Garden State Gangland

by Scott M. Deitche

  But Longy was too ambitious to stay working for someone else. He wanted his own business. So he approached Reinfeld with an offer that either Reinfeld take Longy on as a fifty-fifty partner or Longy would walk and take all of his men, and their protection, with him. Reinfeld, not wanting to start any violent altercation, and sensing Zwillman’s potential, reluctantly agreed. Zwillman now had a part in a liquor-smuggling operation, his own gang, and growing respect among the local gangsters.

  Zwillman and Reinfeld’s operation was a huge success. Between the two men and their respective gangs, they dominated the illegal liquor scene in Newark and branched out to nearby communities. “The Internal Revenue Service estimated that the Reinfeld-Zwillman combine earned forty million dollars from rum-running during the five-year period between 1928 and 1933.”[8]

  As expected, Longy was increasingly the target of law enforcement as his star rose. From 1925 through 1928 he was picked up four times on minor charges, though none of the charges stuck. Within a day of his arrests, Longy was back out on the streets of the Third Ward. But in June of 1928, he was accused of assault by local crime figure and runner for his numbers racket, Preston Buzzard. Longy was accused of hitting Buzzard with a blackjack. Supposedly Buzzard himself went into the police department and demanded they arrest Zwillman for the attack.

  The police knew who Buzzard was and were not overly enthused about having to go round up Zwillman just to appease another criminal, but when Buzzard came into the police department demanding action, there happened to be a couple local reporters there. The police knew that they were going to have to take Buzzard’s complaint seriously, so they sent out two detectives to find and arrest Longy. The detectives took their time; it was a week later that Longy was finally brought to the police station, where he promptly paid a thousand dollars for the bail and walked back out on the street, though this time with an assault charge hanging over him. Years later Zwillman looked back at the incident. “Well it’s a long story. It goes back I think to about 1925 or 1926. And some man up in the old ward that time got hit with a blackjack, and they said I did it. A lot of circumstance surrounded that.”[9]

  A curious spectacle occurred in the ensuing months between the time Zwillman walked out of the police station and the beginning of his trial. Three different men all came in and confessed to being the one who had beaten Buzzard. It wasn’t clear from the police whether any of the men was telling the truth or simply covering for Zwillman. But the additional confessions were not enough to sway the judge overseeing the case. He pushed for it to move ahead, while Longy declined a trial by jury, probably assuming that he would get off right there on the spot.

  The indictment he faced was atrocious assault, battery, and assault with intent to kill. These charges were serious, and Zwillman faced the prospect of real jail time. On February 11, 1929, he was convicted of the charges, though the sentencing phase was suspended. Zwillman’s lawyers quickly went about working to apply for a new trial. They appeared before the court on March 12, but the court took it under advisement for another year and a half. By the time they reached a decision, on December 12, 1930, the motion for a new trial was denied, and a judge sentenced Zwillman to six months in jail and a fine of one thousand dollars for the beating of Buzzard.

  Zwillman was sent to serve his time at the Essex County Penitentiary. Though the sentence called for hard labor, Longy managed to avoid that by working as an orderly in the prison hospital. He was able to leave on weekends through an arrangement that he made with the warden, staying at the home of his bodyguard, Sam “Big Sue” Katz. Zwillman also “had a telephone in his cell, had outside meals brought in, and enjoyed unlimited visiting privileges.”[10] He was released from the penitentiary at 8 a.m. on March 31, 1930, having had some time shaved off for good behavior. Though his time in prison was not what anyone would consider “hard time,” Zwillman was determined to avoid going back. The word on the street was that he was done getting his hands dirty and would rely on his crew to take care of things, remaining above the fray and with a degree of separation from the law.

  Zwillman’s base of operations was the Riviera Hotel on Clinton Avenue in Newark. The hotel, built in 1922, was one of the largest in the area at the time and a prominent gathering place for local politicians, the exact type of people that Zwillman wanted to hobnob with. Though now past its prime, during its heyday the hotel was an architectural landmark for the area and walking distance from the retail strip of the Third Ward. It was here that Zwillman would host fellow mobsters from New York City as well. “Meyer Lansky would come into Newark and stay at the Riviera with his brother Jake. Bugsy [Benjamin Siegel] used to come as well.”[11]

  Just up the street from the Riviera was the Blue Mirror Lounge, a nightclub that was a “well known meeting place of Newark and New York City mobsters as well as a payoff spot for graft.”[12] Zwillman and his crew hung out here often as well. It was here, according to underworld lore, that Dutch Schultz was drinking the night before his murder in 1935 at the Palace Chop House in Newark.

  One of the reasons that Longy was able to gain such power in New Jersey was related to his prowess at working with politicians and the judiciary to his benefit. His alleged involvement in political corruption was reported on religiously by local papers at the time. Longy was questioned in a 1932 voting scandal in Newark. Ballots had been stolen from boxes that had supposedly been safeguarded in the basement of Newark City Hall. The thefts had been “to cover up alleged voting frauds in the Third Ward.”[13] By controlling the voting and the political appointments, the lanky kid from the Third Ward was becoming a force unto himself.

  One of the political establishments with which Zwillman aligned himself was the Third Ward Political Club. Opened in 1927, and located at 88 Waverly Place,[14] the club was an important hangout for politicians from both ends of the political spectrum. But “party affiliations didn’t matter to Longy. If you needed a favor, you got it, regardless of political affiliation.”[15] The club had several hundred members and was an active part of the social scene in the Third Ward; Zwillman was the man in charge. “Well, I had a club, and I was living out in my old neighborhood, which is the ghetto, a very poor neighborhood, and everybody needed help, everybody needed jobs, and we were making a little money, so we started a club and got everybody into it . . . it more or less started off as a charitable thing and then wound up in a political club . . . nonpartisan.”[16]

  Another side of Zwillman often lost to news reports of the day was his charity and hospitality in the neighborhood. The Robin Hood image of the old-school gangster may have been best exemplified by Capone and his soup kitchens for the less fortunate of Chicago during the Depression, but other underworld figures would, sometimes quietly, give back to their communities—the same community that gave them their best customers when it came to gambling or loan-sharking. It seemed kind of a penance for the Irish and Italians, a mitzvah for the Jews, and a general way of currying favor with the neighbors in general that a local gangster might expect to look out for the neighborhood, keep an eye on police, and offer an additional layer of protection from rivals.

  Zwillman was no stranger to such outreach. From his earliest days defending the Jewish merchants from roving gangs of thugs Zwillman sought to better those around him, as well as himself. Known as an avid reader who, before he left school to start supporting his family, had excelled in his classes, Longy was very different form the archetypical street urchin. His charity, while unable to be confirmed to the dollar, was expansive, giving “millions to charity over the course of his life, sponsoring scholarships and orphanages and soup kitchens in Newark, buying matzo for indigent Jews at Passover.”[17] Jewish charities were not the only beneficiaries of Longy’s largess. He reportedly donated a thousand dollars a week for years to the Mount Carmel Guild of the Catholic Charities and “provided a yearly Christmas carnival at Laurel Gardens for orphans of all colors and creeds through the Third Ward Political Club.”[18]

  Thi
s civic-minded attitude, especially toward members of the Jewish community he grew up in, was on full display in the years leading up to World War II. Newark at the time had one of the largest Jewish populations in the United States, and it became the target of marches by the German-American Bund, an offshoot political party that emerged in the 1930s and was “for all intents and practical purposes the American Section of the Nazi Party.”[19] Jewish merchants and citizens banded together, with assistance from underworld figures. Meyer Lansky and his crew disrupted Bund meetings in the Yorkville section of Manhattan. Zwillman did the same in Newark and nearby towns like Irvington. The goal was to drive out the Bund from the community and show Longy’s allegiance to the citizens.

  But even with the clout he wielded, he was still playing in the shadow of New York City. Newark’s proximity to New York, and the easy travel between the two cities, even at that time, brought about collaborations and partnerships between sometimes-rival factions and bosses. Zwillman was no exception, allying himself with other smuggling kingpins like Irving Wexler—aka Waxey Gordon—and future Mafia boss Nick Delmore. Zwillman’s partnership with Gordon extended not only to the vast smuggling and transport operations throughout the New York metro area but also to control of “closed” breweries.

  The New Jersey breweries controlled by the Zwillman/Gordon combine included Hensler Brewery (Newark), Orange Brewery (Newark), Union City Brewery (Union City), Peter Hauck Brewery (Harrison), Eureka Brewery (Paterson), Hygeia Brewery (Passaic), Peter Heidt Brewery (Elizabeth), and the Rising Sun Brewery (Elizabeth). Though they had all been closed at the start of Prohibition, the buildings were used by the combine to store and, in some cases, manufacture illegal liquor and beer.

  One of the breweries, the Rising Sun, located on Marshall Street in Elizabeth, was raided in 1930 by Prohibition agents. The agents came up from the Philadelphia office of the federal Prohibition administrator. On the way up to the raid, agents were involved in a car crash. An unknown vehicle sideswiped them and drove off. Suspecting their raid had been leaked to the brewery operators, they continued on anyway, arriving in Elizabeth. The agents drove around the large brick building where they “detected a strong odor of beer brewing emanating from the premises” and “saw smoke rising from the smokestacks . . . steam coming out of said premises at the top of the building from two different pipes.”[20]

  When agents stormed the brewery, they rounded up eleven employees. But they did not realize that a number of other men were camped out across the street in another building. The other men came in to the brewery, surprising the agents, which included John G. Finiello, a noted agent who had been on a number of raids of illegal liquor establishments in both New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. One of the gangsters took an agent’s gun and turned him around as a human shield, making the other four agents line up against the wall to be disarmed and searched. Just then, one of the unknown gangsters saw Finiello standing just apart from the other agents. Recognizing the enterprising dry agent, who had made his career as the continual thorn in the side of brewery operations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the man shouted “There’s Finiello—give it to him!”[21]

  Gunshots erupted. Three shots hit Finiello, a fourth killing him as he fell forward. Then the place “became a turmoil with shots being fired right and left.”[22] In the ensuing pandemonium, the gangsters fled the scene, though they ran into a sixth agent entering the brewery and disarmed him, leaving the agents to care for their fallen compatriot. The gunmen were believed to have escaped with waiting cars, just as over a hundred police officers with guns and teargas descended on the brewery. The spectacle drew the attention of the neighbors as well as the local press. The headlines for the next several days in newspapers across New Jersey and Pennsylvania were focused on the Finiello murder.

  Suspicion was directed toward members of Zwillman’s crew and an upstart Italian gangster who was working with Zwillman and had ties to the Elizabeth crime family, Nick Delmore. At the time. Delmore was the owner of the Maple Shade Inn in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, but he was also widely regarded as a major beer baron in the state and operator of the Rising Sun. Within a day of the shooting, police believed that he was not only involved in the incident but also may have been the one who fired the fatal shot that took Finiello down. Delmore, “said to have intensive political and social connections,” allegedly “fled in one of his three expensive limousines shortly after the killing of the agent.”[23]

  Police went both to his house and an apartment above the brewery in search of Delmore, but he was not around. What they did find in the apartment was a complex set of buzzers and wires that connected his apartment to the rest of the brewery, as well as a signal tower from which all areas of the brewery and surrounding grounds could be surveilled. The police were also searching for Philadelphia-based gangster Mickey Duffy and some of his associates, and brought in the brewmaster John Liebert for questioning.

  Years after an informant told the FBI that he had overheard Herman “Red” Cohen reminiscing about the old days in Newark. Cohen said that the night of the shooting Delmore “came into the Riviera Hotel in old clothes one night many years ago and told the late Longy Zwillman that they had just shot a Prohibition agent.”[24]

  By September 23, 1930, the FBI was in on the hunt for Delmore. As evidence and tips poured in, law enforcement did what it could to not only stay on the trail of Delmore but also crack who the other gunmen were. In addition, the fallout from the Rising Sun shooting was causing serious disruptions in rum-running activities across New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The other Treasury agents were taking their frustrations out on the gangland operations. Some of Delmore’s breweries, like the Harrison brewery near Newark, were shut down, and raids intensified against still operations.

  As 1931 yielded to 1932, indictments started coming down on Delmore’s accomplices. One of the first to be indicted was Martin “Red” Podolsky, who had allegedly been the lookout man outside the brewery when the shooting had occurred. But Podolsky was released on bail when the prosecutor declined to proceed with his case until he had more of the gang in custody, including Delmore, who was still a fugitive. But the winds of fortune were turning in Delmore’s favor in the fall of 1932. August Gobel was one of the men arrested back when the raid had occurred. He was a fireman in the brewery. Police then brought him in as a witness and in anticipation of Delmore’s trial, though Delmore was still a fugitive.

  By November of 1932, Gobel was working in a factory in Newark. Police had been tipped off that there might be an attempt on Gobel’s life, so a patrolman was sent to guard the witness. The patrolman was talking with Gobel by a boiler in the plant when Gobel walked outside, out of the sight of the patrolman, for a moment. Then he screamed out, “They got me.” When the police officer ran outside, he was met with a barrage of bullets that took him down, wounding him. Gobel was not so lucky. The star witness to the murder of John Finiello was dead.

  With his resources, it would have been simple for Delmore to disappear to another part of the country, but when police finally arrested him on October 19, 1933, they found him asleep in his own bed at his house in Berkeley Heights. When police woke him up, he asked them, “What rat turned me up?”[25] He told the police that he would be happy to accompany them to the station. He was put in a lineup and identified by a dry agent as one of the gunmen at the Rising Sun. At his arraignment Delmore discovered that he was charged with first-degree murder and that the prosecutor was going to pursue the death penalty.

  The turnaround time was quick. A month later, on November 20, the trial was underway. Some of the agents who had participated in the raid were called as witnesses. Delmore himself was called to the stand. He told the courtroom that he had an airtight alibi for the day of the Rising Sun shooting. He said he had been nowhere near the brewery when the shooting had occurred. Upon hearing of Finiello’s death, he had visited another beer baron, Max Hassel, in a hotel in Elizabeth and then gone to New York City, where he lived in
a private home for three years. He didn’t offer any explanation as to why he had decided to come back to New Jersey when he did.

  Overall the trial lasted eight days. Jurors went into deliberation on November 28 and came back to the courtroom after only two and a half hours. Delmore and Podolsky were acquitted of murder. Applause erupted in the courtroom as the verdict was announced. Though Podolsky was immediately released, agents rearrested Delmore and charged him with conspiracy in the operation of the Rising Sun Brewery, resisting a federal officer, and use of a deadly weapon.

  Before Delmore’s trial even opened in January of 1934, four men—including one of Longy Zwillman’s right-hand men, Jerry Catena—were arrested for attempting to bribe a juror. The men had gone to the home of one of the jurors and given him a hundred dollars, with the promise of another four hundred if Delmore was acquitted. Catena received three months in jail for the bribery attempt. However, he was lucky once again, as jurors acquitted him for the second time in less than six months.

  Delmore’s alibi in the Finiello murder case brought a new name to the New Jersey bootlegging scene. The beer situation in central Jersey was firmly under the control of Zwillman, Waxey Gordon, and Ritchie Boiardo, as well as New York mobster Vito Genovese. Another brewery owner making headway in New Jersey was Max Hassel, based in Reading, Pennsylvania, and the man Delmore said he had visited the night of the Rising Sun raid. According to sources, Hassel had been pushed out of Reading, forced to give up his operations there, because of the intense pressure agent Finiello was exerting. Hassel had relocated to Elizabeth, New Jersey, in 1929 to start anew. He set himself up in the Elizabeth Carteret Hotel and teamed with Max Greenberg and Waxey Gordon to operate over a dozen breweries. But success can breed envy, especially in the rapidly shifting world of Prohibition-era gangland.