But He Was Good to His Mother - The Lives and Crimes of Jewish Gangsters

by Robert Rockaway

  Benny (Bugsy) Siegel

  The Jewish members of this gang hung out in a tacky candy store located under the elevated subway tracks at the corner of Saratoga and Livonia Avenue in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. Owned by a woman named Rose, who kept the place open 24 hours a day, the store became known as “Midnight Rose’s.”

  Allegedly the two main topics of conversation in the store were how many runs the Brooklyn Dodgers would lose by that day, and murder. Wags claimed that more individual murders were planned in the store than at any other spot on earth.

  Fact or fancy, what we do know for certain is that Italian and Jewish mobsters in New York did cooperate during the 1920s and 1930s (they also periodically fought each other), that various criminal syndicates across the United States maintained contacts with each other, that leading crime figures met intermittently, and that gangsters did put out contracts to kill rivals. We also know that while Lepke was hiding from New York’s crime-fighting special prosecutor, Thomas E. Dewey, he used Abe Reles and company to execute persons he thought knew too much about him and might talk.

  Somewhere between sixty and eighty men died on Lepke’s orders. They were burned with gasoline, buried in quicklime, shot, stabbed with ice picks or garroted. It is said that Lepke even coined the word “hit” as a euphemism for contract murder.62

  Although not a protege of Arnold Rothstein, Louis “Pretty” Amberg was a significant force in the New York underworld from the late 1920s until his violent death in 1935.63 He was one of the city’s best known killers, having “rubbed-out” between eighteen to 100 men, no one knows for sure. Arrested numerous times, luck and cunning kept him from being convicted of any of these murders.

  His favorite technique was to stuff his live victims into a laundry bag, tied around the arms, legs and neck in such a way that they would strangle themselves as they struggled to get free. Damon Runyon commemorated this feat in a number of stories which portrayed Amberg in a thinly disguised form.

  Amberg was nicknamed “Pretty” because of his ugliness. He was so ugly that the Ringling Brothers circus offered him a job, asking him to appear as the “Missing Link.” Rather than being insulted, Amberg was flattered and often bragged about the offer.

  Louis was born in Russia in 1898 and immigrated to the United States with his parents. The family settled in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, where Louis’s father peddled fruit. At the age of ten, Louis started peddling on his own, developing a unique method for selling fruit door-to-door. He would kick on a door until the resident opened up. Louis would then shove the fruits and vegetables forward and snarl, “Buy.” One look at Pretty’s face and they bought.

  By the time he was twenty, Pretty was the terror of Brownsville. He and his older brother Joe ran a loansharking business that charged 20 percent interest a week. People who borrowed money from the Ambergs were told at the very outset that if they did not pay on time, they would be killed. No one was late.

  During Prohibition, Pretty and his brothers Joe and “Hymie the Rat” (who later committed suicide in jail) controlled bootlegging in Brownsville. Any speakeasy that refused their product was bombed.

  Prohibition made Amberg rich. He strutted around New York’s nightspots spending lavishly. Waiters fought to serve his table because he never left less than a $100 tip.

  Amberg later expanded his activities to include laundry services for Brooklyn businesses. He did very well by offering businessmen a deal they couldn’t refuse. If they used Pretty’s service, they stayed in business. A morbid joke making the rounds claimed that Pretty got into the laundry business so he could have a ready supply of laundry bags for all his stiffs.

  Pretty successfully defended his domain from inroads by other gangsters. Dutch Schultz once told Amberg that he was thinking of becoming his partner. ‘Arthur,” Pretty said, “why don’t you put a gun in your mouth and see how many times you can pull the trigger.”64

  Not to be put off, Schultz planted two of his men in a new loan office not far from Pretty’s operation. Within 24 hours the two men were dead, their bodies riddled with bullets.

  Pretty was good friends with Legs Diamond, but he even warned him about coming into Brownsville. “We’re pals, Jack,” said Amberg. “But if you ever set foot in Brownsville, I’ll kill you and your girlfriend and your missus and your whole damn family.”65

  Not far from New York, in Newark, New Jersey, Abner “Longy” Zwillman reigned as king of the rackets. Over six feet two inches tall, Zwillman got the nickname “Longy” because he was the tallest kid in his school and neighbors called him, “der Langer,” Yiddish for “the tall one.” Next to Meyer Lansky, Zwillman was the most prominent Jewish mob boss in America. Together with his Italian allies, Richie Boiardo and Willie Moretti, Longy ran Newark from the Prohibition era until the 1950s. His influence was so great that he was referred to as the ‘Al Capone of New Jersey.”

  During his testimony before the Kefauver Committee investigating organized crime in 1950, Zwillman was asked by Senator Charles Tobey whether it was true “that you have been known in New Jersey for a long time as the Al Capone of New Jersey?”

  The suave Zwillman laughingly replied, “That is a myth that has been developing, Mr. Senator, for a good many years, and during the time when I should have had sense enough to stop it, or get up and get out of the State, I did not have sense enough, and until the point where it blossomed and bloomed… I am not that, I don’t intend to be, I never strived to be, and I am trying to make a living for my family and myself.

  “But those rumors go around. They accuse me of owning places. I walk into a restaurant and I own the restaurant. I walk into a hotel and I own the hotel. I take a shine twice, and I own the bootblack, too.”

  “Well,” replied Tobey, “those are the penalties of greatness.”66

  Zwillman was born in Newark in 1904 to immigrant parents who had come to the city from Russia before the turn of the century. Abner was the third of seven children. The father, Abraham Zwillman, peddled live chickens from a stall in the public market on Prince Street and barely made a living.

  Longy was once asked why he was so strongly addicted to making money. He replied, ‘All I remember is that as kids my brothers, sisters, and I were always hungry.”67

  Longy’s father died when he was fourteen. He quit school and went to work, renting a horse and wagon and peddling fruits and vegetables. But he saw that the men who made real money in his neighborhood, the kind of money he was after, were either politicians or gamblers. And he quickly realized that he would never get anywhere peddling. Prohibition provided him with the chance to get what he wanted — money, respect and power.

  Using his brain and brawn, Longy began making his fortune by hijacking liquor shipments, muscling in on still operations, and rum-running. In these ventures he was assisted by his boyhood pal, Joseph “Doc” Stacher, and his gang, the Third Ward “Longy Mob.”68

  Longy expanded his operation by allying himself with Joseph Reinfeld, a saloon owner who perfected the system of shipping whiskey directly from the Canadian Bronfman brothers’ distillery in Montreal to the shores of New Jersey.69

  Reinfeld was born in Poland in 1899 and came to the United States and Newark in 1909. He was first arrested when he was nineteen, and fined $5 for a minor liquor offence. In 1925 he was charged with murder, shooting a prohibition agent in what police discreetly called “a dispute over money matters.” Reinfeld was never indicted and the charge was dropped. His only federal conviction occurred in 1920, when he pleaded guilty to transporting ten barrels of liquor from Newark to New York. He paid a $200 fine.70

  Zwillman started as a truck driver for Reinfeld, hauling liquor from unloading zones along the East Coast. Abe proved so ruthless and tough that no hijacker dared bother him. Smart as well as rugged, Zwillman quickly became a full partner in the combine.

  Zwillman and Reinfeld ran one of the biggest and most profitable bootlegging operations in the United States, importing nearly
40 percent of all the illicit alcohol consumed in the United States during Prohibition. The syndicate maintained a sales office in Newark. A customer wanting to buy liquor came to the office, deposited his money and got a receipt entitling him to a specific amount of whiskey. He then took a boat out to the ship and collected his cargo.71

  When the weather was rough, the gang found other ways to distribute their liquor. For instance, one stormy winter night in 1928 off the coast of New Jersey, a Zwillman-Reinfeld ship, carrying a cargo of booze in copper-lined tanks, watched for a red light on the top floor of an oceanfront house. When the crew spotted the light, the ship anchored offshore. A small boat brought out a hose made of rubber on the outside and linen on the inside. The crew then connected the hose to the tanks and pumped twenty thousand gallons of Canadian whiskey into oaken vats located in three houses on shore. The customers then picked up their whiskey at the houses.72

  Treasury agents estimate that from 1926 to 1933 Longy earned over $40 million from illegal booze alone.73

  After Prohibition, Zwillman expanded into the numbers racket, bookmaking, slot machines, cigarette vending machines and gambling. He also muscled into labor organizations, installing his friends as heads of local unions such as the Wine and Liquor Salesmen of New Jersey, the International Union of Operating Engineers, the Retail Clerk’s Union, the Teamsters Union and the Motion Picture Machine Operator’s Union.

  In 1942, a Newark businessman sent J. Edgar Hoover a confidential letter complaining bitterly about Zwillman’s stranglehold on local businesses. “Longy Zwillman is interested in every industry, and openly admits being connected with over fifty firms who pay tribute to him and his henchmen,’’ he wrote. The writer then went on to list a number of large concerns that paid Longy to keep the peace and allow them to operate.

  “Do you know that Mr. Abner Zwillman sits in his office at the Public Service Tobacco Co., Hillside, N.J., while reputable business people come pleading and begging him to leave them alone so they can continue to conduct their business honorably.”

  As if to emphasize the un-American character of Zwillman and his cronies, the writer noted that “high officers at camps and draft boards are intimidated” to keep Longy’s men out of the army, “and keep his friends in soft berths while others fight and die.”

  He closed his letter by assuring Hoover “that every word of this is true and correct. You will have no difficulty of checking on this because his employees are so bold, that they do not hesitate bragging of their accomplishments.”74

  Longy worked closely with New Jersey Italian mobsters Angelo “Gyp” De Carlo, Gerardo Catena and the Moretti brothers, Willie and Sal, as well as with New York organized crime figures Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Lepke Buchalter, Frank Costello and Lucky Luciano.

  Zwillman became especially close to Siegel. Whenever he traveled to Los Angeles, Bugsy was the first person he visited. The two men spent considerable time together and Zwillman often stayed at Siegel’s home. Longy once remarked that he would not have hesitated to do any favor for Siegel, “no matter what the request might have been.”75

  As Zwillman’s wealth increased, so did his political influence. He developed the payoff into an art, starting with the cop on the beat and including prosecutors and judges. The police did not merely look the other way when illegal whiskey was involved; they often convoyed trucks from the docks to the warehouses to prevent hijackings, and guarded the warehouses where the liquor was stored. Newark prosecutors became adept at “misplacing” evidence, or making unprofessional “mistakes” in drawing up indictments. Judges dismissed cases or levied small fines. Some of the bolder ones even bargained for bribes right in the courtroom.

  Because of the corrupt policemen, prosecutors and courts, Newark became the bootleg capital of the country.

  Zwillman’s political clout continued long after Prohibition ended. The Democratic leader of Essex County New Jersey traditionally went to Longy to get his okay for the list of Democratic candidates. If Zwillman vetoed someone, he wasn’t nominated. Well into the 1940s, the mayor of Newark and three of the city’s five commissioners owed their jobs to Longy.

  The mayor was a former dentist, Meyer Ellenstein. One Longy associate remembers that Ellenstein “was a wonderful dentist. Only he thought he could make more money being a mayor.” But when he finished his term in office “he was broke. He didn’t have one penny. He was the only mayor that left Newark that didn’t have a quarter. He shoulda stayed a dentist.”76

  Longy’s connections protected him the one time he was arrested and went to jail.

  He was sent to prison for beating up a local pimp who was also a runner for his numbers racket. The pimp made the suicidal error of holding back money from his numbers route. Longy taught the man a lesson, beating him with a blackjack, breaking three bones in his face and leaving his body a mass of bruises and welts. The pimp was lucky. Longy said he felt sorry for the man because he was black, which was why he didn’t kill him. Longy was found guilty of atrocious assault and received a six-month sentence.77

  While in prison, Longy had a telephone in his cell, was permitted callers at all hours and ate meals prepared outside the prison.

  A friend of Zwillman’s, Itzik Goldstein, remembers standing on the corner of Princess and Springfield Avenue at 4 o’clock in the morning one spring day, when “a car stops and Longy and two other fellows get out. Now I knew he was supposed to be in prison, up at Caldwell. I says, ‘My God, he’s supposed to be in Caldwell.’ So I asked him, ‘Longy, what are you doing here?’ He says, ‘They let me out for a couple of hours.’ Longy used to sleep at the jail all day and go out all night, go cabareting. That’s how he spent his time in jail.”78

  Longy served three months. Upon leaving prison, he gave gifts of money to the guards and a new car to one of the jail officials.

  Despite his reputation as a mobster, Longy always remained sensitive to his Jewish upbringing. When Hymie Kugel, a good friend of Longy’s died, Zwillman would not go into the chapel where the casket lay. Hymie’s son Jerry could not understand it. He felt hurt, because he knew his father loved Zwillman. After the service, he went over to Longy, who was standing outside, and asked why he had not gone into the funeral parlor to pay his respects.

  “I can’t, Jerry,” Longy said. “I’m a Cohen.”

  Jerry looked confused, until someone standing nearby explained that as a Cohen, a descendant of the ancient Hebrew priestly class, Longy was not allowed to be in the same room with a dead body. As close as Zwillman had been to Jerry’s father and family, he would not break this ritual prohibition.79

  Perhaps the most incongruous Longy story involves the actress Jean Harlow, the sex symbol of the 1930s. Apparently, Longy met her in 1930 when she was an unsophisticated nineteen-year-old. At the time, Harlow was under contract to Howard Hughes and had just starred in his movie “Hell’s Angels.” Hughes recognized Harlow’s potential and sent her on a personal appearance tour around the country promoting the film. One of her stops was Newark.

  Longy’s friend Doc Stacher had gone to Newark’s Adams Theater to see the film. Harlow made an appearance before the movie began. Stacher was intrigued by Harlow’s looks and raved about her to Longy. Zwillman had never heard Doc speak so enthusiastically about any woman, so he went to see for himself. One look and he was smitten.

  Zwillman introduced himself to Harlow. The attraction was mutual and the two became lovers. He took Harlow under his wing and taught her how to walk, talk, dress and behave in public. He even coined the term “platinum blond’’ to describe her hair. And

  Arthur (Dutch Schultz) Flegenheimer

  from all accounts, Harlow loved Longy. Their affair lasted until Jean moved to Hollywood to become a star for MGM.80

  Bootlegging in Prohibition era Philadelphia was directed by Max “Boo Boo” Hoff. Born in Philadelphia in 1893, the son of Russian-Jewish parents, Max was nicknamed “Boo Boo” when he was a kid, playing on the crowded streets of South Philadelphi
a. When the boy’s mother called “bo,” the Hebrew word for “come,” his Irish and Italian playmates thought she was saying “boo boo.”81

  Hoff earned his first few dollars as a newsboy, then as a clerk in a cigar store, and later opened a high stakes gambling establishment which fronted as a political club in Philadelphia’s Fifth political Ward.

  Later, he managed boxers, promoted prizefights and became well-known in sporting circles. He made his real mark with the coming of Prohibition, heading a powerful gang of tough young Jewish hoodlums that supervised a considerable portion of Philadelphia’s illegal liquor racket, gambling and other underworld operations. He was the city’s major buyer of machine guns and bullet-proof vests, putting them to good use when dealing with competitors.82

  Hoff maintained an ongoing relationship with the Jewish New York and Newark mobs and was reportedly on “close terms” with A1 Capone. By 1927 he was acknowledged to be Philadelphia’s “King of the Bootleggers.”83

  In keeping with his reputation, Max lived in a luxurious apartment in West Philadelphia and entertained lavishly. He became one of the city’s most talked-about hosts, a man who thought nothing of hiring hotel ballrooms to honor local and visiting celebrities.

  Hoff also achieved repute as someone who was generous to his friends. Every Christmas he distributed thousands of dollars in gifts to members of the police department; in 1926 alone he gave away a total of $250,000 in gifts. That was in addition to the bribes.

  A 1928 grand jury investigation found over 80 policemen on Hoff’s payroll. When questioned about the source of their wealth, some officers said they made extra money by being “lucky in crap games and poker games”; others said they “bet on the right horses.” A few officers claimed that they had “loaned money to dead saloon keepers who left provisions in their will for the loan plus a large bonus.” One police captain explained that he managed to accumulate $100,000 in bank accounts, from his salary of $2,000 per year by “building birdcages for the retail trade.”84