any
event, Doyle took to drinking and one day, presumably
liquored up, fell into the Nueces River and drowned.
For some reason rumor spread that Sally had drowned
him in a barrel of whiskey.
During the Civil War, Sally Skull sported a new husband, whom she referred to as Mr. Watkins, but he didn’t last long enough for the locals to learn his first
name. Mr. and Mrs. Watkins went on a trip to Corpus
Christi, where Mr. Watkins was shot to death by his
spouse. There was some dispute about whether Sally
had shot him because she thought he was an intruder or
out of annoyance at his having the temerity to awaken
her. But the lady’s account of what had happened was
taken and Sally Skull was free to marry again. In 1867
she married William Harsdoff. The couple set off for
Although skyjackings occurred elsewhere in the world
as early as the 1930s, the crime did not become a problem in the United States until the early 1960s, when
hijackers forced a number of planes to be flown to
Cuba. Often, these skyjackings were for political reasons, but a number of criminal fugitives looked upon
Cuba as a logical place of refuge. Invariably, the crews
and passengers of skyjacked planes were well treated by
the Cubans, although Premier Fidel Castro imposed a
steep landing fee for all such aircraft.
Countermeasures were soon taken, and laws were
passed making it illegal to carry a weapon onto a passenger plane. Some airlines placed guards on planes,
and the Federal Aviation Administration ordered
cockpits locked during flight. Soon, the number of
skyjackings dwindled, but a new rash erupted in
1968–69, when a total of 63 attempts were made. Not
all attempts were Cuba-bound; some were extortion
plots calling for the payment of a huge sum of money
in exchange for the safety of the passengers and plane.
One extortion skyjack that has become legendary was
made by a man known only as D. B. Cooper, who
took control of a November 1971 Northwest Orient
Airlines flight out of Portland, Ore., and demanded a
$200,000 ransom. When the plane landed in Seattle,
Wash. the $200,000 was sent aboard and the 36 passengers were released. Cooper then ordered the plane
to fly to Reno, Nev., and somewhere in the flight he
parachuted to earth with the money. The case remains
unsolved.
Because of a new outbreak of plane hijackings in the
late 1960s, “sky marshals” were introduced on many
flights and a program was launched to detect weapons
and explosive devices carried by passengers, either on
their person or in their hand luggage. In 1969 airline
pilots staged a strike and demanded that there be an air
travel boycott of countries allowing skyjackers to enter.
A 1973 U.S.-Cuban agreement aimed at stopping air
piracy was the most effective measure of all. Castro
voided the pact in October 1976, charging the CIA was
involved in the bombing of a Cuban passenger jet. In
1980 there was a fresh spate of skyjackings to Cuba,
these by Cuban refugees disenchanted with their life in
America.
See also: “D. B. COOPER.”
819
SLADE, Joseph “Jack”
Slade, Joseph “Jack” (1824–1864) murderer
to heed the warnings, apparently figuring his reputation was enough to scare off any attackers. On the
night of March 3, 1864 he went on one of his monumental drunks and shot up a good deal of Virginia
City.
A group of vigilantes rushed him and tied him up,
and within three hours he was convicted and ordered to
be hanged forthwith. When the scourge of the West
learned his fate, he crawled around on his hands and
knees, crying: “My God! My God! Must I die? Oh, my
poor wife, my poor wife! My God, men, you can’t
mean that I’m to die!”
Despite his pleas, Slade was hanged, and by the time
his wife got to him, he had been laid out to “cool” in a
hotel. The widow packed Slade’s body in a tin coffin
filled with raw alcohol and set out for Illinois to bury
him at his birthplace. By the time the Widow Slade and
the coffin got to Salt Lake City, however, the body was
decomposing and giving off an awful odor. So Jack
Slade was buried in the Mormon Cemetery.
See also: JULES BENI.
When sober, Jack Slade was a vicious killer; drunk, he
was considerably worse. Born in Illinois the son of a
congressman, Slade had to flee west after killing a man
during an argument. Thereafter, he left a trail of
corpses wherever he went. He worked on and off as a
stagecoach driver, a station agent for the Central Overland and, finally, a district superintendent for that line.
But his main occupation was killing. Some biographers
insist that Slade was a regular Jekyll and Hyde, being
one of the kindliest men around when sober. The truth
is that his killings were only a little less cruel when he
was not under the influence. A typical sober killing was
that of a teamster named Andrew Farrar, who pulled a
gun on Slade one day when the latter entered a saloon.
Farrar could have shot him dead at that point, but he
let Slade taunt him with the accusation that he was too
cowardly to fight with his fists. Farrar rose to the bait
and flipped his gun aside. As he was rolling up his
sleeves, Slade shot him dead.
Alcohol seemed to make Slade go crazy. He once got
intoxicated and shot up the army post at Fort Halleck,
Colorado Territory, sending armed soldiers ducking for
cover. Worse than that, Slade under the effects of
whiskey engaged in acts of unparalleled cruelty. One of
his victims was a larcenous Frenchman named Jules
Beni, who had tried to kill Slade and made the mistake
of failing. Slade caught up with Beni and tied him to a
fence post. Between swigs on a bottle of whiskey, he
shot Beni full of holes, aiming at his legs and arms to
keep his victim alive. When finally he tired of the game,
Slade jammed his gun into Beni’s mouth and pulled the
trigger. He then cut off Beni’s ears, one of which he
reputedly used as a watch fob. He sold the other as a
souvenir for drinking money.
Even Mark Twain recorded some of Slade’s exploits
in Roughing It.
Slaughter, John (1841–1922) cattleman and lawman
One of Arizona’s storied lawmen, John Slaughter was
also an enormously wealthy cattleman and living proof
of an old Western axiom that if you put a man with
much to lose in charge of enforcing the law, the law
gets enforced.
Slaughter was born in the Republic of Texas. After
18 months of fighting for the Confederacy, he was
discharged for medical reasons. Those reasons, however, did not prevent him from serving six years
with the Texas Rangers, during which he won some
measure of fame for honesty and efficiency. He was
known for his ability to tell a badman to move on and
be obeyed. Slaughter took up ranching in Texas and
then moved west to start what would become the
100,000-acre San Bernardino Ranch in southeastern
Arizona.
In dealing with rustlers, Slaughter was his own law,
burying a notorious “herd cutter” named Bittercreek
Gallagher where he gunned him down on a prairie in
the New Mexico Territory. In 1886 Slaughter formed a
partnership with George W. Lang, and their ranching
enterprises boomed. He also established a very profitable packinghouse in Los Angeles. The same year, he
became sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona Territory,
which contained violent Tombstone. The area had
already experienced problems with lawmen: the Earps
had been run out of Tombstone in the aftermath of the
gunfight at the O.K. Corral, and their enemy Sheriff
John Behan took off rather than face a grand jury
indictment charging theft of county finances.
Slade was a matchless marksman with a navy revolver.
The legends say that one morning at Rocky Ridge,
when he was feeling comfortable, he saw a man
approaching who had offended him some days
before—observe the fine memory he had for matters
like that—and, “Gentlemen,” said Slade, drawing, “it
is a good twenty-five yard shot—I’ll clip the third button on his coat!” Which he did. The bystanders all
admired it. And they all attended the funeral too.
Slade had the misfortune of performing some of his
unwholesome deeds in Montana vigilante country,
where the practitioners of the noose had cleaned out
the Plummer gang and were looking to find other
guests of honor for their necktie parties. Slade was
warned to “get his horse and be gone,” but he failed
820
SLEEPWALKING and crime
scious, stripped of his clothes and tossed naked back on
the sidewalk.
A gangster who set the tone of the Slaughter Housers
was George Leese, described by a reporter of the day as
“a beastly, obscene ruffian, with bulging, bulbous,
watery-blue eyes, bloated face and coarse swaggering
gait.” Besides his career as a murderous mugger and
river pirate, he was a sporting gentleman, serving as an
official bloodsucker at illegal bare knuckle prize fights
staged in the Fourth Ward’s larger dives and entertaining the crowd at rat fights by biting off the head of a
mouse and/or rat for anyone offering a quarter. While
he never matched the legendary Jack the Rat at that
enterprise, Leese still made quite a bit of money. The
practice reinforced the perception of the Slaughter
Housers as monsters, which secured their role as kings
of the Fourth Ward until the end of the Civil War, when
police action finally drove most of the criminals from
the area.
Slaughter brought a breath of honesty to the office
and soon proved his effectiveness as a lawman. His message to outlaws that they were no longer welcome was
simply, “Git.” When Ike Clanton, the last important
member of the Clanton gang, returned to Cochise
County, it was Slaughter who invited him to leave. Clanton departed, only to continue his cattle-rustling activities in Apache County, where he was killed. Outlaws
Cap Stilwell and Ed Lyle were two others who left rather
than face Slaughter’s wrath. It must be noted that the
Tombstone area was taming down by the time Slaughter
took office, but he certainly sped up the process.
When two Mexican outlaws, Guadalupe Robles and
another known only as Deron, robbed a train near
Nogales, Mexico, killing three crewmen and making
off with $15,000, they decided to hide out up north.
They made the mistake of picking Cochise County,
where they were shot dead by Slaughter and his chief
deputy, Burt Alvord, who cornered them in the Whetstone Mountains. Alvord proved to be one of Slaughter’s mistakes. At the time, he was, as one writer later
described it, “casting a crooked shadow” and would
become one of the leaders of the Alvord-Stiles gang of
train robbers while serving as a lawman, although by
then Slaughter had put down his badge. Upon his
retirement in 1890 he was appointed honorary deputy
sheriff of the county and held that post until his death
in 1922.
Slaughter Housers
slave murderers
The record of murders committed by slaves in America
before the end of the Civil War is hazy and inaccurate.
In Virginia, however, efforts were made to compile
complete statistics, which probably have some is validity as a guideline for an overall view. Between 1780 and
1864 the following murder convictions of slaves were
tabulated by the type of victim:
Master
Mistress
Overseer
Other whites
Free Negroes
Other slaves
Children killed by mother
Victim not described
Total
19th-century New York gang
By the late 1840s New York’s Fourth Ward was known
as the worst hotbed of crime in the city. In large part, it
was run by criminal gangs, one of the most prominent
and vicious being the Slaughter Housers. Before the
Revolution the area had been the finest residential section of the city, containing the mansions of the great
merchant families. But the wave of immigration that
followed forced these aristocrats northward and their
residences were replaced by shabby tenements where
poverty and crime were a way of life. Police entered the
Fourth Ward only in groups of a half dozen or more
and well-dressed strangers proceeded at their peril. In
similar sections of the city, such strangers could count
on being robbed—in Slaughter Houser territory they
would be lucky to escape with their lives. The Slaughter
Housers would try to lure a passing stranger into a dive
where he could be robbed and, often, murdered at
leisure. But if he would not follow them, they in turn
would follow him until he passed below an appointed
window, from which a woman would pour a bucket of
ashes on his head. As the victim choked, several of the
gangsters would shove him through an open cellar
door. The victim would be killed or knocked uncon-
56
11
11
120
7
85
12
60
362
These figures include the 57 whites slain in Nat
Turner’s rebellion of 1831.
See also: NAT TURNER, DENMARK VESEY.
sleepwalking and crime
Sleepwalking is one of science’s deepest mysteries. It
has been estimated that as many as two million Americans walk in their sleep, engaging in all sorts of activities, from writing letters, reading books and driving
automobiles to robbing houses, committing murder
and taking their own lives. It has been demonstrated
that a sleepwalker can kill and then awaken unaware of
what he or she has done.
821
SLEEPWALKING and crime
Automatic movements occur in a pathological
sense without the subject’s being aware of their meaning, and even without his being aware of their happening at all. They have not the full cooperation of the
personality and do not involve interest and attention.
They may, in fact, when generalized, occur in the complete abeyance of the normal personality.
In a classic case early in this century, a 16-yearold Kentucky girl shot and killed her father and
six-year-old brother and wounded her mother during
the night while in a somnambulistic trance. The girl,
who had a long history of somnambulistic behavior,
had suffered a nightmare that intruders had broken
into the house and were going to kill her family.
She had gotten out of bed, gone downstairs through
the living room and kitchen into the pantry, where
she placed a chair by a closet so that she could reach
the top shelf, the place her father kept two revolvers.
Then she had gone upstairs, entered her parents’ bedroom and opened fire—at her family. Based on the testimony of doctors, the girl was acquitted of homicide
charges.
Writing in the legal journal Case and Comment, Dr.
Edward Podolsky, a member of the psychiatric staff at
Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York City,
cited the case of a Mt. Vernon, N.Y. man who shot and
killed his wife while in a somnambulistic state. Brought
to trial, the man swore to the jury that he had been
sleepwalking and that he hadn’t awakened until several
hours after the slaying. The jury appeared unconvinced
until several doctors testified the man’s claims were not
illogical, that a somnambulist can indeed sleep through
virtually anything.
This fact is further attested to by the odd case of a
civil engineer in Denver. He stabbed himself four
times in his sleep and bled to death. Just before he
died, he awakened and told his wife about a weird
dream he had had. He had dreamed he was surrounded by enemies who were trying to ruin him and
that finally an evil spirit persuaded him to kill himself in order to spite them. The man had thereupon
sliced himself up. Remarkably, he had not been disturbed by the excruciating pain he had inflicted upon
himself.
But can a person who would not kill when awake
commit murder during a sleepwalking session? According to Podolsky:
And Dr. Lewis R. Wolberg, a New York psychiatrist
has noted:
A sleepwalking person has enough discrimination to
perceive right from wrong. Unless he harbored a murderous hostility he would not kill, even when sleepwalking. This hostility might be so deep he would be
unaware of it, of course. It would be transmitted more
easily when he was partially conscious.
Another expert, Dr. Abraham Weinberg, has written:
“True somnambulists have no recollection of an incident when they awake, but at the time they are aware
of what they are doing.”
Some persons are capable of fighting off urges
toward kleptomania while awake but not when they
are asleep. In one such case a sleepwalker would constantly steal his roommate’s wallet in his sleep. If he
were staying in a hotel, he would wander through the
corridors asleep looking for an open door so that he
could enter a room and pilfer something.
The extent to which a sleepwalker will break away
from his moral code is best illustrated in the case study
of a pastor compiled by the 19th century neurosurgeon
Baron von Krafft-Ebing, who did much psychiatric
research in the realm of somnambulism. Charged with
having caused the pregnancy of a teenage girl, the pastor was acquitted after proving that he was a sleepwalker and that the forbidden relationship had taken
place while he was in such a state. In another case a
monk dreamed he had gotten out of his bed, walked
down the corridor to the room of his prior, stabbed the
prior three times and returned to his own bed. The next
morning the monk excitedly ran to the prior’s room
and was relieved to see him alive. He told him of his
dream, adding that he had dreamed that the prior had
killed his mother and voices had called on him to take
revenge. The prior told the astounded monk that he
hadn’t been dreaming, that he had indeed entered the
room and gone through the actions he’d described. Fortunately, the prior had been unable to sleep and had
been reading at his desk when the monk entered,
walked to the bed and stabbed the rumpled blankets.
Of course, to a psychiatrist, the monk’s attempt to kill
the prior was a subconscious expression of hostility.
Because the monk was bound by the commandment
During somnambulism the individual commonly lives
through a vivid experience, little or not at all related to
his surrounding, and therefore hallucinatory in character. Although such persons appear to be walking in
their sleep, they are not really asleep.
While it is necessary for a person to have consciousness before any cortical function is possible, it is
not necessary to have complete awareness. During
somnambulism activity is so completely organized that
it can function without awareness. There is a complete
disassociation of behavior patterns from the patterns of
awareness. The disassociation is in that part of the
brain known as the diencephalon.
822
SLOT machines
“Thou shalt not kill” his subconscious had produced a
justification for his violence, i.e., the prior’s alleged
murder of his mother.
Apparently, the first legal case in the United States in
which a sleepwalking defense was upheld was that of
Albert J. Tirrell, a very improper Bostonian and the
black sheep of his wealthy family, in 1845. He slit the
throat of his mistress, Maria Bickford, in a rooming
house and then tried to burn the place down. Tirrell had
been seen leaving the room moments before the fire
broke out. Later, friends of his had seen him walking
around in a sort of daze, mumbling to himself, “They
broke in and tried to murder me . . . someone came into
my room and tried to murder me . . . I’m in a scrape.”
When Tirrell was brought to trial for murder, he
maintained he knew nothing of what had happened.
Provided with the top lawyers of the day, his defense was
that he must have killed Maria Bickford during a sleepwalking hallucination and his attorneys had doctors testify that he was a chronic somnambulist. It took the jury
just two hours to find him not guilty. Public opinion subsequently turned against Tirrell’s novel defense and his
family had him committed to an institution.
Controversy still surrounds the Tirrell case. Was
sleepwalking the cause of his act or had he merely been
intoxicated and killed the girl in a drunken rage? Only
a few sleepwalking defenses have been offered over the
years, and in those that succeeded, the defense generally
had proved the existence of a long history of the disorder prior to the crime.
See also: MARIA BICKFORD.
Slickers
Missouri vigilantes
In 1845 Lincoln County, Mo. was the most crime-ridden county in the state, mainly because gangs of horse
thieves and counterfeiters came up with a way of
thwarting arrest or, in the event of an arrest, conviction. The technique involved engaging obliging witnesses beforehand to provide the lawbreakers with
alibis for the time of the crime. As a result, subsequent
prosecutions proved futile.
Finally, the citizens of the county formed a vigilante
group that called on suspected criminals and their
backup witnesses and, if they decided the individuals
were guilty of crimes, proceeded to “slick them down”
with hickory sprouts, “slick” being slang for thrash.
The punished individuals were then given a specified
time to leave the county, generally no more than a few
hours. The so-called Slicker Campaign of 1845–46
spawned an opposition group called the Anti-Slickers,
but the vigilante movement proved an eminent success,
probably the most successful ever in this country. It
took only a few hangings to convince the county’s trou823
blesome characters that a slicking was a clear and
pressing reason “to pull up stakes fast.”
slot machines
With the end of Prohibition, gangsters who had
engaged in bootlegging went into slot machines in a big
way. These so-called one-armed bandits provided much
of the revenue needed to hold criminal organizations
together in the post-Prohibition era.
The American slot machine dates back to 1887,
where a skilled German mechanic in San Francisco
made a machine that took in and paid out nickels. It
quickly became popular and was set up in saloons
around the city. The house takeout was usually set at
25 percent. Since gambling devices could not be
patented, the mechanic’s idea was lifted freely. In
Chicago, Herbert Mills began making machines for distribution throughout the country, and by 1906 he was
known as Mr. Slot Machine. A slot machine is a very
complicated mechanism, with over 600 parts, including
one very reliable apparatus whose adjustment determines the house percentage.
The biggest Mafia operator of slot machines in the
1930s was Frank Costello, who saturated New York
City with them. Each Costello machine sported a special sticker, which protected it wherever it was set up. If
a freelancer tried to install machines without Costello
stickers, the color of which changed regularly, they
would be subject to attack by the mob or to police
seizure. Police officers who made the mistake of interfering with the operation of Costello’s machines could
count on departmental harassment, such as transfer to
the far reaches of Staten Island.
Costello’s hold on the New York slot machine racket
was secure during the administration of Mayor Jimmy
Walker, but when reformer Fiorello H. La Guardia
became mayor, an all-out war was launched against the
machines. Costello used all his political pull to get a
court injunction restraining La Guardia from interfering with the slots, but the Little Flower simply ignored
the order and sent special squads of police around town
to smash the machines. Costello did not know how to
react to this “illegal” behavior by the mayor and eventually pulled his valuable machines out of the city. He
found a new location for them—thanks to an invitation
from Gov. Huey Long of Louisiana—and set up a slot
machine empire in New Orleans. Years later, when an
aggressive and ambitious young hood named Joe Gallo
demanded, “Who the hell gave Frank Costello New
Orleans?” the answer was, of course, “ole Huey did.”
Today, slot machines are legal only in Nevada and
Atlantic City, N.J. For some reason, a myth persists
that the casinos pay off at 95 percent. The actual payoff
SLUNGSHOT
is much nearer to 75 percent. What the casinos generally do is put one 95 percent payoff machine in a line to
draw in the suckers. Sometimes a player will work
three machines at once. What money he gets back from
the middle one is quickly swallowed up by those on the
left and right.
loot. Naturally, B never shows, and when the sucker
returns to the scene of the swindle, A has disappeared
as well. It is a great learning experience for most victims.
Small, Len (1862–1936) “Pardoning Governor” of Illinois
slungshot
It would be futile to attempt to single out the most dishonest politician ever to hold office, but Len Small,
governor of Illinois during the 1920s, stands as the
most blatantly corrupt. A Kankakee farmer and puppet
of Chicago Mayor Big Bill Thompson, Small took
office in 1921 and was indicted a short time later for
embezzling $600,000 during his previous term as state
treasurer, an activity that before and after Small was a
time-honored tradition in Illinois.
Facing trial, Small said he had an abiding faith in the
jury system. As it turned out, he had very good reason
to. While his lawyers fought the standard courtroom
defense, Small’s behind-the-scenes support came from
Walter Stevens, then regarded as the dean of Chicago’s
gunmen; Jew Ben Newmark, a former chief investigator
for the state’s attorney who found greater prosperity as
a counterfeiter, extortionist and all-around thief; and
“Umbrella Mike” Boyle, a corrupt Electrical Workers’
Union official. This trio successfully molded the jurors’
opinions with bribes and, when that technique did not
work, with threats against them and members of their
family. Small was acquitted.
Duly grateful, the governor shortly thereafter was
able to repay his debt to the three by granting all of
them pardons for sundry offenses—Boyle and Newmark for jury tampering and Stevens for murder. Thereafter, Small ran up a pardon-granting record
unparalleled in American history.
During his first three years in office, he pardoned
about 1,000 felons. And that was only the warm-up.
Over the next five years Small freed another 7,000 on
a strictly cash basis. A longtime Chicago newspaperman, George Murray, explained the operation most
succinctly:
mugger’s weapon
A most brutal weapon favored by 19th-century footpads and muggers, the slungshot consisted of a weight
of shot or other heavy material attached to a flexible
handle or strap. When swung, the weapon picked up
tremendous force and would invariably lay a victim
low, sometimes even killing him.
Slungshot gangs controlled many streets in several
large cities. One of the most fearsome of such groups
was the teenage killer gang of Quincy, Ill. in the 1850s,
whose members made up for their lack of size and age
by such effective use of the weapon that they drove
other criminal outfits from the scene. Changing gentlemen’s fashion led to the decline of the weapon, since its
concealment required the suits and long coats popular
in the last century. During that era no underworld
dandy would venture abroad without a slungshot to
complement a brace of pistols.
smack game
matching coin con
Among the most enduring of all con games is one called
“smack.” It involves two swindlers and a victim and is
often worked at bus and train stations, airports and bars.
Con man A joins con man B, who has already lined
up a victim, and suggests they pass the time matching
coins for drinks or smokes. Soon, they are playing for
money. The game calls for each to flip a coin with the
odd coin the winner, such as one tails collects from two
heads and so on. When con man A goes off to the men’s
room for a moment, con man B informs the victim how
much he dislikes A and suggests they cheat him. Con
man B says that whatever he calls, heads or tails, the
sucker should call the opposite. That way A has to lose
to one of them.
What happens, of course, is that A does lose each
flip but most of the time B wins the money, especially
on large bets, and thus collects not only from A but
from the sucker as well. Suddenly, A gets suspicious
and declares he thinks B and the sucker are cheating
him. Both B and the sucker deny the charge, but A is
not satisfied. If they aren’t working together, he says, he
would like them to leave in different directions. Con
man B gives the sucker the high sign and whispers to
him a place where they can meet nearby. The sucker
goes off gleefully, looking forward to the division of the
The Republican party machinery of the state was then
in the hands of Len Small as governor, Robert E.
Crowe as state’s attorney of Cook County, and William
Hale Thompson as mayor of Chicago. . . . When
Crowe would convict a wrong-doer the man could buy
a pardon from Small. Then Small and Crowe would
split the take and Crowe would go into court for more
convictions. The voters returned this team to office year
after year.
That incredible electoral streak came to an end in the
infamous Pineapple Primary of 1928. Despite the sup824
SMITH, Jefferson Randolph “Soapy”
port of the Capone mob, the Small-Crowe ticket went
down to a resounding defeat, as enraged voters turned
out in record numbers. “It was purely a revolt,” concluded the Illinois Crime Survey, “an uprising of the
people, expressing themselves through the ballot. The
birth of ‘Moral Chicago’ was hailed throughout the
world.”
The accolade may have been somewhat overly
enthusiastic but with the removal of Small from office,
the citizens of Chicago and the rest of Illinois could at
least entertain the hope that a convicted felon might
actually be required to put in some time behind bars.
See also: PINEAPPLE PRIMARY.
Smith, Edgar Herbert (1933– ) murderer
Probably few “wrong man” cases have taken as many
twists as that of Edgar Smith, who was sentenced to
death for the 1957 bludgeon murder of a 15-year-old
New Jersey girl, Victoria Zielinski. Smith established a
longevity record on death row, 14 years at Trenton
State Prison. During that time he never ceased proclaiming his innocence and soon started a correspondence with conservative columnist William F. Buckley,
Jr., which eventually totaled some 2,900 pages. Buckley
encouraged Smith to write an impressive book, Brief
Against Death, in his cell. The book, aided by Buckley’s
columns, made Smith a national cause celebre. Smith
followed up with a second book, A Reasonable Doubt,
which made belief in his innocence still more compelling.
Finally, in 1971 Smith won a new trial, at which he
admitted his guilt and was sentenced to 25 to 30 years
for second-degree murder. With time credited for good
behavior, he was released on probation. As he left the
prison, Smith was picked up by Buckley’s car and driven to New York, where before TV cameras he again
assured people he was innocent of the killing. His second trial had come about as the result of plea bargaining, which he was convinced was the only way he could
get out of prison. “It was a difficult choice,” he said,
“but I wanted to be free.”
Smith set to work writing his third book, Getting
Out, in which he stated in the prologue:
In the Prologue to Brief Against Death, I ended with
the question: “Did Justice triumph?” Today, four years
later, my fight ended and my freedom a reality, that
question remains as valid as when it was first asked.
Did Justice triumph?
Each reader will have to find his own answer.
Calif. police began a hunt for Smith to answer charges
of assault, kidnapping and attempted murder. Smith
had forced a young woman into his car at knifepoint,
and when she fought him, he stabbed her. The women
kept on battling and finally hurled herself out of
Smith’s car onto the freeway. Smith then drove off.
About a week later, Smith telephoned Buckley from
Las Vegas. The columnist was out, so Smith left a number where he could be reached. Buckley promptly notified the FBI and Smith was arrested in a hotel room.
Taken into custody, Smith readily admitted his
assault on the San Diego woman and then added a
bombshell. He admitted he really had murdered Victoria Zielinski 19 years earlier. “For the first time in my
life, I recognized that the devil I had been looking at the
last forty-three years was me,” he said. “I recognized
what I am, and I admitted it.”
Smith was sent back to prison for life.
Smith, James Monroe “Jingle Money” (1888–1949)
college president and embezzler
A member of the Huey Long regime, Dr. James Monroe
Smith, president of Louisiana State University, was
credited by that state’s press with making education
profitable—for himself—and won the journalistic
sobriquet Jingle Money Smith.
Born in Jackson Parish, La. in 1888, Smith served as
dean of the College of Education at Southwest
Louisiana Institute from 1920 to 1930 and as president
of LSU from then until 1939. For part of his academic
years, he was an adviser and lackey to Huey Long. As it
developed after his tenure at LSU, Smith could have
taught the state’s political dictator a few things about
making money. While serving at the university, Smith
had become known as a rather wild liver and free
spender.
In 1939 Dr. Smith resigned his post and fled the state
as an investigation began delving into missing school
finances. In due course, the sum was found to be extensive, and by the time Smith was found hiding out in
Canada, he had been dubbed Jingle Money Smith. He
was arrested on a charge of embezzling $100,000 in
university funds and was indicted on 36 counts, which
indicated the theft was far greater. Convicted on the
$100,000 embezzlement charge, Smith was sent to the
penitentiary. He was released in February 1946 in poor
health and died on May 26, 1949.
Smith, Jefferson Randolph “Soapy” (1860–1898)
con man
As it turned out, readers had to wait until October
1976 to make up their mind. In that month San Diego,
825
An incorrigible con man and gambler, Jefferson
“Soapy” Smith worked his trade—everything from
SMITH, Joseph
the surprised clergyman $1,000. With the impetus from
Soapy’s contribution, the clergyman collected a total of
$36,000, only to have it all stolen. Soapy thought 36 to
one was a rather good return on his initial investment.
Efforts to control Smith’s avarice were unavailing as
he took control of the town, naming his own marshal
and judges. A vigilance committee, called the Committee of 101, plastered up signs reading:
three-card monte, the shell game and various other
scams—throughout the West and in the goldfields of
Alaska, areas where the suckers were plentiful but
could prove unforgiving.
Soapy got his nickname from one of his famous
cons. It involved selling soap to the hicks in the cow
towns, where Smith would stand on a soap box and
announce that several of the bars of soap he was selling
had a $10 or $20 bill inside the wrapper. The suckers
would rush to buy, especially after one buyer, one of
Smith’s shills, waved a $20 bill and yelled he had just
pulled it out of a wrapper.
Soapy was in his early teens when he ran away from
his Georgia home and ended up in Texas punching
cows. He was separated from six months’ pay by a shell
game artist. Far from taking it badly, he decided to
learn that con himself, eventually teaming up with a
venerable old con man named V. Bullock-Taylor. When
Bullock-Taylor died, Smith became the king of the con
circuit throughout the West. He opened up a gambling
hall in Denver that became famous for never giving a
sucker an even break and recruited an organization that
enabled him to control virtually all the city’s con rackets, including gold brick swindles and phony mining
stock. Later, he moved the center of his operations to
Creede, Colo. to take advantage of the silver wealth
pouring into that town. Smith took over most of the
rackets there with only some opposition from saloon
keeper Bob Ford, the assassin of Jesse James. Eventually, it was said, Soapy forced Ford to accept him as a
secret partner. After Ford was killed by a man named
O’Kelly, it was said that Smith had paid for the job.
Eventually, the silver ran out and Soapy and his gang
headed for the Alaskan gold fields, setting up in Skagway to trim the miners just arriving and the big-strikers
on the way home. Soapy’s capers in Skagway became
legendary. He trimmed suckers in his gambling saloon,
robbing many of valuable claims. Too greedy to pass up
any form of revenue, he set up a sign over a cabin that
read “Telegraph Office” and charged $5 to send a
telegram to anywhere and another $5 to receive a reply.
Miners flocked to send out messages and paid their
money for responses, never learning there were no telegraph wires out of Skagway.
Soapy also ran an “Information Office” to provide
newcomers and travelers with whatever intelligence
they needed. Inquirers imparted more information to
Soapy’s men than was wise and Skagway burglars and
footpads became famous for their clairvoyance in locating sums of money. On some nights Skagway had as
many as a dozen holdups, virtually all executed by
Soapy’s men. One of Soapy’s most famous swindles
involved a man of the cloth who was seeking funds to
build a church. Smith was the first to contribute, giving
NOTICE
To all gamblers and bunco men:
We have resolved to run you out of town and make
Skagway a decent place to live in. Take our
advice and get out before action is taken.
Soapy laughed at the warning and promptly formed
his own Committee of 303 to indicate he had the
power and was not about to relinquish it. The Committee of 101 quickly lost heart and failed to act. In
July of 1898, however, Soapy’s men robbed a miner of
$2,500 in gold in a daylight mugging that sparked an
instantaneous uprising. With the men of the Committee of 101 in the lead, hundreds of angry miners armed
with picks and shotguns stormed into Soapy’s saloon.
Soapy tried to con his way out; the vigilantes listened
for a while and then shot him to pieces. Most of
Soapy’s supporters were rounded up and what would
have been Alaska’s greatest lynching was prevented
only by the arrival of U.S. infantry troops and the
establishment of martial law.
With Soapy dead, the citizens enjoyed telling tales of
his wild cons and observing how fitting it was that
someone had ceremoniously tossed three shells and a
pea into his grave as he was being lowered into it.
Smith, Joseph (1805–1844) Mormon leader and murder
victim
Joseph Smith has been described as America’s most
charismatic religious leader. Certainly, as the founder of
the Mormon Church, he inspired great love in some
and incredible hatred in others. The hatred ended in his
brutal murder.
Smith claimed he had received divine revelations
when he was 15 and living with his family in Manchester, N.Y. The revelations continued through the 1820s
until he published The Book of Mormon in March
1830. The following month he officially established the
Mormon Church. Mormon beliefs stirred anger in virtually all non-Mormon religious circles, and Smith and his
followers were forced to move constantly, from New
York to Ohio, to Missouri and to Illinois. In various
communities anti-Mormonism culminated in virtual
civil war, as mobs attacked Mormon settlements, leav826
SMITH, Susan
Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church, was murdered along with his brother by an angry Illinois mob opposed
to his religious teachings and practices.
Smith, Moe
ing a trail of arson, rape, pillage and murder. Gov. Lillburn W. Boggs ordered the Mormons out of Missouri
under threat of annihilation, and Smith barely escaped
execution there. The Mormon leader then established a
community in a new city called Nauvoo in an area north
of Quincy, Ill. Rumors about the practice of polygamy
plagued the Mormons, particularly after Joseph Smith
openly advocated the practice in 1843. In 1844 a split
developed in the church, and a splinter group started
publication of a newspaper attacking Smith, who in
turn ordered its printing presses destroyed. Rioting followed, and Smith and a number of followers were jailed
in Carthage, Ill. on charges of polygamy, arson and treason. Late on the afternoon of June 27, 1844, an angry
mob broke into the jail and shot Joseph Smith and his
brother Hyrum, patriarch of the church, to death.
See also: POLYGAMY.
See IZZY AND MOE.
Smith, Perry E.
See CLUTTER FAMILY MURDERS.
Smith, Susan (1971– ) child murderer
It was pathetic high drama. A black carjacker seized a
young white mother’s Madza Protege with her two toddlers late at night on a rural Union County, South Carolina highway. The frightened children howled in fear
as they were driven off, while their poor mother, Susan
Smith, could do nothing but scream after them, “I love
y’all!”
It was an incident that shocked not only the county
and state but the entire nation. The citizens of Union
County formed private search parties and prayer chains
827
SMITH, Thomas “Bear River”
in hopes that 3-year-old Michael and 14-month Alex
would be found alive.
The community rallied to 23-year-old Susan Smith.
She helped a police artist produce a mugshot of the
attacker, the drawing distributed nationwide by the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
and the Adam Walsh Foundation.
Young black men between the ages of 20 and the
early 30s were mass subjects of suspicion. Later a black
named Hester Booker would say, “It was hard to be
black this week in Union. The whites acted so different.
They wouldn’t speak, they’d look at you and then reach
over and lock their doors.”
People in Union held out sympathy for the mother
and hoped to the very end that the boys would be
found alive. That end came nine days later on November 4, 1994. The story Susan Smith had told was a
deadly hoax. She confessed to having killed the two
toddlers by driving her car into a lake so that they
drowned. The motive: She had a lover who she feared
losing if she was saddled to two small children.
Rage from both the black and white community was
intense. It was the same around the country where a
poll indicated 63 percent favored Smith’s execution. In
fact, because Union County was a rather impoverished
area, outside donations were made from around the
country to aid in the prosecution. The county had to
return the donations because many of the donors
insisted on a quid pro quo—Smith had to be sentenced
to death.
The murder verdict was handed down and the punishment phase also revealed that Smith had sex with a
total of four men in a short period before her crime.
This further enraged many but in the end the decision
was for a sentence of life imprisonment. Smith would
be eligible for parole in 30 years.
number of freighting outfits in the territories of Utah,
Colorado and Wyoming until 1868, when he turned up
as a construction worker in Bear River, Wyoming Territory, the “end of track” of the Union Pacific Railroad.
The railroad workers were, of course, “hell on wheelers” and friction inevitably developed between them
and the more conservative “townies,” who soon organized a vigilance committee. When the vigilantes seized
three railroaders and seemed intent on hanging them,
Smith led a railroader counterattack. They set the jail
on fire and then trapped most of the vigilantes in a
store. A peace parley was held, but it ended abruptly
when Smith shot a man named Nuckles, who may or
may not have tried to shoot him first. In the ensuing
battle 14 men were killed and Smith was badly
wounded before the U.S. Cavalry from Fort Bridger
restored order. He was never tried for his offenses, and
after the battle the nickname Bear River stuck to him.
The Union Pacific showed its appreciation by giving
him the job of end-of-the-track marshal.
In 1869 Smith took on the marshal’s job at Kit Carson, Colorado Territory, where he won the praise of
Billy Breakenridge, another famous lawman, as “the
bravest man I ever had the pleasure of meeting.” By this
time Smith had developed the practice of never using
his guns. As the fame of Bear River Smith spread, the
mayor of Abilene, Kan. appointed him marshal of that
turbulent town. Smith immediately made his mark by
declaring it illegal to carry a gun within the town limits
and using his fists to enforce the edict. Within a few
months Abilene experienced a startling transition. The
Texas cowhands who used to shoot up the town were
tamed, and Smith gained their admiration and respect.
Had Bear River Smith’s tenure lasted, Abilene’s mention in chronicles of the lawless West might have been
only a footnote. On November 2, 1870, as a favor to a
neighboring sheriff, Smith rode out of Abilene to arrest
a nester named Andrew McConnell on a murder
charge. He found the wanted man with his partner,
Moses Miles, but never got within fist range of them.
The two men cut Smith down with rifle fire, and as he
lay dying, they nearly decapitated him with an ax.
With Bear River Smith’s death, Abilene returned to
its bloody ways and remained so until Hickok arrived
on the scene in 1871.
Smith, Thomas “Bear River” (1830–1870) lawman
As a town tamer of the Old West, Tom “Bear River”
Smith had few equals. He had, for instance, tamed Abilene, Kan. before Wild Bill Hickok appeared on the
scene, and he did it with his fists rather than the two
guns he carried. Such titles as “Bear River Smith: TwoFisted Marshal of Abilene” have appeared from dime
novel days down to today’s adventure magazines.
Smith’s early history is clouded, although most of his
biographers say he was a New York City policeman for
six years in the 1850s or early 1860s and that he
learned how to use his fists on a rough Bowery beat.
Some writers describe Smith performing heroically in
the New York Draft Riots of 1863, while others have
him moving west before the Civil War. Beginning in
1865, Smith’s trail becomes clear. He worked for a
Smith, Thomas L. “Pegleg” (1801–1866) mountaineer,
thief and swindler
One of the legendary mountain men who roamed the
American West a law unto themselves, Pegleg Smith
could also be described as a slaver, thief, rustler and con
man. William Caruthers in Loafing Along Death Valley
Trails says:
828
SMOKY Row, New Orleans
Smits, Claes (?–1641) first white murder victim in New
York
Smith may be said to be the inventor of the Lost Mine,
as a means of getting quick money. The credulous are
still looking for mines that existed only in Pegleg’s fine
imagination. . . . [He] saw in man’s lust for gold,
ways to get it easier than the pick and shovel method. .
. . When his money ran out he always had a piece of
high-grade gold quartz to lure investment in his phantom mine.
Born in Crab Orchard, Ky. on October 10, 1801,
Smith ran away from home in his teens. After a stint of
flatboating on the Mississippi, he headed for St. Louis,
where he worked for a fur merchant and met such trappers and mountaineers as Jim Bridger, Kit Carson and
Milton Sublette. When Alexander Le Grand made his
first expedition to Santa Fe, Smith went along and got a
taste of living in the wild, an experience he found most
satisfying. He picked up several Indian tongues and,
like the majority of mountain men, some Indian enemies. One shot him just below his right knee, which
was how Smith acquired his peg leg. He remained as
good a horseman as ever despite his handicap, and during most of the 1830s was one of the most successful of
the fur trappers.
Near the end of the decade, the value of pelts
dropped through the floor and Smith went into a more
nefarious trade, stealing Indian children and selling
them to wealthy Mexicans looking for slaves. In time,
the Indians were on the lookout for this mysterious
child stealer with a wooden leg; so Smith moved on to
California, where for the next decade he became an
accomplished horse thief, one time leading a group of
150 Utah Indians across the Sierra Nevada into California, where they stole several hundred horses. With two
other famous mountaineer scouts, Old Bill Williams
and Jim Beckwourth, Pegleg Smith formed one of the
biggest horse-stealing rings California ever saw. In time,
pressure from the law became so intense that they disbanded.
Following the discovery of gold in California, Smith
developed his mining swindle, insisting that he had
found rich samples of gold-bearing black quartz before
he had to flee from vicious Indians somewhere in the
Chocolate Mountains or the Santa Rosa Mountains or
the Borego Badlands. The locale kept changing as Pegleg changed his story, but the gullible still listened; some
staked him while others bought maps showing the
alleged location of the gold. Even after Smith died in
the county hospital in San Francisco in 1866, men kept
searching for the Lost Pegleg Mine and they still do
today, a lasting tribute to the old reprobate’s snake-oil
charm.
See also: JIM BECKWOURTH, WILLIAM S. “OLD BILL”
WILLIAMS.
829
The first murder in what is now New York occurred
either in 1626 or 1641, depending on whether or not
Indians are counted as murder victims. In 1626 an
unidentified Indian started out for a Dutch trading post
in New Amsterdam with a string of pelts for sale. He
was accompanied by his young nephew. At Fresh Water
Pond they came across three Dutch farm laborers chopping wood. The Indian made the mistake of showing
off his furs, and with typical greed, the trio quickly dispatched him with an ax and took the furs, while the
victim’s young nephew ran off. This is the first recorded
account of blood being spilled in the colony of New
Netherland. Although it would have been a simple matter for the authorities to solve the murder, there appears
to have been no consensus that a crime had been committed, since the dead man was only an Indian.
Thus, Claes Smits, a white man who was murdered
in 1641, was considered the first genuine homicide victim. Ironically, Smits’ murder had a direct relationship
with the one 15 years earlier, for the culprit was the
nephew of the murdered Indian. He too had been on
his way to the settlement to trade some furs when he
came upon the hut of a Dutch settler—Smits—who, as
coincidence would have it, was also chopping wood.
Smits, a wheelwright, took an interest in the pelts and
brought out several blankets and, apparently, a hatchet
to trade for the furs. The Indian noticed, perhaps mistakenly, a similarity with previous events and quickly
axed and slew Smits.
This act, of course, was a genuine murder, considering the color of the victim’s skin, and the Dutch authorities demanded that the Indians turn over the killer to
face punishment. The Indians refused, declaring Smits’
killer had merely followed tribal law and avenged the
death of his relative after the whites had refused to act.
The result of the dispute was a full-scale war, in which
many on both sides died, a tragedy that could have
been avoided had Dutch officials taken the position in
1626 that a murder had occurred.
Smoky Row, New Orleans
prostitution area
Possibly the worst center of prostitution in New
Orleans’ French Quarter in the 1870s was a short row
of dilapidated old houses on Burgundy Street between
Bienville and Conti, which teemed with black prostitutes. The press was constantly printing warnings to
visitors of the city to avoid the area and reported on the
brawling and violence of such battling bawds as OneEyed Sal, Fightin’ Mary, Gallus Lu and the redoubtable
Kidney-Foot Jenny. These women would often fight
one another over a potential customer; if the gentleman
SMUGGLING
made the error of trying to settle the argument by making a selection, he would very likely end up being savaged by the other woman.
The whores of Smoky Row came in all sizes and
ages, from 10 to 70 and wore only loose Mother Hubbards cut very low. When not entertaining a customer
or fighting each other, they sat in rocking chairs in the
doorways, chewing tobacco and smoking pipes. When
a man passed, they tried to drag him inside, and if he
resisted, they grabbed his hat. When the man went
after it, one of the women would very often blind him
with a well-aimed spit of tobacco juice and another
would club him unconscious. He was then robbed of
all money and things of value and tossed out on the
street. Smoky Row continued in its wicked ways for
about 15 years until 1885, when numerous complaints and a growing list of missing men forced the
police to clean out the area. After the harlots were driven out, police searchers discovered piles of men’s
clothing and bloodstained wallets. They dug up the
backyards of the houses in search of corpses but
found none, concluding the code of Smoky Row
called for all dead victims to be removed and buried in
other parts of the city.
smuggling
himself a decent living, but it is an ability few thieves
possess.
Less proficient than a packy but skilled in his own
right, a reader relies more on acting ability than on timing and dexterity. This type of sneak thief spots a likelylooking package in the hands of a delivery boy, reads
the address on it and gets there first. When the boy
arrives, the reader is waiting in front of the building,
often in shirt sleeves with a pencil over his ear, anxiously pacing back and forth. When the readers sees the
delivery boy, he goes into his act, demanding: “Where
the hell have you been? Do I have to wait all day for
one little package?” The reader complains that unless
the service gets better he is going to take his business
elsewhere, or else he declares he may call the boy’s boss
to complain he’s too slow. He grabs the package away
from the boy, signs a receipt for it, bawls the kid out a
little more and then stalks into the building. The delivery boy naturally figures he’s done his job. Meanwhile,
the reader heads out the back door with a package that
may contain expensive fur collars, meaning about
$1,000 or $2,000 profit for a couple of minutes of
playacting.
A slasher, by comparison, is a bush-league thief, but
not without talent. He walks behind the big dress racks
as they are pulled through the streets of the garment
district. At the proper moment he slashes the canvas
cover on the rack and yanks out an armload of dresses.
He does it so neatly and quickly that the man pulling
the rack never suspects anything has happened.
See HAMS.
sneak thieves
There is no way to measure the extent of sneak thievery
or to describe the many techniques sneak thieves use,
but it is safe to say that the great majority of people
have no idea how skilled most professional sneak
thieves are. A few examples from the “sneak thief paradise,” New York’s garment district, will demonstrate
the skills involved, especially those of the “packies,”
“readers” and “slashers.”
A packy is a sneak thief who has “rhythm,” or the
ability to steal directly under the noses of workmen and
guards. Many of them are drug addicts (knowledgeable
observers say addicts make the best packies). A police
detective once told the story of a packy with amazing
timing who beat four men loading a truck.
snitch boxes
prison metal detectors
Today, metal detectors are a common sight at airports,
courthouses and many public buildings, but more than
a half-century ago their use was in the main restricted
to prisons, where they were used to spot knives or guns
in the possession of anyone passing through them.
Referred to by inmates as “mechanical stool pigeons”
or “snitch boxes,” they were affected by any metal so
that a green line danced on an oscilloscope and a
buzzer sounded.
Unfortunately, the machines could not discriminate
between lethal and harmless metal. While Al Capone
did time in Alcatraz, the snitch boxes were constantly
going off. It turned out that Big Al’s metal arch supports were the source of the trouble, and exasperated
officials finally had their prize prisoner turn them in for
a plastic pair.
Even more frustrating was when Mama Capone
showed up to see her “good boy” on visiting day.
The electric pigeon blared away and guards pounced
on the old lady in a frantic hunt for a gun or hacksaw.
Nothing. Mrs. Capone was sent through the machine
This guy watches the movements of the four men very
carefully, timing them. They were working in a rhythm,
and you actually see this packy swaying to it. Then, at
just the right moment, he stepped in and beat them for
a package. A few minutes later, when I told them what
he’d done, they could hardly believe it.
Since the value of a package may range from $20 to
$750 or more, a first-rate packy can obviously earn
830
SNYDER, Ruth
again and the alarm went off once more. It took a
quarter of an hour to finally solve the problem. Mrs.
Capone was wearing an old-fashioned full-length
corset with metal ribs. Mama Capone was allowed to
proceed, but on subsequent visits the entire routine
had to be repeated, for fear this time the old lady
might be armed with lethal contraband. Prison officials made no effort to dissuade her from wearing such
a corset, since that would have been regarded as most
disrespectful.
Snyder, Ruth (1895–1928) murderess
Ruth Snyder, a wife who, with her lover, murdered
her husband, became probably the most reviled
woman of the 1920s; even her death in the electric
chair was subjected to indignity. Her sin was not so
much being a conspirator in the murder plot but
being the active planner and the more active participant in the crime. Her trial was so spectacular that
the press contingent included such unlikely personalities as Mary Roberts Rinehart, David Belasco, D. W.
Griffith, Billy Sunday, Peggy Hopkins Joyce, Dr. John
Roach Straton, Aimee Semple McPherson and even
Will Durant, then at the top of the best-seller list with
The Story of Philosophy.
Albert Snyder never realized how many close calls he
had at the hands of Ruth. She had resolved to kill him
in 1926, a year after she met corset salesman Judd Gray
and found true happiness in an adulterous affair. Gray,
not the strongest of personalities, called her “queen,”
and “my momsie.” She referred to him as “lover boy.”
Ruth took out a $48,000 life insurance policy on
Snyder with a double-indemnity clause. Then she set
about trying to kill him, but he seemed to live a charmed
life. Twice, she disconnected the gas while Snyder slept
and slipped from the room, but both times her husband
awoke and saved himself from asphyxiation, never even
suspecting his wife. Another time she closed the garage
door while he was inside with the automobile’s motor
running. He nearly fell victim to carbon monoxide poisoning but managed to survive. On two occasions she
put bichloride of mercury in his whiskey, but he poured
the stuff out, commenting that they had to change bootleggers. Twice she added powerful narcotics to his medicine while he was ill, but he still recovered.
In February 1927 Ruth convinced Gray to help her
murder her husband. Gray hid in a bedroom closet
before the Snyders returned home one night, and after
Snyder fell asleep, he slipped out and hit him over the
head with a sash weight. But the blow woke Snyder up.
He struggled with Gray and cried out for his wife to
help him. Ruth came to the aid of her lover, picking up
the sash weight and hitting her husband again. As he
Millions of newspaper readers hung on every word in the
case of Ruth Snyder and Judd Gray until their execution.
slipped into unconsciousness, Ruth chloroformed him
and strangled him with picture wire. Finally, Albert
Snyder was dead. Gray then tied Ruth up and when the
police arrived, she told them she had been attacked by
burglars.
The police became suspicious because her bindings
had been tied rather loosely, as though not to cause her
discomfort. When they found Gray’s name a number of
times among her possessions, they decided to tell her
Gray had been arrested and had confessed. The trick
worked and she talked. Hearing that Ruth had confessed, Gray admitted his part in the murder. Both
attempted to make the other the principal party in the
murder, but it was well established that the credit
belonged to Ruth Snyder.
Both were convicted and sentenced to death in the
electric chair, a fate they met on January 22, 1928 at
Sing Sing Prison. Just as the executioner pulled the
switch on Ruth Snyder, photographer Thomas
Howard, sitting in a front-row seat, crossed his legs
and snapped a picture with a camera strapped just
above his ankle. The next morning the New York
Daily News devoted the entire front page to the horrifying shot of the current coursing through Ruth
831
SOCCO the Bracer
devoted to the art of force to, among other things,
defend the American way of life, and in this case, death.
The plot was successful, but afterward uncovered,
and the killer, John Wayne Hearn, plea-bargained a life
sentence for himself and testified against Black. Black
was executed in 1992.
In 1990 businessman Richard Braun was murdered
by gunman Michael Savage. In this case as well the plot
did not remain undetected. However, in a sense the
solutions to both murders became secondary to
whether or not there was a degree of guilt beyond that
of the plotters themselves. Braun’s sons ended up suing
Soldier of Fortune, claiming business associates of their
father hired Savage to kill the senior Braun through a
“gun-for-hire” advertisement in the publication. Similarly the victim’s estate in the Black case had sued on
the same grounds.
Initially both suits against the magazine were successful, but these decisions were later overturned. In the
Black case an appeals court overruled the previous finding, holding that the ad in question was ambiguously
worded, and therefore cleared the magazine against
having to pay damages. In 1992 a judgment for $4.37
million for the Braun family was upheld by the U.S.
11th Circuit Court of Appeals. The court ruled that
Savage’s ad had implied a willingness “to use his gun to
commit crimes,” and therefore was outside the commercial free-speech protections of the First Amendment.
Snyder’s body, perhaps the most famous picture in
tabloid journalism.
Socco the Bracer (1844–1873) gangster
One of the leaders of the notorious Patsy Conroy gang
that terrorized New York’s East River docks in the
1860s and 1870s, Joseph Gayles, better known as
Socco the Bracer, was described by a police inspector
as the most ferocious thug on the docks. Socco was
generally conceded to have killed more than 20 men
and always prowled the streets with at least two guns
and an assortment of knives. According to waterfront
legend, Socco once was so disappointed with the loot
he and three other Conroys netted during a raid on a
brig that he lashed the lone seaman on watch to a sea
chest, gagged him and heaved him overboard after filling the sea chest with several small sacks of sugar. “If
the sugar melts fast, you’ll be all right,” he said. It didn’t.
Socco the Bracer came to a fitting end on the night of
May 29, 1873, when he and two other pirates, Bum
Mahoney and Billy Woods, attempted a raid on the brig
Margaret, which was tied up at Pier 27 waiting to take
on cargo. While ransacking a sea chest, they made such
a racket that the captain and two crewmen awakened.
In a bitter fight the looters were forced over the side to
their boat and they rowed off in the mist. However, as
they neared shore, two policemen patrolling the river in
a rowboat spotted them and exchanged fire with Socco
the Bracer. One of the officers’ bullets hit Socco in the
chest and he collapsed in the boat. Mahoney and
Woods kept to the oars, rowing to the middle of the
river, where they decided to lighten their load by tossing Socco overboard.
Socco the Bracer swam back to the rowboat, clung
to the gunwales and begged his companions to haul
him back aboard. Woods told Mahoney to crack the
wounded man on the knuckles, but Mahoney, in a fit of
tenderheartedness, pulled the wounded gangster in.
However, before the boat had gone another 50 feet,
Socco the Bracer expired, and his two disgusted accomplices once more heaved his body over the side. The
corpse floated to shore four days later at the foot of
Stanton Street.
Soldier of Fortune hit man want ads
liability
Soledad Brothers
See ANGELA DAVIS.
Son of Sam (1953– ) serial killer
Few cases of mass murder have ever generated the level
of hysteria produced by the notorious “Son of Sam”
killings that terrorized New York City from July 1976
to August 1977. During that period the killer fired a
total of 31 bullets into 13 young women and men,
killing six and severely wounding seven in eight separate attacks. Generally, the victims were young girls or
couples parked in cars at night.
At first, the murderer was labeled the “.44 Caliber
Killer” because of the weapon he used. Later, he started
writing letters to newspapers and signing them Son of
Sam, which became his new nickname. Sam, the killer
wrote, was the person really responsible for the crimes
because he kept ordering him, the Son of Sam, to do his
bidding. Next he asserted “demons” were responsible.
The city was in a state of terror. Son of Sam’s first
female victims were brunettes, so thousands of women
became blondes. But then he killed a blonde. His victims had long hair, so women with long hair cut their
magazine’s
In 1985 Robert Black, 35, a former U.S. Marine Corps
captain decided he had to be rid of his wife, Sandra,
and so hired a hit man to carry out the crime. How did
Black locate such a character? He simply consulted the
ads in Soldier of Fortune, a right-wing publication
832
SONTAG brothers
hair short. Son of Sam then shot women with short
hair. Parents who had previously lost control of their
teenage daughters suddenly reasserted that control and
refused to let them out at night.
Vigilantism ran amok. In Brooklyn a burglar was
caught carrying a large-caliber gun. A mob formed, and
a noose was hung from a lamppost. It took a dozen
police officers to rescue the hapless burglar. Another
man caught speeding in a yellow Volkswagen was
hauled into the street and nearly beaten to death—all
because rumor had it that Son of Sam had driven a yellow Volks. Mob rule was starting to take over; Mayor
Abe Beame subsequently admitted he had been just
about ready to call for the National Guard to maintain
order.
As the hysteria mounted, the newspapers set about
making Son of Sam even larger than life. When the
anniversary of the killer’s first attack neared, the press
was filled with speculation about whether he would
observe the date with more killings. “DEATHDAY,”
one newspaper proclaimed. “Tell Us Sam, What Have
You Planned for Us Tonight?” another echoed. Two
days later, the killer struck again.
Subsequently, the police publicly expressed gratitude
to the newspapers for cooperating with them on the
release of information. Actually, they were stunned by
the coverage given to the case, much of it fanciful.
Police activities that never happened were reported to a
breathless public.
Then on August 10, 1977, just 11 days after he had
killed his last victim, 20-year-old Stacy Moskowitz of
Brooklyn, and blinded her escort, Robert Violante, Son
of Sam was captured.
His name was David Richard Berkowitz, a mailman
and former city auxiliary policeman. At the time of his
arrest, he was carrying the .44-caliber Bulldog revolver
he used in his eight attacks. Berkowitz’ capture resulted
from seemingly unrelated clues—a parking ticket issued
the night of July 30–31 in the vicinity of the
Moskowitz murder, threatening notes he had sent to his
Yonkers neighbors, and information provided by a
neighbor, Sam Carr, who was believed to be the “Sam”
referred to by the Son of Sam. Carr’s dog had been
wounded April 27 by a .44-caliber bullet, two days
after Carr had received threatening letters.
Berkowitz pleaded guilty to the crimes, and three
state supreme court justices, from the different counties—Bronx, Queens and Kings (Brooklyn)—where the
murders had been committed, followed each other to
the bench in one court to pass sentences on him. For
the murders in their jurisdictions, they each passed
terms of 25 years to life, the maximum allowed under
the law, and additional sentences were added for the
seven attempted murders. All three justices said they
833
wished they could pass harsher sentences, and made
some of the sentences consecutive, but under the law
the sentences had to be merged into a cumulative
penalty not exceeding 30 years. This meant the then
25-year-old murderer had to be released when he was
54 years old.
Plans were made to allow publication of an “official
biography,” with the full authorization of the surviving
victims and the families of the dead as well as the
courts. The author, Lawrence Kausner, was to receive
$150,000 in salary and expenses, his agent $25,000
and a conservator appointed to manage the killer’s
affairs $75,000. Beyond the $150,000, all the author’s
future royalties would go to the conservator and two
charities. It was estimated that $10 to $11 million
would accrue from book and movie sales, and all funds
received by the conservator would be turned over to the
court to be given to the surviving victims and the families of the dead.
When Berkowitz heard of this arrangement, he
announced from behind bars that he would not cooperate “in any way” with the book or movie project. He
said, “Maybe after some disturbed person sees the
movie, he too will go out and kill some people and then
someone will make a movie about him, then another
and another.”
In any event, Berkowitz was not going to be able to
claim any share of the future proceeds. The state legislature passed the “Son of Sam Law,” which prohibited
a criminal from profitting financially from his crimes.
Sontag brothers
train robbers
George and John Sontag, one-time owners of a quartz
mine in California, became train robbers bent on carrying out a vendetta against the Southern Pacific Railroad. There is some dispute about whether the Sontag
brothers committed train holdups at Kosota, Minn.
and Racine, Wis. in the spring of 1892, but there is no
disagreement that they, together with Chris Evans and
a gang known as the California Outlaws, held up a
number of Southern Pacific trains.
The Sontags and Evans have been described as common criminals, but that is not entirely true. The California Outlaws came into existence because of the
avarice of the railroad, particularly its practice of virtually stealing the property of small landowners for railroad rights-of-way. In none of their robberies did the
Outlaws take any money from passengers nor did they
touch the U.S. mails. Their sole loot was always the
contents of the train safe in the express car.
The Sontags’ exploits in eluding huge posses of
railroad detectives, generally with the aid of the local
residents, made them a part of California folklore.
SPANISH, Johnny
John Sontag, one of the leaders of the California Outlaws, lies mortally wounded after an eight-hour gunfight with a
railroad posse.
Finally, after another train robbery, the Sontags and
Chris Evans were cornered in the high country.
Evans and John Sontag shot their way out, killing a
deputy sheriff, but George Sontag was captured and
given a life sentence at Folsom Prison. Evans and
John Sontag kept up their war with the railroad and
the Pinkertons by stopping stagecoaches to see “if
there are any detectives aboard we can kill.” In June
1893 a large posse located the robbers’ hideout and
an eight-hour battle, later known as the Battle of
Sampson’s Flats, ensued. When the smoke cleared,
John Sontag was shot full of holes and bleeding profusely and Evans was also badly wounded. Evans
recovered to be sentenced to life imprisonment, but
John Sontag died of his wounds on July 3. When
George Sontag got news of his brother’s death, he led
a revolt at Folsom and was shot down trying to scale
the wall.
See also: CALIFORNIA OUTLAWS, CHRISTOPHER EVANS,
ED MORRELL.
A Spanish Jew (his real name was John Weyler), he is
said to have been involved in a murder at the age of 17.
For a time he operated as an independent slugger and
killer, taking on all assignments, until he finally formed
his own gang, which was attached to New York’s notorious Five Pointers.
Spanish reportedly always ventured forth with two
revolvers stuck in his belt and, on serious missions, two
more in his coat pockets. When staging a holdup, he
often had an accomplice, a man weighted down with
additional guns who acted strictly as a weapons bearer.
Johnny Spanish gained considerable underworld
fame for his daring, a classic example being the robbery
of a saloon on Norfolk Street belonging to Mersher the
Strong Arm. Spanish gave notice that he would appear
at a certain time to empty the till, and he turned up on
the dot with his trusty gun bearer. The daring Spanish
did exactly what he said he would, shooting out the
mirror over the bar as he entered and pistol-whipping
several customers who objected to contributing their
wallets.
In 1909 Spanish became fast friends with Kid Dropper, destined to be for a time the leading gangster in
New York. They committed a number of jobs together
before becoming deadly enemies when the Dropper
Spanish, Johnny (1891–1919) gangster and murderer
Johnny Spanish was one of the bloodiest criminals during the first two decades of the 20th century.
834
SPANISH Prisoner Swindle
thugs headquartered in an old graveyard between First
and Second avenues in the block between 12th and
13th streets. Humpty Jackson was a mysterious figure
with a hunchback (under which he concealed a gun).
His gang was a substantial power on the East Side,
responsible for a large number of robberies and burglaries as well as beatings and murders on assignment.
Jackson would take on a beating or murder mission
and parcel it out to one or more of his 50 thugs. It is
believed he handed most of the difficult murder assignments to Spanish Louie, who accomplished them with
closed-mouth efficiency.
Little was known of Spanish Louie’s background.
While he talked of noble Portuguese and Spanish ancestors, some speculated that he was really an Indian. His
knowledge of weapons indicated that he had served in
the army or navy, and while Spanish Louie hinted so
himself, he never divulged any specifics. He was always
armed with a brace of revolvers and was referred to by
a writer of the era as the most artilleried man in gangland. He also wore two scabbards containing eight-inch
daggers concealed in his trousers. Spanish Louie always
dressed in funereal black—jacket, trousers, neck-high
sweater topped off with a large sombrero. When he
stalked the streets, he cut an awesome figure. It was an
outfit well calculated to strike fear in men and a different emotion in women. When he was not at work,
Spanish Louie always seemed to have at least three
beautiful women in tow and was never short of spending money.
One day his bullet-ridden body turned up on 12th
Street. While his murder was never solved, there was
speculation that he had either been killed in a dispute
with another gang member, the Grabber, over the spoils
of a crime or that Humpty Jackson had done him in for
botching a murder assignment in Chinatown. In his
pockets he had $70, in one shoe $700 and in the other
a bank book from the Bowery Savings Bank showing
$3,000. The only mystery about Spanish Louie that
was ever solved was the matter of his forebearers. His
body was claimed by a tight-lipped man from Brooklyn
and taken off for an orthodox Jewish burial.
See also: HUMPTY JACKSON.
stole the affections of Johnny Spanish’s girlfriend. In
order to provide for the woman of his affections, Spanish determined to take over the stuss games on the
Lower East Side, then a popular form of illegal gambling. In his efforts to absorb one such operation with
his usual fast shooting, Spanish killed an eight-year-old
girl who happened to be playing in the street. He was
forced to flee the city for several months until things
quieted down. When he returned, he was chagrined to
find that the woman he had done the shooting for had
left him for Kid Dropper.
Determined to take vengeance, he snatched the
woman off the streets one night and drove to a marsh
near Maspeth, Long Island. There, he put her up
against a tree and fired several shots into her abdomen,
which he considered appropriate revenge since she was
pregnant at the time. The woman was found alive but
unconscious several hours later and, in the meantime,
had given birth to a baby with three fingers shot off.
For this offense Spanish was sent to prison in 1911 for
seven years. His only solace was that about the same
time Kid Dropper also was put away for seven years on
a robbery count.
Remarkably, when both were freed in late 1917,
they hooked up again as partners in crime. However,
the inevitable jealousies soon surfaced and the pair and
their followers split into separate gangs, each determined to take over what was virtually the sole source of
income for organized criminals at the time: labor racketeering and slugging. Each gang sought to service the
unions who wanted strikebreakers maimed or killed or
the employers who wanted union pickets and organizers eliminated. Both the Dropper and Johnny Spanish
fielded large contingents of gunmen to control the rackets and a shooting war broke out that led to dozens of
deaths. Johnny Spanish was suspected of carrying out a
number of torture-murders himself.
On July 29, 1919 the Dropper forces learned that
Spanish was dining in a Second Avenue restaurant
without his usual collection of bodyguards. When
Spanish stepped into the street, three gunmen, one said
to be Kid Dropper himself, emptied their revolvers into
his body. With Johnny Spanish’s demise, Kid Dropper
became the top racketeer in New York City, a position
he held until 1923, when he too was assassinated.
See also: KID DROPPER, LABOR SLUGGERS WAR.
Spanish Prisoner Swindle
The Spanish Prisoner Swindle has been worked in
America for at least 150 years. Most common now is a
version initiated in a letter describing an alleged prisoner held captive in Mexico or Cuba. If he is a Cuban
prisoner, he is in a Castro prison, a pity since he is a
rich man who, before his incarceration, smuggled out
of the country something like $250,000, which is now
concealed in the false bottom of a trunk laying
Spanish Louie (?–1900) thug and hit man
Few New York gangsters have ever inspired the awe
that a strange individual known only as Spanish Louie
did at the turn of the last century. Spanish Louie was a
trusted underling of a colorful gang leader named
Humpty Jackson, who presided over a collection of
835
SPECK, Richard Benjamin
unclaimed in a U.S. customs house. The trunk can only
be claimed by the writer of the letter, or perhaps his 18year-old daughter. For a mere pittance, say $5,000 or
$10,000, the prisoner could bribe his way out of prison
and he and his daughter could escape Cuba to claim his
fortune.
The letter also contains an offer that is difficult to
refuse. If the recipient of the letter will send the bribe
money to the address mentioned in the letter, generally
a box number in Miami, not only will he get his money
back within a month—when the prisoner gets to the
United States—but he also will be rewarded by an additional $100,000 or so. Sometimes the letter is more
pathetic. The prisoner writes that there is no way he
can escape (the letter has been smuggled out at great
risk) but by sending the bribe money, the recipient can
enable the prisoner’s young daughter to escape Cuba
and claim the cache in the trunk.
Such letters are sent out by the hundreds and a large
number of victims fall for the story. Of course, no
money is sent to them, no prisoner escapes from Cuba
and no trunk is claimed from customs. The Postal Service has issued constant warnings about the Spanish
Prisoner Swindle without much success. Whatever the
current situation, the confidence operators come up
with a story to match it. In recent years the scam
involved Mexican, Cuban or Turkish prisoners. During
the 1930s it was Jewish prisoners in Nazi Germany. At
least once, letters describing the plight of an “American
prisoner” who had hidden $3 million in South America
were sent to wealthy Latin Americans. In this particular
case the operator employed six typists in New York to
pound out letter after letter to be sent to Latin America.
bed and was overlooked. Four hours she cowered there,
not knowing what had happened to her roommates or
whether the assailant had left. When an alarm clock
went off at 5 A.M., the apartment was still. Two hours
later, the terror-stricken woman finally crawled out
from her hiding place. She found three bodies in the
next room and ran screaming from the apartment.
Speck avoided arrest for a number of days until he
attempted to slash his wrists and was taken to a hospital, where he was identified as the mass murderer. He
was sentenced to the electric chair, but when the
Supreme Court voided the death sentence in 1972, he
was resentenced to eight consecutive terms of 50 to 150
years. Facing a possible total of 1,200 years in prison,
Speck seemed to have received the longest sentence in
history. By 1976, however, he was eligible for parole,
and although turned down, he was entitled to a review
of his case each year thereafter.
sperm fraud
preying on desperate would-be parents
As technology marches on, blatant new crimes keep
pace with the new advances, even in such unlikely matters as artificial insemination. In a shocking 1992 case,
a Virginia fertility specialist, Cecil B. Jacobson, laid
claim to having helped scores of desperate, infertile
women by supplying them with an “extensive, carefully
regulated donor program” involving physical, mental
and social characteristics. The doctor always came up
with the seemingly perfect donor, always the same
one—Cecil B. Jacobson.
Dr. Jacobson had no need to screen donors or store
sperm till the proper time. He produced the sperm in
the privacy of his office bathroom before each patient
arrived at his clinic. The flamboyant Jacobson referred
to himself as “the baby maker” and boasted that “God
doesn’t give you babies—I do.”
Some parents started finding out just how right he
was. One couple testified in the 55-year-old doctor’s
trial that they became suspicious and shocked by their
daughter’s first baby pictures. “We pulled them out of
the envelope and both went, ‘Whoa, who does she look
like?’” the mother said. “And we both had the same
feeling—she looked a lot like Dr. Jacobson.”
DNA testing proved that the doctor had fathered 15
children for his patients at fees of about $5,000 in
many cases. Authorities estimated that some 75 more
couples had been hoaxed by the “babymaker” but
refused to submit to DNA testing to find out. A very
standard response being “Please, we don’t want to
know.”
However, at the time of Dr. Jacobson’s conviction
there were no laws on the books prohibiting a doctor
from donating sperm to a patient or impregnating an
Speck, Richard Benjamin (1942–1991) serial killer
A drifter often high on both alcohol and drugs, Richard
Speck was apparently in that condition on July 13,
1966, when he found himself in front of a row house
serving as a nurses’ dormitory for the South Chicago
Community Hospital. After forcing his way into an
apartment shared by nine student nurses, he committed
one of Chicago’s most heinous mass murders. Armed
with a knife and a pistol, he trapped six nurses present
and tied them up. He waited until three other nurses
returned home and bound them also. Then after taking
their money, he led eight of the nurses, one at a time,
from the room where they were being held and killed
them, strangling five and stabbing three. He sexually
assaulted one of his victims. The eight were Gloria Jean
Davy, Suzanne Bridget Farris, Merlita Gargullo, Mary
Ann Jordan, Patricia Ann Matusek, Valentina Pasion,
Nina Jo Schmale and Pamela Lee Wilkening. The ninth,
23-year-old Corazon Amurao, managed to hide under a
836
SPIRITUALISM
unwitting woman with his sperm. Under those circumstances Dr. Jacobson could be convicted of no more
than criminal fraud involving the use of telephones and
the U.S. mails. He was sentenced to five years imprisonment.
Since this case more stringent rules have been passed
concerning sperm donation.
Spiderman of Denver
ally, the bags only held some extra meat that the victim
was taking home.
The Duchess was furious about the needless murder
and then even more furious when Sherrard started
showing signs of “coming apart.” Fearful he would talk
about the murder, she ordered him killed. The gang
knocked Sherrard out with a Mickey Finn, dressed him
in swimming trunks and dumped him off a bridge.
According to the Duchess, there was a good chance the
police would mark the death down to accidental
drowning. To be on the safe side, she moved her brood
to Reno, where they pulled a few more jobs. Meanwhile, Ives began getting shaky, and he grew even more
nervous when the Duchess started intimating he might
be disposed of next. Deciding it was only a matter of
time until he too was killed, Ives managed to slip away
from the mob long enough to inform the police about
the gang’s murderous activities.
In the ensuing investigation, every male member of
the mob tried to implicate everyone else, especially the
Duchess, who sneered at their cowardice. In the end,
Duchess Spinelli, Simone and Hawkins were sentenced
to die in the gas chamber. Ives was judged insane and
committed to a mental institution. He died in 1951.
Duchess Spinelli managed to delay her execution for
a year and a half with appeals, including one to Gov.
Culbert Olson requesting life imprisonment on the
grounds that no woman had ever been legally executed
in the state. The governor found the appeal without
merit, and the Duchess prepared for death by putting a
“curse” on the authorities, the judge and the jurors. She
told reporters, “My blood will burn holes in their bodies, and before six months have gone by, my executioners will be punished.”
However, an hour before she died on November 21,
1941, the Duchess relented, saying, “I have asked God
to forgive them.”
See PHILIP PETERS.
Spinelli, Juanita “Duchess” (1889–1941) murderess
The first woman to be executed legally in California,
Juanita Spinelli, dubbed the Duchess of Death by the
newspapers, set up a school in California to train
young men for crime and masterminded their criminal
activities.
Until her middle years Juanita Spinelli’s life is
shrouded in mystery. She claimed she was born in a
hobo jungle to a drifter and a runaway Sioux Indian
girl. Her mother died in childbirth and her father disappeared. It is unclear who raised her, but it is known that
she was married once or twice.
Her police dossier began in 1935, when she acted as
“finger-woman” in a laundry union strike. She
informed on a strikebreaker she knew was wanted by
the police. At the time, she was living with Michael
Simone, a Detroit hoodlum who served as a bodyguard
for some of the city’s leading gangsters.
While Simone’s employers were not directly affected
by Juanita’s informant role, they felt uncomfortable
about having a female stoolpigeon around. Sensing she
was not wanted, Juanita moved on to California.
There, she struck up an acquaintance with a young San
Francisco car thief named Gordon Hawkins, moved in
with him and began giving instructions to Hawkins
and some of his friends on how to become big-time
gangsters. Among her prize pupils were 23-year-old
Albert Ives and 18-year-old Robert Sherrard, a fugitive
from a mental institution. In time, she brought in Mike
Simone from Detroit to act as her chief lieutenant in
the gang.
At first, Juanita, now called Duchess by Hawkins,
masterminded small operations—auto thefts, easy burglaries, rolling helpless drunks. Then they moved on to
stickups. On April 8, 1940 Simone, Hawkins, Ives and
Sherrard held up Leland S. Cash, the 55-year-old manager of a roadside barbecue stand. When they
announced it was a robbery, Cash, who was hard of
hearing, reached for his hearing aid, and Ives, panicking, shot him fatally in the stomach. The quartet
escaped with the paper bags Cash was carrying, which
they supposed contained the receipts for the day. Actu-
Spiritualism
The birthplace of modern American Spiritualism, the
belief that the dead can communicate with the living
through physical phenomena, was Hydesville, N.Y.
In 1848, 15-year-old Margaret Fox developed the
ability to snap her big toe so loudly that it resembled a
sharp rap on wood. She and her younger sister Kate
kept the ability a secret and decided to play a prank on
their parents. One night they called their mother and
father to their bedside and said they could not sleep
because of some strange rappings. The girls said they
were sure the sounds were being made by the ghost of
the former owner of the house, who had been murdered. Kate shut her eyes and went into a sort of trance
and asked if the ghost was in the room. Margaret
837
SPOONER, Bathsheba
answered yes by snapping her toe twice under the blankets (one snap meant no). Mr. and Mrs. Fox excitedly
put more questions to the strange spirit and got
answers via the girls. The parents concluded their
daughters had supernatural powers.
News spread rapidly through the surrounding area
and hundreds of people descended on the Fox home
seeking to get in touch with deceased relatives. By now
the hoax had gotten so big that the girls dared not confess. They ended up becoming famous mediums for the
next 40 years. Meanwhile, other charlatans readily
came up with various methods of producing rappings
from the dead and the principles of Spiritualism became
firmly imbedded in popular belief. Not even a confession by the Fox sisters in 1888 about their toe trick
could stop the growth of this new racket.
Spiritualism caught on in America because it coincided with a loss of faith in authoritarian religious doctrine thanks to the profound impact of 19th-century
science. Evidence became more and more a requirement
and spiritualists seemed to satisfy that criteria through
rappings, “spirit lights” and the “materialized spirit.”
Some fakers carried off particularly bald-faced swindles. Typical of these charlatans was Mrs. Hannah Ross,
the most popular medium in Boston during the 1880s.
Her greatest trick was to make a long-dead baby materialize before her gullible victims’ eyes. Eventually, Mrs.
Ross’ con was revealed by an enterprising reporter. She
would seat herself in a cabinet in a dark room and
allegedly go into a trance. Then she would expose one
of her breasts through a slit in the curtain surrounding
her and the dead baby would seemingly appear. On her
breast she had painted the face of an infant.
Converts from around the world flocked to spiritualism in the late 19th and early 20th century. Among
them were William Gladstone, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
John Ruskin and Alfred Russel Wallace. In the late 19th
century leading mediums became important international figures despite the fact that exposure of their
frauds increased. Henry Slade, the slate-writing
medium, was one of the most famous exposed.
Probably the greatest American Spiritualist was
Daniel D. Home, who was one of the first to adopt the
tapping trick of the Fox sisters. Leaving his home in
Waterford, Conn. in 1850 at the age of 17, Home was
one of the earliest swindlers to cash in on the spirit
communication craze. He went to Europe in 1854 and,
over the years, conducted thousands of seances, many
by invitation in royal courts and the houses of nobility.
At the court of Emperor Napoleon III of France, Home
pulled off one of his most acclaimed performances.
Knowing for a certainty that the empress would want
to communicate with her departed father, Home smuggled in a rubber replica of the dead man’s right hand.
On touching it in the dark, the empress “recognized it
at once” because of the missing third finger.
One of Home’s greatest tricks, which convinced
many of his supernatural powers, was having a chair he
was sitting in rise and carry him around the room over
the heads of his guests. Home retired in 1871 an
extremely wealthy man. While all of his supposed psychic powers have been exposed as tricks, true believers
in Spiritualism still celebrate him as the greatest
medium of all time.
See also: HANNAH ROSS.
Spooner, Bathsheba (1746–1778) murderess
Bathsheba Spooner, the Tory Murderess, was convicted
and sentenced to death in 1778 in the first capital case
tried in American jurisdiction in Massachusetts, and
quite possibly, her subsequent ill fate was the result of
her lowly political repute. Not that Bathsheba was
innocent of the charges against her. She admitted conspiring with and assisting her lover and two escaped
British soldiers in the murder of her husband, the
elderly Joshua Spooner, but she most likely would have
earned herself a lesser punishment had she possessed
more revolutionary fervor.
Bathsheba was the daughter of Timothy Ruggles,
chief justice of the Massachusetts Court on Common
Pleas under crown rule. With the onset of the Revolution, Ruggles had been forced to flee to Canada.
Bathsheba remained behind in that fateful year of 1776
and married 63-year-old Joshua Spooner, a retired merchant. Although old Spooner was rather apolitical, he
was soon branded as a Tory sympathizer because of his
marriage to the daughter of a leading Tory. It was not a
situation to his liking and probably explained why he
was so happy when he came home one day in the winter of 1778 to find his 31-year-old wife had taken in
Ezra Ross, a handsome 20-year-old soldier in the Revolutionary Army who had been wounded in the chest
during a recent campaign. Ross had literally collapsed
outside the Spooners’ door in the hamlet of Brookfield,
near Worcester. With his wife, a suspected Tory, now
nursing a Revolutionary hero, Spooner knew that the
wagging rebel tongues would still.
Of course, his wife’s care for the soldier had little to
do with political sentiments; within a few months she
would inform her recuperating patient that she was
“with child.” Bathsheba also told young Ross they
would have to kill her husband before he learned of
their affair and cast them both out of his lavish keep.
Ross agreed to her suggestion in the abstract, but in
practice he proved unavailing. She suggested poisoning
her husband, but Ross, who said he could face any man
musket to musket, backed off from such a low deed.
838
SPOONER, Bathsheba
Then Spooner had to journey to Boston to look after
his investments and Ross went with him. Bathsheba’s
lover was supposed to kill her husband on the return
trip and blame the murder on the British, but the pair
returned together.
By this time Bathsheba Spooner had decided her
young lover just wasn’t going to do her bidding; so she
recruited two passing British soldiers to carry out the
plot. Whether James Buchanan and William Brooks
were deserters or escapees from Revolutionary custody
was of small consequence to Mrs. Spooner. The important thing was that they were willing to perform any
deed which would earn them some gold. With
Buchanan and Brooks backing him, Ross waylaid
Spooner as he came staggering home one midnight
from Ephraim Cooley’s tavern. The three clubbed the
old man to death and dumped his body into a well at
the side of the house.
A maid fetching water the next morning discovered
the bucket covered with a film of blood and sounded
the alarm. Old Spooner’s body was raised and it was
found to be devoid of purse, snuff box, silver shoe
buckles and watch. Obviously, he had been murdered
and robbed. Perhaps if they had kept a low profile,
Ross, Brooks and Buchanan might have escaped detection, but with foolish abandon, they took to wearing
their loot, and within days the trio was arrested. Servants in the Spooner household then came forth with
tales of having heard the three in conspiratorial conversations with Mrs. Spooner. One servant, coachman
Alexander Cumings, said he had come into the parlor
and observed the men burning their clothing, which
appeared to be bloodstained in the fireplace. The victim’s money box lay open on the table and its contents
divided up in neat piles.
It was, to say the least, a rather open-and-shut case,
especially when Bathsheba confessed she had masterminded the murder of her husband to keep him from
learning of her affair with young Ross. The case was
tried by William Cushing, chief justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court and later a member of the U.S.
Supreme Court, and prosecuted by Robert Treat Paine,
a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Defense
attorney Levi Lincoln, who was to become attorney
general under Thomas Jefferson, came up with the
rather novel defense that since the plot had been so
openly planned and botched, Bathsheba must have
been “insane.” He added that because only one of the
three men had struck the fatal blow, the jury could not
convict more than one of them and, lacking absolute
proof against any of the three, it would have to release
them all. Unmoved by the defense attorney’s arguments, the jury found the four guilty. They were all sentenced to be hanged.
The sentences were scheduled to be carried out on
June 4, 1778 but were postponed through the intercession of the Rev. Thaddeus MacCarty, a Worcester
minister, who visited the condemned woman in her
cell to discuss her spiritual future. Mrs. Spooner once
more admitted her part in the crime but for the first
time confessed the full story, including the fact that
she was pregnant. If that were so, and the Rev. MacCarty was certain it was, both English law and custom
forbade her execution. Urged on by MacCarty, the
Massachusetts Council granted a stay until July 2 and
ordered that “two men midwives and twelve discreet
lawful matrons” conduct an examination “by the
breast and by the belly” to determine the accuracy of
the claim.
Their unanimous finding was that Bathsheba
Spooner was not pregnant, which led MacCarty to
charge that their opinion had been colored by their
political sympathies. He empaneled his own jury of
three men midwives and three lawful matrons. After
they conducted an examination, all the men and one of
the women declared Bathsheba was pregnant, but the
two other women said she was not. In any event, the
MacCarty panel had no legal standing, and even
Bathsheba gave up the fight.
She made a final request in a letter to the council
that my body be examined after I am executed by a
committee of competent physicians, who will, perforce,
belatedly substantiate my claims. I am a woman, familiar with my bodily functions, and am surely able to perceive when my womb is animated. The midwives who
have examined me have taken into greater account my
father’s Royalist leanings than they have the stirrings in
my body which should have stirred their consciences.
The truth is that they want my father’s daughter dead
and with her my father’s grandchild.
Thousands attended the four hangings in Worcester
on July 2, the dispute over Bathsheba’s condition still
raging. The crowd did not disperse until later that
afternoon when a committee of surgeons completed an
autopsy and rather reluctantly made their report public. In the executed woman’s womb they had found “a
perfectly developed male foetus, aged between five and
six months.”
Some latter-day historians have insisted that the
Spooner case was so etched on the conscience of the citizens of Massachusetts that never again was a female
condemned to death in the state, with or without a plea
for mercy because of pregnancy. That theory is certainly open to debate, but one definite result of the
affair was that certain male midwives and discreet lawful matrons needed a lengthy period of remorse before
839
SPRINGFIELD (Illinois) race riot
Heath’s jailers before he was due to be shipped off to
the penitentiary, and a short time later, the squealer’s
dead body was found dangling from a telegraph pole.
Over the years law enforcement officials have come
to rely heavily on informers. Detective Lt. Jack Osnato
broke the Murder, Inc. investigation by coaxing leads
out of minor killers in the group until the trail led to
Abe Reles, probably the most important informer in the
history of American crime. In 1941 Reles “went out the
window” of a sixth-floor hotel room, where he was
being kept under police protection.
More recent informers have fared better. The celebrated Joe Valachi died in prison of natural causes in
1971. Vinnie Teresa, the New England Mafia songbird,
remains hidden under the Justice Department’s Witness
Relocation Program, and is probably the informer most
wanted by the underworld, with a reputed price of
$500,000 on his head.
By 1976 the controversial relocation plan, sometimes
called the Alias Program, had hidden away under new
identities an estimated minimum of 2,000 witnesses and
members of their families. Its origin and procedures
have never been discussed in Congress, and critics have
charged that the program’s protection of witnesses is
less than efficient. Indeed, in one incredible blunder a
witness and several members of his family were given
new identities and issued new Social Security cards—in
sequential numbers. A private investigator tracking the
witness eventually found him after hearing a story about
a husband and wife who had sequential Social Security
numbers. In other cases witnesses have walked away
from their covers, finding them ineffective. Certainly,
the most infamous squealer of recent years, mafioso
Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, was not impressed with the
Alias Program and walked away from it.
See also: ABE RELES, VINCENT CHARLES TERESA, JOSEPH
M. VALACHI.
Further reading: The Alias Program by Fred Graham.
they could once more walk the streets of Worcester
without downcast eyes.
Springfield (Illinois) race riot
Probably no false rape story in American history had as
much impact as one told in 1908 in Springfield, Ill.
After a white woman claimed she had been raped by a
black named George Richardson, whites rioted and
4,200 militia had to be called in to stop the violence.
Richardson was spirited out of town to save his life, but
during the two days of rioting—August 14 and August
15—two blacks were lynched, six other blacks were
killed and over 70 blacks and whites were seriously
wounded. Some 2,000 blacks fled the city. The instigators of the riot never were punished, although a number of people were arrested and indicted.
George Richardson also went free after his accuser
admitted to a special grand jury in 1909 that it was a
white man who raped her, although she refused to identify him. Prompted by the Springfield riot, a biracial
group, including William Dean Howells, Jane Addams
and W. E. B. Du Bois met in New York City the following year and agreed to form the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People.
squealer
slang term for “informer”
There are many theories on the origin of the slang term
squealer as a synonym for “informer.” The simplest is
that a lawbreaker squeals like a pig when caught, and
in this squealing he often names his accomplices.
Another theory traces the origin of the term to the case
of an unfortunate stock thief who was making off with
a pig when the animal’s squeals betrayed him. Whatever the etymology of the word, squealers are the chief
source of information by which crimes are solved.
No matter how necessary informers may be to police,
the public has never thought highly of them. In the
1870s four members of a gang that had robbed a train
in Kansas were convicted on the testimony of a fifth
member, Dave Rudabaugh. The Kinsley Graphic was
much taken with the ethical question involved, commenting: “Rudabaugh testified that he was promised
entire immunity from punishment if he would ‘squeal,’
therefore he squole. Some one has said there is a kind of
honor among thieves. Rudabaugh don’t think so.”
In an infamous holdup in the Arizona Territory in
1883 called the Bisbeen Massacre, the mastermind of
the operation, John Heath, turned informer to save
himself and named his five confederates, all of whom
were hanged. As a reward for his assistance, Heath was
let off with a life sentence, a decision that did not sit
well with the local populace. A large mob overwhelmed
Stacher, Joseph “Doc” (1902–1977) syndicate leader
Born in Poland in 1902, Stacher came to the United
States at the age of 10. A few years later, he was a
minor-league pushcart thief in Newark, N.J. During
this period he formed friendships with future leading
Jewish gangsters, such as Longy Zwillman and Meyer
Lansky. In the 1920s Stacher ran many of Zwillman’s
gambling enterprises and in 1931, at Lansky’s behest,
brought together a number of the top New York Jewish gang figures for a conference at the Franconia
Hotel, which resulted in the merger of the Jewish
Mafia and the Italian Mafia into a new national crime
syndicate. Lansky then assigned Stacher to handle
gambling activities on the West Coast and in the
840
STANDARD Oil Building, Battles of the
Caribbean. Later, he oversaw gambling in Las Vegas
for Lansky and was connected with such casinos as the
Sands and the Fremont.
Federal agents finally nailed Stacher for income tax
evasion, and he was sentenced to five years. Although
the government wanted to deport him, the law prohibited sending anyone to an Iron Curtain country. As a
Jew, Stacher was entitled, under the Law of the Return,
to go to Israel. The gangster accepted this form of exile
and emigrated in 1965. Scores of other mobsters of
Jewish descent followed him. Lansky himself tried to
emigrate to Israel in 1971, but he proved to be too
notorious and was expelled. Doc Stacher was allowed
to remain.
See also: JEWISH MAFIA.
gamblers and reporters from each of the newspapers.
Also invited were other leading Chicago madams, while
some three dozen of Annie’s young ladies were trained
thoroughly on the proper etiquette for the occasion.
The reporters were brought to Sunnyside in a huge
four-horse sleigh.
Frederick Francis Cook, there as a reporter for the
Chicago Times, reported that the festivities started in a
most decorous fashion. “You were ceremoniously
introduced, engagement cards were consulted, and all
the rest of the little formalities that distinguish like
functions in the haut monde were strictly observed.
Yes, the make-believe was quite tremendous.” One
young redheaded lady of Annie’s staff walked around
looking gentlemen in the eye and asking, “Who’s your
favorite poet? Mine’s Byron.”
The tone couldn’t last. Before the night had finished,
case after case of champagne had been consumed, Cap
Hyman had shot out the lights, Annie had had to reprimand other madams for passing out business cards,
and several harlots had set up business on a freelance
basis in a number of the upstairs rooms.
While Sunnyside was a great social success, it flopped
as a commercial enterprise. Annie Stafford noted that
gentlemen just wouldn’t travel that far even for highclass strumpets. So the couple returned to their Chicago
haunts. In 1875 Cap Hyman suffered a complete physical and mental collapse. He died the following year,
with Annie at his bedside. Annie continued to run a
brothel until about 1880, when she dropped from sight.
See also: SANDS, WHORE WAR.
Stafford, Annie (1838–?) Chicago madam
Annie Stafford, better known as Gentle Annie in her
younger, more voluptuous days, was the leading fighter
in Chicago’s Whore War in 1857, representing the
forces of the Sands, a sinkhole of vice, against an incursion by the madams of the better State Street district,
who were looking for attractive talent to stock their
house with. Annie at the time was merely a 50¢ prostitute in the house of Anna Wilson, but she nevertheless
took on the brunt of the fighting, which eventually
resulted in a victory for the Sands area. Somewhere
along the line Annie got tired of doing all the work
while others were making the money. She resolved to
become the madam of her own establishment, and by
the early 1860s she was running what she described as
a “classy place with 30 boarders.”
For close to two decades Annie was a principal figure
in Chicago vice and her lovelife and business enterprises
were duly recorded by the newspapers. Annie had been
the longtime mistress of Cap Hyman, a leading Chicago
gambler, who enjoyed her company and charms but didn’t see the need for making it legal—until one September
day in 1866 when Annie stormed into his gambling
house carrying a rawhide whip. She found Hyman
sleeping on a sofa, threw him down the stairs and
chased him up the street, her whip cracking on his
shanks with every stride. Shortly thereafter, Cap Hyman
proposed marriage. The wedding was an elegant affair
that attracted not only the Chicago underworld but also
representatives from as far away as Cincinnati and New
Orleans. Immediately following the ceremony, Cap
Hyman announced he was giving his wife a very special
present, a tavern outside the city limits called Sunnyside,
which would be turned into “a high-toned roadhouse.”
The opening of Sunnyside was a gala event, with
guests of honor including city and county officials,
young businessmen with sporting interests, big-time
Standard Oil Building, Battles of the
Probably more than any other events, the two so-called
Battles of the Standard Oil Building in 1926 were what
people thought of when they heard the words “Chicago
gangsters.”
On the morning of August 10 Hymie Weiss and
Schemer Drucci, who took control of Dion O’Banion’s
North Side Gang after O’Banion’s assassination, were
on their way to make a payoff to Morris Eller, political
boss of the 20th Ward, in order to secure protection for
their numerous speakeasies. The meeting was to take
place at 910 South Michigan Avenue, the new 19-story
Standard Oil Building. Just as the pair reached the
bronze Renaissance-style doors of the building, four
Capone gunmen, the North Siders’ sworn enemies,
jumped from a car and charged at them. Seeing the
attackers’ drawn guns, Weiss and Drucci ducked
behind a parked car and pulled their own weapons
from shoulder holsters. The area, which at that hour
teemed with pedestrians, erupted in gunfire. One pedestrian was hit in the volley of 30-odd shots, as
841
STAR Route frauds
bystanders either dived for cover or stood frozen with
horror.
Weiss started to retreat from car to car, but Drucci
headed for his hated foe. The Capone gunmen backed
off to a sedan parked on the other side of the avenue
and then pulled away, with a still-angry Drucci firing
after them. He jumped on the running board of a passing car, put his gun to the driver’s temple and ordered,
“Follow that goddamn car.” Just then a police flivver
pulled up and officers yanked the crazed Drucci to the
pavement.
Drucci told the police there had been no gang battle,
that it had merely been a case of some punks “trying
for my roll.” The police brought Louis Barko, whom
they had recognized as one of the Capone gunners,
before Drucci for identification. In keeping with underworld tradition, Drucci shrugged, “I never seen him
before.” Barko and all other suspects were released.
Five days later, on August 15, Weiss and Drucci
were again attacked at almost the same spot. This time
they were driving in a sedan when rival gangsters trailing in another auto opened up on them. Although their
car was riddled with bullets, the two gangsters were not
hit. They dashed from their car to the sanctuary of the
Standard Oil Building, firing wild shots over their
shoulders.
On September 20 Weiss and Drucci retaliated with
the famous attack on the Capone headquarters at the
Hawthorne Inn in Cicero. A convoy of eight cars
loaded with gunmen poured lead into the building in a
vain effort to kill Al Capone. In addition to wounding
some pedestrians, the gunmen shot Louis Barko in the
shoulder. Later, police picked up Drucci on the suspicion that he had fired the shot which downed Barko.
When asked if he could identify Drucci as his assailant,
Barko returned a past favor by announcing, “Never
saw him before.”
About this time Lucky Luciano, Capone’s Brooklyn
schoolmate, visited Chicago on crime business. “A real
goddam crazy place!” he told associates upon returning
to the quiet of New York. “Nobody’s safe in the streets.”
See also: VINCENT “SCHEMER” DRUCCI, HYMIE WEISS.
travel at a cost of $50,000 despite the fact that its use
brought in only $761 in postal income annually. A single fraudulent affidavit, unopposed by postal officials,
netted one contractor $90,000. A later investigation of
the road improvement claims made by another contractor, John M. Peck, revealed that to equal the distance he
claimed could be traveled in a day a man would have to
ride for 40 hours.
Probes by congressional investigators, special agents
and Pinkerton detectives resulted in more than 25
indictments. Trials held in 1882 and 1883 uncovered
frauds related to 93 routes. However, not a single conviction was obtained. It was estimated that the government had been defrauded out of at least $4 million.
Starkweather, Charles (1940–1959) serial killer
Charley Starkweather, Nebraska’s mass murderer of the
1950s, killed his first victim on December 1, 1957. On
that day the red-haired youth robbed a gas station
attendant, Robert Colvert, at gunpoint in Lincoln,
drove him to an open area outside the city and executed
him with several shots in the head. He did nothing
more for almost two months until January 21, 1958,
when he drove to the home of 14-year-old Caril Ann
Fugate.
Finding the girl not at home, he sat down to wait for
her, toying with a .22 hunting rifle he had brought with
him. Caril’s mother, Velda Bartlett, yelled at him to stop
fooling around with the weapon—whereupon he shot
both her and Caril’s stepfather, Marion Bartlett. When
Caril Ann came home, Starkweather went to her twoyear-old sister’s bedroom and choked the child to
death. He then dragged the parents’ bodies outside and
put Marion Bartlett’s corpse under newspapers and
rags in the chicken coop and Velda’s in an abandoned
outhouse. He dumped the child into a cardboard box
and then went into the kitchen, made some sandwiches
and joined Caril to watch television.
They put a sign on the door reading: “STAY AWAY.
EVERYBODY IS SICK WITH THE FLU. MISS
BARTLETT.” When Caril’s older sister came by and
wanted to help, Caril Ann sent her away. Later, Caril
Ann’s lawyer would argue she had saved her sister from
being killed by Starkweather, who was lurking behind
the kitchen door as the two sisters talked.
Caril’s older sister told her husband, who became
suspicious and notified the police. When two officers
came to the house to investigate, Caril Ann told them
everyone inside was sick. They left. Two days later,
Caril turned her grandmother away, and she went to
the police. The police returned to the house and found
it empty. They then searched the premises and found
the three bodies.
Star Route frauds
One of the greatest frauds in U.S. postal history
involved the so-called Star Routes, roads built in the
19th century West for mail delivery via wagon and
horseback. The situation was ripe for fraudulent claims
and a combine of crooked Postal Department officials,
contractors, subcontractors and politicians set up a vast
conspiracy. The combination lobbied for congressional
appropriations to start new and useless routes and
upgrade old ones. One road was improved for faster
842
STARR, Belle
An alert went out for Starkweather and the girl, and
in the following week of terror, Little Red, the bowlegged teenager who modeled himself after movie star
James Dean, played the role of a murderer without a
cause, shooting and stabbing seven more people to
death. When his car got stuck on a muddy road, a high
school couple stopped to lend a hand, Starkweather
shot them to death and he and Caril Ann transferred to
the victims’ car. He then shot a friend, August Meyer,
for his guns and ammunition.
Back in Lincoln, Starkweather and Caril Ann
entered the house of wealthy steel executive C. Lauer
Ward and marched his wife and housekeeper upstairs.
The two women were tied up and gagged and then
Starkweather stabbed them to death. When Ward
returned home, he was murdered before he had time to
take off his coat.
The couple took Ward’s smooth-running Packard
and drove to Wyoming. Twelve miles outside of Douglas, they came upon shoe salesman Merle Collison catnapping in his new Buick at the side of the road. Caril
Ann slipped into the backseat while Starkweather
walked over to the driver’s side of the car and shot the
sleeping victim nine times in the head. It was his last
killing. Thinking someone was in trouble, an oil company worker named Joe Sprinkle stopped to offer a
hand. When Starkweather leveled a rifle at Sprinkle, the
oil worker charged him and struggled for possession of
the weapon. By luck, a deputy sheriff happened by and
Caril Ann ran to him, screaming: “It’s Starkweather!
He’s going to kill me. . . .”
Starkweather managed to break free, jump into the
Packard and speed off. After gunning his car to 110 miles
an hour and crashing through one roadblock, he was
finally stopped when officers shot out his windshield.
Starkweather blandly announced he had killed
everyone in “self-defense” and tried to defend Caril
Ann. “Don’t take it out on the girl. She had no part of
it.” He claimed she was a hostage. But when the girl
started calling him a killer, he changed his attitude.
“She could have escaped any time she wanted,” he said.
“I left her alone lots of times. Sometimes when I would
go in and get hamburgers, she would be sitting in the
car with all the guns. There would have been nothing to
stop her from running away. One time she said that the
hamburgers were lousy and we ought to go back and
shoot all them people in the restaurant.”
“After I shot her folks and killed her baby sister,
Caril sat and watched television while I wrapped the
bodies up in rags and newspapers. We just cooked up
that hostage story between us.”
Starkweather was condemned to death and Caril
Ann Fugate was sentenced to life imprisonment, tearfully proclaiming her innocence as she left the court843
room. Starkweather went to the electric chair on June
25, 1959, after turning down a request from the Lions
Club of Beatrice, Neb. that he donate his eyes to their
eye bank following his death.
“Hell no,” he said. “No one ever did anything for
me. Why in the hell should I do anything for anyone
else?” The 19-year-old’s execution took four minutes.
Caril Ann Fugate was released on parole in 1977,
considered completely rehabilitated.
Starr, Belle (1848–1889) Bandit Queen
Although the eastern press dubbed her the Bandit
Queen, the Lady Desperado and the female Robin
Hood, Belle Starr was simply a hatchet-faced horse
thief, a frontier fence and, whenever times got tough, a
whore. It seems likely that naive makers of legends
often confused her with Belle Boyd, the truly heroic
Confederate spy.
Born Myra Belle Shirley in Carthage, Mo., or thereabouts, to “Judge” John Shirley (her father’s judgeship
may have been a product of her imagination) and his
wife Elizabeth, Belle associated with some pretty mean
characters in her teens. Her brother Ed Shirley rode with
the James-Younger gang, and Belle formed a rather close
attachment to some of the boys. Her first illegitimate
child was a daughter named Pearl, born after a brief
courtship by Cole Younger. After that, Belle took up
with another badman, Jim Reed, by whom she had
another child, a boy named Ed, who was born after the
couple had trekked to California, where Reed engaged
in highway robbery. After a while, there was a price on
Reed’s head, and he headed back east with his family.
With $30,000 in loot, Reed took Belle to Texas,
where she opened a livery stable and ranch and played
her role of Bandit Queen. As a member of old Tom
Starr’s gang, Jim rustled horses in Indian Territory in
what is now Oklahoma, and Belle’s stable always had a
fine supply of stock.
Reed was killed in 1874 by a lawman who had previously ridden the outlaw trail with him. From 1875
to 1880 Belle was the acknowledged leader of a rustler
band that forayed out of Indian Territory (Oklahoma).
She had a succession of lovers but seemed most fond
of her first love, Cole Younger. Cole, however, vanished from her life following the ill-fated bank raid at
Northfield, Minn. in September 1876. Shot up in the
raid, he was captured soon after and sentenced to life
imprisonment.
Belle consoled herself with others. In 1876 another
“husband” started making the rounds with Belle. He
was a flatfaced Indian, half-breed or white man—there
are conflicting stories—with the odd alias of Blue
Duck. Subsequently, a lot of tales were told about this
STARR, Henry
James.” Much was made of her past relationship with
Jesse James, whom she knew from the old days and to
whom she had evidently offered a refuge on her ranch
around 1881. Belle got a job in a Wild West show playing the part of an outlaw who held up a stagecoach,
which carried among its passengers none other than
Judge Parker. Goggle-eyed audiences ate up this presentation with the same gusto they accepted the publicrelations build-up of Buffalo Bill.
All this upset Sam Starr, but he may have been more
hurt by the fact that Belle had a long line of lovers. He
shot one of them and disappeared for a time. By 1886
the two were back together in the horse-stealing business. Taken into custody, Belle granted long interviews
to the press, in which she indicated she wasn’t worried
about going before Judge Parker again on a rustling
count. She proved right, as the judge released her for
lack of evidence. Belle rode out of town, smiling graciously at the citizens of Fort Smith.
That Christmas, Belle became a widow when Sam
Starr got into a drunken shoot-out with an Indian
deputy. Both men died of their wounds. With Sam
gone, Belle was no longer the Bandit Queen. She had a
number of lovers, at least some of whom came cash in
hand. Her last was an outlaw Creek Indian named Jim
July. When he was charged with larceny, Belle talked
him into surrendering at Fort Smith, pointing out that
since the case against him was very weak, Judge Parker
would have to set him free.
Belle rode with him to Fort Smith. Returning home
alone she was bushwhacked on a lonely road near
Eufaula, Indian Territory (Oklahoma) on February 3,
1889. A neighbor of hers, Edgar Watson, with whom
she was on bad terms, was accused of the crime, but the
charges were eventually dropped. Most historians now
agree she was probably murdered by her 18-year-old
son, Ed Reed, whom she alternately attacked with a bull
whip and made love to in an incestuous relationship.
However, Belle Starr went to her grave with her Bandit Queen reputation firmly established. Belle’s daughter Pearl had a short elegy inscribed on her tombstone
that read:
Belle Starr’s reputation as the Bandit Queen was born in
the pages of the sensationalist eastern press, which
portrayed the hatchet-faced horse thief and, when times
were tough, prostitute as a comely, hell-for-leather lass.
period in Belle’s life. She supposedly rode with Blue
Duck on rustling sprees, although there is no proof of
that, and she was later said to have killed a Dallas lawman, a story without foundation.
In any event, before long Blue Duck was replaced by
Sam Starr, with whom Belle broke tradition by legally
marrying. Sam, a Cherokee, was apparently the son of
horse thief Tom Starr, and after the marriage Belle
resumed selling stolen livestock. Soon, the U.S. government had a $10,000 reward out for the capture of Sam
and Belle Starr “dead or alive.” This would seem to
indicate that Belle was a genuine outlaw. However, in
1883, when they were captured and hauled before
Hanging Judge Parker, who was notorious for handing
out stiff sentences, Parker gave Belle only a six-month
prison term, indicating she was probably guilty of no
more than being a receiver of stolen beef and horseflesh. Sam Starr got a year. When he came out of the
penitentiary, he found his wife had changed. She was
now a celebrity. Richard Fox’s Police Gazette had
immortalized her as a “female Robin Hood and a Jesse
Shed not for her the bitter tear,
Nor give the heart to vain regret,
’Tis but the casket that lies here,
The gem that fills it sparkles yet.
See also: ED REED, JIM REED, TOM STARR.
Starr, Henry (1873–1921) bank robber and murderer
The last of the Starrs, a remarkable criminal clan that
included Tom, Sam and by marriage, Belle Starr, Henry
844
STARR, Tom
On February 18, 1921 he parked his car, which he now
used instead of a horse, in front of the People’s Bank at
Harrison, Ark. and tried to rob the bank at gunpoint.
Banker W. J. Myers answered Starr’s demands with a
shotgun blast that ended his career on and off the
screen. He died of his wounds four days later.
Starr was born in Indian Territory in what is now Oklahoma on December 2, 1873. For a time he appeared to
be the “good Starr,” avidly reading the classics and
shunning such vices as smoking and drinking. In 1891,
however, he was arrested for trading whiskey to the Indians, and after that, he was charged with stealing horses.
Finally, he started his own Starr gang in late 1892 and
pulled off several train and store robberies. During the
course of one escape from the law, Starr killed Floyd
Wilson, one of Hanging Judge Parker’s deputies, a crime
for which he was captured in 1893. On October 20,
1894 Starr was sentenced by Parker to be hanged, but a
series of appeals kept putting off the execution and, it
was reported, “gave Judge Parker fits.”
After a string of reversals and new trials, the authorities acquiesced to a prison term for Starr. He served less
than five years before being pardoned by President
Theodore Roosevelt, a stroke of good fortune that Starr
celebrated by sticking up a bank in Bentonville, Ark. By
1909 he was in custody again and throughout the next
decade he was in and out of prison for various offenses.
Remarkably, in 1919 Starr won another pardon. For a
while, he seemed to have found a new career, appearing
in a number of movies that, in one way or another, had
the same theme: crime does not pay. In between movie
chores, Starr, as it happened, was still robbing banks.
Starr, Tom (1813–1890) outlaw and murderer
A full-blooded Cherokee Indian, Tom Starr was among
the West’s most violent characters, and he certainly
passed along his bad traits, fathering a bloodthirsty
brood of eight boys and two girls, who—with their
children and cousins and nephews—formed the “Starr
clan gang.”
“Uncle Tom” Starr was easily the most vicious. Born
in Tennessee, Tom was brought by his parents to the
Indian lands of what is now Oklahoma. In his twenties,
he was a strapping six feet seven inches and an expert
with a bowie knife, a skill that came in handy in the factional warfare that beset the Cherokee nation. When
Tom Starr killed a rival tribesman named David Buffington, nothing much happened to him; no one seemed
capable of doing anything about it. For no apparent reason, Tom burned a whole family to death in 1843. By
then he had become a full-time outlaw, leading a mixed
group of Indians, whites and half-breeds on many murderous horse-rustling raids. In 1845 his enemies attacked
the Starr homestead and slaughtered his father and 12year-old brother, Buck. Starr dropped his desperado
career temporarily and went about taking fatal
vengeance on the 32 raiders involved. He is said to have
killed all of them, save those lucky enough to die of other
causes before he could get to them; Starr was not a man
who believed in ending an enemy’s life quickly.
Having avenged his kin, Starr went back to crime for
profit. It was considered an honor by outlaws of any
race to be accepted into the Starr band. Among those
accepted was Jim Reed, whose younger paramour
would later become known as Belle Starr when she
married Uncle Tom’s son, Sam. Until his retirement
from active criminal behavior in the 1880s, Uncle
Tom’s territory, now a part of Adair County, Okla., was
considered to be the most unsafe in the entire region,
although Starr often struck deep into Texas on criminal
forays. Overall, he is believed to have personally killed
more than 100 men. When he died in 1890, members
of his clan insisted to journalists that he was a delightful old man “full of fun and eager to josh folks.”
See also: JIM REED, BELLE STARR.
In 1921 the last of the Starrs, Henry, parked his car—
instead of tethering his horse as his forebears had done—
held up an Arkansas bank and got himself shot to death.
Starved Rock State Park murders
WEGER.
845
See CHESTER
STATE Street Crap Game
State Street Crap Game
best-seller, eager readers subscribing to 70,000 copies
before publication and buying 140,000 immediately
thereafter. Stead named names long considered above
reproach in his Black List, which showed who
owned, rented and paid taxes on property used for
illicit purposes.
He highlighted evidence of the extent of political
corruption with a quote from a corporation lawyer:
“There are sixty-eight aldermen on the City council,
and sixty-six of them can be bought; this I know
because I have bought them myself.”
Readers were shocked when they read the following
description of City Council graft:
Few gambling operations were more important to
organized crime than Brooklyn’s State Street Crap
Game, operated by the mob in the 1930s. It was
located in a building just off the busy corner of State
and Court streets in downtown Brooklyn, New York
City. No nickel-dime setup, it attracted men of considerable wealth and prominence and was said to
have been responsible for “sucking in” politicians
and police brass, in time making them beholden to
the underworld when they suffered big losses. The
game was also one of the most important methods of
financing Murder, Inc., the national crime syndicate’s
assassination “troop.” The killers of Murder, Inc. did
not receive a fee for each job but were paid on
retainer and given rights to certain crooked operations. Abe “Kid” Reles aided by Pittsburgh Phil, one
of the two most important hit men in the organization, was declared the official shylock of the game;
his aides would circulate among the players, fists full
of money, making loans at a mere 20 percent—per
week.
It has been estimated that the play each night probably exceeded $100,000. Reles’ nightly profit from the
shylock operation was generally between $1,000 to
$2,000. Druggists, clothing merchants, liquor store
proprietors, dentists and shoe manufacturers were
found to be paying incredible amounts of “or else”
interest. In a manner of speaking, they were actually
bankrolling the operations of Murder, Inc. When Reles
started singing to the authorities, it was said the loss of
the State Street game was almost as troublesome to the
mob as was the exposure of Murder, Inc.
How much does it cost to pass a franchise through the
City Council? There is no set price, because one franchise may be worth more than another. The highest
price ever paid for aldermanic votes was a few years
ago when a measure giving valuable privileges to a
railway corporation was passed in the face of public
condemnation. There were four members of the Council who received 25,000 dollars each, and the others
who voted for the ordinance received 8,000 dollars
each. An official who was instrumental in securing the
passage of the measure received the largest amount
ever given in Chicago for a service of this kind. He
received 100,000 dollars in cash and two pieces of
property. The property was afterward sold for
110,000 dollars. In one of the latest “boodle”
attempts the aldermen voting for a certain franchise
were supposed to receive 5,000 dollars each. One of
them, however, had been deceived and was to get only
3,500 dollars. When he learned that he had been
“frisked” of 1,500 dollars he wept in anger and went
over to the opposition, assisting in the final overthrow
of the steal.
The “5,000 dollars per vote” is the high-water
mark in the Council for the last four years. During
1891 and 1892 there were a dozen ordinances which
brought their “bits,” yet in one case the price went
down to 300 dollars. In spite of what has been said of
the good old times these two years were among the
most profitable ever known in criminal circles.
When it becomes necessary to pass an ordinance
over the Mayor’s veto the cost is 25 per cent more than
usual.
Stead, William T. (1849–1912) journalist
During the 19th century citizens of Chicago launched
several reform movements aimed at cleaning up that
city which was considered the most crime-ridden in the
nation. But Chicago’s greatest reform wave of all was
started by an English muckraking journalist, William T.
Stead, in 1893.
Before his arrival in this country, Stead enjoyed a
reputation as an uncompromising investigative gadfly.
In 1885, to expose prostitution in London, he bought
a 13-year-old girl for £10 and placed her in a brothel.
Although his purpose was to expose the evils of prostitution in a series of articles, he was sent to prison
for the act. That experience did not curb Stead’s
enthusiasm for exposing evil, after visiting the 1893
World’s Fair in Chicago, he remained to expose graft,
corruption and vice in the city. Thousands thronged
to his platform speeches, and in 1894 he published If
Christ Came to Chicago, which became a runaway
The upshot of Stead’s disclosures was the formation
of the Civic Federation of Chicago, the city’s first
important reform organization to enjoy wide public
support. Stead remained a thorn in the side of corrupt
politicians and vice operators for close to two decades
until his death aboard the Titanic in 1912.
See also: VINA FIELDS.
846
STEWART, Alexander Turney
Steamboat Squad
19th-century New York police unit
defense lawyer Clarence Darrow. Darrow scored a
stunning victory that gave new strength to the union
movement in the West. Orchard, a killer whose main
claim to fame was his role in the “get Haywood” effort,
served a life sentence.
See also: CLARENCE DARROW, WILLIAM D. “BIG BILL”
HAYWOOD, HARRY ORCHARD.
Until the mid-1870s river pirates were the scourge of
both the Hudson and East rivers in New York City.
They preyed on cargo craft tied up at piers, boarded
boats in the river and even sailed up the Hudson for
many miles to loot riverfront businesses, stores and
homes. In 1876 the New York Police Department organized the Steamboat Squad, first using the steamboat
Seneca and, after that proved successful, then several
others, to patrol the rivers in search of gangsters. When
pirates were spotted, a score or more of officers hidden
in the cabin of a police steamer would set forth in rowboats to run them down. The story was often told of
one small police boat being boarded by four river
toughs in search of loot and ready to clout the few crew
members. But when the hapless quartet opened the
cabin door, they suddenly found themselves surrounded
by two dozen club-wielding officers.
Later, steam launches were added to the fleet of the
harbor police, which subsequently developed into the
present-day Marine and Aviation Division, a unit recognized as probably the most efficient in the police
department. Several high officers during the early years
of the Steamboat Squad were dispatched to other cities
to demonstrate their effective techniques. Within a few
years the death knell was sounded for the long-lived
profession of river piracy, a crime that had plagued the
country since early colonial days.
See also: HOOK GANG.
Steunenberg, Frank
murder victim
Stevens, Walter (1867–1939) hit man
One of the most proficient killers in a city of killers,
Walter Stevens was known as the Dean of Chicago
Gunmen.
Stevens turned up first in Chicago shortly after the
turn of the century as a slugger and killer for Mossy
Enright’s union-busting mob. After Enright was murdered in 1920, Stevens became a freelance hit man,
often renting his guns out to Johnny Torrio and Al
Capone. There was direct evidence linking Stevens with
more than a dozen murders (although it was believed
he had committed at least 60), but he only went to
prison for one, the killing of a policeman in Aurora, Ill.
However, he was pardoned shortly after his incarceration by Gov. Len Small, evidently for past services rendered. Years before, Small had been accused of
embezzling more than $500,000 while serving as state
treasurer. Stevens bribed and threatened a number of
jurors and Small was acquitted.
While Stevens can only be described as ferocious in
his profession—he once did a killing as a favor for a
mere $50—he displayed an entirely different manner in
his home life. Well-educated, he enjoyed the works of
Robert Burns, Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack London. He neither drank nor smoked until he was 50, and
for 20 years he took excellent and doting care of his
invalid wife. He adopted three children and gave them
a good education. Stevens was also a prude. He censored his children’s reading material, tearing out pages
of books that he considered immoral. When he found
stage plays and movies not up to his puritanical standards, he ordered his children not to attend them. His
daughters were not allowed to wear short skirts or use
lipstick or rouge.
After an attempt was made on his life, Stevens
retired, earning the same description as Johnny Torrio:
“He could dish it out but he couldn’t take it.” Still, no
one ever said it to Stevens’ face during the last dozen
years of his life.
(1861–1905) Idaho governor and
Had union leader Big Bill Haywood been convicted of
the bombing murder of Frank Steunenberg, a former
Democratic governor of Idaho, there is little doubt that
the history of the American labor movement would
have been quite different.
A native of Keokuk, Iowa, Steunenberg was chosen
governor of Idaho in 1896 and reelected in 1898. As the
state’s chief executive he earned the enmity of the union
movement for his probusiness actions during the bitter
labor struggle in the Coeur d’Alene mines. After retiring
from public office, Steunenberg devoted himself to the
lumber company that eventually grew into Boise Cascade.
Late in 1905 Steunenberg was assassinated by a
bomb placed in his home by Harry Orchard, a labor
activist whose real name was Albert E. Horsley.
Orchard, some say in exchange for a promise of
leniency, named Big Bill Haywood, a leader of the
Western Federation of Miners, as a conspirator in the
assassination. The trial of Haywood attracted national
and international attention and pitted prosecutor and
future senator, William E. Borah, against the renowned
Stewart, Alexander Turney (1803–1876) graverobbing victim
The nation’s most sensational grave robbery was the
removal of the bones of A. T. Stewart, two years after
847
STILES, Billie
event that eventually had an ironic sequel. Handy with
a gun, Stiles hired out as a deputy to various lawmen
until he became an assistant to Burt Alvord, marshal of
Wilcox, Arizona Territory. Both men had experience in
chasing train robbers and both had the idea that it was
an easy crime to commit. The pair recruited a gang of
hardened gunslingers, including such leading desperadoes of the area as Three-Fingered Dunlap, Bob
Brown, Bravo Juan Yaos and George and Louis
Owens.
The gang thrived on a number of train robberies and
other holdups until 1900, when they were all identified
as perpetrators of a Southern Pacific train robbery near
Cochise on the previous September 9. All the gang
members denied their guilt except Stiles, who admitted
his part in the crime and was released on his offer to
testify against the others. However, he soon slipped into
the county jail, wounded the jailer and released his confederates.
Stiles and Alvord returned to the outlaw trail and
avoided capture for three more years. Finally retaken,
they escaped again and tried to cover their trail by faking their deaths; they even shipped coffins supposedly
bearing their remains to Tombstone. However, the Arizona Rangers continued their pursuit of the pair, finally
cornering them on an illegal raid into Mexico. Alvord
was wounded and captured in a gunfight but Stiles got
away. Eventually, Alvord went to prison for two years
and then vanished from the scene.
In January 1908 a Nevada deputy sheriff named
“William Larkin” shot and killed a fugitive from justice. When the officer rode back to his victim’s house,
the dead man’s distraught 12-year-old son seized a
shotgun and shot Larkin dead with a double blast.
Larkin was subsequently identified as the wanted Billie
Stiles, a man who had killed his own father at the age
of 12.
See also: BURT ALVORD.
Body snatchers turn over a bag containing the bones of
the late merchant prince A. T. Stewart for $20,000
ransom.
he died in 1876, from the churchyard of the venerable
St. Mark’s-in-the-Bouwerie in New York City. Since
Stewart was the greatest of the merchant princes of his
era and a multimillionaire, the grave ghouls demanded
a ransom of $200,000 for the return of the body. Negotiations over the ransom continued for two years
through newspaper personal columns until finally the
ghouls agreed to accept $20,000.
The transaction was made at midnight on a lonely
country road. The chief ghoul, using the assumed name
of Henry Romaine, and two others took the money in
exchange for a bag of bones, which were later definitely
established as Stewart’s. The identities of the grave robbers were never learned, although various police
authorities claimed the crime was the work of either the
notorious bank robber George Leonidas Leslie or the
fence Travelling Mike Grady.
The Stewart family reburied A. T. Stewart’s bones in
the mausoleum of the Cathedral of the Incarnation in
Garden City, Long Island, protected thereafter by an
intricate burglar alarm system.
Stiles, William C. “Bill” (1850–1939) James gang
outlaw
Bill Stiles was the last surviving member of the James
gang. Born in New York, Stiles, by his own admission,
spent his youth rolling drunks. He then journeyed west,
freelancing along the outlaw trail until 1876, when he
joined the James gang. Some historians insist that Stiles
was killed on September 7, 1876, when the JamesYounger gang was cut to pieces in the raid on the First
National Bank of Northfield, Minn. The man killed
was not Stiles but Bill Chadwell, a youth of 19 who had
joined the gang only a few weeks before. There was
some confusion thereafter about whether Bill Chadwell
and Bill Stiles were one and the same.
Stiles, Billie (?–1908) lawman and outlaw
Along with Burt Alvord, another law officer, Billie
Stiles headed the notorious Alvord-Stiles gang, which
terrorized the Southwest around the turn of the century. Both used their lawman positions as cover for
their nefarious activities.
Very little is known of Stiles’ early life except that
he was born in the Arizona Territory in the 1870s and
was said to have killed his father at the age of 12, an
848
STOCK thefts
coup,” especially one involving a sudden, brilliantly
successful move.
The word gained considerable prominence as a
result of the 1973 film The Sting, in which Paul Newman and Robert Redford played confidence men operating in Chicago.
Sting soon became a media buzz word. It was first
used in its most recent meaning to describe a warehouse fencing operation run by the District of Columbia Police Department in which undercover officers
bought a wide range of stolen goods from criminals.
Eventually, about 140 persons were arrested. Between
1973 and 1980 there were 93 federally assisted stings
in 47 cities, in which local police departments made
7,134 arrests and recovered $236 million in stolen
goods.
See also: FENCE.
Sometime after the breakup of the James gang,
Stiles worked his way east. In 1900 he was sent to
Sing Sing for killing an unarmed man in New York
City. Released in 1913, he kept his James gang membership a secret until shortly before his death in Los
Angeles on August 16, 1939, when he made a confession. The facts he told about his past life seem to
stand up, one of the few cases of a long-lost oldtimer’s tale doing so.
See also: NORTHFIELD, MINNESOTA BANK RAID.
sting
undercover law enforcement operation
The definition of the word “sting” has undergone a
number of changes through the decades. In the 1970s it
came to mean undercover operations by law enforcement agencies to gather evidence against criminals,
such as phony fencing setups or offers of political payoffs to government officials.
In the 1812 edition of J. H. Vaux’s Glossary of Cant
the verb “to sting” is defined as “to rob or defraud a
person or place.” By the 1880s the term was obsolete in
Britain, but according to Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of
the American Underworld, it survived in America as a
noun meaning “a cheat, a swindler” or a “criminal
stock thefts
It is probably accurate to say that all stock thefts,
except for an isolated instance or two, in the United
States are sponsored by organized crime. Syndicate
gangsters alone have the know-how and technical ability to launder and disseminate stolen negotiable securities. The extent of underworld activity in this field was
Part of the 150 cars, vans and trucks swept up in a recent “sting” operation by Indiana state police.
849
STOLEN car racket
revealed during hearings of the Senate Permanent
Investigations Subcommittee in 1971, when witnesses
testified that $400 million in securities had been stolen
without detection in the two previous years. Murray J.
Gross, an assistant district attorney for New York
County, said that organized crime operated its “virtual
monopoly” in the disposition of stolen securities often
in collusion with certain New York banks. According
to the prosecutor, some banks added stolen securities to
their assets to improve their financial position, and loan
officers were bribed to take stolen securities as collateral for loans. It was also reported that some small brokerage houses, generally the over-the-counter variety,
were suspected of being “created and controlled” as
conduits for organized crime. Knowledgeable crime
observers have often noted organized crime’s ability,
through its loan-sharking activities, to force financially
distressed Wall Street firms to do its bidding.
stolen car racket
due to the loss of amateur illegal activity. The pros survive, utilizing tow trucks and flatbeds to move vehicles.
If the cars are slated for export (which is true for about
40 percent of all cars that are never recovered), the
criminals replace the antitheft devices with about $400
of replacement parts. Organized crime still runs some
“chop shop” operations, stripping car parts for resale,
but it now prefers to steal cars that enjoy huge demand
in other countries, to which they can be shipped in
sophisticated big-time operations.
True, stolen vehicles have for years been shipped to
Latin American markets, but now a much bigger market exists in Europe, especially eastern Europe and Russia. Most cars stolen for export are concealed in the big
steel containers used to ship goods on trucks, flatbed
rail cars and cargo ships. It has not proven difficult to
conceal such shipments from customs agents since the
government obviously concentrates on seizing illegal
imports rather than watching exports.
The stolen vehicles that bring the most lucrative
prices overseas are luxury sport utility vehicles, such as
the Mercedes M-class and the Lexus RX-300, which
can best negotiate bad roads in countries like Russia,
China and Colombia. Says a spokesperson for the
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety: “Some drug
lord in Colombia says, ‘I want a Mercedes M-class,’
and poof, a Mercedes disappears in San Antonio or San
Diego and it shows up in Colombia in a crate.”
Car owners frequently receive inaccurate advice on
what model cars are most likely to be stolen. The standard information is that prime targets are Honda
Accords and Toyota Camrys. While it is true that such
numbers are accurate, they are really largely a reflection
of the number of such vehicles on the road. If one
instead goes by the percent of thefts by model, a recent
study shows the most stolen vehicle is the Jeep Wrangler.
In a recent year 1.7 percent of this small sport utility
vehicle disappeared. Other top models in such a realsteal list are the Suzuki Sidekick, 2-door; Toyota Land
Cruiser, Geo Tracker, 2-door; Acura Integra, 2-door—
all snatched almost as often as the Jeep Wrangler.
As Kim Hazelbaker, senior vice president of the
Highway Loss Data Institute, notes, “If you don’t have
a luxury sports car or a sport utility vehicle, you’re not
really at risk, except in high-crime neighborhoods.”
None of this indicates that drivers are not generally
in harm’s way. There is a troubling downside to the
technological war on car thieves. That very success has
apparently led to a big increase in carjackings. “If it’s
not going to run without a key, they’re going to walk
up and put a gun to your head and demand the key,”
says Edwin P. Sparkman, senior manager for vehicle
theft at the National Insurance Crime Bureau, an industry group. In 1999 the Justice Department said a survey
return of the professionals
When J. Edgar Hoover was running the FBI and ignoring organized crime, he never stopped crowing about
the agency’s success in running down car thieves. He
was criticized by many experts because he was trumpeting success against “criminals” who were often joyriding teenagers who hot-wired cars, had several hours of
fun and then abandoned them.
Joyriding has not completely disappeared in recent
years, but it occurs less frequently, mainly because
newer protective methods have made vehicles tougher
pickings for amateurs. Today, cars are stolen by pros,
many of whom are part of or working for organized
crime groups. What put the crimp in joyriding were
very sophisticated protective devices. One particularly
effective design places a miniature radio transponder
inside the base of each key. When the key is turned in
the ignition, a weak electrical current flows from the
car battery through the lock, and the key broadcasts a
coded signal over a two-inch range. The signal is
enough to be picked up by a sensor in the steering column, and the engine is permitted to turn on. If there is
no signal, nothing happens, even with a hot-wire start.
At first more adept thieves were able to solve this
problem by transmitting all the available codes, which
might be no more than a dozen combinations on some
models. Since then the technology has been vastly
improved. Ford, for example, has keys that have 10
quadrillion combinations, and engines won’t accept
any signal that takes more than 0.0007 seconds to
come through.
Insurers are happy with these car-theft-prevention
devices and have seen the theft rate on some models cut
by two-thirds from one year to the next. That is largely
850
STONE, John
advised to get out of England in 1957 after he had
threatened Turner with a razor. Despite this difference,
the pair reconciled, and shortly before Stompanato’s
death they had returned from a two-month stay in Acapulco, Mexico.
The actress said:
of 49,000 carjackings occurred annually over a recent
five-year period. The figure was twice as high than
criminologists had been expecting.
Actually carjackings are an even bigger problem elsewhere, especially in poorer countries. In South Africa,
one manufacturer sells flame-throwers to be attached
below a car’s doors so that marauders can be incinerated. American auto companies say they have no interest in devices that would injure car thieves. They note
that such devices are illegal in the United States, in any
event.
. . . I swear, it was so fast. I truthfully say I thought
she had hit him in the stomach.
As best I remember, they came together. But I
still never saw the blade. Mr. Stompanato grabbed himself here [indicating the abdomen].
And he started to move forward, and he made
almost a half-turn and he dropped on his back and
when he dropped, his arm went out, so that I still didn’t
see that there was blood or a wound until I ran over to
him and I saw his sweater was cut.
And I lifted the sweater up and I saw this wound.
I remember only barely hearing my daughter sobbing.
And I ran into my bathroom which was very close. And
I grabbed a towel. I didn’t know what to do. Then I
put a towel on Mr. Stompanato.
Stompanato, Johnny (1926–1958) “justifiable homicide”
victim
The death of Johnny Stompanato, a 32-year-old exbodyguard for gambler Mickey Cohen, in April 1958
was labeled a case of “justifiable homicide,” harkening
back to Hollywood’s real life murder and scandal days
in the 1920s and 1930s. For a year prior to Stompanato’s death, he had been the romantic interest of
Lana Turner, at 38 still one of Hollywood’s most glamorous actresses. Then, as the saying went, Turner “didn’t pick up his option.”
On the night of April 4 Cheryl Crane, the 14-yearold daughter of Lana Turner and Stephen Crane, the
second of Turner’s four husbands, was present when an
argument broke out between her mother and the gangster. As the girl later related to police:
A medical report indicated the knife had severed the
aorta and that the victim had died within minutes.
After hearing the evidence, the coroner’s jury
returned a verdict of justifiable homicide.
Cheryl Crane was a heroine, Lana Turner was a
heroine and Johnny Stompanato was memoralized by
Hollywood screenwriters who found ways to incorporate the drama into movie scripts.
See also: MICKEY COHEN.
I was in my room talking to mother when he came in
and began yelling at her. She told him “I don’t want to
argue in front of the baby.”
Then mother and he went into mother’s room
and I went to the door to listen. He kept saying that he
was going to have her cut and disfigured. I thought he
was going to get her.
I ran downstairs to the kitchen and grabbed the
first big knife I could find and raced back upstairs.
I stood outside the bedroom door, right around
the corner.
Then I heard him say, “I’ll get you if it takes a
day, a week or a year. I’ll cut your face up. I’ll stomp
you. And if I can’t do it myself I’ll find somebody who
will—that’s my business.”
I went into the room and I said, “You don’t have
to take that, mother.” Then I pushed the knife into his
stomach with all my might.
Stone, John (1806–1840) murderer
John Stone, Chicago’s first legally executed man, couldn’t claim he hadn’t been warned. In 1839 the Chicago
American, perhaps reacting to a Jackson, Mich. newspaper’s comment that “the population of Chicago is
said to be principally composed of dogs and loafers,”
issued a warning to “suspicious loafers about the city,”
including Stone, that they “had better, as soon as possible, make themselves scarce, or the city watch will be at
their heels.” Stone had already made quite a mark as a
“loafer” since arriving in Chicago in 1838. He had
served prison sentences in his native Canada for robbery and murder and in New York for horse stealing. In
Chicago he occasionally worked as a wood chopper but
spent much of his time in the city’s liquor groceries and
in a particularly frowned-upon establishment, the city’s
first billiard hall, one flight above Couch’s Tavern at
Lake and Dearborn streets.
Almost a year to the day after the newspaper warning, Stone was arrested for the rape and murder of a
The husky gangster crumpled without a word,
according to both mother and daughter.
At a coroner’s inquest, a week later, Lana Turner was
the star performer, describing the killing as well as her
relationship with Stompanato. The gangster had been
851
STORYVILLE
Cook County farmer’s wife, Mrs. Lucretia Thompson.
A 19th century historian summed up the case against
Stone and the verdict at his trial, noting:
body, which was delivered by Drs. Boone and Dyer,
pursuant to the order of the court, for dissection. It is
supposed that he died from strangulation and that his
neck was not broken in the fall, which was about four
feet.
A bit of flannel torn from a shirt which was proved to
have belonged to the accused and which was found
near the body of the victim, the burning by him of the
clothes worn in the earlier part of the day of her disappearance, the club used as the instrument of killing to
which still adhered, when found, a bunch of her hair,
and a remembered threat by him against her virtue,
sworn to by a single witness, in the absence of any circumstances pointing toward any other neighbor, were
deemed sufficient to warrant a verdict of murder in the
first degree. Nor has there been any doubt of its justice,
although John Stone stolidly asserted his innocence to
the last.
Storyville
New Orleans red-light district
For 20 years, from 1897 until 1917, Storyville in New
Orleans was the most famous red-light district in the
United States.
Long before Storyville emerged, New Orleans had
achieved the “almost universal reputation as the
promised land of harlotry,” as social historian Herbert
Asbury put it. Prostitutes from all over the country
flocked there. Eventually, the entire citizenry realized
that unless prostitution was somehow suppressed or
regulated, the entire city would become one vast
brothel. However, all the proposed solutions were shot
down in the cross fire between what might be called the
brothel lobby and the equally powerful lobby representing the clergy and respectable southern womanhood, which argued that a law licensing prostitutes
would legitimatize vice. Finally, in January 1897 the
city council adopted an ordinance introduced by Alderman Sidney Story, a leading broker, that provided for
the containment of prostitution in a prescribed area.
After considerable maneuvering, including lawsuits by
landlords in other parts of the city who would be left
tenantless if the harlots moved elsewhere, a quasi-legal
red-light district was established. It consisted of five
blocks on Customhouse, Bienville, Conti and St. Louis
streets and three on North Basin, Villere, Marais,
North Franklin, North Robertson and Treme streets.
As a result, a total of 38 blocks were to be occupied
exclusively by brothels, assignation houses, saloons,
cabarets and other types of businesses that depended on
vice for their prosperity. It was Alderman Story’s misfortune that the area took his name.
Inside of a year Storyville became the top attraction
of the city. Tours took visitors “down the line” so that
they could see the richly furnished parlors of the
plush, even palatial mansions of sin. Inside the
cabarets they could be shocked by the bawdy shows
and dancing and later they could peek through the
shutters of the hundreds of cribs in the cheaper houses
where naked girls lay waiting for customers. Actual
pleasure seekers could find houses to meet any purse.
In most of the crib-type brothels, flimsy one-story
wooden shanties, the price varied from 25¢ up to $1.
These establishments dominated St. Louis and Franklin streets and others could be found on Conti, Customhouse and North Robertson. A step up in class, $2
On July 10, 1840, handcuffed and chained, Stone
was placed in a wagon and escorted by 260 mounted
men under the command of Colonel Seth Johnson, who
“appeared in full uniform,” to a spot on the lakeshore
about three miles from the courthouse, where he was
hanged before a large and festive group of spectators.
The American described the event in full detail:
The execution took place about a quarter after three.
The prisoner ascended the scaffold, dressed in a loose
white gown, and with a white cap upon his head, as is
usual in such cases. He evinced much firmness upon
the gallows, under the circumstances, and in the presence of the spectators (among whom we regretted to
see women enjoying the sight) he persisted to the last
in the assertion of his innocence—which declaration
was publicly made in his behalf by the Sheriff, together
with his acknowledgement, as requested, of the satisfactory manner in which he was treated in the jail. He
stated that he was never in the house of Mrs. Thompson, and did not see her on the day she was murdered.
He also stated that he believed two individuals were
engaged in the murder, but on being asked if we knew
them, he replied in substance, that if he did he would
swing before their blood should be upon him. The Rev.
Mr. Hallam, Isaac R. Gavin, Sheriff, and Messrs.
Davis and Lowe, deputies, attended the prisoner on
the scaffold. The Sheriff seemed particularly affected,
even unto tears. After the beautiful, solemn and
impressive services of the Episcopal Church for such
occasions had been performed by Mr. Hallam, and the
appropriate admonitions bestowed, the death warrant
was read by Mr. Lowe, the knot adjusted, the cap
pulled over the face of the prisoner, and he was swung
into another world. After he was hung until he was
“dead, dead,” a wagon containing a coffin received his
852
STORYVILLE
Stella Clements, who now calls herself Stella
Moore, has taken the name of a performer in Haverly’s
Minstrels. Are you going to do the couche-couche,
Stella?
and $3 houses were located on Villere, Marais, Customhouse and North Liberty streets. Most of the $5
establishments were on North Basin Street. A good
number of them were imposing mansions, where
liaisons were conducted with great ceremony and elegance. Customers were expected to refrain from any
rudeness or bawdy behavior and no drunken gentlemen were accommodated. Naturally, these finer
houses sported such trappings as rooms with mirrored
walls and ceilings, ballrooms with fine hardwood
floors and curtained platforms for special circuses,
indecent dancing and other forms of erotic entertainment. Top houses had bands, consisting of two to four
musicians, who played in the ballrooms from about
seven o’clock in the evening until dawn. It was these
musicians who created jazz in the brothels on North
Basin Street.
Storyville even developed its own newspapers. One
such publication was the Mascot. A 5¢ tabloid that
appeared weekly starting in 1882, the Mascot was a
vigorous weekly on the liberal end of the political
spectrum. While it devoted considerable space to
crime and scandal in the vein of the Police Gazette,
the newspaper also performed valued service in
exposing high-level corruption. In the 1890s, however, the Mascot shifted more toward a Storyville orientation, instituting a column called “Society,” which
consisted of personal items about prostitutes, a sort
of harlot gossip column. The column reported such
news as:
Lou Raymond, better known as Kackling Lou,
ought to attend to her own business and quit poking
her nose into her neighbors’ affairs. The way Kackling
Lou has put the devil in a couple of young girls, who
were doing nicely with a neighbor of hers, was a caution. Such conduct on the part of a woman as old as
Kackling Lou is most mortifying. Now will you be
good, you naughty old girl, and attend to your own
business?
Storyville’s most famous publication was the Blue
Book. It was published regularly from 1902 on and
had a complete list of all prostitutes in residence in
Storyville. The girls were coded by race, sometimes
listed alphabetically and sometimes by street. There
was a special listing of “Late Arrivals.” The publication was 40 to 50 pages in length and sold for a quarter. It was on sale at hotels, railroad stations and
steamboat landings and was of course available in
saloons. The Blue Book was read as much for its
advertisements as for its editorial content. The ads
went straight to the point:
Martha Clark, 227 North Basin. “Her women are
known for their cleverness and beauty. Also, in being
able to entertain the most fastidious of mankind.”
Madame Julia Dean has received a draft of recruits,
and the fair Julia is bragging loudly of her importation.
She seems to forget that the ladies played a star engagement here last winter at Mme. Haley’s, and they all
carry their diplomas with them.
Diana and Norma, 213–215 North Basin.
“Their names have become known on both continents,
because everything goes as it will, and those that cannot be satisfied there must surely be of a queer
nature.”
It is safe to say that Mrs. (Madeleine) Theurer
can brag of more innocent young girls having been
ruined in her house than there were in any other six
houses in the city.
Eunice Deering, corner of Basin and Conti
Streets. “Known as the idol of the society and club
boys. . . . Aside from the grandeur of her establishment, she has a score of beautiful women.”
Several amateurs have been enjoying quite a
good time of late in the residence at the rear of a grocery store on Derbigny Street.
The Firm, 224 North Villere Street. Kept by Miss
Leslie. “The Firm is also noted for its selectness. You
make no mistake in visiting The Firm. Everybody must
be of some importance, otherwise he cannot gain
admittance.”
The Sunday Sun was perhaps more explicit in covering bawds. The following excerpts were taken from the
column “Scarlet World”:
Mary Smith, 1538 Iberville. “A pleasant time for
the boys.”
Miss Josie Arlington is suffering with a bad cold,
but she is on deck all the same attending to business.
Taps was sounded for Storyville when America
entered World War I. The army and navy issued orders
forbidding open prostitution within five miles of any
army cantonment or navy establishment. Federal agents
Jessie Brown is expecting two girls from
Atlanta, Ga.
853
STOUDENMIRE, Dallas
visited Storyville and ordered it closed. When New
Orleans mayor Martin Behrman went to Washington
to lodge a protest, he was told that if the city
didn’t close Storyville, the army and navy would.
After all manner of legal appeals—by city officials,
madams, whores—failed, a final appeal was made to
the Supreme Court, but it too was rejected and Storyville passed into history.
See also: JOSIE ARLINGTON.
Further reading: The French Quarter by Herbert
Asbury.
ning pulled a .45 and shot the struggling Stoudenmire
in the head, killing him. Doc Manning then straddled
the corpse and viciously pistol-whipped it until lawmen
pulled him away. In the subsequent legal proceedings
all the Mannings were cleared of any wrongdoing by
pleading self-defense.
Strang, Jesse
Stranglers
See JOHN WHIPPLE.
lynch law group
While the term “stranglers” was at times used to
describe any lynch mob or vigilante group, it was the
official name of one of the smallest group of Regulators
ever organized. Headed by a Montana rancher named
Granville Stuart, the Stranglers had a total membership
of only 14. Nevertheless, between mid-1884 and the
winter of 1886, the Stranglers hanged no less than 70
rustlers. This occurred during a period when vigilante
justice was no longer accepted as it had been some
years earlier. Very few of the Stranglers were ever identified, but they obviously included some of the “best
folks” in Montana, meaning the ones who had the
most to lose to rustlers. Stuart never officially admitted
his role as a Strangler, but his reputation as one certainly didn’t do him much harm, as he went on to pursue a successful political career.
See also: REGULATORS AND MODERATORS.
Stoudenmire, Dallas (1845–1882) lawman
Dallas Stoudenmire is one of the best real-life examples
of a Western lawman who came to be feared by the citizens he was supposed to protect, inspiring scores of
novel and movie plots thereafter.
A former Texas Ranger, Stoudenmire became city
marshal of El Paso in 1881 at the height of that community’s boomtown violence. He quickly established
his reputation as a lawman who shot first and talked
afterward. In one case Stoudenmire avenged the shooting of a constable by gunning down his killer, John
Hale, a partner of the Manning brothers, who controlled much of the town’s saloon business. In the melee
Stoudenmire also killed George Campbell, another
friend of the Mannings, although Campbell had cried
out he didn’t want to fight. And somewhat embarrasingly, the marshal also fatally shot an innocent
bystander. Despite this last mishap, the city fathers for
some time approved of their new marshal, who gained
the reputation of the toughest lawman in Texas.
Stoudenmire continued to turn El Paso into a shooting gallery and his private feud with the Mannings
erupted into a number of gunfights. The lawman
turned into a brooding drinker who frequently shot up
the streets. Some citizens began to see the choice
between the marshal and the Mannings as “picking
between two hells.” In April 1882 Stoudenmire and the
Mannings signed a “truce,” but even that pact, which
was doomed to failure, did not save the marshal’s job;
he was forced to resign the following month. Two
months later, he bounced back with a deputy U.S. marshal’s badge.
Stoudenmire’s hatred for the Mannings continued to
fester until September 18, when a barroom dispute
broke out between Stoudenmire and George “Doc”
Manning. Manning shot first and wounded Stoudenmire, who then wrestled his enemy out into the street,
bear-hugging him so that he could not shoot again.
Finally, Stoudenmire was able to draw a small belly gun
and shoot Doc Manning in the arm. Meanwhile, James
and Frank Manning came charging up and James Man-
Strauss, Harry
Strawan, Samuel
See PITTSBURGH PHIL.
(1845–1869) gunfighter
If, as some historians insist, few of Wild Bill Hickok’s
killings amounted to anything less than cold-blooded
murder, at least Sam Strawan can be remembered as
one of Hickok’s more deserving victims. Strawan was
gunned down in what has been called more than a fair
fight—Hickok’s back was turned as Strawan drew on
him. Hickok, however, drew faster, whirled and shot
his foe dead.
Strawan was known in Hays City, Kan. as a deadly
killer and gunfighter. He not only ignored the formation of a vigilance committee and an order to leave
town but pistol-whipped a leading vigilante, Alonzo B.
Webster. Yet when Hickok was named sheriff in August
1869, Strawan departed. On September 27 Strawan
ended his exile by riding into town with 18 other cowboys and taking over John Bitter’s Leavenworth Beer
Saloon on South Fort Street. The gunfighter announced
he was going to “kill someone tonight just for luck.”
When Hickok arrived on the scene, the drunken cow854
STROUD, Robert Franklin
boys had taken most of the saloon’s glasses out to the
street. Smilingly, Hickok retrieved them, saying, “Boys,
you hadn’t ought to treat a poor old man in this way.”
Strawan followed Hickok into the saloon and said
he was going to break every glass in the place. “Do,”
Wild Bill retorted, “and they will carry you out.”
According to some reports, Hickok then turned his
back on Strawan and faced a mirror. When he saw
Strawan draw, he pulled his gun, turned and fired first.
Other witnesses say Hickok was not facing a mirror
but “sensed” Strawan was about to draw and drew,
whirled around and fired before his victim could. If this
were the case and Strawan had not gone for his gun,
Hickok undoubtedly would have suffered nothing more
than embarassment, as he had in a number of his other
quick-triggered gun “duels.”
See also: WILD BILL HICKOK.
Street, Julian
large troop of men out of sight and waited for a big
battle to break out. When one did, the strong-armers
waded in, clubbing Englishmen and Irishmen indiscriminately. When the police left the street, scores of rioters
lay bleeding on the ground. After that, 22nd Street was
a safe and peaceful thoroughfare.
The public approved of Walling’s action, and he
eventually went on to serve as the city’s superintendent
of police from 1874 to 1885. However, his strong-arm
tactics eventually fell into disrepute, although his theories were carried on by the likes of Alexander “Clubber” Williams, who, like so many strong-armers, was
to prove somewhat inept at separating the innocent
from the guilty.
See also: HONEYMOON GANG, ALEXANDER “CLUBBER”
WILLIAMS.
Stroud, Robert Franklin (1887–1963) murderer and
Birdman of Alcatraz
See JULIAN STREET.
Probably the most famous prisoner in the history of the
federal prison system, Robert F. Stroud, the Birdman of
Alcatraz, was the subject of a book, a movie and
numerous magazine and newspaper articles about both
his accomplishments behind bars and the kind of treatment he received on “the Rock.”
A 19-year-old pimp in Juneau, Ala., Stroud shot
dead a local bartender who had not only refused to pay
for services rendered but had beaten up one of his prostitutes. Stroud drew 12 years in prison, first at McNeil
Island and later at Leavenworth. In March 1916,
shortly before he was scheduled to complete his sentence, Stroud got into an altercation with a prison
guard in the mess hall and stabbed him with a knife.
The guard died. There was a controversy over whether
Stroud had acted without provocation, as the authorities claimed, or whether the guard had been about to
club him, as Stroud said and many of the 300 other
prisoners agreed. It was also uncertain whether the
guard died of the stab wounds or as the result of a heart
condition.
In any case, Stroud was tried and sentenced to death.
After Stroud’s mother pleaded with President Woodrow
Wilson for clemency, Wilson, at the behest of Mrs. Wilson, commuted Stroud’s sentence to life imprisonment
with the stipulation that he would spend all his remaining years in solitary confinement. In his Leavenworth
isolation cell, Stroud gained his Birdman nickname for
writing two books on bird diseases and establishing a
makeshift laboratory. He developed into one of the
country’s genuine authorities on bird ailments.
As the years passed, moves to win his release were
launched by thousands of supporters, including veterinarians, bird breeders and poultry raisers. However,
strong-arm squads
It has been an age-old tactic of police forces faced with
a serious outbreak of crime to resort to strong-arm
methods. Possibly the first strong-arm squad in this
country was organized by Capt. George W. Walling of
the New York Police Department in 1853. Capt.
Walling had long noted that the average city thug
would seldom fail to flinch before a policeman armed
with a heavy locust club and that what a criminal most
feared was a thorough thumping. Walling decided to
use a tactic he called “preventive patrolling,” ordering
his men to club known gangsters on sight.
The first targets of preventive patrolling were a
notorious East Side gang, the Honeymooners, who
were so brazen that they took control of the intersection of Madison Avenue and 29th Street from dusk to
midnight and simply attacked every prosperous-looking man who came along. Walling put his patrolmen in
plain clothes and sent them into Honeymooner territory for a pre-emptive strike. It worked like a charm,
and within a matter of weeks the Honeymoon Gang
disappeared from the area, because to stay meant being
beaten with clubs.
Capt. Walling then used his men, now dubbed the
Strong Arm Squad, against the English and Irish rioters
of 22nd Street. That slum street between Second and
Third avenues was the sight of as many as a dozen
fights an evening, with the denizens swarming into the
street to do battle at the slightest excuse. Police would
only enter the area in groups of three or more. Plagued
by newspaper demands that something be done to protect innocent pedestrians, Walling one night massed a
855
STRUCK, Lydia
Stroud had killed an officer of the federal prison system, and government authorities were committed to
keeping him behind bars and in isolation for life. There
is no doubt that had Stroud been given his freedom,
morale among the prison guard cadre would have
sagged badly, perhaps affecting the entire operation of
the system.
In 1934 Alcatraz Prison opened as the ultimate cage
for super criminals. It soon housed convicts deemed to
be the most troublesome and dangerous and those considered most likely to attempt an escape. In 1942
Stroud was ordered, on 10-minutes notice, to prepare
to leave Leavenworth. He was not permitted to take his
laboratory, his birds or his books. Since Stroud seemed
unlikely to try to escape or to lead a riot, his transfer to
Alcatraz smacked of official sadism. Ironically, Stroud
became famous as the Birdman of Alcatraz, although
he never conducted any of his bird studies there, since
he was confined under conditions that prevented him
from carrying on such work.
At Alcatraz, Warden James A. Johnston seems to
have done what he could to lighten Stroud’s burden, at
least permitting him to have books and writing material
and to communicate with his publisher. Stroud busied
himself on a mammoth history of the federal prison system. In 1946 Stroud got out of his isolation cell for the
first time in 26 years during the famous Alcatraz rebellion, during which six convicts attempted the most dramatic and bloody escape ever from the Rock. In the riot
that ensued, Stroud was released into the cell block. He
took no part in the violence and was, in fact, instrumental in getting the authorities to stop their bombing of the
cell block by giving the warden his word that none of
the prisoners in the block had guns. Even this deed,
along with a new rash of news stories about him, did
not help Stroud’s plight. He was returned to solitary
confinement, and in 1948 a new warden, E. B. Swope,
who succeeded Johnston, tightened the reins on Stroud,
so that he could no longer keep in touch with his supporters or write any more business letters.
The fight for the Birdman, now in his sixties, went
on, but his health was shattered. Finally, in 1959, after
a string of illnesses, the Birdman was transferred to the
Federal Medical Center at Springfield, Mo. His isolation remained as complete as ever. He died in 1963 at
the age of 76. He had spent 56 years behind bars, most
of them in isolation. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons never
permitted the release or publication of his massive
study of the federal prison system.
kill 102 persons and successfully poisoned at least 27.
Helen Jegado of France officially did in 26 and may
well have finished off another dozen or so. In the
United States, Jane Toppan nursed and poisoned at
least 31 persons in her care, and her final toll may have
been over 100. Lydia Struck had a mere eight confirmed poisonings and three more probables. But while
she didn’t come close to breaking the record, for sheer
callousness Lydia may well be at the head of the list.
Lydia’s first victim was her husband of 17 years, a
rogue cop fired from the New York City Police Department for cowardice. Edward Struck devoted full time to
drinking, and when he drank, he got mean, and when
he got mean, he beat Lydia. After one of his tears, Ed
Struck grew morose and screamed that he was no good
and would kill himself someday. Lydia promptly went
out and got some arsenic to use as rat poison. Ed
Struck died. Apparently, he had gone out of his mind in
a fit of remorse and poisoned himself. All the neighbors
said that was what had happened and the police
agreed. Even the insurance company that carried a
$5,000 policy on him as a policeman paid without
question.
Lydia took the four young Struck children to live in
Connecticut. Since they reminded her of her unlamented husband, she poisoned each of them. The children’s deaths attracted no attention since Lydia claimed
no insurance on them and was new to the state. After
that, Lydia became a nurse for Dennis Hurlbut, a 75year-old Bridgeport widower who said that if she married him, he’d leave her his entire estate. They were
married and Hurlbut lasted only 14 months. It was
arsenic that did him in, but no one suspected that anything other than old age had finished him off.
Lydia’s next husband was Horatio Sherman of
Derby, Conn. In a way, this was a misstep for Lydia.
She was sure Sherman was a man of property and considerable wealth. Only later did she learn that he had
married her for her money. Moreover, he drank. Even
worse he had two children who drove her crazy. Lydia
poisoned the children first. Then she poisoned Sherman as well. There was no profit in these last three
murders and Lydia simply moved into the home of an
apple farmer as a housekeeper. The arrangement soon
turned amorous and Lydia was considering a proposal
of marriage when the police located her. Somehow
they had gotten suspicious about the deaths of Sherman and his two children happening so close together
and had exhumed the man’s body. His vital organs
were sent to Yale University and found to be loaded
with arsenic.
Lydia confessed all eight murders. For some reason
she would admit the murders of the six children, Struck
and Sherman but not that of old Hurlbut, even though
Struck, Lydia (1833–1879) poisoner
Madame Van der Linden, the Leiden poisoner, between
1869 and 1885 attempted, according to the record, to
856
SUICIDE by cop
Matthew Stuart said he had thrown the evidence
into the Pines River in the suburb of Revere. Police
recovered the purse and the .38-caliber revolver, which
turned out to be the murder weapon.
With the police now zeroing in on him, Charles Stuart killed himself by jumping from a bridge into Boston
Harbor. It seemed that Stuart’s motives had been at
least twofold: He had taken out a large amount of life
insurance on his wife and appeared to have had a
romantic involvement with a young woman who had
worked in a store he had managed.
he too had suffered the fatal effects of arsenic. She kept
insisting he might well have taken the arsenic “accidentally.” Authorities suspected Lydia of dispatching three
other men, but she would not confess to those crimes
either and there was little point in pursuing the matters.
More than enough evidence had been accumulated
against her. She was sentenced to life at the Connecticut
State Prison at Wethersfield and died there of cancer in
1879, her sixth year of confinement.
Stuart, Charles (1960–1989) the not-so-heroic husband
A murder case that deeply affected the social scene was
the 1989 shooting of 29-year-old Charles Stuart and his
30-year-old wife, Carol, who was killed in the incident.
It was to stir racial tensions in Boston, since the Stuarts
were white and the gunman was allegedly black.
According to the story Charles Stuart gave police at
the time, he and his seven-month-pregnant wife had
just left a childbirth class at Brigham and Women’s
Hospital on October 23, 1989, when a gun-wielding
black man jumped into their car. Stuart recounted that
the assailant had ordered him to drive to an inner-city
neighborhood where he robbed them. The assailant,
Stuart said, then shot Carol in the head and Charles in
the stomach before fleeing. Stuart managed to maintain
consciousness and called the police on his cellular car
telephone. Tapes of his dramatic call for help and the
frantic search for the car were broadcast on radio and
television stations from coast to coast.
When the wounded couple was found, they were
hurried to the hospital, but Carol Stuart died the
next day. Her baby, named Christopher, was delivered
by cesarean section but lived only 17 days. Slowly,
Charles Stuart recovered, and the hunt was on for the
black killer. It was no exaggeration to say that racial
hysteria gripped the city. Black leaders criticized city
police, Mayor Raymond Flynn and the local media
for their response to the case. The mayor ordered 100
extra officers into the predominantly black Mission
Hill neighborhood where the Stuarts had been located.
Residents told of police breaking into their apartments
and routinely stopping and frisking young black men.
On December 28, Charles Stuart identified a black
man in a lineup as resembling the man who had shot
him and his wife.
However, shortly thereafter there was a startling
twist in the case. Stuart’s brother, Matthew, implicated
Charles in the shooting. He said that as part of an
arrangement he had made with Charles, he had driven
to the area of the shooting and picked up Carol’s purse,
together with a revolver that Charles apparently had
used to shoot his wife and then wound himself.
suicide by cop
deliberately seeking to be shot
While the news media in the 1990s devoted itself to
reporting allegations of police brutality that often
resulted in death and inevitably led to charges of police
out of control, there was another growing phenomenon that put officers in a bad light. The baffling concept is known to police and psychologists as “suicide
by cop.”
While firm statistics are not available on the frequency of such suicides, it has been estimated that of
the 600-odd fatal police shootings per year, about 10
percent are clearly provoked by individuals seeking to
make a police officer shoot—usually under threat of
shooting the officers.
Item: A 46-year-old cancer patient who was shot
and wounded after pulling a gun on two Jersey City,
N.J., police officers eating in a pizza parlor. Clearly,
he wanted to die.
Item: A 19-year-old college student with a destructive gambling problem was shot and killed after he
pulled a toy gun on officers who had pulled him over
for driving erratically on the Long Island Expressway.
Item: A security guard brandished two guns outside
a police station in Shelby, South Carolina, and
screamed at officers, “Do your job! It’s going to end
here.” It did.
Perhaps persons who opt for suicide by cop are
essentially no different in motivation from other suicides, but what remains a matter of some bafflement is
why they single out cops as their executioners. There
are documented cases of persons planning such acts of
self-destruction actually telling loved ones or friends
that they intended to get the police to shoot them.
About one-third of suicides by cop leave notes apologizing to the police for intentionally making them their
executioners.
Dr. Deirdre Anglin of the University of Southern
California points out, “Suicide is still socially taboo.
857
SUBMACHINE gun
This way you’re not actually killing yourself.” Dr.
Anglin cites other possible motivations: cowardice,
religious prohibitions against suicide, not wishing to
jeopardize their families’ inheriting insurance money
because of policy restrictions, and being simply incapable of committing the act themselves.
Additionally, Clinton R. Van Zandt, a former chief
negotiator for the FBI, notes, “What it all comes down
to is that people know the police have weapons. If you
drive your car into a bridge abutment, you may not die.
But provoking a cop—there’s good reason to believe
that’s going to kill you.”
Studies of suicide conducted by researchers at the
Harvard Medical School and in British Columbia have
helped pinpoint the typical suicide by cop figure. He is
a white man in his mid-20s with a record of drug and
alcohol abuse. His acts are often triggered by a deterioration of an important personal relationship.
A recent study on suicide by cop analyzed by Sgt.
John Yarbrough of the L.A. County Sheriff’s homicide
bureau indicates “a break-up or a divorce with no
belief that there can be a reconciliation is often the significant contributing factor. They are helpless to change
their situation and they often suffer the frustration of, ‘I
can’t get it back, it’s over.’”
One of the chief victims of suicide by cop actions
are, although it is often not known to the public, the
cops themselves. It is one thing to get involved in a
shooting with a real or even a perceived sense of
duty or at least self-preservation; however, suicide by
cop plots leave the officers with, says expert Bill Geller, “feelings of powerlessness, feelings of being manipulated.” Geller, author of Deadly Force: What We
Know, adds that most officers in suicide by cop incidents tend to retire prematurely.
submachine gun
Suicide Hall
glasses before jumping. If they fell with their glasses on,
it is because they were pushed.
A man is found in his bathroom with a long butcher
knife in his chest, the blade penetrating through the
front of his shirt. Suicide or murder? Again, it’s probably murder. Suicides don’t stab themselves through
their clothing. A man will remove his shirt or at least
pull it back out of the way. Women who commit suicide
by stabbing themselves also will strip bare to the waist
or perhaps leave on only a bra. Women rarely stab
themselves with long-bladed knives. A female suicide
will tend to use a small knife and stab herself 20 or 30
times in the stomach until she passes out from loss of
blood and finally dies.
Sumner, Charles (1811–1874) U.S. Senator and assault
victim
The halls of Congress have been the scene of numerous
acts of violence, most perpetrated by outsiders, of
course. Perhaps the most criminal attack by one congressman upon another occurred in 1856 in what was,
in a personal sense, a preview of the coming Civil War.
On May 19 Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts
delivered a fiery attack on the proslavery forces, charging that Sen. Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina had
embraced “the harlot, Slavery” as his “mistress.” Three
days later, Rep. Preston S. Brooks, Butler’s nephew and
also a native of South Carolina, strode onto the Senate
floor to avenge the insult to his uncle. As Sumner sat at
his desk writing, Brooks charged at him and proceeded
to beat him over the head with the heavy cane he was
carrying. Sumner toppled to the floor under the savage
barrage, tearing the desk from its moorings as he struggled to move away. Brooks pounded on Sumner’s head
until his cane broke. Two Georgia senators watching
nearby were reported to have chuckled at the attempted
murder. Sumner survived the assault, although he was
nearly blinded in one eye and was disabled for a number of years. As for Rep. Brooks, he was showered with
gifts of canes and whips from southern admirers. From
that date until secession, many congressmen appeared
on the legislative floor armed with pistols or bowie
knives or both.
See CHICAGO PIANO.
See MCGUIRK’S SUICIDE HALL.
suicide investigations
One of the first tasks for police investigating a mysterious or unexplained violent death is to determine
whether it is an accident or a case of suicide or murder.
Police use their own brand of intuition to come up with
the likely answer, aided by the knowledge that suicides
tend to act in predictable ways. A man’s body is found
on a sidewalk outside a tall building, his glasses
smashed with slivers of glass imbedded in his face.
Murder or suicide? Almost certainly, it is murder. Police
know that genuine suicides will invariably take off their
Sundance Kid (1863–1911?) Wild Bunch outlaw
Hollywood has given us a romantic picture of Butch
Cassidy and Harry Longbaugh, the Sundance Kid, as
being two of the closest buddies in the outlaw West, but
in fact, Cassidy was often ill at ease with Sundance. He
preferred the company of such stalwarts as Elzy Lay
and Matt Warner. Both were genuine wits, a trait Sundance also displayed but only when sober. Unfortu858
SUTTON, Willie “The Actor”
nately, when he was drunk, he was very mean. And
Sundance was often drunk.
At the age of 14, Longbaugh was arrested for horse
stealing and spent a year and a half in jail in Sundance,
Wyoming Territory. Upon his release he was dubbed
the Sundance Kid and continued his outlaw ways,
becoming a regular resident of such criminal hideouts
as Robber’s Roost and Hole in the Wall. By 1892 Sundance was an accomplished train robber. A few years
later, he was working on the Bar FS ranch in Wyoming
where he became acquainted with Butch Cassidy. The
pair often talked of going legitimate as big ranchers.
When instead Cassidy organized his Wild Bunch, Sundance eagerly joined up.
After each robbery the gang would ride hell-forleather to Fannie Porter’s gaudy bordello in Fort Worth,
while angry posses would continue to search for them
up North. Fannie considered Cassidy a wild one but,
on the whole, well behaved. The same could not be said
of Sundance. Sober, he was charming, but once he
started drinking, he would often lock himself in the
brothel for days and shoot up the place. Fanny became
particularly angry with him when he shot down the
expensive chandelier she had installed in her parlor.
After Sundance sobered up the next morning, he sheepishly dug into his pockets to pay for the damages.
In late 1896 Sundance met up with Etta Place, who
some say was a former schoolteacher. More likely, she
was one of Fanny’s “soiled doves.” Etta was a fine
horsewoman and an excellent markswoman. Thereafter,
she rode with the Wild Bunch and is believed to have
acted as lookout in a number of robberies. There are
those who say she divided her favors between Cassidy
and Sundance, but the latter was clearly her top choice.
She was most understanding of the ways of her man and
even rode with him and Butch on their forays to Fannie’s
place. When Sundance “caught cold,” i.e., contracted
venereal disease, as he often did, Etta nursed him.
In 1901 the Wild Bunch was falling apart. Many had
been caught and others shot. Cassidy realized the old
days were over. The telegraph, the Pinkertons and the
steady advance of civilization spelled the end for the
hell-raising cowboy-bandit. So, Cassidy, Sundance and
Etta Place headed for South America. It is known that
they remained there until 1907, reportedly trying for a
while to go straight but soon hitting the outlaw trail,
with Etta an active participant in some of the jobs.
Then the record begins to peter out. Etta became ill and
Sundance took her back to the States for medical treatment, dropping her off in either New York or Denver,
and then presumably returning to South America to
rejoin Cassidy. For some time it was generally believed
that Sundance and Butch were killed in San Vincente,
Bolivia in 1911 after hijacking a money-laden mule
859
train. However, since there is some evidence that Cassidy later turned up in the United States and visited
often with his family in Utah, that theory has been
revised. Perhaps Cassidy survived and only Sundance
was killed. According to this version, Sundance had
been so shot up by attacking Bolivian soldiers that he
gave Cassidy his money belt to give to Etta Place and
then had Butch finish him off. However, Butch Cassidy’s sister, Lula Parker Betenson, in a book entitled
Butch Cassidy, My Brother (1975), insisted her brother
told her Sundance had not been killed and had subsequently joined up with Etta Place in Mexico, where
Cassidy later met up with the couple for a happy
reunion.
In the late 1990s there was a report that Cassidy’s
grave was located in Bolivia, but full confirmation was
not offered.
See also: BUTCH CASSIDY, ETTA PLACE, WILD BUNCH.
Sunset Laws
During the Reconstruction era, a number of unscrupulous white men financed a crime wave in southern
states by establishing stores whose real purpose was to
receive stolen corn, cotton and other farm products
from thieves, mostly blacks and poor whites, in
exchange for whiskey, cheap jewelry and sweets. The
thefts became so prevalent that southern lawmakers
finally passed statutes, which became known as Sunset
Laws, that forbade any trading or purchase of farm
products after sunset unless a full written, witnessed
record of the transaction was made. Since these laws
made the movement of such products after dark automatically suspect, they effectively reduced the thefts
that were driving farmers into bankruptcy.
“Sunset” Slayer
“Super Max”
See DOUGLAS CLARK.
See ALCATRAZ OF THE ROCKIES.
Sutton, Willie “The Actor” (1901–1980) bank robber
One of the most-storied criminals of modern times,
Willie “the Actor” Sutton started committing burglaries at the age of 10 and went on to be known as the
Babe Ruth of Bank Robbers. When asked why he
robbed banks, Sutton replied, “Because that’s where the
money is,” although some claim that the explanation
was actually supplied by a journalist. He earned his
nickname the Actor because of the many disguises he
used in holding up banks. On his capers, which netted
him an estimated $2 million over 35 years, he masquer-
SUTTON-Taylor feud
face and braiding a rope from string to scale the prison
wall, they allowed him to continue his efforts until he
was almost finished, on the theory that if they stopped
him, he would merely start on another plot.
In 1951 Sutton was placed on the FBI’s list of the 10
most wanted criminals and was captured the following
year after being spotted on a Brooklyn street by a
young salesman named Arnold Schuster. In a bizarre
twist, Schuster was murdered by a gunman hired by
crime overlord Albert Anastasia, who, although he did
not know Sutton, was enraged at Schuster for squealing. Sutton was appalled at the act, mainly because he
realized public anger over the killing would doom him
to a longer prison sentence. He was right; he drew a
term of 60 years to life.
Released from prison in 1969, Sutton became a
consultant to banks on security matters. He signed
with the New Britain Bank and Trust Co. in Connecticut to promote its new photo credit card. “Now when
I say I’m Willie Sutton,” he said during a television
commercial, “people believe me.” Looking back, the
Actor agreed that his way of life had robbed him
far more than he had robbed banks. He had spent
33 of the 43 years from 1926 to 1969, the prime of
his adult years, in prison. Sutton died November 2,
1980 in Spring Hill Fla., where he had lived in retirement.
See also: ARNOLD SCHUSTER, FREDERICK J. TENUTO.
aded as a postman, messenger, window cleaner and
even bank guard and police officer. “I love it,” Sutton
wrote in his memoirs, Where the Money Was. “I was
more alive when I was inside a bank robbing it than at
any other time in my life.”
Although he committed numerous crimes from the
age of 10 to 25, Sutton managed to stay out of prison
until 1926, when he was sent to Sing Sing for four years
on a burglary conviction. Upon his release he decided
to make a career in armed robbery and led many of the
country’s most spectacular bank robberies, all committed with far more care and precision than those pulled
by the Dillinger mob. However, as if to belie his reputation as a master thief, he was caught quite often but
was able to achieve a new dimension of fame by his
ability to break out of jail.
Sutton escaped from Sing Sing and from Holmesburg
Prison near Philadelphia, though his most famous
breakout scheme was unsuccessful. In 1941 he fashioned a plaster head that looked very much like him,
and planned to leave it in his bunk while he escaped.
Although guards discovered him working on his dummy
Sutton-Taylor feud
One of Texas’ bloodiest feuds was that between the
Suttons and the Taylors. It started in the 1840s, when
the two families were neighbors in South Carolina and,
occasionally, a member or members of one family
would kill someone from the other family. Ironically,
both clans pulled up stakes in the 1860s and picked
DeWitt County, Tex. as a new home, ending up as
neighbors and fellow cattlemen. For a time nothing
more lethal than a stray bullet or two passed between
them, but in 1868 the feud was rekindled in earnest
when Bill Sutton, at the time a deputy sheriff, shot to
death Charley Taylor, who was suspected of stock theft.
Six months later, he caught Buck Taylor in a saloon in
Clinton and gunned him down. The fighting now broke
out in earnest, with the county’s gunfighters dividing
equally into armed bands of about 200 each. Despite
the efforts of the Texas Rangers, the feud could not be
contained for another six years, during which a number
of famous partisans took up one banner or another.
The Suttons rallied to their cause Indian fighter Joe
Tumlinson, cattleman Shanghai Pierce and the notoriously brutal lawman Jack Helm. The Taylors attracted
the violent Clements brothers (Mannen, Gyp, Jim and
A legend in his own lifetime, bank robber and prison
escaper Willie Sutton was lionized in his later years.
Hospitalized in 1970, he got hundreds of get-well cards
from his fans.
860
SWEENEY’S Bombers
wife and Rachel Cunningham, described as the loveliest
harlot in Washington County.
Complaints against Rachel Cunningham were so
numerous that the sheriff was forced to call on her several times to advise her to leave the district. Each time,
however, Swearingen became less insistent, and soon the
pair were carrying on a torrid affair, which quickly
became common knowledge in the county. The sheriff,
an extremely wealthy landowner, totally neglected his
business affairs as well as his wife. No amount of urging
from friends could make him give up his newfound love.
One day early in 1829 Swearingen went out riding
with his wife along the Hagerstown Road. He returned
bearing her body across his mount. Swearingen insisted
that his wife had been thrown from her horse and
killed.
The story did not go over well in the community.
The authorities questioned the sheriff closely about the
matter. One night Swearingen picked up Rachel Cunningham and the pair disappeared. Eventually, they
were found living in New Orleans and extradited to
Maryland. Although the evidence against Swearingen
was insubstantial, he was convicted of murder and
hanged at Cumberland, Md. on October 2, 1829,
probably as much for his scandalous behavior as for
the alleged homicide.
Joe) and their even more violent cousin, John Wesley
Hardin.
Hardin killed Helm in 1873 in a gun duel that was
actually closer to an execution. In the various battles at
least 40 men died in DeWitt County and adjacent Gonzales County. The Suttons suffered their most grievous
loss in 1874 when Bill Sutton was killed. Bill and Jim
Taylor had learned that Bill Sutton was aboard a steamboat about to leave Indianola for a trip to New
Orleans. The Taylors rode onto the pier and dashed
aboard, confronting Sutton and a friend, Gabe Slaughter, as they stood on deck with Sutton’s young wife and
child. As Mrs. Sutton looked on aghast, Jim Taylor shot
Sutton in the head and heart and Bill Taylor fatally
wounded Slaughter in the head.
The Taylors escaped, but the following year a band
of Sutton supporters cornered Jim Taylor and two
companions on a drinking expedition and literally
cut them to pieces in a hail of bullets. After that, the
fighting between the families petered out, most of the
best fighters having been killed. Finally, in the late
1870s Bill Taylor left Texas for Indian Territory, where
he became a law officer and later died in a gunfight
with a criminal.
See also: JACK HELM, JOHN WESLEY HARDIN.
Swamp Angels New York gang
Sweeney’s Bombers
Just prior to and during the Civil War, the Swamp
Angels were among the most prolific waterfront thieves
in New York. Rendezvousing in the sewers under
Cherry Street, they would work their way to the East
River docks, loot cargo and carry it back underground
directly to the headquarters of a fence, where they
would sell the stolen property before it was even
missed. The police tried to contain the Swamp Angels
by posting sharpshooters on the docks. Eventually, officers had to descend into the sewers to do nightly battle
with the gang. Regular sewer patrols finally cramped
Swamp Angel operations, but the waterfront was a big
place, and the gang simply shifted to hijacking cargoes
on the streets as they were being delivered to or coming
from the piers.
The Swamp Angels were never conquered. They simply changed in composition through the years, so that
by the 1920s their descendants were running the notorious White Hand Gang, still looting the docks as well
as battling with Italian gangsters.
gang of hired bombers
Criminal bombings in America were probably first
practiced by Black Hand extortionists preying on Italians in the big cities and then by rival gamblers in
numerous wars between them. However, these were
merely the efforts of individual criminals who used
bombs just as they would guns or any other death-dealing weapons. The first organized, professional band of
bombers was probably a gang in Chicago called
Sweeney’s Bombers.
The head of the gang was a mean character named
Jim Sweeney, who during World War I bossed a gang
of bombers and sluggers ready to take on any job for
a price. The Sweeney gang was hired frequently during Chicago’s laundry union organizing disputes. In
1921 Andrew Kerr, a member of the International Union of Steam and Operating Engineers, confessed that the Sweeney gang had been used to bomb
four laundries against which the engineers were conducting a strike. He revealed the membership of
Sweeney’s Bombers, including Sweeney, Soup Bartlett,
the gang’s explosive expert, and Con Shea, its labor
agitator, whose duty it was to solicit business. Kerr
revealed that the union had assigned him to see that
the Sweeney outfit carried out all jobs effectively.
In one instance Kerr gave the names of 25 individuals
Swearingen, George (?–1829) murderer
An early Maryland murder, which is still the subject of
dispute, had all the ingredients of a spicy love triangle.
It involved the local sheriff, George Swearingen, his
861
SWITZER, Carl “Alfalfa”
to be slugged and the addresses of seven laundries
to be bombed. The gang completed the entire mission. For his part Kerr received only the regular
$15 strike benefit paid by the union. Kerr’s testimony
led to the destruction of the bombing outfit; Sweeney
and Bartlett were sentenced to long prison terms at
Joliet.
Switzer, Carl “Alfalfa” (1927–1959) shooting victim
From the age of eight, Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer was perhaps the most recognizable kid star in Hollywood with
his freckled face, bobbing Adam’s apple, and everpresent cowlick. Featured in the irrepressible Our Gang
comedies along with the likes of Spanky, Buckwheat,
Darla and Porky, Switzer performed in 60 of these Hal
Roach pictures with an endearing off-key singing voice
and banjo eyes that earned him the admiration of millions of American kids. But as it must to all kid stars,
adolescence overtook him, and in 1942 he could not
continue in his role.
Switzer took the end of his juvenile stardom more
crushingly that did most young stars, and he became
embittered while still trying to string together some sort
of screen career—with very little success. A few
“mature” roles came his way, but the feeling was that
he could not escape his persona as Alfalfa. He had held
a few nonacting jobs and drank a good deal by the
1950s. Then the old Our Gang comedies came to television as the Little Rascals. Everyone connected with
that operation made money but not the Our Gang kids,
who had no TV residuals in their contracts since at the
time no one thought television would ever amount to
much.
The situation made Switzer even more bitter. If it
were not for friends like Henry Fonda and Roy Rogers,
Switzer would probably have gotten no more acting
work. Rogers booked him for a couple of minor
appearances on his television show and Fonda got him
a few minor movie roles. Switzer married a Kansas
heiress, but that union collapsed after four months.
Switzer had to take bartending jobs and tried to
build a career as a hunting guide, being quite a proficient hunter. Through Fonda, he lined up the backing for a good hunting expedition and in need of
a good hunting dog, he borrowed one belonging
to a friend, a welder named Bud Stiltz. Unfortunately,
the dog ran off, which upset his owner, Stiltz. Switzer felt bad himself and posted a $35 reward for the
dog.
The dog was found by a man who brought it to the
tavern where Switzer tended bar to claim his reward.
Elated, Switzer laid out drinks for the man in addition
to giving him the reward money. Later, Switzer was
er, Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer was at times a
As an Our Gang
Ganger,
gentle bully. In real life he proved later to be more violent,
which led to his death.
upset when the tavern insisted he make good on the
drinks.
As days passed, Switzer got it in his head that Stiltz
owed him $50. Stiltz objected, pointing out that
Switzer had lost the dog and was on his own when he
entertained the day’s finder with drinks.
Switzer felt he needed all the money he could get.
He’d finally landed a small supporting job in The Defiant Ones and felt if he could hang on in Hollywood, he
still might have an acting career. But he kept brooding
about Stiltz and finally, after a long drinking bout with
a studio buddy, the pair headed to Stiltz’ home. His studio pal flashed a movie police badge at the door and
demanded to be let in. When the door opened a crack,
the pair pushed their way in.
Switzer demanded the $50, and he and Stiltz
engaged in a heated shouting match. Finally Switzer
seized a heavy clock from a table, and yelled, “I going
to take $50 out of your face!” He swung at Stiltz,
smashing him in the forehead just above his right eye,
causing a gush of blood. Clutching his forehead, Stiltz
retreated into his bedroom with Switzer in pursuit. The
dog owner opened a closet and produced a .38-caliber
revolver. A struggle ensued, with a wild bullet smashing
into the wall.
Switzer forced his foe back into the closet and
slammed the door. Fearful that Stiltz would emerge firing from the closet, Switzer drew a switchblade knife
from his pocket. Switzer brandished the knife as Stiltz
came forward, gun in hand. “He’s trying to kill me,”
Switzer cried and swung his knife, hitting only air. Stiltz
fired, hitting Switzer in the stomach.
862
SYDNEY Ducks
Sydney Ducks
Switzer died in an ambulance on the way to a hospital. It had been a silly dispute, one having about as
much logic as the Our Gang kids’ pranks.
As Alfalfa Switzer had been known to millions, but
even his tragic death garnered him little public recognition, as he had the misfortune to die on the same day as
fabled director Cecil B. DeMille. The media splashed
DeMille’s obituary over all the newspapers and television. Most accounts of Switzer’s death ran only a paragraph or two. A friend was quoted as saying later, “I
think he would have been happy to have gone out with
a splash of front-page publicity, but once again he was
reduced to a bit player role.”
Stiltz was cleared by a coroner’s inquest, which
found Switzer’s death a case of justifiable homicide.
San Francisco gangsters
Of all the riff-raff that poured into San Francisco in
1849 after the discovery of gold in California, probably
the worst of the lot were former inmates of the penal
colony in Australia. They set up their own section,
which became known as Sydney-Town. It served as the
city’s biggest haven for burglars, thieves and killers. Of
this section, the San Francisco Herald said:
There are certain spots in our city, infested by the most
abandoned men and women, that have acquired a reputation little better than the Five Points of New York
or St. Giles of London. The upper part of Pacific
Street, after dark, is crowded by thieves, gamblers, low
women, drunken sailors, and similar characters, who
resort to the groggeries that line the street, and there
spend the night in the most hideous orgies. . . .
Unsuspecting sailors and miners are entrapped by the
dexterous thieves and swindlers that are always on the
lookout, into these dens, where they are filled with
liquor—drugged if necessary, until insensibility coming
upon them, they fall an easy victim to their tempters.
In this way many robberies are committed, which are
not brought to light through shame on the part of the
victim.
Swope, Colonel Thomas B. (1825–1909) murder
victim
An elderly multimillionaire, Colonel Thomas B. Swope
was the central figure in a bizarre 1909 murder plot
that shocked Kansas City, Mo.
Swope, a bachelor, lived in a mansion with his
brother’s widow, a nephew and four nieces. A fifth
niece had just moved into her own home nearby, having
married a Dr. B. C. Hyde. Dr. Hyde had obviously
thought he was marrying into money, so one can understand his sudden dismay when he learned that Swope
was preparing to change his will, leaving most of his
money to charity. A man of quick action, Hyde gave
both Swope and his lawyer such a fast-acting poison
that the two men immediately “died of heart failure.”
Hyde, escaping suspicion for this strange double death,
was not satisfied with just his wife’s share of the Swope
fortune, however, and calmly prepared to murder the
other young heirs so that his wife would also inherit
their shares of the estate. Before the authorities stopped
him, he had fatally poisoned one and almost killed the
other four with typhoid germs.
Although the evidence against Hyde was staggering,
he was able to avoid conviction in three sensational trials. Found guilty the first time, Hyde won a reversal on
technical grounds. The second trial ended in a mistrial
and the third in a hung jury. Finally in 1917, the indictment against Hyde was dismissed and he quickly
departed, never having spent a single day in prison for
one of the most diabolical schemes of the era.
Whenever a particular brutal crime occurred in San
Francisco, it was labeled, not unreasonably, the work
of the Sydney Ducks with the saying “the Sydney
Ducks are cackling in the pond.” Between 1849 and
1851 more than 100 murders were attributed to them,
and they were known to have started many conflagrations that almost consumed the city. This latter tack
was essentially a burglary technique. The Ducks would
set fire to a number of buildings, and while all attention
was diverted to the fires, they would set about looting a
nearby section.
Finally, in 1851 the citizens of San Francisco had
enough, and the first of the city’s great vigilante movements hanged four leading Ducks: James Stuart, better
known as English Jim, John Jenkins, Samuel Whittaker
and Robert McKenzie. The result of the hangings produced panic in Sydney-Town, and Ducks left the city in
droves. Those who remained operated their dives and
houses of prostitution with much greater respect for
local mores.
863
T
table
crime, Meyer Lansky, was reported to have said, “I had
no choice”—the verdict was final.
A famous table hearing was held after the murder of
Crazy Joe Gallo in Umberto’s Clam House in New
York’s Little Italy in 1972. Carlo Gambino, who had
ordered the assassination, was infuriated at the messy,
saloon-style nature of the execution and demanded the
hitman, to this day unidentified, be brought to the
table. According to subsequent underworld gossip, the
gunman explained he had faced unexpected problems.
Gallo had not followed the Mafia custom of seating
himself facing the door, which the killer had every right
to expect. As a consequence, the killer said, he was
forced to start shooting before he was sure which man
at the table was his target. The fault clearly was Gallo’s.
The court of inquiry accepted the excuse, and the
defendant was let off with no more than a harsh reprimand.
Mafia court of inquiry
When a member of the Mafia is tried for his alleged
misdeeds, it is called “going to the table.” A typical
trial involves charges that one Mafia soldier has
cheated another in some joint criminal enterprise or
that a mafioso has violated the “no-hands” rule,
whereby no member is permitted to use his hands on
another. Although the latter charge may seem ludicrous
and trifling for an organization that specializes in coldblooded murders, it must be remembered that maintaining peace is vital in a place like New York City
where there are five Mafia families in operation. Competition is very serious and potentially explosive, and
petty quarrels could provoke major gang wars.
Each side at the table may be represented by its
“rabbi,” Mafia lingo for an informal lawyer. The verdict rendered is generally accepted as fair. Fair or not,
it is final. In one such trial gang leader Albert Anastasia ruled that a mobster was to sell his share in a
restaurant to his partner for only $3,500 because he
had been stealing money from the business. When the
alleged embezzler started to protest, Anastasia cut
him off. “I have decided. Take what I allow, or take
nothing.”
Even major offenders are given a trial, but they are
usually not present for the proceedings or the sentencing, since the mob has never felt it necessary to give a
doomed man advanced warning. Bugsy Siegel was sentenced to death in absentia because, among other
things, he had rejected an order from the mob to return
several million dollars that he had squandered in building the Flamingo casino-hotel in Las Vegas. After the
sentence was passed, Siegel’s longtime companion in
Taborsky, Joseph (1923–1960) murderer
On October 7, 1955 Joseph Taborsky walked out of
the death house at the Connecticut State Prison in
Wethersfield a free man; in convict parlance, he beat
the big one.
In 1951 Taborsky was convicted of murdering a
West Hartford liquor dealer named Louis Wolfson after
his brother Albert confessed that the two of them were
responsible for Wolfson’s death. Albert got life because
he had testified against his brother, while Joseph was
sentenced to the electric chair. Joseph protested he was
innocent and his brother was insane; he was half right.
Albert soon had to be transferred to a state hospital
864
TAR and feathering
because of his bizarre behavior. Meanwhile, appeals
had kept Joseph Taborsky alive, and now news that his
brother had been committed to a state hospital brought
forth demands for a new trial from all over the state.
When the state supreme court ordered the case retried,
Joseph had to be freed—without the testimony of
Albert Taborsky there was no case.
Joseph Taborsky shook hands with the people who
had fought to free him and bylined his story in a
national magazine.
In Connecticut a new murderous crime wave soon
dominated the headlines. There was a rash of holdupshootings that Connecticut police dubbed the Chinese
Executions. A 67-year-old Hartford tailor was lucky.
On December 15, 1956 a young bandit waving a gun
robbed him and then shot him in the back of the neck
before leaving. Miraculously, after a delicate operation,
the tailor survived. The victims who were struck down
30 minutes later weren’t so lucky. Edward Kurpiewski
was stuck up in his gas station, ordered into the rest
room and made to kneel. Then a bullet was fired into
his head. It was Daniel Janowski’s misfortune to drive
up to the station just as this brutal act was completed.
After his wallet was taken, he was ordered into the gas
station storeroom, ordered to kneel and shot to death.
Eleven days later, liquor dealer Samuel Cohn died the
same way. Ten days after that, Mr. and Mrs. Bernard
Speyer were killed when they walked into a North
Haven shoe store. The owner nearly suffered the same
fate when he wrestled with the two gunmen rather than
get on his knees. He was battered unconscious, but his
assailants fled without finishing him off. Three weeks
passed and then a Hartford druggist, John Rosenthal,
was slain the same way as the other murder victims.
Finally, the police arrested two men: Arthur
Culombe and Joseph Taborsky. The shoe store owner
made an identification, and the police got a confession.
Taborsky snarled his admission to the six murders, and
he had one more to confess: the murder of Louis Wolfson—the crime which he had been cleared of in 1955.
Taborsky died in the electric chair in 1960.
Tanner, John (1780–?) “white-Indian murderer”
One of the most tragic figures in American history,
John Tanner was captured by Indians as a youth. When
he tried to return to white society after 30 years, he was
regarded as an outcast both by whites and Indians. He
was constantly accused of crimes, including murder.
Although he was innocent, Tanner may have been
secretly assassinated because of these suspicions.
At the age of nine, Tanner was captured by a
Shawnee looking for a child to replace his dead son.
Adopted by an Indian woman, he underwent a com865
plete transformation, becoming in effect an Indian. He
even forgot his original name and lost the ability to
speak English. He fathered several children by two
Indian wives but was eventually driven by some inner
compulsion to return to his original world. Searching in
Kentucky and Ohio, he finally located several relatives
who had tried to find him through the years.
Tanner traveled back and forth between the whites
and the Indians trying to arrange for his children to
live with him. However, he succeeded in convincing
only two daughters and his second wife to join him.
Tanner settled in Mackinac, Mich. for a time but was
unable to find work. In 1828 he moved to Sault Ste.
Marie, where he became an interpreter for U.S. Indian
Agent James Schoolcraft. Tanner, however, remained
an outcast in both worlds: the Indians regarded him as
a renegade and the whites suspected him of being
steeped in the violent ways of the Indians. Whenever a
mysterious crime occurred in the town, Tanner became
the first suspect.
Eventually, his eldest daughter was taken from him
by legislative order, and his wife returned to her tribe.
Tanner then married a white woman, but this marriage
ended with the woman claiming Tanner’s living habits
were intolerable and violent.
In 1846 Schoolcraft was murdered, and Tanner soon
became the prime suspect. He fled the community, and
troops and vigilantes scoured the countryside looking
for him. According to one rumor, some vigilantes
caught up with Tanner and decided to kill him secretly
to end their “white-Indian” problem. Another story
was that he returned to the Indians. In any event, Tanner remained a wanted man for several years until
finally an army officer confessed that he had killed
Schoolcraft in an argument over a woman. If John Tanner was still alive and heard that he had been cleared,
he did not choose to return to the white world.
tar and feathering
Although it was never a legal form of punishment, tar
and feathering—pouring molten pitch over a person
and then covering him or her with feathers—has a long
history in America, practiced especially by mobs
against those who violated community standards. It
was the treatment given to many Tories at the start of
the Revolutionary War and to an occasional abolitionist in the antebellum South.
Perhaps the most famous incident involved Capt.
Floyd Ireson, who, according to a New England legend,
was tarred and feathered by the women of Marblehead
for his refusal to go to the rescue of seamen in distress.
In the West tar and feathering was considered to be the
proper punishment for wife beaters (followed by ban-
TARNOWER, Herman
ishment from the community, if deemed necessary), for
whiskey peddlers who sold to the Indians and for card
sharks who won with monotonous regularity. Of
course, if the latter were actually caught cheating, they
were more likely to receive sterner punishment, such as
the rope or at least a spray of buckshot. By the turn of
the 20th century the practice had just about vanished,
although it was resurrected from time to time by white
racists in the South.
Tarnower, Herman
PICK UP
PICTURE
FROM FILM
See JEAN HARRIS.
Tatum, Joshua
See COUNTERFEITING.
Taylor, Arthur
See COUNTERFEITING.
One of the many speculations about the Taylor murder
was this one favored by the New York Daily News
News, which
had the killer dressed in male attire but walking like a
woman.
Taylor, William Desmond (?–1922) victim of unsolved
murder
With Hollywood reeling from the Fatty Arbuckle case,
movie executives needed anything but another scandal
for which the film industry could be excoriated. But
that is what they faced when someone pumped two
.38-caliber bullets into the heart of film director
William Desmond Taylor the night of February 1,
1922. The case would never be solved, for many, many
reasons. Not the least of which was that someone,
upon finding the body, thought it was more advisable
to notify studio executives than the police. After all,
who really ran Hollywood?
Studio brass dispatched their people to the scene to
launch an immediate cover-up operation. As a result,
much of the potential evidence was in all likelihood
tampered with. Taylor, somewhere around 45 years
old—his past was hazy—was a notorious ladies’ man,
and many who heard about his murder turned up at his
house to get rid of any evidence that might involve
them in scandal.
Among those who sped to the murder scene was 28year-old Mabel Normand, a leading comedienne of the
day and the chief rival to Mary Pickford, “America’s
Sweetheart,” in box office appeal. Mabel was searching
for letters revealing she had a $2,000-a-week cocaine
habit and that Taylor had helped her out, it was said,
by beating up a drug dealer supplying her with the
stuff. And there were love letters.
Why hadn’t the police been summoned? It seemed a
studio doctor examined Taylor’s body and surmised
death had been the result of natural causes, perhaps a
chronic stomach ailment. Only later when the body
was turned over to authorities was blood discovered, as
was a bullet hole. From the doctor’s assessment, Paramount studio brass felt they were right in assuming
Taylor’s death had not been a matter for the police.
Normand had been the last person known to have
seen Taylor alive. She had dropped in to the director’s
bungalow about 7:05 P.M. She said Taylor had seen her
off to her chauffeur-driven limousine around 9 o’clock,
after lending her a book by Sigmund Freud when he
noticed some trashy magazines in the car.
It soon developed Taylor had a string of lady friends.
A picture of Mary Pickford occupied a favored spot in
his bachelor quarters. She said that not only did she
know nothing about the murder but that she was
America’s Sweetheart. There were two damsels, one
young, one older, who had got to the murder scene too
late, their way blocked by police. They were Mary
Miles Minter and her ever-watchful mother. They were
very much enraged when the police refused them entry.
Miss Minter, allegedly 17 years old, had been a rage in
a number of Charlie Chaplin films.
One reason the Minters had tried to crash the murder scene soon became apparent. During the police
search a scented note on Mary’s stationery fluttered out
of a book. The note was short, sweet and very, very
passionate. It read:
Dearest:
I love you—I love you—I love you.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX!
Yours always,
Mary.
866
TAYLOR, William Desmond
Taylor cataloged the unmentionables of his conquests.
Denying they were sexually involved with Taylor were
(clockwise from upper left) actresses Mary Miles Minter,
Mabel Normand and Mary Pickford. Pickford especially
insisted she and Taylor were just friends, and besides, she
was “America’s Sweetheart.”
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TEAPOT Dome scandal
The eighteenth X was two inches high so “Dearest”
would know how devoted she was.
Mary made it clear that she truly meant what she
wrote in the note. She later said, “I loved him deeply,
and tenderly, with all the admiration a young girl gives
to a man with the poise and position of Mr. Taylor.”
She insisted that despite all her devotion, she and Taylor, an ex-British army officer (a matter of some dispute), had merely been good friends.
And Mary insisted she knew nothing about all those
bits of lingerie found in the Taylor home. None, she
said, was hers. There was, for instance, a mysterious
pink silk nightie with a butterfly on the back that was
quickly discovered. Then there was a collection of silky,
lacy lingerie, nightgowns and underwear, each item
meticulously tagged with a date. There were love letters
from other actresses and secret photographs of many of
them. Taylor seemed to have been a multifaceted collector and connoisseur.
Mary, however, had a way of dominating the Taylor
gossip. There was her remarkable performance at the
director’s garish funeral, which Taylor would no doubt
have liked to use in one of his films. Mary kissed the
corpse on the lips and then arose to declare that her
dreamboat had whispered something to her even in
death. She said it sounded like “I shall love you
always, Mary.”
Now the police investigation was in full swing, with
the cops off on one wild goose chase after another. In
the first two months, some 300 people, some even in
South America and Europe, confessed to the murder.
The public loved all this but really wanted more specific identification of the owners of all those uncovered
unmentionables.
If the authorities identified any or all of those persons, they did not reveal one. Each lead petered out
after the other. Studio brass launched a campaign to
save Mary. When the public found it upsetting that a
17-year-old girl could get involved with an older man,
the studio insisted she was really 21, no, make that 22.
The idea of a girl pretending to be younger than she
was didn’t wash with the public. Nor did Mabel Normand’s pretending to be older than she was.
Both women ended up almost as tragically as did
Taylor himself. American moviegoers exhibited a prudery that has since largely vanished. But at the time they
wanted no more to do with Mary Miles Minter, and she
was forced to retire. But at least she managed a comfortable retirement from an investment trust her
mother had established.
Mabel Normand did try to do some movies, including one in 1923 called Suzanna that was described as
her funniest ever. Hardly anyone went to see it. Still
there was some belief Normand could weather the
storm in time, but in 1924 she happened to be around
when her chauffeur put a bullet into another gentleman, apparently in a dispute over her favors. Then she
was named corespondent in another man’s divorce suit.
Mabel took refuge in more and different drugs. Her
health ruined, she died of tuberculosis in 1930.
Perhaps the real legacy of the Taylor murder was that
it led to Hollywood “going moral” by launching the
Hays Office under the leadership of Will Hays, the Presbyterian postmaster-general of the Harding Cabinet. In
due course that experiment would run out of gas.
Teapot Dome scandal
The term “Teapot Dome” has become a catch phrase
for governmental corruption and graft taking. Early in
the ill-fated Harding Administration, Secretary of the
Interior Albert B. Fall declared that the oil reserves at
Teapot Dome, Wyo. and Elk Hills, Calif., which had
been set aside for use by the U.S. Navy, were being
drained by adjacent commercial operations and that
consequently they should be leased out to private interests. It so happened that Fall had a number of close
friends who would benefit from this decision, and in
1922, without allowing competitive bidding on the
property, he secretly signed lease contracts with
Edward L. Doheny and Harry B. Sinclair, two oil millionaires known for their freewheeling tactics. The two
oil men, who figured to clear as much as $100 million
from their leases, found ways to show their gratitude.
Doheny slipped Fall $100,000 in a black bag, while
Sinclair used a roundabout method to see that the secretary got a $260,000 “loan” in Liberty Bonds.
After the press and a senatorial inquiry headed by
Thomas J. Walsh of Montana dug out the facts, the
government canceled the leases, a decision eventually
upheld by the Supreme Court. Oil man Doheny
shocked the nation by dismissing his $100,000 payment as “a mere bagatelle.” Criminal cases involving
Doheny and Fall and Sinclair and Fall were tried but
resulted in acquittals, although Sinclair was given nine
months for contempt of court and Fall, tried separately,
was found guilty of bribery charges and drew a oneyear prison term. It can be argued that Fall was made
the “fall guy” for all the scandals of the Harding
Administration, in which even larger sums were
siphoned out of the Treasury.
See also: WILLIAM J. BURNS, ALBERT B. FALL.
teeth-mark evidence
In 1980 Theodore Bundy, suspected of killing and
mutilating perhaps more than 30 young women across
the country, was convicted of the brutal slayings of two
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TEN Most Wanted List
Florida State University sorority sisters and sentenced
to death. Perhaps the most damning evidence against
him was the testimony of dental experts that only
Bundy’s scraggly teeth could have made the wounds
found on the buttocks of the two coeds.
This was not the first case in which the testimony of
forensic dentists was admitted in evidence. So far about
a dozen states—among them New York, Florida, California, Maryland, Illinois, Texas, California and Connecticut—and the District of Columbia permit such
testimony. Dr. Duane T. DeVore, a professor of oral
surgery at the University of Maryland, is considered
one of the pioneers in the use of teeth-mark evidence in
criminal cases. Dr. DeVore said that while bite marks
are not as reliable as fingerprints, they usually provide
a good idea of who did the biting—or at least who did
not—a fact that can be just as important. It is also possible, according to the dental expert, for forensic dentists to determine the general time a bite mark was
inflicted and the positions of the bodies during an
attack, frequently essential in corroborating the testimony of a defendant or a witness.
Dr. DeVore helped convict some defendants and
acquit others. In one case a defendant pleaded not
guilty in a Maryland murder case until Dr. DeVore gave
him a dental examination. The impression of the suspect’s teeth matched the photographs of teeth marks
found on the victim’s body. The defendant shifted his
plea to guilty.
television quiz show scandal
In 1959 the television broadcast industry was rocked by
a quiz show scandal when it was established that many
big-money winners had been provided with the answers
to questions. Several recent highly acclaimed winners
were exposed as frauds, perhaps the most shocking
being Charles Van Doren, a 33-year-old Ph.D. who
came from one of the nation’s top intellectual families.
Van Doren, a $5,500-a-year instructor at Columbia
University, had won $129,000 on NBC’s “TwentyOne” after having been supplied with a trumped-up
script in advance. Later, Van Doren said he had been
convinced to take part in the quiz show because it
would be a boon “to the intellectual life, to teachers,
and to education in general.” He added, “In fact, I
think I have done a disservice to all of them.”
On the basis of his new fame as a quiz winner, Van
Doren got a $50,000-a-year post with NBC, but in the
aftermath of the exposures he lost that position as well
as his teaching job at Columbia.
In the ensuing investigation New York District
Attorney Frank Hogan found that of 150 persons who
had testified before a grand jury about the quiz fixes,
869
about 100 had lied. From 1959 to 1962, 18 contestants
who had “won” from $500 to $220,500 on nowdefunct quiz shows pleaded guilty to perjury and were
given suspended sentences, although they could have
been fined and imprisoned for three years. The punishment seemed sufficient, considering the fact that nothing was done to the corporate sponsors, some of
whom, according to confessions by the shows’ producers, had decided whether a contestant would be
bumped or allowed to survive as a contestant.
Abroad the scandal generally was viewed as demonstrating a failing in American life. France’s France-Soir
saw a parallel between Van Doren’s confession and
Vice President Nixon’s campaign-fund confession and
observed: “In America, more than anywhere, contrition
is a form of redemption. A sinner who confesses is a
sinner pardoned.” Nixon would survive to be pardoned
again, but Van Doren never returned to public life.
Ten Most Wanted List
FBI fugitive roster
Started in 1950, the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list was
designed to aid in capturing the country’s leading fugitives through extensive publicity. In its first 30 years,
the list resulted in well over 300 arrests.
Typical was the case of William Raymond Nesbit, a
member of the original “class of 1950.” Wanted for
robbery and the murder of his partner, whom he
allegedly blew up in a powder shack with 3,500 pounds
of dynamite, Nesbit went to prison for murder but
escaped. He was caught hiding out in a cave by the
Mississippi River at St. Paul after being recognized by
some boys playing in the area who remembered seeing
his wanted picture in the newspapers.
Henry Randolph Mitchell was the only one of the
original “Tenners” who was not caught. He was
removed from the list when a federal warrant against
him was dismissed in 1958. Many criminals were truly
terrified of having their names on the list. Put on the list
in 1953, armed robber John Raleigh Cooke told FBI
agents after being caught that his capture was a
“relief.” Francis Laverne Brannan, a 1962 listee wanted
for the shotgun slaying of an elderly widow, called the
Miami FBI office after making the roster and said,
“Come and get me, I’m tired of running.”
A composite profile of the average Top Tenner
would be a 37-year-old, five-foot-nine-inch, 167-pound
male. The average stay on the list before capture is 145
days. Most Top Tenners have lengthy criminal records,
have served prison terms and have in the past benefited
from some form of judicial leniency.
In the 1950s the FBI arrested about 15 Top Tenners
a year, but during the early 1970s there was only a total
of 12 arrests in four years. In an attempt to improve its
TENDERLOIN
FPO
FIG #167
TO BE
PICKED-UP
FROM
PREVIOUS
ED.
On-the-air photos of Charles Van Doren (top) and Herbert Stempel (below) show them going through the prearranged quiz
show charade that made Van Doren for a time the most celebrated “egghead” in the nation.
efficiency rate, the FBI in 1970 unofficially adjusted the
list so that it contained 16 names instead of 10; if any
of the 16 was caught, the agency could claim it had
captured a Top Tenner. The reason for the FBI’s declining score was that the list became dominated with radical fugitives who could effectively vanish into an
organized underground.
Cynics have pointed out that the idea of a Most
Wanted list came about in 1950 merely as a response to
the Kefauver Committee investigation, which at the
time was laying waste to J. Edgar Hoover’s longespoused denial of the existence of organized crime and
the Mafia. The Ten Most Wanteds were thus offered up
as proof that the FBI was a premier crime-fighting
organization. Whatever the motives for establishing the
list, with a total of some 400 captures, it must be
regarded as an effective publicity device for battling
crime.
Tenderloin
New York vice area
Every major American city had or has a tenderloin
district where crime and vice thrive, but the original
term applied to an area in New York City. During the
greater part of the 19th century, New York City, by
most estimates spawned more crime and vice than any
other city in the United States and possibly as much as
the rest of the nation combined. And New York City
at the time consisted only of Manhattan Island. In the
post-Civil War 1860s and the 1870s, some 20,000
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TENUTO, Frederick J.
The Tenth Avenue Gang had operated since 1860
under the leadership of Ike Marsh as typical burglars
and holdup men. Determined to stage a train robbery
because they were “as good as those cowboys,” Marsh
and a number of his men boarded a Hudson River Railroad train at Spuyten Duyvil, at the northern end of
Manhattan in 1868, and forced their way into the
express car. Binding and gagging the guard, they threw
off an iron box that contained about $5,000 in cash
and bonds.
For a time after that caper, the Tenth Avenue Gang
was the toast of the underworld. But with a vengeful
railroad flooding the city with detectives bent on
smashing the gang, Marsh and his men eventually disbanded and sought refuge within the much bigger and
more powerful Hell’s Kitchen Gang.
See also: HELL’S KITCHEN.
full-time professional prostitutes worked the tiny
island, and there was at least an equal number of parttimers. Together these two groups accounted for five
percent of the population, or one out of every 20
inhabitants. In 1866 Bishop Matthew Simpson of the
Methodist Church lamented in a sermon that the city
harbored as many harlots as Methodists. One could
speak of the lewdness, vulgarity and crime in Chicago
and San Francisco, but nothing could compare to
Manhattan Island, with its 5,000 open brothels and
assignation houses. In some areas of the city brothels
and other dives, such as groggeries, concert saloons
and dance halls, often numbered as many as 10 per
block.
The worst section of all was the Tenderloin, comprising just a part of what was the 29th Police Precinct,
covering the area between 24th Street and 40th Street
from Fifth Avenue to Seventh Avenue. By the 1890s the
Tenderloin was bursting at its seams and by general
acceptance, was extended north to 48th Street and as
far west as Ninth Avenue.
Twenty straight blocks of Sixth Avenue, then New
York’s wickedest street, were lined on both sides with
nothing but gin mills, dance halls, brothels and other
low resorts. Day and night the streets were jammed with
streetwalkers and crooks of all sort. So many live sex
shows abounded that competition forced down the
price of admission from $5 to 50¢. A Brooklyn preacher
was so horrified with what he witnessed on Sixth
Avenue that he dubbed it “Satan’s Circus.” In time, it
was estimated that one half of all the buildings in the
district were given over to some sort of vice.
Illicit fortunes were made in the Tenderloin by landlords, madams, pimps, sneak thieves, pickpockets, footpads, swindlers, burglars, holdup men, murderers and,
of course, policemen. In 1876, after long service in relatively quieter precincts, Capt. Alexander “Clubber”
Williams took command of the 29th and told a friend:
“I’ve been transferred. I’ve had nothing but chuck steak
for a long time, and now I’m going to get a little of the
tenderloin.” The new meaning stuck as a description
for any area devoted to vice with the connivance of the
police. Williams put police graft on a more organized
basis than had ever been achieved before. He retired in
1895 under pressure from reformers, including police
Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt. By that time
Williams was a millionaire.
See also: ALEXANDER S. “CLUBBER” WILLIAMS.
Tenth Avenue Gang
Tenuto, Frederick J. (1915–1952?) murderer
In 1952 a young Brooklyn man named Arnold Schuster
became a short-lived public hero when he recognized
Willie “the Actor” Sutton and notified the police, who
promptly arrested the notorious bank robber; two and
a half weeks later, Schuster was shot to death on the
street where he lived. His killer is believed to have been
Frank J. Tenuto, at the time a 37-year-old murderer and
fugitive from justice who was on the FBI’s list of the 10
most-wanted criminals.
Tenuto had his first run-ins with the law at the age
of 16, with several arrests as a “suspicious person.”
At 18 he was put on probation for three years after
being convicted of robbery and burglary. Arrested again, he was sentenced to 10 years in the industrial school at Huntington, Pa. He was in and out of
prison several times in the 1930s and in 1940 he was
convicted of the hired killing of a Philadelphia man.
Sentenced to 10 to 20 years, he escaped two years
later but was quickly recaptured. In 1945 Tenuto
broke out again and enjoyed a month’s freedom
before being caught in New York. Sent to Holmesburg
Prison on the outskirts of Philadelphia, he escaped
once more in 1947 with four other men, one of whom
was Sutton.
After that, Tenuto, ironically known as “the Angel”
or “St. John,” turned up in Brooklyn underworld
haunts sporting two guns under his belt and boasting
that the only way he would ever be retaken by the
police was to be “shot in bed.” Around this time,
Tenuto apparently came under the wing of gang leader
Albert Anastasia, the Lord High Executioner of the
Mafia. When Sutton was caught in 1952, Anastasia,
who had no connection with the bank robber, flew into
a murderous rage at the “stoolpigeon”—Schuster—
New York train robbers
Two years after the Reno Gang staged the first train
robbery in America in 1866, a vicious gang imitated the
crime in New York City.
871
TERESA, Vincent Charles
who had turned him in. Anastasia ordered Schuster
killed, and Tenuto carried out the assignment.
It was a foolish thing for Anastasia to do, since he
could in no way profit from Schuster’s murder and simply left himself open to a possible homicide charge.
According to underworld reports, Anastasia decided to
make amends for his foolhardy action. He ordered
Tenuto killed so that he could never be connected to the
Schuster case. Tenuto’s body was never found; one version states that he was given a “double-decker
funeral”—that is, placed in a coffin with an about-tobe-buried corpse—and buried.
See also: ARNOLD SCHUSTER.
world was that Fat Vinnie had himself once more
become an endangered species, with a price still on his
head. Teresa eluded underworld vengeance until his
death in 1990.
Terranova, Ciro (1891–1938) Mafia leader
An imposing Mafia figure when the Morellos and
brother-in-law Lupo the Wolf controlled organized
crime in New York, Ciro Terranova went on to make
his fortune in New York in two main rackets: numbers, as a junior partner of Dutch Schultz, and artichokes, as “the Artichoke King,” a name given him by
the newspapers. Informer Joe Valachi said, “He tied up
all the artichokes in the city. The way I understand it
he would buy all the artichokes that came into New
York. I didn’t know where they all came from, but I
know he was buying them out. Being artichokes, they
hold; they can keep. Then Ciro would make his own
price, and as you know, Italians got to have artichokes
to eat.”
Terranova was at the zenith of his power during the
1920s but went into a slow decline after the Maranzano-Masseria war of 1930–31, when Lucky Luciano
emerged as the new power. Luciano and his assistant
Vito Genovese regarded Terranova as a coward and as
someone, as Valachi explained, who could be “stripped
[of power] . . . a little at a time.”
Luciano’s contempt for Terranova was based on the
latter’s performance in the assassination of Giuseppe
“Joe the Boss” Masseria in 1931, which Lucky had
engineered. On the day of the planned execution,
Luciano, who was Joe the Boss’ top assistant, Genovese
and Terranova set out with Masseria for a Coney Island
restaurant, where the latter was to be killed. During the
ride Terranova, who was driving, became so nervous he
almost gave away the plot and had to be relieved at the
wheel by Genovese. It may even be that Terranova was
supposed to have been one of the assassins who entered
the restaurant later in the afternoon and gunned down
Joe the Boss as he sat alone at a table waiting for
Luciano to return from the men’s room. The killers
were Genovese, Joe Adonis, Albert Anastasia and
Bugsy Siegel.
For a time Terranova retained his power, and when
Schultz was murdered on orders from the new national
crime syndicate, he moved to take full charge of the
Dutchman’s numbers racket in Harlem. It was at this
point that Terranova was informed by Luciano and
Genovese that he was now in retirement. Too weak to
protest, Terranova retired, and three years later, according to Valachi, “he died from a broken heart.” With
Terranova’s death, the old Morello gang, the first Mafia
family established in New York, broke up; its members
Teresa, Vincent Charles (1930–1990) underworld
informer
Joe Valachi is generally considered to have been the
most important underworld informer since Abe Reles.
The Mafia, however, may well have a different idea
about who deserves that distinction. When Valachi
started telling what he knew about organized crime, the
Mafia set a $100,000 price on his head. When Vinnie
Teresa, who had previously been the number three
Mafia man in New England, began talking to the
authorities a few years after Valachi, the figure was set
at $500,000. The price was about right. While Valachi
presented a lot of generalized information, Teresa’s evidence was harder and more valuable in court. Because
of his testimony, some 50 mob figures were either
indicted or convicted and valuable information was
gathered on hundreds more.
Teresa described the activities of the Mafia from his
home area of Massachusetts all the way to the
Bahamas. He was the first informer to detail the extent
of mob fixes of horse races at New England tracks, and
he cleared up several murders that had baffled the
authorities. He also did something that few informers
had ever dared to do: he testified in court against the
much-feared Meyer Lansky. Teresa was able to reveal
many Mafia secrets because in his racket activities he
had filled the mob’s coffers with an estimated $150 million. By his own calculation he ran through $10 million
during a 28-year career in crime.
After completing his testimony in the early 1970s,
Fat Vinnie was “buried” under the Federal Witness
Protection Program with a new identity as Charles
Cantino. In 1984, the Cantino address was Maple Valley, Washington. The government itself blew Fat Vinnie’s cover in December 1984 by getting a grand jury
indictment against him and five members of his family
on charges of smuggling hundreds of exotic birds and
reptiles into the country. Most of the animals were
listed as endangered species. The word in the under872
THAW, Harry Kendal
were absorbed by other groups within the crime syndicate.
See also: LUPO THE WOLF, MORELLO FAMILY.
row and Bonnie Parker. Hamer and Ranger Manny
Gault were members of a party of six lawmen who literally “ventilated” Bonnie and Clyde in a roadside
ambush in August 1935.
In 1935 Ma Ferguson’s successor cleaned out the
Ferguson Rangers and reconstituted a professional
force as part of the Department of Public Safety. Later,
it was returned to independent status, but the agency
did not remain free of criticism. In 1967 the state AFLCIO demanded the Rangers be abolished, insisting that
instead of fighting smugglers and cattle rustlers, they
spent too much time operating as tax-supported strikebreakers. During the effort by Cesar Chavez and his
United Farm Workers to lead a strike of melon pickers
in Texas, two strike leaders suffered brain concussions
after an encounter with the Rangers. Besides the concussions, the men had bruises on their bodies and
backs, had their fingernails ripped away and suffered
deep cuts. The official Ranger explanation was that the
men had hurt themselves by bumping into each other
while trying to escape arrest. The Supreme Court
upheld a three-judge federal court that had ruled
against the Rangers in a suit brought by the union. The
lower court had concluded, “It is difficult indeed for
this court to visualize two grown men colliding with
each other so as to cause such injuries.” It was perhaps
a sign of the times that in the 1970s a candidate for
governor could run an extremely strong, if losing, race
on a platform calling for the abolition of the Texas
Rangers.
See also: FERGUSON RANGERS, LEE HALL, FRANK
HAMER, LEANDER H. MCNELLY, PONVENIR MASSACRE.
Texas Rangers
The Texas Rangers date back to 1826, when Stephen
Austin first proposed keeping “twenty to thirty
Rangers in service at all times.” Over the years the
Rangers have become the most-storied, if controversial,
lawmen in the country. The heroic side of the legend is
captured in a frequently told tale set in a variety of
towns in which a riot broke out; a lone Ranger was
sent in to handle matters. When local officials saw a
single Ranger ride into town, they expressed alarm.
“Why,” said this fabled Ranger, “there’s only one riot,
isn’t there.”
The Rangers early activities often involved actions
against Indians or Mexicans. Indeed, they showed a
remarkable inability to recognize the U.S.-Mexican
border, often foraying into Mexico in pursuit of their
quarry. During its Wild West period, the force had
many heroes and villains and members who turned villain later. The heroes included Ben McCulloch, Big
Foot Wallace, Frank Jones, John Coffee Hays and
Leander McNelly. Also in its ranks were Bass Outlaw,
who was indeed to live up to his last name, the psychotic Ben Thompson and the brutal Scott Cooley.
The Rangers were disbanded in the period immediately following the Civil War but were reestablished in
1874. Over the next decade and a half they reached
their peak of acclaim, running to earth such outlaws as
King Fisher, Sam Bass and Wes Hardin.
In the 20th century the Texas Rangers came under
fierce criticism from a number of different sources.
They were described as antiblack, anti-Chicano and
antilabor. In 1919 a state House-Senate committee
found that the Rangers had consistently violated the
civil rights of individuals and groups, killed unnecessarily while making arrests and murdered prisoners. One
of the worst offenses was the Ponvenir Massacre during
World War I, in which a Ranger captain and eight of
his men killed 15 or more Mexicans in cold blood.
Although no criminal charges were brought against
them, the nine were dismissed from the force.
In the 1930s the Rangers had become so politicized
that the entire force was fired by incoming Gov. Ma
Ferguson because they had openly supported her opponent. They were all replaced by Ferguson appointees,
who brought the agency its greatest disrepute with an
unparalleled record of corruption, theft, embezzlement
and murder. The only Ranger to escape Ma’s revenge
was Frank Hamer, a tough lawman who had taken
leave to go on special assignment hunting Clyde Bar-
Thaw, Harry Kendall (1872–1947) murderer
At first, quite a few people felt that railroad heir Harry
Kendall Thaw did what was right and proper when he
shot Stanford White, the distinguished architect, on the
roof garden of New York’s Madison Square Garden in
1906. Revelations showed that millionaire White had a
hobby of seducing young girls. One of his amusements,
it would be alleged, was having them put on little girls’
dresses and cavort, legs flying, on a red velvet swing in
a heavily curtained, lavishly decorated miniature Taj
Mahal he maintained on the West Side.
One girl White so despoiled was the beautiful Evelyn
Nesbit, who became his mistress at the age of 16, by
which time she had already posed for Charles Dana
Gibson’s painting The Eternal Question and had
adorned the chorus of many hit shows, including “Floradora.” Then in 1905, at the age of 19, Evelyn left
White to become engaged to Thaw, whom she married
the following year. Thaw was the wastrel heir of a Pittsburgh railroad tycoon who had reduced his allowance
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THAW, Harry Kendal
to a paltry $2,000 a year. However, he had a doting
mother who gave him another $80,000 so that he could
pursue the wild life. Among other bad habits that
would soon become public knowledge, Thaw maintained an apartment in a New York brothel where he
would entice young girls under the promise of winning
them a show business career. Once he had them in the
apartment, Thaw often would whip the girls, a treatment he soon inflicted on his new bride. Thus, there
emerged a bizarre triangle: a lascivious architect with
50 elegant New York City buildings to his credit and a
lascivious wastrel with $40 million in his future contending over gorgeous Evelyn, destined to become the
fantasy idol of millions of American men and boys.
Irvin S. Cobb was to describe her to enthralled newspaper readers as having “the slim, quick grace of a fawn,
a head that sat on her flawless throat as a lily on its
stem, eyes that were the color of blue-brown pansies
and the size of half dollars, a mouth made of rumpled
rose petals.” Was it any wonder that the assassination
of Stanford White enjoyed as much publicity as had
that of President William McKinley a few years earlier?
At age 34 Thaw was no doubt going slowly mad. On
a European cruise he finally cracked up and beat Evelyn until she “confessed” all her past sins with White.
To stop the whippings, Evelyn was later to admit she
told Thaw even more than had happened.
Thaw was now totally insane with jealousy. He forbade his wife to mention White by name but instead
refer to him as “the Bastard” or “the Beast.” Being
rather on the genteel side, Evelyn more often simply
called him “the B.” Then on the evening of June 25,
1906, Thaw and his wife were attending a musical at
the dinner theater on the roof of Madison Square Garden. Also in the audience was Stanford White. Suddenly, Thaw arose from his seat and strolled through
the audience to within four feet of White. He drew a
revolver and fired two times at the architect’s head,
killing him instantly. As the victim slumped to the floor,
Thaw fired a final shot into his shoulder. Then he
announced with evident satisfaction: “You deserve this.
You ruined my wife.”
Thaw unloaded his weapon, scattering the cartridges
onto the floor, and held the gun aloft, indicating he
meant no harm to others. He was quickly arrested and
hustled off to jail.
While awaiting trial, Thaw had all his meals catered
from Delmonico’s, and his mother announced she was
prepared to spend a million dollars to save her son. She
hired the famous California trial lawyer Delphin Delmas to defend him. Even before the opening of the trial,
Delmas began spreading stories that transformed
bounder Thaw into a defender of American womanhood. Various of White’s escapades with teenage girls
were leaked to the press and the Rev. Charles A. Eaton,
who numbered John D. Rockefeller among his parishioners, delivered a sermon in Thaw’s defense. “It would
be a good thing,” Rev. Eaton said, “if there were a little
more shooting in cases like this.”
District Attorney William Travers Jerome, the uncle
of Winston Churchill, saw what the defense was trying
to do and reacted with an angry declaration that he
would personally try the case. “With all his millions,”
Jerome roared, “Thaw is a fiend. In the conduct of his
trial, I shall prove that no matter how rich a man is, he
can’t get away with murder in New York County!”
Tickets to the sensational trial were scalped at $100,
and 80-odd world famous artists and writers, including
Cobb, Samuel Hopkins Adams and James Montgomery
Flagg, covered the proceedings. The prosecution’s case
was brief and simple: Thaw had shot and killed White.
The high point for the defense came when Evelyn took
the stand and, as the saying went, told all. Dressed in a
plain blue frock with a white collar, big schoolboy tie
and black velvet hat, she told, in dewy innocence, of the
bizarre love games she played with White, often wearing a little girl dress with her hair hung back. It was a
tale that would have enraged a statue. She sobbingly
told of her ultimate deflowering, which White had
accomplished by giving her drugged champagne that
rendered her helpless. In rebuttal, the prosecutor
elicited damaging testimony from a leading toxicologist, Dr. Rudolph Witthaus, who pointed out that Evelyn’s story of the drugged champagne was dubious. No
drug known to science would have worked as rapidly
as she described without also killing the victim.
But what was such evidence worth against the word
of Evelyn Nesbit—“a wounded bluebird, a soiled
Broadway sparrow,” as the press referred to her.
A group of alienists examined Thaw and pronounced him legally sane, but throughout the trial he
alternately scribbled incoherent notes to his lawyers,
cried like a baby and flew into rages until his eyes
bugged out and “his face would turn purple.”
In a flowery summation, defense attorney Delmas
told the jury that his client had been temporarily seized
by “dementia Americana . . . that species of insanity
which makes every home sacred . . . makes a man
believe that his wife is sacred. . . . Whoever stains the
virtue of his wife has forfeited the protection of human
laws and must look to the eternal justice and mercy of
God. . . .”
The gentlemen of the jury could not agree on a verdict. A year later, a new trial was held. Prosecutor
Jerome decided his previous tactic of attacking Evelyn’s
rape story had boomeranged, so this time he stipulated
she spoke the truth. Evelyn looked more lovely and
Thaw acted more mad. The jury returned a verdict of
874
THIEL, Alexander
near the back of it. He would then stamp the stubs:
“Defective Checks. Removed by Printer.” Thus, even if
the missing checks were noticed, the explanation was
readily at hand. Generally, however, the missing
checks weren’t noticed until they were cashed and Mr.
X and his “gang” were long gone. Thiel himself
handled every step of the operation, including the second-story work. “Accomplices mean extra tongues
that can wag,” he told police, a philosophy that permitted him to avoid detection for almost a quarter of a
century.
Thiel was born in Chicago in 1890, one of six children. When he was 14, his father, a reasonably successful architect, was wiped out in the bank crash of 1904.
That experience was to shape Thiel’s criminal future.
As he later told the authorities, “Right then and there I
decided banks and bankers were all a bunch of nogoods and someday I was going to get even with them.”
He was a delinquent in his teens and was sent to reform
school after being caught in a burglary.
In his twenties he was a card dealer and croupier at
illegal gambling joints, where he discovered his superior forging ability by sheer luck. A heavy gambler
committed suicide; almost by impulse, Thiel hurriedly
scrawled out an I.O.U. chit for $2,500, using as a
model a marker the gambler had given him earlier in
the evening. He tossed the chit into his money box and
pocketed $2,500. His employers never suspected a
thing, figuring the dead gambler had obviously killed
himself because he had lost more than he could afford.
Thiel decided it would be a lot healthier to swindle
banks than gambling-joint operators, who tended to be
most unforgiving about such matters. He quit the job
and went into the bad paper business.
In his first big caper Thiel managed to acquire some
blank checks belonging to New York real estate millionaire Messmore Kendall. It was three weeks before
Kendall and his bank realized the millionaire’s account
had been looted of $162,000. That haul set Thiel up in
a style of living to which he was to remain accustomed
for about 20 years, although he never again pulled a
job on such a grand scale. He came to realize that
passing checks of $50,000 or more was too dangerous. Thereafter, he kept his forged checks within a
range of $5,000 to $15,000 and simply cashed more
of them.
Thiel started living the good life and became a fixture in New York nightclub society. He was a regular at
the Stork Club when it was still a speakeasy, where he
was known by sight, if not by reputation, by host Sherman Billingsley. However, he had a strong drug habit,
one that had started when he was a teenager in reform
school, and needed to cash thousands of dollars worth
of bad checks annually just to cover his addiction.
“not guilty, on the ground of his insanity at the time of
the commission of the act.”
Thaw, however, did not go free. He was declared
criminally insane and imprisoned for life in a mental
institution at Matteawan, N.Y. His mother spent tens
of thousands of dollars on legal hearings trying to win
his freedom. Then in 1913 Thaw escaped from the asylum, fled to Canada and was finally retaken. While he
was on the loose, Evelyn Nesbit announced: “Harry
Thaw has turned out to be a degenerate scoundrel. He
hid behind my skirts through two dirty trials and I
won’t stand for it again. I won’t let lawyers throw any
more mud at me.” She then signed a contract to appear
in vaudeville at $3,500 a week.
A battery of lawyers kept Thaw from going back to
Matteawan and in 1915 a court declared him sane. The
following year he celebrated his new freedom by horsewhipping a teenage boy. Before going off to the asylum
once more, Thaw divorced Evelyn. He emerged from
Matteawan in 1922 and embarked on a new career of
wild living. Evelyn Nesbit continued to appear in vaudeville for many years and, sporadically, in some less austere nightclubs and gin mills. She eventually retired to a
career in ceramics in California. Harry Thaw continued
to roam the world, spending his millions, until his death
in 1947.
Thiel, Alexander (1890–1956) forger
The bible of criminology, Fundamentals of Criminal
Investigation by Charles E. O’Hara, labels Alexander
Thiel “probably the most accomplished forger of modern times.” It was an accolade few police authorities
would dispute. From the 1920s to 1943 Thiel, known
throughout the country as “Mr. X,” was thought to be
the head of the nation’s most prolific gang of check
forgers. Only after he was apprehended did the police
discover that Mr. X had no gang, that he was a loner
who netted something like $600,000 to $1 million, in
an era when a dollar was worth five to 10 times what it
is in the 1980s.
What made the authorities sure they were dealing
with a gang of criminals was the fact that Thiel was an
expert at several different criminal crafts. The man
who passed the checks, a dapper look-alike of actor
John Barrymore, was a master forger capable of
imitating a real signature from memory. Thus, whenever a bank teller requested that he sign the back of a
withdrawal slip to verify his endorsement of a check,
he always duplicated the signature down to the dotted
i’s. Certainly, the second-story man in the mob was a
specialist who knew how to break into a business
office without leaving a trace. Once inside, he would
locate a blank check ledger and rip out a page from
875
THIEVES’ Exchange
Thieves’ Exchange
New York criminal district
By the late 1930s Mr. X was being sought by police
all over the country. Under the name of George Workmaster, a real stockbroker, Thiel cashed checks totaling
$4,160; again, an alert went out for the John Barrymore look-alike. This time the police got their man—or
at least thought they had after five witnesses identified
Bertram Campbell as the forger. Campbell was sent to
prison for five to ten years, despite his anguished claims
of innocence. Alex Thiel read newspaper accounts of
the supposed criminal career of Bertram Campbell with
mixed feelings. It took the pressure off him but, at the
same time, he felt sorry for the man.
Thiel wrote a letter to District Attorney Thomas E.
Dewey, whose office had prosecuted Campbell, informing him an innocent man had been convicted. He also
wrote several letters to newspapers. But, of course, Thiel
was not about to come forward and the suspicion grew
that a friend of Campbell was perpetrating a hoax in the
hope of getting him off. Finally, Thiel tried another tack.
He resumed pulling more of his Mr. X capers. Still, the
authorities refused to believe they had the wrong man.
They formed the theory that Campbell had merely been
a front man for a “syndicate” of check forgers and that
the gang was still in operation. No one person could
pull so many jobs by himself, they maintained.
So, while Campbell rotted in jail, Thiel went on forging checks. He was finally caught, ironically, because of
his drug addiction. In 1945 Thiel was “taking the cure”
at the United States Hospital at Lexington, Ky. Two
New York detectives visited the institution in search of
wanted check passers, since drug addiction was recognized as common in that particular profession. Going
through pictures of the inmates, they ran across a photo
of a John Barrymore look-alike and remembered the
Campbell case. Thiel was brought back to New York
and confronted with the witnesses in the Campbell case,
who admitted they had identified the wrong man. He
then confessed to being Mr. X, and cleared Campbell.
When the two men were brought together, Thiel said,
“I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused you.”
Campbell, in spite of his eight-year ordeal, showed
no sign of anger. He simply replied, “I suppose you
couldn’t help it.”
Within a few months, Campbell won a full pardon,
and a short while later, he was awarded $115,000 for
his wrongful conviction. Eighty-two days after getting
the award, Campbell died.
Thiel drew jail terms totaling nine years. Freed in his
mid-sixties, he went back to Chicago and, for a time,
faded into obscurity. Then he forged a check for $100.
When located by police, he was in bed near death. The
master forger told the cops, “Give me a pen and a blank
check and I’ll square my bill with the undertaker now.”
See also: BERTRAM CAMPBELL, CHECK PASSING.
No extensive thievery is ever possible without an outlet
for the criminals’ plunder. Receivers of stolen goods, or
fences, have always existed but perhaps nowhere quite
as blatantly as in New York’s notorious Thieves’
Exchange, in the Eighth Ward near Houston Street and
Broadway, during the last third of the 19th century.
Each night criminals and fences would gather over
drinks to dicker about the price of stolen loot with virtually no attempt at subterfuge. There was little need
since all the important fences paid regular stipends to
the police for the right to operate in the Thieves’
Exchange. It was said that major politicians and top
police officials were even granted commissions on the
fences’ gross business.
A criminal down on his luck could shop around at
the Thieves’ Exchange for a fence who would supply
him with funds in exchange for first option on his future
loot. Fences would also listen to specific criminal plots
to decide whether or not to supply financial backing.
There was little that could not be handled in the way
of loot, big or small, at this criminal marketplace.
When in the 1870s a gang stole $50,000 worth of needles and thread from the warehouse of H. B. Caflin and
Co., they had little trouble finding an instant buyer for
the goods at the Exchange. By the final two decades of
the century, the Thieves’ Exchange began crumbling
under the assault of police reform movements. The
fences, of course, did not disappear; they simply scattered.
See also: FENCE.
third degree
Use of the third degree, whether in the form of brute
force or the more subtle torture of protracted questioning or other psychological pressures, by the police to
gain confessions has declined greatly in recent years.
In the heyday of the third degree, many police
departments had their own favorite ways of extracting
confessions from suspects they deemed guilty of an
offense. A standard device was the rubber hose, which
can inflict terrible pain but leaves no marks. The
“water cure” had the same merit; a suspect would be
forced to lie down and water would be poured slowly
into his nostrils. The victim either suffocated or confessed. Another method was to drill into the nerve of a
suspect’s tooth. In his memoirs a police captain
described a technique whereby officers would deliver
a sharp but not heavy blow on the skull, repeated at
regular intervals, so that the regularity of the blows
arouses anticipation which increases the torture; assur-
876
THOMAS, Henry Andrew “Heck”
Thomas, Henry Andrew “Heck” (1850–1912)
lawman
ing the suspect that he will not be hurt, then suddenly
felling him with a blow from behind with a club or a
slab of wood, followed by further sympathy and reassurance when the man revives, only to have the same
thing happen again, the man never seeing who strikes
him. . . .”
If one man could be given credit for cleaning up the
Oklahoma badlands, he would have to be Heck
Thomas, one of the West’s most remarkable lawmen.
Actually, Thomas would probably have preferred to be
remembered as one of the Three Guardsmen, a trio
comprised of himself and two other illustrious deputy
U.S. marshals, Chris Madsen and Bill Tilghman,
although there is no doubt that Heck was the key planner. Among the outlaws Thomas tracked down were
Sam Bass, the Daltons and the Doolin gang.
Born in 1850 in Athens, Ga. to a family with a distinguished military tradition, young Heck served as a
courier in A. P. Hill’s division of Stonewall Jackson’s
corps; he was 12 years old at the time. A year later, he
was mustered out of the Confederate Army when he
almost died of typhoid fever. After the Civil War Heck
joined the Atlanta police force. Wounded in one of the
city’s numerous race riots, he won a reputation as a
fearless fighter. After becoming bored with his job, he
moved to Texas with his wife in 1875 and went to
work as an express car guard for the Texas Express Co.
During a train robbery in 1876 he prevented holdup
men from getting $22,000 by hiding the money in an
unused heating stove in the express car. Promoted to
detective by the company, he led posses that ran to
earth several members of the Sam Bass gang. Tiring too
of this work, Thomas became a bounty hunter, his most
notable catch being a pair of murderous brothers, Jim
and Pink Lee, whom he killed in a shoot-out that established his reputation of always giving a wanted man a
chance to surrender first. The Lees declined the offer.
Later that year Thomas became a deputy marshal
for Hanging Judge Parker’s court in Fort Smith, Ark.
His job was to round up badmen in the Indian Territory and bring them to Parker for trial. When Thomas
wasn’t traveling alone, he rode with another deputy
and drivers for two or three “prison wagons,” each
capable of holding about eight prisoners. On his first
trip with a partner, Thomas brought in eight murderers,
one horse thief, an illegal whiskey trader and seven
other offenders. He soon became famous for the number of his catches. Working alone during the week after
Christmas 1886, Thomas brought in four murderers.
Not surprisingly, most of the territory’s renegades soon
recognized him on sight and sought to stay clear of this
big man with the flowing brown mustache “who
looked easy but fought hard.”
During the late 1880s Thomas and Chris Madsen
were given the task of running down the Dalton gang.
The Daltons made a strenuous effort to avoid confrontations with the two lawmen. Thomas pushed the
gang so hard that they decided to pull one big job in
Widespread use of third degree methods undoubtedly resulted in the wrongful conviction of countless
suspects. A report by a committee of the American Bar
Association in 1930 stated, “For every one of these
cases which . . . find a place in the official reports,
there are many hundreds and probably thousands, of
instances of the use of the Third Degree in some form
or other.” In 1947 President Harry Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights arrived at the same conclusion.
Apologists for the third degree have often insisted
its use is “rare” and it is never directed against
“decent” persons. In fact, especially in lurid cases
where the public demands a solution, the third degree
has been used on prominent and respectable people,
although, as the Truman committee put it, “Most of
the victims . . . are ignorant, friendless persons,
unaware of their rights and without the means of challenging those who violate those rights.” Roscoe
Pound, former dean of Harvard Law School, once
emphasized, “No rich man is ever subjected to this
process to obtain proof in violation of antitrust legislation, and no powerful politician is thus dealt with to
obtain proof of bribery and graft.”
The main impetus for improvements in the treatment
of suspects springs from the 1966 Miranda decision
handed down by the Supreme Court. Under Miranda
the police are required to warn a suspect that he has the
right to keep silent; that anything he says can and will
be used against him; that if he wishes, he has the right
to have his attorney present during any interrogation;
and that if he has no attorney or cannot afford one, a
lawyer will be appointed to represent him.
Despite the Miranda ruling, the third degree is still
practiced in some jurisdictions. In the late 1970s the
Philadelphia police were often accused of using excessive force at the time of arrest, a sort of pre-third degree
treatment considered helpful in getting a suspect to
confess. The city’s police officers were found to have
engaged in marathon interrogations, in some cases
breaking down the resistance of the innocent as well as
the guilty. It was revealed that the force also employed
the old-fashioned physical third degree, in the form of
the “telephone book treatment,” whereby a Philadelphia telephone directory was placed on a suspect’s head
and beaten upon with a steel hammer until his memory
improved.
See also: CONFESSIONS, FALSE; MIRANDA DECISION.
877
THOMPSON, Ben
order to get enough money to flee to South America.
On October 5, 1892 the Daltons staged their famous
raid on Coffeyville, Kan. and were almost completely
wiped out trying to rob two banks at once. Thomas,
hot on the gang’s trail, arrived in town just after the
shooting. Even though he had taken no actual part in
gunning down the Daltons, a Coffeyville banker
awarded him $1,500 after the raid for bringing about
“the extermination of this gang.”
Next, Thomas, Madsen and Bill Tilghman went
after the Doolin gang. Although Bill Doolin had been a
member of the Dalton gang, he had missed the Coffeyville raid and had thereafter formed his own outfit.
Thomas captured or killed several of the Doolin gang
in various gunfights. He was also given official credit
for finally killing Bill Doolin, supposedly in a nighttime gunfight in 1896. Years after, an apparently more
accurate version of what had happened surfaced.
Thomas had located Doolin’s house and found the outlaw’s wife weeping over his corpse, which was laid out
on a bed. Doolin had just died of consumption. Without a moment’s hesitation, Thomas leveled his shotgun
and let the corpse have both barrels. He later told of
having shot Bill Doolin as the outlaw went for his gun,
and collected a $5,000 reward. Thomas gave the
money to Doolin’s widow, a penniless woman who had
reformed her husband and made him give up his life of
crime.
Later, around the turn of the century, Thomas tamed
Lawton, Oklahoma Territory, became a hunting companion of Teddy Roosevelt and finally retired in 1909
following a heart attack. He died on August 15, 1912,
five years after the territory he had tamed became a
state.
See also: BILL DOOLIN, CHRIS MADSEN, THREE GUARDSMEN, BILL TILGHMAN.
undistinguished. He was charged with a couple of
killings but nothing came of the accusations.
After the war Thompson was accused of another
shooting. While in jail in Austin, he bribed two guards,
and he, the guards and five others headed for Mexico
to join up with the forces of Emperor Maximilian.
When Maximilian was executed in 1867, Thompson
fled back across the border, barely avoiding capture by
the forces of Juarez. In Texas he was acquitted of an old
murder charge but soon got two years for another
shooting.
Pardoned in 1870, Thompson hit the gambling trail
and eventually opened a saloon and gaming establishment in Abilene in partnership with a gambler and old
army buddy, Phil Coe. Thompson had a few confrontations with Wild Bill Hickok, but despite some tough
talk, neither seemed anxious to have a showdown. No
less an authority than Bat Masterson erased any doubt
about who would have won. He considered Thompson
Thompson, Ben (1842–1884) gunfighter, murderer and
lawman
English-born Ben Thompson was one of the West’s
more pathological gunfighters (perhaps only trailing his
younger, even more trigger-happy brother, Billy),
equally mean and murderous whether or not he was
wearing a badge.
Raised in Austin, Tex. Thompson’s first recorded
scrape with the law occurred when he shot a black
youth. In a significant departure from the normal judicial custom of the period, he was sent to prison under
pressure from the local citizenry, indicating the low
repute in which he was held. With the outbreak of the
Civil War, Thompson joined the Confederate Army.
Aside from the fact that he fought more with his comrades than against the common foe, his service was
Ben Thompson’s death toll may have reached 32; he was
just as likely to commit murder with his badge on as with
it off.
878
THOMPSON, Billy
the best gunfighter of all. “Others missed at times,” he
wrote later, “but Ben Thompson was as delicate and
certain in action as a Swiss watch.” The facade of the
Thompson-Coe establishment boasted a representation
of an enormous bull whose sexual organs were of an
even greater dimension than the rest of its parts. Citizens dubbed the painting the Shame of Abilene and
pressured Marshal Hickok to do something about it.
When Thompson was out of town, Hickock got into an
argument with Coe, supposedly over the painting, and
killed him in a gun duel. Shortly thereafter, Thompson
sold out his interest in the saloon and left Abilene, having suffered an accident in a wagon that left him with a
broken leg.
Thompson returned to Kansas in 1873 and took
part in several killings. In one incident Billy Thompson
gunned down a sheriff in Kansas and Ben helped his
brother get away. Thereafter, Ben Thompson kept on
gambling and killing, pausing in 1879 to hire out his
gun to the Santa Fe Railroad during its war to gain
rights-of-way through Royal Gorge.
In late 1879 he returned to Austin with quite a stake
from his gambling and gunfighting days. He opened a
string of gambling houses and then, despite his unsavory record, ran for marshal. After being defeated once,
he was elected to the post in 1880. Thompson gave the
town quite satisfactory law enforcement for a time. The
crime rate dropped dramatically and so did the number
of arrests. Thompson’s very appearance kept things
peaceful. Overlooking his habit of getting drunk and
shooting out the street lamps when things got too quiet,
the voters reelected him in December 1881. However,
when Thompson shot and killed an old foe, Jack Harris, in San Antonio in 1882, the citizens of Austin felt
that he had gone a bit too far, and he was forced to
resign. Thompson stood trial for the Harris killing but
was acquitted on a plea of self-defense. When he
returned to Austin, his supporters gave him a spontaneous parade of welcome.
Although no longer the town’s lawman, Thompson
still cut such an awesome figure that other badmen
stayed clear of him and the community. Soon, he began
to crave action. In March 1884 he met King Fisher,
deputy sheriff of Uvalde, who was in Austin on official
business, and the pair went on a drunk that took them
to San Antonio. There, they entered the Vaudeville
Variety Theatre, a gaming joint that the late Jack Harris
had partly owned. Thompson and Fisher repaired to an
upstairs box from which to watch the show. A short
time later, two of Harris’ former partners, Billy Simms
and Joe Foster, entered with the establishment’s
bouncer, Jacob Coy. The five had a drink together, with
the conversation quickly turning to Harris’ death and
Thompson viciously taunting the partners about it. As
words got heated, he playfully, in a style of play only
Thompson was capable of, jammed his six-shooter into
Foster’s mouth. Bouncer Coy grabbed the cylinder of
the revolver and there was a scuffle. Suddenly, gunfire
erupted and both Thompson and Fisher fell dead, shot
down by Simms, Foster and Coy as well as three gunmen they had stationed in the next box. Thompson
took nine bullets and Fisher 13. Fisher had not fired a
shot and Thompson only one, which obviously made
the killings self-defense, at least according to the official
ruling.
See also: PHIL COE, JOHN KING FISHER, SHAME OF ABILENE, BILLY THOMPSON.
Thompson, Billy (c. 1845–1888?) gunfighter
The trigger-happy brother of Ben Thompson, one of the
West’s most notorious gunmen, Texas Billy Thompson
was the more cold-blooded, if less efficient, murderer.
On several occasions it was only Ben’s intervention that
saved Billy from retribution by his enemies or the law.
Billy’s family came to Austin, Tex. from Yorkshire, England when he was a small child. Growing up in the
shadow of his brother, Billy was often moved to gunplay
to prove he was worthy of as much attention as Ben.
After a number of shooting scrapes in the Confederate Army, from which Ben always rescued him, Billy
turned gambler upon resuming civilian life and spent
most of his free time either drinking or trying to shoot
someone. In 1873 Billy shot and killed Sheriff C. B.
Whitney in Ellsworth, Kan. “For God’s sake, Billy,”
Ben reproached him, “you’ve shot our best friend.”
“I don’t give a damn,” Billy retorted. “I would’ve
shot if it had been Jesus Christ.”
With the help of Ben and some friends, Billy got out
of town. Once clear of pursuit, he lay down on the sod
and fell into a drunken sleep. When he awoke, he rode
back to Ellsworth and found Ben. His brother hid him
for five days and then smuggled him out of town again.
Billy then made his way to Buena Vista, Colo., where
he was hailed as a hero and elected mayor by the outlaw element. Meanwhile, the governor of Kansas
posted a reward for him in connection with the Whitney shooting, but he was not apprehended until three
years later, when he wandered into Texas and was captured by Texas Rangers. Shipped back to Kansas for
trial, Billy was found not guilty. It was said that Ben
Thompson made a number of threats and spent a huge
sum of money to get the not-guilty verdict.
Billy then traveled a bit, usually under his brother’s
wing. He was in San Antonio in 1884 when his brother
was gunned down there by longtime enemies. Billy
rushed to his dead brother’s side and, although griefstricken, made no effort to seek vengeance. After walk879
THOMPSON, Gerald
Several suspects were questioned by police. After six
days they focused on Thompson because of an anonymous tip. Apparently, the informer was one of his many
rape victims who had also been attacked in the same
cemetery and remembered that her rapist had been
armed with a pair of scissors. A search of Thompson’s
home, which he shared with his grandmother, turned
up direct evidence linking him to the murder: bloodstained trousers and a bloodstained car cushion from
his auto, samples from which matched the victim’s
blood type. The police also found hundreds of obscene
photos of Thompson with his other rape victims as well
as a diary in which he had recorded the identities of his
last 16 pickup victims with a description of what had
occurred.
An army of newsmen descended on Peoria for
Thompson’s trial, as did hundreds of angry Illinoisans
who were determined to see that Thompson died,
whether legally in the electric chair or at the end of a
lynch rope. Despite such threats, Thompson’s trial was
held and he was quickly convicted. He died in the electric chair on October 15, 1935.
ing the streets in sorrow for several days and nights, he
pulled out of San Antonio. There was speculation that
without his brother’s protection, Billy wouldn’t last
long. But he did commit another murder in Corpus
Christi and managed to hole up in El Paso for many
months. What happened to Billy after that is not certain, the most common rumor was that he was shot
dead in Laredo about 1888.
See also: BEN THOMPSON.
Thompson, Gerald (1910–1935) rapist and murderer
Few capital cases in recent history have degenerated
into the kind of circus that took place during the rapemurder trial of Gerald Thompson in Illinois in 1935.
Angry mobs paraded through Peoria threatening to
lynch him, and at one point the defendant had to be
secretly shipped out of town until the local citizenry
quieted down.
People were incensed by his cold-blooded murder of
young Mildred Hallmark as well as his long string of
rapes carried out with weird, almost assembly-line efficiency. As far as the authorities were able to determine
from the victims who finally came forward, Thompson
raped 16 young women between November 1934 and
June 1935, ending with the Hallmark murder. However, Thompson once confessed to a friend that he had
actually averaged better than one rape a week for well
over a year.
In his brutal series of crimes, Thompson followed
the same modus operandi. He would pick up a girl in
his car and imprison her there. The rapist had rigged up
a clever wiring system from the battery to the car door
handle so that if his victim attempted to flee, she would
be literally jolted back into his arms. With a pair of
scissors on hand, he would cut away the victim’s
clothes and then rape her. Finally, he would switch on
his car lights and force the naked girl to get in front of
his car, where he would make her perform sexual acts
with him in strange positions while a self-timing camera clicked away. These pictures were later used to
blackmail his victims into keeping quiet about their
experience.
Unlike his other victims, Mildred Hallmark fought
back viciously, and in the struggle the rapist brutally
beat her and stabbed her several times with the scissors. He then dumped her naked body in a local cemetery. Thompson went about his normal work as a
toolmaker at the Caterpillar Tractor plant in Peoria.
One of his coworkers was John Hallmark, the father
of the murdered girl, and when a collection was taken
up to buy flowers for Mildred, Thompson made a
large contribution.
Thompson, Miran Edgar “Buddy” (1917–1948)
robber and murderer
Buddy Thompson was one of the most dangerous and
daring lone wolf criminals of the late 1930s and early
1940s. A confirmed criminal, Thompson while in his
early twenties, left a trail of crimes through his native
Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas,
Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. Arrested eight
times, he engineered eight successful jailbreaks.
His most stunning crime followed the death of his
brother, Blackie Thompson, a fugitive from a Texas
penitentiary, at the hands of an Amarillo police officer.
Thompson sought out the officer and sat waiting for
him at the soda counter of a drug store. When the officer noticed Thompson and thought he recognized him
from a number of wanted posters, he approached him
and asked for identification. Instead, Thompson
opened his jacket to reveal an automatic tucked in his
belt. He ordered the officer to draw.
It was crazy, something out of a Western movie.
“What is this?” the officer asked. “Do I know you or
something?”
“No, and you ain’t never going to,” Thompson said
coldly. “You can draw or not, but when I count three
I’m going to start shooting. One. Two. Three.”
The officer drew but much too slowly. Thompson
shot him twice, killing him.
Thompson fled Texas, kidnapping a motorist and
forcing the man to drive him to Oklahoma. A month
later, he was captured. Found guilty of killing the police
880
“THREE strikes and you’re out”
officer, Thompson was sentenced to life imprisonment,
a light sentence that infuriated Texas officials. They
turned him over to federal officers, hoping that under
the Lindbergh Law he would get the death sentence for
kidnapping. But because the motorist had been released
unharmed, Thompson got a 99-year federal sentence
and ended up in Alcatraz.
Thompson’s reputation preceded him to “the Rock,”
and Bernie Coy, actively plotting the Alcatraz rebellionescape, was eager to include a man with a record of
eight successful jailbreaks. The Alcatraz break of May
1946 foundered at the last minute because of a single
missing key, which prevented the escapees from getting
to a police launch that would have taken them to the
California mainland, where getaway cars were waiting.
When Thompson saw the plot had failed, he realized
the only officers who could identify him as being in the
break were the nine guards held hostage in two prison
cells. Thompson goaded another leading member of the
escape team, Dutch Cretzer, a former Public Enemy No.
4, to gun down the nine, against Coy’s specific orders.
Cretzer did so, and then Thompson slipped back to his
cell block, not realizing that Cretzer’s fusillade had
killed only one officer; the rest were badly wounded or
playing dead. After the revolt was crushed and Cretzer
and Coy killed, Thompson thought he was home free,
only to be accused by the eight surviving guards. Along
with Sam Shockley, another participant in the
attempted break and a pathetically insane inmate,
Thompson was executed in San Quentin’s new gas
chamber on December 3, 1948, the first to die by that
method in California. As the door to the chamber was
being pneumatically sealed, Thompson said to Shockley, “I never thought this would really happen.”
See also: ALCATRAZ PRISON REBELLION, SAM RICHARD
SHOCKLEY.
keteers in the 1930s and 1940s owed more to the
careers of the Guardsmen than to the Dumas tale.
See also: CHRIS MADSEN, HENRY ANDREW “HECK”
THOMAS, BILL TILGHMAN.
three-card monte
gambling con game
Three-card monte is a classic card gyp, whose history in
America goes back to the early 1800s. Every few
decades it enjoys a big revival because a new crop of
suckers has grown up. Since the late 1970s, practitioners of the trade have been flooding most big American
cities. On almost any weekday as many as a half-dozen
street games may be in progress at one time, for example, on New York’s fashionable West 57th Street from
Fifth Avenue to Carnegie Hall, until determined block
association campaigning got rid of them.
The idea in three-card monte is to guess which of three
face-down cards is the red queen. It looks easy: the dealer
shows the winning card, then he does a fast shuffle and
places the three cards face down; pick a card and put
your money on it. The average victim will watch for a
time and invariably spot the correct card every time.
Other players try and win at times and lose at other times.
These losing efforts are particularly exasperating to the
potential victim who recognizes the correct card. Generally speaking, all these early players, winners and losers,
are shills for the operation who try to coax outsiders to
play. When an outsider does play, the dealer becomes
extremely adept at his art and lays the cards out in a way
that not only prevents the sucker from spotting the queen
but makes another card appear to be the queen.
There are endless variations to the game. A victim
may suddenly notice the corner of the queen is bent so
that it can be easily identified. When the victim bets,
the quick-fingered dealer will first straighten that corner and fold a losing card instead. Sometimes a victim
will spot the correct card and try to put down say $50.
One of the shills will quickly lay down $100 on a losing
card and the dealer will take his bet and tell the victim,
“Sorry, only one card can be bet a game.” Should the
victim protest his bet was down first, the other supposed bettor will insist his was. The dealer will throw
up his hands in disgust and say, “I don’t know whose
bet was down first, so all bets are off. New deal.”
Three Guardsmen western law officers
Three deputy U.S. marshals who carved out illustrious
careers were known in folklore as the Three Guardsmen. Enforcing the law for Hanging Judge Parker’s
court in Fort Smith Ark. Heck Thomas, Chris Madsen
and Bill Tilghman were instrumental in running to
ground members of the outlaw gangs of Sam Bass, the
Dalton brothers and Bill Doolin. In the process they
gained well-earned reputations as being fair, brave and
incorruptible, rare traits among Western lawmen.
Unlike many other peace officers, they even won
respect from the outlaws they hunted. Bandit leader Bill
Doolin reportedly refused to allow his men to gun
Tilghman down from ambush, saying the officer was
“too good a man to be shot down like that.” Hollywood’s numerous Western versions of the Three Mus-
Three-Finger Brown
See THOMAS LUCCHESE.
“three strikes and you’re out”
effort
crime-reduction
After his daughter was killed by a five-time offender,
Mike Reynolds was responsible for launching Califor881
“THREE strikes and you’re out”
prisoner for a year, costs rise two or three times as sentences lengthen. Because of the worsening health of
older prisoners, the costs of keeping them soar. An even
more serious problem is the estimate made in late 1998
that California’s jail system would run out of room in
two years. A shortage of 70,000 beds will choke the
system by 2006. By 2002, 25 percent of California prisoners will be second or third strikers. The estimated
cost of the three-strike law will be an estimated $5.5
billion annually.
(As if to confirm these fears of rising costs, there is a
concurrent move in many jurisdictions to lower penalties for nonviolent drug offenders. In New York in
1999 a movement grew for tempering the penalties
under the state’s Rockefeller-era drug laws. The move
drew strong support and leadership from conservative
Republicans. While the claimed purpose for the change
was fairer sentencing, it was noted the switch among
Republicans came as the state’s prison costs climbed.)
An additional criticism made of three-strike laws is
that they actually target the wrong offenders. In California, for instance, the average age of a three-strike
inmate is 36, but it is well known that most crimes are
committed at age 18. After that the number of offenses
starts to dip and drops two-thirds by age 30. Critics
insist the jails are being filled with people who are
unlikely to pose a threat to the community. Exceptions
to that rule are viewed by critics as little more than
unimportant anecdotal evidence.
Just as in the late 1990s sentiment shifted in favor of
treatment as a remedy to drug-use-related offense, foes
of three-strike laws call the expenditure of money to
enforce them wasteful. The Rand Corp., a California
think tank, estimated that for every $1 million spent
under the three-strikes law in the state about 60 serious
crimes are prevented. This is considered to be way
below what other methods could accomplish. Based on
pilot programs, Rand concluded that offering cash and
other incentives to troubled youths for them to graduate from high school would avert 250 serious crimes
per $1 million. And spending $1 to provide counseling
for parents of aggressive youths could prevent 150 serious crimes.
Other critics wonder how necessary three-strikes
laws are since crime rates throughout the country
started dropping before the first law was passed. Running for governor in California, Attorney General Dan
Lungren made a centerpoint of his campaign his record
on fighting crime and the aggressive use of three strikes.
His opponents noted he never mentioned the drop in
crime rates before the law went into effect. Seasoned
political observers found the crime issue and three
strikes was no longer working with voters. As one put
it, “That dog won’t bite anymore.”
nia’s 1994 “three strikes and you’re out” movement,
which, at least in terms of convictions, quickly became
the most successful of such programs. Under the standard description of the program, any career criminal
who receives a third conviction does not simply get
what that crime calls for as punishment but a life sentence, often with no opportunity for parole. As
Reynolds explains the California statute, “What three
strikes has done is drawn a line in the sand and said,
‘You’re at a point in your life where you’ve got to
decide whether you’re going to be a criminal or a lawabiding citizen.’”
California was not the first state to adopt three
strikes. Washington State voters overwhelmingly
approved such a statute in 1993. Through fiscal 1996
(the last available figures in complete form), 121 career
criminals were sentenced to life imprisonment in Washington. By contrast California has obtained 40,511
convictions since the law’s inception.
Yet five years after the first three-strikes law passed,
its impact was disputed. True, many state attorneys
general and other advocates insist three-strikes laws are
reducing violent crime. According to Georgia attorney
general Thurbert Baker, “I certainly believe there is a
greater sense of security for law-abiding citizens in
Georgia. They know these crimes are going to be dealt
with severely and will happen less frequently because of
how tough [such laws] are.” In fact the law is so popular in Georgia that the state has gone to a two-strikes
version, leading some opponents of such statutes to say
somewhat puckishly that obviously one-strike laws (or
even no-strike laws) would be more effective.
Despite the popularity of three strikes with elected
officials, law enforcement officers and voters, a debate
has started to rage over whether such laws curb crime
and if the programs are too costly to enforce. This
opposition clearly runs the gamut from liberal to conservative opponents. They point out most states put
such laws on the books and fail to enforce them aggressively. Indeed, some 15 states with laws on the books
for three or four years have sentenced no more than six
people under supposed three-strike rules.
Critics note the laws are enforced unevenly in enthusiastic California, and many critics, including dyed-in-thewool hardline conservatives, are warning that the future
price tag for enforcing strike laws could be very high.
On the matter of uneven enforcement, some district
attorneys zealously apply the three-strikes law, while others use it very infrequently. In some jurisdictions, says
Thomas Griffith, a law professor at the University of
Southern California, any felony can be a third strike,
including “something as small as stealing a pair of pants.”
Obviously, though, the matter of cost is sweeping to
the forefront. While it takes about $20,000 to keep a
882
TIN Cup, Colorado
Even three-strikes proponents find flaws in the laws
as passed and enforced, especially in California. David
La Course, an activist who helped write the Washington law, says California’s broad approach “has hurt the
movement.” At the same time, he criticizes other states
for drafting laws so narrowly that they are “paper
tigers” that can hardly be enforced.
Whatever the case, three strikes seemed to have faltered by 1999. At that time the last state to institute a
three-strikes law was Alaska in 1996.
Tilghman, Bill (1854–1924) lawman
A two-fisted, fast-shooting lawman, Deputy Marshal
Bill Tilghman was one of the most-respected law officers the West ever produced. He once brought in the
noted badman Bill Doolin without firing a shot.
Together with deputy marshals Chris Madsen and
Heck Thomas, Tilghman formed what was popularly
known as the Three Guardsmen, a trio of law officers
that did more to clean up the Oklahoma badlands than
any number of 50-man posses.
Born in Fort Dodge, Iowa on July 4, 1854, William
M. Tilghman developed a quick draw but also learned
that a man could sometimes use his fists faster than his
gun. By the age of 23 he was proving that as a deputy
in Dodge City under Sheriff Charlie Bassett. Tilghman,
rather than Wyatt Earp, who later became town marshal, established—and enforced—the no-guns-inDodge rule. He did it by proving that he was better in
a fistfight or a gunfight than any quick-tempered cowboy.
Tilghman held various lawman posts in Dodge,
including that of chief of police during the late 1880s,
and then became a federal deputy marshal. In 1890 he
brought in Kid Donnor, a psychotic young killer who
had terrorized the bad lands around the Wichita Mountains for two years, after tracking him for three
months. It took him a month to catch up with John
Braya, who had murdered an entire family west of
Oklahoma City.
Tilghman’s next assignment, with Madsen and
Thomas, was to get the Doolin gang. While he helped
arrest several of them, he earned a reputation for never
killing unnecessarily. After shooting and almost killing
one gang member, Bill Raidler, Tilghman nursed the
outlaw until he was able to travel and then brought him
in. While he stalked the Doolins, they knew he played
fair and they did too. Once, he walked into a farmhouse where members of the gang, including their
leader, were hiding. Several guns were aimed at Tilghman from behind drawn drapes, but Doolin would not
let his men gun down the lawman, saying he was “too
good a man” for a fate like that.
883
Tilghman eventually captured Doolin in Eureka
Springs, Ark. Most Western lawmen would have shot
Doolin first and then asked him to surrender, but Tilghman took him alive. Doolin was lodged in a wooden
jail in Guthrie, from which he soon escaped. Later
Heck Thomas caught up to the bandit and filled him
with lead, perhaps after Doolin was already dead.
Tilghman became sheriff of Lincoln County, Oklahoma Territory in 1900 and chief of police in Oklahoma City in 1911. Three years later, he retired at the
age of 60. In 1924 Gov. M. E. Trapp induced Tilghman to take up a badge again to clean up the oil-boom
town of Cromwell. Tilghman, at the age of 70, accepted the assignment but it was to be a fatal one. After
bringing a large measure of order to Cromwell in two
months, he was shot in the back by a drunken Prohibition agent, and died without knowing what had happened to him.
See also: BILL DOOLIN, CHRIS MADSEN, HENRY ANDREW
“HECK” THOMAS, THREE GUARDSMEN.
Till, Emmett (1941–1955) murder victim
Following a rumor that he had whistled at a white
woman, a 14-year old black youth named Emmett Till
was kidnapped sometime around August 28, 1955
from his uncle’s home in LeFlore County, Miss. On
August 31 the youngster’s body, tied in barbed wire,
was fished from the Tallahatchie River. Two white men
were eventually charged with the murder but were
found not guilty by an all-white jury. Till’s death
inspired at least one of the protest songs of the civil
rights movement during the early 1960s and was frequently cited by the leaders of the movement as symbolic of the double standard of American justice.
Tin Cup, Colorado
lawless mining camp
It has been said that law and order developed in Western mining camps as bricks and stone began to be used
for construction, giving such places a sense of stability.
Tin Cup in Gunnison County, Colo., which remained a
tent and shack town for all of its existence, certainly
could be cited as supporting evidence. Law and order in
Tin Cup was, at best, a sometime thing. One jest had it
that Tin Cup pinned a badge on a marshal as a prelude
to burying him. From 1881 to 1883 three marshals,
Frank Emerson, Harry Rivers and Andy Jameson, were
shot to death, and a fourth, Samuel Mickey, was shot at
and cut up so often that the pressure of daily survival
became too much for him and he finally had to be
carted off to an insane asylum.
The only lawman to last was a Kansan named David
Corsaut. Named marshal number five in 1883, he was
TINKER, Edward
famed for shooting “on suspicion.” Mining camp justice was violent but impatient. If the guilty man was
found, he was quickly strung up; if the guilty man got
away, the crime was as likely to be quickly forgotten.
A gambler hit town once and died in a fight at a
gambling table, holding a poker hand in his left hand
and a shooting iron in his right. The boys buried him
that way and nobody worried about going after his
killer. There was gold to be panned and mined and time
was short. When the gold ran out, the tents came
down, the shacks were deserted and a very crowded
boot hill was left to the wind and the dust.
In the early 1900s the farmers formed cooperatives
to fight for better prices; those growers who refused to
join the campaign had their crops and barns burned. In
1906 more direct action was taken, as armed, mounted
Night Riders, also known as the Silent Brigade, swept
into the market towns and burned down the tobacco
companies’ warehouses in Elkton, Hopkinsville, Princeton and Russelville, Ky. Leaders of the farmers’ association denounced the terrorist acts, at least officially.
Although numerous arrests were made, there were no
convictions. The tobacco interests charged that judges
and jurors acquitted the defendants because of threats
or other forms of influence, while supporters of the
farmers insisted the acquittals merely reflected the community’s backing of their actions.
Finally, thanks to heavy pressure from Kentucky
Gov. Augustus Willson, several of the Night Riders
were convicted and imprisoned, while others were successfully sued in the courts. Tainted by the criminal
behavior of a number of their members, the cooperatives dissolved during the succeeding decade. Nevertheless, the tobacco firms increased their payments to the
farmers.
Tinker, Edward (?–1811) insurance swindler and murderer
The first captain of an American cargo ship known to
have attempted insurance fraud by sinking his own
vessel, Edward Tinker got caught up in his own plotting and finally had to resort to murder. Tinker sold
off his cargo and then scuttled his schooner off
Roanoke Island, Va., planning to claim the cargo had
gone down with the ship. Two members of his crew,
named Durand and Potts, readily joined his plot but a
third, known as Edwards, expressed some trepidation.
Tinker lured Edwards on a duck-hunting expedition
and murdered him, weighting down the body with
rocks and heaving it into the sea. The corpse, however, was carried back to shore by the tide, and Tinker, as the last person seen with the seaman, was
arrested.
The captain then wrote a letter to his coconspirator
Durand offering him money if he would testify that
Potts had killed Edwards and had sunk the vessel earlier. Tinker explained to Durand that the worst that
could happen to him if he was convicted of perjury was
that a bit of his ear would be lopped off, the punishment for false swearing at the time. Durand, now terrified of Tinker’s plots, feared that if he refused, Tinker
would approach Potts with a plan to put the blame on
him. The worried seaman solved his dilemma by revealing the letter to the authorities, and the scheming Tinker was convicted of murder and hanged at Cateret,
N.C. in September 1811.
Tirrel, Albert
Todd, Thelma (1906–1935) Hollywood actress and alleged
murder victim
She was dubbed the “Vamping Vixen,” the “Hot
Toddy,” and the “Ice Cream Blonde,” but she easily
outdistanced this sort of Hollywood hype. Beautiful
Thelma Todd was recognized as a sparkling comedienne who easily made the transition from silents to
talking movies because of her genuine talents. Most
remembered for her roles with the Marx Brothers in
successful box office hits as Monkey Business and
Horse Feathers, she also appeared with Buster Keaton,
Laurel and Hardy, Bing Crosby, Cary Cooper, Joe E.
Brown, and ZaSu Pitts, her closest female friend. In
most of these appearances Thelma was regarded as the
real draw. From 1926 to 1935 she appeared in an
amazing 109 films, virtually all very successful. The
saying was that many actors and directors were ready
to kill to get her in their films.
Thelma had a most adoring legion of fans, a situation that made her rich beyond the hope of a young girl
with limited acting training. Her road to Hollywood
had been amazingly easy. She won a beauty contest as
Miss Massachusetts, and a family friend showed pictures of her to Paramount producer Jesse Lasky, who
sight unseen, offered her a contract. Thelma was sent to
a studio acting school in Astoria, New York, and progressed so rapidly she was ready to move to the top in
Hollywood. Her delightfully throaty voice in the talkies
soon made her the darling of movie audiences.
See MARIA BICKFORD.
tobacco Night Riders
farmer terrorists
During the first decade of this century, hundreds of
tobacco farmers in Kentucky and Tennessee turned to
violence to try to break the monopolistic hold of the
tobacco companies, climaxing in the Black Patch War
of 1906–9.
884
TODD, Thelma
When Thelma Todd, the striking heartthrob of the 1920s and ’30s, died in her car under mysterious circumstances, the
rumor mills never stopped, and murder theories about the case continued into the next century.
she had been beaten and placed in her car and the ignition turned on.
And there were other whispers. Thelma seemed to be
having a secret affair with a very rich and powerful
man from San Francisco. She told actress Ida Lupino,
who was at the party, about him and said she expected
to see him shortly, perhaps right after the party. Thelma
inferred it was very, very important that she not reveal
his identify, presumably as that would result in a very
messy situation.
Then again there was the fact that Thelma did seem
quite fearful recently, for a time hiring bodyguards
and on some occasions she instructed her driver to
pick up speed, fearing they were being followed.
Thelma did mutter things about “eastern gangsters.”
That element was not unknown in Hollywood. Lucky
Luciano operating out of New York had set about targeting spots where the mob could establish secret
gambling operations on an upper floor. The mob was
very interested in Thelma’s cafe, but Thelma had
refused them. Could she have been ordered killed by
Luciano as an object lesson to owners of other choice
spots so they would be less inclined to refuse similar
offers?
A lot of criticism was placed on director West, who
although he had his own apartment in the complex
had moved in with Thelma. He had not attended the
Trocadero affair and said later that he had jokingly
warned if she wasn’t home by 2 A.M. he would lock her
out. As a point of fact he did lock her out, and he
Extremely bright, Thelma often told friends she
had to realize her fame would have to fade with
age and that she had to set herself up for the future.
One course she set out on was a half-interest, along
with director and producer Roland West, in a swank
Palisades roadhouse called “Thelma Todd’s Sidewalk
Cafe,” which became a mecca for the rich and famous
of the sun-and-beach-loving film colony. Some
would later insist that the cafe was the reason for
Thelma’s tragic fate, but that was just one theory among
many.
On the evening of December 16, 1935, Thelma
Todd’s body was found by her maid in her garage, set
well atop the cliff above Thelma’s apartment, which
was situated above the cafe.
The actress was slumped on the steering wheel of
her Packard convertible with its top down. The car’s
ignition was turned on. Like other sudden deaths that
had upset the big studios in recent years, there was a
vested interest by certain forces to see to it that there
be no suggestion of foul play. But there were problems
in advancing the theory that Thelma had committed
suicide—especially since she was very much at the
peak of her career. Her face was bloody and there was
blood on the evening gown and mink coat she had
worn to a late Saturday night party given in her honor
at the Trocadero, one of Hollywood’s top nightspots.
The blood seemed to raise the possibility that she had
been batted about after being driven home by her limousine driver. That in turn raised the possibility that
885
TOLSON, Clyde A.
claimed he never heard her come home. And even
though he did not see her all day and night Sunday, he
had not looked for her.
There were other loose ends. Thelma had had a terrible argument at the party with her ex-husband, talent
agent Pat DeCicco, who had shown up with two starlets.
While all these factors were tossed into the mix, an
inquest ruled that Thelma Todd had committed suicide,
a finding with which Hollywood’s brass was most comfortable. The film colony was at the time in its do-good
phase, with all scandals deemed detrimental to the
industry.
However, because of public opinion a second inquest
was held before a grand jury. This time the verdict was
that Thelma died “by carbon monoxide poisoning,”
leaving open that chance that she had not killed herself
but had died accidentally because she was curled up in
the convertible with the motor on to stay warm
through the night. There did seem to be a hole in that
theory since she could have curled up not in her open
convertible but instead in the car right next to it, a new
Lincoln sedan, which obviously would have provided
much more warmth.
Then true Hollywood mania raged. In which car had
Todd really died, and was her body transferred?
Again criticism centered on her housemate, director
West, who insisted he never heard Thelma trying to get
in—although neighbors insisted the actress had created
a loud ruckus. Also, West failed to locate Thelma Sunday day or evening. West was the only one ever to pay a
price in the tragedy. He could not shake off public suspicion and was never able to direct another movie.
In succeeding years the Thelma Todd story never
died. Decades later theories are still being advanced,
which say powerful forces protected the killer, utilizing
perjured testimony and official corruption. Despite
claims and counterclaims, it is now firmly established
that the verdict on the Todd case still must reside in the
“unsolved” files.
never took his eyes off the director in public. Not surprisingly, it was whispered that the two were homosexual lovers, charges that Hoover described as coming
from “public rats,” “guttersnipes” and “degenerate
pseudo-intellectuals.”
When Hoover died in 1972, he left virtually all his
$551,500 estate to Tolson, a situation that reportedly
caused considerable bad feelings in the FBI hierarchy.
Tolson resigned from the agency two days after
Hoover’s death.
Ironically, the Hoover-Tolson relationship stories
have lived on, even after Tolson’s death in 1975. In
1979 author Truman Capote, asked to name for The
Book of Lists 2 the persons whose lives he would have
most wanted to live in past incarnations, listed Hoover
and Tolson as one selection.
See also: J. EDGAR HOOVER.
Tombs
New York City prison
New York City’s original prison was built in 1838 on
marshland that had been filled in to provide work for
the poor, who had threatened to riot and revolt following the business collapse of 1807–08. The draining and
filling of the swamp took many years to complete.
When it was finished, it covered an area bounded by
Mulberry, Lafayette, White and Leonard streets. Most
of the landfill was then occupied by the Criminal
Courts Building and the Tombs Prison. The official
name of the prison was the Halls of Justice, but it was
popularly referred to as the Tombs because its design
had been copied from that of an ancient mausoleum,
which a Hoboken man, John L. Stevens, had illustrated
and described in a book, Stevens’ Travels, that he wrote
after touring Egypt.
From the first, the Tombs was rocked by scandal.
Conditions for the average prisoner were described as
“harsh and bleak and cold and damp,” and calls for
the prison’s closing appear to have started around
1850 (and were finally heeded about a half century
later). However, the first public scandal at the Tombs
was not over ill treatment of the many but because of
tender treatment of the few. In 1841 a young playboy
named John G. Colt was lodged there on a murder
charge. Colt and his family knew all the right people.
His brother was Samuel Colt, inventor of the Colt
revolver and the Colt repeating rifle. Among John
Colt’s close friends were Washington Irving, James
Fenimore Cooper and John Howard Payne, author of
Home, Sweet Home. Therefore, it was not surprising
that Colt received very special treatment even after
being sentenced to death. Charles A. Dana, then a
reporter working for the Tribune, wrote of Colt’s cell
life:
Tolson, Clyde A. (1900–1975) associate and friend of J.
Edgar Hoover
Longtime assistant to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover,
Clyde A. Tolson had served as confidential secretary to
three secretaries of war before joining the bureau in
1928. He became Hoover’s alter ego and was eventually named associate director of the agency. The two
men, both bachelors, dressed alike in conservative suits,
lunched and dined together almost daily, went on vacations together and regularly attended the races together.
Hoover would start each day by picking up Tolson in
his chauffeured, bullet-proof limousine on the way to
work. Tolson called Hoover “Eddie,” and some said he
886
TOMBSTONE Epitaph
Let us take a stroll through Murderer’s Row in the
Tombs and glance in on homicide Colt. . . . As the
keeper swings open the door of Colt’s cell the odor of
sweet flowers strikes you. It is no delusion, for there
they are in a handsome vase upon the center table. That
handsomely dressed little lady with the golden hair and
the sorrowful face whom we passed on the stairs has
just left them. Tomorrow they will be replaced by fresh
ones.
The table itself is a pretty one; there is nothing
handsomer in Washington Square. It is of exquisite
workmanship, and is covered with a dainty cloth. In a
gilt cage hanging against the wall is a canary. . . . A
pretty set of swinging shelves, suspended by silken
cords, catches the eye. Here are to be found the latest
novel, the freshest magazine. Pictures here and there
break up the dull wall into gorgeous color. You tread
on roses, for the cold stones are concealed by rare Kidderminster.
And Colt, how is with him? . . . In a patent
extension chair he lolls smoking an aromatic Havana .
. . He has on an elegant dress-gown, faced with cherry
colored silk, and his feet are encased in delicately
worked slippers. His clothes are neat and up in style to
the latest fashion plate. To one side of him is his bed, a
miracle of comfort.
When he is tired of reading or smoking or sleeping he takes a stroll in the yard. His toilet takes considerable time. Finally he appears, booted and gloved. He
may have his seal-skin coat on, or he may appear in a
light autumn affair of exquisite cut and softest tint. In
his hand is a gold-headed switch, which he carelessly
twirls during his promenade.
Then comes his lunch; not cooked in the Tombs,
but brought in from a hotel. It consists of a variety of
dishes—quail on toast, game pates, reed birds, fowl,
vegetables, coffee, cognac. Then it is back again to his
easy chair with book and cigar.
built in 1902. Through the years it too was the subject
of a number of newspaper exposés, again because of its
inhuman living conditions and its security problems.
Finally, in 1974 the second Tombs was closed after a
federal judge held it to be uninhabitable.
See also: JOHN C. COLT.
Tombstone, Arizona Territory
The public uproar over that revelation was nothing
compared to the one that came about as the result of a
fire in the Tombs. In the confusion during the fire
Colt—or someone else—was found lying on his bed
with a knife through his heart. The official verdict was
that Colt had committed suicide. Several prisoners had
escaped during the fire, and most people believed Colt
had too, a theory that facts uncovered afterward
seemed to confirm. The body on the bed probably had
been a stand-in. The public demanded that the prison’s
top personnel be replaced and, later, that the Tombs be
shut down.
Escapes from the Tombs were common in subsequent years and exposés of mistreatment of minor prisoners appeared regularly. Finally, a new Tombs was
887
The “town too tough to die” was born when a grizzled
long-haired prospector named Ed Schieffelin found silver ore on the borders of the Grand Canyon in 1877.
He was alone in Apache country when military scouts
from Fort Huachuca ran across him. “Whaddya doin’
here?” a soldier asked. “Prospectin’,” answered Schieffelin. The soldier laughed and said, “All you’ll ever find
in them hills is your tombstone.” So Schieffelin named
his claim Tombstone, and a town grew out of the
bedrock, one that was to be described as “hell’s last
wide open resort under the western sky.”
By 1881, the population of Tombstone had grown
to 10,000, and it had become a mecca not only for
miners but for gamblers, rustlers, desperadoes and
killers of all stripes. Twice, President Chester A.
Arthur sent special messages to Congress about the
brutal conditions there and in 1882 he was forced to
threaten the town with martial law. No other town in
the West could claim a citizenry comparable to the roll
of inhabitants—good and bad—who made Tombstone
the town too tough to die. Over the years it was populated by the Earps, the McLowerys, the Clantons, Doc
Holliday, Frank Leslie, Luke Short, Johnny Ringo,
John Clum, Curly Bill Brocius, Sheriff John H. Slaughter, Deputy Sheriff Billy Breakenridge, Sheriff John
Behan, John Heath, Pony Deal, Mike Kileen and Bat
Masterson.
Tombstone didn’t die from an excess of violence but
because, after something like $30 million had been
stripped from its bountiful hills, the veins ran out and
the population faded away. Today there are 1,200,
most devoted to keeping the town alive as a tourist
attraction.
Tombstone Epitaph
newspaper
Known as the “law-and-order” newspaper of Tombstone, the Epitaph founded in 1880 by a former Indian
agent named John Clum, certainly played an important
role in ridding Tombstone, Arizona Territory of the
lawless cowboy element. But whether this opposition to
the cowboys represented a real stand for law-and-order
or an alliance with the other lawless element in the
town, the gambling interests, remains an open question. In any event, Clum’s Epitaph could be counted on
TOMBSTONE Nugget
to support Wyatt Earp in all matters. As a newspaper in
one of the Old West’s most violent towns, the Epitaph
gave the most comprehensive coverage to holdups,
rustlings, gunfights and murders of any publication of
its era. However, given Tombstone’s bustling activity, it
became necessary for the paper to file all minor killings,
stabbings, robberies and brawls in a daily catch-all column entitled “Death’s Doings.”
Publisher Clum sold his interest in 1882, apparently
feeling it wise to leave town about the same time the
Earp brothers left, not entirely willingly. The Epitaph
continued publishing and still appears today in what is
now the tourist town of Tombstone.
See also: JOHN P. CLUM, WYATT EARP, TOMBSTONE
NUGGET.
Tombstone Nugget
eliminated. The Chinese called these fighting men boo
how doy and the American newspapers dubbed them
hatchet men, in honor of their favorite weapon. The
tong wars raged on and off for more than 50 years,
occasionally over the loss of face but far more often
over the loss of profits. Great wars were fought at different times between the tongs, although tongs not
infrequently changed from one side to the other. It
made no matter, skulls were still split and pitched battles fought, while the white man’s law proved incapable
of stopping them.
When the tong wars got completely out of hand,
white society tried unique tactics to restore the peace.
After the great tong warrior Fung Jing Toy, better
known as Little Pete, was assassinated in San Francisco
in 1897, his tong, the Sum Yops, was decimated by the
Sue Yops. Finally, some white Americans appealed to
the emperor of China, Kwang Hsu, for help, and he
called in the great Chinese statesman Li Hung Chang.
“The matter has been attended to,” Li Hung Chang
reported in due course. “I have cast into prison all relatives of the Sue Yops in China, and have cabled to California that their heads will be chopped off if another
Sum Yop is killed in San Francisco.” Suddenly, one of
the greatest tong wars ended. The Sue Yops and the
Sum Yops signed a peace treaty that was never violated.
By 1922 the San Francisco Police Department had
learned how to apply pressure to the Chinese community as a whole and in that year the presidents of the six
great tongs put their signatures on a treaty of lasting
peace.
As fierce as the San Francisco tong wars were, they
were equaled in intensity and bloodshed by numerous
battles in New York City, especially the Hip Sings and
On Leongs. One war in 1909–10 over the murder of a
beautiful slave girl called Bow Kum, or Little Sweet
Flower, resulted in 350 casualties. Lesser wars occurred
in Boston and Chicago.
See also: AH HOON, BLOODY ANGLE, BOW KUM, HIGHBINDER SOCIETIES, LITTLE PETE, MOCK DUCK.
newspaper
Just as the Tombstone Epitaph represented the Earp
forces in Tombstone, the Nugget, started in 1879, had a
strong “cowboy” bias. While, for instance, the Epitaph
described the gunfight at the O.K. Corral as a fair
match between the Earps and the Clantons, the Nugget
reported it as a case of outright murder. Thus, readers
in Tombstone could pick sides between the newspapers,
whose locations across the street from each other
were appropriate for their typesetting shoot-outs. The
Nugget died in May 1882, the beginning of the end of
the cowboy era.
See also: WYATT EARP, TOMBSTONE EPITAPH.
Tommy gun
See CHICAGO PIANO.
tong wars
The origins of the tongs date back roughly 2,000 years.
In ancient China the tongs were bandit or rebel organizations. When first imported into the United States,
they served as mutual aid societies. Unfortunately, aiding someone meant attacking someone else and the
result was the great tong wars in American cities.
From about the 1860s more than 30 tongs appeared
and prospered along the West Coast. San Francisco’s
Chinatown supported six great tongs. As the Chinese
migrated east so did the tongs. Almost all these organizations derived their main incomes from such illegal
enterprises as opium dens, gambling, smuggling of
aliens, especially slave girls, and prostitution. The tongs
tended to concentrate on the same illegal activities,
making conflict inevitable. This gave rise to numerous
small strong-arm gangs, or enforcers, known as highbinder societies, which were composed of hit men available for hire to tongs that wanted the competition
Toole, Ottis
See ADAM WALSH; HENRY LEE LUCAS.
Toppan, Jane (1857–1938) serial killer
As a mass murderer or murderess, nurse Jane Toppan
has never received the recognition which she deserved,
although she may well have killed 100 victims. One
observer who did give her an appropriate amount of
attention was Ellery Sedgwick, the distinguished editor
of the Atlantic Monthly, who protested: “When it
comes to evaluating the histories of famous murderers,
Jane Toppan has never received proper recognition.
888
TORRIO, John
Without the slightest doubt, she outranks both Bluebeard and Jack the Ripper.” Sedgwick’s interest in Toppan stemmed from the fact that he had been nursed by
her through a siege of pneumonia and allowed to live.
Many other of her patients did not survive her ministrations.
Nurse Toppan’s poor record with patients did not
become apparent for about 15 years, since at the time it
was considered normal for sick people to die. In fact,
Toppan had a reputation among doctors around Lowell, Mass. as one of the community’s finest and most
capable nurses. She was also for a period head nurse at
Massachusetts General Hospital until administrators
discovered her certificate was forged and that she was
not even a graduate nurse.
Jane Toppan poisoned numerous patients with her
own recipe of morphine and atropin, a mixture that
prevented doctors from suspecting morphine poisoning
because instead of the victim’s eye pupils being contracted, as happens with morphine, they would be
dilated. Her confession, made after she had taken poison herself in a futile suicide attempt, read: “Everybody
trusted me. It was so easy. I felt strange when I watched
them die. I was all excited and my blood seemed to
sweep madly through my veins. It was the only pleasure
I had.”
The first step in her usual ritual was to help build up
the patient so that the doctor would be encouraged.
Then once the physician stopped making regular visits,
she would sit at the patient’s bedside and feed him or
her a little of the poison brew, increasing the dosage
each day. The patient’s breath would grow short and
painful. Then his body would be seized with convulsions, then become lax, then chill and then go into convulsions again. As the climax approached and the
patient neared death, Jane would become more and
more excited. “It wasn’t my fault,” she later said. “I
had to do it. They hadn’t done anything to me and I
gained nothing from their deaths except the excitement
of watching them die. I couldn’t resist doing it.”
Finally traced through some prescriptions she had
forged to purchase the necessary ingredients for her
poison, Toppan attempted suicide but was saved by
quick medical attention. However, she was told that she
was dying and, in that belief, made her confession:
eral dozen others whom she had nursed until their
death refused permission to have autopsies performed,
so that it was never determined how many of them
were also her victims, although the conventional wisdom put the figure at about 100. At Toppan’s trial her
pugnacious defense lawyers would concede only 11
murders, but such disclaimers meant little, especially
when the defendant told a horrified courtroom, “This
is my ambition—to have killed more people—more
helpless people—than any man or woman has ever
killed.”
Finally, the prosecution agreed to accept a plea of
not guilty by reason of insanity when the defense consented to a stipulation that no request for parole would
ever be made, even if she was pronounced sane at some
future time. On June 23, 1902 Jane Toppan was sent
to the State Hospital at Taunton, Mass. for the remainder of her natural life. That proved to be another 36
years. She died there in 1938 at the age of 81.
Torrio, John (1882–1957) underworld “brain” and Capone
mentor
Everyone who ever worked with Johnny Torrio called
him the Brain. He had taught Al Capone all he ever
knew, and he was sought out for advice by Lucky
Luciano. In time, the whole underworld would refer to
him by that nickname, just as in his youth he was called
Terrible Johnny. Both sobriquets were well deserved.
Born in Sicily in 1882 and brought to New York at
the age of two, Torrio grew up on the rough Lower
East Side. While he was still in his teens, he was a subchief of Paul Kelly’s huge Five Points gang, one of the
city’s two most powerful (the other being the Eastmans), and a head of a subgang, the James Streeters.
Torrio’s name in that period never made a police blotter
but his reputation in the underworld grew. He was
cold, cruel and cunning, and when he fought, he used
his fists, feet, knives and guns. Although small, he was
mean and tough enough to be a bouncer at Nigger
Mike’s on Pell Street, one of the wildest joints in Manhattan (coincidentally, Irving Berlin got his start there
as a singing waiter).
By 1912 the Bowery no longer drew the money it
once did and Torrio opened a bar and brothel for the
sailor trade in the even tougher Brooklyn Navy Yard
district. Now and then he hired one of his James Street
gang youngsters, a big, coarse hoodlum named Al
Capone, as a strong-arm man. Torrio, not satisfied with
just the whore business began handling other enterprises from hijacking to narcotics. He talked about how
crime should and could be made into a big business. He
had developed finesse and vision, and Terrible Johnny
was being replaced by the Brain.
Yes, I killed them. I’m going to die and I can’t face my
Maker with this on my conscience. I killed Mattie.
Then I killed Annie. I told her father it was suicide. It
was poison. I killed Mr. Davis. And I killed Mrs. Mary
Gibbs. . . . Oh, I killed so many of them.
In all, she rattled off the names of 31 victims, whose
poisonings were later confirmed. The relatives of sev889
TOUHY, Roger “Terrible”
In 1915, when he was 33, Torrio got an offer from
Big Jim Colosimo, his uncle by marriage and the
biggest whoremaster in Chicago, to come out and help
him with his business. He took over running Big Jim’s
flesh-peddling joints, everything from such landmarks
as the House of All Nations to the low-cost Bedbug
Row joints. Late in 1919 Torrio sent for Capone, figuring he needed Al’s muscle for what he had in mind—
bootlegging. The only problem was that Big Jim wasn’t
interested, a situation that steamed Torrio. Hadn’t he
reorganized the whore business and increased the net
enormously? Big Jim nodded, but that was the problem. Torrio had made him so much money, Colosimo
couldn’t see the need for any more.
Torrio realized that Colosimo was a drag on the
organization and had to go, but neither he nor Capone
could handle the job without being suspected. Another
old buddy from Brooklyn, Johnny Yale, was brought in
to assassinate Colosimo. With Big Jim erased, Torrio
stepped in, and anyone who objected had to face
Capone. Torrio set about creating a new crime empire.
He dreamed of combining all the Chicago gangs under
one umbrella and giving each its own area to milk without any competition. He called in the leaders of the
other gangs: the Italian gangs, the North Side Irish, the
South Side Poles. They’d all make millions and actually
live to enjoy their fortunes, Torrio told them. Then he
dropped his voice ever so slightly and said that if they
didn’t join the new syndicate, he would kill them,
sooner or later.
These gang leaders were hard men, but most of them
were persuaded, perhaps with a little force tossed in.
Some, especially the Irish gangs, said they would but
didn’t. War soon developed with the tough North
Siders, headed by Dion O’Banion. The Italian Genna
gang was a tribulation as well, its members falling one
by one. But the big roadblock was O’Banion. Then the
Irishman called Torrio; he wished to end the war. In
fact, he was getting out completely and wanted to sell
the Sieben Brewery. Torrio jumped at the chance. A
half-million dollars was a reasonable price to get rid of
the murderous O’Banion. A week after the deal was
closed, federal agents raided the brewery, and Torrio
realized he had been taken. O’Banion had inside information on the raid and stuck Torrio with the loss.
For one of the few times in his life, Torrio lost his
cool. He raged around his office brandishing a gun and
screaming he’d see O’Banion in hell. Torrio kept his
word. Frank Yale was sent for again. Yale and two
other hoods, Albert Anselmi and John Scalise, walked
into O’Banion’s flower shop, which he ran as a legitimate sideline, to order flowers for an underworld
funeral. As Yale shook hands with O’Banion, Anselmi
and Scalise drew guns and shot the Irishman to death.
Capone was ecstatic; Torrio was not. He knew the
gang wars would now intensify. O’Banion’s men would
want vengeance, and the longer they held out, the more
others would think of rebelling. Hymie Weiss, one of
O’Banion’s top aides, tried to assassinate Torrio while
the latter was riding in his limousine. The chauffeur
and Torrio’s dog were killed, but all Johnny got were
two bullet holes in his gray fedora.
Torrio raced to kill Weiss before he could mount
another assassination attempt, but Hymie stayed out of
sight. On January 24, 1925, Torrio was ambushed in
front of his apartment house. He was hit with a shotgun blast and then another gunman pumped four slugs
into him, in his chest, arm and stomach. Torrio hovered
between life and death for 10 days while an army of 30
hoods, captained by Capone, threw a security net
around the hospital where he was staying.
As Torrio recovered, he had time to take stock of his
situation. He was 43 years old, had managed to stay
alive for five years at the top of the Chicago gangland
hierarchy, no small accomplishment, and he was a millionaire. Torrio decided to get out, telling Capone: “It’s
all yours, Al. I’ve retired.”
Torrio walked away from the greatest crime setup
ever established, one that allowed him to say, “I own
the police force.” The former chairman of the board
took off to laze under the Mediterranean sun for a
while and then retired in Brooklyn. No one ever knew
if he really had retired completely. Luciano and the
emerging national crime syndicate often asked him for
advice, as did Capone. It is known that his counsel was
sought before the decision was made to hit Dutch
Schultz because of his idiotic plan to assassinate prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey. There were reports that some
Murder, Inc. hits also required his approval. Torrio
denied it all and said he just wanted to die in bed.
Some gangsters have died in barbershop chairs.
Johnny Torrio, at age 75, had a heart attack in one in
April 1957, an unlikely end for one who had ruled
from the center of a violent world.
See also: ATLANTIC CITY CONFERENCE, ALPHONSE
“SCARFACE AL” CAPONE, FIVE POINTS GANG, GENNA
BROTHERS, CHARLES DION “DEANIE” O’BANION.
Touhy, Roger “Terrible” (1898–1959) bootlegging king
A powerful bootlegging king in the greater Chicago
area whom the Capone mob took years to dislodge,
Roger Touhy in some respects resembled a businessman
with a keen appreciation of the value of strong public
relations. As far as the entire underworld was concerned, the Terrible Touhys’ hold on the Chicago suburban area of Des Plaines was so complete and backed
with such firepower as to be unchallengeable. Despite
890
TOUHY, Roger “Terrible”
press coverage that often portrayed him and his gang as
among the most vicious in the Midwest, the fact is that
Touhy was never more than a middle-class type bootlegger who employed no more muscle than was necessary to see that all the saloons and speakeasies in his
area bought and used Touhy beer and booze exclusively.
Touhy produced a superior beer, and his kegs,
made at his own cooperage, were leak-proof, a fine
selling point at the time. Touhy, as much as Johnny
Torrio and Al Capone, realized that the way to
achieve preeminence in a criminal endeavor was to
corrupt the local politicians and police, and he was a
past master of the art. In addition to providing the
customary cash payoffs Touhy rewarded the local
politicos and police brass with bottled beer brewed
especially for them and often bearing their own personal labels. Kinky-haired, beady-eyed and with a
hawklike face, Touhy had the perfect appearance for
toughness. There is considerable evidence that Al
Capone personally feared him, and he is said to have
been the only gangster who ever made Al back down
in a confrontation. Touhy had sold the Capone mob
800 barrels of his superior brew at a special price of
only $37.50 a barrel (it cost him $4.50 to $5.50 a barrel to produce), and as was his habit, Capone tried to
beat down the price some $1,900 by claiming 50 of
the barrels had leaks. Touhy put on his famed hard
stare and said firmly, “Don’t chisel me, Al.” Capone
paid in full.
Roger was the leader of the Terrible Touhys, a family
of six brothers who entered a life of crime after starting
out in respectable circumstances. Their father was a
Chicago policeman, and many of their playmates on
the West Side were later to become police officers. In
the early 1920s Roger Touhy went into the trucking
business “strictly legit”—until the revenues proved
insufficient. Touhy then started filling the trucks with
beer, and profits soared.
Touhy took control of the Des Plaines area in the
northwest section of Cook County. Since he filled a
vital need, he was far from frowned upon. Her further
solidified his popularity with the local citizens by keeping brothels out of the area. Whenever a group of mobsters attempted to open a roadside whorehouse, Touhy
would relieve the local police of the need to handle the
situation, sending in his own toughs to wreck the place.
Even when Capone personally noted that Des Plaines
was “virgin territory for whorehouses,” Touhy’s
answer was his typical hard-eyed stare, which convinced Capone to drop his plans.
Touhy’s headquarters always had the appearance of
an armed camp. When rivals made rumblings about
moving in, Touhy would invite them for a visit, and
they invariably would gawk at walls lined with submachine guns. Little did such visitors know that the arsenal had been borrowed from cooperative local police
just for the occasion. While a conference was being
staged, one Touhy underling after another would
march in and receive orders to “bump off” someone.
Touhy’s visitors would be suitably impressed and leave
with the overwhelming conviction that war with the
Touhys was a foolhardy undertaking. At various times
two of Capone’s gunners, Frank Nitti and Murray
“The Camel” Humphreys, returned from the Touhy
base thoroughly shaken and convinced that the
Capones could not hope to handle the Touhys.
None of this prevented the Capone mob from continuing its efforts to take over, however, even when Big
Al was sent to prison. Having ruled out direct action,
the mob is believed to have used another favorite
method to get rid of a problem—tricking the law into
doing it for them. First, Touhy and several of his gang
were arrested for the kidnaping of William Hamm, Jr.
The FBI insisted it had a strong case against Touhy, but
a jury thought differently, finding him not guilty. Later,
an embarrassed FBI switched the charge to the actual
perpetrators, the Barker-Karpis gang.
Then FBI agents arrested Touhy for the alleged 1933
kidnapping of Jake “the Barber” Factor, an international con man with ties to the Capone mob, choosing
in the process to ignore word from the underworld
grapevine that the abduction had been a put-up job
masterminded by Factor and the Capone mob. In what
would prove to be a terrible blot on a remarkable
career, Melvin Purvis, the FBI special agent who later
captured John Dillinger, among others, proclaimed the
arrest of Touhy in the Factor case as a hallmark of
detection. “This case,” he said, “holds a particular
interest for me because it represents a triumph of
deductive detective work. We assumed from the start,
with no material evidence, that the Touhy gang was
responsible for the crime.”
After the first trial ended in a hung jury, Touhy was
convicted in a second trial and sentenced to 99 years in
Joliet; he was led from court crying frame-up. The
Capone mob moved instantly into Des Plaines.”
In 1942 Touhy broke out of prison but was retaken
in a short time and given an additional sentence of 199
years.
He continued to protest his innocence, a claim that
several newspapermen took up, and in the 1950s he
won a rehearing on his original conviction. After an
intensive 36-day inquiry, Judge John H. Barnes ruled
that Factor had never been kidnapped but had disappeared “of his own connivance.” The judge went on to
attack many key parties in the case, including the FBI,
the Chicago police, the state’s attorney and the
891
TOURBILLION, Robert Arthur
This was not the only unusual happening following
Touhy’s murder. Early in 1960, a few months after the
slaying, retired FBI man Purvis committed suicide.
Tourbillion, Robert Arthur
See DAPPER DON
COLLINS.
town-site fraud
19th-century swindle
One of the most prevalent rackets of the 19th century
was the western town-site fraud, whereby gullible easterners were swindled by land sharks into investing their
money in property glowingly described in phony
prospectuses.
Typical was the Nininger swindle. The city of
Nininger, Minnesota Territory in the 1850s, as
depicted on large and beautifully engraved maps
printed by one Ingenuous Doemly, was a well-built
metropolis expected in due course to house some
10,000 people. It had a magnificent courthouse, no
less than five churches and was jammed with warehouses and stores to service the surrounding area.
Packet companies kept the levee loaded with freight.
Here truly was a growth area in God’s Country if ever
there was one. And to still any remaining doubts, one
only had to peruse the Nininger Daily Bugle. Of all the
phony attributes of Nininger, at least the Daily Bugle
did actually exist, although it appeared weekly or
biweekly or triweekly depending on how energetic its
publisher was at any particular moment. The paper
was loaded with local advertising—dry goods stores,
hardware stores, groceries, millinery shops, blacksmith
shops, shoe stores, all obviously thriving. Each issue
carried accounts of a new store opening, complete
with a total of its receipts for the day. It was very
impressive fiction. As a contemporary account put it:
“Every name and every business was fictitious, coined
in the fertile brain of this chief of all promoters. It was
enough to deceive the very elect—and it did. When the
Eastern man read that there were six or eight lots,
lying just west of Smith & Jones’s drygoods store, on
West Prairie Street, that could be had at a thousand
dollars per lot if taken quickly, and they were well
worth twice that money on account of the advantageous situation, they were snapped up as a toad snaps
flies on a summer day.” In fact, some plain prairie land
two miles from the river to which the anonymous promoters had not even bothered to obtain title, went for
as high as $10,000 per acre. “If the editor or the proprietor had been found in Nininger in the following
spring when the dupes began to appear, one or two of
the jack oaks with which the city lots were plentifully
clothed would have borne a larger fruit than acorns.
Roger “Terrible” Touhy lies dying after being shot by
underworld assassins following his release from prison,
where he had served 25 years as the result of a frame-up.
“I’ve been expecting it,” he said. “The bastards never
forget.
Capone mob. He further noted that despite the FBI’s
classification of Touhy as a major criminal, he had
never been listed by the Chicago Crime Commission
on its roster of public enemies. Furthermore, the judge
noted, Touhy had never even been linked to a capital
case.
In 1959, after almost a quarter of a century behind
bars for a crime that had never happened, Touhy was
released. He collaborated on a book about his life entitled The Stolen Years. It was a quick job and for good
reason. Twenty-three days after his release, Touhy was
gunned down on a Chicago street. As he lay dying the
former gangster muttered: “I’ve been expecting it. The
bastards never forget.”
It was an open secret in the underworld that the
killing had been carried out by Murray “the Camel”
Humphreys. Six months after the Touhy murder,
Humphreys bought 400 shares of First National Life
Insurance Co. stock at $20 a share from John Factor,
Touhy’s old nemesis. Eight months later, Humphreys
sold the shares back to Factor for $125 a share, realizing a profit of $42,000 in capital gains. The Internal
Revenue Service later moved to declare this sum income
for services rendered, making the profits subject to
straight income tax.
892
TRACY, Harry
Even the printer who set the type was forced to flee for
his life.”
An even more tragic swindle was the so-called
Rolling Stone colony, also in Minnesota Territory. When
some 400 purchasers, mostly from New York, arrived in
Rolling Stone in the spring of 1852, they expected to
find a thriving metropolis with library, lecture hall, a
large greenhouse, a hotel, a large warehouse and a fine
dock. That was how they had described the area to
steamboat officers, who said they had never heard of
such a place. The colonists, however, had produced
maps supplied them by one William Haddock and from
the maps the boatmen had pinpointed the location some
three miles above Wabasha Prairie, on Sioux Indian
land. Having insisted on being put ashore there, the
colonists built sod houses for themselves or burrowed
shelters in the riverbanks, but sickness came and many
died through the summer and autumn. With the onset of
winter, more died and the area was abandoned.
Tracy, Harry (1876?–1902) desperado and murderer
In 1902 virtually the whole country went, as one editorialist put it, “wild about Harry.” Harry was Harry
Tracy, desperado, Hole in the Wall outlaw, bank robber, train robber, murderer and escapee. When he was
finally shot down in 1902, after having killed eight men
in a bloody chase across Washington and Oregon, his
coffin was torn to pieces by avid souvenir hunters. His
funeral drew a mob that was to rival Rudolph
Valentino’s in ardor. Tracy was a national hero. An editorial writer for the New York World carried this “wild
about Harry” adulation to an extreme, writing of him:
“This bad man who single-handed has for 30 days
‘stood off’ the State of Washington, its sheriffs, posses
and bloodhounds, is undoubtedly a captain of industry—in his peculiar branch of it deserving a badge for
superior criminal courage, something corresponding to
the Victoria Cross or the Congressional Medal.”
Despite such raves, Harry Tracy really was a rotten
character. He most likely was born sometime around
1876, possibly in Pittsville, Wis. or Poughkeepsie, N.Y.
It is known that he spent his younger days in Boston
where he so intimidated policemen that they refused to
attempt to arrest him single-handedly, or, as the joke
went, without police protection. In the mid-1890s
Tracy headed west, pulled a number of robberies and
went to prison for burglary in Utah. In 1897 he escaped
with another prisoner and joined the Wild Bunch at
one of the famous outlaw hideouts, Brown’s Hole. The
boys welcomed Harry, but they soon changed their
minds. He was surly, sullen and tight-lipped and readily
exhibited a murderous nature. Even the tough men in
the Hole made a point of avoiding him.
893
Tracy rode for a time with Butch Cassidy and the
Wild Bunch and was sometimes called the Mad Dog of
the Bunch, but he preferred to team up with the more
ruthless killers in the Hole. He was apprehended a couple of times for murder, but on each occasion, while
authorities in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming argued
about who should have custody of him, he escaped,
adding to his legend as a great escapee. After Tracy and
a convict named Dave Merrill broke out of prison in
Oregon, he married Merrill’s sister. In their escape the
pair had shot two guards to death and used two
wounded ones as shields to get across a bridge outside
the prison. Then Tracy finished off one of the guards
but ignored the other, who played dead.
Tracy and Merrill engaged in a number of petty
crimes to raise money and then pulled a bank robbery.
On the run, they hid out in a barn near Puget Sound,
where Harry came across a story in a newspaper that
reported Merrill had once informed on him in an effort
to get a lighter sentence, an incident Tracy had been
unaware of. He laid down the newspaper, reached over
and choked his partner in crime to death.
In a fishing village, Tracy commandeered a motor
launch at gunpoint and ordered the captain to take him
to Seattle. On the way he told the seaman at the helm
to pass close to McNeil Island Penitentiary which stood
out in the Sound, because “I want to pick a few guards
off the wall.”
Tracy thought better of that when he realized the
guards would likely shoot back. In Seattle, Harry tied
up the captain and his crew and walked inland, away
from the city. He encountered a 21-man posse during a
rainstorm and fought them to a standstill, escaping
after killing a deputy sheriff and wounding three other
pursuers.
Over the next several days Tracy happened on several young ladies who willingly provided him with food
and a place to hide, apparently finding more reasons to
be wild about Harry than those mentioned by the
newspapers. He forced his way into the farmhouse of
Mrs. R. H. Van Horn and made her cook him a meal,
warning her politely to keep silent and make no outcry.
“I will today—but not tomorrow,” she said.
When a butcher boy made a delivery, the woman
managed to whisper “Tracy,” and the boy notified the
law. As Harry slipped out of the house that night and
mounted a wagon, a posse closed in on him. Tracy
jumped off the wagon firing with uncanny accuracy. He
killed three men, two with shots in the brain and
another with a slug in the heart, and slipped away in
the confused gunfire.
The hunt for Tracy continued through July and into
August 1902, with the gunman several times getting the
best of posses. On August 5 lawmen learned Tracy was
TRAFFICANTE, Santo
hiding at the Eddy Ranch near Davenport, Wash. and
flushed him out of a barn there. Shooting as he ran,
Tracy was hit in the leg by a chance rifle shot. He hobbled 75 yards to the edge of a wheat field. Bleeding profusely, he hid behind a rock and exchanged volley after
volley with the lawmen. Shortly before night fell, a bullet tore into his thigh. The posse formed a cordon
around the field to make sure he wouldn’t slip out in
the darkness. It was a needless precaution; Tracy couldn’t move. As dawn was breaking, Harry raised his gun
to his head and pulled the trigger. The lawmen waited
until full daylight before carefully approaching. They
found Harry Tracy dead.
See also: WILD BUNCH.
statement made by Cuban exile leader Jose Aleman to
committee investigators that months before the
Kennedy assassination Trafficante had told him,
“Kennedy’s gonna get hit.” However, in public testimony, Aleman, admitting he was fearful of Trafficante’s
wrath, remembered the matter differently. What the
mobster probably meant, Aleman testified, was that
Kennedy would be hit by Republican votes in 1964—
not bullets. Trafficante denied he had made the comment. Trafficante glided through the prose easily and
remained until his death in 1987 of a heart ailment a
Mafia boss suspected of much but convicted of little.
See also: JOHN ROSELLI.
train robberies
Trafficante, Santo (1914–1987) Mafia leader
Train robbing is a particularly American crime. While
train robberies have occurred in many other countries,
the United States provided far and away the most
favorable ground for the crime, with its vast open areas
along railroad rights-of-way, which gave the thieves
ample opportunity to escape without being seen by witnesses.
The first reported train robbery of any magnitude
occurred in 1866 between New York and New Haven
when an Adams Express car on a New York, New
Haven and Hartford Railroad train was looted of
$700,000. The first actual holdup of a train in the
United States, and perhaps the world, was pulled the
same year by the Reno gang near Seymour, Ind., where
they stopped and boarded an Ohio and Mississippi Railroad train and robbed $10,000 from the express car.
They tried to break open the safe but were forced to give
up. News of the Renos’ deed had an electrifying effect;
no one had ever thought of holding up a train before but
now an epidemic of train robberies quickly broke out.
Other bandits held up a train in Indiana and seized
about $8,000. Jealous of their reputation and enraged
by their imitators, the Renos organized an outlaw posse,
captured two of their rivals and turned them in.
Train robbing became a big business from coast to
coast. In the South there were the Farrington brothers
and in the Midwest the much-storied James gang. The
latter robbed many trains but never came close to
equaling the Renos’ biggest job, pulled on May 22,
1868, when they stole $96,000 from a train near
Marshfield, Ind. In the East the Tenth Avenue Gang
preyed on trains even within the city limits of New
York. In the Far West there was the Jack Davis gang
and Butch Cassidy and the Wild Bunch. In California,
Chris Evans, the Sontag brothers and the California
Outlaws carried on a private war with the Southern
Pacific. Train robbers were frequently lynched, so
often, in fact, that some observers have suggested these
One of the most shadowy but certainly one of the most
powerful leaders in the Mafia and the national crime
syndicate, Santo Trafficante was the underworld boss
of Tampa, Fla. and long regarded to be deeply involved
in many of organized crime’s endeavors, including gambling and narcotics. At one time he was overlord of the
mob-owned casinos in pre-Castro Cuba. Because of his
eminence in the Mafia and his longtime close association with Meyer Lansky, it was often said that no
important underworld event takes place without Trafficante’s knowledge or approval. Accordingly, he was
reportedly consulted before Carmine Galante was murdered in 1979.
Any plan by the CIA to utilize the underworld to
assassinate Fidel Castro had to have involved Trafficante. Under pressure of a court order granting him
immunity from prosecution for anything he might say
but threatening him with contempt if he didn’t talk,
Trafficante admitted to a congressional committee in
1975 that he had recruited other mobsters, such as
John Roselli, in the early 1960s to carry out assassination attempts on Castro’s life. “It was like in World
War II,” he said. “They tell you to go to the draft board
and sign up. Well, I signed up.” Of course, Trafficante
had a grudge against Castro for shutting down the casinos in 1959. According to the mobster, he and his fellow underworld conspirators considered “poison,
planes, tanks. I’m telling you, they talked about everything.” Eventually, they settled on poison pills, but that
plot failed.
It has long been a theory among many researchers
looking into the assassination of John F. Kennedy that
the CIA-Trafficante efforts to kill Castro may have triggered a Castro retaliation against the president.
In 1978 Trafficante testified before a House assassination committee looking into the Kennedy murder.
The committee was especially interested in a sworn
894
TRANSPORTATION
England on the ground that it was necessary to stamp
out promiscuity in the colony. It was often suspected
that the British authorities simply reshipped the women
to another colony. Other protests took the form of
pamphlets tracing the criminal deeds of the new
arrivals. Much was made of the case of Thomas
Lutherland, a convicted felon sent to New Jersey as a
bound servant. Within days of his arrival he was convicted of stealing and punished. That did little to cure
him, however, and a short time later, he murdered a
boat trader and hid the victim’s goods in his home.
Parliament turned a deaf ear to these protests, as it
did to an official resolution by the Virginia House of
Burgesses declaring that “the peace of this colony be
too much hazarded and endangered by the great numbers of felons and other desperate villains sent hither
from several prisons in England.”
In the half century before the American Revolution,
a total of 30,000 convicted felons were deposited in the
colonies. The flow only stopped when America broke
with England, which in turn merely shifted the bulk of
its criminal exports to Australia.
Ironically, the flow of thugs from England went on
unabated following independence. Mixed in among
those Europeans fleeing to America to start a new life
were a great number of criminals seeking to escape
arrest in Britain and Ireland. Many newcomers flooded
American cities and, instead of finding jobs, found only
privation and slums at best the equal to those they had
fled. The occupants of the crowded slums banded
together and, by the 1820s, formed the first outlaw
gangs, becoming the forerunners of organized crime in
America.
actions were encouraged by agents of the railroads who
were determined to wipe out the crime by dispensing
quick, if extralegal, justice.
The last of the train robbers can’t be named in an
absolute sense as isolated crimes have continued well
into this century, but perhaps the last to rob trains on a
regular basis was Old Bill Miner. His holdup days ran
from the Civil War until 1911, when he was caught in a
Georgia swamp after leading a five-man gang on a
holdup that netted $3,500 from the Southern Railroad
Express near White Sulphur. “I’m getting too old for
this sort of thing,” he told his captors. The truth was
that technology more than the aging of the old-time
train robbers was making the crime much more difficult. Trains were faster, news of robberies clicked over
the telegraph wires and swift cars could hasten pursuit
across a much more populated landscape.
One of the last major American train holdups
occurred in November 1935, when a gang headed by
public enemy Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, a leader of the
Barker-Karpis gang, robbed a train at Garretsville,
Ohio of $34,000. The loot was much smaller than
Karpis had expected, but the robbery had its compensations. As he wrote later: “I thought of the great bandits
of the old West, the James brothers, the Dalton boys,
and all the rest of them. They knocked over trains, and
I was going to pull the same stunt.” Karpis also admitted a contributing motive was his belief that resurrecting the crime would give FBI director J. Edgar Hoover
fits. It did.
See also: EUGENE “CAPTAIN GERALD” BUNCH, CALIFORNIA OUTLAWS, JAMES BROTHERS, BILL MINER, OLIVER CURTIS PERRY, RENO GANG, TENTH AVENUE GANG, WILD
BUNCH.
JUVENILE DELINQUENTS
transportation
Almost as prevalent as the English custom of transporting adult criminals to America was the even more
heinous practice of shipping over juvenile delinquents.
There were many in the colonies who welcomed receipt
of such wares under the theory that cheap labor was
needed and the lash had more effect on young criminals
than on the more-seasoned variety. In 1619 the Virginia
Company, which prized child labor, eagerly sought to
import children from London. That city seized upon
the offer and promptly set out to rid its back streets,
hovels, jails and poorhouses of paupers, vagrants, petty
thieves and orphans. The following year a law was
passed permitting the deportation of children without
their approval, and large-scale abductions became commonplace in every part of London.
In America the children were apprenticed until they
were 21, when, in principle, they were to be freed and
given cattle, corn and some public land. In practice,
there was no real guarantee that their masters would
exportation of criminals to America
While it is a common belief that the American colonies
were populated by persons fleeing political or religious
persecution in Europe, the fact is they were peopled as
much by the dregs of English jails. The British crown
looked upon the American colonies as a convenient
dumping ground for criminals and the solution to the
English crime problem. During the last four decades of
the 17th century, almost 5,000 convicts were transported to America. During the next century the traffic
increased enormously; from 1745 to 1775 almost
9,000 convicts were landed in just one port, Annapolis,
Md. The local populace could have hardly been pleased
when out of one shipment of 26 prisoners, five were
convicted murderers.
In Virginia the local citizenry fought back by inspecting incoming female prisoners, and if they had become
pregnant on the ship crossing, they were sent back to
895
TRAPMAN
counted against a portion of the money taken in a robbery of the trap.
Traps are often of extremely clever design. One technique is to place a trap behind another trap. Another is
to hide a trap in the basement of a house but install its
trigger mechanism in the attic, so that chances of accidental discovery are virtually nil. A unique deception is
a fireproof panel built into a stove.
The only time a trapman is permitted to talk is if the
party who has hired him suddenly dies, a not infrequent event in the underworld. Since the secret of the
trap would otherwise be buried with the dead man, the
trapman is permitted to tell the secret to the deceased’s
associates. If the trap has not already been cleaned out,
the trapman is entitled to a portion of the cash found.
set them free at the end of their apprenticeship. In addition, the youths were often subjected to cruelty by their
masters, who had the law on their side. Thus, children
found guilty of lying, swearing, fighting, cheating,
stealing and running away were liable to added
restraints that could delay their freedom, even though
most of these offenses were not punishable if committed by adults.
trapman
mob security expert
Not many years ago, long after the mob had disposed
of the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, the new owners
discovered a secret safe in the hotel floor. It had
undoubtedly been built many years earlier by Bugsy
Siegel, the explosive partner of Meyer Lansky who had
been murdered because he had defied the national
crime syndicate. Obviously, Siegel had kept large
amounts of money hidden there, but when the safe was
found, it contained nothing. Since Siegel had died suddenly, it was hardly likely he had time to make a lastminute withdrawal. Speculation had it that either
someone else knew of the existence of the safe or that a
“trapman” had talked.
The trapman is one of the most important specialists
used by the mob, as vital as hit men and respectable
front men. The trapman’s function is to build traps, or
secret panels or hidden safes, for mob leaders. Knowledgeable police insist no important national crime figure is without one or more traps in his home.
Organized crime leaders do not believe much in safedeposit boxes or, contrary to public opinion, in Swiss
bank accounts. They rely on hidden compartments
where they can store cash, records and even guns on
short notice. Underworld traps have consisted of walls
that slide open or even panels in swimming pools.
Trapmen are generally not syndicate or Mafia members, but rather legitimate contractors, although they
are often relatives of Mafia figures. Pledged to secrecy,
a trapman in Los Angeles may be flown to Chicago or
New York to install a special trap. Only he and the man
hiring him will ever know the secret of the trap. The
trapman has two reasons for keeping the secret: he is
extremely well paid and he wants to stay alive.
Persons other than crime leaders use trapmen for
illegal purposes. Professional men, such as doctors and
dentists, are notorious for installing traps in their
homes to hide their “tax-free” funds. Of course, since
they do not have access to the same trapmen who service the Mafia, they generally use the contractors who
build their homes. The underworld is aware of this
practice and makes a special effort to get a loan-shark
hold on building contractors. Then in exchange for
information about a trap, a contractor’s loan is dis-
trash bag murders
California homicide wave
The first of the bodies in one of America’s most bizarre
murder sprees turned up on Christmas Day 1972;
shortly thereafter, plastic-bagged bodies or parts
thereof began appearing along the California coastline.
Some dismembered parts were discovered in garbage
bins, and others were found in ditches along the roadside and on freeway shoulders, obviously hurled from a
car. A plastic-wrapped head turned up on a recycling
plant’s conveyer belt and a left leg was found in a junk
heap outside a Sunset Beach saloon. By July 1973 the
police had tied five homicides to the Trash Bag Murderer, and over the next four years that number more
than quadrupled. Finally, in July 1977 a 38-year-old
bearded, bespectacled ex-aerospace worker named
Patrick Kearney surrendered to the authorities. Five
months later, he pleaded guilty to 21 murders.
Kearney never revealed any motive for the killing
spree, and no effort was made in court to discover one.
There were seven other murder charges pending against
Kearney, but authorities did not proceed on them. If
they had, he could have been convicted of a total of 28,
which at the time would have made him one of the
worst mass murderers in American history. Kearney
was given two concurrent life sentences for his crimes.
treatment of sex criminals behind bars
See
JEFFREY JOE HICKS.
Tresca, Carlo (1875–1943) syndicalist editor and murder
victim
For years the 1943 assassination of syndicalist editor
Carlo Tresca on New York’s Fifth Avenue has been
listed as a great unsolved political murder. It has never
been a mystery in Mafia circles, however. Tresca, as the
896
TRI-State Gang
underworld has always known, was gunned down on
orders transmitted from Italy by a leader of the American Mafia. Tresca’s anti-Fascist, anti-Communist Italian-language weekly, Il Martello, earned him the
enmity of both Rome and Moscow. Thus, when the editor went down under a volley of gunfire after stepping
out of his office on January 11, speculation arose that
he could have been killed by either the left or the right.
He was most likely killed to satisfy the wish of Benito Mussolini, whose hatred for Tresca dated back a
long time.
Tresca was born in Pulmona, Italy to a wealthy landowning family, and, as a youth, gravitated to “lost
causes” of the left. After serving as editor of the Socialist Party’s newspaper, he was forced to flee the country.
In Geneva, Switzerland in 1904 Tresca met another
young man who had a reputation for being as much of
a hothead as he was, Benito Mussolini. At the time,
Mussolini regarded Tresca as not enough of a radical;
Tresca regarded Mussolini as a charlatan, a judgment
confirmed by subsequent events.
Tresca would later spend much of his energy fighting
Mussolini’s regime in Italy. The record indicates that
Mussolini had put Tresca’s name on a death list in
1931, but it was a dozen years before something was
done about it. The agent of Mussolini’s bidding was
Vito Genovese, who had been forced to flee the United
States in the 1930s to escape a murder indictment.
Arriving in Italy, Genovese knew that Mussolini had
vowed to wipe out the Mafia in that country, so he
decided his personal comfort and safety required that
he ingratiate himself with the Fascist cause. Genovese,
who had left America with several million dollars, contributed $250,000 to build a Fascist Party headquarters. When World War II broke out, he further
demonstrated his devotion to Mussolini by supervising—and partially financing—the construction of a
munitions factory. The Italian leader personally
bestowed the title of commendatore on the American
gangster.
Another of Genovese’s ploys to establish himself
with the power elite was to supply Mussolini’s son-inlaw and foreign minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano, with
narcotics, and in this way the gangster also became one
of the country’s richest narcotics dealers. When Mussolini raged to him about Tresca’s anti-Fascist activities
in New York, Genovese grandly informed the Italian
leader that he would solve the problem. He then sent
word through Mafia circles that Tresca was to be hit.
The contract was carried out by Carmine Galante,
who, although later to become one of the top Mafia
leaders in the country, was described in an account at
the time as “a petty Brooklyn hoodlum.” Witnesses
were able to record the license number of a Ford sedan
used in the assassination: 1C-9272. That number led to
an ironic discovery. About two hours before the Tresca
assassination, Galante, a parolee, was making his
weekly report to his parole officer in downtown Manhattan. It was common practice for parole officers to
trail parolees out of the office in the hope of seeing
them consorting with other criminal types. Galante was
followed to a car, which he entered and drove off. His
parole officers could not tail the car because of restrictions placed on such activity by the wartime gasoline
shortage. All he could do was take down the license
number: 1C-9272.
Picked up as a material witness in the Tresca murder,
Galante denied everything. He had not entered any
such car, he said. He had taken the subway uptown and
was at a Broadway movie at the time of the killing, and
besides, he asked, “Who is this guy Tresca? Never even
heard of him.”
Since no witnesses could identify the gunman, the
link to Galante and the car was not enough to bring
about a prosecution. When Genovese returned to the
United States after the war, he had little to fear from the
by then stale murder investigation.
See also: CARMINE GALANTE, VITO GENOVESE, WALL
STREET EXPLOSION.
trial by touch
As late as the end of the 17th century, American
colonists employed the medieval custom of trial by
touch in murder cases. It was believed that if the
accused was the murderer, the corpse would give some
signal.
In a typical trial held in Virginia in 1663, several
members of a family were accused of having killed a
former black servant. On orders from the court each of
the defendants touched Uncle Joe’s body, and since it
“gave no sign,” they were found not guilty. However, in
the trial of a man accused of murdering John Clark, a
boat trader in New Jersey, who was found dead and his
supplies stolen in 1691, the results were somewhat different. The corpse was brought forth in court and the
defendant, Thomas Lutherland, was ordered to touch
it. It was firmly believed that the corpse would bleed if
Lutherland was guilty. It did not, but Lutherland was
hanged anyway because the victim’s goods had been
found in his home.
Tri-State Gang
If the Dillinger mob was noted for its members’ loyalty
to each other, the Tri-State Gang, a more typical criminal combination of the 1930s, won notoriety for the
opposite. Based in Philadelphia and led by Robert
897
TRUESDALE, David A.
Returned to Richmond, Mais and Legenza were electrocuted. Meanwhile, Cugino shifted some of his operations from Philadelphia to New York, fearing he too
would be betrayed. He still returned to Philadelphia,
however, to recruit new Tri-Staters for jobs and to eliminate “weak links” in the operation. He also shot dead
Anthony “Musky” Zanghi after a quarrel about how
the spoils from a counterfeiting operation were to be
divided.
It was the Zanghi murder that doomed Cugino.
Convinced that Cugino now believed in nothing but
“kill, kill, kill,” several gangsters informed Philadelphia police that the gang leader hung around New
York’s theatrical district a great deal, especially the
area of Seventh Avenue and 47th Street. Cugino was
captured there just after midnight on September 8,
1935.
Questioned for 15 hours straight, Cugino laughed at
police efforts to tie him to a large number of robberies
as well as eight murders. Finally, he made some damaging admissions concerning the murder of a New York
police detective, James J. Garvey, in 1934. Cugino
never paid for any of his crimes, hanging himself in his
cell later that night. With his death, the Tri-State Gang,
perhaps the most devious and treacherous criminal
organization ever, disintegrated.
Mais, Walter Legenza and Anthony Cugino, known as
Philadelphia’s Public Enemy No. 1, the Tri-Staters
became famous for the short-lived careers of many of
their members, most of whom were victims of internal
assassinations. Cugino was particularly adept at this
pastime, killing, at various times, four of his men and
two of their girlfriends.
Cugino’s career in crime began at the age of 12,
when he was sent to a reformatory. In 1919, barely out
of his teens, he committed a $35,000 jewel robbery
and, when caught, was sent to prison for 15 years. In
prison he killed his cellmate, but he drew no added
penalty for the act because he successfully claimed he
had acted in self-defense. Released in 1930, Cugino
hooked up with Mais, Legenza, Salvatore Serpa, Eddie
“Cowboy” Wallace, John Zurkorsky and others to
form a holdup and counterfeiting gang called the TriStaters. Together with Serpa, Wallace and Zurkorsky,
Cugino stole a plant payroll and shot down a police
officer guarding it.
A few months after the robbery, Cugino and Serpa,
suspecting their partners in crime might betray them
to the police to save themselves, took Wallace and
Zukorsky for a ride. Riddled with bullets, the pair
were dumped on a roadside and left for dead. Wallace
was dead but Zukorsky staggered upright, hailed a
car and was taken to a hospital. From the hospital he
called Camden, N. J. police and begged them to go to
a rooming house to save two girls with whom he and
Wallace had been living. Detectives were too late.
They found that the young women, Florence Miller
and Ethel Greentree, had just left with two men
whose descriptions matched those of Cugino and
Serpa. Three weeks later, the bodies of the women
were found in a shallow grave in a cornfield near
Downington, Pa.
Sometime later, Cugino assassinated another gangster, Johnny Horn, who had two marks against him:
Cugino suspected him of possible duplicity and
regarded him as a rival for a certain young woman’s
attention. The only members of the gang Cugino
seemed to have any loyalty toward (he later also
stabbed Serpa to death in Chicago) were Mais and Legenza. When they were convicted and awaiting execution in Richmond, Va. for killing a mail-truck driver
during a robbery, Cugino sent them two pistols hidden
in a baked turkey. The pair broke out, murdering a
guard in the process, and rejoined Cugino.
Back in business, the Tri-Staters robbed $48,000
from an electric company office in Philadelphia. Soon,
Mais and Legenza were scouring the city’s underworld
for a certain hoodlum they believed had betrayed them,
but they were informed on by certain other gang members who feared their vengeance would get out of hand.
Truesdale, David A. (1881–1948) Wells Fargo messenger
Just before World War I, the most famous Western
character was neither a lawman nor an outlaw but an
unimposing 31-year-old Wells Fargo messenger named
David A. Truesdale. Bars and saloons, east and west,
saluted him with the “Truesdale Special.” What Truesdale had done to gain such fame was “cash in the
chips” of the last active member of Butch Cassidy’s
Wild Bunch, the Tall Texan, Ben Kilpatrick.
On March 13, 1912, Kilpatrick and a confederate,
an ex-convict named Ed Welch, halted the Sunset Limited of the Southern Pacific at Dryden, Tex. by posing
as Union Pacific detectives. While Kilpatrick covered
Truesdale, the Wells Fargo messenger in the express car,
Welch went about looting the mail car. But the Tall
Texan got careless and took his eyes off Truesdale. As
the messenger later described the events to the New
York Herald:
They thought they were such smooth workers at the
game. But it made me sore the way they acted, so I
decided to take some of the conceit out of them. By a
ruse I made the bigger one (Kilpatrick) look the other
way; then I struck him on the head with the ice mallet.
I picked up his rifle and killed the other one as he
walked out of the mail car toward me.
898
TRUMAN, Harry S
Only afterward did the plucky Truesdale learn that
the tall one was Ben Kilpatrick, one of the slickest bandits ever to ride with Butch Cassidy and Black Jack
Ketchum. Did that scare him now that he knew who his
victim was? He replied, “I am more worried about
what to do with the vacation and the reward the company has given me than I am about killing those two.”
Of course, Truesdale’s moment of glory was shortlived, and the Truesdale Special enjoyed only a brief
popularity. A wicked concoction of whiskey and gin (or
whatever hard liquor happened to be handy) with just a
dash of soda, it offered little to all but the hardiest of
imbibers; its usual effect could well be described as
being hit over the head with a mallet.
In 1930 Truesdale’s feat got a replay when it was discovered that he was still waiting for his reward. The
neglected payment was finally made and Truesdale, like
the badmen of the West themselves, faded into obscurity.
See also: BEN KILPATRICK, ED WELCH.
FPO
FIG #172
TO BE
PICKED-UP
FROM
PREVIOUS
ED.
Would-be presidential assassin Oscar Collazo lies
wounded at the foot of the steps to Blair House.
The would-be assassin sprawled out, his hat awry, his
heels kicking. The second gunman lurched backward
over a low boxwood hedge, dead with a bullet through
his ears.
In the heavy silence that followed, Secret Serviceman
Floyd Boring saw President Truman in his undershirt
peering out the window of an upstairs room, where he
had been napping.
“Get back, Mr. President!” Agent Boring shouted.
“Get back!”
Truman stepped back while a few Secret Service
agents converged on the scene. Most remained at their
posts, on guard against further attacks.
The wounded gunman was identified as Oscar Collazo and his dead partner as Griselio Torresola. In Torresola’s pocket were found two letters from a fiery
Puerto Rican nationalist, Pedro Albizu Campos.
While newspaper front pages were filled with details
of the assassination attempt, a key factor failed to get
the prominence it deserved. Although Torresola and
Collazo started with the assassin’s greatest asset—the
element of surprise—they failed to penetrate even the
outer rim of presidential protectors. Backing up the
uniformed White House police was an agent sitting in a
nearby office building with a clear view of Blair House.
His duty was to drop any attacker who made it to the
doorway of Blair House. However, even if the attackers
had gotten through the door, they would have faced an
agent stationed inside the entrance with a submachine
gun in his lap.
There was another agent on the stairway, one in
front of Truman’s door and others in surrounding
rooms. It was estimated that the assassins would have
had to kill at least 20 Secret Servicemen before getting
within sight of the president.
Truman, Harry S (1884–1972) intended assassination
victim
On November 1, 1950 a uniformed White House
guard, Donald Birdzell, was at his post in front of Blair
House, across the street from the Executive Mansion,
where President Harry S Truman was staying while
repairs were being made at the White House. Suddenly, Birdzell heard a faint, metallic click and turned
his head. Ten feet away, a neat, dark man in a pinstriped blue-green suit was silently and carefully aiming a German F-38 automatic pistol at him. It went off
just as Birdzell jumped for the street—a prescribed
Secret Service action to draw fire away from the house
where the president was staying so that he would not
catch a stray bullet. The first assault on a president of
the United States in his Washington residence was
underway.
Birdzell landed on the streetcar tracks on Pennsylvania Avenue, turned and began firing back. The gunman
put a bullet in his leg, dropping him to one knee.
Another slug ripped into Birdzell’s good leg and he
pitched forward. As other guards and Secret Servicemen went into action, a second attacker darted up to
the guard at the west sentry booth, pulled out a Luger
and began shooting at point-blank range. A uniformed
sentry, Leslie Coffelt, went down with bullets in the
chest, stomach and legs. He died a short while later.
Plainclothesman Joseph Downs toppled over, shot in
the stomach.
There was one last burst of gunfire. The wounded
Birdzell, stretched out flat with his pistol held braced at
arm’s length on the pavement before him, shot the first
gunman in the chest as he frantically tried to reload.
899
TRUSSELL, George
How much faith President Truman placed in the
Secret Service was pointed up by the fact that a few
hours after the attack he delivered a speech and
unveiled a statue before a large crowd in Arlington—all
as though nothing had happened.
Collazo recovered from his wounds and was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Coffelt.
President Truman commuted his death sentence to life
imprisonment. On September 6, 1979 President Jimmy
Carter, “for humane reasons,” commuted his life sentence to time served and on September 10 he was
released from prison.
acquired a half interest in Dexter, a famous trotting
horse, and was spending more of his time with the
horse than with Mollie. Taunted by her friends that
she was losing out to a horse, Mollie’s devotion to her
lover turned to insane jealousy and led to bitter quarrels between them. On September 4, 1866, enraged
because her lover had forgotten their dinner engagement, Mollie walked into the bar of Seneca Wright’s
saloon on Randolph Street (“in a gorgeous white
moire dress, with a light shawl thrown over it, and
seemed as if she had just come from some dancing
party,” according to the Chicago Tribune). When
Trussell told her to go home she pulled a revolver from
under her shawl and shot him in the side. As Trussell
tried to run out a side exit, Mollie shot him again. The
gambler staggered into Prince’s livery stable, where
Mollie followed him and shot him a third time.
Trussell fell dead, and Mollie prostrated herself over
his body and sobbed: “Oh, my George! My George!
He is dead!”
Irish Mollie was convicted of manslaughter and
given a rather mild sentence of one year in prison,
which would seem to indicate that the courts did not
regard the loss of Trussell as a major civic tragedy.
Before serving a day of her sentence, Mollie received a
pardon from the governor and returned to her bordello.
She never laid claim to Trussell’s estate, which was considerable, even though she contended she had been
legally married to him. Friends say it was because she
was too grief-stricken at the loss of her lover to concern
herself about his money, but more likely her pardon
had been granted on the condition that she make no
claim to his property.
See also: HAIRTRIGGER BLOCK.
Trussell, George (1833–1866) gambler and murder victim
Known as “a shrewd, cunning Yankee from Vermont,”
George Trussell was the dandy of the Chicago gamblers
during the Civil War and, as such, the idol of the young
sports of the city. Contemporary accounts described his
good looks. He was, according to one, “tall, straight as
an arrow, and might have stood as model for one of
Remington’s Indian-fighting cavalry officers.”
Trussell first appeared in Chicago working as a
bookkeeper and then as a bank teller, but he was discharged from that job for gambling. He then worked as
a “roper,” or victim hunter, for a faro operation and
soon had his own gambling business. By 1862 he was
operating two gambling houses, one on Dearborn
Street and another on Randolph. From then until 1866
Trussell was at the peak of his power. He was said to
be—and indeed claimed to be—the most generous dispenser of bribes to accommodating police.
Trussell constantly walked around armed and is
noted for having used his weapon on sore losers who
had been taken in his games, which may not have
always been operated in accordance with the official
rules. In addition to protecting himself against irate
losers, he needed to carry a weapon because of what
became known as the Hairtrigger Block feud, which he
carried on with a rival gambler, Cap Hyman. This was
a bullet-pocked yet somewhat humorous duel that went
on for years whenever the two got drunk, which was
quite often. Bets were always made in gambling circles
on who would be killed by whom. As it turned out,
Trussell was shot to death, but by a different party.
Since it was almost obligatory that a gambler of
Trussell’s station take a mistress from among the
madams of the city’s brothels, Trussell selected Irish
Mollie, whose real name was Mary Cossgriff. For two
years the affair flourished, as Trussell took his Mollie
on daily carriage rides around the city, appeared with
her at the theater and racetracks and continually
showered her with gifts. In 1866 Irish Mollie found
herself competing with an unusual rival. Trussell had
truth serum
Although they have been touted in the past as the surest
method for both lie and crime detection, the so-called
truth serums have proved far from practical for legal
purposes. Aside from the constitutional problems
raised, the fact remains that none of the truth serums,
such as scopolamine, sodium amytal, phenobarbital
solution, sodium pentothal and others, has ever been
scientifically accepted as a reliable and accurate technique for learning the truth. The theory behind truth
serums is that they relieve the subject of inhibitions, so
that he or she will make true statements. Although
these drugs are used in the field of psychiatry, any
attempt to use them on a person suspected of a crime,
especially in light of the Miranda decision, which protects a prisoner’s legal rights, draws almost universal
opposition from defense attorneys. Not only is it necessary to get a suspect’s permission to use such drugs, but
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TUCKER Telephone
he must also grant a written release of liability to the
interrogator and the attending physician in case of
unfavorable reaction. It is a level of cooperation few
prisoners will accede to.
Even some of those who see value in truth serums
for purposes of interrogation, such as criminologist
LeMoyne Snyder, object to the use of the drugs alone.
They see them as a complement to the lie detector, with
neither a valid substitute for the other. Not surprisingly,
the Nazis made considerable use of truth serums to
interrogate suspected underground agents and other
enemies, but the reliability of the results was at best
mixed and the drugs never replaced ordinary torture as
the most effective method of interrogation.
Tub of Blood Bunch
Side. When he disappeared in the 1880s the police do
not seem to have searched too hard or lamented too
long, just as few cops—or criminals—were griefstricken when the Tub of Blood eventually shut down
for lack of patronage.
Tucker Prison Farm scandal
penal probe
incomplete Arkansas
In early 1967 Arkansas’ Tucker Prison Farm was
rocked by scandal when Governor Winthrop Rockefeller fired Superintendent Pink Booher and three wardens, J. L. Markburn, Bob Hensley and H. H. Chadick,
in the midst of an investigation of the state’s prison system. However, the governor denied the firings were in
any way connected with the death of a 50-year-old
inmate from peritonitis. A report issued by Arkansas
assistant attorney general Eugene B. Hale described the
prison as the scene of “torture, brutality and extortion
and gross wrongdoing.” There were reports that
Tucker inmates who testified on behalf of investigators
were later beaten by “goon squads” of prisoners.
Tom Murton, the new superintendent, later discovered that nearly 200 prisoners were listed as escapees.
He heard from prisoners that the prison grounds might
contain more than 100 bodies. According to the
inmates, the dead were men who had antagonized previous wardens.
On Murton’s orders some sunken ground was dug
up and three human skeletons were found in makeshift
wooden coffins. The reports on Murton’s investigation
filled the nation’s press and airwaves for weeks until
officials ordered the digging stopped and Murton fired.
This effectively ended any further probes of Tucker.
See also: TUCKER TELEPHONE.
post–Civil War New York criminals
One of the great “cleanups” of gangsters in New York
occurred shortly after the Civil War, when the police
started to force criminal gangs out of the Fourth Ward.
The majority of these criminal elements moved northward along the East River into the Corlears’ Hook district. Perhaps the worst of all were those who
congregated in a notorious dive called the Tub of
Blood. Some belonged to organized gangs but most
were vicious loners who owed allegiance to no one and
gave none. Even celebrated thugs like those of the Patsy
Conroy gang steered clear of the Tub of Blood Bunch,
which included such unsavory characters as Skinner
Meehan, Dutch Hen, Jack Cody, Sweeney the Boy,
Brian Boru and the celebrated Hop Along Peter.
It was said that Sweeney the Boy and Brian Boru had
not slept in a bed in a house for 20 years. By day and
late evening they could be found in the Tub of Blood
and at night they would adjourn to a marble yard,
where they slept. They never had a change of clothes,
simply robbing or killing a hapless pedestrian when the
clothes they were wearing bored them or got too dirty.
The eventual fate of Sweeney the Boy is unknown, but
Brian Boru suffered the misfortune of falling asleep in
the marble yard one night in such a drunken stupor
that he was unable to defend himself. The next morning he was found literally half eaten by the huge gray
dock rats that often ranged blocks from the waterfront
in search of food.
Probably the oddest of all the Tub of Blooders was
Hop Along Peter, a certifiable half-wit, but nonetheless a vicious thug. Other gangsters utilized Hop
Along Peter as a lookout because of his habit of flying
into a fury whenever he saw a policeman’s uniform
and attacking its wearer. This readily afforded the
other gangsters sufficient time to make their getaway.
Hop Along Peter was, for a period of almost two
decades, the most notorious cop fighter on the East
Tucker Telephone
prison torture
Any belief that brutality and torture had disappeared
from the American prison system by the mid-20th century was dispelled in the late 1960s following probes of
conditions at Arkansas’ Cummings and Tucker prison
farms. While all sorts of charges were made and perhaps only partially verified, the investigation established that a particularly awesome torture device, the
“Tucker telephone,” was used at the institutions. It was
composed of an old telephone, a heavy duty battery
and the necessary wiring. A convict would be stripped
and one end of the wire fastened to his wrist or ankle
and the other end to his penis. Electric shocks would be
sent coursing through his body until the agony drove
him to unconsciousness.
At the time this torture instrument was in use in
Arkansas, the only other official authority in the world
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TUFTS, Henry
Tunstall, John Henry (1853–1878) murder victim
known to be employing a similar device was SAVAK,
the Iranian secret police.
It was the death of a wealthy young Englishman, John
H. Tunstall, that is said to have turned Billy the Kid
from a rustler into a mean killer. Tunstall, a much-traveled entrepreneur, arrived in Lincoln, New Mexico Territory in 1876 and was soon embroiled in the Lincoln
County War, one of the major violent commercial
clashes in America, with the wealth of the entire territory as the spoils.
Tunstall had bought a large ranch and aligned himself with Alexander McSween, an ambitious lawyer, and
John S. Chisum, a wealthy cattleman, against the forces
of Lawrence G. Murphy, James J. Dolan and others of
the so-called Santa Fe Ring, prominent Republicans
attempting to dominate every aspect of economic life in
the New Mexico Territory, including the revenues from
very lucrative government beef contracts. Soon, a war
broke out between the two groups, with the fighting
done by cowboys such as Billy the Kid.
The Kid was riding for Murphy until, at some point,
he met Tunstall and switched sides. Although Tunstall
was not much older than the Kid, Billy seemed to
regard him as a father, and Tunstall said of him: “That’s
the finest lad I ever met. He’s a revelation to me every
Tufts, Henry (1748–1831) horse thief
Henry Tufts was the first American criminal to write an
autobiography, appropriately titled The Autobiography
of a Criminal, which became, one presumes unintentionally, a manual for horse thieves.
Tufts was the compleat horse thief, developing what
was then an unmindful criminal endeavor into a highly
skilled profession. He carried an assortment of tools
with which to break into locked barns, including corrosives that could soften or eat through iron and, concealed in the soles of his shoes, saw blades, which he
also used to saw his way to freedom whenever he was
apprehended stealing a horse. Tufts always brought
along a variety of paints with which to disguise a stolen
steed, and often a black horse he had sold to some
unsuspecting buyer would turn chestnut after about a
week.
Born in Newmarket, N. H. in 1748, Tufts stole his
first horse at age 16. At 18 he performed the unique
feat of stealing and selling the same dog three times in
one day. But it was the Revolutionary War that really
catapulted Tufts into big-time horse stealing, as both
sides paid dearly for horses and asked no questions
about their source. This was fortunate for Tufts, who
often lost track of whether he was selling certain animals to the side he had stolen them from or to their
enemies. Whenever constables or sheriffs were hot on
his trail, Tufts would elude capture by enlisting in the
Continental Army only to desert and return to the
horse thief trail once the chase cooled.
In time, Henry Tufts gained the reputation of being
the greatest knave and most arrant horse thief in New
England. Finally, he retired from the profession in 1807
and, under another identity, published his autobiography. The work permitted him to reenter society as a
reformed rogue truly regretful of a misspent life. No
one seems to have been too upset or even aware that his
autobiography was being used as a primer for would-be
horse thieves, who learned from Tufts, for example,
how to fashion cork shoes covered with sole leather
that could be attached to a horse’s hooves to eliminate
the sound of its footsteps.
Tufts remained a respectable citizen for the rest of
his days, save for a minor lapse here and there. Shortly
before he died in 1831, he expressed sadness over the
state of the horse-stealing profession. Even such awesome penalties as the lash and branding had failed to
halt the crime, and now hanging was becoming the
newest punishment. Old Tufts found the situation
“most discouraging.”
Artist Charles Russell depicts Billy the Kid executing two
of the men who murdered his mentor, John Tunstall; the
pair had surrendered on the promise that they would be
brought back alive to Lincoln, New Mexico Territory.
902
TURNER, Nat
not present. In one note from his death cell, he had written them, “Don’t you want to go and see Pa hung?”
day and would do anything on earth to please me. I’m
going to make a man out of that boy yet.” Quite predictably, latter-day Freudians have seen more to this
odd relationship between an unschooled, undisciplined,
homeless boy and a cultured foreigner in tweeds, but
hard facts about what was to prove their brief
encounter are missing.
Through a blatantly political move, Tunstall’s business rivals had obtained a court order to seize some of
his horses in payment for an alleged debt. When the
Englishman refused to comply with the order, the ring’s
puppet sheriff, William Brady, sent an 18-man posse to
seize the horses. When Tunstall rode up to the lawmen
to protest their presence, he was ordered to dismount
and hand over his pistol. As he complied, he was shot
in the head by Deputy Billy Morton, becoming the first
victim of the Lincoln County War.
The Kid, who witnessed the killing from a distance,
was deeply affected. “He was the only man that ever
treated me like I was free-born and white,” he said.
And when his mentor’s body was being lowered into
the grave, Billy vowed: “I’ll get every son-of-a-bitch
who helped kill John if it’s the last thing I do.”
It was an oath the Kid was quite successful in keeping. There are those who say that Billy was by nature
and inclination a killer. In any case, Tunstall’s murder
made him a killer with a mission.
See also: BILLY THE KID, LINCOLN COUNTY WAR.
Turner, Nat (1800–1831) leader of slave uprising
In the bloodiest slave uprising in this country, Nat
Turner, a 31-year-old slave foreman in Virginia who
was permitted by his owner to perform as a preacher to
other slaves, led a band of about 70 or 80 blacks on a
48-hour rampage that took the lives of 57 whites.
General Nat, as his followers were to call him, later
confessed he had begun plotting his rebellion when,
on May 12, 1828, I heard a loud noise in the heavens,
and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the
Serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the
yoke He had borne for the sins of men, and that I
should take it on and fight against the Serpent, for the
time was fast approaching when the first should be last
and the last should be first. . . .
At 2 A.M. on August 22, 1831, Turner and six other
black slaves entered the mansion of Turner’s owners, Mr.
and Mrs. Joseph Travis, and hacked the couple to death
in their bed. For the next two days the killing continued,
the slave leader murdering only one victim, a frightened
woman he battered to death with a fence post.
In his confession Turner stated:
As I came round to the door I saw Will pulling Mrs.
Whitehead out of the house, and at the step he nearly
severed her head from her body with his broad axe
. . . . We proceeded to Mr. Levi Waller’s. . . . I took
my station in the rear, and as it was my object to carry
terror and devastation wherever we went, I placed 15
or 20 of the best mounted and most to be relied on in
front, who generally approached the houses as fast as
their horses could run, this was for two purposes, to
prevent the escape of and strike terror into the inhabitants—on this account, I never got to the houses, after
leaving Mrs. Whitehead’s, until the murders were committed, except in one case. I sometimes got in sight in
time to see the work of death completed, viewed the
mangled bodies as they lay in silent satisfaction, and
immediately started in quest of other victims. Having
murdered Mrs. Waller and 10 children, we started for
Mr. William Williams’—while engaged in killing him
and two little boys that were there, Mrs. Williams fled
and got some distance from the house, but she was
pursued, overtaken, and compelled to get up behind
one of the company, who brought her back and after
showing her the mangled body of her lifeless husband,
she was told to get down and lie by his side, where she
was shot dead. . . .
Turley, Preston S. (?–1858) murderer
“Never hang a preacher” became a pre-Civil War saying in Charleston, Va., which is now West Virginia, following the execution of an ex-minister of the Baptist
Church, Preston Turley, in 1858.
Demon rum had led to Turley’s being defrocked, and
from there on, it was straight down. One night in 1858
both Turley and his wife, Mary Susan, came home
drunk. Suddenly, Turley began quoting scriptures and
then strangled his wife to death while their three children watched. He disposed of the body in a nearby
river, somehow not expecting his children would say
anything about the murder. They did, however, and
Turley was convicted and given the death sentence.
On September 17, 1858 Turley mounted the scaffold. He was given the right to make a final statement,
which he turned into a harangue that lasted three and a
half hours. Turley lectured on the wages of sin and the
evils of drink, so much so that one account speaks of
some members of the audience drifting away—that in a
day when executions were considered highly entertaining. We are informed that the ex-minister was visibly
saddened when the hangman approached, ending his
lecture. He was also disappointed that his children were
903
TWEED Ring
muscle of the great gangs of the period was at the disposal of Tweed and his cohorts in exchange for protection of the criminals in their illegal endeavors. During
elections the gangsters brought out those who would
vote right and scared away those not likely to. Tweed
became legendary for his mass production of voters.
On one occasion, with the aid of a corrupt judge,
Tweed in 20 days naturalized 60,000 immigrants; few
of them knew the nature of the oath or a word of the
English language. When election day arrived, Tweed
hacks showed them how to vote.
Two things finally dislodged the Tweed Ring from
power: an incorruptible reform movement, headed by
Samuel J. Tilden, and the near bankruptcy of the city as
a result of the group’s depredations. No treasury could
forever survive paying out $10,000 for $75 worth of
pencils, $171,000 for $4,000 worth of chairs and tables
and $1,826,000 for plastering a municipal building, a
job later estimated to be worth no more than $50,000.
No amount of power could have kept Tweed from
being indicted once authorities discovered his own illegal profits totalled $12 million. The first trial of the
Tammany leader ended in a hung jury, a number of
jurors having been bribed. During the retrial the prosecution took the unprecedented action of having each
juror watched by a plainclothesman, each of whom was
watched by another police detective, who in turn was
watched by a private detective. Each of these watchers
were required to send in a daily report so that any variation in any surveillance account would immediately
become apparent. Tweed was convicted and given a 12year prison term and a number of Tweed Ring judges
were impeached. It was obvious that Tweed and the
judges were being made the scapegoats.
On appeal Tweed’s sentence was reduced and he was
released in 1875. Then the state instituted an action
against him to regain the money he had stolen, and
when he was unable to furnish bail, he was incarcerated again. In December 1875 Tweed fled the Ludlow
Street Jail and made his way first to Cuba and then to
Spain. Ironically, he was recognized from a Thomas
Nast cartoon, taken into custody and returned to the
United States.
In 1876 Tweed found himself once more confined in
the Ludlow Street Jail. In failing health, he made a partial confession and offered to reveal everything if he
was simply allowed to die outside of prison; amazingly,
his offer was not accepted. Tweed died in jail in 1878
and with him the full secrets of the Tweed Ring.
Within two days whites began a massive counterattack. Posses of 2,000 local militiamen scoured the area,
aided by a force of 800 federal troops. The succeeding
reign of terror claimed an unknown number of blacks,
somewhere between 100 and 200. Some were killed on
suspicion of being in on the plot, but others were
slaughtered, decapitated and had their heads posted on
roads merely as a warning to other blacks. Of the
actual rebels, a handful escaped the area entirely, many
were killed and a total of 55 captured, including Nat
Turner, who was caught some two months after the
uprising. Seventeen were hanged, 12 were “transported” and 20 were found not guilty. The others died
of their wounds before being tried.
See also: SLAVE MURDERERS.
Tweed Ring
The Tweed Ring—or, more accurately, the Hall-Connolly-Sweeny-Tweed Ring—stands as the greatest
example of civic corruption in American history. Estimates of the loot the ring took from the New York City
treasury between 1865 and mid-1871 have been placed
as high as $200 million.
The Tweed Ring reached its zenith of power on January 1, 1869, when the city’s robber barons appeared
to be unassailable. William Marcy Tweed, the boss of
Tammany Hall, had placed his man, John T. Hoffman,
in the governor’s seat so that there would be no state
interference in city affairs. And in the metropolis, the
ring members—Tweed, president of the Board of Supervisors; Mayor A. Oakley Hall, known as the Elegant
One; City Comptroller Richard B. Connolly, called
Slippery Dick; and City Chamberlain Peter B. Sweeny,
alias Bismarck or Brains—ran the city as if it were their
personal fief.
As a rule of thumb, the spoilers determined they
would steal one dollar for every two paid out by the
city. This, of course, meant stealing in myriad ways,
including fraudulent bond issues, the sale of all sorts of
franchises and the granting of tax forgiveness acts and
other favors in return for cash payments. Merchants
and contractors could not hope to have dealings with
the city unless they paid huge bribes. Even these tributes failed to satisfy the ring, whose arrogance and
greed led them to award grants from the city treasury
to nonexistent hospitals and charities.
The Tweed Ring might have held power almost
indefinitely given its control of the police, the district
attorney’s office and the courts and its influence over
most newspapers. Even the opposition Republican
Party and various reform groups were neutralized by
Tweed’s tactic of putting scores of their leaders on the
payroll. The ring also controlled the underworld. The
Tylenol murders
1980s terror
The first victim in Illinois’ notorious mystery deaths
was seventh grader Mary Kellerman who, suffering
904
TYRRELL, John F.
from a lingering cold, took some medication so she
could go to her suburban Chicago school. She collapsed
in the bathroom and was rushed to a hospital, where
she was diagnosed with cardiopulmonary collapse.
The next victim—that same day, September 29,
1982—was Adam Janus, who took a painkiller and collapsed into a coma. Adam’s younger brother, Stanley,
and his wife, Teresa, rushed him to a hospital, telling
the attending doctor they could not account for his sudden distress. The deeply troubled coupled returned to
Adam’s Arlington Heights home to comfort the rest of
the family. Stanley, distraught, saw a container of the
painkiller Tylenol in the kitchen, took some and fell to
the floor suddenly from oxygen starvation of the brain.
Stanley’s wife, shocked by that event, promptly seized
the Tylenol for some relief. She also collapsed. Then a
27-year-old mother of four, Mary Reiner, suffering
from the aftereffects of the birth of her latest baby, took
some Tylenol and collapsed.
All of the victims died in their respective hospitals
except for Teresa, who was in a coma on life support.
While these tragic dramas were being played out, an
employee at an Illinois Bell Phone Center developed a
terrific headache and took some Tylenol—and
promptly collapsed and died. And the next day, a
United Airlines attendant bought some Extra-Strength
Tylenol in a drugstore after her flight from Las Vegas.
She took the tablets in her Chicago apartment. Two
days later she was found dead. By this time, only Teresa
Janus still clung to life.
Within a brief time medical authorities determined
all the victims had taken Extra-Strength Tylenol. Bottles collected from the victims’ homes all showed some
of the capsules were tainted with cyanide.
There was a massive recall of the drug as authorities
feared that someone at the maker of the drug, McNeil
Consumer Products Co. in Pennsylvania, had tampered
with massive amounts of Tylenol shipped recently.
Finally it was determined only bottles in the Chicago
area had been tampered with, and since the tainted bottles of Tylenol were from different stores it was obvious
that someone had gone from store to store, used an eyedropper to add some cyanide to bottles and screwed the
lids back on. The victims thus were random selectees in
what the press reported as a deadly game of “American
roulette.” Psychiatrists were quoted as saying that the
Tylenol killer was someone who might have a strong
personal hatred for someone near him or her, or that
the killer was a rather ordinary person who by the poisonings was achieving a measure of fame.
Meanwhile a massive recall was made of the Tylenol
lot involved in the poisoning. Several persons near to
using the medication did not because of the publicity
and saved their own lives. There were a number of
905
reports around the country of “copycat” hoaxers
claiming that they too had poisoned Tylenol in their
area stores. In the meantime, Teresa Janus was taken
off life support and died, the seventh fatal victim.
The killings spurred efforts by the drug industry for
sealed containers for many drugs so that tampering
could be spotted. However, authorities made no headway in finding the Tylenol poisoner. The only arrest
made was that of James Lewis, who sent an extortion
letter to the drug maker, demanding $1 million to stop
the killings. He was traced by police and given a long
prison sentence.
Tyrrell, John F. (1861–1955) examiner of questioned
documents
More than a mere handwriting expert, he was, as
numerous biographers and journalists have referred to
him, “Mr. E.Q.D.” John F. Tyrrell was, until his death
in his active 90s, America’s leading examiner of questioned documents. For well over half a century, Tyrrell
appeared in some of the nation’s most famous criminal
trials and produced compelling testimony that aided in
bringing about guilty verdicts. He could identify handwriting—as well as papers and inks—with unerring
accuracy. In addition, he was able not only to trace
typed documents to a specific machine but often identify the typist by his or her individual methods of
stroking the keys.
Early in the century, in one of Tyrrell’s most bizarre
cases, he developed the evidence that sent two identicaltwin forgers to prison. The Longley brothers, Lloyd
and Leon, of Milwaukee, Wis., specialized in writing
rubber checks. They not only looked alike, dressed
alike and wrote alike but made use of the same signature—L. Longley. Whenever one L. Longley was passing rubber, the other L. Longley would be establishing a
firm alibi. For every witness who identified the bum
check passer, there were a dozen reputable witnesses
who could place L. Longley on the other side of the city
when the crime had occurred. It was Tyrrell who established the existence of the two Longleys and sorted out
one signature from the other so that both brothers went
to prison—separate ones since two men who looked,
acted and wrote alike could wreak a unique form of
havoc within the walls of the same penal institution.
As a youth in Milwaukee, Tyrrell exhibited a flair
for handwriting, and right out of school, he was hired
by an insurance company to use his skill addressing
envelopes. Young Tyrrell began contributing squibs and
sketches to the Penman’s Art Journal, then edited by
William Kinsley, one of the 19th century’s few handwriting experts. Kinsley had once testified in a forgery
trial, during which the defense attorney, seeking to trip
TYRRELL, John F.
him up, put before him a large batch of similar-looking
handwriting samples and challenged him to pick out
the three written by the defendant. Kinsley did so and
won great notoriety for the feat. He then ran a contest
in his magazine challenging his subscribers to do the
same. There were only two winners: Tyrrell and
another young handwriting buff, Albert S. Osborn of
Rochester, N.Y., who was also destined to become a
leading expert in the field and, with Tyrrell, one of the
founders of the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners in the next century.
Impressed by Tyrrell’s skill, Kinsley began recommending him to authorities as a competent handwriting
expert. Meanwhile, Tyrrell had risen to the position of
clerk in his employment and started studying signatures
of documents received by the insurance firm. He was
able to spot several as forgeries, particularly those on
medical examination forms. Checking on his findings,
the insurance company discovered that a number of
insurance applicants were in poor health and were
using healthy stand-ins in the examinations. Tyrrell’s
handwriting detective work put a stop to the practice.
Tyrrell received national attention when he testified
as an expert in the sensational trial of Roland B.
Molineux in 1899. Molineux was accused of sending
poisoned Bromo Seltzer to an enemy, Harry Cornish.
Cornish did not use the medication but gave some to
his landlady, Mrs. Catherine Adams, who died of
cyanide of mercury poisoning. Tyrrell, Osborn and
Kinsley all testified for the prosecution and identified as
Molineux’s handwriting the writing on the poison
package and on letters sent to several manufacturers
requesting sample powders.
Tyrrell’s testimony was the most spectacular of the
three. For the first time he demonstrated his courtroom
technique, which involved making large, rapid freehand
reproductions of all disputed writing. At first the jury
could perceive no difference. Then Tyrrell would show
tiny variations that pinpointed the writer’s specific
style. Newspapers promptly dubbed him the Wizard of
the Pen.
Molineux was convicted but the case was thrown
out because of legal errors. He was retried later by a
judge who refused to admit any nonsense, such as testi-
mony from handwriting experts. Without such expert
testimony, Molineux was acquitted. He later turned
homicidal and died in an insane asylum.
Shortly after Tyrrell appeared in the Molineux case,
he testified in another affair that proved even more sensational, the murder of eccentric millionaire William
M. Rice in a plot by a corrupt Texas lawyer, Albert T.
Patrick, to steal Rice’s fortune. Tyrrell proved forgery
by showing that Rice’s signature on each of four pages
of a purported will were identical in every detail, proof
that they had been traced. Patrick was convicted.
Thereafter, Tyrrell was called in on almost every
major case in which there was a questioned document
or sample of handwriting. He solved the dynamite murder of Mrs. James A. Chapman in Marshfield, Wis. in
1922, a case in which Tyrrell had nothing more to
work on than a bit of dynamite-charred wrapping
paper with part of the address written on it.
In the celebrated case of Leopold and Loeb, defense
attorney Clarence Darrow decided to plead the two
“poor little rich boys” guilty to kidnap-murder charges
only after he heard Tyrrell’s evidence linking them to a
typewritten ransom note.
Tyrrell was among the battery of experts called in to
testify in the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, and he examined all 15 ransom letters. He often painted an amusing
portrait of the various handwriting experts during the
trial, most of whom refused to discuss their theories,
secretly guarding their diagnoses. Tyrrell’s evidence was
generally regarded to be the best.
Tyrrell frequently said the attempt to forge an old
document was often filled with too many boobytraps
for the average criminal, or even the skillful one. One
resourceful heir to a rich man’s fortune sought to
improve his minor inheritance manyfold by claiming to
find a will, yellowed with age, in a book. The plotter
had gone to great pains to make the paper look old and
then botched up his hard labors, Tyrrell found, by composing the will on a typewriter with a typeface that had
not been designed until some 15 years after the date of
the will.
Tyrrell was still being consulted by authorities and
other experts until his death at the age of 94.
See also: MRS. JAMES CHAPMAN.
906
U
Unabomber
been dumb enough to open an unexpected package
from an unknown source.” The Unabomber went on to
criticize the professor’s writings. To further show his
contempt for authority, the Unabomber even put a
return on one of his letters as the Washington, D.C.,
address of the FBI.
In June 1995 the Unabomber sent a long manifesto
to the New York Times and the Washington Post, having previously indicated that if it were published, his
bomb attacks would cease. The newspapers complied.
In his “manifesto” the Unabomber condemned what he
called a corrupt technocracy, which was eradicating
human freedom for the benefit of corporate and governmental elite.
The important thing was that the bombing stopped.
And even more important, the Unabomber’s manifesto led to his unmasking. David Kaczynski, a social
worker living with his wife in Schenectady, New York,
read the manifesto and recognized much of the phrasings as being the same in letters written by his older
brother, Theodore Kaczynski. And when David was
packing material in his mother’s home in the Chicago
suburb of Lombard, Illinois, he came across many more
papers written by Ted Kaczynski, with numerous
phrasings almost identical to those found in the manifesto. The Kaczynski family shuddered in horror at the
thought that Ted was the Unabomber. Ted was a onetime academic, social dropout and now a Montana hermit living in a crude plywood cabin in the remote
regions of Stemple Pass.
Kaczynski’s younger brother agonized about what to
do and finally contacted a lawyer and then went to the
FBI. The FBI put Ted Kaczynski under close observa-
terror through the mail
The first terror bombing occurred at Northwestern
University on May 25, 1978 when a cigar box packed
with thousands of match heads exploded in the hands
of a security officer, injuring him and a graduate student. The package sent through the mail was addressed
to a professor on campus, but as it developed, he was
not the specific target. It was meant simply for whoever
opened the package.
The culprit became known as the “Unabomber”
after his reign of terror went on for 17 years. In that
time three persons would be killed and 29 others
injured when innocent-looking packages were opened.
The three fatalities were: Theodore Mosser, an advertising executive, killed December 1994 in North Caldwell, New Jersey; Gilbert Murray, a California Forestry
Association lobbyist, killed in April 1985 in Sacramento; and Hugh Scrutton, the owner of a computer
rental store, also of Sacramento, murdered in December of the same year.
Whoever was victimized by a bomber attack
deserved no sympathy as far as the mysterious terrorist
was concerned. A brilliant computer science professor
at Yale suffered serious injuries, including loss of vision
in one eye, the hearing in one ear and part of his right
hand. That attack occurred in June 1993 and almost
two years later the Unabomber got around to sending
the victim, David Gelertner, a taunting letter.
“People with advance degrees,” he wrote, “are not
as smart as they think they are. If you had any brains
you would have realized that there are a lot of people
out there who resent bitterly the way technonerds like
you are changing the world and you wouldn’t have
907
UNDERHILL, Wilbur
Underhill, Wilbur (1901–1934) bank robber
tion for two months and finally took him into custody.
Authorities even hauled away Kaczynski’s shack for
display at his later trial.
If capturing the Unabomber had been an enormous
ordeal, it was probably just as hard to get him convicted. Kaczynski feuded with the FBI, the prosecutor,
the judge, and ignored his family. He also fought with
his attorneys when they wished to use an insanity
defense. He declared it was well known that many of
those who refuse to plead insanity are often less insane
than those who do.
Kaczynski asked presiding judge Garland Burrell Jr.
for the right to dismiss his lawyers. He said he would
rather present his own case than listen to his lawyers
question his mental health. The judge, in response,
ordered the defendant to undergo mental testing to
determine if he could stand trial and defend himself.
Later that same evening county prison authorities
who were holding Kaczynski reported that it appeared
that the prisoner had attempted to hang himself with
his underwear. The effort was so poorly made that
some officials felt he was merely trying to fake a suicide
attempt. In any event Dr. Sally Johnson concluded that
Kaczynski was competent to stand trial, and she also
agreed with the defense’s mental health experts that
Kaczynski was a paranoid schizophrenic.
The judge then rejected the defendant’s bid to represent himself. Judge Burrell accused Kaczynski of deliberately using disputes with his attorneys to disrupt and
delay the trial proceedings. On January 22 the prosecutors and defense attorneys made a deal under which
Kaczynski pleaded guilty to the charges filed against
him. The only condition was that he be sentenced to life
in prison with no possibility of parole rather than the
death penalty. At the sentencing phase, Susan Mosser,
the widow of victim Thomas Mosser, urged the court to
“lock [Kaczynski] so far down that when he dies he will
be closer to hell.” In his own statement to the court
Kaczynski accused federal prosecutors of distorting his
motives, that he was an environmentalist crusading
against technology.
Kaczynski, then 55, was sentenced to four life prison
terms plus 30 years.
In one postscript to the case, David Kaczynski was
ordered to pay taxes amounting to $355,000 on the $1
million federal reward he received for turning in his
brother. David said he would use part of the reward
money to cover the legal expenses he incurred to help
his brother avoid the death penalty and give the rest to
the victims of his brother’s bombings. Many lawmakers
of both parties objected to the requirement that taxes
be paid, but said they were forced to accept the provision since it was part of an omnibus bill with crucial
spending measures that had to be passed.
As a gangster roaming the Cookson Hills of Oklahoma,
Wilbur Underhill was second in fame only to Arthur
“Pretty Boy” Floyd. Actually, he robbed dozens more
banks than Floyd did, becoming known as the Tri-State
Terror for his forays in Oklahoma, Arkansas and
Kansas.
Underhill had been responsible for robbing an
unknown number of small-town banks in the late
1920s until he was finally caught and imprisoned at the
Kansas State Penitentiary. In September 1933 he broke
out of prison with two other inmates, Bob Brady and
Jim Clark, and made for the Cookson Hills. Brady and
Clark then went their separate ways, which promptly
led to their capture by the law, while Underhill joined
forces with the Ford Bradshaw gang. Within a short
time, Underhill became the real leader of the gang, in
fact if not in name, as the group hit bank after bank.
The loot was never enormous; in a typical robbery, in
November 1933, the gang netted about $13,000 from a
bank in Okmulgee, Okla. A short time later, Underhill
decided he had enough money to take a vacation from
his criminal activities in order to marry his childhood
sweetheart over the year-end holidays.
On New Year’s Day 1934 FBI agents, having traced
the movements of Underhill’s bride, surrounded the
couple’s honeymoon cottage in Shawnee, Okla. and
called on the bank robber to surrender. Underhill’s
answer came from two handguns, and an incredible
battle raged for the next 30 minutes, during which at
least 1,000 bullets were fired into the cottage. Finally,
Underhill, armed with a shotgun and wearing nothing
but his long underwear, charged out shooting.
Although bleeding from a dozen wounds, he somehow
broke through the cordon of lawmen, raced down the
street and dove through a store’s plate glass window.
The officers found him passed out inside the store. He
died from his wounds five days later.
Uniform Crime Reports
Since 1930 the FBI has issued the Uniform Crime
Reports (UCR), which categorize “crimes known to the
police” and arrest statistics. Just as it is charged that the
Dow Jones averages don’t measure total stock activity
and trends, the same can be said about the UCR. The
reports use seven felonies to gauge the distribution and
trend of crime in the United States; they are murder,
forcible rape, robbery, burglary, larceny, aggravated
assault and auto theft, probably the seven crimes most
likely to be reported to the police.
When the UCRs first appeared, there was much criticism of the quality of the data, which were based on
the dubious figures supplied by local law enforcement
908
UNRUH, Howard
agencies. Over the years the FBI has pressured local
agencies to supply more accurate figures. There is little
doubt the UCRs have led to improved law enforcement. For many years it was common for the police in
New York City to discard a huge number of complaints
in order to make their percentage of arrests look better.
If a case appeared relatively easy to solve, it was filed; if
it seemed like a hard one, it was discarded and naturally no work was done on it. In some cases citizens
checking on the status of their complaints were ordered
out of a station house. Because of the FBI’s refusal to
accept New York crime figures, reforms were finally
instituted by the police in that city.
While the UCR figures are now accepted as being
more authoritative than in the past, conclusions should
be drawn from them only with extreme care. For
instance, according to the UCRs, bank robberies in
1932 totaled 609, with the dollar losses amounting to
$3.4 million. In 1975 there were 4,180 bank holdups,
with the loot totaling $18,179,000. Yet, crime experts
would say that bank robbery is much less of a problem
now than it was in the Dillinger days. Allowing for
inflation, population growth, the proliferation of bank
branches that are more vulnerable to robbery, the sudden drop in liquor hijacking as a criminal activity, better crime reporting and other factors, it would appear
that crime has not made the dramatic gains which the
raw figures would indicate.
Similarly, the annual murder rate, according to the
most recent figures, ran around 20,000 until a drop off
in the 1990s. This figure, of course, represents
reported and detected murder cases. A few decades ago
it was estimated that for every murder reported
another went undetected. Since then better scientific
detection methods and the replacement of untrained
coroners with professional medical examiners have no
doubt led to the discovery of more murders. On the
other hand, improved medical skills and techniques
have saved the lives of many persons subjected to
homicidal attacks. On balance, one cannot state
responsibly that the murder rate has increased in
recent years. Undue weight given to UCR statistics can
often result in a “crime crisis” that is more apparent
than real.
The value of the FBI statistics are not utterly worthless, as some critics have said. But neither are the critics
of the UCR system “illogical and inane,” as the late J.
Edgar Hoover was prone to charge.
Unruh, Howard (1921– ) serial killer
A quiet 28-year-old Bible reader who had become infatuated with guns while serving in the army, Howard
Unruh killed 13 people in 12 minutes because he felt his
909
Camden, N.J. neighbors were laughing at him behind
his back.
On September 5, 1949 Unruh stepped from his
home at 3202 River Road. Dressed in a tasteful brown
tropical-worsted suit, white shirt and striped bow tie,
he entered John Pilarchik’s shoe repair shop at exactly
9:20 A.M. He approached within three feet of Pilarchik,
who was hunched over nailing a heel to a shoe, pulled
out a 9-mm Luger and shot him in the chest, killing him
instantly.
Holding his pistol at the ready, Unruh calmly
stepped back out in the morning sun, turned left and
entered Clark Hoover’s barber shop next door. Mrs.
Edward Smith was in the barber shop with her young
son and daughter. Her six-year-old boy, Orris, was sitting on a wooden hobby horse while Hoover cut his
hair. Mrs. Smith, her daughter and two other boys
waiting to have their hair cut hardly glanced at Unruh,
thinking he was another customer. Unruh approached
Hoover and said quietly, “I’ve got something for you,
Clarkie.”
Then as one would brush a branch aside, Unruh shot
the little Smith boy through the head and chest. Now he
could see Hoover better and killed him with shots to the
head and body. Ignoring the screaming mother clutching
the body of her dead son, Unruh turned and walked out
to the street. When he didn’t find druggist Maurice
Cohen in his store, the crazed killer went upstairs to
Cohen’s living quarters and shot him to death. Unruh
also gunned down pedestrians, motorists and threeyear-old Tommy Hamilton, who was peeking out a window of his home. He shot 17-year-old Armond Harris
in the right arm after slugging him with the pistol barrel.
As his potential victim lay senseless, Unruh pulled the
trigger again but there was only a harmless click.
Although he had more ammunition in his pocket, he
simply shrugged and trotted back home. The massacre,
which claimed 13 lives, was over by the time police cars
skidded to a stop on the street. Sixty policemen and
detectives then laid siege to the Unruh home with pistol,
rifle and submachine-gun fire. Unruh fired back only a
few times. He was otherwise occupied.
During the siege his telephone rang. Unruh picked it
up and calmly said, “Hello.” At the other end of the
line was Philip Buxton, assistant city editor of the Camden Courier-Post, who had decided to call the Unruh
home after hearing about the rampage. He came up
with one of the most bizarre interviews in history.
“Is this Howard?” Buxton asked. He could hear the
shooting in the background.
“Yes, this is Howard. What’s the last name of the
party you want?”
“Unruh.”
“Who are you and what do you want?”
UNWRITTEN law
Mass killer Howard Unruh after he surrendered.
have killed a thousand if I’d had bullets enough,” he
said.
Medical experts did not agree with Unruh’s evaluation of his mind. Never tried for murder, he was judged
incurably insane and committed to a mental institution,
where he remains.
“I’m a friend, and I want to know what they’re
doing to you.”
Unruh’s voice was steady. “Well, they haven’t done
anything to me yet, but I’m doing plenty to them.”
“How many have you killed?”
“I don’t know yet—I haven’t counted them, but it
looks like a pretty good score.”
“Why are you killing people?”
“I don’t know. I can’t answer that yet, I’m too busy.
A couple of friends are coming to get me.”
Buxton heard the line click. He dialed the number
again but there was no answer. Inside the Unruh home,
tear gas cannisters were exploding. Unruh parted the
curtains, raised his arms and said he was coming out.
He walked out to face the muzzles of several dozen
guns. “I’m no psycho,” Unruh said in a formal tone. “I
have a good mind.”
His final score fell far short of what Unruh apparently had intended. Except for some ragged shooting
by Unruh, the death toll could have been at least 30.
There were a lot of people he still wanted to kill. “I’d
unwritten law
defense against murder charge
A notion long honored in American justice, although
certainly not supported by statute, is that a man who
has been cuckolded and murders his wife or her lover is
somehow exempt from paying the penalty for his
crime. This notion or custom, “the unwritten law,” was
if not first established firmly rooted in the shocking
Sickles-Key affair of 1859, often described as “the case
that wrote the unwritten law.”
In 1859 the Honorable Daniel E. Sickles was a congressman from New York with a brilliant future ahead
of him. His wife was the former Teresa Bagioli, the
daughter of a renowned Italian operatic maestro, and
910
UNWRITTEN law
he was a protege of President James Buchanan.
Through an anonymous letter, he discovered his wife
was being unfaithful, meeting regularly in a house on
Washington’s 15th Street with Philip Barton Key, district attorney for the District of Columbia and the son
of Francis Scott Key, the composer.
Sickles determined the accuracy of the charge and
then ordered his wife from his home after making her
write a confession of her adulterous behavior. The next
morning, February 27, 1859, Sickles was being visited
by two close political friends when he looked out the
window to see Key parading back and forth across the
street, raising and lowering a handkerchief three times,
the signal he used to summon Mrs. Sickles. Obviously,
Key was unaware that anything untoward had happened concerning his liaison with Sickles’ wife.
Abruptly, Sickles left the house and his guests. In a
little park nearby, he confronted Key and shouted,
“Key, you scoundrel, you have dishonored my house—
you must die!” With that Sickles produced a Colt
revolver and shot his wife’s lover.
Key sank to the ground, wounded. Sickles pulled the
trigger a second time but the weapon misfired. He produced another gun, a derringer, and shot Key a second
time. Then he pointed the Colt at the fallen district
attorney again, whereupon Key, in a weak voice, cried:
“Don’t shoot me! Please don’t shoot me!” Sickles shot
him once more, killing him.
Sickles returned home, washed up and then walked
to the home of the attorney general and surrendered.
The news of the murder and its motive caused a sensation. Sickles was not lodged in a cell but allowed to
occupy a comfortable room in the warden’s quarters.
Among the steady stream of well-wishers to call on him
were many members of the Cabinet, and it was rumored
that President Buchanan sent words of support.
Sickles was indicted and selection of a jury began on
April 4, 1859. In the three weeks it took to select a
jury, over 200 talesmen had to be dismissed after
expressing approval of the shooting. During the trial
Sickles’ lawyers invoked the unwritten law, insisting a
husband had the right to kill an interloper in his marriage. The defense offered another relatively new
defense, claiming their client had become “temporarily
insane” at the sight of Key.
All the prosecution could do was argue that it was
against the law to go about murdering people whatever
the provocation. It was no contest. Eleven of the 12
jurors said afterward that they didn’t even want to
leave the jury box, but one did. He prayed in a corner
for divine guidance and then joined the other 11 in
bringing in a verdict of not guilty.
Sickles went on to become a Civil War hero, losing a
leg at Gettysburg. It should also be noted that a few
years after his unwritten law acquittal, he took his wife
back. To criticism of that, Sickles retorted: “I am not
aware of any statute or code of morals which makes it
infamous to forgive a woman.”
Since Sickles’ time, the unwritten law had been more
talked about than invoked, as most lawyers regard the
temporary insanity plea a much surer strategy. But
some defense lawyers have used it often. When a judge
once told Moman Pruiett, a famous attorney during the
first half of the 20th century, “Moman there ain’t no
unwritten law,” the courtroom wizard replied, “There
is if the jury says there is.”
911
V
Valachi, Joseph M. (1903–1971) informer
who had become the head of the Luciano crime family
and, after Luciano’s deportation to Italy according to
Valachi, the “boss of bosses” within the Mafia. In
1962, Valachi later revealed, Genovese, after being
falsely told that Valachi was an informer, gave him the
“kiss of death” in their cell to let him know that he,
Genovese, had ordered his murder. Valachi was terrified and subsequently mistook fellow prisoner Joe
Saupp for Joe Beck (Joe DiPalermo), whom Valachi
identified as the man assigned to kill him. Valachi killed
Saupp with an iron pipe. After receiving a life sentence
for that murder, he decided to turn informer and get
federal protection.
When Valachi “sang” for the McClellan Committee,
he was guarded by some 200 U.S. marshals. The Mafia
was said to have placed a $100,000 price tag on his
head. But to the man who admitted participating in five
killings the bounty on his life came as no surprise. “You
live by the gun and the knife and you die by the gun
and the knife,” Valachi said.
While not everything Valachi testified to was new, he
had, by the time he was through informing, helped to
identify 317 members of the Mafia. Attorney General
Robert F. Kennedy called Valachi’s testimony “a significant addition to the broad picture” of organized crime.
“It gives meaning to much that we already know and
brings the picture into sharper focus.” However, other
law enforcement officials and some persons with
underworld connections derided much of Valachi’s testimony as little more than good theater, at least half
erroneous and even ludicrous. Many doubted the
description of Genovese as the boss of bosses, insisting
there was no such animal and if Genovese ever
Although not a very important member of the crime
organization he identified as the Cosa Nostra, Joe
Valachi remains to this day one of the few Mafia members who violated omerta, the organization’s code of
silence. In September and October 1963 the gravelvoiced, swarthy, chain-smoking killer held much of the
television public enthralled as he related the inner
workings of organized crime, the Mafia and the
national crime syndicate to the Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee headed by Sen. John L.
McClellan.
“Not since Frank Costello’s fingers drummed the
table during the Kefauver hearings,” The New York
Times noted in an editorial, “has there been so fascinating a show.”
The tale Valachi told was a bloody one, including
several murders that he himself had committed in the
struggle for power within the New York Mafia, which
controlled much of the underworld operations not only
in New York City but in other parts of the nation as
well. During his long criminal career Valachi had
worked for Salvatore Maranzano from the late 1920s
until the latter’s death in 1931 and then for the Lucky
Luciano family, whose leader had masterminded
Maranzano’s demise. Valachi, whose police record
started when he was 18, was a “soldier,” or “button
man,” whose duties included acting as a hit man,
enforcer, numbers runner and drug pusher until 1959,
when he was sentenced to 15 to 20 years on narcotics
charges.
Valachi was sent to the federal penitentiary at
Atlanta, where he was a cell mate of Vito Genovese,
912
VALENTINE’S Day Massacre
achieved that level of power, he never held it for any
length of time. Some said the very expression “La Cosa
Nostra” was generally unknown in syndicate circles, or
was at best no more than a propaganda slogan aimed at
the soldiers on the lowest level of organized crime. The
Cosa Nostra label proved exceedingly valuable to the
FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover, who for decades had insisted
there was no such thing as a Mafia or organized crime
in America. Suddenly, and with a straight face, Hoover
could assert that the FBI knew all about the Cosa Nostra and that “agents have penetrated its workings and
its leadership” for “several years.”
Yet there can be no doubt that Valachi’s testimony, supplemented by his memoirs, The Valachi Papers (1969),
had a devastating effect on many mafiosi. It greatly
reduced the importance of the Genovese family and
loosed a new violent power struggle within the Mafia.
Once Valachi had completed his testimony, he
became the most carefully guarded inmate in the federal prison system. He was moved several times before
being confined in September 1968 in the La Tuna Federal Correctional Institution at El Paso, Tex. He died
there on April 3, 1971. To this day it is not difficult to
find underworld characters who insist that Valachi did
not die, that the death report was “a con to let the Feds
hide him on the outside.”
See also: VITO GENOVESE.
Grover A. Whalen was named police commissioner by
Mayor Jimmy Walker, Valentine was broken to captain
and once more returned to Brooklyn. Years after, it
would be revealed that Whalen’s office received $20,000
a week from the forces of Lucky Luciano, probably the
city’s most powerful Valentine hater.
Shortly after La Guardia took office, he named
Valentine police commissioner. While Valentine’s
“rough on rats” program occasionally upset civil rights
advocates, a spirit of reform swept through the police
department. “I’ll promote the men who kick these
gorillas around and bring them in,” Valentine said,
“and I’ll demote any policemen who are friendly with
gangsters.” In his first six years he fired 300 policemen,
officially rebuked 3,000 and fined 8,000.
Valentine was given credit for filling the higher ranks
of the police department with more honest men than
ever before in New York’s history. Under his command
the time-honored police practice of “proving” efficiency, whereby citizen’s complaints were simply left
unrecorded in order to achieve a higher “solved”
record, was eliminated.
Valentine deserved most of the credit for forcing
Murder, Inc.’s Louis Lepke to surrender, although J.
Edgar Hoover grabbed the limelight. Valentine applied
such heat to the underworld that the gangster barely
had enough time to breathe, and he warned that he
intended to keep it up until the mobs realized control of
their operations would be threatened unless Lepke surrendered. When some civil liberties groups protested to
Mayor La Guardia that such police harassment was
unconstitutional, the Little Flower summoned Valentine to the meeting and said, “Lewie, these people claim
you violate the Constitution.”
Valentine replied, “So do the gangsters.” And on
that note La Guardia sent the protesters on their way.
Paying a unique compliment to Valentine during the
1945 mayoralty campaign, all three major candidates
for the office publicly promised to retain him in his
post. When William O’Dwyer won, Valentine chose
instead to retire. He signed a lucrative contract to function as “chief investigator-commentator” for the “Gang
Busters” radio show and he made several movie shorts
on crime prevention. However, Valentine soon tired of
that career and accepted an offer from Gen. Douglas
MacArthur to reorganize the Japanese police department along the lines of the New York department.
Valentine returned to this country in 1946, resumed
his radio career and wrote his autobiography, Night
Stick. He died in December of that year.
Valentine, Lewis J. (1882–1946) New York police
commissioner
Police commissioner of New York from 1934 to 1945
and known during his 42 years in the department as the
city’s “honest cop,” Lewis J. Valentine paired perfectly
with Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia in the latter’s
efforts to “run out the bums and rats.” Valentine had
previously seen his fortunes rise and fall depending on
the extent of corrupt political and/or criminal influences that infected various city administrations. Joining
the force as a patrolman in 1903, he made sergeant
after 10 years and later became a lieutenant on the
“confidential squad,” charged with rooting out corrupt
and graft-taking members of the department.
However, while Richard E. Enright was commissioner, Valentine fell from grace and was continually
passed over for captain despite achieving the highest
score on civil service examinations. He was transferred
to the wilds of Brooklyn to satisfy Tammany Hall, which
was upset by his constant raids on politically protected
gambling operations. Later, under Commissioner George
V. McLaughlin, he returned to favor and was promoted
to captain, deputy inspector, inspector and deputy chief
inspector within a year. He became even more famous
for his gambling raids and his incorruptibility. When
Valentine’s Day Massacre
MASSACRE.
913
See ST. VALENTINE’S DAY
VALLEY Gang
Valley Gang
early 20th-century Chicago gang
vampires
vice extortionists
Among the more loathsome types of extortionists
prevalent in big cities during the 19th century were the
“vampires,” who made their living by victimizing men
seen coming from a house of assignation. Vampires
were generally young thugs who would follow a man
back to his residence and then threaten to stand in front
of his house chanting he “has just come from a whorehouse, just come from a whorehouse.” In most vice districts the vampires were finally wiped out by the
bordello operators themselves, who came to realize
such activities were bad for business. They also took
offense when vampires tried to extort money from
some housewife-inmates returning to their own neighborhoods, where no one knew of their secret occupation.
In Chicago in the 1870s a particularly successful
band of vampires was crushed because they harassed
patrons of a large bagnio on Biler Avenue belonging to
one Dan Webster. Unfortunately for the vampires, they
did not know that the secret landlord of the building,
and most likely Webster’s partner, was Michael C.
Hickey, the superintendent of police. The vampires
deserted the area when they found that police would
lay for them and give them a severe clubbing whenever
they came within a block or two of Webster’s place.
Chicago’s Valley Gang was an Irish precursor of Al
Capone’s mob and later merged into the latter’s operations.
What was to become a gang of hardened criminals in
this century started out in the 1890s as a neighborhood
play group on Fifteenth Street in the Bloody Maxwell
section of the city. In the 1900s the Valley Gang began
committing burglaries, picking pockets and, later, hiring out for murders. Around the time of World War I,
the gang was under the leadership of Paddy Ryan, better known as Paddy the Bear thanks to his physique,
who controlled much of the crime in Bloody Maxwell
from a saloon he ran on South Halsted Street. Paddy
the Bear was killed in 1920 by Walter Quinlan, known
as the Runt. After serving only a few years in prison for
the crime, the Runt was released and opened a saloon
that became a rendezvous for trigger men and gangsters. When on one occasion the police raided the
Runt’s saloon, they collected a dozen automatic pistols,
two machine guns and 10 bulletproof vests. The Runt’s
defiance of the Valley Gang ended when he was killed
by Paddy the Fox, Paddy the Bear’s son.
The most important leaders of the Valley Gang took
over in 1920. They were Frankie Lake and Terry Druggan, who moved the gang into bootlegging and rum
running. In time, the gang was the most prosperous
criminal combine in Chicago. Even the lowliest members rode in Rolls-Royces. Naturally, such wealth gave
the mob considerable leverage with the law in Chicago.
In 1924 Lake and Druggan were sentenced to a year in
prison for contempt of court, a punishment that proved
to be laughable. A newspaper reporter who went to the
county jail to interview Druggan was told, “Mr. Druggan is not in today.”
The reporter said he would speak to Frankie Lake
instead. The response was: “Mr. Lake also had an
appointment downtown. They will be back after dinner.”
The reporter’s inquiry led to a major newspaper
investigation, which revealed that, in consideration for
$20,000 paid in bribes, Lake and Druggan were entitled to certain special privileges. They were permitted
to dine regularly in the finer Loop restaurants and
spent more time in their own apartments than they did
in their cells. They came and went as they pleased and
used the death cell in the jail as an office, where they
met with their troops to give them instructions. The
sheriff and jailer were later sent to prison for conniving
in this arrangement.
The Valley Gang in subsequent years was absorbed
into the Capone operation, in which its members continued to thrive. The Capone men always cited the Valley Gang as proof that Big Al took good care of the
gangsters who joined him willingly.
Vasquez, Tiburcio (1835–1875) bandit
Tiburcio Vasquez, who terrorized California in the
1870s, was a far more proficient robber and killer than
the legendary Joaquin Murieta, and unlike Murieta he
enjoyed the protection of his own people, mainly
because they saw his acts as revenge for their treatment
at the hands of the Anglos.
A thief since his teens who had been in and out of
prison several times, Vasquez launched a five-year reign
of terror after his release from San Quentin in 1870.
Together with a large band of men, he carried out
scores of robberies of stores, stagecoaches, and travelers. After the gang killed three unarmed men during an
invasion-robbery of the town of Tres Pinos, he became
the state’s most-hunted man.
In one of his most daring raids, Vasquez robbed the
hotel and all the stores in the town of Kingston, after
his men first had tied up all the male citizens they found
in the streets.
The reward on him was raised again after the
Kingston raid. But he was finally betrayed, not for
money but for love. One of his own men, Abdon Leiva,
caught Vasquez, a prolific womanizer, with his wife.
After waiting a while, Leiva surrendered to the sheriff
and told him where Vasquez could be found. A large
posse cornered Vasquez in Cahuenga Pass (now Holly914
VIGILANTES of Montana
area, which was controlled by an army of whoremasters, con men and gamblers. Theoretically, the Volunteers acted following the great hysteria that gripped
the South as a result of John Murrel’s grandiose plot
to take over a number of southern cities with an army
of criminals aided by rebelling slaves. While some
local criminals were undoubtedly involved in the plan,
how anyone could have believed that the rich gambling elements would have participated much less benefited is a mystery. Yet, the Volunteers didn’t
discriminate when they swept into the Landing area
and dragged known gamblers and hustlers from their
saloons and gambling dens, hanging them by the
dozen. Among those lynched were gambler John
North and several of his aides, including Sam Smith,
Dutch Bill, D. Hullum and a steerer known as
McCall. North was notorious for having swindled a
number of local residents out of their farms and land
holdings through his crooked faro tables and roulette
wheels. His victims were prominent among the Volunteers, and when he was hanged, his body was left on
display for a considerable time with a crooked
roulette wheel tied to it.
See also: JOHN NORTH.
wood). Although wounded in the battle, the outlaw was
taken alive. This may be attributed to the reward, which
offered $3,000 for him alive but only $2,000 dead.
Transferred to jail in San Jose, Vasquez was honored
by his people, as thousands came to visit him. A large
number were women, but it was clear he enjoyed great
affection as a champion of the Mexican community.
Certainly Vasquez thought of himself in that light,
declaring before he was hanged on March 19, 1875:
“A spirit of hatred and revenge took possession of me. I
had numerous fights in defense of what I believed to be
my rights and those of my countrymen. I believed we
were being unjustly deprived of the social rights that
belonged to us.”
Versace, Gianni
See ANDREW CUNANAN.
Vesey, Denmark (1767–1822) slave uprising leader
As a champion of black slaves in this country, Denmark
Vesey had greater potential to lead a successful rebellion against white slave masters than Nat Turner was to
have nine years later.
Certainly Vesey enjoyed the support of many more
desperate slaves. He had become a freedman some 22
years earlier after winning a lottery and purchasing his
liberty from his owner for $600. Later, while working
as a carpenter, he plotted with Peter Poyas and several
other blacks to foment an uprising of all slaves in
Charleston, S.C. Slaves from up to 100 miles away
joined the plot, making it impossible to keep secret.
The uprising was planned for July 2, 1822, but more
than a month before that date an informer told the
authorities of the plan. Vesey and Poyas were arrested,
but they denied all charges. When a third man, a slave,
voluntarily surrendered after hearing he was wanted,
the authorities tended to doubt the report, and all three
were released.
Vesey then ordered the date of the insurrection
moved forward to June 16, but once again the authorities were tipped off, this time on the night before the
scheduled uprising. When the authorities found black
sentinels already on guard at various points, they knew
the report was accurate. Vesey, Poyas and 33 slaves
were hanged and some 43 other slaves banished, dashing Vesey’s bold plan to take control of Charleston and
slaughter all slave holders.
See also: SLAVE MURDERERS, NAT TURNER.
Vicksburg “Volunteers”
vigilante noose
warning symbol
The vigilante noose became a warning symbol for other
potential malefactors following a great many vigilante
hangings in the Old West. After a troublemaker was
“strung up,” he often was buried with one end of the
rope still around his neck and the other end running
out of the grave as a warning to others. The proponents
of this device insisted it worked well and, as one put it,
“don’t stink up the air with a corpse hanging around
for days.”
vigilantes of Montana
One of the most notable American outbreaks of vigilantism occurred in late 1863 and 1864 in the Montana
Territory. Its aim was to wipe out an outlaw scourge
that had brought most commerce, particularly the shipping of ore, almost to a standstill.
The vigilante activity focused on a notorious gang of
killers and cutthroats surreptiously headed by Sheriff
Henry Plummer. Called the “Innocents,” this criminal
group in time had come to number over 100 members.
Plummer, who was extremely persuasive and charismatic, was able to diffuse the vigilante movement for a
while, but eventually, the activities of the Innocents
became too blatant. Many of the gang’s members were
publicly identified, and Plummer himself was revealed
as the brains behind their operations. At that point the
vigilantes
In 1835 the irate citizens of Vicksburg, Miss. formed a
law-and-order group and cleaned out the Landing
915
VIGILANTES of San Francisco
vigilante movement formally organized under a
covenant which read:
dwelling as a warning to leave. The exact meaning of
the numerals is no longer known, but those who took
heed were spared the rope.
The vigilantes struck late in 1863. In six weeks an
estimated 26 Innocents, including Plummer, were
hanged. The reign of vigilante terror continued for
another year, during which several other outlaws
were hanged without any evidence of a miscarriage of
justice. The vigilantes sported their own historian,
Thomas J. Dimsdale, an Oxford graduate and English
professor whose chronicle of the movement was published in a book entitled Vigilantes of Montana. It
was perhaps the most-impassioned tract ever written
in support of lynch law. The “best” people of the territory were involved in the vigilance movement,
including Nathaniel Pitt Langford, the father of Yellowstone National Park; Colonel Wilbur Fisk
Sanders, later one of Montana’s first U.S. senators;
and Nelson Story, one of the state’s leading businessmen and ranchers.
A later Montana vigilance movement was launched
in 1884 against cattle rustlers but was labeled by some
as being no more than a murderous tool of the big
ranchers and stockmen against homesteaders. Such criticism never sullied the 1863–64 movement. As Wayne
Gard pointed out in Frontier Justice, “Their work had
made it easier to set up effective courts and law
enforcement agencies when the territorial government
was formed a few months later.”
See also: BANNACK, MONTANA; JOHN X. BEIDLER;
THOMAS J. DIMSDALE; INNOCENTS; FRANK PARISH; HENRY
PLUMMER.
We the undersigned uniting ourselves in a party for the
laudible purpos of arresting thievs & murderers &
recovering stollen propperty do pledge ourselves & and
our sacred honor each to all others & solemnly swear
that we will reveal no secrets, violate no laws of right
& and not desert each other or our standerd of justice
so help us God. As witness our hand and seal this 23 of
December A D 1863.
The Montana Vigilantes never wore masks, were not
nightriders and generally afforded a suspect a reasonable opportunity to prove his innocence. They also
attempted to warn a malefactor to clear out of the territory before he faced sterner action. A paper bearing the
numbers 3-7-77 was usually tacked on a suspect’s
vigilantes of San Francisco
The first justice in the gold camps of California was
administered by miners courts. As crime increased, virtually every community of any size in the territory
developed its own similar vigilance committees. Of
these, the most notable was the one set up in 1851 in
San Francisco, where crime was running rampant. In
June of that year a former Mormon elder named
Samuel Brannan organized the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance, which was unique for groups of its
type in that it afforded each accused man a formal and
reasonably fair trial before hanging him. Its first act
was to hang an Australian highwayman caught in the
act of robbing a safe. The local police chief attempted
to rescue the condemned man but was shoved aside by
the vigilantes to a roar of approval from the thousands
who jammed the streets to see the execution. By August
three more of the city’s leading lawbreakers received
similar treatment before the committee officially disbanded.
Vigilante groups in the Old West usually issued a
warning—once—before acting.
916
VOICEPRINTS
Virginia City, Montana
By 1855 crime had soared again in San Francisco,
and Brannan called for a new vigilance committee.
Joining him were such prominent citizens as William T.
Coleman and Leland Stanford, who later became governor and eventually U.S. senator. The first victims
were two men who had killed a U.S. marshal. They
were given an “orderly and dignified trial” and then
hanged from the second story of the vigilantes’ headquarters. This was followed by two of the state’s mostcelebrated hangings, that of an English criminal,
Joseph Hetherington, and a New York hoodlum, Philander Brace.
Whenever a hanging took place, an English journalist reported, the hills were aswarm with humanity.
“They seemed to cluster like bees on a tree branch,
and for the purpose of seeing a criminal convulsed
and writhing in the agonies of violent death! This
desire seemed to pervade all classes of Americans in
the city.”
In defense of the vigilantes, it must be said that their
second appearance was caused by corrupt city officials
who had literally turned San Francisco over to the
criminals. With the election of an honest city administration, the second committee dissolved after staging a
triumphal parade through the streets with 5,000
marchers. The San Francisco Committee achieved
worldwide fame, and for the first time, lynch law on
the American frontier escaped universal condemnation.
Even The Times of London noted it was “seldom selfconstituted authorities retire with grace and dignity, but
it is due to the vigilante committee to say that they have
done so.”
lawless mining town
No list of the most murderous towns in America would
be complete without the mining camp of Virginia City
in what is now Montana.
Gold was discovered along Alder Gulch in 1863,
and within weeks an estimated 10,000 miners had created the mining town of Virginia City. Like all mining
towns, it was plagued by violence, in this case supplemented by the depredations of outlaw Sheriff Henry
Plummer and his Innocents. Virginia City had the distinction of having 190 murders within a six-month
period. Statistically, the figure worked out to a four
percent chance that a man would meet a violent end
there within a year and that over a 25-year period he
was almost certain to contract lead poisoning.
Perhaps it was fortunate that the placers started running out within just a few years and Virginia City
began a steady decline toward becoming a ghost town.
Today, with its ghost town features well preserved, it is
the state’s top tourist attraction.
See also: INNOCENTS, HENRY PLUMMER.
voiceprints
identification method
Almost certainly in future years, despite misgivings by
civil rights proponents, a national computerized file of
sound spectograms or voiceprints will join the archives
of fingerprints. Slowly, voiceprints are gaining legal
recognition, although not without judicial objections.
Advocates insist that for purposes of identification they
are as reliable as fingerprints and far more reliable than
handwriting comparisons. They insist that no two
voices have ever been found to be exactly alike.
The developer of the technique, Lawrence G. Kersta,
described his methods before the Acoustical Society of
America in 1962. At the time a Bell Telephone
researcher, Kersta insisted that after studying thousands
of voiceprints, he concluded that no two human voices
were exactly alike, not even those of identical twins,
and that it was impossible to fool the spectograph by
disguising a voice. Voiceprinting involves the use of a
tape recorder and a spectograph, a device that turns
speech sounds into visible disgrams, much as electronic
impulses are turned into pictures for television. In one
of Kersta’s early tests, involving 25,000 spectographs,
researchers were able to make a correct identification
of the speaker with an accuracy rate of over 97 percent.
Kersta has since held that with properly trained technicians accuracy would approach 100 percent.
Police have successfully used voiceprints in cracking
cases involving telephone extortion demands and
obscene phone calls. The findings of voiceprint experts
have been allowed as evidence in some court proceed-
Viking murders
If you grant the Vikings really were the first European
discoverers of America, there can be little doubt that
they were also the first white men to commit murder in
the New World.
According to the Viking sagas, Leif Ericson and his
brother Thorvald Karlsefni started a colony in the New
World around A.D. 1000 and almost immediately came
face to face with a group of nine Indians. Instantly, they
killed eight of them. Even if, as was to become an
American custom, killing Indians didn’t count, the
Vikings still deserve a first for homicide. Freydis, Ericson’s half-sister, and her husband murdered her two
brothers and several others in the colony. Freydis personally axed five women in the group to death when
her husband refused to do the deed himself. The survivors then returned to Greenland with an agreed-upon
story that the others had chosen to remain in the New
World.
917
VOLLMER, August
ings but not permitted in others. Following the Watts
riots, the Columbia Broadcasting System decided to air
a TV program in California entitled “Watts: Riot or
Revolt,” which included an interview with a 19-yearold black youth who admitted taking part in the riot.
As he was interviewed, the youth’s identity was carefully concealed by camera angles and lighting. However, police obtained a sound spectograph of the
interview and, based on Kersta’s findings, eventually
made an arrest. Kersta was permitted to testify in court
and the youth was convicted and sentenced to a term of
one to 10 years. In October 1968 the California District Court of Appeals reversed the verdict, finding:
“Kersta’s admission that his process is entirely subjective and founded on his opinion alone, without general
acceptance within the scientific community, compels us
to rule that voiceprint identification has not reached a
sufficient level of scientific certainty to be accepted as
identification evidence in a case where the life and liberty of a defendant may be at stake.”
Later that same year a New Jersey court permitted
the introduction of voiceprint evidence in support of
the defense, although the judge indicated he would forbid such evidence if presented as proof of guilt. Kersta’s
testimony in the case was instrumental in gaining the
acquittal of a man convicted in a lower court of making
obscene telephone calls.
In 1978 courts in Maine allowed spectrographic
examiners to testify, applying ordinary evidentiary
standards, which call for weighing the reliability and
relevancy of the evidence against its tendency to prejudice, mislead or confuse a jury. That same year the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit made a similar
decision. On the other hand, Maryland’s highest court,
at about the same time, ruled out the use of voiceprint
tests. Still, legal experts tend to believe the thrust is
toward eventual acceptance of voiceprints as evidence
in legal cases.
Perhaps the most famous use of voiceprints
occurred in the case of Clifford Irving’s forged biography of Howard Hughes. Although he denied the biography was authentic, Hughes refused to appear in
public to attack the book. He did, however, agree to a
telephone interview with seven newsmen who had
known him. After he had answered their questions, all
the newsmen were satisfied that the man they had
talked to was Howard Hughes. Anticipating Irving’s
certain claim that the man was an imposter, the prosecution retained Kersta and another voiceprint expert,
Dr. Peter Ladefoged, to judge the authenticity of the
voice after studying sound spectographs of the telephone conversation and comparing them with those of
earlier recordings made by Hughes. Irving later confessed his hoax.
Nevertheless, the possibility of a computer bank of
voiceprints has caused apprehension in many quarters.
Opponents of the idea cite a report published by the
New York Post in 1973 that the FBI, acting on behalf
of the CIA, had asked a radio station, WMCA, which
featured a “call-in” program, to record all incoming
phone calls critical of President Richard Nixon and his
associates. Although the station denied there was such
a blanket demand, it said that it recorded all conversations and that the CIA had requested a recording of a
specific conversation about the administration that was
of a threatening nature. It remains clear that voiceprinting probably involves more “police state” potential
than most other methods of identification.
Further reading: Voice Printing by Eugene Block.
Vollmer, August (1876–1955) Berkeley, California police
chief
The father of the modern scientific police force,
August Vollmer is generally acknowledged today as
having been America’s most far-sighted and influential
police chief. As chief of police in Berkeley, Calif. from
1905 to 1932, he created a department far ahead of its
time. Though not a scientist, he steeped himself in all
the latest scientific developments and looked for ways
to apply them to police work. He even anticipated
police radio communications before the introduction
of the radio, devising a method whereby patrol cars
could answer emergency calls with incredible speed
for that era. Vollmer had special signal lights connected to police headquarters installed at all major
intersections. When a crime was telephoned in to
headquarters, the signal lights in the area of the crime
were blinked on and off. Officers seeing the flashing
lights would immediately telephone in for instructions
on where to go.
Considering his later distinguished career, Vollmer
had an unimpressive background. He had been a
Philippine Scout in the U.S. Army and later a postman
in Berkeley before becoming a police officer. Once on
the force, his rise was meteoric. After he became chief,
Vollmer recruited only the best possible candidates for
job openings on the force. He had the advantage of
having to maintain only a small department, for a long
time just a few more than 30 men, and thus could, as he
said, “be fussy.” Most of the recruits he picked had at
least some college background in the sciences. Early on
in his post, he said: “We believe in employing every
method known to modern science that will keep us at
least one jump ahead of the criminal—not one jump
behind.” Under Vollmer’s guidance the country’s first
formal training school for policemen was established in
Berkeley in 1908. His crime laboratory, though modest
918
VON Bülow, Claus
in size, became famous as one of the most efficient in
the nation, and was consulted by many other departments on matters of identification and development of
clues.
Every new scientific development interested him. He
was particularly intrigued by the experiments being
done in the area of lie detection and assigned a colleague, John A. Larson, to construct a lie detector that
the department could use. Larson produced the first
polygraph, and when Larson moved on to other law
enforcement positions, Vollmer had a brilliant student
at the University of California, Leonard Keeler, perfect
the device and develop what became known as the
Keeler Polygraph.
Vollmer credited many of his solutions to crimes to
the fact that he simply was well read in the police sciences. Once, he solved a case without ever leaving his
office. At a conference with some of his officers who
were making no headway in solving an outbreak of
arson cases in a certain neighborhood, Vollmer leaned
back in his chair and said: “Well, I’d check the neighborhood very thoroughly. Ring doorbells. I’d look for a
feeble-minded person, preferably one who hasn’t been
living in Berkeley very long and who might be homesick.”
Without understanding why, the officers followed
Vollmer’s instructions and solved the case. A feebleminded youth who had recently moved to California to
live with relatives readily confessed to setting the fires.
When the officers later expressed their amazement to
Vollmer, he showed them a book, Criminal Psychology
by Hans Gross, an Austrian criminologist, and had
them read a chapter on nostalgia. Gross expounded on
a theory that when a feeble-minded person is uprooted
and moved to a new environment, he often becomes
homesick. Somehow, he tends to relieve this feeling by
starting fires.
After retiring from his post in 1932, Vollmer was
active as a writer and lecturer on police work. Perhaps
the best measure of his contribution to police work was
that in the 1940s there were 25 police chiefs around the
country who at one time had served under him in
Berkeley.
cause her death by denying her required medication to
alter her hypoglycemic (low blood sugar) condition.
The prosecution presented the evidence offered by
Maria Schrallhammer, Sunny’s longtime private maid,
that she had seen a little black bag with a vial of
“insulin” and a hypodermic syringe. The maid also testified that von Bülow seemed uncaring when his wife
suffered attacks, once waiting until Sunny was “barely
breathing” before summoning a doctor. That coma was
due to an apparent drug overdose.
Then on December 21, 1980, Sunny was found
unconscious on the floor of her bathroom in the couple’s fashionable Newport, Rhode Island, mansion.
She was rushed to a hospital, later transferred to a
Boston hospital and then to Columbia Presbyterian
Medical Center in New York City, where she thereafter remained in a coma, vegetative and in a fetal
position.
The prosecution felt it had a powerful case against
von Bülow. Von Bülow was well-to-do but not in the
same league financially with his wife. Educated in
England at Cambridge University, he had worked for a
time for J. Paul Getty, advising the oil billionaire on
legal and diplomatic matters. When the von Bülows
were married they soon became much sought after by
the social elite, and were distinguished for their elegant
dinner parties. They were both patrons of the arts, and
Claus became a profitable investor in Deathtrap, a
highly acclaimed Broadway comedy thriller, ironically
about a husband who plans to kill his wife for her fortune. That was what the prosecution alleged was von
Bülow’s intent in real life. It said von Bülow wanted to
inherit his share of his wife’s fortune, amounting to
about $14 million, and then marry his mistress,
Alexandra Isles, a beautiful socialite and former television soap-opera actress.
The prosecution won the first trial on two counts of
assault with intent to murder and von Bülow was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment but was freed under
$1 million bail. Von Bülow appealed the verdict, a
process he assigned to Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz. In the Rhode Island Supreme Court Dershowitz argued that von Bülow’s “little black bag” and
its supposedly incriminating contents had been illegally
seized and used against the defendant. Von Bülow’s
1982 conviction was thrown out. However, Sunny’s
two children by a previous marriage, Prince Alexander
von Auersperg and his sister, Princess Annie Laurie von
Auersperg Kneissl, again filed charges that their stepfather tried to kill their mother.
The second trial was held in 1985. A brilliant
defense attorney, Thomas Puccio, advised by Dershowitz, brought in experts who testified that drugs
and alcohol, rather than insulin, had caused Sunny’s
Von Bülow, Claus (1926– ) cleared of attempted murder
charges
For some 19 years until late 1999, and presumably
much longer, Martha “Sunny” von Bülow had been in
a coma in a vegetative state with no medical expectation of ever regaining consciousness. That situation led
to two of the most sensational trials of the 1980s, during which her husband, Danish-born socialite Claus
von Bülow, was accused of seeking to either kill her or
919
VON Bülow, Claus
Socialite Claus von Bülow was portrayed in the press as weeping as he entered the mansion he once shared with his
comatose wife, Sunny. Actually he apparently was reacting to a greeting given him by the family’s two pet dogs (not
shown).
Sunny’s two children by her previous marriage then
filed a $56-million lawsuit against von Bülow. They
sought to bar von Bülow from collecting $120,000 a
year from a trust fund Sunny had established for him,
claiming he had falsely influenced her while planning to
do her in. Meanwhile Cosima was disinherited by her
maternal grandmother because she had stood by her
father and could have provided him with money. In
1986 von Bülow tried to settle the matter by divorcing
Sunny and giving up all claims to any of her fortune,
estimated in total to be somewhere between $25 and
$40 million, if the children dropped the suit against
him and gave their half-sister, Cosima, her fair share of
the estate left by Sunny’s mother. The offer was
rejected, but the following year the parties came to an
agreement. Von Bülow renounced all claims to Sunny’s
fortune and agreed not to write any books about the
case. Cosima gained one-third share of her grandmother’s estate.
comas. It was claimed that Sunny had injected herself
with mixtures of Demerol and amphetamines and that
von Bülow’s extramarital affairs had greatly depressed
her. Von Bülow was quoted as saying Sunny had lost
interest in sex after their daughter, Cosima, was born in
1967, and that was why he had sought the attentions of
another woman. Medical experts for the prosecution
testified that only insulin injections could have caused
the comas. Thus the jurors were left to debate the testimony of experts on both sides. Even Isles, von Bülow’s
mistress, testified against him.
In his summation after nine weeks of sensational testimony, which was a delight to the tabloid press, Puccio
implored the jury to consider only the real facts in the
case. He admitted it was “not a pretty picture. Mr. von
Bülow was cheating on his wife and he was stringing
Alexandra Isles along. No matter what you think of
Mr. von Bülow’s conduct of his marriage, please don’t
hold that fact against him in this case.” The jury on
June 10, 1985 acquitted the 58-year-old defendant.
920
W
sell him a large batch of the bills at bargain prices. Once
the sucker was convinced the merchandise was
absolutely undetectable, he would eagerly agree to make
a big buy. At the time of the transaction he would again
be shown real money, but at the last moment the package containing the bills would be switched for a similarlooking one in which there was nothing but cut-up
pieces of green paper. From 1880 to 1890 Waddell took
in more than a quarter of a million dollars with these
two schemes before switching exclusively to gold bricks,
a scam whose advantage was the great time lag before
the victim realized he’d been taken. Waddell found
Europe, especially Paris and London, an ideal locale for
pulling the gold brick swindle. In March 1895 he was
killed by another swindler named Tom O’Brien in a dispute over the split in one of their capers.
See also: GOLD BRICK SWINDLE, GREEN GOODS SWINDLE.
Waddell, Reed (1859–1895) swindler
Among the most successful American swindlers to
operate both in this country and in Europe during the
last century, Reed Waddell was an artful practitioner of
the green goods racket and without doubt the greatest
of all at the gold brick swindle.
Some historians erroneously credit Waddell with
originating the gold brick game in New York in 1880,
but there is ample evidence that the racket was pulled
before that. It is known, for instance, that Wyatt Earp
and Mysterious Dave Mather were selling “gold
bricks” to gullible cowboys in 1878 in Mobeetie, Tex.
Even though Waddell did not invent the game, he certainly made it pay off more than anyone else had.
The son of a very rich and respectable Springfield,
Ill. family, Waddell refused to go into the family business and instead gravitated to gambling circles. In 1880
he turned up in New York with the first gold brick to
be offered for sale there. The brick was actually a lead
bar covered with three platings of gold and containing
a slug of solid gold in the center. Waddell would tell a
potential sucker that he was forced to sell the brick. He
would then guide the victim to an accomplice posing as
an assayer, who would declare the brick pure gold. If
the victim was still dubious, Waddell would impulsively
dig out the slug of real gold in the center and insist the
man take it to a jeweler himself for another test. When
the assay turned out positive, the sucker was hooked.
Waddell sold his first lead brick for $4,000, never got
less than $3,500 and often made twice that price.
Another of Waddell’s cons was the green goods swindle. In this scheme Waddell would show a sucker some
real money, tell him it was counterfeit and then offer to
Wagner, John F. (1893–1950) embezzler
It has been said that the motives for most embezzlers
are one or more of the three R’s: rum, redheads and
race horses. What made one of this country’s greatest
embezzlers so different was that he was motivated by
none of the three.
John F. Wagner was the cashier of the First National
Bank in the little coal town of Cecil, Pa. When the bank
examiners came calling one Monday morning in 1950,
they found Wagner sprawled dead on the floor next to
the vault, a bullet in his head. Soon, they discovered
why. The 57-year-old Wagner, a resident of Cecil all his
life, was short the sum of $1,125,000.
921
WAITE, Dr.Arthur Warren
But the motivation for the embezzlement remained a
puzzle, since Wagner didn’t wench, drink or gamble. In
fact, he only owned two winter suits, one of which he
was buried in. The examiners solved the puzzle when
they found a note in Wagner’s handwriting. “The reason for the shortage was because of paying checks that
were not good.” Appended to the note was a list of persons who had defaulted on their loans or had written
scores of rubber checks. Townspeople had an explanation for Wagner’s downfall: he was a complete soft
touch who never could turn away a friend in need.
Authorities went about trying to make as many people as possible meet their debts. But for Wagner, it was
too late.
See also: EMBEZZLEMENT.
Waite, Dr. Arthur Warren (1887–1917) murderer
In 1916 Dr. Arthur Warren Waite, a leading New York
dental surgeon and a brilliant germ culture researcher
at Cornell Medical School, committed two of this country’s most-celebrated poison murders. He is remembered, however, not so much for his deeds as for his
style, which, if nothing else, proved that a knowledge
of medical science doesn’t necessarily make a person an
efficient killer.
Dr. Waite was an exceptionally handsome man in his
late twenties. Tall, athletic and debonair, he had made a
considerable impact on New York’s Upper West Side
society. An expert tennis player, he won several tournaments; Franklin P. Adams and other well-known tennis
addicts considered him to be the best player on the
local courts. Waite was also devoting a good deal of
attention to making himself a millionaire. That he figured to do by wiping out his wife’s parents, millionaire
drug manufacturer John E. Peck and his wife of Grand
Rapids, Mich. When the Pecks, in their seventies,
passed away, Waite’s wife stood to inherit approximately $1 million.
Mrs. Peck came to visit the Waites for Christmas in
1915. Waite took his mother-in-law out driving with
the windshield open in a pouring rain so as to bring on
pneumonia. He put ground glass in her marmalade. He
sprayed her throat with bacteria and viruses known to
cause influenza, anthrax, diphtheria and streptococcus.
Some of Mrs. Peck’s friends commented on how well
she looked, and she did have a nice rosy-cheeked face.
Finally, however, the old woman died on January 30,
1916, with doctors attributing her death to kidney disease. Waite wasn’t at all sure whether she had died
because of or in spite of what he had given her, but he
was determined that no one else would know either. He
had his mother-in-law cremated, which he said was her
last request.
Mr. Peck, saddened by his wife’s death, came to visit
the following month. While consoling him, Waite filled
his galoshes with water, dampened his bedsheets while
he slept, opened a container of chlorine gas in his bedroom while he slept and even fed him a mixture of
burned flypaper and veronal. When Peck developed a
sniffle, Waite gave him a nasal spray laced with tuberculosis bacteria. Nothing happened.
Becoming desperate, he gave the old man 18 grains
of arsenic, presumably enough to kill a team of horses.
Peck took to bed but did not die. Finally, Waite took a
pillow and smothered him to death. That, of course,
worked, and Waite went out celebrating with his mistress. He was seen by a woman friend of the family,
who thought it was callous of him to be carrying on in
such fashion with his father-in-law’s body not even
cold. In an anonymous letter to the authorities, she
accused the dentist of poisoning Mr. and Mrs. Peck.
Large amounts of arsenic were found in Mr. Peck, and
police investigators traced the poison to Waite, who
finally confessed his entire plot.
Waite died in the electric chair at Sing Sing on May
24, 1917. He was annoyed when guards came to escort
him to the death chamber because they interrupted his
reading of a volume of Robert Browning’s poetry.
Waite marked with a pencil the last lines he had read:
“Life’s a little thing!
Such as it is, then,
pass life pleasantly. . . .”
Walker, James J. (1881–1946) mayor of New York
New York’s inimitable Night Mayor, Jimmy Walker
was the most important municipal chief executive ever
forced from office on corruption charges. The silvertongued politician became mayor in 1925 and soon
demonstrated that he enjoyed the high life as well as the
nightlife of New York far more than the grueling detail
of running the world’s richest city. In many respects the
glib Walker was right for a fun-loving New York saddled with a Prohibition law that wouldn’t work and a
wild prosperity that wouldn’t last. Under Walker the
city sunk to new lows of corruption, with the mayor
himself accepting money in both hands.
At the time Walker took office, the LucianoCostello forces were making their first weekly graft
payments to the police commissioner’s office, initially
$10,000 and within a few years $20,000. For this sum
the gangsters’ operations were allowed to function
without interference as long as no innocent civilians were harmed and sometimes even if they were.
Now and then, following negotiations between a
police official and Luciano, a “raid for show” would
922
WALKER, Jonathan
be carried out, with attention given to ways of limiting
the damage.
These payoffs were never traced to Walker, since he
collected what was considered a better class of money.
None of the graft taking and corruption became public
knowledge until the various Seabury probes began in
1930, by which time Walker had won reelection,
defeating a popular reformer, Fiorello La Guardia, by a
huge margin. New York loved their Night Mayor, who
paraded down Broadway and could be seen almost
every night in the classier speakeasies in town, such as
the Central Park Casino. Besides being the Night
Mayor, Walker was also the Late Mayor, never arriving
at City Hall before noon and almost never being on
time for an appointment.
Perhaps the grimness of the onsetting Depression
doomed Jimmy Walker as much as the probings of
Samuel Seabury, but those investigations certainly took
the bloom off his administration. Seabury started out
focusing on the misdeeds of the New York Police
Department, especially its vice squad, which concentrated on making the city safe for hookers. There were
shocking tales of reputable housewives being blackmailed by cops, who told them they would have to pay
money or face vice charges that would wreck their lives
and marriages. Before she was murdered, a prostitutemadam-blackmailer named Vivian Gordon made even
more shocking revelations about police misdeeds.
As the Seabury inquiry widened, the spotlight shifted
to general municipal corruption until Walker himself
was caught in the glare in 1932. He was summoned to
take the stand before the Hofstadter Joint Legislative
Committee, counseled by Seabury. It proved to be a difficult and embarrassing day for Walker. He denied allegations by Seabury that an accountant named Russell T.
Sherwood—who could not be located—was his front
man. It was shown that Sherwood had banked over
$700,000 and had on one occasion, just before Walker
sailed on a trip to Europe, withdrawn $263,838. Finally,
the mayor was forced to concede that over a four-year
period he had pocketed $432,677. Nor could Walker
satisfactorily explain how he had earned $26,000 in oil
stock deals with taxi-cab mogul J. A. Sisto without ever
investing a penny of his own money. Evidence was presented that J. Allan Smith, a contact man for a bus company in search of franchises, staked Walker to a $10,000
letter of credit for a European vacation and came
through with another $3,000 when the mayor ran over
his expense budget. Then there was the $246,000 profit
in a joint stock account with Paul Block, a Brooklyn
publisher and financier. Block’s testimony hardly helped
Walker’s case; the publisher said his 10-year-old son had
once noted that the world’s richest city paid its mayor a
trifling pittance ($40,000 a year), so Block determined
“to make some money for Jimmy.”
Armed with this testimony, Seabury took the case
against Walker to Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt. Walker
beat the prosecutor to the punch on September 1, 1932
by wiring Roosevelt: “I HEREBY RESIGN AS
MAYOR OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK . . . JAMES
J. WALKER.”
He then promptly sailed for Europe in the company
of his showgirl-mistress. Walker did not return to
America until 1935, when the heat from the investigations had cooled and he was certain he would no longer
be prosecuted. The ex-mayor found New York in a forgiving mood and he enjoyed considerable popularity.
He reminded the city of a time that was colorful, sometimes charming and even elegant, although extremely
corrupt. Walker represented the “good old days.” It
was hard to hate a man who had taken a ton of money
and had now rather obviously run through it. Jimmy
Walker simply was Jimmy Walker. Even such a hardnosed exponent of honesty as Mayor La Guardia
understood that. He appointed his predecessor to a
$20,000 a year job as head of industrial and labor relations with the cloak-and-suit industry. Walker was still
remembered fondly for years after he died in 1946.
See also: VIVIAN GORDON, SEABURY INVESTIGATION.
During the Seabury Investigation, New York’s “Night
Mayor” of the 1920s, James J. Walker, was forced to
make damning admissions about his huge secret income
and subsequently resigned from office.
Walker, Jonathan
last legal branding victim
Branding for criminal offenses was a common punishment in America from the 17th century until 1844,
923
WALL,Tessie
when Jonathan Walker became the last man to be judicially branded. He had the initials SS, for slave stealer,
burned into the palm of his right hand. Walker had
been convicted of attempting to help slaves escape to
the Bahamas. Walker’s experience was the inspiration
for John Greenleaf Whittier’s abolitionist poem “The
Man With the Branded Hand.”
See also: BRANDING.
standing over him crying, “I shot him because I love
him—damn him!”
Daroux survived, and although the shooting permanently weakened him, he refused to testify against
Tessie and she was released. Tessie retired from the
business in 1917 during a wartime wave of reform that
wiped out the Barbary Coast and most of the sordid
features of her bailiwick, the so-called Upper Tenderloin, which was the city’s best theater and restaurant
district. Years of wild living and gambling had reduced
her fortunes considerably, but she had enough left to
establish herself comfortably in a nice flat on Eighteenth Street, taking with her many of the furnishings
from her O’Farrell Street place, including a needlepoint
wall motto that read, “If every man was as true to his
country as he is to his wife—God help the U.S.A.”
Tessie died in April 1932.
Wall, Tessie (1869–1932) San Francisco madam
The best-known parlor house madam in San Francisco
from 1900 to 1917, Tessie Wall was described as a
“flamboyant, well-upholstered blonde.” Her most
famous brothel, at 337 O’Farrell Street, was regarded
as the Golden Gate City’s greatest fun palace. She
stocked it with beautiful, slightly plump girls, remarkably all of them blondes. She charged what was then an
outrageous price, $20, for an assignation. But the
clients seemed to feel it was worth it and said Tessie
Wall’s services were “super.” Overnight guests could
expect to find their clothes pressed and shoes shined
when they awoke in the morning. Those who were not
staying and had to get back across the bay to Oakland
would be interrupted by Tessie and informed, “You just
have time to catch the last ferry.”
As was true of many famous madams, Tessie Wall in
later life was invested with perhaps more colorful
accomplishments than she deserved, such as the journalistic credit for inventing the phrase, “Company,
girls!”; those words were probably first uttered by an
earlier madam, Bertha Kahn. In Tessie’s case, this sort
of embroidery was pointless since her own legitimate
achievements were quite sufficient to make her famous.
An incredible drinker, she once drank boxer John L.
Sullivan under the table. Tessie was amazingly generous
with the police and generally led off the Grand March
at the annual policemen’s ball on the arm of Mayor
Sunny Jim Rolph. She started things rolling at such
affairs by slapping a $1,000 bill down on the bar and
shouting, “Drink that up, boys!”
Long married to Frank Daroux, a gambler and
owner of a number of brothels, she resisted his
entreaties that she leave the business and become a
country housewife on a lavish estate that he had
bought for her in San Mateo County. Once, Tessie told
him, “I’d rather be an electric light pole on Powell
Street than own all the land in the sticks.” After
Daroux finally divorced her, Tessie begged him to
return. When he refused, she sent word to him that she
would fix him so no other woman would ever want
him. She did her best to keep her word in the summer
of 1916 by firing three bullets into his body from a
.22-caliber revolver. When the police arrived, she was
Wall Street explosion
New York bombing
Probably the most intensive police hunt in New York’s
history followed an explosion on Wall Street at noon
on September 16, 1920.
On that day a horse-drawn wagon containing a concealed bomb was left in front of the U.S. Assay Office,
opposite the J. P. Morgan Building. As during any other
weekday lunch hour, clerks, stenographers, bankers,
brokers and messengers choked the narrow streets. The
only out-of-the-ordinary activity was the transfer by
workmen of gold ingots, worth $15,000 each, to the
Assay Office from the U.S. Sub-Treasury building next
door.
At 12:01 P.M. the bomb exploded, killing 30 persons
and injuring another 300. The pavements were littered
with people writhing in agony or deathly still. Many
had had limbs ripped off. A number of those still able
to walk hobbled to nearby Trinity Church to take
refuge. Bomb fragments rained into the House of Morgan, killing one employee inside. Other financial houses
were badly damaged. Panic ensued in the New York
Stock Exchange, as brokers racing for exits collided
with one another, tumbling into heaps.
The disaster sent a shudder throughout New York
and, as news wires crackled, stunned the entire nation.
There was near unanimous opinion that the explosion
had been the work of anarchists or other radical terrorists. Instantly, various public and financial buildings
and men of great wealth were placed under heavy
guard. In Chicago police cordoned off the Stock
Exchange and other buildings in the La Salle Street sector. Similar measures were taken in Philadelphia and
Boston. In New York a force of 30 private detectives
guarded the J. P. Morgan home on Madison Avenue,
and pedestrians were not permitted to pass in front of
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WALSH, Johnny “The Mick”
newspapers and magazines and even on milk cartons.
Recognized as a relentless proponent of public awareness in preventing these and other crimes, the elder
Walsh became the host of the TV show America’s Most
Wanted.
Then the national crime news became dominated by
two strange figures, Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole,
who started making bizarre confessions. While being
held by police on weapons charges and suspicion of
murder, Lucas made confession after confession after
confession. He said he had killed 69 people alone and
another 20 or so with Toole. Later on Lucas would
start raising the total to staggering heights. In the
meantime Toole was in prison in Florida for arson,
doing 20 years to life. Toole started aping Lucas and
allowed he probably killed 50 or so people on his own.
Among other things, he declared he was a practicing
cannibal, had interest in Satanism and was a member in
a cult of death.
On October 21, 1983, Toole really shook up the
country, confessing to Florida police that among his
victims was Adam Walsh. Assistant Police Chief Leroy
Hessler was impressed with the details of the crime,
which he said were “grisly beyond belief.” Hessler
announced to the press that “there are certain details
only he could know. He did it. I’ve got the details that
no one else would know. He’s got me convinced.”
Needless to say parents from coast to coast were
shocked and frightened by Toole’s confession. Then a
few weeks later the public was to be stunned again. The
law reversed its stand and declared that Toole was “no
longer a suspect” in the Adam Walsh case.
Among other crimes he committed, Toole had said,
was the murder of a massage parlor employee in Colorado Springs and the stabbing of another woman in
1974. The authorities now were suspicious of anything
Toole said and grilled him extensively, catching him in
contradictions. Finally he withdrew that claim also,
telling prosecutors, “Okay, if you say I didn’t kill her,
maybe I didn’t.”
Eventually Toole was not convicted of any murders
at all, and the Adam Walsh case returned to the
unsolved files. Toole died in prison of cirrhosis of the
liver in 1996.
See also: HENRY LEE LUCAS.
the mansion. Forty armed guards ringed the Pocantico
Hills estate of John D. Rockefeller.
William J. Flynn, chief of the Secret Service,
announced: “This bomb was not directed at Mr. Morgan [who at the time was in Scotland] or any individual. In my opinion, it was planted in the financial heart
of America as a defiance of the American people. I’m
convinced a nationwide dynamiting conspiracy exists
to wreck the American government and society.”
A large number of suspects were questioned, including the anti-Communist Carlo Tresca and his group of
Italian “terrorists.” Tresca was later cleared, as were
others, mostly foreigners deemed to have a hatred for
Wall Street and what it represented. After a time some
theorized that the dynamiting was the work of criminals who had planned a bold robbery of the gold bullion. According to this theory, having been slowed by
traffic, the thieves were forced to flee the wagon
because the bomb had already been activated and was
about to go off.
Nothing much came of that theory either. In fact, all
the massive investigation ever turned up was a horseshoe. Although it was traced to the manufacturer, the
shoe produced no lead to the identity of the owner of
the horse and wagon.
Wallace, George W.
See ARTHUR HERMAN BREMER.
Walsh, Adam (1975–1981) classic missing child case
The disappearance and murder of six-year-old Adam
Walsh caused an incredible public hysteria about serial
killers claiming young children as victims. But the
Walsh case, as tragic as it was, seemed not to be an
example of a serial killing but, rather, of a child abduction which sometimes results in murder but more frequently in permanent unsolved disappearance that
makes homicide seem the likely conclusion.
Young Adam disappeared on July 27, 1981 after
his mother left him in the videogame department of a
Sears store at a mall in Hollywood, Florida. When
Adam’s mother returned, her son was gone. In the
meantime a security guard had escorted some older
boys off the premises and it was possible that Adam
had gone with them.
Following frantic searches by hundreds of volunteers, nothing was found for about three weeks. Then
the tragic climax occurred when Adam’s severed head
was found in a canal in Vero Beach some three weeks
later.
Adam’s father, embittered by law enforcement’s failure to find his son alive, embarked on a national crusade for placing photos of missing children in
Walsh, Johnny “The Mick” (?–1883) gang leader and
murderer
Leader of the Walsh gang, a power on New York’s
Bowery in the 1870s and early 1880s, Johnny “the
Mick” was a brutal gangster known to kill not only his
victims but also any other crooks daring to operate on
what he regarded as his turf.
925
WALSH School feud
Ward, Return J. M. (?–1857) murderer
The Walshers carried on a war with the Dutch Mob,
a rival outfit of sneak thieves, muggers and pickpockets, for supremacy along the Bowery. Walsh personally
feuded on a number of occasions with Johnny Irving,
one of the Dutch Mob’s leaders, and at least three
times, the pair engaged in knife fights without doing
one another serious damage. The police, for their part,
did not interfere in the battles between the two gang
leaders. Superintendent of Police George W. Walling
was quoted as saying that only good could come of the
bad blood between the pair; his words proved prescient. One day in late 1883 Johnny the Mick was
standing at the bar of Shang Draper’s notorious saloon
on Sixth Avenue when Johnny Irving walked in with a
friend, Billy Porter. The two gangsters stood glaring at
each other for several moments. Suddenly, Johnny the
Mick drew a pistol and shot Irving dead. Immediately,
Billy Porter drew a gun and killed Johnny the Mick.
Whereupon Shang Draper pulled a gun and shot Billy
Porter. Porter survived, and no charges were pressed
against him or Draper, each of whom claimed he was
“keeping the peace.” The police were satisfied, being
rid of both Johnny Irving and Johnny the Mick.
See also: JOHNNY IRVING.
Return Ward’s execution was said to have attracted the
largest crowd to attend a hanging in pre-Civil War
Ohio. His crime was regarded as so heinous that the
jury found him guilty without allowing him to finish
his testimony.
A hulking lout, Ward had often mistreated his wife,
Olive, until she finally left him. Early in 1857 she succumbed to his pleas and returned to him, much against
the advice of friends and neighbors. When Olive was
not seen for 24 hours, a horde of neighbors descended
on the Ward home and accused Ward of killing his
wife. They could not, however, find her body. The people were entirely right in their suspicions but had not
thought to look under the couple’s bed, where Ward
had stowed his wife’s freshly killed body when he heard
the crowd approaching.
As soon as everyone left, Ward dragged his wife’s
corpse into the kitchen, cut up her body with a carving
knife and an ax and threw it piece by piece into the fireplace. The next day Ward cleaned out the hearth and
placed the ashes outside the house. Neighbors keeping
watch immediately searched the ashes and found the
dead woman’s jaw bone.
Ward was brought to trial within the week, and the
multitude that descended on the trial scene in Sylvania
expected a hanging forthwith. They were not disappointed, as the trial got no further than Ward’s claim
that he had killed his wife by accident and in panic had
cut up her body. He was going into a detailed description of burning the corpse when the jury simply
announced it would listen no more and was prepared
to bring in a verdict. They then sentenced Ward to
death. While legal scholars in later years might cite the
Ward case as an example of an illegal verdict and a
“legal lynching,” Ohioans of the day felt justice had
been served quite well.
Walsh School feud
Undoubtedly, the most remarkable schoolboy feud in
American history occurred in Chicago at the Walsh
School on Johnson Street. A war between two rival
gangs of schoolboys broke out in 1881 and continued
for almost three decades, during which several boys
were killed and more than a score were shot, stabbed or
severely beaten with clubs or brickbats. A number of
pitched gun battles were fought both inside and outside
the school by the two gangs, which were known as the
Irishers and the Bohemians, although ethnic origin was
not the real touchstone of allegiance. Place of residence
was the important factor, with boys living east of Johnson Street constituting the Irishers and those west of
Johnson making up the Bohemians.
For years the boys came to school armed with
revolvers and knives and on many occasions they
would take pot shots at one another in the classrooms.
Some of these little gangsters were only 10 years old
and so small that they had to use both hands to even lift
their weapons to firing position. The last major gunfight between the rival gangs occurred in December
1905, when 25 Irishers and an equal number of
Bohemians blazed away at each other outside the
school until police arrived. Finally, authorities launched
daily searches of all pupils going into or leaving the
school and confiscated all weapons found. This continued for several years until the level of violence dropped.
Warde, John (1912–1938) suicide victim
Probably no suicide has ever been matched for drama,
suspense and the ghoulish interest of the American public as that of 26-year-old John Warde in New York on
July 26, 1938.
Warde, who two years earlier had been confined for
a time in a mental hospital following a suicide attempt,
was in room 1714 of the Gotham Hotel at Fifth Avenue
and 55th Street when he told his sister, Katherine, “I’m
going out the window.” Before she could prevent him,
he climbed out on a ledge 18 inches wide and 160 feet
above the street. For 11 hours he stood there deciding
whether or not to jump and warning police he would
leap if any of them came near him. The structure of the
building made it impossible for firemen to trap him
926
WATERED stock
with a large net, and as the drama continued, a huge
crowd gathered to watch. Press photographers, newsreel cameramen and radio commentators set up shop
on the street and in offices around the hotel, and the
entire nation listened anxiously to reports of every
move the slender, curly haired man made. Many of the
spectators on the street called on Warde to jump.
Patrolman Charles V. Glasco, sitting on the window
ledge with a noose around one leg, seemed to develop a
rapport with the disturbed man and kept him talking
about everything from sports to poetry while trying to
lure him close enough so he could grab him. But as the
night wore on, Warde still refused to come to safety.
Finally, as Patrolman Glasco left his perch to make
room for a boyhood friend of the would-be suicide, a
roar went up from the crowd below. Warde had
jumped. He landed on the hotel marquee and then
bounced to the street, dead before he hit the ground. It
was later estimated that the news media had spent
$100,000 to cover the event.
thought he had killed his opponent. Only 14 at the time
he ran off and fell in with rustlers. Later, he worked
with outlaws out of Robber’s Roost in the Utah Territory and eventually met up with Butch Cassidy. In 1889
Butch, Matt and Tom McCarty held up the Telluride
Bank in Colorado, making off with $31,000. After
that, Butch, Matt and others earned quite a living robbing banks and rustling cattle and horses.
In the early 1890s Warner used some of his loot to
open a saloon in Star Valley, an area on the WyomingUtah border. A bit of a wit, he covered the back of the
bar with the most expensive wallpaper ever used, stolen
bonds and bills, in the center of which was a $10,000
note that the gang had obviously reckoned they would
never be able to cash.
In 1892 Warner and George McCarty were arrested
in Ellensburg, Wash. for a bank robbery in Roslyn,
Wash. While they were in jail, other Bunchers supplied
them with tools and pistols, and two days before their
trial the pair broke out and got as far as the livery stable,
where McCarty was winged. Warner got off a shot that
wounded an attacking citizen before the pair was forced
to surrender. Remarkably, Warner and McCarty beat the
bank robbery charge and were set free, their escape try
overlooked because innocent men were sometimes
allowed to attempt desperate measures in that era.
In 1896 Warner was arrested for a bank job and
faced certain conviction. Cassidy immediately rounded
up the Wild Bunch for a raid to free him. After word of
the raid was passed to Warner, he talked Cassidy out of
the attack on the ground that it was too risky. Instead,
Cassidy had the boys rob a bank and contributed a
large portion of the proceeds from the robbery to
Warner’s legal defense. Warner got off with just five
years, on the whole a rather light sentence.
By the time Warner got out of prison, the Wild
Bunch had busted up, Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
fleeing to South America, where they continued in the
robbery business. Warner settled in Carbon County,
Utah, was elected justice of the peace and became a
deputy sheriff. He worked as a policeman in Price,
Utah, moonlighting on the side as a bootlegger. At the
age of 74, Warner died a much-respected citizen.
There were reports that in his later years Warner
often visited with Butch Cassidy, who, according to
these reports, had not died in South America as the
Pinkertons claimed. If he did see Cassidy, Warner carried that secret with him to the grave.
See also: BUTCH CASSIDY, WILD BUNCH.
Warehouse Brothel
A newspaper article in early 1857 referred to a notorious establishment called the Warehouse Brothel as the
most-depraved dive in Chicago; it became even more
infamous for what was labeled in retrospect the Little
Chicago Fire.
Housed on the second floor of a brick warehouse at
109 South Water Street, the brothel had a large population of resident prostitutes and a long row of cubicles
that were rented to streetwalkers. Because of complaints by neighbors, the police raided the warehouse
brothel almost continually to break up boisterous
drunken orgies. On October 19, 1857 a drunken prostitute kicked over a lamp and in the quick-spreading
fire 23 persons died and the brothel and surrounding
property valued at a half-million dollars were
destroyed. All the victims were either male customers
or residents of the area. Being trained, thanks to previous police raids, to make quick escapes, none of the
harlots died in the conflagration. It was several days
before talk of lynching the harlots died down. After the
Great Chicago Fire in 1871, the Warehouse Brothel
tragedy was often referred to as the Little Chicago Fire.
Warner, Matt (1864–1938) bank robber and lawman
Willard Erastus Christianson was the hell-raising son of
a Mormon bishop who became known as Matt Warner,
or the Mormon Kid, a close companion of Butch Cassidy and the other Wild Bunchers.
They say young Warner would not have gone wrong
if he had not gotten into a fight in 1878 in which he
watered stock
swindle
“Watered stock” is the term used to describe a stock
swindle in which the assets of a company, real or imag927
WATERFORD Jack
ined, have been exaggerated to attract gullible
investors.
The term is believed to have originated out of a timehonored tradition in cattle country. Unscrupulous
stockmen would drive their animals to market while
giving them all the dry feed stuff they could hold down.
Just before reaching the selling yards, the cattle would
be allowed to drink all the water they wanted. Since the
animals were sold by weight, the watered stock brought
in considerable extra profits.
When Waterford Jack faded from sight in 1880, vice
society in Chicago knew she had achieved her magic
number of $30,000.
Watson, Ella
See CATTLE KATE.
Watson, J. P. (1870–1939) Bluebeard
As a one-man murder machine, J. P. Watson, America’s
premier Bluebeard, ranks with the world’s worst. He
had all the charm and verve of France’s Henri Landru,
the killing efficiency of Germany’s Peter Kurten and the
utter lack of morals of Gilles de Rais of the 15th century, who is regarded by historians as the original Bluebeard.
Watson killed more women than most of his European rivals, although the exact number is undetermined. He is known to have married at least 40
women and killed at least 25 of them. The rest got off
with just losing all the money they had given to Watson in their blind passion to marry him. Several of his
wives followed him from one end of the country to the
other, and even after he was sent to prison for murder,
they remembered him wistfully for his passionate
poetry and the grace with which he had wooed them.
They were lucky he had not tired of them, but many
others were not so lucky. Watson bashed in about a
dozen skulls and wrung an equal number of pretty
necks. He hid his victims so well that none were ever
found except one, whose whereabouts he eventually
revealed voluntarily.
Watson was born Charles Gillam in Paris, Ark. He
ran away at the age of 12 and, thereafter, always used
the pseudonym of J. P. Watson, varying the first name
to whatever struck his fancy. He killed his first woman
in 1893, a passionate hillbilly girl who had run off with
him and then announced she was pregnant. After she
mentioned marriage, Watson fed her poison and took
off with her possessions. After that, he never murdered
another woman before marrying her. Years later, he
said he felt his victims were entitled to a measure of
happiness before he separated them from the living.
By 1913 Watson had married 10 women and killed
four of them. Then he started getting serious about his
calling. To attract victims, he advertised:
Waterford Jack (1840–?) Chicago streetwalker
Chicago’s most industrious, wealthiest, and, paradoxically, most honest streetwalker in the last century was,
as the Chicago Times called her, “a notorious old jade
known as Waterford Jack.” She was also known as the
Millionaire Streetwalker and boasted that she had
walked the streets every night, regardless of weather,
for 10 years, accommodating from five to 25 men a
night at prices ranging from $1 to $10.
In 1875 Waterford Jack decided to put streetwalking
on a structured level, organized a band of streetwalkers
and rented living and working space on the top floors
of office buildings in the business district. She became
the girls’ manager and business agent, seeing to it that
they kept themselves attractive and clean and, each day
at “shape-up,” assigning them to the areas they were to
work. The choice girls were sent to the hotels and railroad stations.
Every night the streetwalkers would turn over their
earnings to Waterford Jack, who would give each a
small amount of spending money for food and clothing.
After paying for police protection and, when needed,
the services of bondsmen and lawyers, she would subtract a small cut for herself and bank the rest in trust
for the girls. Apparently, none of the streetwalkers ever
feared that Waterford Jack would steal any of the
money and, indeed, she never did. Several, in fact, had
enough saved for them to open their own brothels.
Waterford Jack entertained no such desires, saying simply she would retire when she had saved $30,000. A
red-light newspaper, the Chicago Street Gazette
reported in 1877:
Waterford Jack has $22,000 in the bank, every cent
of which she had picked up (so to speak) on the streets
of Chicago. Jack (her right name is Frances Warren)
has made money. It is said to her credit that she never
stole a cent and was never drunk in her life. She is a
pug-nosed, ugly-looking little critter, but for all that
she has prospered in her wretched business, and now
stands before the world the richest street-walker in
existence.
Gentleman: Neat appearance, courteous disposition,
well-connected in business, has quite a little property,
also connected with several corporations and has a substantial bank account. Would be pleased to correspond
with refined young lady or widow, object matrimony.
This advertisement is in good faith, and all answers will
be treated with respect.
928
WEBSTER, John White
Watson leafed through hundreds of responses to
pick out likely victims. Between about 1915 and 1920
he confined his amorous and murderous activities to
the West Coast, from Vancouver, British Columbia to
southern California. He dumped wives in such scenic
spots as Idaho’s Lake Coeur d’Alene and Seattle’s Lake
Washington. Others went into fast-running rivers. Watson never understood why some murderers had their
corpses refloat to the surface. When he weighted a
body down, it stayed down. The same was true of the
many corpses he buried. He buried them deep, no shallow graves that animals or heavy rains would uncover.
Watson’s downfall came about as a result of suspicions that had nothing to do with his murderous activities. One of his wives became suspicious of his constant
traveling and, thinking he was two-timing her, hired
private detectives to follow him. He was caught by
police with a huge amount of loot from previous victims, including at least a dozen diamond rings from different-sized fingers.
Yet, even when the authorities knew they had a master bluebeard on their hands, they could not bring murder charges against Watson. Not a single body could be
found. Then while he was in custody in California, the
body of a woman turned up in Plum Station, Wash.
Watson had done some burying there and he worried
that the corpse was one of his victims. So he made a
deal with the Los Angeles district attorney to reveal the
hiding place of one of his victims provided the DA
guarantee him no worse than a life sentence and fight
any extradition effort. Since without a body there was
no case, the DA consented. The deal was made and
Watson led officers out to the desert where he had
buried Nina Lee Deloney.
Afterward, Watson confessed to eight other murders
and hinted at many more. His confession created a
firestorm throughout the country. Dozens of people
wrote asking for information on missing loved ones.
Watson shunted such requests aside, saying he couldn’t
be expected to remember every woman he had married
or exactly what had become of them.
In 1920 Watson was convicted and drew a life sentence. He died in San Quentin on October 15, 1939.
Ironically, his murder confession had been uncalled for;
the corpse found in Plum Station proved not to be one
of his.
We Boys Mob
swindlers
One of the most audacious group of swindlers in America was the so-called We Boys Mob of the 1920s, who
consistently hoodwinked the supposedly cynical and
savvy journalists of the nation’s newspapers. The gang,
often no more than two fast talkers, would hit a news929
paper city room with a sad tale about the death of some
“old-time newspaperman,” a story that was fictitious
but profitable. The spiel would go something like: “We
boys are getting together to see that he gets a decent
burial and have something in the pot afterward for the
widow, and knowing how all you guys feel about the
boys in the business, we were sure all of you would like
to make a small donation to build the kitty.” There
were just a few newsrooms exempt from such flimflams, which would only be discovered when the old
reporter would one day saunter into the office. The
racket died after newspapers ordered much closer
checking of facts whenever the death of a journalist
was reported.
Webster, John White (1791–1850) murderer
A crime that might have been spawned by the imagination of an Edgar Allen Poe and has been called “America’s classic murder” occurred in Boston on the
afternoon of November 23, 1849. Dr. George Parkman, for whom the Parkman Chair of Anatomy had
been established at the Massachusetts Medical College,
called on Dr. John White Webster at the school to
demand repayment of a loan. Dr. Webster (MA, MD,
Harvard) who led a rather notorious wild life, said he
could not make payment, whereupon Parkman
shouted, “I got you your professorship and I’ll get you
out of it.” In a rage Webster grabbed a heavy piece of
kindling wood and smashed Parkman in the head.
Parkman fell to the floor. When Webster examined him,
he found Parkman was dead. The confrontation took
place in a laboratory in the basement of the medical
college building.
Webster dragged the body into an adjoining room
and placed it in a huge sink. He then climbed in the
sink and calmly began dissecting the corpse. When he
finished, he incinerated the pieces in his assay oven.
Some larger pieces he put in a vault used for storing the
bones of dissected bodies.
Quite naturally, the disappearance of Dr. Parkman
caused a considerable stir and the college posted a
reward of $3,000 for the apprehension of his apparent
abductors. One of the few leads in the case came from
Dr. Webster, who told of Dr. Parkman coming to visit
him and accepting a $483 payment on his loan. The
authorities theorized that the money provided a possible motive for robbery and continued their search.
They did not suspect Dr. Webster. However, a college
janitor named Ephraim Littlefield did. He had noticed
that on the afternoon of the disappearance the wall
behind Dr. Webster’s assay oven had been very hot.
When he later mentioned the fact to Dr. Webster, the
latter seemed nervous and said he had been doing some
WEEKS, Robert
Parkman’s teeth by dentists. After an 11-day trial Webster was found guilty. Prior to his hanging on August
30, 1850, he made a full confession.
Weeks, Robert (1929– ) “romantic” serial killer
While Robert Weeks was definitely a serial killer, he
cannot be said to have committed his crimes as a
“recreational killer.” Rather, he seemed to be a man
who couldn’t take “no” from a woman after he formed
an attachment to her. When a woman tried to break off
with him, she either ended up murdered or among the
missing.
Weeks put himself through college in Mississippi by
working as a mortician and a parachute stuntman. In
1954 he married his first wife, Patricia, in Minneapolis
and they moved to Las Vegas the following year. Weeks
proved to be a successful businessman, starting the
city’s first limousine service in 1960. By this time Patricia Weeks found her life a living hell, as her husband
kept her a virtual prisoner in his home. Extremely jealous, he would not even allow her to do grocery shopping alone. When Patricia took up the piano, Weeks
beat her elderly piano teacher in a jealous rage. In 1968
Patricia insisted on a divorce, and Weeks finally
granted her wish. Patricia got the family Cadillac and
home as part of the settlement. Shortly thereafter, her
car was found abandoned in a local shopping center.
Weeks informed his daughters their mother had simply
abandoned them.
A few years later Weeks married again, but that marriage ended in divorce in 1974. This wife didn’t die for
that offense since it was Weeks who had developed a
relationship with another woman, Cynthia Jabour.
That relationship continued for six years. By late 1980
Cynthia had had enough of Weeks’ behavior and
wanted out. The couple went on a dinner date, October
5, and Cynthia broke the news to Weeks that they were
finished. What Weeks said to her at the time is not
known, and Cynthia would never be able to tell. The
next day her car was found in a Las Vegas parking lot.
Weeks was suspected of murder and at first agreed to
take a polygraph test, but instead he vanished, surfacing finally in Chile.
He reappeared in the United States in Houston with
a Libyan passport under the name of Robert Smith. He
then moved on to San Diego, starting a construction
business. While on a business trip to Colorado, he met
a 43-year-old divorcée named Carol Riley and convinced her to move to Southern California with him.
That relationship came to a mysterious end in April
1986 after the pair had a dinner date. It was known to
Carol’s friends that she was contemplating breaking off
with “Smith” and was going to tell him so. As usual the
A city marshall poster asking for information concerning
the whereabouts of Dr. George Parkman before his grisly
fate was determined.
experiments. The next day, in an uncharacteristic gesture of generosity, Webster gave the janitor a Thanksgiving turkey, but the gift only heightened Littlefield’s
suspicions. A week after the disappearance, he used a
crowbar to take some bricks out of Webster’s vault and
found a fleshy pelvis and parts of a leg. When the police
were summoned, they made other grisly finds, including the most incriminating, that of Parkman’s teeth in
Webster’s oven.
The trial of Dr. Webster in 1850 was a sensation.
Among those testifying were Oliver Wendell Holmes,
who by then occupied the Parkman Chair, Drs. W. T.
G. Morton and C. T. Jackson, the discoverers of
ether, and Jared Sparks, president of Harvard. Newspapers as far away as New Orleans sent special correspondents, and instant booklets relating the
testimony appeared. Since an estimated 60,000 persons showed up to view the trial, the judge ordered
that spectators could sit in the balcony for only 10
minutes at a time.
Webster pleaded not guilty and insisted the cut-up
parts belonged to a routine cadaver, but the clinching
evidence against him was the positive identification of
930
WEGER, Chester
jilting female’s car turned up abandoned in a hotel
parking lot.
By the end of the year, “Smith” had become
“Charles Stolzenberg,” living in Tucson, Arizona.
When Weeks-Smith-Stolzenberg was featured on NBC’s
“Unsolved Mysteries” in May 1987, he was spotted by
a number of Tucson viewers.
In April 1988 authorities had sufficient evidence to
charge Weeks with the murders of Patricia Weeks and
Cynthia Jabour. The case involving Carol Riley was
not completed and neither were those involving others
with whom it was suspected Weeks had formed shortlived relationships. It is possible those females had survived their apparent encounters with Weeks and
chosen not to step forward for fear of unwanted publicity. Or of course there could have been another possible explanation. Few cases of serial murder ever
uncover all of their victims. In any event, Weeks was
convicted of the two murders he was officially charged
with, the jury setting his penalty at life imprisonment
without parole.
youth as a suspect, gave him another lie detector test.
Once more, he passed with flying colors.
Weger was dropped as a suspect, as were all other
local persons, and the police concluded that the
women had been the victims of a transient thief. Two
local deputies, Wayne Hess and William Dummett,
were not convinced, however. They went back to the
twine used on the women, which was originally
thought to be of too common a type to be traced. The
officers found the twine was a 20-strand variety and
compared it with the twine used at the Starved Rock
Lodge; it too had 20 strands. The lodge had bought
the twine from a Kentucky manufacturer, who
informed the officers that very few of his customers
purchased that kind of twine. The lodge, in fact, was
the only one in Illinois.
The deputies again centered their investigation at the
lodge. Since the original investigators had casually dismissed the twine as a clue, the two deputies wondered
if perhaps the rest of the inquiry had been just as poorly
handled. Among other clues, the officers secured
Weger’s jacket again but this time sent it to the FBI Laboratory in Washington. Technicians there identified the
stains as being human blood and most likely from the
same group as that of one of the victims.
Weger was once more a suspect, but there was the
troublesome matter of the lie detector tests. A top
expert, John Reid of Chicago, was called in to perform
a new test. This time the machine clearly indicated
Weger was lying when he denied committing the murders. Meanwhile, Hess and Dummett had searched the
records of previous crimes in the area and found a case
in which a girl had been raped not long before the triple
murders. The victim had been tied up with twine
exactly like the cord used in the murders. Given a number of photographs of various men, she readily picked
out one of Weger as her attacker.
Confronted with this new evidence plus the revised
blood analysis and the incriminating polygraph findings Weger confessed. On March 4, 1961, Weger’s
22nd birthday, he was convicted of the three murders
and was later sentenced to life imprisonment.
Reid was asked how he could account for two previous failures by the lie detector before he, unlike the previous examiner, was able to get the incriminating
results. “Simple enough,” he said. “It’s all a matter of
technique—in knowing how to conduct such an experiment effectively.” Weger himself had an entirely different rationale. “Before the tests,” he said, “I just
swallowed a lot of aspirin and washed it down with a
bottle of Coke. That calms a guy down, you know.
Why I didn’t do that before this other guy tested me I’ll
never know.”
See also: LIE DETECTOR.
Weger, Chester (1939– ) murderer
The savage robbery and murder of three well-to-do
Chicago matrons in Starved Rock State Park, Ill. in
March 1960 attracted nationwide attention. In investigative circles it is remembered as one of the most
embarrassing cases in the annals of scientific detection.
Police laboratory tests that should have pointed to the
killer did not, and the murderer, 21-year-old Chester
Weger, managed to do what many experts had claimed
was the impossible, beat the lie detector, not once but
twice.
The bodies of the women, Mrs. Lillian Oetting, Mrs.
Mildred Lindquist and Mrs. Frances Murphy, wives of
prominent businessmen, were found bound with twine
and hidden in a cave. Nearby was a bloodied tree limb,
some four inches thick, with which their killer had battered them to death. During the long investigation hundreds of persons were questioned. For a time the most
promising suspect was Chester Weger, a dishwasher
employed at the park’s lodge. He was reported to have
had a scratched face on the day the women had been
murdered.
When police interrogated him, they discovered he
had a bloodstained leather jacket, which they immediately sent to the police laboratory. While tests were
being made on the jacket, Weger agreed to submit to a
lie detector examination. The conclusion was that he
was telling the truth when he denied any connection
with the brutal crime. Then the laboratory analysis of
the jacket found the stains were animal blood, as Weger
had claimed. Authorities, reluctant to give up on the
931
WEIL, Joseph “Yellow Kid”
Weil, Joseph “Yellow Kid” (1875?–1976) con man
Midwest trimming the gullible. He and a confederate
would zero in on a rich man eager to invest in mining
ventures and then Weil’s confederate would mention
the article in McClure’s. Unfortunately, the confederate
would say, he had no copies of the magazine, but “I’m
sure you’ll find one at the local library.”
The swindlers had, of course, pinched the library
copy and substituted a doctored one. The gullible victim
would rush to the library, find the article with Weil’s picture and be totally convinced. As soon as Weil milked a
huge investment from the sucker, his confederate would
retrieve the doctored copy of the magazine and return
the original. As Weil often recalled later, “You can imagine the victim’s amazement after being swindled, to go
to the library and look up that article only to find that
the picture did not resemble me at all!”
One of Weil and Buckminster’s greatest coups was
renting a vacant bank in Muncie, Ind. and stocking it
with con men and their lady friends to act as depositors
so that the pair could con financiers into investing in
the bank.
Born in Chicago in 1875, Weil started hanging out in
underworld dives early in life, almost always with a
copy of the New York Journal, which contained his
favorite comic strip, “Hogan’s Alley and the Yellow
Kid.” Soon, all the crooks in town started calling Weil
the Yellow Kid. He married young and had a devoted
wife who spent most of her years trying to get him to
go straight. Weil often tried for her sake, but even his
honest efforts proved tainted. He once attempted to
make a living selling a Catholic encyclopedia; using the
name Daniel O’Connell, he told a priest in Flint, Mich.
that the Holy Father, Pius X, had expressed the wish
that at least 2,000 copies be placed in homes in Flint.
The priest bought a set, and on the strength of that,
Weil sold 80 more sets, earning $1,600 in commissions.
Then the priest learned of Weil’s imposture and canceled his order. Weil went back to his basic con rackets,
selling phony stock and running phony boxing matches
and horse races.
Although extremely glib, Weil, like other con men,
was frequently arrested. Usually, he beat the rap
because almost always his victim was put in a position
of having been knowingly involved in a crooked
scheme. “I never cheated an honest man,” Weil often
proclaimed, “only rascals.” Still, he was convicted several times and did a number of stretches in prison. In
1934 Weil announced he had retired from the swindle
game. Of course, he was lying. He had by then made
some $8 million through his cons and was not about to
give up the game.
Weil was always ready to lend a hand to a parish for
a fund drive. One day he was walking down a Chicago
Joseph “Yellow Kid” Weil probably invented and practiced more swindles than any other confidence operator
in the history of American crime and was most certainly the greatest con man of the 20th century. The
only man to come close to him was Fred “the Deacon”
Buckminster, who ironically started out in life as a
plainclothes policeman in Chicago working on the vice
and bunco squad.
In 1908 Buckminster had a warrant to pick up Weil
after a waterproofing cover he had been paid to paint
on some city buildings washed off with the first rains.
As Buckminster was escorting Weil to the precinct
house, his prisoner handed him a wad of bills. Buckminster counted $10,000. “How’d you get this?” he
asked. Weil said from his swindles. Buckminster
weighed the money in one hand and his badge in the
other. He pocketed the money, tossed away the badge
and shook hands with the Kid. They became partners
in scams for the next quarter century.
Even in his twenties Weil could affect a most earnest
and dignified appearance. At the turn of the century he
and Colonel Jim Porter, a former riverboat gambler, carried off what became known as the Great Michigan
“Free Land” Swindle. Weil introduced Porter around as
an eccentric millionaire who was giving away free lots.
The pair gave the lots to prostitutes, madams, bartenders, waiters and even Chicago policemen. The two
then opened a sales office and showed the usual artist’s
concept of a huge vacationland planned for the area,
provided the supposed millionaire didn’t give all the lots
away before it was completed and ready for sale. Whenever Porter would give away some lots—which he and
Weil had purchased at $1 an acre—Weil would sidle up
to the sucker and beg him not to tell anyone else or
everyone would be wanting free lots. He also advised
the recipients of the land to make sure they had the
transaction recorded at the county seat in Michigan.
That was the key to the swindle. The recording fee was
$30 and the recorder happened to be Porter’s cousin.
Previously, the fee was $2 but Porter’s cousin had raised
it with the understanding that $15 would go to Weil and
Porter and he would keep the rest. Weil and Porter
made just over $16,000 from this neat little flimflam.
In another of his great cons Weil posed as mining
engineer Pope Yateman, who reportedly had garnered a
fortune in Chile. Yateman was written up in McClure’s
magazine under the title “$100,000 A Year,” together
with a large picture of him. For a price a crooked
printer who specialized in “first editions” of famous
books agreed to substitute Weil’s picture for Yateman’s
and reprint the required pages. Weil rebound the pages
into actual copies of the magazine and then toured the
932
WEISS, Hymie
street with a certain monsignor discussing a fund drive
when a member of the police confidence squad stopped
him and questioned him on his activities. Weil insisted
he was on the level. The monsignor joined in to back
him up, whereupon the detective turned on him and
said, “You, aren’t you ashamed to be wearing the cloth
for a swindle?” The officer took both of them in and
held them for questioning.
In 1948 the Kid decided to write his memoirs with
Chicago journalist W. T. Brannon, once again announcing he was going straight. He proceeded to sell the
movie rights to his autobiography to Brannon and then
to a Hollywood studio.
One of his last attempted coups was to try to establish a little independent republic on a small island made
of fill, somewhere in Lake Michigan. His object, he told
Saul Bellow in a magazine interview, was to make himself eligible under the foreign aid program.
Weil died February 26, 1976. Newspapers listed his
age as 100, a goal he often said he planned to attain.
Quite a few printed records, however, indicated Weil
was really born in 1877 rather than 1875, as he
claimed in his later years.
See also: FRED BUCKMINSTER, GREAT MICHIGAN “FREE
LAND” SWINDLE.
Weiss, Hymie (1898–1926) gang leader
The man who succeeded the assassinated Dion O’Banion as head of Chicago’s North Side Gang during Prohibition, Hymie Weiss continued O’Banion’s gang war
with the forces of Al Capone. Chicago police credited
Weiss with being the one responsible for building
O’Banion’s bootlegging business into the empire it
became. He was more thoughtful, forward-looking
and resourceful than the headstrong O’Banion and
used reason and bribery more freely than “Deanie”
had. Despite the fact that he, like many gangsters,
especially members of the North Side mob, regularly
attended Mass and was never without crucifixes and
rosaries in his pockets, he had a brutal and ugly disposition. He also carried a gun or two and killed without
qualm or pity.
Weiss’ real name was Earl Wajciechowski, which
was soon changed upon his family’s arrival in the
United States from Poland. He was an accomplished
crook in his teens, doing duty as a burglar, car thief,
hired slugger and killer for labor unions and as a safecracker. The last skill won him a spot in the O’Banion
gang, which specialized in jewel thefts and other safecracking jobs. The Irish gang leader toasted Little
Hymie as the “best soup artist in Chicago.” With the
onset of Prohibition, O’Banion moved into bootleg-
933
ging, and Weiss acted as his right-hand man in convincing saloon keepers of the value of O’Banion’s merchandise.
Weiss wept openly at O’Banion’s grave when the latter was buried in November 1924, following his murder by Capone’s gunmen. Although Capone boldly
appeared at the services with six bodyguards, Weiss
kept the O’Banions in line, having promised the Irishman’s widow there would be no violence until their
beloved Deanie was under ground. Besides, there were
100 detectives on hand to maintain the peace. A
reporter asked Weiss if he blamed Capone for O’Banion’s death. The gangster threw up his hands in mock
horror and said: “Blame Capone. Why Al’s a real pal.
He was Dion’s best friend, too.”
Weiss maintained the fiction of peace with Capone
for almost two months, even banishing Two Gun
Alterie from the gang because he kept publicly threatening Capone with vengeance. Meanwhile, Weiss
lined up more gunners and bided his time. On January 12, 1925 Weiss, Schemer Drucci and Bugs
Moran followed Capone’s black limousine until it
parked in front of a restaurant at State and Fifty-fifth
streets. As they drove slowly by, they raked the vehicle with 26 pistol and shotgun blasts, wounding the
chauffeur but missing two bodyguards in the backseat. Capone had stepped into the restaurant 15 seconds earlier.
Weiss’ most famous attempt to kill Capone occurred
in Cicero on September 20, 1926, when 11 automobiles filled with his gangsters drove past the Hawthorne
Inn and poured more than 1,000 bullets and slugs from
shotguns, handguns and machine guns into the establishment. A Capone bodyguard and an innocent
woman bystander were shot, but Capone again escaped
injury.
Three weeks later, on October 11, 1926, Weiss himself was on an undertaker’s slab, his wiry body having
been ripped open by 10 machine-gun bullets as he
crossed the street to his headquarters above O’Banion’s
flower shop at 738 North State Street. His bodyguard,
Paddy Murphy, was killed instantly by the same fusillade, which came from a second-floor room rented by
the assassins the day after the Cicero raid. Three others
walking with Weiss were wounded.
Weiss was 28 at the time of his death and had a fortune conservatively estimated at $1.3 million. His
funeral was lavish, although his wife complained he
had only 18 truckloads of flowers while O’Banion had
been honored with 26 and a previously departed gangster, Nails Morton, had merited 20. It had to be
explained to her that since the onset of the war with
Capone, some 30 of Hymie’s friends had abruptly
WEISS Club
his dream of a grandiose new Everleigh-Weiss Club
never came true.
See also: EVERLEIGH SISTERS.
departed the world, greatly reducing the number of
available flower donors.
See also: ALPHONSE “SCARFACE AL” CAPONE; VINCENT
“SCHEMER” DRUCCI; HAWTHORNE INN; GEORGE “BUGS”
MORAN; SAMUEL J. “NAILS” MORTON; CHARLES DION
“DEANIE” O’BANION; ONE-WAY RIDE; STANDARD OIL BUILDING, BATTLES OF THE.
Weiss Club
Weiss Family
See WHITE FAMILY.
Welch, Bernard Charles, Jr. (1940– ) master thief
and murderer
Chicago brothel
Located right next door to Chicago’s opulent Everleigh
Club, perhaps the most lavish brothel the world has
ever seen, the Weiss Club operated in a strange, if luxurious, anonymity. The Everleigh sisters always credited
the Weiss Club with being the only establishment that
provided their resort with genuine competition. Yet, the
name of the Weiss Club was unknown to all but a few
vice insiders, and most of the patrons who sampled the
pleasures offered there came away believing that they
had been in the Everleigh Club.
The club, located at 2135 South Dearborn, was run
by Ed and Aimee Weiss. Ed Weiss was a seasoned
“male madam” in Chicago, having operated some of
the city’s worst dives. He had “stepped up in a class” in
1904, when he married Aimee Leslie, one of the most
beautiful courtesans of the Everleigh Club. It was probably Aimee’s idea to buy the brothel next door later
that year and turn it into an imitation of the Everleigh
Club. They were able to get it for a song from Madam
Julia Hartrauft, who had just been robbed of over
$3,000 by stickup men. Madam Hartrauft took the
couple’s money and left the area, bemoaning the lack of
law and order in Chicago.
The Weiss Club was done up with luxurious
appointments and stocked with women who would
have been at least runners-up at the Everleigh and thus
could command high fees. However, the real reason for
the success of the resort was the fact that Ed Weiss
shrewedly put most of the vice area’s cabbies on commission. Whenever one of them picked up a fare who
asked for the Everleigh Club and seemed too drunk to
know where he was going, the cabbie would simply
bring him to the Weiss establishment. Invariably, the
customer would enter the club, be properly entertained
and leave all the while thinking it was the Everleigh.
Both the Everleigh and the Weiss Club went out of
business about the same time in 1911 during a crackdown on vice ordered by Mayor Carter Harrison, Jr. In
an attempt to recapture the old glory, Weiss leased the
building of the shuttered Everleigh Club in 1913, making preparations to pay the police $25,000 a year for
protection, but the deal never came off because of continued antivice campaigns. Although Weiss remained a
force within the Capone brothel empire into the 1920s,
Described by police as a one-man crime wave, Bernard
C. Welch, Jr., was a remarkable master thief whose
career ended in December 1980, when he was apprehended for the Washington, D.C., murder of Dr.
Michael J. Halberstam, a noted cardiologist and
author. Through the years since 1965, when he was 25,
Welch was arrested a total of 25 times but avoided confinement on a number of occasions by jumping bail or
escaping detention. His main activity was burglary, and
often when free on bond, he went about committing
additional thefts. He specialized in stealing furs, art
objects, rare coins and silverware. Wherever he went,
Welch lived in style, paying cash for luxurious houses,
in one case almost $250,000 up front.
It can only be guessed how much money Welch
made from 1965 to 1980 despite several years in prison
during that time; it may have been anywhere from $10
to $20 million. Francis M. Mullen, assistant director of
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said of him after
his capture in 1980:
Welch has operated as a one-man crime cell;
that’s why he has been so hard to catch. . . . He has
been so smart, melting much of the stuff to prevent it
from being traced. He was a loner, so that it reduced
the chance of someone close turning him in. He specialized in burglary, the type of crime hardest to solve. He
was lucky, he never walked into one of our sting operations. And he was talented and well-trained.
From 1974—when he escaped from New York’s
Dannemora Prison by hiding on the grounds following
a softball game and scaling a 25-foot fence after dark—
to 1980, Welch was perhaps the FBI’s most-sought
criminal, with 15,000 circulars describing him and his
method of operation distributed to police.
During those six years Welch continued his bigmoney capers and lived high on the hog, finally winding
up in Great Falls, one of the more affluent suburbs of
Falls Church, Va. He lived with his common law wife
and three children in a $245,000 house, into which he
poured an estimated $750,000 worth of improvements,
including a huge indoor swimming pool and an environmental room that allowed for alteration of temperature
934
WELFARE Island prison scandal
older man whose reflexes might not be quick enough in
a pinch.
The pair staged a few small robberies for stake
money and then hit a Southern Pacific train at Dryden,
Tex. on March 13, 1912. They stopped the train by
claiming to be railroad detectives, and entered the
express car and got the drop on the Wells Fargo messenger. While Welch was collecting loot, it was Kilpatrick’s reflexes that failed. His attention strayed and
the messenger struck him a killing blow with a mallet.
The messenger then picked up Kilpatrick’s weapon and
shot Welch, who lived only long enough to regret his
ambition to run with the big-timers.
See also: BEN KILPATRICK, DAVID TRUESDALE.
and humidity to simulate both Arctic and Saharan conditions as well as everything in between. He surrounded
his home with a security system, which, one newspaper
noted, “the Central Intelligence Agency, 10 miles down
the road, might envy.” Spotted under the eaves of the
home were a host of remote-controlled closed-circuit
television cameras that swept the tree-decorated lawn in
all directions. Weight sensors could detect footsteps on
the grass and microphones in the outside walls would
signal any attempt to enter.
Welch simply informed his neighbors, to whom he
proudly exhibited his personal art collection, that he
was a stockbroker (so successful that he had no need to
take on any new clients). He also maintained a summer
home in Duluth, Minn. and told a different story there
about his profession. He was a fur dealer to the nation’s
wealthiest.
On the night of December 5, 1980, Welch burglarized four affluent homes in the Washington, D.C. area
before invading the house of Dr. Halberstam. When
Halberstam unexpectedly confronted him, Welch violated his cardinal rule against violent crime and shot
the doctor. Halberstam managed to get in his car and
was driving to a nearby hospital when he saw his
assailant and swerved his car to hit him. Halberstam
died on the operating table a short time later.
After Welch’s apprehension, his Virginia home was
located and searched. It took some 20,000 pages to catalog the stolen loot found in his basement, more than
50 boxes and crates. About 2,000 burglary victims
from the D.C. area were invited to try to claim over $4
million in stolen goods recovered by the police.
In May 1981 Welch was sentenced to nine consecutive terms of life in prison. He would be eligible for
parole in 143 years.
Welfare Island prison scandal
In 1934, as New York Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia’s
newly appointed corrections commissioner, Austin H.
MacCormick, uncovered scandalous conditions in the
prison system on Welfare Island. Built in 1826, the Welfare Island institution was by that time no longer fit for
human habitation. It had an “anti-reformer” reputation and was, without doubt, the most bizarre prison
this country had seen in a long time. The 1932 murder
of convict George Holsoe, better known as Horseshoes,
was a case in point. Horseshoes headed one of two
prison gangs seeking to control the narcotics business
in the institution. A peace conference was called to settle the dispute. Since it was a summit meeting of sorts,
it was held in the warden’s office. But the conference
was a flop. The anti-Horseshoes forces, headed by a
well-known hoodlum, Joie Rao, showed up with knives
(made to order in the prison’s machine shop), and suddenly, Horseshoes lay bleeding to death all over the
warden’s rug. A general melee followed, with the rival
gangs running wild in the prison. Before the dispute
was brought under control, 200 policemen had been
sent into the prison, with fireboats circling offshore and
police planes flying overhead.
The outburst drew front-page coverage. Grand juries
were convened and witnesses called, but Horseshoes’
murder remained unsolved. Things soon returned to
normal on Welfare Island, which in theory was a tough
prison but in reality was a “country club for gangsters.”
Like several other prisons, many of the inmates received
too little food and almost no heat in the winter while
certain kingpins lived in grand style. Rao and about 30
of his cohorts, for example, resided in prison cells with
doors that could be lifted off their hinges. This convenience meant they didn’t have to wait for a guard to
open the door when they felt like going for a stroll.
Commissioner MacCormick learned about this and
more on January 24, 1934, when he ordered Warden
Welch, Ed (1865?–1912) western outlaw
A man of many aliases (Howard Benson, H. O. Beck
and Ole Hobeck, among others), Ed Welch has often
been described as the last member of the Wild Bunch to
be gunned down in action. He was not, although his
craving to join that legendary outlaw gang did get him
killed.
Welch was doing time in Atlanta, where his cell mate
was none other than Ben Kilpatrick, the Tall Texan, of
the Wild Bunch. When both were released on June 11,
1911, Welch tagged after Kilpatrick in the hope of joining the Bunch. They got as far as Texas and discovered
there was no more Wild Bunch, no more Hole in the
Wall Gang, no more Black Jack Ketchum gang. Kilpatrick couldn’t find any important badmen to team up
with, so he told Welch he would allow him to be his
partner despite doubts about trusting his life to an
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WELFARE Island prison scandal
Joseph A. McCann to his downtown office on a ruse
that he had some new appointments to announce.
When the warden got there, he was shunted into a car,
one of a convoy of vehicles carrying 30 policemen and
25 keepers from other institutions over to Welfare
Island for a raid that was dubbed Operation Shakedown. MacCormick wanted Warden McCann along so
that he could keep an eye on him.
Operation Shakedown was to shock New York City
and the nation. When the raiders swept into the prison,
they located Rao not in his nominal cell residence but in
the hospital building, where he had usurped an entire
floor for his own use. The floor was off limits to anyone
who was actually sick. As a matter of fact, when found,
Rao was being shaved by his personal barber. Many
other residents on the floor were Rao henchmen. Those
who weren’t had to pay $75 a week for the privilege of
staying there, which came with all the luxuries, including the best food cooked by the best chefs available.
Rao had his meals served to him on the finest china and
dined regularly on such fare as lobster, chicken, shrimp,
nuts and fruit. Naturally, his private chef prepared the
meals. Rao kept a wardrobe of a dozen suits, and whenever he didn’t wish to have his wife trek all the way over
to the island for dinner, he would dress up and sojourn
to his favorite restaurant in Manhattan. The privileged
convict maintained his own garden on prison grounds,
complete with a private guard, where trespassing by
either convicts or guards was strictly forbidden. Rao
also kept a milch goat—which of course required a private shepherd, whose main duty was to keep the goat
out of the flower garden.
Rao pretended to be a pigeon enthusiast, perhaps in
the style of a nobleman with his falcons, but with the
practical advantage of providing him with a way to
import narcotics into the prison.
If Rao lived in the splendor befitting an Oriental
potentate, Ed Cleary, the number two con in the prison,
was not far behind. He also had hospital headquarters,
in the Dormitory Hospital in another building. Cleary
was listed as a “day nurse,” which apparently entitled
him to keep a stiletto stuck in the wall over his bed. An
animal lover, Cleary had a pet police dog, which he
kept chained to his bed. He brazenly named it Screw
Hater, with no objection from the guards.
With Rao and about 80 of the top cons in the 1,700inmate prison confined in a special wing, Operation
Shakedown proceeded. Storming through the cells, the
raiders tossed out all the contraband they found:
knives, lead pipes, meat cleavers, rugs, surgeon scalpels,
table lamps, electric grills, huge chunks of uncooked
meats, dozens of loaves of bread, canned goods, razors
and even tin poker chips made to order in the prison
machine shop. Several walking sticks led one reporter
accompanying the raiders to conclude that “some aristocrats must be living here.”
The bulk of the cells, however, were found to be
bare, and bitter inmates eagerly told reporters of the
strangle hold the “convict politicians” had on the food
that was rightfully theirs.
“All the food you wanted was available from the
mob,” one of them said. “The prices were steep, but it
made life here better than in any other prison—if you
could pay the price. The mob controls the distribution
of the meat, so most of us guys are nothing but meatless
stew. For a fee, the guys who have the dough got regular
meat delivery, guaranteed fresh, right to their cells.”
Regular delivery entitled a prisoner to have a little
electric stove so that he could cook his own steak and
onions the way he preferred. Each inmate with a stove
received a monthly electric bill, which he paid to the
cell block bagman for the privilege of cutting in on a
hot wire running through the cells. The bill was higher
if a prisoner kept a radio.
“It was the same way with the milk,” another convict said. “The big boys would let it stand around till
the cream all came to the top and skim it off. For a
buck a week you got a half pint delivered to your cell
each morning. The rest of us got the bluest milk you
ever saw in the mess hall.”
“It was a good setup for about 300 cons who, I
swear, ain’t never been in the mess hall since they been
here. They used to laugh at all us others. They said at
least we could smell the odor of good food.”
The prison guards themselves were demeaned
because they had to take orders from important cons.
Realizing this, the prisoner elite made life more bearable for them by providing 250 pounds of boneless beef
to the keepers’ mess each day. This broke down to five
pounds per day per guard. The mob wanted the keepers
to eat well but made one proviso: the guards had to be
careful not to spoil the leftovers, which once more
became mob property. For a preferment fee of $2 a
week, any con still suffering hunger pangs after eating
the regular mess hall fare could slip into one of the
keepers’ chairs, while it and the food were still warm,
and partake of the remains of steak dinners and other
fine meals.
In the ensuing days more scandals came to light. The
mob even ran a special lingerie and accessory concession to service some of the homosexual population, and
there was a special method for reducing one’s sentence
by “buying out” at the rate of $100 for each month’s
reduction.
In the wake of the raid, Warden McCann was
relieved of all duties, but MacCormick realized that
Welfare Island was totally unfit to be a correctional
institution. In 1935, with a new penitentiary on Rikers
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“WEST Brothers”
West, Little Dick (c. 1870–1898) Western outlaw
Island ready for full occupancy, demolition work began
on the old prison. After serving as corrections commissioner for six years, MacCormick became research
director of the Osborne Association of New York, a
national organization dedicated to correctional reform.
See also: THOMAS MOTT OSBORNE.
In its frontier days Chicago made more of an effort
than most towns to fight the establishment of vice, but
it was a losing proposition. In 1835 the town’s Board of
Trustees established a fine of $25 for anyone found
guilty of maintaining a brothel. In 1838 the fine was
raised, but with little effect. Brothels were in open operation on Wells Street between First and Jackson.
Although they were rough, shabby dives, they heralded
the beginnings of one of the largest red-light districts
the country has ever seen. By 1870 Wells Street had
become such a pest hole that the Board of Aldermen
changed the name of the thoroughfare to Fifth Avenue,
so as to no longer defame the memory of Capt. Billy
Wells, the famous Indian fighter for whom the street
had been named. Things did not improve until after the
turn of the century, when the name Wells Street was
reapplied.
As an outlaw, Little Dick West seemed to carry a curse.
Every criminal gang he joined in his checkered career
soon lay in ruin, but that is what gave him his claim to
fame in a fittingly short-lived ballad called “The Luck
of Little Dick.”
Little Dick’s earliest bad luck was being orphaned or
abandoned as a child, no one ever knew which. He was
found in Indian Territory by cowboys and raised by
them on the Oscar D. Halsell HX ranch on the Cimarron River. That was another piece of bad luck since the
Halsell spread was rather noted for spawning criminals, and Little Dick was inevitably educated in a life of
crime. In the summer of 1892 Little Dick West joined
the Dalton gang, just a few months before that outfit’s
disaster at Coffeyville. Then West became a member of
the Doolin gang, but by 1895 that outfit ceased to
exist. Afterward, Little Dick outdid his past failures by
joining the Jennings gang, a laughable criminal organization that committed only one robbery, for which
West’s cut came to $60. Following Al Jennings’ capture,
Little Dick decided the time had come for him to go it
alone. He pulled a few minor jobs before being gunned
down by a posse near Guthrie, Oklahoma Territory on
April 7, 1898.
See also: DALTON GANG, DOOLIN GANG, AL JENNINGS.
Welsh, Leila (1921–1941) murder victim
“West Brothers”
The murder of Leila Welsh in Kansas City, Mo. at about
3 A.M. on March 9, 1941 remains a classic unsolved
case. The 20-year-old woman’s head had been crushed
with a blunt instrument and she had been stabbed several times with a razor-sharp knife. The police could
find no leads—other than dozens deliberately left by the
murderer. To confuse investigators, he had littered the
room and the backyard with phony clues. First, there
was a man’s shirt and trousers that were readily traced
to a very prominent citizen. They had been put into a
garbage can by the man’s servant and later retrieved by
the killer. Then there was a butcher knife bearing fingerprints of yet another man, who turned out to be innocent. The knife, in any event, was not the murder
weapon. A stonemason’s hammer found at the scene
proved not to have been the heavy instrument used to
crush the victim’s skull. Bloody gloves were discovered;
it developed they had not been worn during the crime
but had merely had blood smeared on them afterward.
Over 50 cigarette butts were found; they evidently had
been gathered from ashtrays all about town. A book of
matches with a telephone number written inside led
police to yet another innocent man. Eventually, the
police did make an arrest, but the accused man easily
won acquittal when brought to trial.
One of the modern criminologist’s primary investigative tools is the fingerprint, thanks, in part, to the case
of Willie West.
In 1903, when the fingerprinting system was relatively new and little used, the primary system of identification was one developed in the 1880s by the French
criminologist Alphonse Bertillon. This system measured
various physical features of a subject based on the principle that each person would have a different set of
measurements.
But that year a strange coincidence occurred which
shook confidence in the validity of the Bertillon system. A new prisoner was brought to Leavenworth,
Kan. to start his sentence at the federal prison there.
Part of the normal processing included photographing
and the taking of the prisoner’s Bertillon measurements. The prison clerk responsible for this process
was surprised to see William West enter the room. He
did not recall that West had been released from the
prison. Already having West’s measurements, he felt
that it was not necessary to take them again. But
when the prisoner vehemently denied that he had
been there before, it was then determined that William West was, in fact, still serving a life sentence for
murder.
Wells Street
Chicago vice zone
937
criminal look-alikes
WET Stock
The measurements of the new man, Willie West, were
taken and compared to those of William West. They
were identical. A fingerprint expert was called in to take
the prints of the two men. They were found to be totally
different. So, fingerprints proved to be the only means
by which the two men could be distinguished.
The “West Brothers” case provided a shot in the arm
for the new fingerprinting system. Sing Sing Prison in
New York switched to it that same year. In 1904 Leavenworth received a sum of $60 to fund a changeover to
fingerprinting and about the same time St. Louis
adopted it. The War Department began fingerprinting
military personnel in 1905.
See also: FINGERPRINTING.
Wet Stock
One Whale alumnus was Cod Wilcox, who once
blithely stole a sloop and became an important pirate in
San Francisco Bay before finally being sent away to San
Quentin Prison for 20 years. Tip Thornton, however,
perhaps best typified the clientele of the Whale.
Acknowledged to be one of the deadliest fighters on the
Barbary Coast, he always carried a long knife with a
narrow blade as sharp as a razor. Whenever Thornton
got into a fight, his sole strategy was to slice off his
foe’s nose. If he couldn’t manage a nose, he’d settle for
an ear. Patrons of the Whale used to keep score of the
number of noses and ears Thornton severed in and
around the Whale, but the count was lost when it got
up near 40.
Finally, Thornton cut off a nose too many, and Officer Jack Cleary, one of the very few policemen who
ever entered the Whale alone, went to the saloon to
arrest him. Cleary had to take care of the bartender and
about six other customers before he finally dragged
Thornton off at the end of a pair of handcuffs. Thornton was sent to San Quentin and somehow the Whale
was never quite the same again.
stolen cattle
Many of today’s great cattle fortunes were built by
herds of “wet stock.” The owner of a big spread
would announce he was going to Mexico to buy cattle
and his riders would be put on double or triple pay
because of the “danger” involved. It was a shopping
trip for which no money was needed, since the rancher
would merely locate a large herd of cattle, stampede it
away from its Mexican guards and drive the animals
to the border, crossing the Rio Grande in the middle of
the night. Mexican troops and cowboys might
follow the rustlers’ tracks to the river but would
hesitate to cross; the United States was intolerant of
Mexicans retrieving their stolen property by force on
the American side of the border. When the American
rustlers felt there was a real chance that the Mexicans might continue the pursuit, the cattle would be
driven straight to Kansas for sale. The profits would
then be used to make legitimate purchase of American
stock.
Occasionally, American rancher-rustlers would make
an actual money offer to a Mexican owner. The price,
of course, would be insultingly low, but the Mexican
would look at the American army of cowboys and
judge for himself whether it was prudent to accept
some money or none at all.
See also: CATTLE RUSTLING.
Whale barroom
whipping
See FLOGGING.
Whipple, John (?–1827) murder victim
John Whipple had the misfortune of being married to a
most promiscuous woman, a problem that worsened in
1825 when he took on Jesse Strang as a hired hand on
his estate in Albany, N.Y. Whipple’s wife, Elsie, soon
lured Strang into her bed and, among other things, suggested they could have more time together if he would
kill her husband. At first, the pair fed Whipple doses of
arsenic but apparently without visible results. Then
Elsie bought Strang an expensive rifle so he could shoot
her husband through the window as he was preparing
for bed. After practicing for months with the rifle to
perfect his aim, Strang shot Whipple to death on the
night of May 7, 1827. The conventional wisdom was
that the shot had been fired by a passing drunk, and a
coroner’s jury, which included Strang among its members, found that the murder had been committed by
“persons unknown.” Imprudently, Strang all but
moved in with the grieving widow, setting tongues wagging and arousing suspicion. The two were arrested and
Strang, a rather weak individual, soon confessed the
plot to the Rev. Lacey, rector of St. Peter’s Church.
Strang was convicted at his own trial after admitting
his guilt and stating that Elsie Whipple had put him up
to the murder. He had hoped to save himself from the
gallows by testifying against Elsie at her trial, but he
was not permitted to take the stand. She was found not
San Francisco dive
During the 1870s and 1880s the Whale, run by Johnny
McNear, was probably the toughest barroom ever to
thrive on San Francisco’s Barbary Coast. It was the rendezvous for members of the local underworld. If the
police were searching for a burglar, footpad or murderer, they had good reason to look for him at the
Whale, but to get him out required a large force of men
and probably involved a gun battle.
938
WHITE, Isaac DeForest “Ike”
guilty. So, Jesse Strang was hanged on August 24,
1827, found guilty of conspiring to commit murder
with his lover, while Elsie Whipple went free, found not
guilty of having conspired to commit murder with her
lover.
finance a third-term effort, but by then Grant’s private
secretary, General Orville E. Babcock, was under
indictment and there were strong indications that the
president himself was involved. General Babcock, however, was found not guilty, and the public appeared to
dismiss any possibility that Grant was personally
tainted.
Whiskey Rebellion
Angry grain farmers in the four western counties of
Pennsylvania rose up against the Excise Act of 1791,
which put a tax on that region’s most profitable product, rye whiskey, in the so-called Whiskey Rebellion,
providing the first test of the enforcement powers of the
federal government.
After failing to get legal support to block the tax, the
Whiskey Boys turned to violence in the summer of
1794. They burned the home of General John Neville,
the regional inspector for the tax, and carried out many
acts of violence, culminating in a defiant march on
Pittsburg. Finally, in the autumn of that year President
George Washington federalized the state militia and
sent 13,000 soldiers into the rebellious counties to end
the violence and enforce the tax. Some of the leaders of
the Whiskey Boys were forced to flee into the Spanish
lands of Mississippi when the troops, under the command of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton,
wiped out further resistance and rounded up 20 violators for trial in Philadelphia. Eventually, the offenders
were freed and the tax itself repealed in 1802, but by
then most of the small distillers had been put out of
business by a combination of the tax and competition
from larger distilleries.
Whiskey Ring
tax evasion conspiracy
The Whiskey Ring conspiracy during the administration of Ulysses S. Grant was one of the 19th century’s
biggest political scandals. In that the motivation of the
politicians involved was principally the reelection of
the president, the scandal had a number of parallels
with the Watergate affair during the Nixon Administration.
The plot involved a group of Western distillers who
conspired with corrupt officials in the Internal Revenue
Service to evade payment of the whiskey tax. Because
of their close connections with Grant, the members of
the ring appeared immune to prosecution. However,
Secretary of the Treasury Benjamin H. Bristow moved
in May 1875 to indict more than 230 persons. A total
of 110, including four government officials, were convicted. The court cases disclosed evidence that part of
the illegally withheld monies went directly to the
Republican Party for use in the campaign to reelect
Grant to a second term in 1872. More money went to
939
White, Dan (1946–1985) assassin
A double assassination that triggered an unusual outbreak of public violence was the killing on November
27, 1978 of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and
Supervisor Harvey Milk by former Supervisor Dan
White. The murder of Milk, an avowed homosexual,
had far greater impact than that of Mayor Moscone.
White, a 32-year-old former policeman and fireman,
had been an elected supervisor until he resigned
because he found his $9,600 salary was not enough to
support his wife and infant child. Under pressure from
some of his constituents, White asked the mayor to
reappoint him. At first, Moscone agreed, but later he
changed his mind. Only an hour before the mayor was
scheduled to announce a replacement for White, the
distraught ex-supervisor went to Moscone’s office and
shot him four times. White then walked to the supervisors’ chambers on the other side of City Hall and killed
Milk, who had opposed his returning to the board.
White was quickly taken into custody, offering no
resistance. At his trial the defense contended that when
he committed the murders, White had been suffering
from diminished mental capacity because of personal
and financial pressures. On May 22, 1979 the jury
cleared White of premeditated murder, finding him
guilty of manslaughter. The verdict shocked much of
the San Francisco citizenry, especially the city’s large
gay community. The day of the verdict thousands of
homosexuals rioted in the streets to protest the alleged
leniency shown the killer, which they said never would
have been granted had not Supervisor Milk been gay.
Mob violence aimed at homosexuals has occurred
fairly frequently in American history, but this was one
of a handful of occasions when homosexuals themselves rioted.
White was sentenced on July 3, 1979 to seven years
and eight months in prison, the maximum term permitted by the jury’s verdict.
White, Isaac DeForest “Ike” (1864–1943) crime
reporter
Ike White of the New York World was among the best
crime reporters this country has ever produced. A thorn
in the side of the police, he often solved cases in the
WHITE Caps
columns of his newspaper when the official investigation had barely begun.
In the murder of one Melody Brown, White arrived
on the scene even before the police and found the
woman’s body hanging from a rafter. When the law
arrived and started musing about the possibility of
suicide, White disappeared, suspecting it was a case
of murder. From the building superintendent he
learned that the woman had a boyfriend who worked
as a janitor in a building some blocks away. He found
the dead woman’s boyfriend sitting on the front
stoop, talking to neighbors. “It’s no good, George,
you didn’t do a good enough job of hanging Melody,”
White told him. “We revived her and she told us
everything.”
There was a period of silence and then the man said:
“Thank God. I must have been crazy to go that wild. I
don’t really hate her. . . . I’m sorry.” The World published the interview with the murderer while the police
were still pursuing their suicide theory.
White solved many other mysteries, including the
identity of the “bearded stranger” who made the bomb
attack on financier Russell Sage in 1891. He also
brought to bay a notorious murderer named Dr. Robert
Buchanan. When White died in 1943, one obituary
credited him with being the greatest crime reporter in
the history of American journalism and “perhaps the
best detective this city ever had as well.”
See also: DR. ROBERT BUCHANAN, RUSSELL SAGE.
White Caps
Mexicans who had lived in the Anglo world and had
learned how to fight back. One of these leaders was
Juan Jose Herrera, who had witnessed the tactics labor
had used against the railroads and mining companies in
Colorado, which included violence, sabotage and murder. When he returned to the New Mexico Territory,
Herrera helped found the Gorras Blancas or White
Caps, and taught them to employ the same tactics
against the Anglos who were discriminating against
Mexicans, cheating them and illegally fencing in the
lands so that small Mexican farmers could not survive.
By 1888 the White Caps had about 1,500 members and
were frightening Anglo elements throughout the territory by cutting fences, considered a major offense in the
area, and destroying railroad property. Murders and
other acts of violence were charged to them, although it
is likely that they were blamed for many things they
were not guilty of. The ranks of the White Caps started
crumbling because of spies working within their structure and a decision by their leaders to shift their attention to the political arena. The Mexican White Cap
movement is not to be confused with other White Cap
movements, which were somewhat akin to the Ku Klux
Klan.
white-collar crime
Despite America’s growing concern about what is
regarded as a surge in crime, one sort of criminal activity, easily the most pervasive and probably the one with
the greatest impact on people’s everyday life, is usually
ignored. It is “white-collar crime,” which can be
defined as the criminal activities of middle- and upperclass citizens, generally college-educated, who steal in
their occupational roles in government, the professions
and business.
The crimes include embezzlements, antitrust violations, business swindles, graft taking, income tax evasion, stock frauds, defrauding the government,
violations of pure food and drug laws, consumer
frauds and union-management collusion. It is impossible to measure the actual extent of white-collar crime.
For example, based on arrest records, well over 10,000
embezzlement cases are believed to occur each year.
However, many experts are convinced that less than
one embezzler in 10 is ever reported to the police or
prosecuted. The President’s Commission on Law
Enforcement and Administration of Justice estimated
that $200 million is embezzled each year, and embezzlement is a minor offense in the white-collar crime
field.
President Lyndon B. Johnson commented in 1967,
“The economic cost of white-collar crime—embezzlement, petty theft from business, consumer frauds, anti-
vigilantes
The White Cap vigilante movement started in Indiana
in the 1880s and, for a time, enjoyed considerable popularity in many rural parts of the country. While certain
White Cap organizations may have exhibited anti-black
or anti-Mexican attitudes, by and large the whole
movement was aimed at taming “white trash.” White
Caps focused their attention on shiftless characters,
prostitutes, drunks and men who did not support their
families, and generally attempted to reform them by
application of a whip. These organizations are regarded
as links between the first Ku Klux Klan, which was
started after the Civil War, and the second Klan, which
was organized during World War I.
White Caps (Gorras Blancas)
society
Mexican vigilante
Unlike the other victims of ethnic discrimination and
exploitation in this country, the Mexicans of the Southwest formed a vigilante group to battle the encroachments of the Anglos, especially in the New Mexico
Territory. They were led by educated, English-speaking
940
WHITE Front Cigar Store
another a credit manager of a large company, another
an insurance adjuster and so on.
The merchandise they voluntarily returned
exceeded $50,000. Total loss to the store—over
$200,000. Most of the thieves held two jobs so they
could afford to live in the new suburban area surrounding the store. The store carried items they needed in
their new homes. As they helped each other steal, one
would say to the other, “Be my guest.”
trust violations, and the like—dwarfs that of all crimes
of violence.”
Edwin H. Sutherland, a sociologist who coined the
term “white-collar crime,” wrote in 1940:
The financial cost of white-collar-crime is probably several times as great as the financial cost of all the crimes
which are customarily regarded as the crime problem.
An officer of a chain store in one year embezzled
$600,000, which was 6 times as much as the annual
losses from 500 burglaries and robberies of the stores
in that chain. Public enemies numbered one to 6
secured $130,000 by burglary and robbery in 1938,
while the sum stolen by Krueger is estimated at $250
million; or nearly 2,000 times as much.
White Family
Chicago family gang
The White gang, also called the Weiss gang, was an
incredible family of Chicago criminals.
In the 1860s the six sons and two daughters of the
Widow Margaret Weiss all married into the Renich
family of 10 daughters and two sons. The offspring
of these marriages intermarried and near the turn of
the century the tribe, bolstered by some cousins and
other relatives, had grown to about 100 persons,
every one of whom, the police claimed, was a criminal. Indeed, at any given moment in the 1890s at
least 20 of the family were behind bars. During that
decade the boss of the tribe was Mrs. Renich’s sister,
Eva Gussler, also known as Eva the Cow. One of the
best shoplifters and pickpockets in Chicago, Eva the
Cow assigned all the members of the tribe to specific
criminal duties.
She also supervised the instruction of the young, seeing that they were schooled in the techniques of stealing
as soon as they could walk. A typical use of children by
the tribe was revealed in 1903, when Mary Boston and
her five-year-old niece were apprehended for shoplifting in a department store. The woman was wearing a
large dress with big pockets sewn into the lining. Her
technique involved walking slowly through the store
with the little girl under her skirts and knocking items
to the floor so that the child could retrieve them and
slip them into the hidden pockets.
As late as the beginning of World War I, members of
the family were still being arrested, and a few of the
men eventually joined the bootlegging gangs in the
1920s.
Some major white-collar criminals who have been
convicted and sentenced in recent years include Billie
Sol Estes, who developed a multimillion dollar scheme
to swindle money from farmers for nonexistent fertilizer tanks; Eddie Gilbert who fled to South America
after stealing $1,953,000 from a company of which he
had been president; and Tony DeAngelis, who raised
$150 million by showing creditors fraudulent and
forged warehouse receipts for vegetable oil that did not
exist. In the field of influence peddling, Robert G.
“Bobby” Baker went to prison for his illegal activities
while secretary to the Democratic majority in the U. S.
Senate under President Johnson. From 1955 until he
resigned in 1963, Baker’s net worth grew from $11,000
to $1.7 million. Other political influence cases have
involved former New York City Water Commissioner
James L. Marcus and former Democratic leader
Carmine DeSapio. White-collar crime convictions even
reached the office of the vice president when Spiro
Agnew pleaded no contest to an income tax evasion
charge after being forced to resign his vice presidency in
1973.
In addition, there is an almost endless amount of
white-collar crime committed by officials of some of
the biggest corporate entities in this country. Generally,
their punishment is hardly commensurate with their
offenses. Yet, while the effect of white-collar crime on
the public purse is obviously enormous, very little
demand for reform is heard from the public, especially
the articulate middle and upper classes.
In The Thief in the White Collar by Norman Jaspan,
an expert in the field of security, and Hillel Black, the
authors cite a case that perhaps typifies the extent of
the problem.
White Front Cigar Store
underworld hangout
With the possible exception of the Brooklyn candy
store of Murder, Inc. fame, the White Front Cigar Store
in Hot Springs, Ark. was perhaps the most notorious
underworld hangout of the 20th century. Such an
establishment was possible only in a “safe city,” and in
the 1920s and 1930s Hot Springs was the safest, with
criminals even more immune from arrest there than
they were in St. Paul or Kansas City, two other notori-
In one suburban store recently we found 29 part-time
employees involved in theft. Two were elementary
school principals, one a parochial school principal,
941
WHITE Hand Gang
White Hand Gang
ous criminal havens. All important underworld elements coming to “Bubbles,” Hot Springs’ underworld
slang name, knew they had to report to the White
Front. Whenever a sinister type arrived, he could simply tell the taxi driver, “Take me to the cigar store.”
The cabbie knew which one he wanted.
The White Front was run by Richard T. Galatas,
who acted as liaison between all hoodlums and Dutch
Akers, the local chief of detectives, a tall, slender man
with stooped shoulders who shuffled around town with
a remarkable ability to see no evil. The chief of police,
Joseph Wakelin, ran probably the most lax police
department in the country. He let Dutch Akers operate
freely and for good reason. Akers collected a rakeoff
from every prostitute in town and split that and the
graft from the city’s numbers racket with Galatas. As a
sideline, Akers also sold police guns and equipment to
gangsters with the only proviso being that they be used
elsewhere.
When a gangster showed up at the White Front,
Galatas would introduce him to Akers and explain that
the town was wide open to all visiting hoods as long as
they did not attempt to undercut local operations.
Among the underworld characters to pass through the
White Front pipeline were such killers as Owney Madden, Frank “Jelly” Nash, Alvin “Creepy” Karpis, many
of the Barkers, the elite of Chicago’s Capone mob and
Detroit’s Purple Gang, and Lucky Luciano.
The FBI, which considered the Hot Springs police
force one of the most untrustworthy in the country,
kept the White Front under almost constant surveillance. On June 16, 1933, agents spotted killer, bank
robber and escapee Jelly Nash lounging in front of the
cigar store. They trailed him to a horse parlor, where
he was placed under arrest and speedily rushed out of
town. When news of the arrest reached the White
Front, Galatas immediately called Akers to notify him
of the “federal snatch.” Akers put out an all-points
bulletin stating a man had been kidnapped in Hot
Springs and “taken for a ride” by persons unknown.
The agents successfully escaped the Galatas-inspired
net and got their prisoner as far as Union Station in
Kansas City, where three underworld machine gunners
allegedly attempting to free Nash killed him and four
officers and wounded two others in a savage crime
that came to be known as the Kansas City Massacre.
With that massacre, Galatas was forced to flee Hot
Springs and the White Front went out of business.
Caught the following year, Galatas was convicted and
sent to Alcatraz for harboring an escaped prisoner,
Nash.
See also: KANSAS CITY MASSACRE, FRANK “JELLY”
NASH.
New York waterfront criminals
The last Irish gang of importance to flourish on the
New York waterfront, the White Handers terrorized the Brooklyn Bridge and Red Hook sections of
Brooklyn after World War I. The gang collected tribute from barge and wharf owners; those who refused
to pay were beaten or stabbed and their craft or
wharves looted, burned or wrecked. The White Handers also required that longshoremen pay them for the
right to work. Besides these criminal pursuits, the
gang dedicated itself to keeping the docks clear of
Italians, or “dagoes,” as they would have said.
Gang members were exceedingly violent and they
would often kill one of their own if they saw a reward
in it. The number two man in the gang, Vinny Meehan, was knifed to death by a jealous underling who
wanted his crown. Until 1923 the gang was led by
Wild Bill Lovett, a pinch-faced gangster who looked
harmless even as he killed people. Lovett was shot to
death from ambush. It was suspected that the murder
was the work of Italian dock gangsters, but it was just
as likely the work of Richard “Peg Leg” Lonergan,
who subsequently seized leadership of the outfit. A
pock-faced killer—the police attributed 20 murders to
him—Lonergan would maim any Italian terrorist
exacting extortion money on his docks and then
charge the hapless victim double for having the effrontery to tread on Irish turf.
On December 26, 1925 Lonergan led a half dozen
of his men into the Adonis Social Club, a South
Brooklyn saloon controlled by Italian gangsters.
Although the Irish thugs were greatly outnumbered,
Lonergan sneered at the Italians, including a rather
chubby one with a long scar on his face. When he
spotted two Irish girls dancing with Italians, Lonergan
ordered them out of the place and told them to “get
back to the white men.”
Suddenly, the lights in the establishment went out
and flashes of gunfire blazed in the darkness. When
the lights were switched back on, Lonergan and his
two top lieutenants, Aaron Harms and Needles Ferry,
lay dead on the floor with several bullets in their
heads. Their colleagues had fled. It took the police
some time to discover that one of those present during
the shooting at the club was Al Capone, back from
Chicago on a social visit to his old home ground.
Capone denied having anything to do with the
killings, saying, “I never met an Irishman I didn’t
like.” A cynical newsman added the phrase “to kill”
at the end of the sentence.
Leaderless, the White Handers disappeared from the
waterfront within another three years.
942
WHITMAN, Charles
White Hand Society
group
Italian-American law-and-order
Black Hand extortionists operated in virtually every
Little Italy community in the United States, threatening
to maim or kill victims and/or their families unless they
paid tribute. Nowhere were the ravages of the Black
Hand worse than in Chicago. Year after year during the
early 20th century, anywhere from 25 to 50 Black
Hand murders occurred in the city. As the Chicago
Daily News noted: “A detective of experience in the
Italian quarter estimates that ten pay tribute to one
who is sturdy enough to resist until he is warned by a
bomb. . . . Well informed Italians have never put the
year’s tribute to the ‘Black Hand’ at less than half a million dollars.” Finally, the Italian community itself organized to battle the Black Hand criminals, forming in
1907 the White Hand Society, an organization of
upstanding Italian business and professional men sponsored by the Italian Chamber of Commerce, the Italian
newspapers and several fraternal groups.
The White Hand Society actually supplied its own
police force and money to carry out the prosecution of
Black Handers. White Hand detectives worked together
with the police and even traveled to Italy to gather evidence of gangsters’ criminal records and thus subject
them to deportation. The society found it often had to
contend not only with governmental indifference to the
plight of Little Italy’s residents but with the fear and the
entrenched mores of the Italian immigrants. A typical
problem was cited by the Chicago Record-Herald in an
editorial in 1911:
A murder was committed here in Chicago, and the
detectives, native and Italian, were set to work on the
case. They succeeded in learning who the murderer
was, but in spite of nets and traps, weeks passed in a
vain hunt for him. Finally an Italian saw the “wanted
man” leave the home of the brother of the murdered
man. When the police summoned the brother to
explain the strange affair he declared that the murderer
had been wounded and that he and his family had
shielded and nursed the wretch back to life in order to
kill him and thus duly and personally avenge the death
of the beloved brother. This sort of story would astonish one in a melodrama; what are practical policemen
in real life to make of it? How could it have occurred to
them to look for the criminal in the home of the victim’s own devoted brother?
victed and sent to prison thanks to the efforts of the
White Hand Society, almost all of whose officers and
members were themselves threatened with death.
Unfortunately, nearly every convicted Black Hander
was pardoned almost as soon as he entered prison,
such being the corrupt quality of Illinois politics in that
era. Soon, they would be back practicing their same
criminal activities. In 1912 Dr. Joseph Damiani, the
president of the White Hand Society, told the RecordHerald that his members “were so discouraged by the
lax administration of justice that they were refusing to
advance further money to prosecute men arrested on
their complaints.” After late 1912 nothing more was
heard of the White Hand Society. The Black Hand
racket continued unabated until about 1920, when a
combination of factors—crackdowns by law enforcement agencies, the shifting of gangsters into more
lucrative bootlegging activities and a growing sophistication on the part of the Italian community in reporting threats to police—led to its demise.
See also: BLACK HAND.
white slave
girl forced into prostitution
The origin of the term “white slave” is often associated
with Mary Hastings, a Chicago madam in the 1880s
and 1890s. Hastings prowled the Midwest in search of
seducible young girls between the ages of 13 and 17.
After luring them to Chicago with the promise of a
good job, Madam Hastings would quickly lock them in
a top-floor room of her establishment and abandon
them to professional rapists. Finally, one young victim
managed to toss a note out a window to a passerby; it
read, “I’m being held as a slave.”
The police raided the establishment and freed the
girl. The incident inspired a newspaper reporter to coin
the phrase “white slave.” Madam Hastings suffered no
bad effects as a result of the raid, continuing in business
for several more years until her activities got too unsavory even for Chicago’s graft-hungry police and she
had to flee the city.
Whitman, Charles (1942–1966) mass murderer
Still, the White Handers performed laudable service in battling the extorionists while giving as much
protection as possible to witnesses and the families of
victims. Several murderers and extortionists were con-
943
On August 1, 1966, an enthusiastic Charles Whitman,
user of guns, concluded 24 hours of killing by turning
the University of Texas campus into a shooting gallery
from his vantage atop a 307-foot observation tower,
murdering a total of 18 people and wounding 30 others
in a 96-minute rampage.
Whitman, a crewcut 24-year-old ex-Marine who
maintained a near straight-A average at the school, was
later described by his psychiatrist as an all-American
WHITMAN, John Lorin
boy. On July 31 Whitman typed a note declaring: “I
am prepared to die. After my death, I wish an autopsy
on me to be performed to see if there is any mental disorder.” Then he stabbed his mother with a butcher
knife and shot her in the back of the head. A few hours
later, after feeding the dog, he picked up his wife from
her job at the telephone company and brought her
home. Sometime during the night he killed her with
three knife wounds in the chest.
On August 1 Whitman hauled a footlocker containing a rifle, a shotgun, a revolver, two pistols and 700
rounds of ammunition to the observation tower, killing a
woman at the information desk and then two tourists
who happened to come along. Now, he prepared to
shoot down at the students swarming over the campus
during lunch hour. First, though, he set out his other supplies: sandwiches, Spam, fruit cocktail, Planter’s peanuts,
water containers, a transistor radio, a roll of toilet paper
and a plastic bottle of Mennen spray deodorant.
Then he started shooting. His aim was phenomenal;
at a typical distance of about 300 yards, he hit his tar-
get on at least one in every three shots. In one case he
shot a pregnant student right through her stomach
shattering the skull of her unborn baby. Almost 50 persons were hit by Whitman’s shots and their bodies lay
strewn over the grassy campus. Police efforts to dislodge him failed, as did an attack from a low-flying
plane. Finally, officers led by Austin patrolman, Ramiro
Martinez, charged up the barricaded stairway and shot
Whitman to pieces. Officer Martinez was wounded in
the shooting.
Later, an autopsy showed that Whitman had a
tumor in the hypothalamus region of the brain, but
doctors doubted the condition had caused his violent
behavior. Sen. Ralph Yarborough said the man’s actions
were the result of TV violence, and Gov. John Connally
demanded stiffer penalties for insane criminals.
Whitman, John Lorin (1862–1926) jailer
Nicknamed the Boy Guard, John Lorin Whitman won
fame with both the convicts of Illinois and the public,
A photo found in a camera belonging to tower murderer Charles Whitman shows him asleep on a couch with his pet dog
at his feet. It was believed that his wife took the shot just a few days before his murderous spree.
944
WHYOS
Herrick’s Prairie Queen. The spark that ignited the war
was a provocative act by Mother Herrick, who lured
away from the Sands the fairest specimen in Madame
Anna Wilson’s brothel with an offer of more money
and a clean dress. Madame Wilson operated the only
50¢ brothel in the Sands, twice the standard rate for
that area, and, as such, was considered the natural
leader of the bordello forces there. Several pitched battles with harlots and pimps on each side were fought on
city streets, as newspapers duly warned their readers to
seek cover whenever a large gang of “strumpets and
their men” appeared.
The Sands’ forces had an advantage in having on
their side a pugnacious young prostitute named Annie
Stafford. Totally misnamed Gentle Annie, she was recognized as one of the most brutal fighters in Chicago, male
or female. The war continued indecisively for a number
of months until April 3, when Gentle Annie, with the
aid of a number of henchwomen and their pimps, made
a surprise attack on the Prairie Queen. They battered
down the door, destroyed furniture and forced customers to flee in varying states of dishabille. Mother
Herrick and her supporters were beaten, and Gentle
Annie marched back in victory to the Sands, personally
driving before her the stolen harlot as well as Mother
Herrick’s prize prostitutes as the spoils of victory. The
State Street houses never again tried to raid the Sands.
See also: PRAIRIE QUEEN, SANDS, ANNIE STAFFORD.
no mean accomplishment in an era when “coddling”
convicts was not exactly popular.
Whitman was named a guard at the Cook County jail
in Chicago, Ill. when he was 28 years old, but he was so
young in appearance and slender in build that the prisoners looked on him as a mere boy and, for some reason, became very affectionate and protective toward
him, giving him to no trouble when he was on duty.
Whitman, in turn, developed a kindly, compassionate
and humane attitude toward prisoners that most of the
other guards could not understand. It was not lost on his
superiors, however, and Whitman was promoted to
jailer, in which position he was able to introduce a number of beneficial reforms in the running of the prison.
In 1907 Whitman was appointed superintendent of
the House of Correction in Chicago, where he again
instituted a program noted for its kindness and understanding. As a result, the prison had far fewer inmate
problems than other penal institutions. Until his death
in 1926, Whitman was always affectionately referred to
by the convicts as the Boy Guard.
Whitmore, George, Jr.
See JANICE WYLIE.
Whitney, Richard F. (1888–1974) financial manipulator
Richard Whitney, former president of the New York
Stock Exchange, earned himself two quite different
nicknames during his checkered career. The epitome of
conservative respectability, he was charged by the
Bankers’ Pool with handling the purchase of millions of
dollars in stock on Black Thursday in 1929 in an effort
to reinforce public confidence in the market; for his
efforts he became known as the Strongman of Wall
Street. In 1938 it was discovered that Whitney had misappropriated the securities of the clients of his bond
company to cover his own losses. Renamed the Wolf of
Wall Street, Whitney was sent to Sing Sing. He served
three years and never returned to the Street, disappearing from sight for a time and then turning up as the
manager of a fiber mill in Florida. He died in obscurity
in 1974 at the age of 86.
Whore War
Whyos
last great 19th century ruffian gang
A ruffian gang that was to dominate the New York
crime scene for two decades after its formation in 1874,
the Whyos recalled all the viciousness of such early
marauder bands as the Chichesters and the Dead Rabbits. They, like their predecessors, were Irish to the
core, but whereas the early gangs reveled in robbing,
assaulting, maiming and killing Englishmen, the Whyos
would victimize anyone. In fact, the gang functioned as
a primitive Murder, Inc., ready to perform any sort of
mayhem for a set fee. When one of the top Whyos,
Piker Ryan, was apprehended in 1883, he had in his
possession what the newspapers called the “official”
Whyo price list for services. It read:
Punching
Both eyes blacked
Nose and jaw broke
Jacked out [knocked out with a blackjack]
Ear chawed off
Leg or arm broke
Shot in leg
Stab
Doing the big job
Chicago prostitutes’ feud
Jurisdictional disputes as well as ownership of “goods”
have always dogged organized prostitution, but never
has the business been more marked by violence than
during the so-called Whore War in Chicago in 1857.
Pitted against each other were the forces of the
Sands, the lowest center of vice in the city, and those
representing the more “refined” houses of State Street,
such as Julia Davenport’s Green House and Mother
945
$ 2
$ 4
$ 10
$ 15
$ 15
$ 19
$ 25
$ 25
$100 and up
WICKERSHAM Commission
So powerful were the Whyos that they exacted tribute
from many other gangs for permission to operate. The
names of Whyo members constituted a full roster of the
most vicious thugs of the period: English Charley, Denver Hop, Hoggy Walsh, Big Josh Hines, Fig McGerald,
Bull Hurley, Dandy Johnny Dolan, Baboon Connolly,
Googy Corcoran and Red Rocks Farrell.
Big Josh, who had the franchise for collecting protection money from the various stuss games, an illegal
form of gambling of the era, would parade from one
game to another armed with two revolvers to take out
the Whyos’ portion of the revenues. When some of the
stuss operators complained he took too much, Big
Josh peevishly told a detective: “Them guys must be
nuts. Don’t I always leave ’em somethin’? All I want is
me share!”
Because membership in the Whyos meant higher
income, the more lethal criminals in the city naturally
gravitated to it. In the 1880s the gang’s two most-celebrated leaders, Danny Driscoll and Danny Lyons,
enforced an edict reserving membership only to those
who had killed at least one man. Both Driscoll and
Lyons were hanged in 1888. Driscoll had been convicted of shooting to death a young prostitute and
Lyons of killing another gangster in a street shoot-out.
Shortly after Lyons’ death, two young prostitutes—
Gentle Maggie and Lizzie the Dove—who had toiled
hard and long to keep him in the style to which he had
become accustomed got into a boisterous argument
about which of them missed Lyons the most. Gentle
Maggie won the dispute by slitting Lizzie the Dove’s
throat.
The Whyos headquartered at a low Bowery dive
aptly called the Morgue, whose proprietor proudly
boasted his liquid refreshments were equally potent as
either a beverage or an embalming fluid. It was at the
Morgue that one of the gang’s most brutal members,
Dandy Johnny Dolan, would often display proof of his
latest crime. In addition to flashing the appropriate
bankroll, he would display his victim’s eyes, which he
carried around in a pocket. Dolan was the inventor of a
new and efficient eye gouger, an apparatus worn on the
thumb and available for instant use. He also designed
special fighting shoes with sections of a sharp ax blade
imbedded in the soles, so that a Dolan stomping was
always particularly gory.
The Morgue was the scene of the Whyos’ last battle.
The gang members were notorious for fighting as much
among themselves as with their victims. It started when
Denver Hop and English Charley got into an argument
over the division of some loot. Suddenly, both started
shooting, and soon, at least 20 other Whyos joined in
the gun battle. No one was injured, however, since all
were drunk; the press reported that the proprietor felt
the Whyos had been rather silly to expect to hit anything after imbibing his liquor.
The incident perhaps best explained why the Whyos
were to disappear from the scene. While they were certainly the most efficient killers and maimers in town,
they did not understand the full value of political influence. A powerful gang, the Eastmans, that came to the
fore upon their decline was just as brutal, but its members learned to work with the Tammany Hall powers,
providing efficient services at election time. The Whyos
simply wanted to crack skulls and, as such, fell victim
to the changing times. Without political protection,
they were open to arrest and imprisonment.
See also: DANDY JOHNNY DOLAN, DANNY DRISCOLL,
DANNY LYONS.
Wickersham Commission
law observance unit
The National Commission on Law Observance and
Enforcement, popularly known as the Wickersham
Commission, was appointed by President Herbert
Hoover in 1929. It was headed by George W. Wickersham, a lawyer who had been attorney general in the
Taft administration. The commission delved into a
number of subjects, such as the costs of law enforcement, the third degree, and other lawless police practices, juvenile delinquency and the belief that criminals
were mostly foreign-born. The conclusion was that law
enforcement was totally inadequate and that the cost of
crime had hit the then-staggering figure of $1 billion a
year.
However, the Wickersham report on Prohibition
captured the most attention, as a majority of the commission declared the Noble Experiment a disaster and
called for its repeal. Wickersham and three commission
members favored a continued test of the program, but
in 1932 he changed his position and urged the sale of
alcoholic beverages under regulation. Wickersham’s
new stand was considered by many to be the death
knell for Prohibition.
Wilcoxson, Bobby Randell “One-Eye” (1929– )
bank robber and murderer
An efficient and brutal bank robber, One-Eye Wilcoxson was known as the John Dillinger of the 1960s.
While both men planned their robberies meticulously,
Dillinger carried his off with a certain lightheartedness,
but Wilcoxson was deadly serious. Wilcoxson killed
cold-bloodedly; whereas it must be said that Dillinger
killed only when he felt his own life was in imminent
danger. While casing the Kings Highway branch of the
Lafayette National Bank in Brooklyn, New York City,
Wilcoxson made it a point to talk with the bank guard
946
WILD Bunch
while he was eating in a diner across the street from the
institution. He jokingly asked the guard, 52-year-old
Henry Kraus, what he would do “if I walked in to hold
up the bank.” The guard smiled and said he would
shoot him. One-Eye reported to his confederates that
the guard should be a danger because he was a “Wyatt
Earp type.”
Two weeks later, on December 15, 1961, Wilcoxson
and a partner, Peter Curry, walked into the bank.
Wilcoxson spotted guard Kraus sitting in a chair,
stepped up to him and pulled out a revolver. “Well,
here I am with a gun,” he said and shot the guard in the
chest. When Kraus tried to rise, Wilcoxson shot him
three more times, killing him. One-Eye then announced
it was a stickup, and he and Curry seized more than
$32,000. As they were leaving the bank for a getaway
car driven by Albert Nussbaum, a police officer, Salvatore Accardi, appeared on the scene and opened fire.
The policeman missed, but One-Eye didn’t. His first
shot hit the officer in the leg and his second penetrated
Acardi’s badge and sent him hurtling through the
bank’s outer glass door to the sidewalk. Later, Wilcoxson said he would have continued firing at the policeman except that he thought the cop was dead.
Miraculously, the bullet that hit Accardi in the chest
had become embedded in the officer’s overcoat, and
although stunned, he was not seriously hurt.
Born in Duke, Okla. the son of itinerant farmworkers, Wilcoxson had been in trouble most of his life. He
lost his right eye sometime during his boyhood but
never talked about it. From the age of 10 he worked the
California lettuce fields and by 1953 he had become a
“boss” fruit picker. At this point in his life Wilcoxson
had a wife and daughter and was frequently in trouble
with the law for such offenses as wife beating and car
theft. He wound up in Chillicothe Prison in Ohio on an
auto theft conviction. In prison he met Curry and Nussbaum, and the three teamed up when they were
released in 1959. On December 5, 1960 Wilcoxson
and Nussbaum held up a bank in Buffalo and followed
that up with another robbery in the same city the following month. It is not known how many bank robberies Wilcoxson pulled. He eventually pleaded guilty
to the felony-murder of Kraus and seven bank robberies, in which the total loot taken was $205,873.
Wilcoxson’s downfall came when Curry surrendered
to police after the murder of Kraus, saying he hadn’t
counted on any killings when he agreed to take part in
the bank robbery. Curry identified Nussbaum and
Wilcoxson as his confederates. FBI agents captured
Nussbaum in Buffalo on November 5, 1962 and
learned that Wilcoxson was traveling with a 19-year-old
woman and her baby. The agents traced them to Baltimore, where they were living in a rented house directly
across the street from one FBI agent and half a block
away from another. A week later, Wilcoxson was captured as he was carrying the baby to a station wagon.
Suddenly, 30 agents moved in on him and three tackled
him, pulling the baby away. Wilcoxson was quickly subdued, unable to draw the gun tucked in his belt.
Wilcoxson and Curry were sentenced to life imprisonment and Nussbaum got 20 years.
Wild Bunch
outlaws
The term Wild Bunch is often used to describe the last
great gang, an organization in the loosest sense of the
word, that forayed out of such outlaw strongholds as
Hole in the Wall, Robber’s Roost and Brown’s Hole.
More specifically, the Wild Bunch came to represent the
train-robbing, bank-busting, hell-raising outlaws who
followed the celebrated Butch Cassidy. At any particular
time the Wild Bunch generally consisted of no more
than 10 members, but over the years the cast of characters totaled more than half a hundred. Among the
famous gunmen who rode with the Bunch were the Sundance Kid (Harry Longbaugh), Kid Curry (Harvey
Logan), Harry Tracy, Matt Warner, Elzy Lay and Ben
Kilpatrick, the Tall Texan. The Bunch had more than its
share of camp followers, but only two of these women
ever rode out of the gang’s hideouts on raids. They were
Della Rose (the Rose of the Bunch) and Etta Place, both
prostitutes, although some historians have described
them differently, especially Etta, the companion of both
Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, who was depicted as a
schoolteacher in a late-1960s Hollywood movie. Etta
was extremely understanding and even accompanied the
boys back to Fort Worth, Tex. on their regular visits to
Fanny Potter’s bordello, her alma mater.
Such close-knit companionship was common in the
Wild Bunch, whose members were noted for their
absolute loyalty to Cassidy and to one another. There is
no record of Bunchers deserting one another in time of
danger, a common practice among outlaw bands. By
about 1902 the Wild Bunch was finished, having flourished for less than a decade, with most of the members
dead or behind bars and Butch, Sundance and Etta living in South America. According to one story, Cassidy
and the Kid died in a shoot-out with Bolivian troops,
but in another version they survived and were reunited
years later in Mexico. A third report has only Sundance
living through the battle in Bolivia.
The last Buncher to attempt a return to crime was
Ben Kilpatrick, who, after doing nine and a half years
for a train robbery, informed a newspaper editor that
he had reformed, was going to get himself a flock of
sheep and prove he could be an upright citizen instead
of an outlaw. Shortly thereafter the Tall Texan was
947
WILDE, Oscar
Five of the Wild Bunch posed for this photograph in Forth Worth, Tex. in 1901 and sent a copy with a note of thanks to a
Nevada bank they had recently held up. Left to right, bottom: the Sundance Kid (Harry Longbaugh), Ben Kilpatrick and
Butch Cassidy; top: William Carver and Kid Curry (Harvey Logan).
killed trying to rob a train. As the editor summed up,
“Alas, for good intentions.”
See also: BUTCH CASSIDY, O.C. “CAMILLA” HANKS,
HOLE IN THE WALL, KID CURRY, BEN KILPATRICK, ELZY LAY,
MCCARTY GANG, ETTA PLACE, DELLA ROSE, SUNDANCE KID,
HARRY TRACY, MATT WARNER.
Wilde, Oscar
With his Australian mother and American naval officer father, Wilder lived in a number of U.S. cities, as his
father’s duties required. The family eventually returned
to Australia. At the age of 17, Wilder was accused of
taking part in a gang rape on a Sydney beach, for which
he was sentenced to one year’s probation with required
counseling that involved group therapy and electroshock treatments. These seemed to have had no positive effects. Wilder married at 23, but the marriage
soon collapsed, his wife charging sexual abuse. By this
time Wilder was into nude photography, which he used
in attempts to extort sex from his subjects. Charges
stemming from this account were dropped when none
of the women thus abused would testify in court.
Wilder felt it was prudent to leave Australia, and in
time he relocated to Florida. He had the financial ability to prosper in construction and electrical contracting,
and he lived a lavish lifestyle. He then got on to doing
See BANCO.
Wilder, Christopher (1945–1984) rich serial killer
Australian-born Christopher Wilder early on showed
tendencies of sexual and violent behavior that were not
at all mitigated by his family’s wealth which may
indeed have placed him in an independent position that
allowed him to develop into a frightening serial killer in
the United States.
948
WILLIAMS,Alexander S.“Clubber”
the important things in his life, setting up a photo studio in his apartment as a more convenient way to lure
women to his photo shoots, which frequently degenerated into sexual attacks. In time Wilder had run-ins
with the law as well as his parents, who stayed with
him for a time. Not knowing what to do with him, they
returned to Australia, after settling a considerable sum
of money on their son. On his own, Wilder raped a
teenager after lacing her pizza with knockout drops.
For this he was sentenced to five years on probation,
with the requirement that he undergo psychological
counseling and treatment from a sex therapist.
With a net worth estimated at $2 million, Wilder
became involved in car racing, competing in the Miami
Grand Prix and Sebring races. He also started getting
blackouts and would vanish for two or three days, later
telling friends he had no idea what he had been doing.
Presumably a number of sexual crimes forced Wilder
back to Australia in 1982. He promptly got in trouble
in an incident involving two 15-year-old girls and was
brought up on charges. His parents put up $350,000
bail, and Wilder took off for the United States once
more, where he pretended nothing was wrong.
But now his killer instincts took over. In February
1984 Wilder took part in the Miami Grand Prix and
was outraged when he finished 17th. Rosario Gonzalez
had a worse fate. She worked at the event distributing
samples and was approached by Wilder. By that
evening she had disappeared, her body never found.
Then Wilder started dating lovely Beth Kenyon, who
had been a finalist in the Miss Florida contest. Beth told
her parents Wilder, who was known to have a wild reputation, was a perfect gentleman with her. But in
March she informed her parents she was breaking off
with Wilder. That same month Beth disappeared, and a
coast-to-coast manhunt produced no results. Not long
after that, Wilder kidnapped Terry Ferguson from a
Florida shopping mall. Her body, stabbed numerous
times with an instrument resembling a filet knife, was
found in a snake-infested creek. Witnesses identified
Wilder as the abductor of 21-year-old Terry.
Then Wilder abducted a college co-ed from a shopping mall in Tallahassee, took her to a Bainbridge,
Georgia, motel where he sealed her eyes shut with
super glue. He continually raped her and subjected her
to electrical shocks. Wilder was hitting her with a hair
dryer in the bathroom, but the co-ed managed to
scream even though her hands and mouth were taped.
Panicked, Wilder fled the room, muttering “excuse me”
to other motel guests in what they described as a light
Australian accent.
The murder spree continued as Wilder kidnapped
21-year-old Susanne Logan in Oklahoma City. Her
body was found in the town reservoir in Milford,
949
Kansas. She had been stabbed and raped and had bite
marks on her breasts.
A 16-year-old girl kidnapped and stabbed repeatedly
near Gary, Indiana, survived Wilder’s predation by pretending to be dead. There were other cases, such as a
co-ed in Beaumont, Texas, who was stabbed to death
and dumped in a canal.
By now the FBI had tied Wilder to many of these
slayings and had him at the head of its Ten Most
Wanted List. New victims turned up in Colorado and
Las Vegas, where Michelle Korfman, a casino executive’s daughter, was approached by a man about competing in Seventeen magazine’s cover contest. She
finally turned up in the Los Angeles County morgue.
Investigators expected Wilder to head for the Australian outback, but he did not. He turned east and in
Victor, New York, abducted Beth Dodge, a 33-year-old
Sunday school teacher. Her body turned up in
Rochester.
Now the manhunt for Wilder concentrated on watching for him to try to slip into Canada. Instead he turned
up in Colebrook, New Hampshire. He undoubtedly was
looking for another female victim, but he was now
being hunted as well. Two state troopers passed a service station where Wilder had stopped for gas. Wilder,
who had been sporting a bushy beard, had shaved it off,
leaving his tanned face pale where the beard had been.
The troopers closed in on Wilder and called out to him
to stop. Instead, Wilder ran swiftly to his car and seized
a .357 Magnum revolver. One of the officers hurled his
body at Wilder and two shots followed as they wrestled
for the gun. A bullet passed through Wilder and pierced
the officer’s chest, coming within an inch of killing him.
The second shot killed Wilder.
William Brown
See ALEXANDER WILLIAM HOLMES.
Williams, Alexander S. “Clubber” (1839–1910)
police officer
Clubber Williams, a New York City police officer, is
remembered for a number of reasons. A tough character capable of holding his own against any collection of
criminals, Williams was the originator of the famous
observation, “There’s more law in the end of a policeman’s nightstick than in a decision of the Supreme
Court.” He also coined the word “tenderloin,” meaning a lush vice area. However, his most remarkable
achievement was accumulating something in excess of
$1 million from the time he started in 1866 as a patrolman until he retired in 1895 as an inspector, making
$3,500 a year. The exact sum was never pinned down,
since Clubber was not too precise in his testimony
WILLIAMS, Alexander S.“Clubber”
derloin, as he was to call it. After hearing of his transfer, Captain Williams walked around with a huge smile
on his rugged face. Asked by a friend the reason for this
merriment, he replied, “I’ve had nothing but chuck for
a long time and now I’m going to get the tenderloin.”
Until that time Williams was relatively honest by
departmental standards. He had, it was true, created a
personal benevolent society to which businessmen contributed about one-third the tribute they had been paying protection racketeers (those who didn’t pay continued to be harrassed by the criminals), but overall,
Williams’ former commands just didn’t offer great graft
possibilities. The Tenderloin was another matter. The
area between 24th and 40th streets from Fifth to Seventh avenues contained so much vice it won the name of
Satan’s Circus. It was once estimated that at least half
the buildings in the district were given over to some
form of lawlessness. Sixth Avenue was lined with virtually nothing but brothels, dance halls, saloons and gambling joints.
By nature, Williams was not opposed to brothels
and the like; they were “fashionable,” he often said.
What he objected to was that police grafting in the area
was such a sorry, catch-as-catch-can spectacle. He
assigned brothels a regular payoff rate, determined by
the number of prostitutes and customers and the prices
charged. Several years later, a woman who owned a
chain of such houses testified that she had paid Clubber
$30,000 a year in protection money. For others,
Williams instituted a $500 initiation fee and monthly
charges of $25 to $50. More than 600 policy shops
paid Williams’ command an average of $15 a month
each; $300 was the fee collected from poolrooms
(which were basically gambling establishments); and
even larger sums were extracted from luxurious gambling joints.
A person opening any kind of business in the Tenderloin district was immediately visited by one of
Williams’ officers and told how much he’d have to pay
if he wanted to do anything not quite legal. Even if the
man was interested in operating an honest enterprise,
he had to make some payment as a matter of principle.
Williams’ chief source of revenue during his Tenderloin reign came from the whiskey business. Together
with two partners, he produced a cheap rotgut and had
his men force all the area’s saloons to take so many
cases of the brew a month. It was either that or be
forced out of business by one police raid after another.
By mid-1880s Williams had been brought up on brutality or graft charges 18 times and cleared 18 times.
Finally, though, the stench got so bad that the Tammany-dominated police brass had to root Clubber out
of the Tenderloin by promoting him to the rank of
inspector, in charge of almost the entire East Side of
before investigating committees. Suffice it to say he was
probably one of the most-crooked cops the city and the
nation has ever seen.
Alexander S. Williams was a Nova Scotian by birth
and served his youthful years at sea, becoming a ship’s
carpenter. At the age of 27 he found himself in New
York flat broke. He became a police officer, not a difficult task in those days, the Metropolitan Police Department having a great number of vacancies. Not without
reason, the public viewed the police as little better than
the criminals they were supposed to be suppressing. At
best most police officers were inept, at worst corrupt.
After two years in a quiet part of town, Williams
was transferred to the area around Broadway and
Houston Street, the stomping ground of many of the
city’s toughest gangs, including criminals who sportingly kept close count of the number of officers they
maimed or killed. Williams was cut of a different cloth
than most of their victims, however. Two days after he
was assigned his post, he selected two of the mostfeared toughs in the neighborhood and deliberately
started fights with them, promptly battering them
unconscious. He heaved them through the plate glass
window of the Florence Saloon, a leading criminal
haunt. Immediately, six friends of the disabled thugs
issued forth to teach Williams a lesson, but he stood his
ground and cut them down with his nightstick. Thereafter, he was said to have had at least one fight a day
for almost four years. His prowess with the nightstick
became so famed that he was hailed as Clubber
Williams.
In September 1871 Williams was promoted to captain and put in charge of the 21st Precinct, the heart of
the old criminal-infested Gas House district. He immediately went forth patrolling the streets alone, “invoking the gospel of the nightstick,” as a doting writer of
the era put it. The next day he took a dozen of his
brawniest men and organized a special strong-arm
squad. Up and down the district the band roamed,
clubbing thugs.
While some objected to his violent methods and the
occasional skull rapping of an innocent citizen, most of
the public praised Clubber and said the city needed
more men like him. Whenever delegations of important
citizens and clergymen came around to protest clubbing
excesses, Williams had a most impressive way of showing how well his techniques had cleaned up the area.
Taking his gold watch and chain, he would hang them
on a lamppost at Third Avenue and 35th Street and
then lead the do-gooders on a casual walk around the
block. When they got back, the watch and chain would
still be hanging there.
Williams tamed the 21st and, later, the 8th and 4th
precincts. In 1876 he was shifted to the 29th, the Ten950
WILLIAMS, Edward Bennett
The committee was never able to locate a map showing
the places Williams had mentioned. Despite all the testimony against him, Williams survived the inquiry
without even a reprimand from the police department.
Still, the Lexow revelations spelled his end. A reform
ticket was elected and a three-man board of police
commissioners was established. It was presided over by
reformer Theodore Roosevelt. Some students of history
say that Clubber Williams was the inspiration for Roosevelt’s “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” But if Roosevelt did have a certain admiration for Williams’
ability to cow the underworld, he also believed it was
possible to have a police force that was both tough and
honest.
On May 24, 1895 Clubber, realizing there was little
point in clinging to his job while constantly under Roosevelt’s eye, resigned. He lived out the next 15 years of
his life in most comfortable retirement.
See also: LEXOW COMMITTEE, TENDERLOIN.
Manhattan. Now the third-ranking member of the
department, Williams immediately summoned all his
captains and gave them strict quotas on how much
graft they were expected to collect and what share they
were to give him. A captain who wanted to remain
honest was threatened with being busted in rank and
returned to a beat.
Williams’ arrogant behavior made him a target for
such crusading newspapers as The Herald, The Tribune
and The World. Particularly active against Williams
was Lincoln Steffens, the great muckraking reporter,
who pointed out that while Clubber got so much credit
for cracking the skulls of gangsters and thugs, the fact
remained that he and his command were far more
active in bashing the heads of strikers, most particularly
Russian Jews, for whom Williams had a neverexplained antipathy. It was said that a Russian Jew
brought into a station house when Clubber was present
never left without a bandage on his skull and a limp.
Of course, mistreatment of foreigners and “anarchists” did not necessarily cost Williams much in the
way of prestige among upright citizens, but he eventually ran afoul of the Rev. Charles H. Parkhurst, who, as
head of the New York Society for the Prevention of
Crime, started a crusade to get Williams, digging up
evidence against him that was presented to the famed
Lexow Committee of 1894.
The inspector’s entire graft setup was laid bare
before the legislative investigating committee. Capt.
Max Schmittberger, who had been a sergeant in the
Tenderloin, admitted he had collected money from
gamblers and keepers of disorderly houses and given it
to Williams. Other officers testified to paying Williams
as much as $15,000 for promotions. Individual citizens
came forth with tales of Williams’ corruption; one family, after protesting to Williams about the noise from a
nearby bordello, had found themselves evicted.
Inspector Williams took the stand, the picture of
innocence. Yes, he had allowed some naughty places to
stay open, because sin was fashionable. But, of course,
he only allowed “those that were in good taste.” No, he
could not remember which particular houses had
stayed open and which had been forced to close, and
since he was bad at numbers, he couldn’t estimate how
many places he’d actually put out of business.
Yes, he did have several bank accounts; he was a
thrifty man, not given to extravagant living. Yes,
besides a town house he owned a magnificent country
estate at Cos Cob, Conn. No, he couldn’t recall how
much it had cost him, but shown receipts in the committee’s possession, he had to agree that the dock he’d
had built for his private yacht had cost $39,000.
All that on his annual $3,500 salary? No, he had
made some excellent investments in real estate in Japan.
Williams, Edward Bennett (1920–1988) defense
lawyer
F. Lee Bailey, one of the most famous lawyers in the
country once said, “If I ever got in trouble, he’s the one
I’d want representing me.” Bailey was referring to a
burly Washington lawyer with the face of a middleaged cherub, Edward Bennett Williams. Even men who
despised Williams, and that included many prosecutors,
rival lawyers and even former attorneys general such as
Robert F. Kennedy, have admitted he may be the best
lawyer in the tradition of Clarence Darrow in recent
decades.
Williams was not a “scorecard”-type lawyer, with X
number of defendants of whom only a minute percentage go to prison. His success record was once estimated
to be about 70 percent, an amazing figure for a lawyer
whose clients have included Sen. Joseph McCarthy,
Jimmy Hoffa, Adam Clayton Powell, Bobby Baker,
Frank Costello, Aldo Icardi, Confidential magazine, and
assorted admitted gamblers and accused Russian spies.
Costello probably best summed up the attitude of
Williams’ clients toward the lawyer when he said: “What
I like about Ed Williams is that he’ll go up against any of
’em—J. Edgar Hoover, Bobby Kennedy, even President
Johnson. He doesn’t pull back. He’s not afraid.”
Opponents naturally saw him in a different light; he
was called everything from “ruthless” and a “hypocritical trickster” to “the biggest egotist in the law since
William Jennings Bryan” and “a man who would have
defended Eichmann if there was enough money in it.”
Some years ago Williams had a favorite riposte for
his critics: “I’m called the Burglar’s Lobby in Washington because I defend people like Frank Costello. The
951
WILLIAMS, Edward Bennett
Sixth Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the
right of legal counsel to everyone. It does not say to
everyone except people like Frank Costello.”
Once when Williams was defending Jimmy Hoffa
during Robert Kennedy’s tenure as attorney general,
Kennedy said he’d “jump off the Capitol dome” if he
lost the case. When Hoffa was acquitted, Williams
offered to provide Kennedy with a parachute, thus ending a long friendship between the two.
Some of his opponents charged Williams with perverting the Constitution; he saw what he did as defending it. He probably had done more to restrain
overzealous congressional committees than any other
lawyer. One example was the case of Aldo Icardi,
accused of committing one of the most vicious murders
in World War II. On a 1944 Office of Strategic Services
(OSS) mission, Icardi and OSS Maj. William V. Holohan parachuted behind enemy lines in northern Italy.
Holohan, who had taken along a large number of gold
coins for use on the mission, disappeared. Six years
later, his corpse was fished out of an Italian lake.
Williams told an interviewer:
Williams was long a thorn in the side of police investigators engaged in illegal eavesdropping, winning a
Supreme Court landmark decision against the practice
in the early 1960s. The case involved three gamblers
who ran a $40,000-a-day sports betting parlor in a row
house on 21st Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. The
police moved into the house next door and drove a
spike into the common wall between the two buildings.
The spike, part of an electronic listening device, was
inserted into a duct, converting the entire heating system into a sort of microphone, which allowed police to
record scores of conversations involving gambling
transactions. Based on that evidence, the three gamblers were convicted and given long prison terms.
Williams took over the case and argued before the
Supreme Court that the police eavesdropping was
“more subtle and more scientifically advanced than
wiretapping” and was the grossest sort of violation of
the rights of the defendants to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures. It was no different from the
police smashing into a house in the middle of the night
without a search warrant. The Supreme Court threw
out the convictions.
Williams never saw the contradiction in defending—
at approximately the same time—Sen. McCarthy and
several of the Hollywood writers accused of communism during McCarthy’s heyday in the 1950s. Certainly, McCarthy wanted Williams because he wanted
the best possible defense in his fight to escape Senate
censure, but the case against him was ironclad and
Williams lost.
Williams undoubtedly took the McCarthy case
because he had an abiding hatred for the encroaching
power of the congressional investigative committees
and what he has called “the legislative lynch.” He later
told a reporter: “When Estes Kefauver first ran
roughshod over the rights of the hoodlums in 1950, the
country was amused. Then the leftist intellectuals, who
didn’t spring to the defense of the hoodlums, found that
their turn was next. While this was going on labor
thought it was funny but they soon discovered that they
were being clobbered.” In 1961 Williams was further
amused to hear spokesmen for the business community
deploring the abuse of business by congressional committees. He commented: “Nobody cares until it hurts
him. That’s why I’m interested in stopping such chain
reactions—back where they hit the weak and the
degraded—before they get started.”
In later years Williams often visited law schools to
try to convince young lawyers and students to take up
criminal law, to concern themselves with human rights
instead of property rights. “You look at the curricula of
the top law schools,” he once noted, “and you find that
they are stepped in such courses as Real Property,
Shortly thereafter, a Pentagon press release
charged Icardi with Holohan’s murder. Five years after
that, a Congressional committee called Icardi to testify,
and he denied committing the crime. He was promptly
indicted on eight counts of perjury, which, if conviction
resulted, could potentially have forced him to spend
forty years in prison. So I went to court and proved, to
the satisfaction of the judge, that two members of the
Congressional committee had called Icardi not for any
valid legislative purpose, but because they were deliberately looking for a perjury indictment against him. In
effect, here were two Congresmen assuming the triple
roles of prosecutor, judge, and jury—yet every schoolboy knows that our freedom as a nation is protected by
a delicate separation of powers between the legislative,
judicial and executive branches of government. In
acquitting Icardi, the court clearly defined the line
between Congress as a lawmaker and Congress as a
grand jury.
In his continuing battle against government prosecutors Williams once made shambles of a Treasury agent
who had meticulously prepared an income tax case
against Adam Clayton Powell. The agent withered
under Williams’ fire, admitted errors in the government’s calculations and acted more like a defendant
than like the prosecution’s leading witness. In the end,
the judge threw out two counts against Powell and the
third and final count ended in a hung jury—a remarkable conclusion considering Powell had paid only about
$900 in taxes on a gross income of $70,000.
952
WILSON, Frank J.
Taxes, Estates, and Torts, all of which are required subjects. You generally find that Criminal Law and Constitutional Law are elective courses, which very few
students take.”
He died in 1988.
Williams, William A. H.
See J. REGINALD MURPHY.
Williams, William S. “Old Bill” (1787–1849)
mountaineer and thief
Old Bill Williams has been immortalized in the names
of the Bill Williams River, the Bill Williams Mountain
and the town of Williams, Ariz., but what the names do
not reveal is that the mountain man was a scalp hunter,
a horse thief and a cannibal.
Ginger-haired Williams was born in Rutherford
County, N.C. but grew up in southeastern Missouri. In
1806 he stole a horse and moved west to become a
trapper. From 1813 to 1825 he lived among the Osage
Indians and later on, scouted for the U.S. Army. In the
1830s Old Bill was taking quite a few scalps for bounties and for a time he teamed up with the notorious
scalp hunters James Hobbs and James Kirker. He was
reputed to have explained to them that taking scalps
could be dangerous and that it was much safer to raid
Indian villages when the braves were away, kill some
squaws and steal the village’s scalp trophies. The trophies could be sold to scalp buyers who would be none
the wiser.
In the 1840s Old Bill teamed up with the mulatto
mountaineer Jim Beckwourth and Pegleg Smith to form
the biggest horse-stealing gang in California, driving
their booty into what is today Utah, where they sold
the horses to emigrants heading West, ranchers and
traders. When vigilante action against the gang got too
intense, Old Bill went back to scouting. In 1848 he
acted as a guide for Gen. John C. Fremont on a railroad
survey expedition. The trip turned into a disaster and
11 men died in the freezing weather and deep snows of
Colorado’s La Garita Mountains. Old Bill was accused
of incompetence and cannibalism and as a result, was
fired by Fremont. In March 1849 Williams was killed
by Ute Indians taking vengeance for killings he had perpetrated against their people the year before.
See also: JIM BECKWOURTH, THOMAS L. “PEGLEG”
SMITH.
Wilson, Billy (1858–1911) outlaw and sheriff
Originally a member of Billy the Kid’s gang, Billy Wilson
went on, with the aid of President Theodore Roosevelt, a
noted Wild West fan, to begin a new life as a sheriff.
953
Wilson rode out of his native Texas with gunfighter
Dave Rudabaugh about 1877. When Rudabaugh
joined up with Billy the Kid, Wilson followed and
became one of the Kid’s most trusted aides. Wilson may
have assisted Billy the Kid in gunning down James Carlyle and he certainly was with him on numerous other
forays. He was also in the December 27, 1880 shootout at Stinking Springs, New Mexico Territory, where
both he and the Kid were taken prisoner. Wilson was
separated from Billy and sent to prison at Mesilla, New
Mexico Territory, from which he tunneled his way to
freedom. By that time the Kid had been finished off by
Sheriff Pat Garrett. What Wilson did over the next few
years is not known. But by 1886 he was working as a
cowhand for the Hashknife Outfit under the name of
Anderson. He then settled down in Terrell County, Tex.
married and became a successful rancher. All the while,
Wilson-Anderson lived with the fear that some day his
New Mexico past would be discovered by visiting lawmen. Yet when the job of county sheriff was offered to
him in 1900 he found it impossible to turn down.
Shortly thereafter, while in El Paso, Sheriff Anderson
was recognized by former lawman Garrett as the longmissing Billy Wilson. Garrett, a close friend of
Theodore Roosevelt, who had appointed him collector
of taxes for El Paso, did not expose Wilson. Instead, he
persuaded the president and the governor of the New
Mexico Territory to pardon Wilson for past crimes.
The pardons were granted without revealing Wilson’s
new identity, and he was able to continue on as Sheriff
Anderson until 1911, when he was shot dead by a lawbreaker.
See also: BILLY THE KID, DAVE RUDABAUGH.
Wilson, Bully
See CAVE-IN-ROCK PIRATES.
Wilson, Frank J. (1887–1970) Secret Service agent and
enemy of Al Capone
While Frank J. Wilson served as chief of the Secret Service from 1936 to 1947 and was regarded generally as
the best man to have served in the post up to that time,
he was best remembered as the federal agent who got
Al Capone.
Wilson was assigned to catch Capone by Elmer I.
Irey, chief of the Internal Revenue’s Enforcement
Branch, who saw the opportunity to prosecute the gang
leader under a 1927 Supreme Court decision that made
illegal income subject to income tax. However, it was
no simple matter to prove Capone had a gross income
of over $5,000, then the standard exemption, for the
several years he had filed no return. Big Al had no
property in his own name, maintained no bank
WILSON, Tug
accounts, endorsed no checks and gave no receipts.
This meant Wilson had to gather evidence against him
based on an analysis of his “net worth” and “net
expenditure.”
Wilson succeeded in planting agents on the periphery of the mob’s activities and, finally, within it. The
heat on Capone got really intense; a tipster reported,
“The big fellow’s eating aspirin like it was peanuts so’s
he can get some sleep.” Finally, against the judgment of
others in the mob, Capone imported five gunmen from
New York and gave them a contract to get Wilson. Federal agents tried to put pressure on Capone to pull out
the hit men, but he disappeared, forewarned by local
police that the feds were hunting him. A message was
given to Johnny Torrio, Capone’s old mentor, who was
in town at the time, that if the gunmen were not withdrawn within 24 hours, agents would start stalking
them. With the planned rub-out of Wilson thus
exposed, cooler heads among the mob’s ruling circle
prevailed on Capone to call off the killers. Torrio telephoned an agent and said, “They left an hour ago.”
The plot was Capone’s last attempt to avoid apprehension. Eventually, Wilson presented an air-tight case
against Capone that was to send him to prison, permanently removing him from running crime in Chicago.
Wilson went on to further successes. He was the federal representative in the Lindbergh baby kidnap case,
and it was upon his insistence that the serial numbers of
the ransom money were recorded, a tactic which
resulted in the capture and execution of Bruno Richard
Hauptmann. From 1936 to 1947 Wilson headed the
Secret Service. During his tenure, for the first time in
American history, the flood of counterfeit money was
reduced to a mere trickle and the crime was virtually
wiped out. He also developed presidential security measures that were to become standard procedures. Wilson
retired in 1947 and died June 22, 1970.
Further reading: Special Agent by Frank J. Wilson
and Beth Day.
Of only average height but stocky, he once broke the
doors of five jail cells one after another. Why the police
bothered to arrest him during this period is something
of a mystery, since he actually served very little time,
constantly being sprung by politicians who found his
services invaluable. Wilson always wore a plug hat and
a long coat, in the pockets of which he stored broken
mugs and beer bottles for use as weapons. He was particularly fearsome on election day, intimidating voters
and, on some occasions, entering polling booths with
them to make sure they voted right.
Despite the introduction of some reforms in the city
in the early 20th century, Wilson’s brawn was still
much in demand in the red-light areas during Prohibition. Shortly before he died, he was still a much-feared
bouncer in speakeasies; he was in his seventies at the
time of his death.
Winchell, Walter (1897–1972) gossip columnist
A controversial gossip columnist and influential radio
commentator, Walter Winchell played an important
role in a number of crime stories. He was on speaking
terms with several leading gangsters and, at the same
time, a close friend of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
Even his detractors had to admit Winchell scored
numerous crime scoops. He was the first to link Albert
Anastasia to the murder of a private citizen, Arnold
Schuster, after Schuster had spotted bank robber Willie
Sutton and tipped off the police. He came up with a
number of scoops in the Murder, Inc. case, and because
he was trusted by the underworld, he was chosen to
arrange the details of the surrender of Louis “Lepke”
Buchalter to Hoover in 1939. Lepke was driven to Fifth
Avenue and 28th Street, where he got out of a car and
walked over to one in which Winchell was sitting
behind the wheel. Winchell stared at Lepke intently for
a moment, turned to his stocky companion in the back
and said, “Mr. Hoover, this is Lepke.”
Hoover nodded, opened the rear door and motioned
for Lepke to get in. Lepke later said he had wanted
Winchell to act as intermediary to guarantee he would
not be shot down while surrendering.
In his later years Winchell ranted in his column over
the level of street crime in New York City and told
friends he would not venture out after dark without
carrying a gun. Winchell, the King of Broadway, felt
hostage on the streets that had been his beat for so
many years.
Wilson, Tug (1862?–1934) hoodlum
A ferocious rowdy and easily the most notorious hoodlum in New Orleans after the Civil War, Tug Wilson
was a throwback to an earlier, more uncivilized era.
From the time he first appeared in the French Quarter
about 1881 or 1882, he became one of the most-publicized ruffians in the city and was a familiar sight in the
saloons, red-light districts and speakeasies right up
until the time of his death in 1934.
Wilson’s heyday was during New Orleans’ most corrupt period, the last two decades of the 19th century.
He was arrested more than 100 times a year throughout most of this time. Wilson had enormous strength.
wiretapping and bugging
Any figures on the extent of wiretapping and electronic
eavesdropping, or bugging, are as unreliable as even the
954
WIRETAPPING and bugging
most suspect crime statistic. With regularity, various
government spokesmen appear before congressional
committees and state that a small, specific number of
taps are presently in place. This presupposes both an
honest count and the sudden abandonment of an
enduring tactic practiced by officials who simply do not
wish to be informed when a wiretap of dubious merit is
put into operation. The former point is often gotten
around without really telling a lie. While the House
Judiciary Committee was considering the impeachment
of President Richard Nixon, it was revealed that the
late J. Edgar Hoover would regularly have several FBI
taps disconnected just before he was to make his
annual report to Congress on the number of taps
presently in operation. Afterward, the taps could be
turned on again.
Electronic eavesdropping has become so sophisticated that it is now extremely difficult to find wiretaps
and bugs. American embassies around the world operate under the assumption that all telephones are tapped
and the embassy itself bugged. Even organized crime is
sophisticated enough to realize that the old hoodlum
technique of holding conversations in bathrooms with
all the water faucets turned on no longer works. While
the “whoosh” of running water may drown out human
voices, an eavesdropper can now filter out the interfering frequencies so that the voices come through clearly
over the remaining frequencies. A wiretap can be
placed so far away from the target telephone that only
the most intensive hunt can locate it. The CIA in recent
years even bugged telephone connections between the
Kremlin and Soviet leaders riding in their limousines.
With all this new expertise available, it would perhaps be the height of gullibility to think it will not be
used except under the firmest restraints. When a local
police department has advanced wiretap capability,
often it is used by rogue officers against narcotics dealers not to make drug arrests but to estimate what the
size of their bribe should be. It is well established that
in past years in New York City certain officers charged
with cracking down on gambling set up wiretaps on
bookmaking operations to make sure they were being
told the correct gross figures of the business and thus
were getting the right percentage in bribes.
In its own way the underworld has often appreciated
the joys of wiretapping. Frank Costello for years had
his own wiretapper, a colorful character named Gerard
“Cheesebox” Callahan. Callahan, a renegade New
York Telephone Co. employee, was Costello’s personal
“wire man,” an electronic genius who not only fooled
the police but underworld bookmakers as well.
Cheesebox got his name from a wooden cream
cheese box he used to house his devices in order to mislead the law. The cheesebox was a glorious device, one
that allowed a Costello bookie to supply his customers
with a telephone number in the Bronx that when dialed
was automatically transferred to another phone in
Brooklyn, the real location of the bookmaking operation. Meanwhile, the police having wiretapped the line
and traced it to the Bronx, broke into an apartment
expecting to find an active bank of phone men sifting
through betting slips. All they found was a cheesebox
with some strange gear inside. Of course, the Bronx
drop was watched by a bookmaker’s scout, who
reported the police raid to the gamblers. By the time the
law located the Brooklyn base, the operation had long
ago cleared out and reestablished with perhaps a Manhattan cheesebox drop feeding into a Queens location,
or some other variation.
In addition to employing Cheesebox to help him stay
one step ahead of the authorities, Costello found it very
profitable to use him for “busting out” other bookmakers. A bookmaker’s service line, Nationwide News at
the time, would be tapped so that the results of a certain race could be held up for a minute or so, allowing
Costello or his agents inside the bookmaking establishment to get down a late bet. Cutting in on the line,
Cheesebox would imitate the announcer’s voice running down the late odds and—by code words—reveal
the winner. Then the regular transmission of the race,
which had been recorded, would be broadcast and
Costello would win big.
Some wiretapping exploits have become instant legends. Often mentioned is the job performed by a New
York wiretap expert for a midwestern union leader
who was being investigated by two separate law
enforcement bodies. For three days the expert checked
the union president’s home and office and removed no
less than seven installations for microphones. Working
secretly at night, the wire man also ripped out all the
phone cables at union headquarters, rewired the entire
telephone system (some 86 lines with 600 connections)
and fed all the lines into one sealed terminal box. He
gave the only key to the union president.
The union leader was duly impressed and ordered
wiretaps set up on a dozen of his underlings whose loyalty he doubted. The listening post for all these calls
was set up in his private office.
This did not complete the wiretapper’s chores, however. When a grand jury decided to question eight
union lieutenants, the expert designed special eavesdropping and recording devices that worked through
wristwatch
microphones
and
shoulder-holster
recorders. Outfitted with this gear, the union men
entered the supposedly secret chambers of the grand
jury and told their tale. Playing back the recordings
later, the union president was gratified to hear that all
his aides had been completely loyal to him.
955
WITCHCRAFT
Wiretapping abuses are so widespread that they
probably can no longer be controlled. The Watergate
disclosures revealed widespread unauthorized or illegal
taps during the Nixon Administration. Hoover’s activities in this regard, such as the wiretapping of Martin
Luther King, Jr., predated the Watergate abuses.
For what the claims are worth, over a seven and a
half year period, the American Telephone and Telegraph Co. revealed it had discovered 1,457 wiretaps on
customers’ telephones, 1,009 of which were illegal.
According to the company, the largest number of taps
involved matters of marital discord. However, it should
be noted that most telephone companies tend to check
with federal and local police authorities to make sure
they are not interferring with an investigative tap so
that the AT & T estimate need not be regarded as completely accurate. Also, most of the taps found by the
telephone company are by mere happenstance and on
complaint of a telephone user. When the wiretapped
victim suspects nothing, the tap is almost never found.
The practice of wiretapping is common among all
the nation’s investigative bodies. Virtually every federal
investigative agency—the FBI, the CIA, the Defense
Intelligence Agency, the Secret Service, the Drug
Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms, to name only the more prominent ones—has eavesdropping capabilities. So too do
state police units and city and county agencies. The
“leakage” of such expertise into the private detective
market is known to be large.
The federal government not only engages in questionable wiretapping but is also responsible for spreading the practice in nonfederal jurisdictions. The Law
Enforcement Assistance Administration funds about
three-quarters of local police purchases of surveillance
hardware, and some of its outlays go to police agencies
without statutory wiretap authority.
death under an old English law that called for that punishment if a suspected witch refused to plead guilty or
not guilty. In all, 19 persons were hanged and many
others imprisoned in Salem as a result of the hysterical
accusations of a number of young girls. Finally, saner
attitudes called a halt to the persecutions. The judge
and 12 jurists involved in the witchcraft trials publicly
repented their acts and asked for forgiveness.
Although the Salem experience did not halt witchcraft cases in this country, it undoubtedly reduced them
to a mere handful, such as in Virginia in 1706 and in
North Carolina in 1712. The last case appears to have
occurred in Rhode Island in 1728, but the record of the
incident is sketchy.
See also: GILES COREY, COTTON MATHER, SALEM
WITCHCRAFT TRIALS.
Wood, Isaac (?–1858) mass poisoner
The largest all-in-the-family poisoning plot in American
history was perpetrated by Isaac Wood at Dansville,
N.Y. in the 1850s.
The first to die was Isaac’s brother David, who
owned a huge estate in the area. David Wood was
struck down unexpectedly by a strange malady in May
1855. Before the year was out, his wife Rhoda and his
three children had died of the same strange sickness.
Isaac Wood had slowly poisoned all five so that he
could gain control of the estate; he accomplished that
goal by acting as administrator. Isaac then took his wife
and child to live in New Jersey, where he murdered
them as well. Now a rich man, he moved on to a new
life in Illinois.
Before leaving for Illinois allegedly to bear his grief
alone, Wood had leased his brother’s home to a tenant
named Welch. Shortly after the murderer departed,
Welch found three packs of arsenic in the barn. The
arsenic had been wrapped in legal papers that assigned
Isaac Wood full authority over the estate after the death
of his brother and his family. That link and the fact that
all of Isaac Wood’s relatives had died under similar circumstances were sufficient evidence to doom him.
Wood was brought back to New York, tried and
hanged on July 9, 1858 at Geneseo.
witchcraft
Belief in witches and witchcraft was extremely widespread in 17th-century America. The colonists brought
this belief with them from the Old World.
Margaret Jones was executed in the Massachusetts
colony in 1648, and Mary Parsons of Springfield was
later indicted for witchcraft but was executed for the
murder of her child. There were other cases in the
1650s. In 1688 Goody Glover was executed in Boston,
largely on the testimony of a 13-year-old girl named
Martha Goodwin. The case was closely studied by Cotton Mather and the techniques of prosecution were
subsequently followed in the Salem witchcraft persecutions. Popular myth to the contrary, no one was burned
at Salem. Eighty-year-old Giles Corey was pressed to
wooden gun escapes
Probably nothing is quite as romantic in underworld
folklore as a criminal’s escaping from prison armed
with a fake gun. Few such escapes have excited the
public’s imagination more than John Dillinger’s from
the “escape-proof” jail at Crown Point, Ind. on March
3, 1934. In actuality, although the fake gun tale was
accepted blindly by most newspapers, Dillinger used a
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WOOLDRIDGE, Clifton
very real gun. The full story of the intrigues behind this
wooden gun hoax is told elsewhere in this book. Here,
it is sufficient to point out that the Dillinger story, like
almost all such reports, was a lie.
One of the few authenticated wooden gun breakouts
was pulled by a Cherokee strip outlaw, Ben Cravens,
shortly after he was sent to the Kansas State Penitentiary in January 1897 to serve a 20-year term. Cravens
was confined for only a short time before he fashioned
a wooden gun, covered it with silver paper and bluffed
his way past a legion of guards. It is highly likely that
Dillinger, who was an avid reader of Western outlaw
literature, learned of the wooden gun caper from
accounts of Cravens’ career.
While Dillinger never used a wooden gun to escape
from jail, his fake exploit did serve as inspiration for
two of his most loyal gang members, Harry Pierpont
and Charles Makley, who attempted to escape from the
death house of the Ohio State Prison just a few months
after Dillinger’s death. They used pistols carved out of
soap to overpower one guard and were smashing
through a door leading from the death house when
other guards opened up on them. Makley was killed
and Pierpont was wounded, but he recovered sufficiently to die in the electric chair a month later.
See also: JOHN DILLINGER.
Woods, Frederick Newhall, IV
Originally an office clerk, Wooldridge was in his thirties when he joined the police department. As a police
officer, he quickly proved his worth and was made a
detective within a year. In many respects he was a comic
character, a merry extrovert given to boast and bombast. In his memoirs, Hands Up! In the World of Crime,
Wooldridge billed himself as “the World’s Greatest
Detective, the Incorruptible Sherlock Holmes of America,” adding, “No braver, more honest or efficient police
officer ever wore a star or carried a club.” He was probably right. Sometimes his acts were on the zany side. To
give an example, a strong-arm character named Adams
once lacerated a few citizens and boasted he ate cops for
breakfast. Wooldridge took him into custody forthwith
and lowered the thug’s standing in the underworld several notches by making the crook carry him piggyback
seven blocks to the lockup. Adams had little choice in
the matter since Wooldridge held the butt end of his
revolver a few inches from the brute’s skull and threatened to sock him if he so much as stumbled.
Despite this lighthearted approach to law enforcement, Wooldridge was all he claimed to be: the toughest, strictest and most successful detective on the force.
He was positively fearless. When a murderer named
Henry Foster barricaded himself in a saloon and kept
officers at bay by shooting through the door,
Wooldridge pulled out his gun and picked up a piece of
plank for a shield. Then, screaming at the top of his
lungs, he barreled into the saloon and charged right at
Foster, who was behind the bar guzzling from a bottle.
Panicking, Foster dropped the bottle and did the only
thing he could think of doing under the circumstances:
he put his gun to his head and pulled the trigger. However, he was so rattled by the sight of Wooldridge that
he failed to aim correctly and only received a scalp
wound. He died on the gallows July 1, 1895.
Wooldridge was the most energetic campaigner
against vice in the Windy City, an unlikely role for an
officer during an era when it was rare to find a Chicago
mayor or chief of police who wasn’t also the landlord
of buildings given over to prostitution or gambling.
Because of his law enforcement activities, Wooldridge
on one occasion was ordered transferred to a quiet residential area, but the newspapers intervened and the
order was rescinded. In 1896 a committee from the
Civic Federation, armed with evidence furnished by
Wooldridge, called upon Mayor George B. Swift to
demand he enforce the regulations against bawdy
houses. The committee said that the prostitutes were a
menace to society and that young boys, drawn to the
area by curiosity, could see orgies taking place through
the windows.
The mayor, accompanied by Chief of Police J. J.
Badenoch, toured Custom House Place and was duly
See CHOWCHILLA
SCHOOL BUS KIDNAPPING.
Wooldridge, Clifton (1850–1915) police detective
Undoubtedly the most colorful police officer in American history was Clifton Wooldridge, “that damned little flycop,” as the Chicago underworld dubbed him.
Wooldridge, who ornamented the city’s police force
from 1888 until 1910, made a total of 19,500 arrests,
averaging almost three a day every day of his career. At
any given time there were hundreds of criminals in
Joliet Prison who had been put there by Wooldridge.
He recovered hundreds of thousands of dollars in
stolen property in the days when an American dollar
would buy more than one hearty steak dinner. He personally closed a hundred panel houses, rescued a hundred teenage girls from brothels and white slavery,
broke up a hundred phony matrimonial agencies and
refused hundreds of bribes from $500 to $5,000. In
the process he was shot at on 44 occasions, was
wounded 23 times and wounded exactly twice that
number of criminals. Although a crack shot, he never
once shot to kill, only to wound. “A policeman’s duty
is to preserve order, not to kill,” he proclaimed—and
he meant it.
957
WRONGFUL convictions
shocked. His Honor ordered the brothel keepers to
paint their windows and keep them closed. However,
Wooldridge kept plugging away at the issue, and when
the houses were finally shut down in the early 1900s,
the newspapers gave him much of the credit.
Wooldridge’s tiny form became the most-hated sight
in the red-light districts. He closed down places no
other officer dared touch. In the case of Big Susan
Winslow, he made an arrest no other officer could figure a way of making. Big Susan ran a bawdy house in a
two-story wooden structure on Clark Street, which was
the source of countless complaints to the police, including many from men who were robbed there. Over five
years a total of 20 warrants were issued for her arrest.
Yet every officer who tried to arrest her gave up, unable
to figure a way to get Susan out of the house.
Big Susan was aptly named; she weighed 450 pounds
and was wider in every direction than any door or window in her dive. The police never figured out how she
got in there in the first place.
Wooldridge drove a patrol wagon through an alley
to Big Susan’s back door. Standing outside the house,
he read a warrant to her as she cackled away. Then
Wooldridge removed the back door of the house from
its hinges and sawed out the frame and about two feet
of wall. He put two oak planks, 16 feet long and a foot
wide, between the door sill and the rear end of the
patrol wagon. The detective then unhitched one of the
patrol wagon horses, attached a rope to its collar and
tied the other end of the rope around Big Susan’s waist.
“Giddap!” he shouted and the horse pounded forward,
pulling Big Susan out of her chair. As she slid up the
planks, Susan began to shriek; Detective Wooldridge
had somehow neglected to get dressed lumber. Big
Susan suddenly decided to be cooperative and waddled
painfully the rest of the way up the planks and into the
wagon. During the ride to the station she lay prone on
a bed inside the wagon while one of her girls sat beside
her consolingly pulling splinters out of her bottom.
“After this,” Wooldridge later noted, “the police had
no more trouble with Susan Winslow.”
In addition to such lighthearted triumphs,
Wooldridge deserved credit for putting a number of bigtime procurers, including the notorious Mary Hastings,
out of business and behind bars. It can only be estimated how many girls he thus saved from white slavery.
For 22 years Clifton Wooldridge went on entertaining the public with his crime-smashing exploits which
included the solving of many murders. In one such case
a bartender named Reilly murdered a saloon keeper
with the aid of the latter’s wife and then tried to pass it
off as a stickup murder. Suspicious of the pair’s story,
Wooldridge broke down the widow by presenting her
with proof that the bartender, with whom she was in
love, often spent his nights at the home of a certain
Mrs. O’Brien. Shocked into a jealous rage, the widow
confessed and implicated her lover in her husband’s
murder. Not until later did Wooldridge get around to
explaining that Mrs. O’Brien was the bartender’s
mother, having reverted to her maiden name.
While Wooldridge was known to be tough on
wrongdoers, he was a soft touch for any reformed
criminal. He once explained: “There are only two ways
of making a criminal reform. One is a helping hand, the
other a hard rap on the skull.” When Wooldridge
retired from the force in poor health in 1910, a Chicago
newspaper observed: “His retirement marks the end of
one of the most amazing and accomplished records in
the history of the police system. It is also sad to see the
end of such a source of levity in the grim business of
crime battling.”
wrongful convictions
See DNA EVIDENCE.
World Trade Center bombing
It came with abrupt suddenness. Shortly before noon
on Friday, February 26, 1993, one Mohammad
Salameh, a Palestinian living in New York, drove a yellow van into the underground garage of the 110-story
World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. At the time,
and in fact on any weekday, the twin towers were teeming with 50,000 workers and the usual 80,000 visitors.
Then someone put a lighter to four fuses on a 1,200pound bomb. The occupant or occupants fled in the
yellow van. A scant few moments later the powerful
bomb exploded. Six persons were killed and well over
1,000 injured, as steel beams snapped like toothpicks
and cinder blocks disintegrated. Employees in various
offices were hurled 10, 20 or 30 feet in the air. Automobiles in the parking level were squashed like tin cans.
Much of New York was in a panic, and at first there
was no way to estimate the related death and destruction. What was clear was that the bombing was the
worst terrorist attack carried out on American soil up
to that time.
In hindsight it became apparent that the terrorist
attack was neither wholly effective nor for that matter
well planned, even though it had been a half-year in the
making. The mastermind of the attack was Ramzi
Ahmed Yousef, who had entered the country in September 1992 through JFK airport claiming political asylum.
He was allowed to enter with Mohammad Salameh,
who was providing him with a place to stay in his home.
Immediately the pair went about setting up their
plans for the attack, and, it would later be revealed, for
many more. Money was sent to them from Europe, and
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WORLD Trade Center bombing
what was called a “witch’s brew” of explosives that
were intended to be placed under bridges, in tunnels
and at New York landmarks, such as the United
Nations. It was said other sites around the nation were
also targeted.
While Yousef was clearly the mastermind of the
World Trade operation, evidence provided by FBI
informers revealed the broader nature of the plotters’
plans. A number of arrests and trials were held for various offenses. Four involved with the World Trade
matter were each sentenced to serve 240 years in
prison. Yousef, who was captured in Pakistan, was
also sentenced for a deadly bombing of a Philippine
Airlines airplane in 1994. He intended his attacks as a
test run for blowing up dozens of airliners in the
United States. He was later sentenced to life imprisonment plus 240 years. Before his sentence, Yousef
ranted, “I am a terrorist and I am proud of it.” He told
the judge, “Your God is not Allah. You worship death
and destruction.”
The main trial against a total of 10 accused terrorists
was done under a Civil War–era seditious conspiracy
law that makes it illegal to wage war against the government. Among those charged was Sheik Omar Abdel
Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric known as a fiery
fanatic. Much of the government’s case was built on
tapes secretly recorded by an undercover FBI informant, Emad Salem. The Rahman defense was built
around the claim that he was physically incapable of
participating in any of the operational aspects of the
plot. However, the courts held the conspiracy counts
against the blind cleric were valid and, as a review
panel put it in 1999, “evidence showed that Rahman
was in constant contact with other members of the conspiracy, that he was looked to as a leader, and that he
accepted that role and encouraged his co-conspirators
to engage in violent acts against the United States.”
The blind cleric and nine others were convicted after
a nine-month trial that involved more than 200 witnesses. Among the defendants, all sentenced to life
imprisonment, was El Sayyid A. Nosair, accused of the
murder of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the militant founder of
the Jewish Defense League. He had previously been
acquitted of the murder charge by a state court.
Sheik Rahman’s conviction was appealed on the
grounds that anything he did was no more than an
expression of free speech and violated his rights under
the Constitution to his freedom of religion. The U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled, however,
that “freedom of speech and of religion do not extend
so far as to bar prosecution of one who uses a public
speech or a religious ministry to commit crimes. The
evidence justifying Rahman’s conviction showed
beyond a reasonable doubt that he crossed this line.”
Salameh, under a false name, rented a storage locker in
New Jersey and used that address to order various
bomb parts. The final step almost six months later was
acquisition of compressed hydrogen to add power to
explosives. Then the conspirators rented a Ryder van.
All was ready for the disaster that took place.
One aspect of the disaster not addressed in its wake
was the limited amount of deaths resulting. But if there
was a touch of amateurism in the bombing, it was
unmatched by the later actions of the bombers.
Salameh was most concerned about returning the van
to recoup his $200 deposit, a remarkably venal attitude, considering that they were engaged in what was
regarded by them a holy enterprise. The conspirators
were unaware that the yellow van had attracted attention before the explosion and in its aftermath.
Salameh was taken into custody when he tried to
return the Ryder van. The plotters proved unable to
contain information about their actions, and soon the
New York police received information that led to the
apprehension of five suspects who were found with
Among those netted in the investigation of the 1993
World Trade Center bombing was Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric known as a fiery fanatic, who
was convicted on conspiracy counts for encouraging his
followers to engage in violent acts against the United
States.
959
WYLIE, Janice
say George Didn’t you do so and so here and so and so
there. I wouldn’t say anything.
They would would say shour you did. Then they
would write it down. And go over it with me. Then call
in some more men, and ask me the same quition again.
I would just repeat what I just learned. . . .
I got enemies witch I never had. But I hope some
time he or she will soon find out that I was the wrong
boy. God will see to it. . . . God knows that I didn’t do
these things, and if I keep praying he will help me. . . .
Just bying here it can chang your life it can make
you want to make something of your life when you get
out it can also make you relazice many other things to.
You learn to to fell sorry for other people as well as
your self. So take it from me and witch what you are
doing. I am a boy who never been in trouble before and
went to jail for non-thing. . . .
One example cited by the court was Rahman’s conviction for soliciting the murder of Egyptian president
Hosni Mubarak on a planned visit to New York, an
attack that never was attempted. The evidence showed
that the cleric told Emad Salem, the paid FBI informant
who had infiltrated the conspiracy, that he “should
make up with God” by “turning his rifle’s barrel to
President Mubarak’s chest and killing him.”
All the convictions were upheld.
Wylie, Janice (1942–1963) murder victim
The gruesome murders of Janice Wylie, the 21-year-old
daughter of author Max Wylie and niece of writer
Philip Wylie, and her roommate, 23-year-old Emily
Hoffert, on August 28, 1963 shocked New York City,
and caused a legal controversy for years thereafter.
The bodies of the two women were found bound
together in their Manhattan apartment. Both had
numerous stab wounds and Janice Wylie had been eviscerated. The newspapers depicted the murders as a ritualistic sort of sexual crime. Eight months after the
murders the police charged a semiliterate 19-year-old
black named George Whitmore, Jr., with the crime. He
had been arrested in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn on a charge of attempted rape, which, said the
police, he admitted along with the murder of a woman
in Brooklyn and the Wylie-Hoffert homicides. A few
weeks later, Whitmore repudiated the three confessions,
insisting he had been beaten and otherwise coerced into
making them. In all, he was brought to trial four times
on various charges.
In his own version of how he was made to confess,
Whitmore, whose IQ was at various times estimated to
be between 60 and 90, wrote: “I am the kind of boy
that like to have fun. . . . I don’t like to be hurt nor
me hurt anyone witch I’d never did. But when I first
came to New York I was aquised of doing things I
know nothing about.”
Whitmore said that when he denied the attempted
rape in the Brooklyn precinct house, he was “hit many
times.” He went on:
In 1965 Whitmore was cleared in the Wylie-Hoffert
homicides following a confession made by Richard
Robles, a 22-year-old drug addict who was subsequently convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Whitmore’s experiences, especially the discredited confessions, were cited by the Supreme Court in the landmark Miranda decision, which led to curbs on police
powers to question suspects, and by the New York legislature in a 1965 statute that largely abolished capital
punishment.
Whitmore was also cleared of the third murder accusation after newspapers turned up evidence that the
white detectives had been biased against him and the
Manhattan and Brooklyn district attorneys’ offices
found proof that he was innocent. However, he was
still convicted three times of the attempted rape charge.
In 1973, after Whitmore had served a total of four
years in prison, it was found that the prosecution had
withheld from the defense evidence which would have
cleared him in the rape case as well.
Whitmore filed suit against the city in 1973 charging
false arrest and wrongful imprisonment, but in 1979 a
judge ruled that the statute of limitations in the WylieHoffert case had run out by 1973 and that in the rape
case there was no proof of “actual malice” on the part
of the Brooklyn district attorney’s office. The judge said
he felt an “emotional strain” in ruling against Whitmore and suggested that the wrong-man victim seek
redress from the legislature, which had the power to
grant him a financial settlement.
See also: CONFESSIONS, FALSE.
Then I was so squared that I was shakeing all over. And
before I know it, I was saying yes. I was so squared if
they would have told me name was tom, dick or harry I
would have said yes . . .
Then I was asked about the killing in the city on
88 St. But I was squared in to saying yes. They would
960
Y
Yager, Erastus “Red” (?–1864) outlaw
Yale, Frankie (1885–1927) gangster
Red Yager was the 19th century Western precursor of
such 20th century underworld informers as Abe
Reles and Joe Valachi. Yager’s squealing caused the
downfall of the notorious sheriff-outlaw Henry
Plummer and his gang of Innocents, which plagued
what is now southwestern Montana in the early
1860s. Red’s fate was also indicative of the riskiness
of seeking clemency in the American West by turning
informer.
A thin little man with a wild mop of flaming red hair
and whiskers, Yager probably never killed anyone, but
the vigilantes nevertheless suspected him of a number
of crimes. As a consequence, he was taken prisoner in
late December 1863, and he admitted carrying messages to road agents who held up stages, bullion wagons and individuals carrying large sums of money.
Yager revealed to the vigilantes the structure of the outlaw organization and how orders were passed down
from Sheriff Plummer, who masterminded the depredations of the outlaws while he was supposedly trying to
root them out. He also told them the gang’s password,
“innocent,” and identified a total of 26 key gang members. This intelligence enabled the vigilantes to destroy
the gang.
After Yager finished telling what he knew, there was
some inclination to show him leniency, but it was noted
that his life had already been extended a full week from
the time he should have been strung up. A solemn vote
indicated that that was leniency enough, and on January 4, 1864 Yager was hanged from a cottonwood tree
in Stinkingwater Valley.
See also: INNOCENTS, HENRY PLUMMER.
Brooklyn-born gangster Frankie Yale’s two dearest
friends were Johnny Torrio and Al Capone. Torrio
brought his trusted buddy Yale out to Chicago twice to
carry out two of his most important hits, on Big Jim
Colosimo and Dion O’Banion; Capone sent his killers
east to New York to knock off Yale.
In his teens Yale was a partner with Torrio in the
old Five Points gang and was said to have killed close
to a dozen men by the time he was 20. Around 1908
he and Torrio operated a Black Hand extortion racket
in Brooklyn, threatening immigrant Italians with
death unless they paid protection money. The pair
also ran a bar and brothel in Brooklyn, where Yale
hired Al Capone as a bouncer. Yale maintained the
establishment after Torrio and Capone both moved on
to Chicago.
In the early 1920s Yale moved into the big time on
several fronts. He built up major bootlegging and rum
running operations and took over control of the
national Unione Siciliane, the powerful Sicilian fraternal organization that in large part was turned into a
criminal-front organization. He also ran protection
rackets and forced New York tobacconists to order the
cheap cigars he manufactured; to add insult to injury,
Yale’s face appeared on each cigar box. As a result, in
Brooklynese “a Frankie Yale” meant any kind of product that was overpriced and lousy. When police
demanded to know how Yale made his living, he would
say blandly, “I’m an undertaker.”
Torrio used Yale to kill O’Banion because he was
unfamiliar to the Irish mobster and could thus
approach him in his flower shop without arousing
961
YELLOW Henry Gang
brothers, Red and Blue; Pat Keeley; and the notorious
Frank Lyons, who won fame as a police killer.
Yellow Henry attracted these supporters because of
his ability to plan successful capers for the gang, including burglaries, holdups and protection rackets. Finally,
Yellow Henry and three of his men were caught and
sent to the penitentiary in 1884 for the robbery of a
Julia Street sail maker. The brutal gang leader died
there of malaria in July 1886.
Frank Lyons, in prison at the time, escaped in 1888
and proceeded to reorganize the Yellow Henry gang.
He was apprehended again and returned to prison. In
an act incomprehensible but typical of Louisiana in that
era, Lyons won a pardon in 1890 from Gov. Francis T.
Nicholls. The Yellow Henry gang arose once more, this
time until 1892, when Lyons was sentenced to prison
for killing a policeman, an act that brought down the
full wrath of the police on the Yellow Henrys, breaking
them up permanently.
suspicion. As Yale shook hands with O’Banion, he
gripped the Irishman’s gun hand so that he couldn’t
draw his weapon while two of Capone’s trusty gunmen,
John Scalise and Albert Anselmi, pulled out their pieces
and shot him to death.
In 1927 Capone, almost regretfully, decided to have
Yale knocked off for two reasons. First, he interfered
with the running of the huge Chicago chapter of the
Unione Siciliane, whose members’ alcohol-cooking
operations Capone wanted to control. Yale was trying
to get part of the chapter’s moonshining profits sent to
the national organization, and under Capone’s puppet
president, Antonio Lombardo, those contributions had
dwindled to nothing. More importantly, Capone suspected Yale, who was the Chicago mob’s biggest East
Coast supplier of imported liquors, was hijacking
truckloads of booze he had already sold to Big Al and
selling the same booze to him a second time.
Capone sent in a spy named James De Amato to find
out. Yale found De Amato out and had him shot down
on a Brooklyn street, but not before the spy had confirmed Capone’s suspicions. Capone sent Yale an
anonymous warning, “Someday you’ll get an answer to
De Amato.”
On July 1, 1927 Yale was driving along 44th Street
in Brooklyn when gunmen in a black sedan crowded
him to the curb and machine-gunned him to death.
What really upset New Yorkers about the incident was
that it was the first underworld killing with a submachine gun. It was to be the first of many.
See also: DION O’BANION, JOHN TORRIO.
Yellow Henry Gang
Yorky of the Great Lakes
legend
murderer who became a
For over a century now Yorky Mickey the Clam Man
has scoured the Great Lakes on a mission of murder,
and, the story goes, he will not give up until vengeance
is his.
Yorky Mickey was a real person well-known to the
denizens of Buffalo’s Canal Street vice area, a jutting
piece of land segregated from the rest of Buffalo by 40
feet of murky water called the Erie Canal. In the 1860s
and 1870s Yorky ran a clam stand there that offered
two main attractions. Yorky, a man of amazing
strength, could crush a man’s fingers with his grip and
often did. Patrons flocked to his stand to watch in wonder as he opened clams with his fingers. After a patron
filled up on clams, he could avail himself of the stand’s
second attraction: women. Yorky was also a procurer,
leasing out women by the evening. It was a good deal
for his patrons because Yorky was an honest man and
never allowed his women to rob a customer.
Everyone liked Yorky and they were happy for him
when love came into his life. He fell for one of his own
women, a lass known as the Thrush, and they had a
wedding that Canal Street—indeed the entire Great
Lakes—long remembered. The Thrush, who was famed
for her figure, performed at times as a singer in a bar
called the Peacock. Her voice was not particularly good
but no one seemed to notice.
It was in the Peacock that the pair joined in tragic
wedlock. All Canal Street was there—the leading prostitutes, the rival saloon owners, the sporting men and
the cooperative politicians. Liquor and beer flowed
freely and food was plentiful. A brass band blared
New Orleans criminals
One of the most vicious gangs in New Orleans during
the 1870s and 1880s was a group of murderers, thieves
and cutthroats bossed by Yellow Henry Stewart.
Stewart earned his nickname because he was
afflicted with malaria, which he was convinced, rightly,
would shorten his life span. As a result, he was unbridled in his lawless fury. He would as soon kill a victim
as manhandle him, and he was equally feared by other
criminals and by the police.
In 1877 Yellow Henry inherited the leadership of the
gang that took his name when the former leader, Turpo,
went to jail for murder. The new leader brought to his
banner some of the most desperate criminals that New
Orleans ever produced, including Joe Martin, probably
the most expert garroter in the city’s history; Crooked
Neck Delaney, certainly a top-class performer in the
same line as Martin; Tom McDonald, better known as
Tom the Dog; Prussian Charley Mader, who wore a
false beard and a mask whenever pulling a job; George
Sylvester; Garibaldi Bolden; the murderous Haley
962
YOUNGER brothers
was a black man, named Herbert Youngblood, who
was being held on a murder charge.
Having escaped in the sheriff’s car with two
hostages, Dillinger and Youngblood threw the hostages
out when they reached isolated country. Then Dillinger
ordered Youngblood to hide down between the seats,
since the two of them together, one white and one
black, could be easily identified.
The pair soon separated, but their brief contact evidently made a deep impression on Youngblood, who
was destined to live only 13 more days. On March 16
he was cornered by three deputy sheriffs in a tobacco
store in Port Huron, Mich. Youngblood managed to
kill one of the lawmen and wound the other two, but
he himself took six bullets. Just before he died, he confessed that Dillinger had been with him the previous
day.
Youngblood’s dying words triggered a manhunt in
the area for Dillinger, and there were soon reports of
the noted fugitive crossing the St. Clair River into
Canada with two other men. At the time, Dillinger was
hiding out with his girlfriend, Billie Frechette, in apartment 303 of the Lincoln Court Apartments in the
exclusive Hill section of St. Paul, Minn. Undoubtedly,
Youngblood misled the authorities because he figured
he owed John Dillinger a favor.
See also: JOHN DILLINGER.
without letup. Finally, Yorky and his lady were married
by a Canal Street character named Preacher Dobie, a
minister who had deserted his flock for the ways of the
fleshpots. Preacher Dobie ran through the words in a
drunken stupor, but then everyone else was drunk as
well—Yorky, his bride, and the guests.
The newlyweds were hustled to the bar as soon as
the ceremony was over and served more liquor. Yorky
was so happy he couldn’t seem to get enough. As a
result, the Thrush was being deserted by her groom
only minutes after their marriage. The more Yorky
drank the less likely it appeared he would be leaving
soon. At first the Thrush didn’t seem to mind. She had
no aversion to the brew herself, but the more she
drank, the more her eye would rove.
The Thrush drank until her eye settled on a rakish
young sailor who’d just wandered into the Peacock.
The fact that the Thrush was garbed in a wedding
dress did not deter the young sailor. He was right off
his ship, his pockets bulged with a month’s pay and he
ached to spend some of it. Yorky was so far gone he
failed to notice his bride and the sailor slip out of the
Peacock.
It took another two hours before Yorky noticed his
bride’s absence. He stormed forth to look for her, and
his anger soared when he heard from others that she
had been seen carousing with a young sailor. Yorky
lurched from bar to bar, clenching his powerful fists
tighter each passing minute. Finally, he found the
Thrush. She was sprawled in a drunken stupor on the
bed of the two-room flat Yorky had furnished for her.
Her lipstick and clothing were in disarray and there
was some money pinned to the rumpled pillow.
Later, when others ventured into the flat, they found
the Thrush still lying on the bed, but her head had been
twisted and she looked like a chicken whose neck had
been wrung. She was dead and Yorky was gone.
He was never seen again on Canal Street, but lakers
coming in from other ports reported having observed
him scouring all the ships of the Great Lakes looking
for the young sailor. A couple of times, it was said,
Yorky had just missed catching his man.
Apparently he never did. Even today when a dim
light is seen in the mist over the Great Lakes, there are
some lakers who say it is Yorky still hunting for the
sailor who seduced his new bride.
Younger brothers
outlaw band
Certainly just as daring, violent and cold-blooded as
the James brothers, the Younger brothers terrorized
Missouri and the surrounding states until the ill-fated
Northfield Bank Raid in 1876 broke the power of the
James-Younger gang.
The four outlaw Youngers were part of a family of
eight sons and six daughters born to Henry W. and
Bersheba Younger; the rest of the Younger children
grew up to be law-abiding citizens. Cole (born 1844),
Jim (born 1848), John (born 1851) and Bob (born
1853) killed their share of Union soldiers during the
Civil War, especially after their father was murdered by
Union irregulars in 1862. Bob was only 12 when he
took part with his older brothers under Quantrill in
the sacking of Lawrence, Kan.; John was just 10 when
he helped brother Jim kill four Union soldiers. When
he was 15, John, with no assistance, killed a man who
had hit him over the head with a dead fish. He was
brought to trial but acquitted on the ground of “selfdefense.”
Bob and John Younger, however, could not match
the charm, cunning or deadliness of their elder outlaw
brothers, Cole and Jim. Cole, the big bluff sort, was
noted for his sense of humor and his way with the
Youngblood, Herbert (1899–1934) fellow escapee of
John Dillinger
When public enemy John Dillinger made his fabled
“wooden gun” escape from the supposed escape-proof
jail in Crown Point, Ind. on March 3, 1934, the only
prisoner who accepted his offer to join in the breakout
963
YOUNGER brothers
ladies. Among his many loves was Myra Belle Shirley,
later famous as Belle Starr, who had a daughter by him.
With his mannerisms and acting ability, Cole was able
to assume almost any identity. Once while hiding from
the law in Texas, he sang in a choir and worked as a
government census taker.
Jim was regarded as the most handsome of the lot,
easygoing, readily influenced by Jesse James, but in the
end, he brooded about his misbegotten life and put a
bullet in his brain.
The Youngers got together with the Jameses in 1866,
when Frank James introduced Cole to Jesse. It marked
the beginning of a bloody decade in the Midwest. The
six formed the nucleus of a gang that carried out
numerous bank and train robberies, killing at least 10
persons and possibly many more, since it was never
established which robberies could be attributed to the
gang and which could not. After the robbery of a bank
in Gallatin, Mo. in 1869, the Youngers were identified
as colleagues of the James brothers. In 1872 Bob
Younger took part, under Jesse’s leadership, in a daring
raid on the box office of the Kansas City fairgrounds.
In 1874 Jim and John Younger tangled with three
lawmen and killed two of them: Louis J. Lull, a Pinkerton captain of detectives, and Sheriff Ed Daniels of
Osceola, Mo. The lawmen, however, shot John to
death and wounded Jim Younger, but he managed
escape, leaving behind the bullet-riddled corpse of
brother John.
The three remaining Youngers had only two years of
freedom left, although during that time and thereafter
they enjoyed great notoriety. Much of their fame
derived from an 1875 book by John T. Appler called
The Guerillas of the West; or, The Life, Character and
Daring Exploits of the Younger Brothers. Although
some parts of it were accurate, other sections were
complete fabrication, such as the recounting of an
episode during the Civil War when Cole supposedly
decided to test out a new Enfield rifle on 15 Union prisoners. Told the rifle could fire a mile, Cole allegedly
said that one bullet should be able to kill at least 10
men. According to Appler, he lined up the prisoners one
behind the other and kept firing until all were dead.
In 1876 the James-Younger gang robbed a stagecoach in Texas and later a bank in Otterville, Mo. They
then headed up into Minnesota, where they robbed a
bank in Northfield on September 7, 1876. Up until
then the gang seldom encountered much trouble from
local citizens while pulling a job, but the Northfield residents were of a different cut. Alerted by gunfire inside
the bank, the local citizens rushed out with guns and
rocks to stop the bandits. Two of the robbers were
killed before the gang could get out of town, and the
rest were badly shot up. Bob’s elbow was shattered and
The Younger brothers—left to right: Jim, Bob and Cole—
with sister Rhetta
he was hit in the thigh. Cole took a bullet in the shoulder and Jim had his jaw nearly blasted away. Jesse and
Frank James received lesser wounds.
Over the next several days the bandits could not
shake pursuing posses. When Jesse suggested to Cole
that they put Jim Younger out of his misery because he
was slowing their flight, Cole and his brothers faced the
two James boys down. Jesse and Frank James split off
and threaded their way through the posses, while the
three Youngers and the remaining member of the gang,
Charlie Pitts, continued on together.
Finally, on September 21 the four were cornered in
a thicket of willows and plum trees. Pitts was killed and
the three Younger brothers were literally shot full of
holes. Yet when they were being escorted in a wagon to
the nearest town, Cole Younger, despite 11 bullet
wounds, startled a group of gaping women by standing
up and bowing to them.
All three Youngers were sentenced to life in prison.
Bob Younger, who became a model prisoner, died
there of tuberculosis in 1889. Jim and Cole Younger
were finally freed in 1901. Unable to find suitable
work and despondent, Jim shot himself to death in
964
YUMA Penitentiary
1902. Ironically, Cole at the time was selling tombstones for a living.
In 1903 Cole published his autobiography, The
Story of Cole Younger, and reunited with Frank James
in a Wild West show. They split up after a few years,
some said because of ill feelings stemming from the
Northfield raid, with Cole continuing to tour with carnivals as a solo act. He died in 1916.
See also: JAMES BROTHERS; NORTHFIELD, MINNESOTA,
BANK RAID; BELLE STARR.
route and, in some cases, even the name of the customer. Laundries use a similar coding system, and many
use invisible ink. Slowly, Yulch collected codes from
every state in the union and, in time, became so familiar
with those in his area that he could read them easily
without even referring to his files.
In another case Secret Service agents raided a counterfeiting printing plant but failed to catch the suspect,
who escaped through a hidden exit. He had been shaving at the time they arrived and had left his shirt
behind. The agents brought the shirt to Yulch, who
merely glanced at it, gave them an address and told
them the man they wanted was in apartment 3-B. The
agents were startled but rushed to the place and captured the suspect busily packing his bags to flee. Yulch
understood the laundry’s code mark on the shirt,
which, in addition to its own indicator, listed the customer’s address and apartment number.
Yulch’s Laundry-Mark Identification Bureau was
always available to other law enforcement agencies,
and Yulch helped a number of state police organizations set up their own systems before his death in 1950.
He even organized one for the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police. Decades later, the Nassau County
bureau was still regarded as the best in the country.
Yulch, Adam (1885–1950) laundry-mark expert
The practice of tracing criminals through laundry
marks existed long before Adam Yulch set up a complete Laundry-Mark Identification Bureau in New
York’s Nassau County Police Department during the
1930s, but acting-Captain Yulch’s success in the field
made him nationally and internationally famous as the
“laundry-mark hawkshaw.”
Yulch made his first laundry-mark arrest in 1936
following the robbery of a bank messenger. One of the
criminals left a jacket in the getaway car that had a
faded dry-cleaning mark on an inside sleeve. Handed
the assignment of finding the cleaner, Yulch covered
every cleaner, laundry and tailor on Long Island, and
then in New York City. Finally, he hit pay dirt in
Westchester County at a wholesale cleaner. The mark
was traced to a local tailor, who at first could not
remember the customer. Yulch prodded the tailor’s
memory by pointing out the customer was probably a
dandy dresser who got his clothes pressed often and
who was around a lot in the daytime. Now the tailor
remembered. The dapper holdup man was located and
the robbery was solved.
When the next case with a laundry-mark clue turned
up, the Nassau police immediately turned it over to
Yulch. He realized then he should have kept records of
all the marks of tailors whom he’d called upon in the
previous case. Yulch started assembling such information on 3x5 index cards, organizing what was to
become the most complete identification bureau in the
country.
To the untrained eye one laundry mark looks like
another, but the scrawl is a code that allows a cleaner
and his wholesaler to quickly identify the store, the
Yuma Penitentiary
Easily the most-feared and hated prison in the Old West
was the penitentiary built at Yuma, Arizona Territory
in 1876.
Rehabilitation of prisoners was not one of Yuma’s
objectives. The overriding concern of the prison was
restraint—restraint of the prisoners from escaping,
rioting or creating any sort of a problem. Inmates
were allowed to work and exercise during the daytime, but at night, when the blistering heat of the
desert sun gave way to the chilling cold, the convicts
were chained to the stone floors of their cells from
dusk to dawn. Corruption and brutality were practiced by the guards until this hellhole of a prison was
abandoned in the early 20th century. It is now a
museum. In a sense, Yuma Penitentiary had at least
one claim to innovation. So many escapes were
attempted there that it became the first prison to be
equipped with Gatling guns.
965
Z
Zangara, Joseph (1900–1933) assassin
Virtually every presidential assassination or attempt
has produced speculation of a deeper and more insidious plot. Joseph Zangara’s attempt to kill Franklin D.
Roosevelt on February 15, 1933 in Miami is unique in
that the conspiracy theory posits the president-elect
was not even the target and that Zangara, in fact, killed
the man he was supposed to, Mayor Anton J. Cermak
of Chicago. According to the majority of experts, the
idea that Zangara was a Capone hit man is nonsense.
Nevertheless the theory has long been held by many
crime historians and Chicago journalists. A leading
expert, Judge John H. Lyle, probably as knowledgeable
as any non-Mafia man on the subject of Chicago crime,
emphasizes “Zangara was a Mafia killer, sent from
Sicily to do a job and sworn to silence.”
Before the shooting, Cermak had been trying to get
rid of the Capone mob so that gangsters under his control could take over crime in Chicago, and a current
journalistic theory held that he had fled to Miami
because he feared the Capones were going to assassinate him. The fact that Zangara had won several pistolshooting awards when he was in the Italian army and
that he fatally wounded Cermak without even hitting
Roosevelt provided additional weight to the theory that
the intended victim of the assassination was Cermak.
However, when Zangara opened fire on the car carrying Roosevelt and Cermak, he hit four bystanders, casting doubt on his ability as a marksman.
If Zangara kept his silence in a monumental criminal
plot, he had not maintained his peace on political matters since his arrival in the country in 1923. Employed
off and on as a mill hand in New Jersey, he had railed
FPO
FIG #183
TO BE
PICKED-UP
FROM
PREVIOUS
ED.
Joseph Zangara was almost stripped of all his clothing
by those who seized him after his unsuccessful
attempt to assassinate President-elect Franklin D.
Roosevelt.
966
ZELIG, Jack
about “capitalist presidents and kings.” According to
his later confession, he would have been just as likely to
have tried to kill Calvin Coolidge or Herbert Hoover as
Roosevelt; he happened to select FDR only because he
was in Miami when Roosevelt was there. “I see Mr.
Hoover first I kill him first,” he said at his trial. “Make
no difference. Presidents just the same bunch—all
same.” Zangara clung to that line to the day of his execution. Of Cermak, he said, “I wasn’t shooting at him,
but I’m not sorry I hit him.” Zangara claimed he might
have tried to kill King Victor Emmanuel III had he
remained in the Italian army.
In the death chamber Zangara said: “There is no
God. It’s all below. . . . See, I no scared of electric
chair.” Sitting down in the chair, he glared at the witnesses with contempt. “Lousy capitalists.” His last
words were: “Goodby. Addio to all the world. Go
ahead. Push the button.”
See also: ANTON J. CERMAK.
Square. With his childish face and appearance, he was
seldom suspected of pickpocketing. And when his
youthful appearance was not enough, Zelig could turn
on the tears. One man from whom Zelig had stolen a
wallet and a diamond ring was so overcome with
remorse at having accused him that he bought the
baby-faced thief a new suit of clothes and “forced”
money on him.
By the time he was in his twenties, Zelig had moved
on to muggings and murder for profit, but he never forgot the virtue of tears. Whenever he was arraigned—a
frequent occurrence—he hired a frail and consumptive
girl to come timidly into the courtroom and weepingly
plead with the magistrate, “Oh, Judge, for God’s sake,
don’t send my boy husband, the father of my baby, to
jail!” The agony in the young “wife’s” voice worked
wonders for a number of years: Zelig would be released
with a warning to go home to his wife and baby, of
whom he had neither.
In the early 1900s Zelig attracted the attention of
Monk Eastman and soon became one of his most
dependable henchmen. When Eastman went to prison a
few years later, Zelig remained loyal to Kid Twist, Eastman’s successor, carrying out a number of murder
assignments. After Kid Twist died in a gangland assassination in 1908, Zelig took over control of a large part
of the old Eastman gang, while others left to follow the
banner of Chick Tricker or Jack Sirocco. Most of the
gangsters went with Zelig because he was a genius at
organizing criminal activities and getting the most revenues out of them.
At heart, Zelig remained a bully and a brute. Seeking
to impress a new sweetheart although short of cash, he
marched into an East Side bordello with her and held
up the madam for $80. The madam had the effrontery
to complain to the police, and Zelig was arrested.
Because of previous arrests, Big Jack faced a long
prison term; so he sent word to Tricker and Sirocco to
return the money to the madam and frighten her into
refusing to testify. The pair deliberately did not carry
out his orders, hoping Zelig would be sent away and
they would inherit his crime empire. Big Jack finally got
another gang leader, Jimmy Kelly, to carry his message
to the madam, and when the case came up in court, the
woman insisted Zelig looked not a bit like the man who
had robbed her. Big Jack was released and vowed war
on Tricker and Sirocco.
In the ensuing battles at least a score of gunmen on
both sides died. In an awesome display of shooting,
Zelig shot and killed a hired gunman, Julie Morrell,
sent after him by his foes. Zelig’s friends got Morrell
drunk and he staggered out onto the dance floor of the
Stuyvesant Casino shouting: “Where’s that big Yid
Zelig? I gotta cook that big Yid!”
Zelig, Jack (1882–1912) gang leader and murderer
Big Jack Zelig assumed the leadership of the New York
criminal empire that had been held first by Monk Eastman and then by Kid Twist. A handsome, brutish killer,
Big Jack’s services were always available for hire to any
bidder, high or low. There is no record of the gang
leader ever turning down any job of violence. A Zelig
henchmen once gave the police Big Jack’s price list:
Slash on cheek with knife
Shot in leg
Shot in arm
Throwing a bomb
Murder
$1
$1
$5
$5
$10
to
to
to
to
to
$ 10
$ 25
$ 25
$ 50
$100
If the fee for murder seemed a bit low, it must be
remembered that such contracts normally included
“fringe benefits,” i.e., whatever valuables were found
on the victim. Judiciously, Zelig would wait until a
businessman, e.g., was making a deposit at the bank
before killing him. A common workman would get his
on payday. In one case Zelig held off on the murder of
a victim until he ventured abroad to do his Christmas
shopping.
Zelig, whose real name was William Alberts, was
born in Norfolk Street in 1882 to respectable Jewish
parents. He ran away at 14 and joined a juvenile gang
of pickpockets under the leadership of the colorful
Crazy Butch. Zelig soon figured out that the boy pickpockets did all the dangerous work but Crazy Butch
took virtually all the loot. He deserted the Fagin and
became very successful on his own as a “lush worker,”
rolling drunken men on the Bowery and in Chatham
967
ZERILLI, Joseph
Suddenly, Zelig spoke sharply from a table across the
dance floor and the dancers scattered. Just then the lights
went out and a single shot was fired. When the lights
went on, Morrell lay dead on the floor and Zelig was
gone. He had shot Morrell through the heart in the dark.
By this time Zelig was offering protection to many of
the top gambling clubs in Manhattan. Finally, he was
hired by police Lt. Charles E. Becker for a very special
job, that of assassinating a gambler named Herman
“Beansie” Rosenthal. Becker and Rosenthal had been
partners, but when Becker had failed to protect Rosenthal in the way he wished, Rosenthal decided to blow
the whistle on the payoffs delivered by the gambling
interests of the city to the political and police powers.
Zelig collected $2,000 for murdering Rosenthal. In a
division of the spoils that was generous for Big Jack, he
passed on $1,000 to four of his killers—Gyp the Blood,
Whitey Lewis, Dago Frank and Lefty Louie—who did
the actual work. After the killings, they appeared to
have gotten away clean, since the investigation of the
matter was in the hands of Lt. Becker himself. However, a reform district attorney named Charles Whitman launched his own investigation and easily found
witnesses who identified the four murderers.
Gyp the Blood soon confessed. He said he had been
hired by Big Jack Zelig and named Becker as the man
behind the entire operation.
Zelig also broke the underworld code of silence, testifying before the grand jury on Becker’s links to the
crime. On October 5, 1912, the day before he was to
appear in court, Zelig was gunned down on a Manhattan trolley car by Red Phil Davidson. The police
department was sure the murder of Zelig was related to
his feud with the Sirocco and Tricker forces. Everyone
else in New York felt it had something to do with his
forthcoming testimony against Becker. As it turned out,
even without Zelig’s testimony, there was more than
enough evidence to convict the four gunmen and
Becker as well. All eventually died in the electric chair.
See also: CHARLES E. BECKER, GYP THE BLOOD.
bookmaking, numbers, loansharking, prostitution,
extortion, narcotics and labor racketeering. Zerilli
lived in a $500,000 home on a 20-acre suburban
estate and always insisted he was just a businessmanbaker.
While he was known to have been involved in a
great many crimes, including murder, Zerilli was convicted of criminal charges only twice. In 1919 he paid
fines for carrying concealed weapons and for speeding.
As the highest-ranking mobster in Detroit, Zerilli was
due to attend the infamous Apalachin summit meeting
of syndicate leaders in 1957, but he turned back when
he got word that a police raid was under way.
In his early seventies Zerilli retired from crime family business and turned over control to his son, Tony,
one of the few Mafia cases where a son succeeded a
father in the role of gang leader. However, the elder
Zerilli returned to active control in 1975, when his son
received a four-year prison sentence for conspiring to
obtain a hidden interest in a Las Vegas casino.
Zerilli was implicated in the 1975 disappearance of
James R. Hoffa, the former president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. When Hoffa disappeared, he was reported to have been on his way to
meet Anthony Giacalone, Zerilli’s top lieutenant. Zerilli
provided the police with no information concerning the
case. When he died October 30, 1977, a high police
official observed he probably carried more criminal
secrets to the grave than any crime leader who had
passed away in the past decade.
Ziegler, Shotgun George (1897–1934) gangster
Perhaps the best educated and certainly one of the
smartest of the 1930 gangsters, shotgun George Ziegler
(whose real name was Fred Goetz) was for a time the
mastermind of the Barker-Karpis gang and was a chief
planner in the kidnapping of wealthy Edward George
Bremer of St. Paul, Minn. in 1934. He was also for a
time one of Al Capone’s most-trusted trigger men,
remaining a prime suspect in the famous St. Valentine’s
Day massacre of the Bugs Moran gang.
During World War I, Ziegler had been a second lieutenant and pilot. In 1922 he graduated from the University of Illinois, where he had been a football player
and an excellent golfer. Famed FBI agent Melvin H.
Purvis said of him, “His character was one of infinite
contradictions; well mannered, always polite, he was
capable of generous kindnesses and conscienceless cruelty.” It may well be that Ziegler became a criminal
almost accidentally after being arrested on a rape
charge. He jumped bail before his trial and, not wishing
his parents to lose the money, decided to get it back
quickly. He attempted to hold up a doctor he knew
Zerilli, Joseph (1897–1977) syndicate leader
Perhaps the closest thing in real life to the public’s perception of a Mafia “godfather,” Joseph Zerilli was the
crime boss of Detroit for decades and the last survivor
of that city’s violent Prohibition-era gang wars.
Born in Terrasini, Sicily, he immigrated to the
United States in 1914 and started working as a pickand-shovel laborer. He quickly gravitated into criminal activities and worked his way up to an important
position in the Purple Mob, eventually becoming the
leader of an illegal operation that took in profits estimated at $150 million a year from such activities as
968
ZODIAC Killer
able dispute over the number of persons Zodiac killed,
since he did not claim credit for some murders he definitely committed and the police failed to find the bodies
of many he claimed to have killed.
The first murders he acknowledged were those of
two high school teenagers, who were parked on a
lonely road outside Vallejo, Calif. on December 20,
1968. Carrying a .22-caliber pistol, a lone figure moved
to the car and aimed it at the head of 17-year-old David
Faraday. Three bullets smashed into Faraday’s skull
before he could react. Sitting next to the driver, 16year-old Bettilou Jensen screamed and then bolted from
the car. She didn’t get far. The attacker dropped her
with five bullets. Both youngsters died. The following
July 4 Zodiac struck again, killing a young girl sitting
in a parked car in a public park near Vallejo. Her 19year-old companion survived despite four bullet
wounds. The killer had shined a flashlight into their
car, temporarily blinding the youth, so that he could
give only a sketchy identification of the attacker: a
fairly heavy man with glasses.
In one of Zodiac’s more gruesome killings, he
stabbed Cecelia Shepard in the back 24 times, cutting
the outline of a bloody cross. The best description of
Zodiac was obtained when he killed a part-time college student working as a cab driver in San Francisco.
He had shot him from the backseat and set about
cleaning up the taxi, presumably to eradicate his fingerprints. Then he cut off a piece of the victim’s
bloody shirt—to enclose in a future letter to a newspaper—before leaving. Zodiac was seen by witnesses,
and with their aid the police put out a composite
description of him: a man of 35 to 45, five foot eight
inches with short brown-reddish hair and wearing
thick glasses.
Zodiac’s letters to the police and to the newspapers
continued throughout the early 1970s, although some
were believed to be fakes. The San Francisco police
attributed no more than six murders to Zodiac,
although his own count eventually reached 37. A possible confirmation of Zodiac’s total came in 1975
from Don Striepeke, sheriff of Sonoma County.
Striepeke used a computer study of murder records in
the state attorney general’s office as the basis for a theory that about 40 murders in four western states could
be traced to one killer, perhaps Zodiac. The officer
found in these murders what he regarded as threads of
similarity, and he even theorized that the murderer
was using a huge letter “Z” mapped over several western states as a blueprint for where to commit his
crimes. Since the mid-1970s nothing more has been
heard from Zodiac, the most common police theory
being that he is either dead or confined in some mental
institution.
always carried large sums of money. When the physician drew a gun he had permission to carry, Goetz
blasted him to death with a shotgun, launching his
career as Shotgun George Ziegler.
When next heard of he was a gunman with the
Capone mob in Chicago. Besides the St. Valentine’s
Day killings, Ziegler was credited with six to 10 other
mob murders. From time to time he disappeared from
the crime scene. During those periods he actually
worked as an engineer; he had studied engineering in
college. But he regularly departed from the straight life
to win fame as one of the best artisans at “cracking a
bank” while a member of the Midwest’s KeatingHolden gang.
In 1933 Ziegler turned up in the Barker-Karpis mob,
where his intelligence soon propelled him into a position of leadership. He picked Bremer as a likely kidnap
victim, a caper that netted the gang a $200,000, ransom. Most of the money was turned over to Ziegler,
who stashed it in a garage belonging to his wife’s uncle,
where it was to be left to “cool.” That proved to be a
fatal error on the Barkers’ part. While they trusted
Ziegler totally, he was slowly losing his mind. He began
to talk wildly in underworld circles, loudly proclaiming
credit for the Bremer job. The Barkers realized Ziegler
had to be silenced, and on March 22, 1934, just two
months after the Bremer kidnapping, four shotguns
blasted Ziegler as he stepped out of his favorite cafe in
Cicero, Ill. Ziegler fell dead, most of his head blown
away. With Ziegler gone, only his widow knew where
the ransom money was hidden. Ma Barker was able to
cajole the grieving but trusting widow into turning over
the money, insisting Ziegler had undoubtedly been
killed by enemies from his Capone days. What couldn’t
be undone was the information the FBI had gained
from Ziegler’s corpse. On his body were membership
cards to the Chicago Yacht Club and the Mohawk
Country Club of Bensenville, Ill. Police then found his
address and the names and addresses of many members
of the Barker-Karpis mob. The Barkers were forced to
scatter, all soon to fall victim to the law. Ma Barker and
son Fred were killed in a famous shoot-out in Florida
the following year.
See also: BARKER BROTHERS, DR. JOSEPH PATRICK
MORAN.
Zodiac Killer
California serial killer
Starting in California in 1966 and extending over the
next several years, a weird mass murderer, who became
known as Zodiac because of the letters and cryptograms he sent to newspapers, killed a number of victims, mostly young girls, because, he said, he was
“collecting slaves for my afterlife.” There is consider969
ZWEIBACH, MAX
Zweibach, Max
ing $250,000 for a slum clearance project in Newark.
However, his new image didn’t hold up very well when
the McClellan Committee’s rackets investigation in the
late 1950s began focusing on his activities. Subpoenaed
to appear before the committee and being hounded by
an IRS probe, Zwillman seemed to be a beaten man.
He also had his problems within the syndicate. He
had guessed wrong by supporting the aging Frank
Costello when other forces in the organization wanted
to retire him. Zwillman then guessed wrong again by
siding with Albert Anastasia against Vito Genovese.
Other crime leaders began edging into his New Jersey
rackets.
Given the sum total of the pressures on him, it was
not terribly surprising that Zwillman committed suicide
on February 27, 1959, just prior to his scheduled
appearance before the McClellan Committee. Perhaps
the only troubling detail about Zwillman’s suicide was
the way he had done it. Apparently, he had managed to
strangle himself with a plastic rope in the basement of
his luxurious $200,000 mansion in West Orange, N.J.
That clearly seemed the hard way of committing suicide; moreover, there were unexplained bruises on his
body and indications that his hands had been tied with
wire. Nonetheless, the official verdict was suicide.
Zwillman’s death undoubtedly brought considerable
relief to the members of the crime syndicate, especially
Meyer Lansky, who feared Zwillman was growing too
old to take the pressure and might turn informer.
See KID TWIST.
Zwillman, Abner “Longy” (1899–1959) crime
syndicate leader
A graduate of the bootleg racket in Brooklyn, New
York City, Longie Zwillman emerged as one of the
most powerful crime leaders in the country, a member
of the Seven Group, the forerunner of the national
crime syndicate that began in the 1930s.
Zwillman, an associate of Meyer Lansky, Frank
Costello and Willie Moretti, was instrumental in the
new combination’s successful efforts to take over Dutch
Schultz’s empire. In the process Zwillman became the
undisputed boss of crime in New Jersey, where he operated on a grand scale. When considerable heat was put
on the syndicate as a result of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, Zwillman relieved the pressure by posting a
large reward for the kidnapper. His political power in
New Jersey was impressive. In 1946 Republican Gov.
Harold G. Hoffmann personally asked Zwillman’s aid.
Three years later, the mobster let it be known to the
Democratic candidate for the governorship, Elmer
Wene, that he would contribute $300,000; all he asked
in return was the right to name the state’s attorney general. Wene declined the offer.
In the early 1950s Zwillman moved much of his millions into legitimate enterprises and attempted to create
the image that he was a civic-minded citizen by donat-
970
PHOTO CREDITS
(Numbers refer to page.)
Corbis/Bettmann-UPI
right, 920
Corbis/Reuters
68, 103, 136, 256, 390, 885
New York Public Library Picture Collection
866, 867
361, 478, 595, 959
New York Public Library Picture Collection/Los Angeles Police Department 816
Library of Congress 84, 100, 112, 147, 240, 247,
299, 306, 319, 377, 404, 457, 460, 543, 626, 725,
727, 827, 831, 844
Milner Collection
657,
U.S. Coast Guard 12
Wide World 6, 42, 48, 108, 183, 205, 216, 224, 230,
259, 335, 364, 394, 420, 452, 454, 471, 483, 511,
521, 542, 552, 584, 622, 644, 660, 715, 726 (left),
748, 764, 783, 791, 808, 849, 860, 870, 892, 899, 966
726 (right)
National Archives 27, 34, 69, 73, 88, 91, 95, 123,
128, 158, 172, 221, 244, 262, 265, 273, 323, 414,
462, 502, 519, 529, 530, 533, 534, 535, 592, 617,
654, 719, 778, 779, 834, 845, 910, 923, 944, 963
All others: Author’s collection
971
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973
Index
Boldface page numbers indicate main headings
A
Abbandando, Frank “the
Dasher,” 1, 631, 632, 748
Abbott, Burton W., 1–2, 302
Abilene, Kansas, 801–802
abolitionist riots, 2, 348
abortion as crime stopper,
2–3
Abrams, Big Mike, 3–4
Abu-Jamal, Mumia, 155–156
Accardo, Anthony Joseph, 4
in Big Six, 208, 284
gambling and, 512
Giancana, Sam and, 326
at Havana Convention,
401
maiming and, 577
Ricca, Paul and, 753,
754
accident faking, 4–5
Adams, Albert J., 5–6, 658
Adams, Katherine, 611–612
Adams, Kitty, 497–498, 626
Adams, Randall Dale, 154
Adler, Polly, 6–7
Adonis, Joe, 7
in Big Six, 208
in Broadway Mob, 123
Duke’s Restaurant and,
283, 284
in Five Points Gang, 572
gambling and, 512
Kefauver investigation
and, 482, 483
Masseria, “Joe the Boss”
and, 168, 589, 590,
872
Murder, Inc. and, 631
Mustache Petes and, 638,
813
in Seven Group, 801
in syndicate, 52, 128,
549, 550, 673
underworld conventions,
46, 401
Adorno, George, 7–8
adultery, 8
African American(s)
and crime, 717, 736–737
hate crimes against,
132–133, 398, 738. See
also Ku Klux Klan
lynching of, 398,
555–556
police and, 711–712
voting rights of, 196
African-American gangs, 339
African-American Mafia,
65–66
age and crime, 8, 9, 474–475
Ah Hoon, 8–9
Aiello, Joseph, 9–10, 148,
541
Alcatraz of the Rockies,
10–11, 586
Alcatraz prison, 11–12, 44,
720
escape attempt from, 65
inmates, 158, 329, 479,
485, 548
rule of silence in, 776
Alcatraz Prison Rebellion,
12–14
Johnston, James A. and,
467
key figures in, 228, 233,
809–810, 881
Lucas, James and, 548
Stroud, Robert Franklin
and, 856
Alcatraz push-ups, 14
alcohol, 14–15
Alderisio, Felix “Milwaukee
Phil,” 15
Aldermen’s Wars, 15–16, 786
Alford, William, 762–763
alien-smuggling, 202–203
Allen, Bill, 16
Allen, Jack, 377, 546
Allen, John, 16–17
Allen, Lizzie, 17, 29,
228–229
Allen massacre, 17–18
Allison, Clay, 18–19, 200
Allison, Dorothy, 19–20
Allman, John, 20–21, 677
Almodovar, Louisa, 21
Almodovar, Terry, 21
Alta, Utah, 21–22
Alterie, Louis “Two Gun,”
22, 624, 660
Altgeld, John P., 22–23, 247,
402–403, 497
Alvord, Burt, 23, 142, 821,
848
Amatuna, Samuzzo
“Samoots,” 23–24, 346
Amberg, Louis “Pretty,”
24–25
American Protective League
(APL), 25–26
American Revolutionary
Army, 633
American Tragedy, An
(Dreiser), 350
America’s Devil’s Island. See
Alcatraz prison
Ammon, Robert, 604
anarchist(s), 402
Berkman, Alexander,
83–85
Czolgosz, Leon, 42, 241,
632
Sacco, Nicola, 778–779
Vanzetti, Bartolomeo,
778–779
Anastasia, Albert, 26–28,
864
assassination of, 24, 34,
225, 336, 338, 347,
511, 550
Duke’s Restaurant and,
284
grave of, 370
Masseria, “Joe the Boss”
and, 168, 589, 590
Murder, Inc. and, 128,
214, 510, 631–632,
805
Mustache Petes and, 638
Normandie, S. S., 653
Schuster, Arnold and,
792, 860, 871–872,
954
in syndicate, 261, 622,
673, 787
underworld conventions,
46, 401
Anastasio, Anthony “Tough
Tony,” 26, 28, 650, 653
anatomy and crime, 29
Anderson, Dutch, 176–177
Andrew, Thomas, 88
Andrews, Shang, 29
Andrews Committee, 29–30
Angel of Sing Sing, 514–515
animal criminals, 30
animal lynching, 30–31
Annenberg, Moses L., 31,
46, 737–738
Anselmi, Albert, 31–32, 158,
346, 565, 661, 890, 962
anti-Catholic hate crimes,
398
anti-Catholic riots, 696
anti-foreigner gang, 437–438
Anti-Horse Thief Association, 33
anti-Islamic hate crimes, 398
anti-Jewish hate crimes,
398–399
antimiscegenation laws, 607
anti-Mormon killings,
400–401, 826–827
anti-Red hysteria, 678–679
Apache gangs, 33
Apache Indian job, 33
Apache Kid, 33–34
Apalachin Conference,
34–35, 62, 347
APL. See American Protective League
Arbuckle, Roscoe “Fatty,”
35–36
Argos Lectionary, 36–37
Arizona Rangers, 37, 625
Arkansas Tom, 248–249,
448
Arkansas toothpick, 37
Arlington, Josie, 37–38
Armstrong, William “Duff,”
530–531
Arnold, Philip, 370–371
Arnold, Stephen, 38
arrest, citizen’s, 38–39
arrest procedures, 39
arson, 39–40
“Artichoke King,” 872–873
Ash, Wallace and William,
321, 602
Ashby, James, 40
Ashley, John, 40–42
assassin(s). See also would-be
assassin(s)
975
Booth, John Wilkes,
528–530
Czolgosz, Leon, 42, 241,
632
Ford, Charles, 234, 322,
461, 536–537
Ford, Robert Newton,
234, 322–323, 422,
461, 536–537, 666
Guiteau, Charles Julius,
42, 376–377
Nosair, Sayyid A., 477
Orchard, Harry, 405,
567, 672, 847
Oswald, Lee Harvey, 43,
675–677, 774
Ray, James Earl, 43,
741–742
Sirhan, Sirhan Bishara,
43, 817–818
Weiss, Carl Austin, 43,
542
White, Dan, 939
Zangara, Joseph, 42–43,
174, 966–967
assassination, 42–43
assassination attempt victim
Ford, Gerald, 43, 796
Frick, Henry Clay, 83
Gaynor, William J., 42
Jackson, Andrew, 42,
456
Reagan, Ronald, 43,
421–422
Roosevelt, Franklin D.,
42–43, 174, 966
Roosevelt, Theodore, 42,
766–767
Truman, Harry S., 43,
796, 899–900
Wallace, George W., 43,
120
assassination victim(s)
Cermak, Anton J., 43,
174, 966
Garfield, James A., 42,
376–377
James, Jesse, 322–323
Kahane, Rabbi Meir, 477
Kennedy, John F., 43,
675–677, 774, 795,
796
Kennedy, Robert F., 43,
817–818
King, Martin Luther, Jr.,
43, 741–742
Lincoln, Abraham, 42,
283, 528–530, 625
Long, Huey, 43, 542
McKinley, William, 42,
241
Malcolm X, 43, 578–579
Milk, Harvey, 939
Moscone, George, 939
Steunenberg, Frank, 405,
567, 613, 672, 701,
847
Yablonski, Joseph, 117
assault and battery, 43
Astor Place Riots, 43–44, 488
Atlanta Boys Convoy, 11, 44
Atlanta Centennial Park
bombing, 44–45
Atlanta children murders,
45–46
Atlantic City Conference,
46–47, 801
Attica prison riot, 47–49,
721
Atzerodt, George, 42, 530
Auburn prison system,
719–720
Audett, Blackie, 478, 691
Aunt Josie, 728
Aurora, Nevada, 49
auto theft, 49, 850–851
auto theft law, Dyer Act, 286
Averill, James, 49–50, 172
The Awful Disclosures of
Maria Monk, 614–615
B
Baca, Elfego, 51
badger game, 51–52, 100,
184–185
Badman and Bodie, 52
bagman, 52
bag woman. See Hill, Virginia
bail, 39, 52–53
Bailey, F. Lee, 53–54, 403,
405, 807
Baker, Arthur “Doc,” 64–65
Baker, Cullen M., 54
Baker, Joseph, 54–55
Baker, Norman, 598
Baker, Rosetta, 55
Baker Estate, 55
Bakker, Rev. Jim, 55–56
Balestrero, Christopher
Emanuel, 608
Ball, Joe, 56
ballooning, 56–57
Bananas, Joe. See Bonnano,
Joe
Banana War, 57–58
banco, 58
bandit(s)
Cortina, Juan, 223,
566–567
Mullinen, Joe, 627
Murieta, Joaquin, 633
Starr, Belle, 217, 745,
843–844, 845, 964
Vasquez, Tiburcio,
914–915
Bandit Queen. See Starr, Belle
Banditti of the Plains, The
(Mercer), 58, 466–467
bank robber(s). See also safecracker(s)
Ashley, John, 40–42
Bristol Bill, 122–123
Cornett, Brack, 221–222
Dillinger, John. See
Dillinger, John Herbert
Dobbs, Johnny, 272,
524, 582
The Encyclopedia of American Crime
Franklin, Rufus
“Whitey,” 12, 14, 329,
548
Green, Edward, 372
Hope, Jimmy, 434
jug markers, 472–473
Lamm, Harman K.
“Baron,” xiii, 59, 222,
263, 472, 509–510
Leslie, George Leonidas,
59, 102, 434, 522–524,
537, 582
Lucas, James, 329, 548
Miller, Bill “The Killer,”
321, 602
Shinburn, Mark, 59,
101, 582, 808–809
Shockley, Sam Richard,
13, 14, 233, 809–810,
881
Starr, Henry, 844–845
Sutton, Willie “The
Actor,” 59, 180, 792,
859–860, 871
typical, 60
Underhill, Wilbur, 908
Warner, Matt, 167, 494,
927
Wilcoxson, Bobby Randell “One-Eye,”
946–947
bank robberies, 59–61, 909.
See also safecracking
bank robberies—bounties, 61
bankruptcy fraud, 61–62
Bannack, Montana Territory,
62, 79, 708–709, 818
Barbara, Joseph, Sr., 35, 62
Barbe, Warren Gilbert,
62–63
Barboza, Joseph, 688
Barker, Doc, 12, 64–65, 313
Barker, Freddie, 63–65, 479,
480, 481, 619–620
Barker, “Ma,” 63–64, 479
Barker brothers, 59, 64–65
Barlow, J. R., 451
Barnaby, Josephine, 369
Barnes, Leroy “Nicky,”
65–66, 336
Barnum, P. T., 137, 139, 161,
162, 416
Baron of Arizona, 742–743
Barr, Levi S., 558–559
barrel murders, 66–67
Barrie, Peter Christian
“Paddy,” 67
Barrow, Buck, 107, 108
Barrow, Clyde. See Bonnie
and Clyde
Barrows, Sydney Biddle,
67–68
Barter, Rattlesnake Dick,
68–69
Barton, James R., 320
Bass, Sam, 69–70
Burrow, Rube and, 142
Davis, Jack and, 250
Hall, Lee and, 382
Jackson, Frank and,
456–457
in Mint Gambling
Saloon, 517
Murphy, Jim and,
633–634
Bassett, Charlie, 274, 386
Bassity, Jerome, 70, 775
Batavia Street Gang, 182
Bates, Albert, 484, 804
Bath, Michigan, 70–71
Batista, Fulgencio, 28, 511
bats, 71
Battaglia, Sam “Teets,” 71
Batters, Joe. See Accardo,
Anthony Joseph
Battle Annie, 505
Battle of Ingalls. See Ingalls,
Oklahoma Territory, Battle of
Bayonne-Abriel gang, 71–72
Beachy, Hill, 576–577
Beadle, William, 72
Bean, Roy, 72, 187
Beauchamp, Jereboam O.,
73–74
Beck, Dave, 74
Beck, Martha, 74–75
Becker, Abe, 76
Becker, Charles, 75–76, 185,
229, 380, 968
Becker, Jennie, 76
Beckett sisters, 76–77
Beckwourth, Jim, 77, 829,
953
begging, 77–78
Behan, John, 78, 119, 124
Beidler, John X., 78–79
Bell, Tom, 79
Bender family, 79–80
Benedict’s Sentence, 80–81
Beni, Jules, 81–82, 820
Bennett, James V., 798–799
Benson family murders, 82
Bergdoll, Grover Cleveland,
82–83
Berger, Meyer, 83
Berkman, Alexander, 83–85
Berkowitz, David R.,
832–833
Berman, Otto “Abbadabba,”
85, 790
Berrett-Molway taxi cab
case, 85
Bertillon system, 85–86,
312–313, 937
Betenson, Lula Parker, 167
Bethea, Rainey, 86, 304
Bianchi, Kenneth, 420–421
Bickford, Maria, 86–87,
823
bicycle police, 87–88
Biddle brothers, 88
Bielaski, A. Bruce, 25, 26
bigamy, 89–90
Bigelow, Charlie, 461
Biggy, William J., 628
Big Nose Kate Elder,
427–428
Big Six, 208, 284
Big Store, 89, 131
Biler Avenue, 90
Billee, John, 90–91
Billington, John, xiii, 91,
303, 631
Billy the Kid, xiii, 8, 91–93
accomplices of, 115–116,
125, 198, 662–663,
775, 953
grave of, 370
killer of, 342–343, 689
Tunstall, John and, 532,
902–903
victims of, 367, 378, 669
Bilotti, Tommy, 169
Binaggio, Charles, 93–94
Bioff, Willie Morris, 94, 148,
723
Bird Cage Theatre, 94–95
Birdman of Alcatraz, 12,
855–856
Bisbee (Arizona) kidnapping,
95
Bisbee Massacre, 95–96,
484, 840
Bismarck Hall, 96
Black Bart, 96
Blackbeard, 99–100,
106–107, 702
Black Dahlia, 96–97, 212
Black Hand, 97–98, 570
Cardinella, Salvatore
“Sam,” 162
Genna brothers. See
Genna brothers
Lupo the Wolf, 552–553,
632
Morello family, 621
Shotgun Man, 813
Sweeney’s Bombers,
861–862
victims of, 165, 253, 577
White Hand Society and,
943
Yale, Frankie, 961–962
blackmail, 100–101, 202
Black Maria, 98
Black Patch War, 884
Black Sox Scandal, 98–99,
771
Blackstone, Sir William,
615–616
Bliss, George Miles, 59, 101,
780, 809
Bliss Bank Ring, 101–102
Blixt, Claus, 351–352, 443
Bloods, 339, 802
Bloody Angle, 102
Bloody Inks, 102
“Bloody Mama.” See Barker,
“Ma”
Bloody Tubs, 102
Bloody Ward, 15, 252
Bloomingdale, Alfred,
102–104
Bloomingdale-Morgan affair,
102–104
bluebeard
Cline, Alfred L., 197
Watson, J. P., 928–929
Blue Book, 853
blue-sky laws, 104
Boatright, Buck, 89
Bodie, California, 52, 104
“body box,” 221
Boesky, Ivan, 104, 524
Boggs, Lillburn W., 401
Bolber-Petrillo murder ring,
105
Bolles, Don, 105–106
bombers-for-hire gang(s)
Sangerman’s Bombers,
786
Sweeney’s Bombers,
861–862
bombing(s)
aerial, 111
Apache Indian job, 33
Atlanta Centennial Park
bombing, 44–45
Bath, Michigan, 70–71
Haymarket affair, 22,
154, 402–403
Los Angeles Times
bombing, 140, 141,
545–546, 763
New York World’s Fair
bombing, 649
Oklahoma City bombing, 666–667
Wall Street explosion,
924–925
World Trade Center
bombing, 958–960
976
bondsmen, 52–53
Bonnano, Bill, 57, 58, 572
Bonnano, Joe, 168, 334, 571
Banana War, 57–58, 204,
208
at Havana Convention,
401
Bonnet, Jeanne, 106
Bonnet, Major Stede,
106–107, 702
Bonney, Anne, 702
Bonney, William H., 91–93
Bonnie and Clyde, 107–109,
730
accomplice of, 385
killer of, 61, 383–385,
873
Boodle Gang, 109
book whippings, 109
Boorn brothers, 109–110
boot camps, 110–111
Booth, John Wilkes, 42, 220,
283, 528–530
Boot Hill, 111
bootlegger(s)
Drucci, Vincent
“Schemer.” See Drucci,
Vincent “Schemer”
Gordon, Waxey (Irving
Wexler), 261,
359–360, 801
Madden, Owney “The
Killer,” 25, 201,
568–569
Purple gang, 418, 703,
725, 732
Touhy, Roger “Terrible,”
730, 733, 890–892
bootlegging, ix–x, 111–113,
339, 725
bordello(s). See brothel(s);
madam(s); vice district(s)
Borden, Lizzie, 113
Bordenmania, 114
Borne, Henry, 285–286
Boston, Patience, 114
Boston police strike, 114
Boston Strangler, 54,
259–260, 443
Botkin, Cordelia, 114–115
bounties, 61, 677
bounty jumping, 115, 563
Bowdre, Charlie, 93,
115–116, 342, 370
Bowers, Cecelia, 116
Bowers, J. Milton, 116
Bowery Boys, 116–117, 253,
278, 760
bowie knife, 117, 785
Bow Kum, 115
Bowman, Mace, 19
Bowman, Margaret, 136
“box busting.” See safecracking
Boyd, Jabez, 117
Boyle, W. A. “Tony,”
117–118
Brady, Al, 118
Brady, Bob, 908
Brady, William, 532
Brady gang, 118
branding, 118–119, 206,
581, 638, 923–924
Brandley, Clarence, 154–155
Brannan, Samuel, 916–917
Bras Coupe, 119
Brassfield, George, 714
Brazel, Wayne, 342
Breakenridge, William, 119
Bredell, Baldwin, 141,
226–227
Bremer, Arthur Herman, 43,
120
Bremer, Edward George, 64,
65, 479, 620, 968, 969
Brennan, Molly, 120–121,
592
Bretz, Peter, 443
bribery, police, 101–102
Bridgeport, Shirley, 352
briefcase agents, 121
Briggen, Joseph, 121
Briggs, A. M., 25
Briggs, Hattie, 121–122
Brink’s robbery, 122
Bristol Bill, 122–123
“broadcloth mob,” 348
Broadway Mob, 7, 123–124
Brocius, William B. “Curly
Bill,” 124, 194, 195, 288,
289, 376
Broderick, Johnny, 210
broken homes and crime,
124–125
Brooks, David, 221
Brooks, Preston S., 858
Brooks, William L. “Buffalo
Bill,” 125, 287
brothel(s). See also
madam(s); pimp(s); prostitute(s); vice district(s)
Chicken Ranch, 186
creep joint, 232
crooked, 232
floating hog ranches,
318–319
Green Tree dance house,
374–375
House of All Nations,
438–439
House of Mirrors, 229,
814
John Allen’s Dance
House, 16–17
Maison Coquet, 578
Municipal Brothel,
627–628
Panel house, 239,
679–680
Parisian Mansion, 70
Prairie Queen, 17, 718,
945
Red Light Saloon, 744
Warehouse Brothel, 927
Weiss Club, 297, 934
brothel keeper(s)
Heitler, Mike “de Pike,”
409–410, 650
Lowe, Joseph “Rowdy
Joe,” 274, 546–547
brothel phrase, “Company,
girls!”, 208, 924
Brothers, Leo V., 536
Brown, Billie, 350
Brown, Clara, 674
Brown, David Paul, 429
Brown, Edmund G., 182,
239
Brown, Frances, 409
Brown, Hendry, 125
Brown, J. B., 154
Brown, Neal, 191, 274, 386
Brown, Robert, 331
Brown, Robert S., 61
Brown, Sam, 125–126
Brown, Tom, 469
Brown, William, 428–429
Brown’s Chicken mass murders, 126
Brown’s Hole, 126, 167
Brownsville affair, 126–127
Bryan, Stephanie, 1
Index
Bryan, William Jennings,
248, 792–793
Buccieri, Fiore “Fifi,” 127
Buchalter, Louis “Lepke,”
127–129
at Atlantic City Conference, 46
Murder, Inc. and, 26,
510, 519, 631, 704,
749, 805, 954
Orgen, “Little Augie,”
262, 490, 505, 673
in syndicate, 550
Buchanan, Dr. Robert,
129–130, 940
Buck gang, 130–131
Buckminster, Fred, 131–132,
373, 932
Buffalino, Russell A., 132
Buffalo Blacks murders,
132–133
buffaloing, 133
Bug and Meyer Mob, 133
bugging, 954–956
Bulette, Julia, 133–135
Bull, Dixey, 702
The Bulletin, 768
Bummers, 135
Bunch, Eugene “Captain
Gerald,” 135
“bunco trail,” 131
Bundy, Carol Mary, 195–196
Bundy, Ted, 135–137, 195,
374, 800, 868–869
Buntin, Thomas C., 450–451
Buntline, Ned, 43–44, 273,
472
Bunty Kate, 559
Buono, Angelo, Jr., 420–421
Burdell, Dr. Harvey, 137–139
burglar(s)
cat burglar, 170–171
Doty, Sile, 278
Merrick, Suds, 600
Burke, “Billy the Kid,” 363
Burke, Elmer “Trigger,” 122,
139
Burke, Fred “Killer,” 782
Burke, Honest John, 138
Burke, James “Jimmy the
Gent,” 552
Burke, William, 140
Burkett, J. H., 295
Burns, Robert Elliott, 140,
175
Burns, William J., 140–141,
328, 510, 545, 597, 763
Burns, William “Sleepy Bill,”
99
Burrell, Garland, Jr., 908
Burr-Hamilton duel, 142
Burrow, Rube, 142
Burton, Elijah, 411
Burton, Mary, 142
Burts, Matthew, 142–143
Bush, George, 45
Bush, George W., 154, 155,
789
Bush, Jeb, 154, 301
bushwhacker, 143
Buster from Chicago, 143,
171
Butcher, Jake, 143–144
Butler, Andrew P., 858
Butler, Smedley D., 30
Butler, William J., 326
Butterworth, Mary, 144,
226
Byrd, Harry F., 18
Byrnes, Thomas F., 102,
144–145, 252, 440, 668
C
cackle-bladder, 146
Cahill, Bob, 345
Cahill, Frank “Windy,” 91
Calamity Jane, 146–147,
415
Caldwell, Dehundra, 445
Caldwell v. Mississippi, 156
Calhoun, Clay, 21, 677
Calico Jim, 147–148
California Outlaws, xiii, 148,
833, 894
Callahan, Gerard “Cheesebox,” 955
Camp, Martha, 679
Campagna, Louis “Little
New York,” 148–149
Campbell, Bertram,
149–150, 608, 876
Campbell, Caryn, 136
Campbell, Edmund, 245
Campione, Frank, 162
Canada Bill, 469
Canal Street, 150–151, 318
Candelaria, Nevada, 152
Cannary, Martha Jane, 146
cannibal(s)
Dahmer, Jeffrey, 242–243
Donner Party, 276–277
Fish, Albert, 314–315
Helm, Boone, 410–411
Packer, Alfred, 678
Williams, William S.
“Old Bill,” 829, 953
Cannon, Jack, 470
cannonball, 780
Cantellops, Nelson, 35, 348,
350
Canton, Frank M., 152, 466,
739
Capezio, Tough Tony, 4
capital punishment, xi,
152–156
capital punishment of children, 156–157, 474
Caplan, David, 545
Capone, Alphonse “Scarface
Al,” 157–159, 730. See
also Capone mob
Aiello, Joseph and, 9–10,
148
in Alcatraz prison, 11,
548, 720, 830
at Atlantic City Conference, 46
birthplace of, xii
bodyguard of, 148–149
bootlegging and, 725,
891–892
brothers of, 159–160
defense lawyer of, 519
Drucci, Vincent
“Schemer” and, 281
in Five Points Gang, 231,
290, 317, 572
Genna brothers and,
23–24, 32, 346
grave of, 369
Hoover, Herbert Clark
and, 431–432
Lingle, “Jake” and, 536
Lustig, “Count” and,
554
Moran, “Bugs” and,
618–619
nickname of, 650
O’Banion, Dion and,
332, 618, 661, 933
popularity of, ix, 258,
339
prostitution and, 409
screenplay about,
406–407
in Seven Group, 801
Torrio, John and,
889–890
White Hand Gang and,
942
Wilson, Frank J. and,
953–954
Yale, Frankie and,
961–962
Capone, Frank, 159, 191
Capone, James, 160
Capone, Louis, 129, 631,
632, 704, 749
Capone, Ralph “Bottles,” 160
Capone mob
Bioff, Willie Morris, 94,
148, 723
Cicero, Ill., 191, 402
College Kidnappers and,
202
Colts and, 739
Four Deuces, 327, 409,
618
Guzik, “Greasy Thumb.”
See Guzik, Jake
“Greasy Thumb”
Hunt, Sam “Golf Bag,”
4, 441
Lindbergh kidnapping
and, 534
Lombardo, Antonio
“The Scourge,” 23,
541
McGurn, Machine Gun
Jack, 4, 564–565, 577,
619, 783
Nelson, George “Baby
Face,” 59, 266, 267,
473, 643–645, 733
Nitti, Frank. See Nitti,
Frank
Pineapple Primary and,
699–700, 824–825
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. See St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
Silver Street, 816–817
Standard Oil Building,
Battles of, 841–842
Untouchables and, 645
Capote, Truman, 198
Car Barn Gang, 160–161
Cardiff Giant, 161–162
Cardinella, Salvatore “Sam,”
162
card trick suicide, 162
Carey, Hugh L., 47, 475, 793
Carillo, Jose Antonio, 77
carjacking, 850–851
Carlsen, Betty, 580
Carlton, Handsome Harry,
163, 439–440
Carnes, Clarence, 13
carnival gyps, 163–164
Carpenter, Richard, 164
Carroll, Tommy, 266, 267,
643
Carroll’s orgy, 164–165
Carson, Ann, 165
Carson, Joe, 593
Carson, Wild Maggie, 325
Carter, James R., 250, 626
Carter, Jimmy, 422
car thieves, 49, 850–851
Caruso, Enrico, 98, 165, 635
Carver, Bill, 767–768
Carver, Frank, 579
Casey, James P., 165–166
Cash, Leland S., 837
977
cash machine rackets, 166
Cassidy, Butch, 166–167. See
also Wild Bunch
Hanks, O. C. “Camilla”
and, 386
hideout of, 126, 426
Kid Curry and, 490
Lay, Elza and, 516
Place, Etta and, 705
rivals of, 488
Sundance Kid and,
858–859
Tracy, Harry and, 893
Warner, Matt, 927
Cassini, Dennis, 120
Castellammarese War, 143,
168, 549, 585
Castellano, Paul, 169–170,
361, 368
Castillano, Jose, 340
castration as punishment,
170, 206, 638
Castro, Fidel, 819, 894
Catania, James, 143
Catania curse, 171–172
cat burglar, 170–171
Catchpole, Judith, 447
Catena, Jerry, 335
Cater, Nathaniel, 46
Cattle Kate, 49–50, 172, 466
cattle rustling, 172–173, 938
cave-in-rock pirates, 173
Caverly, John, 248, 520
Center Street, 173–174
Cermak, Anton J., 43, 174,
652, 966
Cero, Gangi, 174
Cero-Gallo case, 174
Chabas, Paul, 209
Chacon, Augustine, 37, 625
Chadwell, Bill, 655, 848
Chadwick, Cassie, 175
chain gangs, 140, 175
Champion, Nathan D.,
175–176
Chandler, Cynthia, 195
Chandler, Tommy, 803
Chapin, Charles E., 768–769
Chapman, Gerald, 176–178
Chapman, John T., 178–179,
250
Chapman, Mark David, 179
Chapman, Mrs. James, 178,
906
Chapman, William, 604–605
Chappell, Hally, 469
Chappleau, Joseph Ernst,
179–180
Charlton Street Gang, 180
Chase, John Paul, 643
check passing, 180–181, 875
Cherokee Bill, 181–182, 325
Cherry Hill Gang, 182
Chessman, Caryl, 182–183,
302, 420
Chicago amnesia, 183
Chicago fire looting,
183–184
Chicago May, 184–185
Chicago piano, 185
Chicago Times, 185–186
Chicken Ranch, 186
child killer(s), 447–448. See
also kidnapper(s)
Crimmins, Alice, 234
Fish, Albert, 314–315
Hatcher, Charles, 397
Smith, Susan, 827–828
Williams, Wayne B., 46
Chilton, Roland J., 124
Chinatown. See tong wars
Chinese, lynching of, 555
Chinese gangs, 417–418
Chinese riots, 186–189
Chisum, John, 92, 532, 902
Chivington, John M., 77,
189
Choate, Rufus B., 87
Chobert, Robert, 156
Choctaw legacy, 189
Chowchilla school bus kidnapping, 189–190, 443,
493
Christie, Ned, 190–191
Christopher, Joseph, 133
Churchill, Dal, 184
Cicero, Ill., 191, 402
Cicotte, Eddie, 98
“Cigar” problem, 335
Cimarron County Seat War,
191–192, 227
Cincinnati riots, 192
circus grifting, 192–193
Cirofisi, Francesco “Dago
Frank,” 520
Ciucci, Vincent, 193
Civil War gold hoax,
193–194
Claffey-Lahey feud, 507–508
Claiborne, Billy, 194, 522,
665
claim jumping, 194
Clanton, Joseph Isaac “Ike,”
124, 194–195, 664–665,
821
Clanton, Newman H. “Old
Man,” 195, 376
Clanton, William, 111, 195,
289, 665
Clanton-Earp feud. See O.K.
Corral
Clark, Dona, 229
Clark, Douglas, 195–196,
421
Clark, Ed, 34
Clark, James G., 196
Clark, Jennie, 497–498
Clark, Ramsey, 630, 651,
717, 798, 799
Clark, Russell, 264, 265, 266
Clark, Tom, 754
Clarke, Donald Henderson,
307
Clark’s Battalion, 196
Clay Pigeon of Chinatown.
See Mock Duck
“clean” hanging, 298
Cleary, Ed, 936
Cleary, Katherine, 196–197
Clegg, Ellen, 582
Cleland, John, 308
Cleveland, Grover, 33, 150
Clifford, Lizzie, 680
Clifton, Dan, 197
Cline, Alfred L., 197
Clinton, Bill, 45
Clinton, George, 272
Clinton, Henry L., 138
Cluchette, John, 249
Clum, John P., 197–198,
447, 887–888
Clutter family murders, 198
Cobb, Gail A., 713
Cochran, Johnnie, Jr., 815
cockfighting, 198
Cody, John Patrick, 311
Coe, George Washington,
198
Coe, Phil, 198–199, 415,
801–802, 878–879
“coed killer,” 487
Coffelt, Leslie, 43
The Encyclopedia of American Crime
coffin, double-decker, 199
Cohen, Hymie, 437
Cohen, Mickey, 199–200
Colbeck, Dinty, 292
Colbert, Chunk, 18, 200
Cole, Teddy, 11
Coleman, Edward, 200–201
Colfax, Schuyler, 232
Coll, Vincent “Mad Dog,”
53, 168, 201–202, 519,
550, 586, 650
Collazo, Oscar, 43, 796,
899–900
College Kidnappers, 202
Collings, Mary Margaret,
496
Collins, Dapper Don,
202–204, 554
Collins, George, 120
Collins, Joel, 69, 250
Collins, John Norman, 204
Collins, Lizzie, 336
Collins, Morgan A., 714
Collins, Shotgun, 273, 274
Collins, Walter, 204
Colner, Andrew, 363
Colombo, Joseph, Sr., 57,
204–206, 336, 370
Colonel Plug, 206
colonial custom(s)
book whippings, 109
trial by touch, 897
colonial punishment, 206
branding. See branding
flogging, 319
juvenile delinquency,
|474
mutilation, 638
pillory, 699
Salem witchcraft trials,
220–221, 593, 784
Colosimo, Big Jim, 158, 332,
890
Colson, Charles W., 120
Colt .45, 208
Colt, John C., 206–207,
886–887
Colts, 738–739
Columbine High School massacre, 788, 790
Colvin, Harvey, 564
Colvin, Russell, 109–110
Comiskey, Charles A., 98
Commission, The, 208
“Company, girls!”, 208,
924
Compton, Veronica Lynn,
421
computer crime, 209, 294
Comstock, Anthony, 209,
799–800
Comstock, Nehemiah, 401
Condon, Dr. John F. “Jafsie,”
534
confessions, 209–211, 760,
876–877
confessions, false, 211–212
Conley, James, 328
Conlish, Pete, 373
con men. See swindler(s)
con men trick. See swindle(s)
Connelly, Charlie, 244
Connolly, John B., 74
Connors, Babe, 212–213
Connors, Charles “Ice
Wagon,” 651
Conroy, Robert, 534
conscience fund, 213
consigliere, 213–214, 350,
511, 541
contract, 214
convict communication system, knuckle voice, 499,
624
convict labor system,
214–215
convict lease battles, 215
Cook, Bill, 181
Cook, David J., 215, 283,
635
Cook, DeWitt Clinton, 616
Cook, Dr. Frederick A.,
215–216
Cook, Jim, 181
Cook, Rufus W., 721
Cook, William, 216–217
Cooke, Ann, 73
Cooke, John Raleigh, 869
Cookson Hills, Oklahoma,
217
Cooley, Scott, 217, 469,
588–589
Coolidge, Calvin, 114, 796
Coonan, Jimmy, 587
Cooney, Joe, 52
Coons, William, 217–218
“Cooper, D. B.”, 218, 819
Cooper, Irving Ben, 358
cooping, 218
Copeland, James, 218–219
Copeland, Joseph J., 21
copper, 219
Coppola, Ann, 219
Coppola, Michael “Trigger
Mike,” 219
Coppolino, Carmela, 220
Coppolino, Dr. Carl, 54,
219–220
Cora, Charles, 166
Corbett, Boston, 220
Corey, Giles, 220–221, 956
Corll, Dean, 221, 800
Corn, Nelson S., 472
Cornett, Brack, 221–222
Cornish, Harry, 612, 906
Corona, Juan, 222, 449–450
corporal punishment, abolition of. See prison
reformer(s)
corpus delicti, 222
corruption, 52, 711, 724
Bliss Bank Ring,
101–102
in Chicago, 157, 346,
391–392, 596, 824
judicial, 471–472, 585,
758–759
in New York, 75–76,
661–662, 712,
922–923, 949–951
Prohibition agents,
725–726
Teapot Dome scandal,
141, 305, 663, 868
Tweed Ring, 6, 904
corruption investigation
Andrews Committee,
29–30
Kefauver investigation.
See Kefauver investigation
Knapp Commission,
498–499, 772
Lexow Committee, 145,
525, 772, 951
Seabury investigation,
358, 772, 794, 923
Cortez, Gregorio, 222–223
Cortina, Juan, 223, 566–567
Cosa Nostra, 223, 571, 585,
586. See also Mafia
Costa, Gaetano, 97
Costello, Frank, 223–225
Anastasia, Albert and,
27, 34
assassination attempt on,
338, 349
at Atlantic City Conference, 46
in Big Six, 208, 284
in Broadway Mob, 123
funeral of, 332
gambling and, 512, 823
Genovese, Vito and, 338,
347
grave of, 370
Kefauver investigation
and, 483
Luciano, Lucky and, 7,
401, 549, 585, 653,
749, 922
Masseria, “Joe the Boss”
and, 168, 589
Moretti, Willie and, 621
Mustache Petes and, 638,
813
in syndicate, 128, 550,
801, 970
wiretapper of, 955
Coster, F. Donald, 635–637
Cotroni gang, 225, 572
counterfeiter(s)
Bredell, Baldwin,
225–226
Bristol Bill, 122–123
Butterworth, Mary, 144,
226
Carson, Ann, 165
Jim the Penman, 227
Oster gang, 675
Tatum, Joshua, 225
Taylor, Arthur, 225–226
counterfeiting, 225–227
county seat wars, 191–192,
227
Courtright, Longhair Jim,
227–228
Cowley, Sam, 643–644
Coy, Bernard Paul, 12–13,
14, 228, 233, 810, 881
Coy, Jacob, 315
Coy, Wayne, 264
Crabb, Christopher Columbus, 17, 228–229
Craft, Gerald, 229
Craig, Andy, 495
Crampton, Grace F., 177
Crane, Stephen, 75, 229–230
Cranston, Alan, 480
Crater, Joseph Force,
230–231
Cravens, Ben, 957
Crawford, Foster, 570
Crazy Butch gang, 231
Crazy Eddie’s insane fraud,
231–232
credit card fraud, 459
Credit Mobilier Scandal,
|232
creep joint, 232
Cretzer, Joseph Paul
“Dutch,” 13, 14, 228,
233–234, 810, 881
crime
abortion and, 2–3
age, 8, 9, 474–475
anatomy and, 29
broken homes and,
124–125
computer, 209
gender and, 9, 124
hate. See hate crimes
hypnotism and, 442–443
978
punishment for. See punishment for crime
Crime and Punishment
(Neier), 170, 799
Crime and the Man
(Hooton), 29
crime clocks, 234
Crime in America (Clark),
630, 717, 798
crime reduction effort,
881–883
Crimmins, Alice, 234
Crips, 339, 802
Crittenden, Thomas T.,
234–235, 322, 323, 461,
536
Croker, Richard, 525
Crook, George, 447
Crowe, Richard H., 293
Crowe, Robert E., 699
Crowinshield brothers, 498
Crowley, Francis “Two
Gun,” 235–236
Croy, Homer, 461–462
Cruz, Florentino, 288, 289,
428
Cudahy, Edward A., Jr., 492
Cugino, Anthony, 898
cult leader(s)
George, Christian, 348
Manson, Charles, 43,
411, 583–585
Cummings, Homer, 14, 44,
453
Cunanan, Andrew, 236–237
Cunningham, Emma, 138
Cunningham’s revenge,
237–238
Cuomo, Mario, 391, 793
Curran, One-Lung, 357
Curry, Big Nose George, 238,
489
Curry, Peter, 947
Cusick, William, 159
Custom House Place, 239
Cutler, Raymond Christopher, 239
Cutler lie detector decision,
239
Cyclone Louie, 239–241,
491
Czolgosz, Leon, 42, 241, 632
D
Dahma, Hubert, 453
Dahmer, Jeffrey, 242–243
Dalhover, James, 118
Dalitz, Moe, 46, 512, 631,
646, 801
Dalton, Bill, 448
Dalton, J. Frank, 461–462,
463
Dalton brothers, 63,
243–245, 570, 649,
877–878, 937
Daly, John, 245
Dance of Death, 245, 579,
684
D’Andrea, Anthony, 15–16,
252
Daniels, Ed, 700
Daniels, James, 245–246,
268
Daniels, Murl, 246
Danites, 246
D’Anna, Anthony, 482–483
Dannan, Emmanuel,
246–247
“Dapper Don.” See Gotti,
John
d’Arlington, Lobrano, 37
Darrow, Clarence Seward,
247–248
Altgeld, John P. and, 23
Burns, Robert Elliott
and, 140
Haywood, William and,
405, 567, 613, 672,
847
Leopold and Loeb and,
520–521, 906
McNamara brothers and,
141, 545–546
Massie Case, 590
Monkey Trial, 248,
792–793
Rogers, Earl and, 763
witnesses and, 609
Daugherty, Harry M., 306,
663
Daugherty, Roy, 248–249
d’Autremont brothers,
407–409
Davenport, Julia, 945
Davenport, Lizzie, 239
Davies, Jack, 69
Davis, Allen Davis, 301
Davis, Angela, 249–250
Davis, Charlie, 744
Davis, Dixie, 791
Davis, Edwin F., 487
Davis, Jack, 178, 250, 894
Davis, Lewis, 130
Davis, Lucky, 130
Davis, Sammy, Jr., 45
Davis, T. Cullen, 403, 404
Davis, Volney, 65
Dawson, Robert, 412
Day, Gertie, 250–251
Daybreak Boys, 8, 251, 427
dead line, 252
Deadly Dora, 151
dead man’s eyes, 252
dead man’s hand, 252, 415,
560
Dead Man’s Tree, 15, 252
Dead Rabbits, 116, 253,
338, 760
DeAngelis, Tony, 941
Death Corner, 253
death penalty. See capital
punishment; execution(s)
Debs, Eugene V., 247, 682
debtors, imprisonment of,
254
DeConcini, Dennis, 480
Deep Nightstick, 254
Deep Throat, 254
Defenbach, Marie, 254–255,
451
defense lawyer(s)
Bailey, F. Lee, 53–54,
403, 405, 807
Choate, Rufus B., 87
Cochran, Johnnie, Jr., 815
Darrow, Clarence. See
Darrow, Clarence
Delmas, Delphin, 874
Fallon, William J.,
306–307, 762
Foreman, Percy, 323–324
Giesler, Jerry, 680–681
Haynes, Richard “Racehorse,” 323, 403–405
Houston, Temple L., 439
Howe and Hummel,
439–440, 446, 523, 582
Kunstler, William M.,
477
Leibowitz, Samuel S.,
201, 359, 518–519,
609, 793–794
Index
Lincoln, Abraham,
530–531, 700
Maris, Herbert L.,
587–588
Pruiett, Moman,
728–730
Rogers, Earl, 762–764
Williams, Edward Bennett, 951–953
De Feo, Ronald, Jr., 251
DeFreeze, Donald, 405–406
Deger, Lawrence E., 273, 274
Degnan, Suzanne, 409
de Kaplany, Dr. Geza,
251–252
Dekker, Albert, 255
de la Haye, Paul, 170
Dellacroce, Aniello, 169,
361, 549
Delmas, Delphin, 874
DeLorean, John, 255–257
“delusion test,” 449
Demara, Ferdinand Waldo,
Jr., 257
Dempsey, Jack, 78
Deneen, Charles S., 699
Denning, Maurice, 478, 691
Dennison, Stephen, 257–258
Denver’s “Spiderman” Murderer, 696
De Palma, William, 252
Depression, the Great, 258
derrick, the Folsom, 258,
623
derringer, 258–259
DeSalvo, Albert H., 54,
259–260, 443
DeSimone, Frank, 57
DeSimone, Thomas, 552
desperado, Tracy, Harry,
167, 893–894
Destroying Angels, 246
The Detection of Murder
(Kessler and Weston), 628
detective(s)
Burns, William J. See
Burns, William J.
Byrnes, Thomas F., 102,
144–145, 252, 440,
668
Fuhrman, Mark, 815
McParland, James, 567,
612–613, 672
Mealli, Michael, 621
Morrisey, John J., 374
O’Farrell, Val, 520
Osnato, Jack, 840
Parker, Ellis, 535,
682–683
Pinkerton, Allan, 700
range detectives,
739–740
roundsmen, 765, 773
Schoemaker, William
“Shoes,” 372
Siringo, Charles Angelo,
701, 818
Smith, Frank, 276
Wooldridge, Clifton,
239, 322, 680,
957–958
Deubler, Mary, 3\7–38
Deubler, Peter, 37
Dever, William E., 22
“the Devil,” 162
Devil’s River Valley, 260
Devine, John, 802–803
Devol, George, 260, 469,
760
DeVore, Duane T., 869
Dewees, W. B., 355
Dewey, Thomas E., 260–261
Buchalter, Lepke and,
127, 128
Gordon, Waxey and, 359
Luciano, Lucky and, 28,
550
Manton, Martin T. and,
585
Schultz, Dutch and, 85,
631, 791
Dewey Hotel Gang, 722–723
Diallo, Amadou, 711
Diamond, Jack “Legs,”
261–263
bail bonding for, 53
Coll, Vincent “Mad
Dog” and, 201
Collins, Dapper Don
and, 203
death of, 791
Hotsy Totsy Club, 437
Lustig, Count and, 203,
554
nickname of, 650
Orgen, Little Augie and,
490, 673
diamond switch, 263
Díaz, Porfirio, 315, 501
Dick, Leroy, 80
Dickens, Charles, 316
Dickinson, Charles, 459
Di Cristina, Paul, 98
Diehl, Billy, 34
Dietrich, Walter, 202, 264
DiGregorio, Gaspar, 57
Dillinger: Dead or Alive?
(Nash and Offen), 267
Dillinger, John Herbert,
263–267
FBI and, 59, 118, 432,
730, 733
jug marker of, 473
partner of, 817
plastic surgery of, 313,
705
sentencing of, 799
wooden gun escape, 263,
265–266, 956–957,
963
Dillinger, John Herbert—
double, 267–268
Dillingham, Bill, 559
Dimsdale, Professor Thomas
J., 268
Dio, Johnny, 268–269, 577
Dirty Dozen Gang, 263, 269
“dirty” hanging, 298–299
DiSiglio, Rocco, 688
“divers,” 5
Dix, Dorothea Lynde, 269
DNA evidence, xii, 154,
269–271
Doane gang, 271, 315
Doan’s Store, 271–272
Dobbs, Johnny, 272, 524,
582
Dobie, J. Frank, 272
doctor, Moran, Dr. Joseph
Patrick, 619–620
Doctor’s Mob, 272–273
Dodge City, Kansas, 273
Earps, 287, 288, 289,
440, 811–812
Hand, Dora, 385
Holliday, Doc, 427
Loving, Cockeyed Frank,
546
Mastersons, 591, 592,
811–812
Mather, Mysterious
Dave, 593
Tilgham, Bill, 883
Dodge City Peace Commission, 273–274, 289, 812
Dodson, Richard Lee, 20
dogfighting, 274–275
Doheny, Edward L., 306,
868
Doherty, Jim, 24, 185
Dolak, Frank, 25
Dolan, Dandy Johnny, 275,
304, 946
Dolan, James J., 92, 532,
902
Dollar Store, 275
Donahue, Cornelius “Lame
Johnny,” 275–276
Donahue, Phil, 68
Donner Party, 276–277
Donohue, John J., 2–3
Doolin, Bill, 243, 277
Doolin gang, 277–278. See
also Ingalls, Oklahoma
Territory, Battle of
Clifton, Dan, 197
Daugherty, Roy, 249
Newcomb, George, 649
Three Guardsmen, 570,
878, 883
West, Little Dick, 937
door-knocker thieves, 278
Doto, Joseph, 7, 123
Doty, Sile, 278
double-decker coffin, 199
Douglas, Joe, 582
Douglas, Stephen A., 185
Douglass, Joey, 492, 770
Dowling, Tom, 21
Downer, George, 80
Downing, Delphine, 75
Doyle, Little Patsy, 569
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan,
567
Doyle, Vincent J., 764–765
“Dr. Death,” 154
Draft Riots, 117, 278–280,
398, 708
Dragna, Jack, 199
Draper, Shang, 51–52, 434,
524, 582
Dreiser, Theodore, 350
Driscoll, Danny, 280–281,
946
drop swindle, 281
Drucci, Vincent “Schemer,”
281–282
Amatuna, Samoots and,
24
Capone, Al and, 933
funeral of, 332
horse killing, 624
O’Banion, Dion and, 660
Standard Oil Building,
Battles of, 841–842
drug dealers, xi
drug empire, in Harlem,
65–66
drug racket, 282
drugs in prisons, 56–57, 282
drug smuggler(s)
Clark, James G., 196
DeLorean, John,
255–257
drug-smuggling, 202, 282,
385
Drumgo, Fleeta, 249
drygulch, 282
Dry Tortugas Prison, 283,
625–626
Duffy, Clinton, 298
Duffy, One-Legged, 375
Duffy, Tom, 185
979
Dufour, Marie, 640
Dugdale, Richard L., 473
Duggan, Sandford S. C., 283
Dugsdale, Richard L., 544
Duke, David, 503
Duke’s Restaurant, 283–284
Dull, Judy, 352
Duncan’s Saloon, 284
Dundee, Vince, 21
Dunlap, Max, 105–106
Dunlop, Arthur, 64
Dunnigan, Jimmy, 611
Dunning, John Presley, 114
Duringer, Rudolph, 235
Durk, David, 498
Durrant, William Henry
Theodore, 284–285
Dutartre, Judith and Peter,
348
Dutch Henry, 285–286, 437
Dutch Mob, 286
Dutch Sadie, 520
Dwight, Louis, 557
Dwyer, Big Bill, 549, 554
Dyer, Mary, 286
Dyer, Oliver, 16
Dyer Act, 286
Dym, Rose, 77–78
Dynamite Dick, 197
E
Earle, Willie, 287
Earley, Pete, 518
Earp, James C., 287, 289
Earp, Morgan, 287–288, 289
Brocius, “Curly Bill”
and, 124
Brooks, “Buffalo Bill”
and, 125
Clanton, Ike and, 194
Ringo, John and, 757
Earp, Virgil, 288, 289
Brocius, “Curly Bill”
and, 124
Clanton, Ike and, 194
Clanton, William and,
195
Ringo, John and, 757
Earp, Warren B., 288
Earp, Wyatt Berry Stapp,
288–290
buffaloing, 133
Clanton, “Ike” and, 195
Dodge City Peace Commission, 273, 274
enemy of, 78, 119, 124
gold brick swindle, 354,
593
gunfights and, 377
Holliday, Doc and, 427,
428
Johnny Behind the Deuce
and, 464, 465
Kennedy, James and, 386
King, Melvin and, 120
Masterson, Bat and, 592
Meagher, Mike and, 596
Oriental Saloon, 674
Short, Luke and, 811
Tombstone Epitaph, 888
victim of, 440–441
Earp-Clanton feud. See O.K.
Corral
Eastman, Monk, 290–291
dead man’s eyes and, 252
imprisonment of, 445,
967
Kid Twist and, 491
weapon of, 657
East Texas Regulator War,
290
Eckel, John J., 138
Eden, Charles, 99, 702
Edgar, John C., 624
Edison, Thomas, 300,
486–487
Edland, John F., 47
Edmonds, John W., 559
Edwards, Don, 154
Edwards Heirs Association,
291–292
Egan’s Rats, 292
Eisemann-Schier, Ruth, 493,
501
electric chair, 299–302
first victim of, 486–487
electric shock, 292
Electrolytic Marine Salts
Company, 354
Eller, Morris, 841
Ellison, Tom, 759
Elmira Reformatory, 720
Elwell, Joseph Bowne,
292–293, 654
embezzlement, 209,
293–294, 940–941
embezzler(s)
Antar, Eddie and Sam,
231–232
Bakker, Rev. Jim, 55–56
Beck, Dave, 74
Butcher, Jake, 143–144
Crowe, Richard H., 293
Gilbert, Eddie, 941
Hoffman, Harold Giles,
424–425, 482, 534
Schlekat, Ludwig R., 293
Smith, James Monroe
“Jingle Money,” 825
Wagner, John F., 293,
921–922
Emerson, Banjo Pete, 309,
582
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 161
Emig, William, 393
Emma Mine fraud, 294–295
Engel, George, 402–403
Engel, Sigmund, 90
English Jim, 123
Ennis, Hod, 363
Entratta, Charles, 262, 437
Epps, Billy, 20
Epstein, Joe, 420
Erickson, Frank, 46, 482,
511
Ernst, Morris L., 210
escape artist(s)
Gardner, Roy, 340–341
Mahaney, Jack, 454, 577
Miller, Bill “The Killer,”
321, 602
Espinosa brothers, 295
Esposito, Diamond Joe, 699
Estabrook, Arthur H., 473
Estes, Billie Sol, 295, 941
Evans, Charles, 295–296
Evans, Christopher, 148,
296, 622–623, 833–834
Evans, Dan, 245
Everleigh sisters, 296–297,
333, 618
Evola, Natale, 58
Excise Act (1791), 939
executed men/women
Abbott, Burton W., 302
Bethea, Rainey, 86, 304
Boston, Patience, 114
Campbell, Edmund, 245
Cardinella, Salvatore
“Sam,” 162
Carlton, Handsome
Harry, 163
The Encyclopedia of American Crime
Chessman, Caryl,
182–183, 302
Davis, Allen Davis, 301
Dyer, Mary, 286
Evans, Dan, 245
Fernandez, Manuel, 310
Fish, Albert, 314–315
Fooy, Sam, 245
Francis, Willy, 328
Gilmore, Gary Mark,
152, 153, 299, 351
Graham, Barbara, 302,
363–364
Graunger, Thomas, 157
Gray, Judd, 301
Grimes, Arthur Lee, 300
Hall, Carl Austin, 302
Heady, Bonnie, 302
Hicks, Albert E., 303,
416, 808
Jon, Gee, 468
Juanita, 470
Kemmler, William, 300,
486–487
Ketchum, “Black Jack”
Tom, 298, 426, 488,
516
McConaghy, Robert, 561
Mares, Elisio J., 299
Medina, Pedro, 301
Myer, Frank, 298–299
Ocuish, Hannah, 474,
662
O’Neil, Jack, 671
Peach, Arthur, 689
Roberts, Harry, 301
Salem witchcraft victims,
220–221, 593, 784
Snyder, Donald, 301
Snyder, Ruth, xii, 301,
831–832
Spenkelink, John, 299
Stone, John, 852
Tucker, Karla Faye, 155
Van Wormer, Fred, 301
Whittingham, John, 245
execution(s), xi–xii, 152–156
avoiding, 162
of children, 156–157,
474
holding, 2
methods of, 297–303
public, 86, 153, 245,
303–304
execution spot, Gallows Hill,
337
extortion. See also Black
Hand
blackmail, 100–101, 202
parsley racket, 687
skyjack, 819
vampires, 914
eye gouging, 275, 304, 577
eyewitnesses, 608–609
F
Factor, Jake “the Barber,”
891
Fahy, William J., 305
faked deaths, 254, 450–451
Fall, Albert Bacon, 141,
305–306, 327, 663, 868
Fallon, William J., 306–307,
762
False Witness (Landreth),
563
Fanny Hill, or the Memoirs
of a Woman of Pleasure
(Cleland), 308
Fanny Hill Case, 308
Farber, Marge, 220
Farley, James J., 174
Farr, Edward, 488, 516
Farrington brothers, 308
Fatal Vision (McGinniss),
563
Faulkner, Daniel, 155
Faurot, Joseph A., 308–309,
313
Favato, Carino, 105
Fay, Janet, 75
Fay, Joey, 262
Faye, Tammy, 55–56
FBI agents
briefcase agents, 121
confessions, 210–211
Cowley, Sam, 643–644
Hollis, Herman E.,
643–644
Purvis, Melvin. See
Purvis, Melvin
slang for, 353, 485
FBI director. See Hoover, J.
Edgar
FBI statistical device, 234
The FBI Story (Whitehead),
433, 479, 734
FBI Ten Most Wanted List,
137, 869–870
Fein, Dopey Benny, 504–505,
673
Feinstein, Puggy, 704
Feitell, Lawrence, 10
Felsch, Oscar, 98
fence(s), 52, 309–310, 810.
See also Thieves’
Exchange
Dobbs, Johnny, 272,
524, 582
Grady, Travelling Mike,
309
Mandelbaum, “Marm.”
See Mandelbaum,
Fredericka “Marm”
Travelling Mike, 363
fence stealing, 310
Ferber, Nat, 307
Ferguson, Miriam “Ma,”
108, 310, 384, 873
Ferguson, Paul and Tom,
657–658
Ferguson Rangers, 310, 873
Fernandez, Manuel, 310
Fernandez, Raymond Martinez, 74–75
Ferrara, Theresa, 552
Ferrare, Cristina, 256
Ferrigno, Steve, 143
Ferris, Danny, 459
Field, George Morton, 250
Fielden, Samuel, 22,
402–403
Fields, Vina, 310–311
Filkins, James L., 544–545
Finch, Mrs. Barbara,
311–312
Finch, Raymond Bernard,
311–312
fingerprint forgeries, 252
fingerprinting, 312–313, 938
father of, 308–309
laser detection, 513
Fink, Isidor, 313–314
Finn, Mickey, 600–601
fire bombing, 33
firing squad, 299
Fischer, Adolph, 402–403
Fischetti, Charles, 159, 401,
420, 512
Fischetti, Rocco, 401, 420,
512
Fish, Albert, 314–315
Fisher, Charles E., 354
Fisher, John King, 315, 879
Fitch, Mollie, 229
Fitzmorris, Charles C., 596
Fitzpatrick, James “The
Sandy Flash,” 271, 315
Fitzpatrick, Richie, 316, 491
Fitzsimmons, Frank, 424
Five Points, 200, 316–317,
667
Five Points Gang, 317
Campagna, “Little New
York” in, 148
Capone, Al in, 157, 572
Crazy Butch gang and,
231
Cyclone Louie in, 240,
491
Eastman, Monk and,
290, 291
Hartley Mob and, 395
leader of, 231, 290, 317,
724–725
Luciano, Lucky in, 549,
572
Torrio, John in, 889
Yale, Frankie in, 961
flaking, 318
Flamingo Hotel, 318, 401,
512, 550, 814, 864, 896
Flannery, Harry P., 70
Flemming, John, 217
floaters, 150, 318, 354
floating hog ranches,
318–319
flogging, 319
“floppers,” 5
Flores, Juan, 319–320
Flour Riots, 320
Floyd, Charles Arthur
“Pretty Boy,” 217,
320–322, 478, 602, 691,
733
“the Flying Mouth,” 53–54
Flynt, Larry, 103
Folsom prison, 623
Fontes, Andres, 320
Fooy, Sam, 245
Forcier-Gaffney gang, 101
Ford, Charles, 234, 322,
461, 536–537
Ford, Emma, 322, 616
Ford, Gerald, 43, 682, 796
Ford, Robert Newton, 234,
322–323, 422, 461,
536–537, 666
Foreman, Percy, 323–324
forger(s)
check passing, 180–181,
875
Thiel, Alexander,
148–149, 181, 608,
875–876
Formby gang, 324
Forrest, Edwin, 43
Forsyth, Red, 4
Fort Smith Elevator,
324–325
Fortune and Men’s Eyes
(Herbert), 325
Fortune Society, 325
fortune-teller swindles, 386
Forty Little Thieves, 325
Forty Thieves, 325–326
Forty-Two Gang, 71, 127,
326
Forty Years a Gambler on
the Mississippi (Devol),
260, 469
Foster, Belle, 54
Foster, Jodie, 422
980
Foster, Joe, 315
Fountain, Albert Jennings,
326–327
Four Deuces, 327, 409, 618
“Four Hundred” assassination list, 327, 795
Fowler, Gene, 203, 306
Fox, Margaret, 837–838
Francis, James, 407
Francis, Willy, 328
Frank, Dago, 75, 380
Frank, Jerome, 270, 608
Frank, Leo, 141, 328–329,
556
Franklin, Ed, 635
Franklin, Rufus “Whitey,”
12, 14, 329, 548
Franks, Bobby, 520
Franse, Steve, 347
Frazer-Miller feud, 329–330
Frechette, Evelyn “Billie,”
264, 265, 266
Freeman, Mrs. Clyde, 402
Freeman, William, 397
French, James, 153
Frenchy, 668
Frick, Henry Clay, 83–85
Friday, Joe, xii
Friendly Friends, 330, 618
Frisco Sue, 330–331
Froehlke, Robert F., 127
Fromme, Lynette Alice
“Squeaky,” 43
Frontier Fighter (Coe), 198
Frosty Face Emma, 151
Frye, James Alphonse, 331
Frye v. United States, 239,
331, 527
Fugate, Caril Ann, 842–843
Fugmann, Michael, 331–332,
500
Fuhrman, Mark, 815
Fuller, Alvan Tufts, 779
Fundamentals of Criminal
Investigation (O’Hara),
875
funerals of gangsters, 159,
282, 332, 338, 379, 549,
933
Fury, Bridget, 332–333
G
Gacy, John Wayne, 334, 628,
630
“gaff,” 163
Gagliano, Gaetano, 168, 590
Gagliano, Tom, 548
Gaither, Billy Jack, 399
Galante, Carmine, 58,
334–335, 347, 370, 571,
897
Galatas, Richard T., 942
Gallagher, James J., 42
Gallagher, Mike, 331
Gallatin Street, 335–336,
603
Gallo, Crazy Joe, 336
Barnes, Leroy “Nicky”
and, 66
Colombo, Joseph and,
204, 205
Costello, Frank and, 823
grave of, 370
Lucchese, Thomas and,
549
murder of, 864
Profaci, Joe and, 214,
724
Gallo, Samuel, 174
Gallory, Richard G., 393
Gallows Hill, 337
Galluccio, Frank, 157, 158
Gallus Mag, 337, 427
Gambi, Vincent, 337–338,
702
Gambino, Carlo, 338
Banana War, 57, 204
Colombo, Joseph and,
204, 205
Gallo, Crazy Joe and,
336, 864
Genovese, Vito and, 28,
214, 225, 347, 350
grave of, 370
green goods swindle,
373
Lucchese, Thomas and,
549
Masseria, “Joe the Boss”
and, 168, 589
sons of, 572
gambler(s)
Adams, Albert J., 5–6,
658
Ashby, James, 40
Coe, Phil, 198–199, 415,
801–802, 878–879
Devol, George, 260, 469,
760
Ellison, Tom, 759
Grannan, Riley, 367
Hargraves, Dick, 389,
760
Johnny Behind the
Deuce, 464–465
Johnson, Mushmouth,
465–466
Jones, Canada Bill, 759,
806
Jones, William “Canada
Bill,” 469
Kelly, Honest John, 485
Le Roy, Kitty, 517
Loving, Cockeyed Frank,
377, 546
McDonald, Michael Cassius “Mike,” 115, 391,
563–564
O’Leary, Big Jim,
668–669
Poker Alice, 709
Powell, John, 760
riverboat gamblers,
759–760
Rothstein, Arnold, 99,
262, 359, 464, 549,
771–772, 801
Short, Luke. See Short,
Luke
Skaggs, Elijah, 818
Smith, Jefferson Randolph “Soapy,” 323,
806–807, 825–826
Trussell, George, 382,
900
Young, Francis Thomas,
688
gambler’s belt, 338
gambling. See also Flamingo
Hotel; Las Vegas
Black Sox Scandal,
98–99, 771
cockfighting, 198
dogfighting, 274–275
numbers racket, 5–6, 85,
658, 790
Reading Game, 742
slot machines, 823–824
State Street Crap Game,
846
three-card monte, 881
gambling czar(s)
Index
Annenberg, Moses L.,
31, 46, 737–738
Cohen, Mickey, 199–200
Ragen, James M., 31,
737–738
Gandil, Charles Arnold
“Chick,” 98
gang(s), ix. See also Irish
gang(s); juvenile gang(s);
pickpocket gang(s)
Apache gangs, 33
Batavia Street Gang, 182
Bayonne-Abriel gang,
71–72
Bloods, 339
Bloody Inks, 102
Bloody Tubs, 102
Boodle Gang, 109
Bowery Boys, 116–117,
253, 278, 760
Brady gang, 118
Buck gang, 130–131
Bug and Meyer Mob,
133
Bummers, 135
Car Barn Gang, 160–161
Charlton Street Gang,
180
Cherry Hill Gang, 182
College Kidnappers,
202
Cotroni gang, 225, 572
Crips, 339
Daybreak Boys, 8, 251,
427
Dewey Hotel Gang,
722–723
Doane gang, 271, 315
Doolin gang. See Doolin
gang
Egan’s Rats, 292
of escaped slaves, 119
Five Points Gang. See
Five Points Gang
Forcier-Gaffney gang,
101
Gas House Gang, 343
Genna brothers. See
Genna brothers
grabbers, 362
Grady gang, 363
Hartley Mob, 395
Henry Street Gang,
412–413
highbinder societies,
417–418
Honeymoon Gang, 430,
855
Hook Gang, 431, 600
Hounds, 437–438
Innocents. See Innocents
James gang. See James
brothers/gang
James Street gang, 157,
317
Keating-Holden Gang,
480–481
Kitty and Jennie Gang,
497–498
Lady Gophers, 505
Lenox Avenue Gang,
380, 519–520
Little Augies, 673
Live Oak Boys, 336, 375,
539–540
Loomis gang, 544–545
McCanles gang,
414–415, 561
McCarty gang, 561
Midnight Terrors, 601
Molasses Gang, 611
Morello Family, 67, 171,
621, 872–873
O’Banion gang. See
O’Banion gang
O’Donnell gang, 185
Ohio Gang, 141, 306,
663
Oster gang, 675
Purple gang, 418, 703,
725, 732
Red Sash Gang, 175,
176, 744
Reno Gang, 59,
749–750, 894
Reynolds Gang, 751–752
ripper gangs, 758
Roach Guards, 760–761
Saltis-McErlane gang,
185
Sangerman’s Bombers,
786
Shirt Tails, 809
Slaughter Housers, 821
Swamp Angels, 861
Sweeney’s Bombers,
861–862
Tenth Avenue Gang, 410,
871, 894
Tri-State Gang, 897–898
Untouchables, 645–646
Valley Gang, 914
war between, 445–446
White Family, 811, 941
Whyos. See Whyos
Wild Bunch. See Wild
Bunch
of women, 106,
497–498, 505
Yellow Henry Gang, 962
gang leader(s)
Carson, Wild Maggie,
325
Driscoll, Danny,
280–281, 946
Dunnigan, Jimmy, 611
Eastman, Monk. See
Eastman, Monk
Jackson, Humpty, 291,
457–458, 835
Kid Twist. See Kid Twist
Merry, Chris, 412–413
Ness, Eliot, 645–646
O’Banion, Dion. See
O’Banion, Charles
Dion “Deanie”
Orgen, Jacob “Little
Augie,” 127, 262, 490,
505, 673, 805
Walsh, Johnny “The
Mick,” 925–926
Weiss, Hymie. See Weiss,
Hymie
Zelig, Jack. See Zelig,
Jack
Gangs (Sonder), 339
gangs and gangsters,
338–340
gangster(s)
Adonis, Joe. See Adonis,
Joe
Alterie, Louis “Two
Gun,” 22, 624, 660
Amatuna, Samuzzo
“Samoots,” 23–24,
346
Anselmi, Albert. See
Anselmi, Albert
Ashley, John, 40–42
Battaglia, Sam “Teets,”
71
Bonnet, Jeanne, 106
Campagna, Louis “Little
New York,” 148–149
Cohen, Mickey, 199–200
Coll, Vincent “Mad
Dog.” See Coll, Vincent “Mad Dog”
Coppola, Michael “Trigger Mike,” 219
Dillinger, John. See
Dillinger, John Herbert
Dolan, Dandy Johnny,
275, 304, 946
Drucci, Vincent
“Schemer.” See Drucci,
Vincent “Schemer”
Fitzpatrick, Richie, 316,
491
funerals of, 159, 282,
332, 338, 379, 549,
933
Gigante, Vincent “the
Chin,” 349–350, 574
graves of, 369–370
Gyp the Blood, 75, 380,
519–520, 968
Hicks, Albert E., 303,
415–416, 808
Kid Dropper. See Kid
Dropper
Lombardo, Antonio
“The Scourge,” 23,
541
Moran, Bugs. See
Moran, George “Bugs”
Nash, “Jelly,” 478, 480,
481, 639–640, 691,
942
Scalice, Frank “Don
Chreech,” 158, 787
Scalise, John. See Scalise,
John
Socco the Bracer, 832
Spanish, Johnny, 490,
834–835
Sydney Ducks, 863
Yale, Frankie. See Yale,
Frankie
Ziegler, Shotgun George,
968–969
Garcia, Francisco, 119
Garcia, Manuel Philip, 340
Garcia, Manuel “Three-Fingered Jack,” 633
Gard, George C., 148
Gardner, J. C., 672
Gardner, Roy, 340–341
Garfield, James A., 42, 232,
376–377
Garfield portrait swindle,
342
Gargotta, Charley, 93
garment area crime, 418, 830
Garner, John Nance, 342
Garrett, Patrick Floyd,
342–343, 710, 767
Billy the Kid and, 93,
116, 663, 689, 775
Coons, William and, 217
Garrison, William Lloyd,
348
Gary, Joseph E., 22, 402–403
gas chamber, 302, 468
Gas House Gang, 343
Gavin, Michael, 159, 191
Gaynor, Tom, 397
Gaynor, William J., 42
gay prostitution, 728
Gebhardt, Dr. Fritz, 343–344
Gecht, Robin, 758
Geidel, Paul, 344
Gein, Edward, 344–345
981
Geller, Max, 373–374, 374
Gem Saloon, gunfight at, 345
gemstone, 345
gender
and crime, 9, 124
and embezzlement, 294
and shoplifting, 810
Genker, Charlie “Monkey
Face,” 409, 650
Genna brothers, 345–346,
596
Amatuna, “Samoots”
and, 23
Anselmi and Scalise, 32
McGurn, Machine Gun
Jack, 565
O’Banion, Dion and,
332, 660, 890
Genovese, Kitty, 346–347
Genovese, Vito, 347–348,
658
Adonis, Joe and, 7
Anastasia, Albert and,
28, 34, 214, 338, 787
bankruptcy fraud, 62
Castellano, Paul and,
169
Costello, Frank, 225,
349
grave of, 370
imprisonment of, 225,
350
LaTempa, Peter and, 513
Luciano, Lucky and, 85,
550, 586
Masseria, “Joe the Boss”
and, 168, 590
Moretti, Willie and, 622
Mussolini, Benito and,
897
Mustache Petes and, 638
Rupolo, Ernest “The
Hawk” and, 776
Terranova, Ciro and, 872
underworld conventions,
34, 401–402
Valachi, Joe and, 496,
912
Gentle Annie. See Stafford,
Annie
Gentle Maggie, 559, 946
Gentlemen’s Riot, 348
George, Christian, 348
Gettler, Alexander O., 21
ghettos, x, 717, 737
Giancana, Sam “Momo,”
348–349
Accardo, Anthony and,
4, 326, 754
at Apalachin conference,
35
gambling and, 512
hit man of, 127
lockstep surveillance of,
540
Gibbs, Charles, 349
Gideon v. Wainwright, 743
Giesler, Jerry, 680–681
Gigante, Vincent “the Chin,”
349–350, 574
Gilbert, Dan, 482
Gilbert, Eddie, 941
Gililland, James, 327
Gillette, Chester, 350
Gillis, Lester. See Nelson,
George “Baby Face”
Gilmore, Gary Mark, 152,
153, 299, 351
Gilmore, Geary, 229
Ging, Katherine “Kitty,”
351–352, 443
Girty, Jim, 640
Giscobbe, Anthony, 105
Giunta, Joseph “Hop Toad,”
32, 158
Glanton, John J., 352, 423,
787
Glatman, Harvey Murray,
352–353
Glenn, John, 480
Glover, Calvin, 399–400
G-men, 353, 485
Goad, John, 353
The Godfather (movie), 338,
625
Godwin, John, 630, 737
Goff, John W., 525
Goggin, James, 498
Gohl, Billy, 353–354
gold accumulator swindle,
354
gold brick swindle, 354–355,
593, 921
Goldman, Emma, 83–85
gold rush town. See Bannack,
Montana Territory
Goldsborough, Fitzhugh,
696–697
Goldsby, Crawford,
181–182, 325
Goldstein, Bugsy, 24, 519,
631, 704
Goldwater, Barry, 94
Goll, George, 139
Gompers, Samuel, 545
“Gone to Texas,” 355
Gonzales, Thomas A.,
355–356
Gooch, Arthur, 356
Goodman, Louis E., 182
Goodrich, William, 36
good-time laws, 356–357,
686
Gophers, 338, 357, 445–446,
496, 569
Gordon, Captain Nathaniel,
357–358, 702
Gordon, Mike, 427
Gordon, Roger, 120
Gordon, Vivian, 358–359,
794, 923
Gordon, Waxey (Irving
Wexler), 261, 359–360,
801
Gordon-Gordon, Lord,
360–361
Gosch, Martin A., 261
Gotthardt, Minni Mae, 56
Gotti, John, 361–362
Castellano, Paul and,
169
conviction of, 572
Gigante, Vincent and,
350
Gravano, Sammy “the
Bull” and, 367
in prison, 10, 575,
586–587
Gotti, John, Jr., 574
Gould, Jay, 701
grabbers, 362
Grabber Scandal, 722
Grady, Travelling Mike, 309
Grady gang, 363
Graff, Selma, 212
Graham, Barbara, 302,
363–364
Graham, Gwendolyn, 801
Graham, John Gilbert,
364–365
Graham-Tewksbury feud,
365, 677
The Encyclopedia of American Crime
Grand Central fruit stand
swindle, 365–366
Grand Street School,
366–367
Grannan, Riley, 367
Grant, Frederick, 229
Grant, Joe, 367
Grant, Ulysses S., 42, 367,
683, 939
Grasso, Arthur, 28
Graunger, Thomas, 157
Gravano, Sammy “the Bull,”
362, 367–369, 840
Graves, Thomas T., 369
graves of criminals, 369–370
Gray, George, 77
Gray, Handsome Harry, 617
Gray, Henry Judd, xii, 301,
831–832
Gray, L. Patrick, 120
Gray, Lucy, 710–711
great diamond hoax,
370–371
The Great Escape (movie),
393
Great Michigan “free land”
swindle, 371–372, 932
Great Mouthpiece. See Fallon, William J.
Greeley, Horace, 279–280,
795
Green, Baldy, 372
“Green, Ballad of Baldy,”
372
Green, Eddie, 266, 267, 432,
473
Green, Edward, 372
Green, Jonathan F., 795
Greenberg, Lou, 659
Greenberg, Samuel, 358–359
Green Chair Curse, 372–373
Green Corn Rebellion, 373
green goods swindle, 373,
921
Greenlease, Robert C., Jr.,
375–376, 493
Green Parrot murder,
373–374
Green River Killer, 374, 800
Green Tree dance house,
374–375
Gregory, Thomas W., 25
Grigson, James, 154
Grimes, Arthur Lee, 300
Gristy, Bill, 79
Groat, Dave, 20
Guadalupe Canyon massacre, 195, 376, 757
Guerin, Eddie, 185
Guimares, Alberto Santos,
495
Guinta, Hop Toad, 565
Guiteau, Charles Julius, 42,
376–377
gunfighter(s)
Allison, Clay, 18–19
Baca, Elfego, 51
Claiborne, Billy, 194,
522, 665
Coe, George Washington,
198
Colbert, Chunk, 18,
200
Dodge City Peace Commission, 273–274, 289,
812
Earp, Wyatt. See Earp,
Wyatt
Fisher, John King, 315,
879
Grannan, Riley, 367
Hardin, John Wesley,
387–388, 411, 739,
761, 797, 861
Hickok, “Wild Bill.” See
Hickok, James Butler
“Wild Bill”
Higgins, John Calhoun
Pinckney “Pink,” 345,
417, 435
Holliday, “Doc.” See
Holliday, John Henry
“Doc”
Leslie, Frank “Buckskin,” 521–522, 674,
758
Longley, William P., 54,
388, 543–544
Loving, Cockeyed Frank,
377, 546
Lowe, Joseph “Rowdy
Joe,” 274, 546–547
Masterson, Bat. See Masterson, William B.
“Bat”
Masterson, James P.,
191, 245, 249, 591
Selman, John, 388,
797–798
Short, Luke. See Short,
Luke
Strawan, Samuel, 415,
854–855
Thompson, Ben, 198,
315, 801, 878–879
Thompson, Billy,
879–880
gunfighting, Western,
377–378
Gunness, Belle, 378, 630
Gurino, Vito “Chicken
Head,” 631
Gusenberg, Frank, 660, 782
Gusenberg, Pete, 782
Guzik, Jake “Greasy
Thumb,” 52, 379
in Big Six, 208, 284
Capone, Al and, 4, 46
Kefauver investigation,
482
nickname of, 651
as procurer, 409, 723
Gwin-McCorkle duel,
379–380
Gypsy Curse swindle, 380
gypsy swindle, handkerchief
switch, 386
Gyp the Blood, 75, 380,
519–520, 968
H
Haag, Mrs. John, 517–518
Hahn, Anna, 381–382
Hahn, Jessica, 55–56
Hairtrigger Block, 382, 900
Halberstram, Dr. Michael,
934–935
Hale, Matthew F., 399
Haley, Nellie, 722
Hall, A. Oakley, 138
Hall, Camilla, 405
Hall, Carl Austin, 302, 375,
493
Hall, Lee, 382
Hallmark, Mildred, 880
Hall-Mills Murders,
382–383
Hamer, Frank, 61, 109,
383–385, 873
Hamilton, Alexander, 272
Hamilton, John, 264, 266,
267
Hamilton, Polly, 267
Hamilton, Ray, 107, 385
Hamm, William A., Jr., 64,
65, 479, 493, 891
Hammer, Richard, 261
Hammock, Edward R.,
686–687
hams, 385
Hance, Ben, 177
Hancock, John, 710
Hancock, Louis, 673–674
Hand, Dora, 385–386
handkerchief switch, 386
handwriting expert, Tyrrell,
John F., 178, 905–906
Hangar, Charles, 666
hanging, 298–299, 808
Dance of Death, 245,
579, 684
“Hanging Judge”
Leibowitz, Samuel S.,
519
Parker, Isaac C. See
Parker, Isaac C.
hangmen
Beidler, John X., 78–79
Maledon, George, 245,
579–580, 684
Monsieur New York, 615
Hankins, Effie, 17, 297
Hanks, O. C. “Camilla,”
167, 386
Hansen, Edmund, 363
Hansen, Robert, 387
Hardin, John Wesley,
387–388, 411, 739, 761,
797, 861
Harding, Warren, 181, 306,
341, 597, 663, 682, 725
Hare, Joseph Thompson,
388–389
Hargraves, Dick, 389, 760
Harold, Margaret, 746
Harpe brothers, 389, 588
Harper, Richard, 389–390
Harrelson, Charles, 10
Harris, Carlyle, 129
Harris, Eric, 788, 790
Harris, Jack, 315
Harris, Jean, 390–391
Harris, W. H., 273
Harris, William and Emily,
391, 405, 493
Harrison, Benjamin, 58
Harrison, Carter, 90, 228,
391–392, 564
Harrison, Lester, 392–393
Harrison, William J., 64
Harsh, George S., 393
Hart, Brooke, 393–394, 556
Hart, Gene Leroy, 394–395
Hart, Pearl, 395
Hart, Richard James “TwoGun,” 160
Hartley Mob, 395
Hartman, L. C., 274
Harvey, Captain Julian, 396
Harvey, Donald, 395–396
Haskins, Hester Jane, 362
Hastings, Mary, 397, 943
Hatch, Bob, 288
Hatcher, Charles, 397
hate crimes, 397–399
hate crimes—homosexual
attacks, 399–400
Milk, Harvey, 939
Shepard, Matthew, 399,
807
Hatfields and McCoys, 400
Haun’s Mill Massacre,
400–401
982
Hauptmann, Bruno Richard,
493, 532–535
Hoffman, Harold G.
and, 425
Koehler, Arthur and, 499
Parker, Ellis and, 683
Wilson, Frank J. and,
954
Havana Convention,
401–402, 814
Hawkins, Gordon, 837
Hawthorne, Alice, 44
Hawthorne Inn, 402, 933
Hayes, Robert, 269
Haymarket affair, 22, 154,
402–403
Haynes, Richard “Racehorse,” 323, 403–405
Hays, Jacob, 219
Hayward, Adry, 351–352
Hayward, Harry T.,
351–352, 443
Haywood, William D. “Big
Bill,” 247, 405, 419, 567,
672, 701, 847
Head, Harry, 124
“head creasing,” 133
Heady, Bonnie, 302, 375,
493
Healy, Dan, 281
Healy, Joe, 202
Hearst, Patricia, 54, 391,
405–406, 493
Hearst, William Randolph,
20, 31, 285, 307, 403,
405
Heath, John, 95–96, 840
Hecht, Ben, 406–407
Hedgepeth, Marion, 407,
430
Hedlin, Dave, 159
Heinrich, Edward Oscar,
407–409
Heinrichs, Dutch, 410
Heirens, William, 409
Heitler, Mike “de Pike,”
409–410, 650
Hell Benders, 79–80
Hellier, Thomas, 410
Hell’s Kitchen, 139, 201,
357, 410, 445–446, 505,
871
Helm, Boone, 410–411
Helm, Jack, 411, 860–861
Helter Skelter, 411
Hendrick’s Lake, 412
Hendrickson, John, Jr., 412
Henley, Elmer Wayne, Jr.,
221
Hennessey, David, 570, 573
Henninger, Ronald, 20
Henry Street Gang, 412–413
Henshaw, Caroline, 207
Henshaw, William, 569
Herbert, John, 325
Herold, David, 42, 529
Herrera, Juan Jose, 940
Herrick, Eleanor, 718, 945
Herring, Robert, 413
Herrin Massacre, 413
Hickey, Jim, 194
Hickey, Michael C., 90
Hickman, Edward, 413–414,
493
Hickock, Richard E., 198
Hickok, James Butler “Wild
Bill,” 414–415
buffaloing, 133
Calamity Jane and, 146
Coe, Phil and, 198–199,
802, 878–879
dead man’s hand, 252,
415, 560
Hardin, John Wesley
and, 387, 761
McCanles gang and, 561
in Mint Gambling
Saloon, 517
Strawan, Samuel and,
854–855
weapon of, 689
Hicks, Albert E., 303,
415–416, 808
Hicks, Jeffrey Joe, 416–417
Hicks, John, Jr., 272
Higgins, John Calhoun
Pinckney “Pink,” 345,
417, 435
highbinder societies,
417–418
highwaymen
Copeland, James,
218–219
Fitzpatrick, James “The
Sandy Flash,” 271, 315
Hare, Joseph Thompson,
388–389
Harpe brothers, 389, 588
Lightfoot, Captain,
527–528
Mason, Sam, 389, 588
hijack, 418
hijacker(s)
Boodle Gang, 109
“Cooper, D. B.”, 218,
819
hijacking, 418
Hill, Dr. John, 403, 418–419
Hill, Joan Robinson,
418–419
Hill, Joe, 299, 419
Hill, Virginia, 52, 318, 420,
483, 550, 814
Hillman, Sidney, 129
Hills, Elk, 141
“Hillside Strangler” duo,
420–421
Hinckley, John W., Jr., 43,
179, 421–422
Hines, James J., 662
Hip Sing Tong, 3–4, 8–9,
102, 115, 609–611, 888
Hirsch, Frederick, 235
Hispanics. See also MexicanAmericans
and crime, 717, 737
police brutality and,
711–712
Hitchcock, Alfred, 313, 608
Hitchcock, Ethan A., 510
Hite, Wood, 422
hit men
Alderisio, Felix “Milwaukee Phil,” 15
Buccieri, Fiore “Fifi,”
127
Burke, Elmer “Trigger,”
139
Buster from Chicago,
143
McGurn, Machine Gun
Jack, 4, 564–565, 577,
619, 783
Pittsburgh Phil. See Pittsburgh Phil
Shotgun Man, 813
Spanish Louie, 835
Stevens, Walter, 847
want ads for, 832
hoax. See also scandal(s);
swindle(s)
anti-Catholic, 614–615
Index
biography of Howard
Hughes, 452–453, 918
Cardiff Giant, 161–162
Civil War gold hoax,
193–194
Sperm fraud, 836–837
Hobbs, James, 422–423,
496, 787, 953
Hoch, Johann, 423
Hodges, Moll, 680
Hodges, Thomas, 79
Hoeweler, Carl, 396
Hoff, Boo-Boo, 46
Hoffa, James R., 424
Beck, Dave and, 74
Buffalino, Russell A. and,
132
Dio, Johnny and, 268,
577
disappearance of, 968
money laundering by,
513
Williams, Edward Bennett and, 952
Hoffert, Emily, 212, 960
Hoffman, Harold Giles,
424–425, 482, 534
Hogan, Dapper, 782
Hogan, Frank, 223, 283,
869
Hogan, Mary, 344
Hohimer, Frank, 693
Holdberg Technicality, 425
Holden, Red, 372–373
Holden, Tommy, 480–481
hole, 11, 329, 425–426
Hole in the Wall, 426, 488
Hole-in-the-Wall Saloon,
337, 426–427
Holinsky, Benny, 25
Holley, Lillian, 266
Holliday, John Henry “Doc,”
427–428
in Dodge City Peace
Commission, 273, 274
Earps and, 194, 289,
664–666, 757
Joyce, Mike and, 674
Hollis, Herman E., 643–644
Hollon, W. Eugene, 327
Holloway, Jerome, 229
Holmes, Alexander William,
428–429
Holmes, Bill, 33
Holmes, H. H., 407,
429–430, 630
Holmes, John Maurice,
393–394, 556
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 161
Holt, John, ix
Home, Daniel D., 838
Homicide: 100 Years of Murder in America (Scott),
126, 237
homosexual attacks. See hate
crimes—homosexual
attacks
Honeymoon Gang, 430, 855
hoodlum, 430–431
Riley, James “Butt,”
756–757
Singleton, Ed, 263, 799,
817
Wilson, Tug, 954
Hoodoo War, 588–589
Hook Gang, 431, 600
Hooton, E. A., 29
Hoover, Herbert Clark, ix,
431–432, 591, 681, 726
Hoover, J. Edgar, 432–434,
711
Barker brothers and, 64,
65
Buchalter, “Lepke” and,
127, 128
Burns, William J. and,
141
car thieves and, 850
criticism of, 118
Karpis, Alvin “Creepy”
and, 479
Kelly, “Machine Gun”
and, 484
King, Martin Luther, Jr.
and, 741
on lie detectors, 527
on Mafia, 223, 571, 586,
870, 913
Means, Gaston Bullock
and, 597
on narcotics control, 282
Purvis, Melvin and,
733–734
on shoplifting, 810
term invented by, 730
on third degree confessions, 210
Tolson, Clyde A. and,
886
Winchell, Walter and, 954
wiretapping and, 955
Hop Along Peter, 901
Hope, Jimmy, 434
Horn, Tom, 434–435, 599,
739
Horner, Joseph, 152
Horrell, Merritt, 417
Horrell-Higgins feud, 345,
417, 435–436
horse killing, 30–31,
624–625
horse poisoners, 436
horse stealing, 436–437
horse thief(ves)
Beckwourth, Jim, 77,
829, 953
Brooks, William L. “Buffalo Bill,” 125, 287
Dutch Henry, 285–286,
437
Perkins, Josephina
Amelia, 693
Tufts, Henry, 902
Williams, William S.
“Old Bill,” 829, 953
Horse-Thief Trail, 437
Horton, Black, 456
Hot Corn Girls, 200–201
The Hot House (Earley), 518
Hot Springs, Arkansas,
941–942
Hotsy Totsy Club, 437
Hounds, 437–438
House of All Nations,
438–439
House of Mirrors, 229, 814
Houston, Sam, 290
Houston, Sequoyan, 181
Houston, Temple L., 439
Howard, Clark, 13
Howard, Joseph, 193–194,
379
Howe and Hummel,
439–440, 446, 523, 582
Hoyle, John E., 624
Hoyt, George, 440–441
Hoyt, W. K., 614
Hubbard, Marvin, 13, 14,
228, 233
Hubbard, Old Mother, 582
Hughes, Howard, 452–453,
513, 918
Hughes, John R., 441
Hull, George, 161
Hummel, Abe. See Howe and
Hummel
Hummel, William, 765
humming bird, 441, 681
Humphreys, Murray, 420,
891, 892
Hunt, E. Howard, 120
Hunt, Sam “Golf Bag,” 4,
441
Hurkos, Peter, 204
hurrahing the town, 441–442
Hutchinson, Bill, 94
Hutchinson, Lottie, 94
Hyde, B. C., 863
Hyman, Cap, 382, 841, 900
hypnotism and crime,
442–443
hypnotism and detection,
443–444
I
I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang (Burns),
140, 175
Ice Cream Bar Robbery, 445
ice pick kill, 445
Ida the Goose, 496
Ida the Goose War, 445–446
identification method(s)
Bertillon system, 85–86,
312–313, 937
DNA evidence, xii, 154,
269–271
fingerprinting. See fingerprinting
voiceprints, 917–918
identity theft, 451–452
If Christ Came to Chicago
(Stead), 311, 846
immigration, illegal, 714
impostor(s)
Demara, Ferdinand
Waldo, Jr., 257
Mina, Lino Amalia Espos
Y, 604–605
In Cold Blood (Capote), 198
In Danger (Howe and Hummel), 440, 446
Indiana, Gary, 236
Indian police, 197, 446–447
Indians, lynching of, 555
Industrial Workers of the
World (IWW), 25, 419
infanticide, 447–448
informer(s), 840
Audett, Blackie, 478
Barboza, Joseph, 688
Burton, Mary, 142
Deep Nightstick, 254
Deep Throat, 254
Gravano, Sammy “the
Bull,” 362, 367–369,
840
Murphy, Jim, 70, 457,
633–634
Reles, Abe. See Reles,
Abe
slang for, 840
Teresa, Vincent Charles,
671, 688, 724, 778,
840, 872
Valachi, Joseph M. See
Valachi, Joseph M.
Yager, Erastus “Red,”
961
Ingalls, Oklahoma Territory,
Battle of, 249, 277, 278,
448, 591, 649, 769
Ingles, Robert I., 77
983
injection, 302–303
Innocents, 62, 448–449, 917
Helm, Boone, 411
leader of. See Plummer,
Henry
lynching of, 556,
915–916
Lyons, Haze, 559
Rawley, R. C., 741
Skinner, Cyrus, 818
Yager, Erastus “Red,”
961
insanity defense, 449–450,
729
Insull, Samuel, 450
insurance frauds, 450–451
accident faking, 4–5
Bolber-Petrillo murder
ring, 105
Tinker, Edward, 884
victims of, 254,
580–581, 695
Internet crime, 451–452
interracial marriages, 607
interrogation methods,
209–211, 760, 901
Invisible Empire, 503
Irish gang(s)
Dead Rabbits, 116, 253,
338, 760
Forty Thieves, 325–326
Gophers, 338, 357,
445–446, 496, 569
Kerryonians, 487–488
Plug Uglies, 116, 253,
708
Ragen’s Colts, 738–739
White Hand Gang, 942
Irish Mollie, 900
“irresistible impulse test,”
449
Irving, Clifford, 452–453,
918
Irving, Jim, 101, 582
Irving, Johnny, 926
Irving, Washington, 43
Israel, Harold, 453
Italian-American Civil Rights
League, 204–205
Italian Dave gang, 453–454,
577
Ivers, Alice, 709
Ives, Albert, 837
IWW. See Industrial Workers
of the World
Izzy and Moe, 454–455
J
Jabour, Cynthia, 930–931
Jackson, Andrew, 42, 456,
459, 506, 682
Jackson, Carroll, 746
Jackson, Charles, 290
Jackson, Donald Dale, 471
Jackson, Eddie, 392, 456
Jackson, Frank, 70, 456–457
Jackson, George, 249
Jackson, Humpty, 291,
457–458, 835
Jackson, Jonathan, 249–250
Jackson, Mary Jane “Bricktop,” 458–459, 603
Jackson, Maynard, 45
Jackson, Shoeless Joe, 98
Jackson, William “Action,”
4, 127
Jackson-Dickinson duel,
z459
Jack the Ripper, 668
Jacobson, Cecil B., 836–837
Jacobson, Susan, 20
jailhouse shopping network,
459
James, Frank, 235, 460–461,
655–656, 683
James, Jesse, 459–461
assassin of, 322–323
Crittenden, Thomas T.
and, 234
as gunfighter, 377–378
Little, Dick and,
536–537
Starr, Belle and, 844
James, Jesse—impostors,
461–462
James brothers/gang, 59,
459–461, 894. See also
James, Frank; James, Jesse
downfall of, 655–656
Hite, Wood, 422
Little, Dick, 536–537
Pinkertons and, 700
Stiles, William C. “Bill,”
848–849
Younger brothers,
963–965
James Street gang, 157, 317
Jane the Grabber, 362, 722
Janin, John, 371
Jarecki, Edmund K., 159,
191
Jay, John, 272
Jefferson, Thomas, 142, 726
Jeffries, James J., 340
Jegado, Helen, 856
Jennings, Al, 462–463, 937
Jernegan, Prescott Ford, 354
Jewell, Richard, 44–45
Jewett, Helen, 463–464
Jewish Mafia, 464, 840–841
Jim the Penman, 181, 227
Joe the Boss. See Masseria,
Giuseppe “Joe the Boss”
Johnny Behind the Deuce,
464–465
Johnson, Andrew, 42
Johnson, Capt. Charles, 99
Johnson, George, 465
Johnson, Hiram, 26
Johnson, J. J., 154
Johnson, Jack, 583
Johnson, James, 787
Johnson, Jerome A., 205,
336
Johnson, John, 465
Johnson, Lyndon, 295, 433,
796, 940
Johnson, Mushmouth,
465–466
Johnson, Napoleon Bonaparte, 472
Johnson, Nucky, 46, 801
Johnson, Turkey Creek Jack,
377
Johnson, William R., 245
Johnson County War, 173,
466–467
Averill, Jim and, 49, 172
book about, 58
Canton, Frank M., 152
Cattle Kate and, 49, 172
Red Sash Gang, 744
victim of, 175–176
Johnston, James A., 11, 13,
44, 329, 467, 856
Johnstown flood looting,
467–468
Jon, Gee, 468
Jones, Canada Bill, 260, 759,
806
Jones, Charles F., 754–755
Jones, Frank, 468–469
The Encyclopedia of American Crime
Jones, Genene, 801
Jones, Julius “Babe,” 202
Jones, William “Canada
Bill,” 469
Jordan, Kirk, 125
Joyce, Mike, 674
joyriding, 850
Juanita, 470
Judd, Winnie Ruth, 470–471
Judges (Jackson), 471
judicial corruption, 471–472,
585, 758–759
Judson, Edward Z. C.,
43–44, 273, 472
jug markers, 472–473
Jukes, 473
Julian Street, 473–474, 727
July, Maoma, 130
Jump, John, 474
juvenile delinquency, 61,
110–111, 124, 156–157,
474–475, 809, 895–896
juvenile gang(s), 339
Dirty Dozen Gang, 263,
269
Formby gang, 324
Forty Little Thieves, 325
Forty-Two Gang, 71,
127, 326
Little Dead Rabbits, 572
Little Forty Thieves, 572
Nineteenth Street Gang,
651–652
K
Kaczynski, Theodore, 10,
907–908
Kahane, Rabbi Meir, 477
Kahn, Bertha, 208
Kanka, Megan, 598
Kansas City Massacre, 321,
478–479, 639–640, 691,
942
Kaplan, Nathan. See Kid
Dropper
Karpis, Alvin “Creepy,” 479,
493
Barker brothers and, 63,
65
Hoover, J. Edgar and,
118, 433
in Keating-Holden Gang,
480, 481
plastic surgery of, 619,
705
in prison, 12
as train robber, 59, 895
Kastel, Dandy Phil, 401, 512,
549
Kate Flannery, 427
Katz, Renee, 443
Kaufman, S. Jay, 340
Kearney, Patrick, 896
Keating, Charles H., Jr., 480
Keating, Lawrence, 181
Keating-Holden Gang,
480–481
Keeler, Leonarde, 481, 526,
919
Keely, John E. W., 481
Keene, John, 482
Kefauver investigation,
482–484, 772, 870
Bals, Frank, 52
Cohen, Mickey, 200
Costello, Frank, 225,
347
Duke’s Restaurant, 283
Guzik, Jake “Greasy
Thumb,” 379
Lansky, Meyer, 511
Moretti, Willie, 621–622
Ricca, Paul “The
Waiter,” 754
Kehoe, Andrew, 70–71
Kehoe, Jack, 567, 613
Kehoe, John “Black Jack,”
567
Kelley, Daniel, 95, 484
Kelley, James H. “Dog,”
385–386, 592
Kelly, “Dog,” 273
Kelly, George R. “Machine
Gun,” 12, 353, 480,
484–485, 493, 804
Kelly, Honest John, 485
Kelly, Joseph “Bunco,”
485–486
Kelly, Kathryn, 484–485,
804
Kelly, Paul, 231, 290, 317,
724–725
Kelly, Shanghai, 486
Kemmler, William, 300,
486–487
Kemper, Edmund Emil, III,
487
Kendall, Hamp, 645
Kenealy, Big Jim, 531
Kennedy, James, 385–386
Kennedy, John F., 43, 433,
675–677, 774, 795, 796,
894
Kennedy, Joseph, 680–681
Kennedy, Robert F.
assassination of, 43,
817–818
Coppola, Ann and, 219
Hoover, J. Edgar and,
433
in McClellan Committee,
74, 424, 912
Williams, Edward Bennett and, 952
Kenner, Joseph, 170
Keppel, Robert, 135
Kerr, Clarence, 164
Kerryonians, 487–488
Kersta, Lawrence G.,
917–918
Keseberg, Lewis, 276
Kessler, William F., 628
Ketchum, “Black Jack” Tom,
298, 426, 488, 516
Ketchum, Sam, 488–489
Key, Philip Barton, 911
key racket, 489
Keywell, Phil and Harry, 732
“kicking the habit,” 489
Kid Curry, 167, 386,
489–490, 494, 798,
947–948
Kidd, Captain William,
491–492, 702
Kid Dahl, 239–240
Kid Dimes, 131–132
Kid Dropper, 262, 281,
490–491, 505, 673,
834–835
kidnapper(s). See also child
killer(s)
Douglass, Joey, 492, 770
Eisemann-Schier, Ruth,
493, 501
Gilmore, Geary, 229
Gooch, Arthur, 356
Hall, Carl Austin, 493
Harris, William and
Emily, 391, 405, 493
Hauptmann, Bruno
Richard. See Hauptmann, Bruno Richard
Heady, Bonnie, 493
Hickman, Edward,
413–414, 493
Holloway, Jerome, 229
Holmes, John Maurice,
393–394, 556
Karpis, Alvin “Creepy.”
See Karpis, Alvin
“Creepy”
Kelly, Kathryn, 484–485,
493, 804
Kelly, “Machine Gun.”
See Kelly, George R.
“Machine Gun”
Krist, Gary Steven, 493,
501
Mosher, William, 492,
770
Schoenfeld, James and
Richard, 190, 493
Seadlund, John Henry,
493
Smith, Byron, 229
Thurmond, Thomas H.,
393–394, 556
Westervelt, William, 492,
770
Williams, William A. H.,
493, 633
Woods, Frederick
Newhall, IV, 190, 493
kidnapping, 492–493
Bisbee, Arizona, 95
Chowchilla school bus
kidnapping, 189–190,
443, 493
College Kidnappers, 202
of free blacks, 493
kidnap victim(s)
Beckett sisters, 76–77
Bremer, Edward George,
64, 65, 479, 620, 968,
969
Collins, Walter, 204
Craft, Gerald, 229
Cudahy, Edward A., Jr.,
492
Degnan, Suzanne, 409
Factor, Jake “the Barber,” 891
Greenlease, Robert C.,
Jr., 375–376, 493
Hamm, William A., Jr.,
64, 65, 479, 493, 891
Hart, Brooke, 393–394,
556
Hearst, Patricia, 54, 391,
405–406, 493
Levine, Peter, 524–525
Lindbergh, Charles A., Jr.
See Lindbergh kidnapping
Mackle, Barbara Jane,
493, 501
McPherson, Aimee Semple, 567–568
Mattson, Charles, 493,
524, 594
Murphy, J. Reginald,
493, 633
Orr, Thomas, 54
Parker, Marion,
413–414, 492–493
Ross, Charles Brewster,
492, 770
Ross, Charles S., 493
Urschel, Charley, 484,
493
Walsh, Adam, 547, 925
Kid Twist, 239–240, 316,
491, 967
984
Kid Twist (Reles). See Reles,
Abe
killer(s). See murderer(s)
Kilpatrick, Ben, 167,
493–494, 768, 898–899,
935, 947–948
Kinder, Mary, 264, 265
King, Dot, 494–495, 654
King, James, 165
King, Kate, 495
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 43,
433, 685, 741–742
King, Maude R., 597
King, Melvin, 120–121
King, Rodney, 711
King of Harlem, 65–66
Kinsey, Alfred, 7, 8
Kipp, Harold W., 301
kirkbuzzer, 495–496
Kirker, James, 423, 496, 787,
953
kissing, 497
kiss of death, 496, 912
kiss of death girls, 496–497,
650, 703
“kiss-the-sucker,” 456
Kitty and Jennie Gang,
497–498
Klebold, Dyland, 788, 790
Klein, “Snags,” 93
Kleinschmidt, Black Lena,
582–583
Klenha, Joseph Z., 159
Kline, Deborah Sue, 20
Kloeb, Frank L., 294
Kloehr, John, 244
Klutas, Theodore “Handsome Jack,” 202
Knapp, Captain Joseph, 498
Knapp Commission,
498–499, 772
Kniffen, Luther, 331
Knight, Goodwin, 2, 302
Knight, Suge, 802
Knights of Mary Phagan,
328, 556
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,
503, 556
knockout drink
Mickey Finn, 600–601
Miss Piggott Special,
699, 803
Knox, Frank, 431–432
knuckle voice, 499, 624
Koehler, Arthur, 178, 332,
499–500, 534
Kogut, William, 162
Koretz, Leo, 500–501
Kosterlitzky, Colonel Emilio,
501
Kriesberg, Dan, 580–581
Krist, Gary Steven, 493, 501
Krugman, Martin, 552
Ku Klux Klan, 141, 501–503,
556, 661, 738, 940
Kunstler, William M., 477
Kurtz, Sheeny Mike, 582
Kushner, Louis, 490–491
Kusz, Charles, 503
L
LaBianca, Leno, 411
LaBianca, Rosemary, 411
labor leader(s)
Beck, Dave, 74
Boyle, W. A. “Tony,”
117–118
Haywood, William D.
“Big Bill,” 247, 405,
419, 567, 672, 701,
847
Hill, Joe, 299, 419
Hoffa, James R. See
Hoffa, James R.
Mooney, Thomas J., 616
labor sluggers war, 504–505
labor terrorist organization,
612–613
Labriola, Paul, 15
Lady Gophers, 505
Lafitte, Jean, 337–338, 412,
505–506, 682, 702
Lager Beer Riot, 506–507
Lagoardette, Peter, 340
LaGuardia, Fiorello, 128
La Guardia, Fiorello, 542,
662, 711, 794, 823, 913,
923
Lahey-Claffey feud, 507–508
Lake, Leonard, 508–509
Lake, Stuart, 385
Lamb, James, 714
Lambert, Drexel Burnham,
104
Lambert, Henry, 18
La Meno Nera. See Black
Hand
Lamm, Harman K. “Baron,”
xiii, 59, 263, 472,
509–510
Lamont, Blanche, 284–285
L’Amphere, Roy, 378
land frauds, 141, 371–372,
510
Landis, Kenesaw Mountain,
99
Landregan, Bridget, 701
Landreth, Ted, 563
Langer, William, 12
Lansky, Meyer, 464,
510–512
Adonis, Joe and, 7
in Big Six, 208, 284
in Bug and Meyer Mob,
123, 133, 589, 813
Costello, Frank and, 224
Flamingo Hotel and,
318, 512, 814, 864
Genovese, Vito and, 28,
347
Gordon, Waxey and, 359
Luciano, Lucky and, 25,
85, 168, 338, 349,
549–550, 571, 631,
658
Mustache Petes and, 638
Schultz, Dutch and, 261
Stacher, Joseph “Doc”
and, 840
in syndicate, 52, 128,
208, 673, 801
Trafficante, Santo and,
894
underworld conventions,
35, 46, 401
Zwillman, Abner
“Longy” and, 970
Lantier, Ike, 417
Larn, John M., 512
Larson, John A., 481, 526,
919
laser detection, 513
The Last Testament of Lucky
Luciano (Hammer and
Gosch), 261
Las Vegas, 512–513, 841.
See also Flamingo Hotel
LaTempa, Peter, 513
Latimer, Robert Irving, 514
Laughing Sam Carey gang,
426
laundry-mark, 340, 965
Index
Law, John, 607–608
Lawes, Kathryn, 514–515
Lawes, Lewis E., 179, 235,
515, 556, 675, 720, 768
lawless mining town
Alta, Utah, 21–22
Aurora, Nevada, 49
Bodie, California, 52,
104
Candelaria, Nevada, 152
Panamint City, California, 679
Rough and Ready, California, 772
Tin Cup, Colorado,
883–884
Virginia City, Montana,
708–709, 917
lawmen, xiii. See also sheriff(s)
Alvord, Burt, 23, 142,
821, 848
Baca, Elfego, 51
Behan, John, 78, 119,
124
Breakenridge, William,
119
Brooks, William L. “Buffalo Bill,” 125, 287
Brown, Hendry, 125
Canton, Frank M., 152,
466
Capone, James, 160
Chivington, John M.,
189
Cook, David J., 215,
283, 635
Courtright, Longhair
Jim, 227–228
Donahue, Cornelius
“Lame Johnny,”
275–276
Earp, Morgan. See Earp,
Morgan
Earp, Virgil. See Earp,
Virgil
Earp, Warren B., 288
Earp, Wyatt. See Earp,
Wyatt
Fisher, John King, 315,
879
Garrett, Patrick Floyd.
See Garrett, Patrick
Floyd
Helm, Jack, 411,
860–861
Hickok, “Wild Bill.” See
Hickok, James Butler
“Wild Bill”
Long, Steve, 543
Madsen, Chris, 569–570,
877–878, 881, 883
Masterson, Bat. See Masterson, William B.
“Bat”
Masterson, Edward J.,
591
Masterson, James P.,
191, 245, 249, 591
Mather, Mysterious
Dave, 354, 593–594
Meagher, Mike, 596
Neagle, David, 641–642
O’Neill, William O.
“Buckey,” 671–672
Owens, Commodore
Perry, 677
Plummer, Henry. See
Plummer, Henry
Selman, John, 388,
797–798
Slaughter, John, 23,
820–821
Smith, Thomas “Bear
River,” 828
Stiles, Billie, 23, 142, 848
Stoudenmire, Dallas, 854
Thomas, Henry Andrew
“Heck,” 877–878
Thompson, Ben, 198,
315, 801, 878–879
Tilghman, Bill, 191, 277,
386, 877–878, 881,
883
Warner, Matt, 167, 494,
927
Lawrence, Jimmy, 267
Lawrence, Joel, 86
Lawrence, Richard, 42
Lawson, Louise, 495
lawyers. See also defense
lawyer(s)
dishonest, 515–516
Lay, Elza, 167, 494, 516
Lazia, John, 46, 93, 691
Leach, Kimberly, 137
Leach, Matt, 264, 265, 266
leatherheads, 517, 765, 773
LeBlanc, Antoine, 517
Lechler, John, 517–518
Lee, John D., 625
Lee, Oliver, 327
Lee, Tom, 609–610
Lee, William, 375
Leese, George, 821
Lefors, Joe, 435
Legenza, Walter, 898
leg in, leg out, 518
Leibowitz, Samuel S., 201,
359, 518–519, 609,
793–794
Leishman, John, 83
Lennon, John, 179
Lenox Avenue Gang, 380,
519–520
Leonard, Bill, 124
Leopold and Loeb, 248,
520–521, 906
Lepke, Louis. See Buchalter,
Louis “Lepke”
LeRoi, Agnes, 470
Le Roy, Kitty, 517
Leslie, Frank “Buckskin,”
521–522, 674, 758
Leslie, George Leonidas, 59,
102, 434, 522–524, 537,
582
Leslie, Harry, 264
lethal injection, 302–303
Levine, Dennis, 104, 524
Levine, Peter, 524–525
Levitt, Steven D., 2–3
Levy, Lisa, 136
Lewis, Allen Curtis, 443
Lewis, George, 732
Lewis, Hungry Joe, 58
Lewis, Joe E., 565, 577
Lewis, Nolan D. C., 40
Lewis, Peter W., 8, 737
Lewis, Vach, 239–241
Lewis, Whitey, 75, 380
Lexow Committee, 145, 525,
772, 951
Leyra, Camillo W., Jr., 444
lie detector, 239, 331,
525–527, 919, 931
lie detector expert, Keeler,
Leonarde, 481, 526, 919
Life Plus 99 Years (Leopold),
521
Lightfoot, Captain, 527–528
lime cell, 528, 623
Limerick, Tom “Sandy,” 329,
548
Lincoln, Abraham
assassination of, 42, 283,
528–530, 625
Civil War gold hoax and,
193
as defense lawyer,
530–531, 700
Gordon, Captain
Nathaniel and, 357
Secret Service and, 795
as target of body snatchers, 531
Lincoln, Warren, 531
Lincoln County War, 92,
125, 532, 903
Lindbergh kidnapping, 425,
493, 500, 532–535, 597,
683, 906, 954
Lindbergh Law, 182, 356,
535
Lindsay, John, 498
Lindsay, Vachel, 23
Lingg, Louis, 402–403
Lingle, Alfred “Jake,” 106,
410, 535–536
Lingley, Big Bill, 161
Linn, Buck, 345
Little, Dick, 234, 422,
536–537
Little, Frank, 25
Little, Joan, 537
Little Augies, 673
Little Chicago Fire, 927
Little Dead Rabbits, 572
Little Forty Thieves, 572
Little Frog Catcher, 106
Little Joker, 523, 537–538
Little Mike, 651–652
Little Pete, 417–418, 538
Little Water Street, 538–539
Liu Fook, 55
Live From Death Row (AbuJamal), 156
Live Oak Boys, 336, 375,
539–540
Lizzie the Dove, 559, 946
loansharking, 24, 258, 540,
846
Lobrano, Philip, 37
Lockerby, Charley, 539
lockstep surveillance,
540–541
Locord, Edmond, 33
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 145
Loeb, Richard “Dickie.” See
Leopold and Loeb
Loeber, Charley, 176, 177
Loesch, Frank J., 700
Logan, Harvey. See Kid
Curry
Lohman, Ann Trow,
750–751
Lombardi, Frank, 15
Lombardo, Antonio “The
Scourge,” 23, 541
Lombroso, Cesare, 29, 526
London, Jack, 148, 624
Lonely Hearts Killer, 74–75
Lonergan, Patricia Burton,
541–542
Lonergan, Richard “Peg
Leg,” 942
Lonergan, Wayne, 541–542
A Lonesome Road (Harsh),
393
Long, Huey, 43, 542
Long, Steve, 543
Longbaugh, Harry. See Sundance Kid
985
Longley, William P., 54, 388,
543–544
Longley brothers, 905
“Looking for Mr. Goodbar
murder,” 196–197
Loomis gang, 544–545
Lord, Rufus L., 363
Los Angeles Times bombing,
140, 141, 545–546, 763
Louie, Lefty, 75, 380
Louie the Lump, 240, 491
Louima, Abner, 711
Love, Harry, 633
Lovejoy, Elijah, 546
Lovett, Wild Bill, 942
Loving, Cockeyed Frank,
377, 546
Lowe, Joseph “Rowdy Joe,”
274, 546–547
Lowell Commission, 779
Lucas, Henry Lee, 547–548,
925
Lucas, James, 329, 548
Lucchese, Thomas, 548–549,
813
Banana War, 57, 204
Buchalter, Lepke and,
128, 673
grave of, 370
at Havana Convention,
401
Lufthansa robbery and,
551
Maranzano, Salvatore
and, 168, 586, 590
Luciano, Charles “Lucky,”
213–214, 549–551
Adonis, Joe and, 7
Anastasia, Albert and, 27
Anastasio, Anthony and,
28
at Atlantic City Conference, 46
in Broadway Mob, 123
Capone, Al and, 157,
842
consigliere, 213–214
Costello, Frank and, 224,
749, 922
in exile, 35, 225, 420
in Five Points Gang, 231,
290, 317, 572, 621
Genovese, Vito and, 347,
872
Gordon, Waxey and, 359
grave of, 370
at Havana Convention,
401–402, 814
kiss of death and, 496
Lansky, Meyer and, 25,
85, 133, 338, 349,
510–511, 571, 631,
658, 813
Lindbergh kidnapping
and, 534
Mustache Petes and, 168,
585–586, 589–590,
638
nickname of, 651
Normandie, S. S., 653
omertà and, 671
in prison, 219
Rothstein, Arnold and,
771
Schultz, Dutch and, 261,
791
in syndicate, 52, 128,
673, 801
Todd, Thelma and, 885
Luckey, Buzz, 746
Luetgert, Adolph Louis, 551
Luetgert, Louisa, 551
Lufthansa robbery, 551–552
Lull, Louis J., 700
Lupo the Wolf, 97–98,
552–553, 589, 621, 632
Lustig, “Count” Victor, 203,
553–554, 614
Lutz, Philip, Jr., 266
Lyle, John H., 174, 332, 409,
619
Lynch, William, 554–555,
710
lynching, 398, 555–556. See
also vigilance committee(s)
animal, 30–31
of horse thieves, 437
origin of, 554–555
lynch victim(s)
Averill, James, 49–50,
172
Brooks, William L. “Buffalo Bill,” 125
Cattle Kate, 49–50, 172,
466
Coons, William,
217–218
Donahue, Cornelius
“Lame Johnny,”
275–276
Earle, Willie, 287
Frank, Leo, 141,
328–329, 556
Heath, John, 96
Holmes, John Maurice,
393–394, 556
Johnson, George, 465
Lovejoy, Elijah, 546
McIntyre, Charles, 565
Thurmond, Thomas H.,
393–394, 556
Lynds, Elam, 556–559, 719
Lynn, Ray, 42
Lyon, Pat, 687
Lyons, Danny, 280, 559, 946
Lyons, Frank, 962
Lyons, Haze, 559
Lyons, Ned, 582
Lyons, Sophie, 582
M
McAdoo, Anthony LaQuin,
753
McAdoo, William, 308
MacArthur, Charles, 406
McBratney, James, 361
McBride, Mrs. William, 380
McCain, John, 480
McCall, Jack, 252, 415, 560
McCanles gang, 414–415,
561
McCann, Joseph A., 936
McCarthy, Henry, 91–93
McCarthy, Johnny, 281
McCarthy, Joseph, 255, 952
McCarthy, P. H., 70
McCarthy, Stitch, 53
McCarty, Tom, 167, 927
McCarty gang, 561
McClain, James, 249
McClellan, George B., 700
McClellan Committee, 74,
132, 424, 572, 754, 912,
970
McClelland, Clem, 471
McCluskie, Mike, 650
McConaghy, Robert, 561
McCorkle, Joseph, 379
MacCormick, Austin H.,
935–937
MacCormick, Cyrus H., 185
McCormick, Robert, 536
The Encyclopedia of American Crime
McCoy, Randolph, 400
MacDonald, Jeffrey,
562–563
McDonald, Michael Cassius
“Mike,” 115, 391,
563–564
McElroy, Henry, 691
McErlane, Frank, 31
McEvoy, Hugh, 475
McFall, Danny, 738
McGarigle, William J., 392,
564
McGinniss, Joe, 563
McGlue, Luke, 564
McGovern, Stubby, 738
McGown, Kitty, 559
McGuinness, Margaret, 786
McGuirk’s Suicide Hall, 564
McGurn, Machine Gun Jack,
4, 564–565, 577, 619, 783
McIntire, James, 289
McIntyre, Charles, 565
McKay, Robert B., 47
McKellar, Kenneth D., 432
McKenna, Alec, 244
McKinley, James, 42
McKinley, William, 42, 175,
241, 632, 767
McKinney Touch, 566
Mackle, Barbara Jane, 493,
501
McLaughlin, Andrew G.,
358
McLaughlin, Bernard, 688
McLowery brothers, 111,
194, 195, 289, 566, 665
McManigal, Ortie, 545
McMullin, Fred, 99
McNamara brothers,
140–141, 247, 545–546
McNelly, Leander H.,
566–567
McNew, William, 327
McNutt, Paul V., 264, 266,
267
McPadden, Gunner, 738
McParland, James, 567,
612–613, 672
McPherson, Aimee Semple,
567–568
Macready, William Charles,
43–44
McSween, Alexander, 92,
125, 532, 902
McSwiggin, William H., 185
McVeigh, Timothy, 666–667
McVeigh, Timothy J., 10
madam(s), 727
Adler, Polly, 6–7
Allen, Lizzie, 17, 29,
228–229
Arlington, Josie, 37–38
Aunt Josie, 728
Barrows, Sydney Biddle,
67–68
Briggs, Hattie, 121–122
Bulette, Julia, 133–135
Camp, Martha, 679
Clifford, Lizzie, 680
Connors, Babe, 212–213
Dufour, Marie, 640
Everleigh sisters,
296–297, 330, 618
Fields, Vina, 310–311
Fitch, Mollie, 229
Friendly Friends, 330,
618
Hankins, Effie, 17, 297
Hastings, Mary, 397, 943
Herrick, Eleanor, 718,
945
Hodges, Moll, 680
Irish Mollie, 900
Kahn, Bertha, 208
King, Kate, 495
Maitland, Cleo, 297
Millard, Zoe, 330
Milton, Edna, 186
Poker Alice, 709
Scheible, Billie, 554
Shaw, Vic, 330, 618
Silks, Mattie, 814–815
Spencer, Georgie, 330
Stafford, Annie, 786,
841, 945
Stanford, Sally, 363
Wall, Tessie, 208, 924
Watson, Carrie, 687
Mad Bomber, 600
Madden, Owney “The
Killer,” 25, 201, 568–569
Madigan, Harry, 738
Madison, James, 682
Madsen, Chris, 569–570,
877–878, 881, 883
Madsen, David, 236–237
Maffie, Adolph “Jazz,” 122
Mafia, 570–572
first, in US, 795
Jewish, 464, 840–841
ruling body of, 208
Mafia, Jr., 572
Mafia, New Orleans mass
execution of, 573–574
Mafia at the turn of the century, 574–575
Mafia body disposal methods, 199
Mafia code for silence,
omertà, 670–671
Mafia court of inquiry, 864
Mafia execution signal, kiss
of death, 496, 912
Mafia execution style(s)
barrel murders, 66–67
ice pick kill, 445
Mafia families, 339,
575–576
Mafia gun, 573–574
Mafia headquarters
Cicero, Ill., 191, 402
Duke’s Restaurant,
283–284
Hawthorne Inn, 402, 933
Mafia leader(s). See also syndicate leader(s)
Accardo, Anthony
Joseph. See Accardo,
Anthony Joseph
Aiello, Joseph, 9–10,
148, 541
Buffalino, Russell A.,
132
Capone, Alphonse. See
Capone, Alphonse
Castellano, Paul,
169–170, 361, 368
Colombo, Joseph, Sr., 57,
204–205, 336, 370
Galante, Carmine, 35,
58, 334–335, 347,
370, 571, 897
Gallo, Crazy Joe. See
Gallo, Crazy Joe
Gambino, Carlo. See
Gambino, Carlo
Genovese, Vito. See Genovese, Vito
Gotti, John. See Gotti,
John
Lucchese, Thomas. See
Lucchese, Thomas
Maranzano, Salvatore.
See Maranzano, Salvatore
Masseria, “Joe the Boss.”
See Masseria, Giuseppe
“Joe the Boss”
Morello, Nicholas, 571,
620–621
Patriarca, Raymond L.
S., 512, 688
Profaci, Joseph. See Profaci, Joseph
Ricca, Paul “The
Waiter,” 160, 326,
379, 652, 753–754
Roselli, John, 769–770,
894
Schultz, Dutch. See
Schultz, Dutch
Terranova, Ciro,
872–873
Trafficante, Santo, 28,
35, 335, 401, 894
Mafia’s “body importers,”
225, 572, 787
Mafia victim’s family, fate of,
171–172
Magaddino, Steve, 57, 62,
401
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
(Crane), 75
Magliocco, Giuseppe, 57,
168, 204, 401
Magnuson, John, 178,
499–500
Magoon, Blue Jaw, 631
Magruder, Lloyd, 576–577
Maguires, Mollie, 154, 567
Mahaney, Jack, 454, 577
Mahoney, John, 747
maiming, 577–578
Maione, Happy, 631, 632,
703, 748
Mais, Robert, 898
Maison Coquet, 578
Maitland, Big Billy, 803
Maitland, Cleo, 297
Majczek, Joseph, 578
Makley, Far Charley, 264,
265, 266, 267
Malcolm X, 43, 578–579
Maledon, Ann, 579
Maledon, George, 245,
579–580, 684
Mallison, Francis A.,
193–194
Malloy, Indestructable Mike,
580–581
Maloney, Andrew J., 572
Maloney, Tom, 331
Mandame, Mary, 206, 581
Mandelbaum, Fredericka
“Marm,” 309–310, 363,
366–367, 523, 581–583,
808
Mangano, Phil, 26, 46
Mangano, Vincent, 26
Mann Act, 583, 722, 727
Manson, Charles, 43, 411,
583–585
Manton, Martin T., 472, 585
Maranzano, Salvatore, 571,
585–586
Atlantic City Conference
and, 46
Coll, Vincent “Mad
Dog” and, 201
Lansky, Meyer and, 510,
511
Lucchese, Thomas and,
548
986
Luciano, Lucky and,
464, 549–550
Masseria, “Joe the Boss”
and, 143, 168, 589
Night of the Sicilian Vespers, 651
Siegel, Bugsy and, 133
Valachi, Joe and, 912
Marcello, Carlos, 401
Marcinkiewicz, Theodore,
578
Mares, Elisio J., 299
Marimow, William, 254
Marin County, Calif. Courthouse Shooting, 249–250
Marinelli, Albert, 662
Marino, Jimmy, 651
Marino, Tony, 580–581
Marion Penitentiary, 10,
586–587
Maris, Herbert L., 587–588
Markle, Gerald E., 124
Marks, Ben, 275
Marley, Kemper, 105
Marsh, Ike, 410, 871
Marston, William M., 331,
526
Marten, Dr. Edward, 703
Martin, Jose Maria, 81
Martin, Joseph W., 181
Martin, Michael, 527–528
Martin-Tolliver feud, 588
Marvin, Ace, 522–523
Mascot, 38, 853
Mason, Sam, 389, 588
Mason County War, 217,
469, 588–589
massacre(s)
Allen massacre, 17–18
anti-Chinese, 186–189
Bisbee Massacre, 95–96,
484, 840
Brown’s Chicken mass
murders, 126
Columbine High School
massacre, 788, 790
Guadalupe Canyon massacre, 195, 376, 757
Haun’s Mill Massacre,
400–401
Herrin Massacre, 413
Kansas City Massacre,
321, 478–479,
639–640, 691, 942
Mountain Meadows
Massacre, 625
Newton Massacre, 650
Ponvenir Massacre,
715–716, 873
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. See St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
Massaro, Jim, 524
Masseria, Giuseppe “Joe the
Boss,” 571, 589–590
Atlantic City Conference
and, 46
Lansky, Meyer and, 510,
511
Lucchese, Thomas and,
548
Luciano, Lucky and,
549–550, 872
Maranzano, Salvatore
and, 143, 168,
585–586
Massie, Thornton L., 18
Massie Case, 590–591
Massino, Joseph, 575
mass murderer(s), xiii. See
also serial killer(s)
Ball, Joe, 56
Beck, Martha, 74–75
Bender family, 79–80
Briggen, Joseph, 121
Cook, William, 216–217
Corll, Dean, 221, 800
Corona, Juan, 222,
449–450
Daniels, Murl, 246
De Feo, Ronald, Jr., 251
DeSalvo, Albert H., 54,
259–260, 443
Fernandez, Raymond
Martinez, 74–75
Fish, Albert, 314–315
Gacy, John Wayne, 334,
628, 630
Gohl, Billy, 353–354
Graham, John Gilbert,
364–365
Gunness, Belle, 378, 630
Hahn, Anna, 381–382
Harvey, Captain Julian,
396
Hoch, Johann, 423
Holmes, H. H., 407,
429–430, 630
Kearney, Patrick, 896
McConaghy, Robert, 561
Mullin, Herbert, 449,
627
Murrel, John A., 630,
634–635, 655
Nelson, Earle Leonard,
642–643
New Orleans axeman,
646–647
Panzram, Carl, 681
Piper, Thomas W., 701
Puente, Dorothea,
730–731, 801
Rees, Melvin David, 746
Schmid, Charles
Howard, 788
Watson, J. P., 928–929
West, John Coulter, 246
Whitman, Charles, 75,
76, 380, 943–944
Wood, Isaac, 956
Masterson, Edward J., 591
Masterson, James P., 191,
245, 249, 591
Masterson, Tom, 191
Masterson, William B.
“Bat,” 592–593, 710
Brennan, Molly and,
120–121
in Dodge City Peace
Commission, 273, 274
Dutch Henry and, 286
as gunfighter, 377, 440
Kennedy, James and, 386
Masterson, Ed and, 591
notched weapons of, 657
in Oriental Saloon, 674
Roosevelt, Theodore
and, 767
Rudabaugh, Dave and,
775
Short, Luke and, 811
Mather, Cotton, 593, 956
Mather, Dave, 289
Mather, Mysterious Dave,
354, 593–594
Matsell, George W., 712
mattress girls, 594
Mattson, Charles, 493, 524,
594
Maury County, Tennessee jail
fire, 594–595
Maxwell, Robert, 595–596
Index
Maxwell Street police station, 596
Mayfield Road Mob,
645–646
“Mayflower Madam,”
67–68
Maynard, Robert, 100
Mays, Sam, 389
Meagher, Mike, 596
Mealli, Michael, 621
Means, Gaston Bullock,
534–535, 597
medical examiner(s),
628–629
Gonzales, Thomas A.,
355–356
Marten, Dr. Edward, 703
Norris, Charles, 356,
654–655
medical quackery, 598
Medina, Ernest L., 54
Medina, Pedro, 301
Meehan, Vinny, 942
Megan’s Law, 598
Meldrum, Robert, 598–599
Mencken, H. L., 85
Menendez Brothers, 599
Mercado, Ruth Rita, 352
Mercer, Asa C., 58, 466–467
Meredith, William, 429
Merill, Frank, 12
Merlo, Mike, 23, 660–661
“Merrick, Pulling a Dick,”
599–600
Merrick, Suds, 600
Merrill, Dave, 893
Merry, Chris, 412–413
Metesky, George Peter, 600
Methvin, Henry, 108, 385
Metzker, James “Pres,” 530
Mexican Americans, murder
of, 715–716, 873
Mexican immigrants (pollos),
714
Mexican patriot, Cortina,
Juan, 223, 566–567
Mexican vigilante society,
White Caps (Gorras Blancas), 940
Meyer, Dr. Henry, 443
Meyner, Robert B., 425
Mickey Finn, 600–601
Middleton, Clarence, 41, 42
Midnight Rose’s, 601, 631
Midnight Terrors, 601
“Midtown Slasher,” 132
Miglin, Lee, 237
Milk, Harvey, 939
milk bottle toss, 163
Milken, Michael R.,
601–602
Millain, John, 134–135
Millard, Zoe, 330
Miller, Allan, 239
Miller, Bill “The Killer,” 321,
602
Miller, Clell, 655
Miller, George P., 58
Miller, John, 458–459,
602–603
Miller, Killin’ Jim, 329–330,
342
Miller, Robert Lee, Jr., 269
Miller, Vern, 478, 480, 691
Miller, William F., 603–604
Miller, Yiddles, 738
Miller-Frazer feud, 329–330
Milligan, William, 449
Millman, Harry, 703
Mills, Eleanor, 382–383
Milton, Edna, 186
Mimms, Zerelda, 460
Mina, Lino Amalia Espos Y,
604–605
Mineo, Alfred, 143
Miner, Bill, 605–606, 895
Minkow, Barry, 606–607
minorities. See specific
minority
Minter, Mary Miles,
866–868
Mint Gambling Saloon, 517
Miranda, Mike, 401
Miranda decision, 607
miscegenation, 607
Mississippi bubble, 607–608
mistaken identity, 608–609
Mitchell, Henry Randolph,
869
Mitchell, J. Kearsley, 495
Mitchell, John H., 141, 510
Mittleman, Evelyn, 496–497,
703
M’Naghten Rules, 449
Mobley, Hanford, 42
mob pistol, 609
Mock Duck, 609–611
Modern Criminal Justice
(Lewis and Wright), 8,
737
Molasses Gang, 611
Molineux, Roland B.,
611–612, 906
Mollie Maguires, 612–613
Molway, Clement, 85
Monahan, Mabel, 363
Mona Lisa swindle, 613
Monell, One-Armed Charley,
337, 426
money-making machine,
553, 613–614
Monk, Maria, 614–615
Monkey Trial, 248, 792–793
Monsieur New York, 615
Montgomery, Jack, 761–762
Mooners, 615–616
Mooney, Thomas J., 616
Mooney case, 616
Moore, A. Harry, 140
Moore, Flossie, 239, 322,
616–617
Moore, Gallow May, 151
Moore, Langdon, 780
Moore, Lester, 617–618
Moore, Nathaniel Ford, 618
Moore, Odie, 189
Moore, Sara Jane, 43, 327
Moore, Screwy John, 4
Moorman, Watt, 290
Moran, George “Bugs,”
618–619
Capone, Al and, 22, 158,
661, 782, 933
horse killing, 624
O’Banion, Dion and, 660
Moran, Dr. Joseph Patrick,
619–620
Moran, Thomas B. “Butterfingers,” 620, 698
Morano, Don Pelligrino,
571, 620–621
Morello, Giuseppi, 553
Morello, Nicholas, 571,
620–621
Morello, Peter “the Clutching Hand,” 143
Morello Family, 67, 171,
621, 872–873
Moretti, Willie, 168, 284,
347, 401, 589, 621–622,
970
Morgan, B. F., 263
Morgan, Vicky, 102–104
Morgenthau, Robert M., xi
Moritz, Alan R., 628
Mormon murder squad, 246,
625
Mormons
killing of, 400–401,
826–827
polygamy, 714–715
Morrell, Ed, xiii, 148, 296,
499, 622–624
Morris, Errol, 154
Morrisey, John J., 374
Morse, Charles W., 624
Morton, Bill, 903
Morton, Samuel J. “Nails,”
22, 30, 332, 624–625, 660
Moscone, George, 939
Moseley, Winston, 346
Mosher, William, 492, 582,
770
Mossman, Burton C., 37,
625
Mother Carey’s Chickens,
625
mountaineer feud, 400
Mountain Meadows Massacre, 625
“mouse game,” 163–164
Moyers, Charles H., 405,
567, 672
Mudd, Dr. Samuel, 283, 529,
530, 625–626
Muehfeldt, Freddie, 161
Muff pistol, 626
mugger(s)
Ford, Emma, 322, 616
Midnight Terrors, 601
Moore, Flossie, 239,
322, 616–617
mugger’s weapon, slungshot,
824
mugging, 150, 626–627
Muhammad, Elijah, 578
Mullen, William J., 721
Mullin, Herbert, 449, 627
Mullinen, Joe, 627
Mulrooney, Edward P., 231
Mulvihill, Patrick, 16
Municipal Brothel, 627–628
murder(s), 628–631, 909
infanticide, 447–448
unsolved. See unsolved
murder(s)
Murder, Inc., 631–632
financing, 846
forerunner of, 133, 339,
510
hit men of, 1, 631,
702–703, 702–704,
748–749
leaders of, 26–28,
127–128, 631, 805
office of, 601, 631
murderer(s). See also child
killer(s); mass murderer(s);
poisoner(s); serial killer(s)
Abbott, Burton W., 1–2
Abrams, Big Mike, 3–4
Adorno, George, 7–8
Allen, Bill, 16
Allman, John, 20–21,
677
Almodovar, Terry, 21
Amberg, Louis “Pretty,”
24–25
Anastasia, Albert. See
Anastasia, Albert
Apache Kid, 33–34
Arbuckle, Roscoe
“Fatty,” 35–36
987
Arnold, Stephen, 38
Baker, Cullen M., 54
Baker, Joseph, 54–55
Bayonne-Abriel gang,
71–72
Beadle, William, 72
Beauchamp, Jereboam
O., 73–74
Becker, Abe, 76
Becker, Charles, 75–76,
185, 229, 380, 968
Benson, Steven, 82
Bianchi, Kenneth,
420–421
Biddle brothers, 88
Billee, John, 90–91
Billington, John, xiii, 91,
303, 631
Blixt, Claus, 351–352
Borden, Lizzie, 113
Boston, Patience, 114
Bowers, J. Milton, 116
Boyd, Jabez, 117
Boyle, W. A. “Tony,”
117–118
Brothers, Leo V., 536
Brown, Sam, 125–126
Buchalter, Louis
“Lepke.” See Buchalter,
Louis “Lepke”
Buck gang, 130–131
Buono, Angelo, Jr.,
420–421
Burrow, Rube, 142
Cardinella, Salvatore
“Sam,” 162
Carlton, Handsome
Harry, 163
Carpenter, Richard, 164
Casey, James P., 165–166
Chapman, Gerald,
176–178
Chapman, Mark David,
179
Chappleau, Joseph Ernst,
179–180
Cherokee Bill, 181–182
Cherry Hill Gang, 182
Christopher, Joseph, 133
Ciucci, Vincent, 193
Cline, Alfred L., 197
Coleman, Edward,
200–201
Coll, Vincent “Mad
Dog.” See Coll, Vincent “Mad Dog”
Collins, John Norman,
204
Colt, John C., 206–207,
886–887
Cooley, Scott, 217
Coons, William,
217–218
Copeland, James,
218–219
Coppolino, Dr. Carl, 54,
219–220
Corbett, Boston, 220
Courtright, Longhair
Jim, 227–228
Crowley, Francis “Two
Gun,” 235–236
Cunanan, Andrew,
236–237
Curry, Big Nose George,
238, 489
Cyclone Louie, 239–241,
491
Dahmer, Jeffrey, 242–243
Daniels, James, 245–246,
268
Davis, Angela, 249–250
de Kaplany, Dr. Geza,
251–252
Diamond, Jack “Legs.”
See Diamond, Jack
“Legs”
Dobbs, Johnny, 272,
524, 582
Dolan, Dandy Johnny,
275, 304, 946
Driscoll, Danny,
280–281, 946
Drucci, Vincent
“Schemer.” See Drucci,
Vincent “Schemer”
Durrant, William Henry
Theodore, 284–285
Espinosa brothers,
295
Evans, Charles, 295–296
Ferguson, Paul and Tom,
657–658
Fernandez, Manuel, 310
Field, George Morton,
250
Finch, Raymond
Bernard, 311–312
Fitzpatrick, Richie, 316,
491
Flores, Juan, 319–320
Franklin, Rufus
“Whitey,” 12, 14, 329,
548
Fugmann, Michael,
331–332, 500
Fury, Bridget, 332–333
Garcia, Manuel Philip,
340
Gein, Edward, 344–345
George, Christian, 348
Gillette, Chester, 350
Gilmore, Gary Mark,
152, 153, 299, 351
Glanton, John J., 352,
423, 787
Glatman, Harvey Murray, 352–353
Goldsborough, Fitzhugh,
696–697
Graham, Barbara, 302,
363–364
Graves, Thomas T., 369
Hamilton, Ray, 107, 385
Harris, Jean, 390–391
Harsh, George S., 393
Heirens, William, 409
Hellier, Thomas, 410
Helm, Boone, 410–411
Helm, Jack, 411,
860–861
Hickman, Edward,
413–414, 493
Hickock, Richard E., 198
Hicks, Albert E., 303,
415–416, 808
Hicks, Jeffrey Joe,
416–417
Hill, Dr. John, 418–419
Hill, Joe, 299, 419
Holmes, Alexander
William, 428–429
Holmes, John Maurice,
556
Horn, Tom, 434–435,
599, 739
Irish Mollie, 900
Jackson, Humpty, 291,
457–458, 835
Jackson, Mary Jane
“Bricktop,” 458–459,
603
The Encyclopedia of American Crime
James, Frank, 683
Johnny Behind the
Deuce, 464–465
Johnson, John, 465
Judd, Winnie Ruth,
470–471
Keene, John, 482
Kelly, Joseph “Bunco,”
485–486
Ketchum, “Black Jack”
Tom, 298, 426, 488,
516
Ketchum, Sam, 488–489
Kid Curry. See Kid Curry
Knapp, Captain Joseph,
498
Latimer, Robert Irving,
514
LeBlanc, Antoine, 517
Lechler, John, 517–518
Leopold and Loeb, 248,
520–521, 906
Lincoln, Warren, 531
Little, Joan, 537
Lonergan, Wayne,
541–542
Longley, William P., 54,
388, 543–544
Lucas, James, 329, 548
Luetgert, Adolph Louis,
551
Lupo the Wolf. See Lupo
the Wolf
Lyons, Danny, 280, 559,
946
Lyons, Haze, 559
McCall, Jack, 252, 415,
560
MacDonald, Jeffrey,
562–563
Madden, Owney “The
Killer,” 25, 201,
568–569
Magnuson, John, 178,
499–500
Mason, Sam, 389, 588
Meldrum, Robert,
598–599
Menendez Brothers,
599
Millain, John, 134–135
Miller, Bill “The Killer,”
321, 602
Moseley, Winston, 346
Norton, Samuel,
246–247
O’Connor, “Terrible
Tommy,” 662
O’Kelly, Edward, 323,
666
Olive, Isom Prentice
“Print,” 670
Orgen, Jacob “Little
Augie,” 127, 262, 490,
505, 673, 805
Parr, Laura, 343–344
Patterson, Nan, 688–689
Peach, Arthur, 689
Pomeroy, Jesse H., 715
Prescott, Abraham, 718
Reed, Ed, 745, 843, 844
Reiser, Charles “The
Ox,” 747
Reles, Abe. See Reles,
Abe
Remus, George, 749
Rogers, George W.,
764–765
Rose Man of Sing Sing,
768–769
Ruby, Jack, 43, 676, 774
Sampson, Joe Willie,
196–197
Schuck, Raymond, 683
Sheppard, Samuel H.,
53–54, 807–808
Shockley, Sam Richard,
13, 14, 233, 809–810,
881
Silver, Frankie, 816
Skull, Sally, 819
Slade, Joseph “Jack,”
81–82, 820
Smith, Edgar Herbert,
825
Smith, Perry E., 198
Snyder, Ruth, xii, 301,
831–832
Spanish, Johnny, 490,
834–835
Spinelli, Juanita
“Duchess,” 837
Spooner, Bathsheba,
838–840
Starr, Henry, 844–845
Starr, Tom, 845
Stone, John, 851–852
Strang, Jesse, 938–939
Stroud, Robert Franklin,
12, 855–856
Stuart, Charles, 857
Swearingen, George, 861
Taborsky, Joseph,
864–865
Tenuto, Frederick J., 792,
871–872
Thaw, Harry Kendall,
873–875
Thompson, Gerald,
526–527, 880
Thompson, Miran Edgar
“Buddy,” 13, 14, 810,
880–881
Thurmond, Thomas H.,
556
Tinker, Edward, 884
Tirrell, Albert, 86–87
Tracy, Harry, 167,
893–894
Turley, Preston S., 903
Waite, Dr. Arthur Warren, 922
Walsh, Johnny “The
Mick,” 925–926
Wanderer, Carl, 406
Ward, Return J. M., 926
Webster, John White,
929–930
Weger, Chester, 527, 931
Welch, Bernard Charles,
Jr., 934–935
Wilcoxson, Bobby Randell “One-Eye,”
946–947
Yorky of the Great
Lakes, 962–963
Zelig, Jack. See Zelig,
Jack
Murder Stable, 632
Murder USA (Godwin), 630,
737
murder victim(s). See also
assassination victim(s);
lynch victim(s)
Adams, Katherine,
611–612
Ah Hoon, 8–9
Almodovar, Louisa, 21
Baker, Rosetta, 55
Barbe, Warren Gilbert,
62–63
Barnaby, Josephine, 369
Becker, Jennie, 76
Bickford, Maria, 86–87,
823
Binaggio, Charles, 93–94
Black Dahlia, 96–97, 212
Bolles, Don, 105–106
Bowers, Cecelia, 116
Bow Kum, 115
Bowman, Margaret, 136
Brennan, Molly,
120–121, 592
Bridgeport, Shirley, 352
Brown, Billie, 350
Brown, Frances, 409
Brown, Robert, 331
Bulette, Julia, 133–135
Burdell, Dr. Harvey,
137–139
Campbell, Caryn, 136
Cash, Leland S., 837
Chandler, Cynthia, 195
Chapman, Mrs. James,
178
Chapman, William,
604–605
Cleary, Katherine,
196–197
Collins, Walter, 204
Coppolino, Carmela, 220
Craft, Gerald, 229
Dahma, Hubert, 453
Dannan, Emmanuel,
246–247
Day, Gertie, 250–251
Defenbach, Marie,
254–255, 451
Degnan, Suzanne, 409
Downing, Delphine, 75
Dull, Judy, 352
Dunlop, Arthur, 64
Elwell, Joseph Bowne,
292–293, 654
Fay, Janet, 75
Finch, Mrs. Barbara,
311–312
Fink, Isidor, 313–314
Flemming, John, 217
floaters, 150, 318, 354
Ford, Bob, 666
Fountain, Albert Jennings, 326–327
Franks, Bobby, 520
Freeman, William, 397
Gaither, Billy Jack, 399
Gallagher, Mike, 331
Gargotta, Charley, 93
Gebhardt, Dr. Fritz,
343–344
Geller, Max, 374
Genovese, Kitty,
346–347
Ging, Katherine “Kitty,”
351–352, 443
Gordon, Vivian,
358–359, 794, 923
Gotthardt, Minni Mae,
56
Grant, Joe, 367
Greenlease, Robert C.,
Jr., 375–376, 493
Haag, Mrs. John,
517–518
Halberstram, Dr.
Michael, 934–935
Hallmark, Mildred, 880
Hand, Dora, 385–386
Harold, Margaret, 746
Hart, Brooke, 393–394,
556
Heitler, Mike “de Pike,”
409–410, 650
988
Henshaw, William, 569
Hill, Joan Robinson,
418–419
Hirsch, Frederick, 235
Hoffa, James R. See
Hoffa, James R.
Hoffert, Emily, 960
Hogan, Mary, 344
Hoyt, George, 440–441
Jabour, Cynthia,
930–931
Jackson, Carroll, 746
Jewett, Helen, 463–464
Jump, John, 474
Kanka, Megan, 598
King, Dot, 494–495, 654
King, James, 165
Kusz, Charles, 503
Lagoardette, Peter, 340
Lamont, Blanche,
284–285
Landregan, Bridget, 701
LaTempa, Peter, 513
Lawson, Louise, 495
Leach, Kimberly, 137
Lechler, Mary, 517–518
LeRoi, Agnes, 470
Levine, Peter, 524–525
Levy, Lisa, 136
Lingle, Alfred “Jake,”
106, 410, 535–536
Lonergan, Patricia Burton, 541–542
Luetgert, Louisa, 551
Madsen, David, 236–237
Magruder, Lloyd,
576–577
Maledon, Ann, 579
Malloy, Indestructable
Mike, 580–581
Maloney, Tom, 331
Mattson, Charles, 493,
524, 594
Mercado, Ruth Rita, 352
Miglin, Lee, 237
Moore, Nathaniel Ford,
618
Morgan, Vicky, 102–104
Murray, James, 465
Murray, John Robert,
196
Narano, Gina, 195
Nash, Frank “Jelly,” 478,
480, 481, 639–640,
691, 942
Nathan, Benjamin,
640–641
Newcomen, John, 91
Novarro, Ramon,
657–658
Oberholtzer, Madge, 661
Old Shakespeare, 668
Olinger, Robert, 93, 669
Parker, Marion,
413–414, 492–493
Parkman, George, 929
Parks, Robert F., 686
Paul, David, 683
Peacock, Dr. Silber C.,
689–690
Percy, Valerie, 692–693
Perry, Phenie, 695
Peters, Philip, 696
Phillips, David Graham,
696–697
Piest, Robert, 334
Pollard, Edward, 714
Potts, Helen, 129–130
Rablen, Carroll, 736
Ragen, James M., 31,
737–738
Ramsey, JonBenet, 739
Rappe, Virginia, 35–36
Reese, William, 237
Ribicoff, Sarai, 752–753
Rice, William Marsh,
754–755, 906
Ridley, Edward Albert,
756
Riley, Carol, 930–931
Rogers, Mary Cecilia,
765–766, 773
Ross, Charles S., 493
Ross, Josephine, 409
Rubinstein, Serge,
773–774
Rupolo, Ernest “The
Hawk,” 513, 776
Samuelson, Hedvig, 470
Schuster, Arnold, 792,
860, 871–872, 954
Shakur, Tupac, 340, 802
Sharp, Solomon P., 73
Shepard, Matthew, 399,
807
Short, Elizabeth, 212
Slesers, Anna, 259
Smith, Joseph, 170, 714,
826–827
Smits, Claes, 829
Snyder, Albert, 831
Spooner, Joshua,
838–839
Steele, Michelle, 397
Steunenberg, Frank, 405,
567, 613, 672, 701,
847
Stompanato, Johnny, 851
Stuart, Carol, 857
Sutherland, Annie,
129–130
Swope, Colonel Thomas
B., 863
Tarnower, Herman,
390–391
Taylor, William
Desmond, 866–868
Till, Emmett, 883
Todd, Thelma, 884–886
Trail, Jeffrey, 236
Tresca, Carlo, 334, 347,
896–897, 925
Trot, Benjamin, 114
Trussell, George, 382,
900
Tunstall, John Henry, 92,
532, 902–903
Turner, Julia, 56
Walcker, Marie, 423
Walsh, Adam, 547, 925
Wanderer, Ruth, 406
Welsh, Leila, 937
Whipple, John, 938–939
White, Stanford,
873–874
Williams, Minnie, 285
Winchell, Barry, 399–400
Worden, Mrs. Bernice,
344
Wylie, Janice, 212, 960
Yoon, Won-Joon, 399
Young, Mabel Hood,
701
Murieta, Joaquin, 633
Murphy, Archie, 336, 458
Murphy, J. Reginald, 493,
633
Murphy, Jim, 70, 457,
633–634
Murphy, Joe, 580–581
Murphy, Lawrence G., 92,
532, 902
Index
Murphy, Louisa, 722
Murphy, Patrick V., 498
Murphy game, 634
Murray, George, 31
Murray, James, 465
Murray, Jimmy, 305
Murray, John Robert, 196
Murrel, John A., 630,
634–635, 655
Musgrove, Lee H., 215, 635
Musica, Philip, 635–637
Mussolini, Benito, 334, 347,
570, 814, 897
Mussolini Shuttle, 637–638
Mustache Petes, 638
Atlantic City Conference
and, 46
Bug and Meyer Mob
and, 133
Costello, Frank and, 225
Lansky, Meyer and, 510
Luciano, Lucky and,
549–550
Maranzano, Salvatore,
168, 571, 585
Masseria, “Joe the Boss,”
168, 571, 590
Mussolini Shuttle and,
637
mutilation, 638
“Mutt-and-Jeff” technique,
210–211
Myer, Frank, 298–299
The Mystery of Marie Roget
(Poe), 765, 766, 773
N
Narano, Gina, 195
Nash, Frank “Jelly,” 478, 480,
481, 639–640, 691, 942
Nash, Jay Robert, 267
Natchez-under-the-Hill, 640
Nathan, Benjamin, 640–641
Nation, Carry A., 641
National Association for the
Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP), 840
National Motor Vehicle
Theft Act, 286
Navarro, Juan, 237–238
Neagle, David, 641–642
Neagle, John, 687
Neebe, Oscar, 22, 402–403
Neier, Aryeh, 170, 799
Nelson, Earle Leonard,
642–643
Nelson, George “Baby Face,”
59, 266, 267, 473,
643–645, 733
Nelson, Warden Louis, 183
Nelson, William, 94
Nelson Tombstone, 645
Nerone, Giuseppe “the Cavalier,” 346
Nesbit, Evelyn, 873–875
Nesbit, William Raymond,869
Ness, Eliot, 645–646
Neufeld, Peter, 270
Neumann, Jonathan, 254
Neutral Ground, 646
Newberry, Teddy, 174
Newcomb, George “Bitter
Creek,” 243, 448,
649–650, 769
Newcomen, John, 91
Newell, William, 161
Newgate prison, 718
Newman, Graeme, 292
New Orleans axeman,
646–647
New Orleans procuresses,
647–648, 722
Newton Massacre, 650
New York dive(s)
Bismarck Hall, 96
Hole-In-The-Wall
Saloon, 337, 426–427
McGuirk’s Suicide Hall,
564
New York fire of 1835, 648
New York Lottery swindle,
648–649
New York World’s Fair
bombing, 649
Ng, Charles Chitat, 508–509
Nichols, Terry, 666–667
Nicknames, criminal,
650–651
Night Mayor. See Walker,
James J.
Night of Blood, 750
Night of the Sicilian Vespers,
651
Nineteenth Street Gang,
651–652
Nininger swindle, 892
Nitti, Frank, 4, 174, 420,
652, 753, 891
Nixon, Richard, 31, 74,
120, 254, 424, 433, 682,
918
Nixon, Tom, 69, 593–594
nobles, 652
Noe, James H., 275
No-Man’s Land, 652
Nootbaar, Max, 330
Norcross, Henry L., 781
Norfleet manhunt, 653
Normand, Mabel, 866–868
Normandie, S. S., 653
Norris, Charles, 356,
654–655
Norris, James, 530
North, John, 655
Northfield, Minnesota, bank
raid, 655–656
Norton, John, 162
Norton, Samuel, 246–247
Nosair, Sayyid A., 477
Notched weapons, 656–657
Not Guilty (Frank), 608
Novarro, Ramon, 657–658
numbers racket, 5–6, 85,
658, 790
Nussbaum, Albert, 947
“Nut money,” 61–62
Nye, Bill, 173
O
O’Banion, Charles Dion
“Deanie,” 659–661
assassination of, 32, 158
funeral of, 332
grave of, 369–370
as safecracker, 781
Torrio, John and, 890,
961–962
witnesses and, 183
O’Banion gang
Alterie, Louis “Two
Gun,” 22
Amatuna, “Samoots”
and, 24
animal lynching by,
30–31, 624–625
Drucci, Schemer. See
Drucci, Vincent
“Schemer”
Genna brothers, 346
Lombardo, Antonio and,
541
Moran, “Bugs.” See
Moran, George “Bugs”
Morton, Samuel J.
“Nails,” 624–625
Oberholtzer, Madge, 661
O’Brien, George, 139
O’Brien, Jimmy, 539
O’Brien, John Patrick,
661–662
O’Brien, Tom, 355, 373
O’Bryan, Ronald, 447
O’Connell, Pat, 308
O’Connor, John J., 781
O’Connor, “Terrible
Tommy,” 662
O’Connors’s Gunners, 662
Ocuish, Hannah, 474, 662
O’Dell, Albert, 714
O’Donnell, Simon, 392, 564
O’Donnell gang, 185
O’Dwyer, Bill, 52, 483, 662,
749
O’Farrell, Val, 520
Offen, Ron, 267
O’Folliard, Tom, 93, 342,
370, 662–663
O’Hara, Charles E., 875
Ohio Gang, 141, 306, 663
Ohio State Penitentiary fire,
663–664, 720
O.K. Corral, 664–666
Behan, John, 78
Brocius, “Curly Bill,”
124
Earps, 287–298
Holliday, “Doc,”
427–428
survivor of, 194
victims, 195, 566
O’Keefe, Joseph “Specs,”
122, 139
O’Kelly, Edward, 323, 666
Oklahoma City bombing,
666–667
O’Laughlin, Michael, 530,
626
Old Brewery, 667–668
Old Shakespeare, 668
“Old Sparky.” See electric
chair
O’Leary, Big Jim, 668–669
Olinger, Robert, 93, 669
Olive, Isom Prentice “Print,”
670
Olmsted, Frederick Law, 355
Olney, Peter B., 583
Olson, Culbert L., 616
omertà, 670–671
one-armed bandits, 823–824
O’Neil, Jack, 671
O’Neill, William O.
“Buckey,” 671–672
“one-two” technique,
210–211
one-way ride, 672
On Leong Tong, 8–9, 102,
115, 609–611, 888
Ono, Yoko, 179
Operation Shakedown, 936
Operation Underworld, 653
Oppenheimer, Jake, 499, 624
Orchard, Harry, 405, 567,
672, 847
Oregon boot, 672
Orgen, Jacob “Little Augie,”
127, 262, 490, 505, 673,
805
Oriental Saloon and Gambling House, 522,
673–674
Orlando, Andrew, 16
989
Orr, Thomas, 54
Osborne, George O., 674
Osborne, J. E., 238
Osborne, Thomas Mott, 556,
674–675, 720
Osnato, Jack, 840
Oster gang, 675
Oswald, Lee Harvey, 43,
675–677, 774
Oswald, Russell G., 47
Otis, Harrison Gray, 141,
248, 545–546
Ott, Fat Charley, 150–151
Otto, Carl C. F., 161
outlaw(s), xiii
Alvord, Burt, 23, 142,
821, 848
Apache gangs, 33
Baker, Cullen M., 54
Barker, Arizona Clark
“Kate” or “Ma,”
63–64, 479
Bass, Sam. See Bass, Sam
Beni, Jules, 81–82
Billy the Kid. See Billy
the Kid
Bowdre, Charlie, 93,
115–116, 342, 370
Bras Coupe, 119
Brocius, William B.
“Curly Bill,” 124, 194,
195, 288, 289, 376
Brown, Hendry, 125
Calamity Jane, 146–147,
415
California Outlaws, xiii,
148, 833, 894
Canton, Frank M., 152,
466
Cassidy, Butch. See Cassidy, Butch
Christie, Ned, 190–191
Clanton, Joseph Isaac
“Ike,” 124, 194–195,
664–665, 821
Clanton, Newman H.
“Old Man,” 195
Clanton, William, 111,
195, 289, 665
Clifton, Dan, 197
Colbert, Chunk, 18, 200
Cornett, Brack, 221–222
Curry, Big Nose George,
238, 489
Dalton brothers. See Dalton brothers
Daly, John, 245
Daugherty, Roy,
248–249
Doane gang, 271, 315
Donahue, Cornelius
“Lame Johnny,”
275–276
Doolin, Bill, 243, 277
Evans, Christopher, xiii,
148, 296, 622–623,
833–834
Farrington brothers,
308
Flores, Juan, 319–320
Gooch, Arthur, 356
Hedgepeth, Marion, 407,
430
Herring, Robert, 413
Hite, Wood, 422
Innocents. See Innocents
Jackson, Frank, 70,
456–457
Jennings, Al, 462–463,
937
Kelley, Daniel, 484
Kilpatrick, Ben. See Kilpatrick, Ben
Lay, Elza, 167, 494, 516
Little, Dick, 234, 422,
536–537
Mather, Mysterious
Dave, 354, 593–594
Murphy, Jim, 70, 457,
633–634
Musgrove, Lee H., 215,
635
Newcomb, George “Bitter Creek,” 243, 448,
649–650, 769
O’Folliard, Tom, 93,
342, 370, 662–663
Parish, Frank, 682
Place, Etta, 167, 705,
859, 947
Reed, Jim, 745
Reynolds Gang, 751–752
Ringo, John. See Ringo,
John
Rose of Cimarron, 448,
649, 769
Rudabaugh, Dave, 775,
840, 953
Russian Bill, 776–777
Skinner, Cyrus, 69,
818–819
Starr, Tom, 845
Stiles, Billie, 23, 142, 848
Stiles, William C. “Bill,”
848–849
Sundance Kid. See Sundance Kid
Welch, Ed, 494, 898, 935
West, Little Dick, 937
Wild Bunch. See Wild
Bunch
Wilson, Billy, 775, 953
Yager, Erastus “Red,” 961
Younger brothers,
963–965
outlaw doctor(s), Bell, Tom,
79
Outlaw Exterminators, Inc.,
21, 677
outlaw hideout(s)
Brown’s Hole, 126, 167
Cookson Hills, Oklahoma, 217
Devil’s River Valley, 260
Hole in the Wall, 426,
488
No-Man’s Land, 652
robber’s roost, 761
Owen, Marie, 714
Owens, Commodore Perry,
195, 677
P
Packer, Alfred, 678
packy (sneak thief), 830
Padgett, Randall, 270
Pagano, Joseph, 540
Paine, Lewis, 42, 530
Palmer, Joe, 385
Palmer Raids, 678–679
Panamint City, California,
679
Pancoast, Marvin, 103
Panel house, 239, 679–680
Pantages rape trials, 680–681
Panzram, Carl, 681
Pardon and amnesty,
681–682
Pariano, Giuseppe, 143
Parish, Frank, 682
Parker, Bonnie. See Bonnie
and Clyde
The Encyclopedia of American Crime
Parker, Ellis, 535, 682–683
Parker, Isaac C. “Hanging
Judge,” 296, 683–684
Buck gang, 130–131
Carver, Frank, 579
Cherokee Bill, 181
Dalton brothers, 243
Dance of Death, 245
Lamb, James, 714
newspaper supporting,
324–325
O’Dell, Albert, 714
Parker, John F., 530
Parker, Marion, 413–414,
492–493
Parker, Robert LeRoy. See
Cassidy, Butch
Parker, William H., 684–685,
711
Parkhurst, Reverend Charles
H., 610, 685–686
Parkman, George, 929
Parks, Robert F., 686
parole, 686–687, 799
Parr, Laura, 343–344
Parrot pimp, 687
parsley racket, 687
Parsons, Albert, 402–403
Pasqua, Frank, 580–581
Pathological Firesetting
(Lewis and Yarnell), 40
Pat Lyon At the Forge, 687
Patriarca, Raymond L. S.,
512, 688
Patrick, Albert T., 754–755,
906
Patsy the Barber, 427
Patterson, Nan, 688–689
Patton, Wesley, 117
Paul, David, 683
Paulus, Lilla, 419
Payne, Jimmy Ray, 46
Peacemaker, 689
Peach, Arthur, 689
Peacock, Dr. Silber C.,
689–690
Pearson, Edmund, 114
Peary, Commodore Robert
E., 215–216
Pease, L. M., 325
pedigreed dog swindle, 690
Peel, Fanny, 690
Pegler, Westbrook, 94
Peifer, Jack, 65
Peiffer, Ken, 20
Pendergast, Jim, 93
Pendergast, Robert, 247
Pendergast, Thomas Joseph,
93, 691
Penningston, Scott, 788
Pennsylvania prison system,
719
peonage, 691–692
Pepitone, Pietro, 98
pepperbox revolver, 692
Percy, Valerie, 692–693
Perez, Juan, 77
Perkins, Emmett, 363
Perkins, Josephina Amelia,
693
Perris, Worcester Sam, 524
Perry, Nancy Ling, 405
Perry, Oliver Curtis, 693–695
Perry, Phenie, 695
Peters, Andrew J., 114
Peters, Frederick Emerson,
181, 695–696
Peters, Philip, 696
Petrillo, Herman, 105
Petrillo, Paul, 105
Petrosino, Joseph, 632
Pettengill, Eddie, 363
Pettibone, George A., 405,
567, 672
Pflaum, William, 159, 191
Phagan, Mary, 141, 328, 556
Phengle, Ida, 21
Philadelphia anti-Catholic
riots, 696
Phillips, David Graham,
696–697
Phillips, William, 498
Pick, Dr. John, 706
Pickett, Tom, 375
pickpocket(s), 192
Jackson, Eddie, 392, 456
kirkbuzzer, 495–496
Moran, Thomas B. “Butterfingers,” 620, 698
pickpocket gang(s)
Crazy Butch gang, 231
Dutch Mob, 286
Italian Dave gang,
453–454, 577
pickpocketing, 697–698
Pico, Andrés, 320
Pierce, Charley, 243, 649
Pierce, Franklin, 238
Pierpont, Harry, 473
Pierport, Harry, 264, 265,
266, 267
Pierre hotel robbery, 698
Piest, Robert, 334
pigeon drop, 698–699
Miss Piggott Special, 699,
803
pillory, 699
pimp(s)
Bass, Sam. See Bass, Sam
Bassity, Jerome, 70, 775
Bioff, Willie Morris, 94,
723
Collins, Joel, 69
Davies, Jack, 69
Earp, Wyatt. See Earp,
Wyatt
Pineapple Primary, 699–700,
824–825
Pinkerton, Allan, 700
Pinkerton, William, 308
Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, 700–701
Horn, Tom, 434
James brothers and,
460–461
Kid Curry and, 490
McParland, James, 567,
612–613, 672
Mandelbaum, “Marm”
and, 583
Perry, Oliver Curtis and,
693–694
Reno Gang and, 750
Siringo, Charles Angelo,
701, 818
Piper, Thomas W., 701
pipers, 701
piracy, 701–702
pirate(s)
Baker, Joseph, 54–55
Blackbeard, 99–100,
106–107, 702
Bonnet, Major Stede,
106–107, 702
Bonney, Anne, 702
Bull, Dixey, 702
cave-in-rock pirates, 173
Charlton Street Gang,
180
Colonel Plug, 206
Copeland, James,
218–219
Gambi, Vincent,
337–338, 702
Gibbs, Charles, 349
Gordon, Captain
Nathaniel, 357–358,
702
Hook Gang, 431, 600
Kidd, Captain William,
491–492, 702
Lafitte, Jean. See Lafitte,
Jean
Merrick, Suds, 600
Rackham, Calico Jack,
702
Read, Mary, 702
Pirates’ Homes, 702
Pisano, Augie, 401
Pitchfork, Colin, 270
Pitts, Charlie, 655–656
Pitts, Robert James
“Roscoe,” 313
Pittsburgh Phil, 129,
496–497, 519, 572, 631,
702–704, 846
Pitzel, Benjamin F., 430
Place, Etta, 167, 705, 859,
947
Plant, Roger, 766
plastic surgery for criminals,
705–707
plea bargaining, 707–708
Pleasant Valley War, 365
Ploscowe, Morris, 8
Plug Uglies, 116, 253, 708
Plummer, Henry, 62,
448–449, 708–709
Helm, Boone and, 411
lynching of, 556, 915–916
Lyons, Haze and, 559
Rawley, R. C. and, 741
Skinner, Cyrus and, 818
Yager, Erastus “Red”
and, 961
Poe, Edgar Allan, 765, 766,
773, 929
poisoner(s)
Botkin, Cordelia,
114–115
Buchanan, Dr. Robert,
129–130, 940
Hahn, Anna, 381–382
Harris, Carlyle, 129
Hendrickson, John, Jr.,
412
Hoch, Johann, 423
horse poisoners, 436
Hyde, B. C., 863
Jegado, Helen, 856
Mina, Lino Amalia Espos
Y, 604–605
Molineux, Roland B.,
611–612, 906
O’Bryan, Ronald, 447
Rablen, Eva, 736
Struck, Lydia, 856–857
Toppan, Jane, 856,
888–889
Van der Linden,
Madame, 856
Wood, Isaac, 956
Poker Alice, 709
police, 709–712
police blotter, 39
police bribery, 101–102
police brutality
buffaloing, 133
investigation of, 254
Ponvenir Massacre,
715–716, 873
victims of, 229–230,
685, 711
990
police corruption, Rotten
apple theory, 498, 772
police detective, Wooldridge,
Clifton, 239, 322, 680,
957–958
police dogs, 712
policeman, slang for, 219
Police Riots of 1857, New
York, 712–713
police sleeping on duty, 218
police spies, 701
police strike, 114
police unit(s)
bicycle police, 87–88
Indian police, 197,
446–447
leatherheads, 517, 765,
773
O’Connors’s Gunners,
662
ratelwacht, 740–741
roundsmen, 765, 773
Steamboat Squad, 431,
847
strong-arm squads, 855
police van, Black Maria, 98
police weapon, Colt .45,
208
policewomen, 710–711,
713–714
Polizzi, Chuck, 46
Pollard, Edward, 714
Pollard, Jonathan Jay, 587
pollos, 714
polygamy, 714–715
polygraph. See lie detector
Pomeroy, Jesse H., 715
Ponvenir Massacre,
715–716, 873
Ponzi, Charles, 500, 606,
716–717
population density and
crime, 717
Porter, Anthony, 155
Porter, Billy, 524
Porter, Fanny, 859
Porter, Jim, 371, 469, 932
Porter, Robert, 56
Porter, Will, 382
Post, George, 373
Potts, Helen, 129–130
Powell, John, 760
Powers, Bill, 243
Powers, Johnny “de Pow,”
15, 252
Prairie Queen, 17, 718, 945
Prescott, Abraham, 718
Prime Minister of Underworld. See Costello, Frank
Pringle, Eunice, 680–681
prison currency, Alcatraz
push-ups, 14
prison disciplinary method,
rule of silence, 776
prison drug-smuggling
method, ballooning,
56–57
prisoner-longest term, 344
prison fire(s)
Maury County, Tennessee jail fire,
594–595
Ohio State Penitentiary
fire, 663–664, 720
prison metal detectors,
830–831
prison punishment cell,
425–426
prison reformer(s)
Dix, Dorothea Lynde,
269
Lawes, Lewis. See Lawes,
Lewis E.
Morrell, Ed, xiii, 148,
296, 499, 622–624
Osborne, George O., 674
Osborne, Thomas Mott,
556, 674–675, 720
Whitman, John Lorin,
944–945
prisons and prison riots,
718–721
Alcatraz of the Rockies,
10–11, 586
Alcatraz prison. See
Alcatraz prison
Alcatraz Prison Rebellion. See Alcatraz
Prison Rebellion
Attica prison riot, 47–49,
721
chain gangs, 140, 175
convict labor system,
214–215
convict lease battles, 215
Dry Tortugas Prison,
283, 625–626
Folsom prison, 623
Marion Penitentiary, 10,
586–587
San Quentin prison,
623–624
Tombs, 886–887
Tucker Prison Farm scandal, 901
Welfare Island prison
scandal, 935–937
Yuma Penitentiary, 965
prisons-good time, 356–357
prison torture
derrick, the Folsom, 258,
623
hole, 11, 329, 425–426
humming bird, 441, 681
lime cell, 528, 623
Oregon boot, 672
“San Quentin overcoat,”
623–624
stretcher, 719–720
Tucker Telephone,
901–902
water cure, 719
prison warden(s)
Collins, George, 120
Duffy, Clinton, 298
Edgar, John C., 624
Gardner, J. C., 672
Hoyle, John E., 624
Johnston, James A., 11,
13, 44, 329, 467, 856
Lawes, Lewis. See Lawes,
Lewis E.
Lynds, Elam, 556–559,
719
McCann, Joseph A., 936
Osborne, George O., 674
Osborne, Thomas Mott,
556, 674–675, 720
Ragen, James E., 706
Swope, E. B., 856
Thomas, Preston, 664
private eye, 721
Pinkerton, Allan, 700
probation, 721–722
Proctor, William, 778–779
procuring, 647–648,
722–723, 731, 943
Profaci, Joseph, 28, 168,
204, 214, 370, 401,
723–724
Professional Criminals of
America (Byrnes), 144
Index
Prohibition, 724–726
bootlegging, ix–x,
111–113, 339, 725
Carroll’s orgy, 164–165
revenue agents, 454–455
Rum Row, 776
Wickersham report on,
946
prostitute(s)
bats, 71
Bunty Kate, 559
Burton, Mary, 142
Cattle Kate, 49–50, 172,
466
feud of. See Whore War
gang of, 106
Gentle Maggie, 559
Lizzie the Dove, 559
McGown, Kitty, 559
McGuinness, Margaret,
786
mattress girls, 594
Peel, Fanny, 690
Stafford, Annie, 786,
841, 945
prostitution, 726–727. See
also brothel(s); madam(s);
pimp(s); procuring; vice
district(s)
legal, 578
male, 728
Protess, David, 155
prowling brigades, 728
Pruiett, Moman, 728–730
psychic detection
Allison, Dorothy, 19–20
Hurkos, Peter, 204
Psycho (movie), 344
PTL network, 55–56
public enemies, x, 730
Barker brothers, 59,
64–65, 222
Bonnie and Clyde. See
Bonnie and Clyde
Brady gang, 118
Dillinger, John. See
Dillinger, John Herbert
Floyd, Charles Arthur
“Pretty Boy,” 217,
320–322, 478, 602,
691, 733
Karpis, Alvin “Creepy.”
See Karpis, Alvin
“Creepy”
Kelly, “Machine Gun.”
See Kelly, George R.
“Machine Gun”
Nelson, George “Baby
Face,” 59, 266, 267,
473, 643–645, 733
public execution. See execution(s), public
Puente, Dorothea, 730–731,
801
“pulling a Dick Merrick,”
599–600
“punch mob,” 203
punishment for crime
castration, 170, 206, 638
colonial. See colonial
punishment
electric shock, 292
tar and feathering,
865–866
Purdy, Sam, 76, 722,
731–732
Purple gang, 418, 703, 725,
732
purse snatching, 732–733
Purvis, Melvin, 65, 267,
733–734, 891, 892, 968
Purvis, Will, 154, 734
Puzo, Mario, 338, 625
pyramid schemes, 734–735
pyromania, 40
Q
Quantrill, William C., 495
Quinn, Joseph, 559
R
Rablen, Carroll, 736
Rablen, Eva, 736
race and crime, x, 9, 124,
736–737
racketeer(s)
Amberg, Louis “Pretty,”
24–25
Anastasio, Anthony
“Tough Tony,” 26, 28,
650, 653
Bioff, Willie Morris, 94,
148
Diamond, Jack “Legs.”
See Diamond, Jack
“Legs”
Dio, Johnny, 268–269,
577
Shapiro, Jacob “Gurrah.” See Shapiro,
Jacob “Gurrah”
Racketeer-Influenced and
Corrupt Organization Act
(RICO), 575
Rackham, Calico Jack, 702
Rafferty, Christopher, 186
Ragen, James E., 706
Ragen, James M., 31,
737–738
Ragen’s Colts, 738–739
Rahman, Omar Abdel,
959–960
Raimondi, Harry, 15
Rallings, George, 280
Ralston, William C., 370
Ramsey, JonBenet, 739
Rand, Greedy Jake, 363
Raney, W. J., 353
range detectives, 739–740
Rankine, John, 294
Rao, Joie, 935–936
Rao, Vincent, 549
rape, 740
rapist(s)
Apache Kid, 33–34
Arbuckle, Roscoe
“Fatty,” 35–36
Buck gang, 130–131
Bummers, 135
Glatman, Harvey Murray, 352–353
Hansen, Robert, 387
Nelson, Earle Leonard,
642–643
Piper, Thomas W., 701
Schmid, Charles
Howard, 788
Scottsboro Boys, 518,
793–794
Thompson, Gerald,
526–527, 880
Rappe, Virginia, 35–36
Rastelli, Phil, 335
ratelwacht, 740–741
Rats, 292
Rawley, R. C., 741
Ray, James Earl, 43,
741–742
Ray, Nick, 176
Raymond, Nate, 67
“Raymond the Cleric,” 52
Raynor, William P., 345
“razzle,” 163
Read, Mary, 702
reader (sneak thief), 830
Reading Game, 742
Reagan, Ronald, xi, 43, 45,
102–103, 179, 249,
421–422
Reavis, James Addison,
742–743
recidivism, 743–744
The Red Badge of Courage
(Crane), 229
Red Cassidy, 437
Red Hot Mama, 114–115
Red-Light Bandit, 182
red-light district, 744
Red Light Lizzie, 362
Red Light Saloon, 744
Red Sash Gang, 175, 176,
744
red shirts, 744–745
Reed, Ed, 745, 843, 844
Reed, James, 276, 843, 845
Reed, Jim, 745
Reed, Nathaniel “Texas
Jack,” 745–746
Rees, Melvin David, 746
Reese, William, 237
Reeves, Albert L., 691
regulators and moderators,
290, 746–747, 854
Reichenbach, Harry, 799
Reid, Ed, 749
Reid, John E., 609
Reilly, Edward J., 499
Reilly, Owen, 439
Reilly, Peter, 443
Reisel, Victor, 268
Reiser, Charles “The Ox,”
747
Reles, Abe, 748–749
Abbandando, “the
Dasher” and, 1
Adonis, Joe and, 7
Amberg, Louis “Pretty”
and, 24
Buchalter, Lepke and, 129
death of, 83, 632, 840
defense lawyer of, 519
as Murder, Inc. hit man,
631, 703, 846
Pittsburgh Phil and, 703,
704, 846
Remus, George, 749
Renaud, H. Stanley, 358
Rennick, Bob, 345
Reno Gang, 59, 749–750,
894
Restell, Madame, 750–751
Reynolds, Glen, 33
Reynolds, Melvin, 397
Reynolds, Mike, 881–882
Reynolds Gang, 751–752
Rhodes, Francis, 428
Ribicoff, Sarai, 752–753
Ricca, Paul “The Waiter,”
326, 379, 652, 753–754
Rice, Harry, 375
Rice, William Marsh,
754–755, 906
Rich, Mary, 375
Richards, W. A., 434–435
Richardson, George, 840
Richardson, Levi, 546
Richardson, Sasezley, 398
Richardson, Thomas
“Sandy,” 122
Richetti, Adam, 321, 478,
691
Rich Men’s Coachmen’s
Club, 755–756
991
Rickabaugh, Lou, 674
RICO, 575
Ride, 672
Ridley, Edward Albert, 756
Riegle, Donald W., 480
Riesel, Victor, 577
“right and wrong test,” 449
“right to bear arms,” 756
Riley, Carol, 930–931
Riley, James “Butt,”
756–757
Riley, James H., 92, 532
Ringo, John, 757–758
Brocius, “Curly Bill”
and, 124
Cooley, Scott and, 589
Guadalupe Canyon massacre, 195, 376, 757
Hancock, Louis and,
673–674
Johnny Behind the Deuce
and, 465
Leslie, Frank “Buckskin”
and, 521–522
Rio, Frankie, 402
riot(s)
abolitionist riots, 2
Astor Place Riots, 43–44,
488
Attica prison riot, 47–49,
721
Chinese riots, 186–189
Cincinnati riots, 192
Doctor’s Mob, 272–273
Draft Riots, 117,
278–280, 398, 708
Flour Riots, 320
Gentlemen’s Riot, 348
Lager Beer Riot,
506–507
Philadelphia antiCatholic riots, 696
Police Riots of 1857,
New York, 712–713
Springfield (Illinois) race
riot, 840
Tulsa Riot, 398
Ripley, Beulah, 37
ripper gangs, 758
Risbergand, Charles
“Swede,” 99
Ritter, Halsted Lockwood,
472, 758–759
riverboat bordellos, 318–319
riverboat gamblers, 759–760
Rizzo, Frank L., 254, 760
Roach Guards, 760–761
road agent spin, 761
robber(s). See also bank robber(s); stagecoach
robber(s); train robber(s)
Apache Kid, 33–34
Bummers, 135
Burke, William, 140
Chapman, Gerald,
176–178
Hamilton, Ray, 107,
385
Kid Curry. See Kid Curry
lawyers, dishonest,
515–516
Thompson, Miran Edgar
“Buddy,” 13, 14, 810,
880–881
robber baron plot, 232
robber’s roost, 761
Roberts, Burton, 8
Roberts, Ed, 21
Roberts, Harry, 301
Robert’s Hill Stagecoach
Robbery, 761–762
Robinson, Richard P.,
463–464
Robinson, Steven, 7
Robison, James, 105
Robles, Richard, 960
“the Rock,” 11–12
Rockefeller, Nelson, 47, 205
Roe, Ralph, 11
Roe v. Wade, 3
Rogers, Earl, 762–764
Rogers, George W., 764–765
Rogers, Hugo, 483
Rogers, Ike, 181
Rogers, Mary Cecilia,
765–766, 773
Roger’s Barracks, 766
Rogge, O. John, 212
Rolfe, James “Sunny Jim,”
393, 394, 556
Rolling Stone swindle, 893
Rombert, Peter, 348
Roosevelt, Franklin D.
as assassination attempt
victim, 42–43, 174,
966
Bergdoll, Grover and, 83
Cook, Dr. Frederick A.
and, 216
Cummings, Homer and,
453
Hillman, Sidney and, 129
Seabury investigations
and, 358, 794
Shannon, Robert and,
804
Roosevelt, Theodore
as assassination attempt
victim, 42, 766–767
Brownsville affair and,
127
Garrett, Patrick and, 342
land frauds and, 510
Masterson, Bat and, 593
O’Neill, “Buckey” and,
672
as police commissioner,
88, 145, 767
Secret Service and, 241
Starr, Henry and, 845
Thomas, “Heck” and,
878
Wilson, Billy and, 953
Rose, Della, 494, 767–768,
947
Rose, Kid Glove, 582
Roselli, John, 769–770, 894
Rose Man of Sing Sing,
768–769
Rosen, Joe, 129
Rosen, Nig, 46, 801
Rosenberg, Louis “Lefty
Louie,” 520
Rosensweig, Joe the Greaser,
504
Rosenthal, Herman, 75, 380,
520, 968
Rose of Cimarron, 448, 649,
769
Ross, Charles Brewster, 492,
770
Ross, Charles S., 493
Ross, Ezra, 838–839
Ross, Hannah, 838
Ross, Josephine, 409
Ross, Mrs. Hannah, 771
Rothenberg, David, 325
Rothstein, Arnold, 99, 262,
359, 464, 549, 771–772,
801
Rotten apple theory, 498,
772
The Encyclopedia of American Crime
Rough and Ready, California, 772
Roughing It (Twain), 820
Rough Rider, O’Neill,
William O. “Buckey,”
671–672
rough shadowing, 540–541
roundsmen, 765, 773
Rowan, Carl, 3
Rubinstein, Serge, 773–774
rub-out, 774
Ruby, Jack, 43, 676, 774
Rudabaugh, Dave, 775, 840,
953
Rudnick, George, 703
Rudolph, Eric Robert, 45
Ruef, Abraham, 141,
627–628, 775
ruffian(s)
Driscoll, Danny,
280–281, 946
Fury, Bridget, 332–333
Gallus Mag, 337, 427
Jackson, Mary Jane
“Bricktop,” 458–459,
603
Leese, George, 821
Miller, John, 458–459,
602–603
Whyos. See Whyos
rule of silence, 776
Rum Row, 776
Runyon, Damon, 24
Rupolo, Ernest “The Hawk,”
513, 776
Russell, William P., 536
Russian Bill, 776–777
rustling, 172–173, 436–437
cattle, 172–173, 938
Ryan, Joseph Hugh, 327
Ryan, “Palmer House,” 131
Rynders, Isaiah, 43–44,
173–174
S
Sabo, Albert F., 156
Sacco-Vanzetti case, 154,
778–779
Sadie the Goat, 180, 337
safecracker(s). See also bank
robber(s)
Bliss, George Miles, 780
Reiser, Charles “The
Ox,” 747
safecracking, 59, 779–781.
See also bank robberies
safecracking device, Little
Joker, 523, 537–538
Sage, Anna, 267, 733
Sage, Russell, 781, 940
Sage, Walter, 703
Saietta, Ignazio. See Lupo the
Wolf
St. Paul layover, 781–782
St. Paul Outfit, 480–481
St. Phillip’s Negro Church, 2
St. Valentine’s Day Massacre,
782–783
Anselmi and Scalise, 32,
565
Atlantic City Conference
and, 46–47
Capone, Al and, 158,
565
Moran, “Bugs” and,
619, 661
Purple Gang, 732
Ziegler, Shotgun George,
969
Salameh, Mohammad,
958–959
Salem witchcraft trials,
220–221, 593, 784
Saliveras, Juan, 625
saloonkeeper(s)
Bean, Roy, 72
Neagle, David, 641–642
salting, 784–785
Saltis-McErlane gang, 185
Samoots, Sam, 23–24
Sampson, Joe Willie,
196–197
Sampson, Sam, 130
Samuelson, Hedvig, 470
Sandbar Duel, 117, 785
Sands, 785–786, 945
Sandy Flash, 315
Sanger, Margaret, 209
Sangerman’s Bombers, 786
“San Quentin overcoat,”
623–624
San Quentin prison, 623–624
Sante Fe Ring, 532, 902
Santos, Jack, 363
Sarber, Jess, 264
Sassy Sam, 3
Saturday Night Special, 421,
786–787
Saunders, Geraldine, 255
savings and loan scandal figure, Keating, Charles H.,
Jr., 480
Sawyer, Harry, 65
Scaduto, Anthony, 535
Scales, Clint, 181
Scalice, Frank “Don
Chreech,” 158, 787
Scalise, Frank, 46
Scalise, John, 31, 31–32,
346, 565, 661, 890, 962
scalp hunter(s)
Glanton, John J., 352,
423, 787
Hobbs, James, 422–423,
496, 787, 953
Johnson, James, 787
Kirker, James, 423, 496,
787, 953
Williams, William S.
“Old Bill,” 829, 953
scalp hunting, 787–788
scandal(s). See also hoax
Black Sox Scandal,
98–99, 771
Bloomingdale-Morgan
affair, 102–104
Credit Mobilier Scandal,
232
Emma Mine fraud,
294–295
Grabber Scandal, 722
Pantages rape trials,
680–681
Teapot Dome scandal,
141, 305, 663, 868
television quiz show
scandal, 869
Tucker Prison Farm scandal, 901
Welfare Island prison
scandal, 935–937
Scapegoat, The Lonesome
Death of Bruno Richard
Hauptmann (Scaduto),
535
Scarface (Hecht), 406–407
Scarfo, “Nicky,” 586–587
Scheck, Barry, 270
Scheible, Billie, 554
Scheidler, Joseph, 3
Schiliro, Lewis D., 575
Schlekat, Ludwig R., 293
Schlesinger, T. Edward, 604
Schlitten, Harry, 358
Schmid, Charles Howard,
788
Schmidt, Matt A., 545
Schmitz, Eugene, 70
Schmitz, Herbert, 627–628
Schnaubelt, Rudolph, 402
Schneider, Henry, 464
Schoemaker, William
“Shoes,” 372
Schoenfeld, James, 190, 493
Schoenfeld, Richard Allen,
190, 493
school bombing, Bath,
Michigan, 70–71
school killers, 788–790
school shootings, 156
Schrank, John N., 42, 767
Schuck, Raymond, 683
Schultz, Dutch, 790–792
at Atlantic City Conference, 46
Berger, Meyer and, 83
Berman, Otto “Abbadabba” and, 85
Dewey, Thomas E. and,
261, 631, 805
Diamond, Jack “Legs”
and, 262
Gordon, Waxey and, 359
Luciano, Lucky and, 549
Masseria, “Joe the Boss”
and, 589
numbers racket and, 658,
872
in syndicate, 128, 550
Schuster, Arnold, 27, 792,
860, 871–872, 954
Schwab, Michael, 22,
402–403
Schwartz, Charles Henry,
62–63, 451
Schwartz, Louis B., 805
Schwarz, Charles, 711
Schwarzkopf, H. Norman,
534
Sciacca, Paul, 57, 58
Scoffel, Katherine, 88
scolds, 792
Scopes, John T., 248,
792–793
Scott, Gini Graham, 126,
237
Scotto, Anthony M., 793
Scottsboro Boys, 518,
793–794
Seabury investigation, 358,
772, 794, 923
Seadlund, John Henry, 493
Sears, Jim, 245
Searver, Christopher, 243
Secret Band of Brothers,
795
Secret Service, 140, 795–796
secret service, 25
Secret Service suspects, 327
Sedition Act, 679
seduction, 796–797
Seibert, Percy, 167
Seidenshner, Jacob “Whitey
Lewis,” 519
Selman, John, 388, 797–798
sentencing of criminals,
798–799
September Morn, 209,
799–800
serial killer(s), xi, 800. See
also mass murderer(s)
Bianchi, Kenneth,
420–421
992
Bundy, Ted. See Bundy,
Ted
Buono, Angelo, Jr.,
420–421
Clark, Douglas,
195–196, 421
Cunanan, Andrew,
236–237
Dahmer, Jeffrey, 242–243
female, 800–801
Green River Killer, 374,
800
Hansen, Robert, 387
Harrison, Lester,
392–393
Harvey, Donald,
395–396
Hatcher, Charles, 397
“Hillside Strangler” duo,
420–421
Kemper, Edmund Emil,
III, 487
Lake, Leonard, 508–509
Lucas, Henry Lee,
547–548, 925
Ng, Charles Chitat,
508–509
ripper gangs, 758
Son of Sam, 832–833
Speck, Richard Benjamin, 836
Starkweather, Charles,
842–843
Toppan, Jane, 856,
888–889
Unruh, Howard, 83,
449, 909–910
Weeks, Robert, 930–931
Wilder, Christopher,
948–949
Zodiac Killer, 969
Serpa, Salvatore, 898
Serpico, Frank, 498
Seven Group, 801
Seward, William H., 193,
529
sex. See gender
sex offender(s)
Chessman, Caryl,
182–183, 420
Mandame, Mary, 206,
581
public notice about, 598
sex swindle(s)
badger game, 51–52,
100, 184–185
Murphy game, 634
Shaffer, Clarence, 118
Shakur, Tupac, 340, 802
Shame of Abilene, 199,
801–802, 879
Shanghai Chicken, 802–803
shanghaier(s)
Calico Jim, 147–148
Chandler, Tommy, 803
Kelly, Joseph “Bunco,”
485–486
Kelly, Shanghai, 486
Maitland, Big Billy, 803
shanghaiing, 699, 803–804
Shanghai Smoke, 803
Shannon, Robert K. G.
“Boss,” 804
Shapiro, Jacob “Gurrah,”
127, 261, 262, 490, 505,
673, 805
Sharp, Solomon P., 73
Shaw, George Bernard, 209
Shaw, Vic, 330, 618
Shean, Walter J., 177
Sheeler, Rudolph, 805–806
sheep killing, 806
sheepmen-cattlemen war, 806
Graham-Tewksbury feud,
365, 677
Sheldon, Ralph, 738
shell game, 806–807
Shelton, Robert, 502–503
Shepard, Matthew, 399, 807
Sheppard, Samuel H., 53–54,
807–808
Sheridan, Phil, 184
sheriff(s). See also lawmen
Barton, James R., 320
Brady, William, 532
Carter, James R., 251
Clark, James G., 196
Emig, William, 393
Farr, Edward, 488, 516
Holley, Lillian, 266
Larn, John M., 512
Sarber, Jess, 264
Truman, William, 395
Wheeler, Harry, 95
Wilson, Billy, 775, 953
sheriff’s ball, 808
Sherrard, Robert, 837
Sherwood, Russell T., 923
Shinburn, Mark, 59, 101,
582, 808–809
ship schools, 809
Shirt Tails, 809
Shockley, Sam Richard, 13,
14, 233, 809–810, 881
shooting, 299
shoplifting, 706, 810–811
Short, Elizabeth, 96–97, 212
Short, Luke, 228, 273, 274,
592–593, 674, 811–812
shortchange artists, 812–813
Shorter, Baxter, 363
Shotgun Man, 813
shylocking. See loansharking
Sickles, Daniel E., 910–911
Sieber, Al, 33, 434
Siegel, Benjamin “Bugsy,”
813–814
in Bug and Meyer Mob,
123, 133, 589
defense lawyer of, 519
Flamingo Hotel and,
318, 367, 401, 512,
864, 896
gambling and, 738
Hill, Virginia and, 420
Lansky, Meyer and, 464,
510–511
Masseria, “Joe the Boss”
and, 168, 549–550,
590, 638, 872
in Murder, Inc., 631
nickname of, 651
in Seven Group, 801
silence in prisons, 776
Silks, Mattie, 814–815
Silva, Henry, 570
Silver, Frankie, 816
Silver Street, 816–817
Simmons, William J., 502
Simmons, Zachariah, 5–6
Simms, Billy, 315
Simone, Mike, 837
Simpson, Matthew, 871
Simpson, O. J., 270,
815–816
Simpson, W. Ray, 561
Simpson case, 815–816
Sinacola, Joseph, 16
Sinatra, Frank, 45, 401
Sinclair, Harry, 140, 141,
306, 868
Sing Dock, 610
Index
Singleton, Ed, 263, 799, 817
Sirhan, Sirhan Bishara, 43,
817–818
Siringo, Charles Angelo, 701,
818
Sirocco, Jack, 445
Six Against the Rock
(Howard), 13
Skaggs, Elijah, 818
Skinner, Cyrus, 69, 818–819
Skinner, George, 69
Skull, Sally, 819
skyjacking, 819
Slack, John, 370–371
Slade, Haddon, 384
Slade, Joseph “Jack,” 81–82,
820
slasher (sneak thief), 830
Slaton, John M., 328
Slaughter, John, 23, 820–821
Slaughter, Roger C., 93
Slaughter Housers, 821
slave murderers, 821
slave uprising leader
Turner, Nat, 903–904
Vesey, Denmark, 915
sleepwalking and crime,
86–87, 718, 821–823
Slesers, Anna, 259
Slickers, 823
Slivers, Wyoming, 284
Slobbery Jim, 427
Slocum, John J. L., 614
slot machines, 823–824
slungshot, 824
Sly, Albert D., 407
smack game, 824
Small, Len, 699, 824–825,
847
Smith, Al, 291, 515, 726
Smith, Benjamin N.,
398–399
Smith, Big Bill, 148, 622
Smith, Byron, 229
Smith, Edgar Herbert, 825
Smith, Edward, 59
Smith, Forrest, 93
Smith, Frank, 276
Smith, Frank B., 48
Smith, James Monroe “Jingle
Money,” 825
Smith, Jefferson Randolph
“Soapy,” 323, 806–807,
825–826
Smith, Jess, 663
Smith, John H., 450
Smith, Joseph, 170, 714,
826–827
Smith, Mary, 201
Smith, Moe, 454–455
Smith, Pearl, 239, 322
Smith, Perry E., 198
Smith, Richard, 165
Smith, Slippery Augie,
170–171
Smith, Susan, 827–828
Smith, Thomas “Bear River,”
828
Smith, Thomas L. “Pegleg,”
828–829, 953
Smith, William, 122
Smits, Claes, 829
Smoker Mankiller, 245
Smoky Row, New Orleans,
829–830
smuggler(s), drug. See drug
smuggler(s)
smuggling technique, hams,
385
sneak thieves, 363, 830
snitch boxes, 830–831
Snodgrass, George, 138
Snyder, Albert, 831
Snyder, Donald, 301
Snyder, James, 276
Snyder, Nigger Benny, 504
Snyder, Ruth, xii, 301,
831–832
Snyder, Simon, 165
Sobell, Morton, 720
Socco the Bracer, 832
Soldier of Fortune hit man
want ads, 832
Soledad Brothers, 249–250
“solid man,” 228–229
Soltysik, Patricia, 405
Sonder, Ben, 339
Son of Sam, 832–833
Sontag brothers, xiii, 148,
296, 622, 833–834
Soule, Asa T., 191
Spangler, Edward, 530
Spanish, Johnny, 490,
834–835
Spanish Louie, 835
Spanish Prisoner Swindle,
835–836
Speck, Richard Benjamin,
836
Spencer, Georgie, 330
Spenkelink, John, 153,
299
Sperm fraud, 836–837
Spiderman of Denver, 696
Spiegelman, Jerome, 516
Spies, August, 402–403
Spinelli, Juanita “Duchess,”
837
Spiritualism, 837–838
Spooner, Bathsheba,
838–840
Spooner, Joshua, 838–839
Spotswood, Alexander,
99–100, 702
Springfield (Illinois) race riot,
840
squealer, 840. See also
informer(s)
Squier, 119
Stacher, Joseph “Doc,” 512,
840–841
Stafford, Annie, 786, 841,
945
stagecoach robber(s)
Barter, Rattlesnake Dick,
68–69
Beni, Jules, 81–82
Black Bart, 96
Davis, Jack, 178, 250,
894
Frisco Sue, 330–331
Hart, Pearl, 395
Miner, Bill, 605–606,
895
Standard Oil Building, Battles of the, 841–842
Standifer, Bill, 417
Standish, Miles, 91
Stanford, Sally, 363
Stanton, Edwin M., 193
Stark, George, 80
Starkweather, Charles,
842–843
Starr, Belle, 217, 745,
843–844, 845, 964
Starr, Charlie, 469
Starr, Henry, 844–845
Starr, Sam, 844
Starr, Tom, 845
Star Route frauds, 842
The Star Rover (London),
148, 624
Starved Rock State Park
murders, 931
State Street Crap Game, 846
Stead, William T., 310, 311,
846
Steamboat Squad, 431, 847
Steed, William T., 392
Steele, Michelle, 397
Steffanelli, Crazy Patsy, 326
Steffens, Lincoln, 145
Stein, Harry, 358–359
Steinbeck, John, 320
Stephens, William, 616
Stephenson, David Curtis,
661
Sterling, Ross, 107, 310
Steunenberg, Frank, 405,
567, 613, 672, 701, 847
Stevens, Walter, 847
Stevens, Will, 183
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 117
Stewart, Alexander Turney,
847–848
Stewart, Charles E, Jr., 793
Stewart, Yellow Henry, 962
Stica, Ronald, 20
Stiles, Billie, 23, 142, 848
Stiles, William C. “Bill,”
848–849
Stilwell, Frank, 288, 289
Stilwell, Joseph “Vinegar
Joe,” 12
sting, 849
stock manipulator(s)
Antar, Eddie and Sam,
231–232
Boesky, Ivan, 104, 524
Insull, Samuel, 450
Levine, Dennis, 104, 524
Milken, Michael R.,
601–602
Minkow, Barry, 606–607
Whitney, Richard F., 945
stock thefts, 849–850
Stockyard Bluebeard, 423
stolen car racket, 850–851
Stompanato, Johnny, 851
Stone, John, 851–852
Storey, Wilbur F., 185–186
Storms, Charley, 812
Storrow, James J., 114
Storyville, 852–854
Stoudenmire, Dallas, 854
Strang, Jesse, 938–939
The Strange Case of Dr.
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
(Stevenson), 117
Stranglers, 854
Strauss, Harry “Pittsburgh
Phil.” See Pittsburgh Phil
Strauss, Jesse L., 77
Strawan, Samuel, 415,
854–855
straw bond, 53
Streib, Richard, 157
stretcher, 719–720
“string game,” 163
strong-arm squads, 855
Stroud, Robert Franklin, 12,
855–856
Struck, Lydia, 856–857
Stuart, Carol, 857
Stuart, Charles, 857
Stuart, James, 123
submachine gun, 185
suicide, card trick, 162
suicide by cop, 857–858
Suicide Hall, 564
suicide investigations, 858
suicide victim, Warde, John,
926–927
993
Sullivan, John J., 231
Sullivan, Joseph “Sport,” 99
Sullivan, Tim, 75
Sumner, Charles, 858
Sundance Kid, 167, 490,
494, 516, 705, 858–859,
947–948
Sunset Laws, 859
“Sunset Slayer,” 195–196
“Super Max,” 10–11, 586
Surratt, John H., 530
Surratt, Mary, 42, 530
Suskind, Richard, 452
Sutherland, Annie, 129–130
Sutton, Willie “The Actor,”
59, 180, 792, 859–860,
871
Sutton-Taylor feud, 411,
860–861
Swamp Angels, 861
Swearingen, George, 861
“sweat box,” 140
Sweeney’s Bombers, 861–862
swindle(s). See also hoax
accident faking, 4–5
badger game, 51–52,
100, 184–185
Baker Estate, 55
banco, 58
Big Store, 89, 131
“bunco trail,” 131
cackle-bladder, 146
carnival gyps, 163–164
Choctaw legacy, 189
circus grifting, 192–193
computer crimes, 209
diamond switch, 263
Dollar Store, 275
drop swindle, 281
Edwards Heirs Association, 291–292
Garfield portrait swindle,
342
gold accumulator swindle, 354
gold brick swindle,
354–355, 593, 921
Grand Central fruit stand
swindle, 365–366
great diamond hoax,
370–371
Great Michigan “free
land” swindle,
371–372, 932
green goods swindle,
373, 921
Gypsy Curse swindle,
380
handkerchief switch, 386
Howard Hughes autobiography, 452–453
jailhouse shopping network, 459, 459
key racket, 489
medical quackery, 598
Mississippi bubble,
607–608
Mona Lisa swindle, 613
money-making machine,
553, 613–614
Murphy game, 634
New York Lottery swindle, 648–649
Nininger swindle, 892
pedigreed dog swindle,
690
pigeon drop, 698–699
pyramid schemes,
734–735
Rolling Stone swindle,
893
salting, 784–785
shell game, 806–807
smack game, 824
Spanish Prisoner Swindle, 835–836
Spiritualism, 837–838
three-card monte, 881
town-site fraud, 892–893
watered stock, 927–928
swindler(s). See also stock
manipulator(s)
Ammon, Robert, 604
Arnold, Philip, 370–371
Baker, Norman, 598
Barrie, Peter Christian
“Paddy,” 67
Buckminster, Fred,
131–132, 373, 932
Chadwick, Cassie, 175
Chicago May, 184–185
Collins, Dapper Don,
202–204, 554
DeAngelis, Tony, 941
Draper, Shang, 51–52
Estes, Billie Sol, 295, 941
Fisher, Charles E., 354
Gordon-Gordon, Lord,
360–361
Jernegan, Prescott Ford,
354
Keely, John E. W., 481
Koretz, Leo, 500–501
Law, John, 607–608
lawyers, dishonest,
515–516
Lustig, “Count” Victor,
203, 553–554, 614
Maxwell, Robert,
595–596
Means, Gaston Bullock,
534–535, 597
Miller, William F., 603–604
Morse, Charles W., 624
Musica, Philip, 635–637
Ponzi, Charles, 500, 606,
716–717
Reavis, James Addison,
742–743
Schlesinger, T. Edward,
604
shortchange artists,
812–813
Slack, John, 370–371
Smith, Jefferson Randolph “Soapy,” 323,
806–807, 825–826
Smith, Thomas L. “Pegleg,” 828–829, 953
Tinker, Edward, 884
Waddell, Reed, 354–355,
373, 921
We Boys Mob, 929
Weil, Joseph “Yellow
Kid,” 131, 371, 373,
932–933
switch man, 418
Switzer, Carl “Alfalfa,”
862–863
Swope, Colonel Thomas B.,
863
Swope, E. B., 856
Swope, Herbert Bayard, 75
Sydney Ducks, 863
Symbionese Liberation Army,
391, 405–406
syndicate leader(s)
Anastasia, Albert. See
Anastasia, Albert
Buchalter, “Lepke.” See
Buchalter, Louis
“Lepke”
The Encyclopedia of American Crime
Costello, Frank. See
Costello, Frank
Giancana, “Momo.” See
Giancana, Sam
“Momo”
Lansky, Meyer. See Lansky, Meyer
Luciano, “Lucky.” See
Luciano, Charles
“Lucky”
Moretti, Willie. See
Moretti, Willie
Siegel, “Bugsy.” See
Siegel, Benjamin
“Bugsy”
Stacher, Joseph “Doc,”
512, 840–841
Zerilli, Joseph, 968
Zwillman, “Longy.” See
Zwillman, Abner
“Longy”
syndicate professional hit
squad. See Murder, Inc.
T
table, 864
Taborsky, Joseph, 864–865
Taft, William Howard, 510,
593, 624
Talbot, Sims, 331
Tall Texan. See Kilpatrick,
Ben
Talmadge, Eugene, 140
Talmadge, Frederick, 712
Tammany Hall, 75, 144,
223, 253, 291, 326, 525,
685, 794, 904
Tanner, John, 865
Tappan, Lewis, 2
Tappenier, J. C., 95
tar and feathering, 865–866
Tarnower, Herman, 390–391
Tatum, Joshua, 225
Taub, Sergio, 516
Taylor, Arthur, 225–226
Taylor, Courtney Townsend,
181
Taylor, William Desmond,
866–868
Taylor-Sutton feud, 411,
860–861
Tchen, Ling, 3
Teach, Edward, 99–100
Teapot Dome scandal, 141,
305, 663, 868
teeth-mark evidence,
868–869
Teets, Harry, 2
“Teflon Don.” See Gotti,
John
telephone book treatment,
760, 877
television quiz show scandal,
869
Tenderloin, 870–871, 950
Ten Most Wanted List, 137,
869–870
Tenth Avenue Gang, 410,
871, 894
Tenuto, Frederick J., 792,
871–872
Teresa, Vincent Charles, 671,
688, 724, 778, 840, 872
Terranova, Ciro, 872–873
Terrell, Zeke, 417
Terrible Gennas. See Genna
brothers
Terry, Carroll, 491
Terry, John, 609
Tewksbury-Graham feud,
365, 677
Texas lawmen’s duels,
329–330
Texas Ranger(s), 716, 873
Ferguson Rangers, 310,
873
Hall, Lee, 382
Hamer, Frank, 61, 109,
383–385, 873
Hughes, John R., 441
Jones, Frank, 468–469
McNelly, Leander H.,
566–567
Slaughter, John, 23,
820–821
Thaw, Harry Kendall,
873–875
Thayer, Webster, 778
thief(ves). See also horse
thief(ves)
car thieves, 49, 850–851
Cherry Hill Gang, 182
Dennison, Stephen,
257–258
door-knocker thieves,
278
Doty, Sile, 278
Harper, Richard,
389–390
Long, Steve, 543
McGlue, Luke, 564
Mahaney, Jack, 454, 577
Smith, Thomas L. “Pegleg,” 828–829, 953
sneak thieves, 363, 830
Welch, Bernard Charles,
Jr., 934–935
Williams, William S.
“Old Bill,” 829, 953
Thiel, Alexander, 148–149,
181, 608, 875–876
Thieves’ Exchange, 308, 363,
876. See also fence(s)
The Thin Blue Line (movie),
154
third degree, 210, 760,
876–877
Thomas, Frederick Jerome,
752–753
Thomas, Heck, 190, 881,
883
Thomas, Henry Andrew
“Heck,” 877–878
Thomas, Preston, 664
Thompson, Ben, 198, 315,
801, 878–879
Thompson, Big Bill, 332, 699
Thompson, Billy, 879–880
Thompson, Donzell L., 61
Thompson, Florence, 86
Thompson, George, 348
Thompson, Gerald,
526–527, 880
Thompson, Henry, 539
Thompson, Miran Edgar
“Buddy,” 13, 14, 810,
880–881
Thompson, Thomas, 419
Thompson, William Hale, 71
three-card monte, 881
Three-Finger Brown,
548–549
Three Guardsmen, 569–570,
881, 883
Three Month Fever: The
Andrew Cunanan Story
(Indiana), 236
“three strikes and you’re
out,” 881–883
Thurmond, Strom, 287
Thurmond, Thomas H.,
393–394, 556
Tieri, Frank “Funzi,” 169,
335, 350
Tiger of the Prison Cage, 624
Tiger Woman, 470–471
Tilbury, John, 755–756
Tilden, Samuel, 101, 904
Tilghman, Bill, 191, 277,
386, 877–878, 881, 883
Till, Emmett, 883
Tin Cup, Colorado, 883–884
Tinker, Edward, 884
Tinning, Marybeth Roe, 801
Tipton, Dan, 345
Tirrell, Albert, 86–87, 823
tobacco Night Riders, 884
Tobin, Tom, 295
Todd, Thelma, 884–886
Tolbert, Paden, 190
Tolliver-Martin feud, 588
Tolson, Clyde A., 433, 886
Tombs, 886–887
Tombstone, Arizona Territory, 887. See also O.K.
Corral
Bird Cage Theatre,
94–95
Oriental Saloon and
Gambling House,
673–674, 811
Ringo, John, 757–758
Russian Bill, 776
Tombstone Epitaph,
197–198, 289, 665–666,
887–888
Tombstone Nugget, 888
tommy gun, 185
tong leader, Mock Duck,
609–611
tong warrior, Little Pete,
417–418, 538
tong wars, 8–9, 102, 115,
538, 609–611, 888
Toole, Ottis, 547–548, 925
Toppan, Jane, 856, 888–889
Torres, Jesus P., 72
Torresola, Griselio, 43, 796,
899
Torrio, John, 889–890
at Atlantic City Conference, 46
bail of, 53
Capone, Al and, 157,
158, 954
Capone, Frank and,
159
in Five Points Gang, 231,
290, 317
Moran, George “Bugs”
and, 618
O’Banion, Dion and,
332, 346, 660
in Seven Group, 801
Yale, Frankie and, 961
Tortora, Anthony, 20
Toubillion, Robert Arthur,
202–204
Touhy, Roger “Terrible,”
730, 733, 890–892
town-site fraud, 892–893
Tracy, Harry, 167, 893–894
Trafficante, Santo, 28, 335,
401, 894
Trail, Jeffrey, 236
train robber(s)
Bass, Sam. See Bass, Sam
Bunch, Eugene “Captain
Gerald,” 135
Burrow, Rube, 142
Burts, Matthew, 142–143
California Outlaws, xiii,
148, 833, 894
994
Chapman, John T.,
178–179, 250
Cornett, Brack, 221–222
Davis, Jack, 178, 250,
894
Fahy, William J., 305
Hanks, O. C. “Camilla,”
167, 386
Ketchum, “Black Jack”
Tom, 298, 426, 488,
516
Ketchum, Sam, 488–489
Miner, Bill, 605–606,
895
Perry, Oliver Curtis,
693–695
Reed, Nathaniel “Texas
Jack,” 745–746
Reno Gang, 59,
749–750, 894
Sontag brothers, xiii,
148, 296, 622,
833–834
Tenth Avenue Gang, 410,
871, 894
Wild Bunch. See Wild
Bunch
train robberies, 894–895
Trammell, Gaspar, 412
transportation, 895–896
trapman, 896
trash bag murders, 896
Travelling Mike, 363
Tregoff, Carole, 311–312
Tresca, Carlo, 334, 347,
896–897, 925
trial by touch, 897
“Trial of the Century,”
815–816
Triplett, Frank, 422
Tri-State Gang, 897–898
Trot, Benjamin, 114
True, John L., 363–364
Truesdale, David A., 494,
898–899
Truman, Harry S., 43, 93,
691, 754, 796, 877,
899–900
Truman, William, 395
Trussell, George, 382,
900
truth serum, 900–901
Tryforos, Lynne, 390
Tubbs, William, 709
Tub of Blood Bunch, 901
Tucker, Karla Faye, 155
Tucker Prison Farm scandal,
901
Tucker Telephone, 901–902
Tufts, Henry, 902
Tulsa Riot, 398
Tunstall, John Henry, 92,
532, 902–903
Turilli, Rudy, 461–462
Turkus, Burton, 261
Turley, Preston S., 903
Turnblazer, William, 117
Turner, Julia, 56
Turner, Nat, 903–904
Turner, Richard, 740
Tutt, Dave, 415
Twain, Mark, 134, 185, 312,
784, 785, 820
Tweed, Boss, 144
Tweed Ring, 6, 904
The 25th Man (Morrell),
623–624
“two deuces,” 93
Tylenol murders, 904–905
Tyrrell, John F., 178,
905–906
U
Ulasewicz, Anthony, 120
Unabomber, 907–908
undercover law enforcement
operation, 849
Underhill, Wilbur, 908
underworld convention(s)
Apalachin Conference,
34–35, 62, 347
Atlantic City Conference,
46–47, 801
Havana Convention,
401–402, 814
underworld’s doctor, Moran,
Dr. Joseph Patrick,
619–620
Unger, August M., 254, 451
Uniform Crime Reports, 8,
908–909
Unione Siciliana, 23, 961
union leader
Beck, Dave, 74
Scotto, Anthony M., 793
United Klans of America,
502–503
Un Occhio, 687
Unruh, Howard, 83, 449,
909–910
unsolved kidnapping, Ross,
Charles Brewster, 492,
770
unsolved murder(s)
Black Dahlia, 96–97, 212
Bowers, Cecelia, 116
Brown’s Chicken mass
murders, 126
Burdell, Dr. Harvey,
137–139
Elwell, Joseph Bowne,
292–293, 654
Fink, Isidor, 313–314
Fountain, Albert Jennings, 326–327
Green River Killer, 374,
800
Hall-Mills Murders,
382–383
Jewett, Helen, 463–464
King, Dot, 494–495, 654
Levine, Peter, 524–525
Mattson, Charles, 493,
524, 594
Nathan, Benjamin,
640–641
New Orleans axeman,
646–647
New York World’s Fair
bombing, 649
Old Shakespeare, 668
Ridley, Edward Albert,
756
Rogers, Mary Cecilia,
765–766, 773
Rubinstein, Serge,
773–774
Shakur, Tupac, 340, 802
Taylor, William
Desmond, 866–868
Todd, Thelma, 884–886
Tylenol murders,
904–905
Walsh, Adam, 547, 925
Welsh, Leila, 937
Zodiac Killer, 969
unsolved robbery, Pierre
hotel robbery, 698
Untouchables, 645–646
unwritten law, 910–911
Urschel, Charley, 484, 493,
804
Uzanyol, Melih, 44
Index
V
Valachi, Joseph M., 840,
912–913
Buster from Chicago
and, 143, 171
Genovese, Vito and, 348,
496
Gigante, “the Chin” and,
349
Hoover, J. Edgar and,
571
Tenuto, Frederick J. and,
792
Terranova, Ciro and, 872
Valenti, Umberto, 589
Valentine, Lewis J., 128, 703,
711, 913
Valentine’s Day Massacre.
See St. Valentine’s Day
Massacre
Valentino, Rudolph, 657
Valley Gang, 914
The Valley of Fear (Doyle),
567
vampires, 914
Van Amburgh, Betsy, 38
Van Amburgh, Charles, 779
Van der Linden, Madame,
856
Vandiver, Bobby, 419
Van Doren, Charles, 869
Van Meter, Homer, 263, 264,
266, 267, 643
Van Wormer, Fred, 301
Vanzetti, Bartolomeo,
778–779
Vasquez, Tiburcio, 914–915
Verain, Leland, 22
Versace, Gianni, 236–237
Vesey, Denmark, 915
vice district(s)
Biler Avenue, 90
Canal Street, 150–151,
318
Center Street, 173–174
Custom House Place,
239
Little Water Street,
538–539
name for, 744
Natchez-under-the-Hill,
640
Roger’s Barracks, 766
Sands, 785–786, 945
Smoky Row, New
Orleans, 829–830
Storyville, 852–854
Tenderloin, 870–871,
950
Wells Street, 937
Vicksburg “Volunteers,” 915
Vigil, Lorraine, 353
vigilance committee(s)
American Protective
League, 25–26
Anti-Horse Thief Association, 33
Knights of Mary Phagan,
328, 556
regulators and moderators, 290, 746–747,
854
Slickers, 823
Stranglers, 854
Vicksburg “Volunteers,”
915
White Caps, 940
White Caps (Gorras
Blancas), 940
vigilante conflict, East Texas
Regulator War, 290
vigilante noose, 915
vigilantes of Montana,
78–79, 245–246, 268,
556, 682, 709, 741,
915–916
vigilantes of San Francisco,
916–917
vigilante victim(s)
Casey, James P., 165–166
Daniels, James, 245–246,
268
Helm, Boone, 410–411
Innocents, 556, 915–916
Rawley, R. C., 741
Reno Gang, 750
Skinner, Cyrus, 69,
818–819
Slade, Joseph “Jack,”
81–82, 820
Smith, Jefferson Randolph “Soapy,” 826
Vigorito, Gabriel “Bla Bla,”
49
Viking murders, 917
Virginia City, Montana,
708–709, 917
voiceprints, 917–918
Vollmer, August, 481, 526,
918–919
Volpe, Justin A., 711
Von Bülow, Claus, 919–920
von Steuben, Baron
Friedrich, 272
W
Waddell, Reed, 354–355,
373, 921
Wages, Gale H., 219
Wagner, John F., 293,
921–922
Waite, Dr. Arthur Warren,
922
Walcker, Marie, 423
Waldo, Rhinelander, 75
Waldrip, Lewis, 142
Walker, James J., 24, 358,
794, 823, 913, 922–923
Walker, John, 587
Walker, Jonathan, 118,
923–924
Walker, William, 184
Wall, Tessie, 208, 924
Wallace, Eddie “Cowboy,”
898
Wallace, George W., 43, 120,
794
Wallace, Lew, 93, 198, 342
Walling, George W., 430,
522, 712, 855
Wall Street explosion,
924–925
Walnut Street Jail, 718–719
Walsh, Adam, 547, 925
Walsh, Edward “Poochy,”
139
Walsh, Helen, 235
Walsh, Johnny “The Mick,”
925–926
Walsh, Thomas J., 868
Walsh School feud, 926
Wanderer, Carl, 406
Wanderer, Ruth, 406
Ward, Return J. M., 926
Warde, John, 926–927
Warehouse Brothel, 927
Warner, Matt, 167, 494, 927
Warren, John, 372
Warren, Joseph A., 52, 225
Washington, Earl, Jr., 270
Washington, George, 682,
710, 939
water cure, 719, 876
watered stock, 927–928
Waterford Jack, 928
Watergate code word, 345
Watergate informant, 254
Watkins, Stewart, 327
Watson, Carrie, 687
Watson, Ella, 172
Watson, J. P., 928–929
weapon(s)
Arkansas toothpick, 37
bowie knife, 117, 785
Chicago piano, 185
Colt .45, 208
common murder
weapons, 630
derringer, 258–259
gambler’s belt, 338
Mafia gun, 573–574
mob pistol, 609
Muff pistol, 626
notched weapons,
656–657
Peacemaker, 689
pepperbox revolver, 692
Saturday Night Special,
421, 786–787
slungshot, 824
tommy gun, 185
Weaver, Bill, 65
Weaver, George “Buck,” 98
Webb, Charley, 388
Webb, Del E., 318, 631
We Boys Mob, 929
Webster, A. B., 273
Webster, Dan, 90
Webster, Freddie, 786
Webster, John White,
929–930
Webster, William H., 45
Weeks, Robert, 930–931
Weger, Chester, 527, 931
Weil, Joseph “Yellow Kid,”
131, 371, 373, 932–933
Weinberg, Bo, 791
Weinglass, Leonard, 156
Weisman, William “Solly,”
478
Weiss, Carl Austin, 43, 542
Weiss, Hymie, 933–934
Alterie, Louis “Two
Gun” and, 22
Capone, Al and, 32, 281,
402
funeral of, 332
horse killing, 624
O’Banion, Dion and, 660
one-way ride, 672
Standard Oil Building,
Battles of, 841–842
Torrio, John and, 890
Weiss, Mendy, 129, 631,
704, 749
Weiss Club, 297, 934
Weiss Family, 941
Weissman, William “Solly,”
691
Welch, Bernard Charles, Jr.,
934–935
Welch, Earl, 472
Welch, Ed, 494, 898, 935
Welfare Island prison scandal, 935–937
Wells, Alice Stebbins, 711,
713–714
Wells, Floyd, 198
Wells, Kittie, 283
Wells Street, 937
Welsh, Leila, 937
Welsh, Paddy, 375
Wendel, Paul, 683
995
Wene, Elmer, 482
Werner, Louis, 551
Wesson, Harry, 154
West, John Coulter, 246
West, Little Dick, 937
West, Robert, 153
West, Roland, 885–886
“West Brothers,” 86, 313,
937–938
Westervelt, William, 492,
770
Westinghouse, George, 300,
486–487
Weston, Paul B., 628
Wet Stock, 173, 938
Whale barroom, 938
Whalen, Andrew, 445
Whalen, Grover A., 52, 225,
913
Wheeler, Harry, 95
Wheeler, John, 16
Wheland, Capt. William, 55
whipping, 109, 206, 319
Whipple, John, 938–939
Whiskey Rebellion, 682,
939
Whiskey Ring, 939
White, Carlos, 76
White, Clarence, 747
White, Dan, 939
White, Fred, 124
White, Isaac DeForest “Ike,”
130, 781, 939–940
White, Marie, 239
White, Stanford, 873–874
White Caps, 734, 940
White Caps (Gorras Blancas), 940
white-collar crime, 940–941
White Family, 811, 941
White Front Cigar Store,
941–942
White Hand Gang, 942
White Hand Society, 943
Whitehead, Don, 433, 479,
734
white slave, 76–77, 943
White Slave Traffic Act
(1910), 583
Whitman, Alonzo James,
181
Whitman, Charles, 75, 76,
380, 943–944
Whitman, John Lorin,
944–945
Whitman, Walt, 209
Whitmore, George, Jr., 212,
960
Whitney, Richard F., 945
Whittingham, John, 245
Whore War, 786, 841, 945
Why Men Confess (Rogge),
212
Whyos, 275, 281, 290, 339,
559, 577, 945–946
Wichner, Sam, 62
“Wickedest Man in New
York,” 16–17
Wickersham, George W., 510
Wickersham Commission,
210, 946
Wilcox robbery, 167
Wilcoxson, Bobby Randell
“One-Eye,” 946–947
“wild beast test,” 449
Wild Bunch, 894, 947–948
Hanks, O. C. “Camilla,”
167, 386
Kid Curry, 167, 386,
489–490, 494, 798,
947–948
Kilpatrick, Ben, 167,
493–494, 768,
898–899, 935,
947–948
Lay, Elza, 167, 494, 516
leader of. See Cassidy,
Butch
McCarty gang, 561
Place, Etta, 167, 705,
859, 947
refuge of, 126, 426
Rose, Della, 494,
767–768, 947
Sundance Kid, 167, 490,
494, 516, 705,
858–859, 947–948
Tracy, Harry, 893
Warner, Matt, 927
Welch, Ed, 494, 898, 935
Wilde, Oscar, 58
Wilder, Christopher,
948–949
Wilhoit, Gregory, 155, 271
Wilkerson, Bill, 503
Wilkie, John E., 227
Wilkinson, Robert “Reds,”
210
William Brown, 428–429
Williams, Alexander S.
“Clubber,” 144, 210, 525,
855, 871, 949–951
Williams, Claude, 98
Williams, Edward Bennett,
951–953
Williams, John S., 692
Williams, Mike, 199, 415
Williams, Minnie, 285
Williams, Wayne B., 46
Williams, William A. H.,
493, 633
Williams, William S. “Old
Bill,” 829, 953
Williamson, John N., 141,
510
Williamson, Stella, 800–801
Williamson, Timothy, 217,
588
Wilson, Billy, 775, 953
Wilson, Bully, 173
Wilson, Edwin, 587
Wilson, Frank J., 953–954
Wilson, Henry, 232
Wilson, Herb, 780–781
Wilson, Lucius, 407
Wilson, Red Bill, 336, 539
Wilson, Richard, 118
Wilson, Tug, 954
Wilson, William B., 679
Wilson, Willie, 650
Wilson, Woodrow, 26, 209,
585, 616, 855
Winchell, Barry, 399–400
Winchell, Walter, 128, 954
Winston, Steven, 516
wiretapping and bugging,
954–956
Wisniewski, Steve, 672
witchcraft, 956. See also
Salem witchcraft trials
witnesses, 183, 608–609
Wolcott, Frank, 152, 466, 739
Wolensky, Moe “Dimples,”
128
Wolfe, William, 406
Wolf of Wall Street, 945
Wolfson, Abraham, 15
Wood, Catherine, 801
Wood, Fernando, 253, 712
Wood, Isaac, 956
wooden gun escapes, 263,
265–266, 956–957
The Encyclopedia of American Crime
Woodhull, Victoria Claflin,
209
Woodruff, Wilford, 715
Woods, Frederick Newhall,
IV, 189–190, 493
Woods, Mag and George,
744
Wooldridge, Clifton, 239,
322, 680, 957–958
Worden, Mrs. Bernice, 344
Working Class Union
(WCU), 373
Workman, Charles “the
Bug,” 792
Workman, Charlie, 748–749
World Trade Center bombing, 958–960
Worley, John, 217, 588–589
would-be assassin(s). See also
assassin(s)
Berkman, Alexander,
83–85
Bremer, Arthur Herman,
43, 120
Collazo, Oscar, 43, 796,
899–900
Fromme, Lynette Alice
“Squeaky,” 43
Gallagher, James J., 42
Hinckley, John W., Jr.,
43, 179, 421–422
Moore, Sara Jane, 43
Schrank, John N., 42,
767
Torresola, Griselio, 43,
796, 899
Wournos, Aileen, 800
Wright, Clarence E., 16
Wright, Jack, Jr., 8, 737
wrongful convictions, xi, 587
Adams, Randall Dale,
154
Balestrero, Christopher
Emanuel, 608
Boorn brothers, 109–110
Brandley, Clarence,
154–155
Brown, J. B., 154
Campbell, Bertram,
149–150, 608, 876
Cero-Gallo case, 174
De Palma, William, 252
Frenchy, 668
Hart, Gene Leroy,
394–395
Hayes, Robert, 269
Israel, Harold, 453
Kendall, Hamp, 645
Lyon, Pat, 687
Majczek, Joseph, 578
Miller, Robert Lee, Jr.,
269
mistaken identity,
608–609
O’Neil, Jack, 671
Padgett, Randall, 270
Porter, Anthony, 155
Purvis, Will, 154, 734
Reynolds, Melvin, 397
Sacco, Nicola, 778–779
Sheeler, Rudolph,
805–806
Vanzetti, Bartolomeo,
778–779
Whitmore, George, Jr.,
960
Wilhoit, Gregory, 155,
271
The Wrong Man (movie), 608
Wylie, Janice, 212, 960
Y
Yablonski, Joseph, 117
Yager, Erastus “Red,” 961
Yale, Frankie, 158, 231, 290,
317, 661, 890, 961–962
Yarnell, Helen, 40
996
Yee Toy, 610
Yellow Henry Gang, 962
Yoon, Won-Joon, 399
York, William H., 79
Yorky of the Great Lakes,
962–963
Yoshimura, Wendy, 405
Young, Alfred, 219
Young, Brigham, 246, 625
Young, Francis Thomas,
688
Young, Guard, 363
Young, John, 101
Young, Mabel Hood, 701
Youngblood, Herbert, 266,
963
Younger, Bob, 655–656,
963–964
Younger, Cole, 460,
655–656, 843, 963–965
Younger, Jim, 655–656,
963–964
Younger, John, 963–964
Younger brothers, 963–965
Young Turks, 169
Yousef, Ramzi Ahmed, 10,
958–959
Yulch, Adam, 965
Yuma Penitentiary, 965
Z
Zachery, Bob, 818
Zangara, Joseph, 42–43,
174, 966–967
Zeigler, Shotgun George,
480, 481, 619–620
Zelig, Jack, 75, 76, 231, 380,
445, 464, 519, 967–968
Zeltner, Eddie, 497
Zerilli, Joseph, 968
Ziegler, Shotgun George,
968–969
Zindler, Marvin, 186
Zion, Eddie, 24
Zodiac Killer, 969
Zug, Edgar, 380
Zurkorsky, John, 898
Zweibach, Max, 491
Zwillman, Abner “Longy,”
46, 208, 284, 482, 801,
840, 970