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

by Robert Rockaway

  From then on, Millman was living on borrowed time. Detective-Sergeant Harold Branton predicted his death. “His number is up and it’s only a question of time. He has kept himself on the streets with his gun and his fists. He is going to die one of these days and die violently.”71

  Those out to get Millman tried again, but this time they brought in outside help. It was long rumored that Harry Strauss and Happy Maione, two of Murder Inc.‘s best gunmen, had been hired to do the hit. According to witnesses, two armed men strode into the crowded restaurant as Millman ate. They pumped nine slugs into Millman and wounded four innocent diners in the process. The killers then calmly sauntered out and disappeared down a dark street. No one ever saw them again.72

  Millman had liked to think of himself as Detroit’s No. 1 Tough Guy and gang leader. This status lasted only a few months, when the unknown assassins cut him down to size. His death signalled the end of the Purple Gang as a force in organized crime in Detroit.

  No one has ever been convicted for killing the Purples. But law enforcement officials agree on who benefited the most from their elimination: the Mafia family headed by Joseph Zerilli.

  During the 1920s, the local Italian combination was run by Samuel Catalonotte, who acted as an arbiter, resolving differences between Detroit’s various Sicilian factions. Catalonotte kept the peace between them until his death in 1930. When he died, the Italian coalition disintegrated into several competing and hostile groups. Chester LaMarre, who liked to think of himself as the ‘A1 Capone of Detroit,” headed one large contingent, Joseph Zerilli another.73

  In late 1930, LaMarre made a bid to become Detroit’s crime czar, but failed. He was murdered in the kitchen of his own home by two “close friends” in February 1931.

  Joseph Zerilli replaced him and instituted a new peace pact between the warring Sicilians.74

  Zerilli had come to the United States from Sicily at the age of seventeen. Starting out as a common laborer, he eventually built a criminal operation that made a profit of $150 million a year from loansharking, extortion, narcotics, bookmaking and labor racketeering.

  Posing as a respectable baker-businessman, Zerilli lived in a $500,000 home located on a twenty-acre estate in the exclusive suburb of Grosse Point Park. During his lifetime he was convicted only twice: for speeding and for carrying concealed weapons.75

  Throughout the 1920s the Purples coexisted, albeit uneasily, with the Italians. The Purples even imported two Italian brothers from St. Louis, Yonnie and Peter Licavoli, to gun for them, and joined Zerilli in a number of criminal ventures. The Licavolis later left the Purples and became their rivals in bootlegging and other rackets.76

  As long as the Purples remained powerful, Detroit Mafia families made do with the territories ceded to them by the Jewish mob. After the murder convictions of the Keywells, Bernstein, Milberg and Raider in 1930 and 1931. the Italians moved against them.

  Detroit turned into a battle zone. Elsie Prosky was a schoolgirl in Detroit at the time. “I lived in the middle of the city just off Woodward Avenue, where much of the fighting went on,” she says. “I recall many times dodging into a store on my way home from school to avoid gunshots.”77

  As long as the gangsters killed only each other, the authorities displayed a singular lack of interest in the goings-on. The police commissioner explained that “so long as they confine their shootings to their own kind there will be no police drive or any increase in the squad assigned to such cases.”78

  After an especially wild eleven-day shooting spree in July of 1930, during which twelve hoodlums were gunned down on city streets, Mayor Charles Bowles remarked that “it is just as well to let these gangsters kill each other off, if they are so minded. You know the scientists employ one set of parasites to destroy another. May not that be the plan of Providence in these killings among the bandits?”79

  Bowles’s nonchalant attitude toward the violence outraged Detroit’s respectable citizens. On July 22, 1930, they deposed the mayor in a recall election.80

  By the end of Prohibition in 1933, the Purples had been elbowed aside by the Sicilians, spearheaded by Joseph Zerilli. The war ended and the city quieted down. Zerilli remained the crime boss of Detroit until his death in 1977.81

  Despite their apparent power and reputation for ruthlessness, the Purples were, in truth, a local gang that never made it big; a neighborhood mob that, for all its swagger and braggadocio, remained small-time.

  When asked how he rated the Purples, Meyer Lansky, a major figure in American organized crime, replied, “They were nothing.’’82

  Because the Purples were flamboyant and well-known in the city’s night spots, and because many of them liked to dress well, be seen in public and live in elegant homes, a romantic aura surrounded the gang which distinguished it from other Detroit mobs.

  Hollywood believed in this image and hoped to capitalize on it. In 1960, Allied Artists produced “The Purple Gang,’’ starring Barry Sullivan as the heroic, honest detective, and Robert Blake as the Purple’s brutal, neurotic leader.83

  The film was a “B” movie that flopped at the box office.

  In the final analysis, Meyer Lansky may have been right.

  Chapter Four: In the Beginning

  Jewish involvement in American crime did not start during Prohibition. By the end of the nineteenth century, Jews were appearing more and more frequently on police blotters.

  From their earliest residence in the United States, dating back to the mid-seventeenth century, Jews had enjoyed a reputation for being among the country’s most law-abiding and least violent citizens. Journalists visiting jails in search of a story frequently noted how they rarely saw “the face of an Israelite” among the prisoners.1

  This spotless reputation began to tarnish in the nineteenth century.

  Due to an influx of Jews from Germany, the nation’s Jewish population rose from 50,000 in 1860 to 250,000 by 1880. An increase in Jewish crime accompanied this growth.

  In 1886, Thomas Byrnes, a former New York City police inspector and chief of detectives, published a compendium of ‘America’s leading professional criminals,” most of whom actually lived in New York City. Over four percent of the men on his list were Jews. At the time, Jews made up less than one percent of the American population, but 10 percent of New York’s population. Scanning Byrnes’ lists, we find that Jews were primarily thieves and confidence men and rarely engaged in crimes of physical violence. For example, Abe “the General” Greenthal, was one of America’s premier pickpockets. Although born in Poland in 1826, Abe called himself a German. This was a common tactic among nineteenth century Polish-Jewish immigrants, many of whom spoke German and wished to identify with the more westernized German Jews.

  Lawmen knew the General as the leader of the “Sheeny Mob” (“sheeny” being a derogatory term for an untrustworthy Jew) of Jewish pickpockets. Abe’s home and base of operation was in New York City, but his gang traveled all over the United States picking pockets. The mob’s technique was to enter a crowded place and while “jostling” through the throng, relieve someone of their purse or wallet.

  In March 1877, Abe, together with his brother Harris and his son-in-law Samuel Casper, was arrested in Syracuse, New York, and charged with robbing a farmer of $1,190. The farmer had sold his farm in Massachusetts and was moving west with the proceeds. He made the mistake of flashing his newfound wealth in Albany.

  Working the train station, the Sheeny Gang saw him and followed him to Rochester. They befriended the man at the Central Railroad Depot in Rochester and told him he would have to change cars. One of the trio kindly helped the farmer with his valise and the entire party entered another car. While pushing through the crowd of passengers, Abe divested the farmer of his pocketbook containing the money. The gang escaped, but were arrested a few hours later in Syracuse.

  They were all indicted, tried and convicted. The court sentenced Abe to twenty years at hard labor in the Auburn New York State Prison. Harris Greenthal r
eceived a sentence of eighteen years and Casper fifteen years. Governor Grover Cleveland pardoned all of the men in 1884.

  One year later, Abe was arrested in the company of one Bendick Gaetz, alias “the Cockroach/’ for robbing a resident of Williamsburg, New York. Abe pleaded guilty to grand larceny in the second degree and received a five-year sentence. He was released in 1889 and died in his own bed in 1895.2

  A rarity among the nineteenth century thieving set was Frank Lowenthal, alias “Sheeny Irving,” alias August Erwin. He was a college graduate. Small and slightly built, Lowenthal was born in Cincinnati in 1844 to wealthy German-Jewish parents. At age sixteen, Frank’s parents sent him to Germany to be educated. After two years at the high school in Magdeburg, he entered the University of Heidelberg as a student in the natural sciences. He graduated with a B.A. degree in 1866, returned to the United States and got married. Frank and his wife moved to St. Louis, where he wrote for a newspaper. In 1870, the family moved to New York. Frank failed to make much money legitimately and embarked on a career as a shoplifter and receiver of stolen goods.

  When his wife’s father learned of his son-in-law’s criminal occupation, he pleaded with his daughter to leave Frank. She agreed and made plans to travel with her father to Europe. Frank discovered her intentions.

  In July 1885, a distraught and drunk Frank confronted his wife in the Allman House Hotel on East Tenth Street in New York City. He begged her not to leave but she refused to change her mind. Frank pulled out a pistol, shot his wife and tried to kill himself. He botched the job and both of them recovered.

  Frank Lowenthal pleaded guilty to assault in September 1885 and was sentenced to five years in prison and fined $1,000. He left jail in 1890 and was not heard of again.3

  At the time he shot his wife, Lowenthal was awaiting trial for filching opera glasses from a jewelry store in Maiden Lane, New York. His accomplice in this robbery was twenty year-old Julius Klein, alias “Sheeny Julius,” alias “Young Julius,” a German-born Jew who worked as a sneak thief, shoplifter and pickpocket.

  Julius was markedly unsuccessful as a thief and kept getting caught. For example, he was arrested four times in 1882. He was arrested in June in New York City for filching a gold watch from a passenger on a ferry boat and was released on $1,000 bail. In September, he was arrested for robbing a jewelry store in Brooklyn, but was not held. Then he was arrested in October for snatching $100 from a young woman as she was window-shopping on Sixth Avenue in New York. The lady must have been taken by Klein’s boyish looks, because she refused to press charges.

  Klein left New York, hoping a change of locale would improve his luck. He was mistaken. Still in October, Julius and two accomplices were arrested for stealing $3,500 worth of goods from the W. A. Thomas tailor’s trimming store in Boston. Julius received two years in the Boston House of Correction.

  In 1885, just six months after he was released from prison, Klein was arrested again in New York for shoplifting $60 worth of velvet and braid from a woman’s clothing store. He received one year in the penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island, New York. After his release, he disappeared from view.4

  A somewhat more successful thief was Michael Kurtz, alias Michael Sheehan, alias “Sheeny Mike,” one of America’s most celebrated burglars. Born in New York in 1850, Mike joined a gang of burglars when he was fourteen years old. He became a highly valuable asset because of his ability to quickly analyze the construction of a building the gang wanted to rob, and to locate its weak spots. Kurtz also became adept at cutting through floors and partitions, and at blowing up safes.

  Sheeny Mike was arrested numerous times, but usually got off. The one time he was convicted, he originated a scheme to gain his release that became a classic among criminals.

  In March 1877, Mike was arrested and convicted of robbing a silk emporium in Boston and received a twelve-year sentence. While in jail he contrived to secure a pardon as a man on the verge of death.

  First, he made himself sick and thin by drinking soapy water. He then made an incision in his side and with the aid of a chemical preparation caused pus to flow out. The physicians who examined him concluded that he would not live a month. On the basis of their report, the governor of Massachusetts pardoned Kurtz in 1880.

  After his release, Kurtz recovered his health so quickly that he was arrested just three months later on a charge of robbing a dry goods store in Washington, D.C. He was released for lack of evidence.

  One February evening in 1882, thieves entered a diamond and jewelry store in Troy, New York, by boring a hole through its twelve-inch thick basement wall from an adjoining building. Using heavy sledge hammers, they broke open the safe and took $50,000 in watches, jewelry, diamonds and cash. Immediately after the heist, Sheeny Mike and his accomplice and pal, Billy Porter, another gifted burglar, sailed for Europe on a White Star liner. The ship’s crew and passengers knew Mike as Henry Appleton, a retired California mine owner; Billy masqueraded as Leslie Langdon, the proprietor of a large cattle ranch.

  The two fashionable gentlemen traveled to Paris and London together, stopping at the best hotels and leaving lavish tips wherever they went.

  During their stay abroad, a number of daring robberies were committed in the heart of London by persons who obviously knew their craft. Safes were blown open so noiselessly that people in adjoining buildings were not alarmed. In every instance, the burglars escaped with their booty.

  Oddly enough, suspicion fell, at length, upon the two wealthy American tourists, Messrs. Appleton and Langdon. The men deemed it wise to cut short their stay abroad and return home. A few days after landing in New York Billy Porter was arrested for the Troy robbery. Upon learning this, Sheeny Mike hurriedly moved to Jacksonville, Florida with his wife and brother. Once there, they opened a large wholesale tobacco warehouse under the name of “Kurtz Brothers.”

  Not too long afterwards, Mike was arrested for the Troy robbery while surveying a plot of land he had purchased to build his house. After a long legal battle, Florida extradited him to New York.

  In 1886, Mike was tried, convicted and sentenced to eighteen years and six months’ imprisonment in the state prison at Dannemora, New York. His case, however, went to the court of appeals on a technicality and Mike was discharged after a few months in jail.5

  A contemporary account claimed that while under arrest, Mike made “reckless confessions” which implicated some of his associates in crimes. Because of this, he was “blacklisted by his old associates, in all parts of the country, as a professional ‘squealer’.”6

  Samuel Brotzki was listed as a “star” confidence man of “the first magnitude” by the denizens of the Boston police department.

  Jack Zelig

  According to the police, the 50-year-old Brotzki was an “expert in every confidence game from years of practice in every state of the union.” Brotzki’s wanted poster describes him as a Russian Jew who also went under the names Schwartzman, Tzigainer [“gypsy”], Schetman, Leitchman and Greenberg. Among his habits, Brotzki was a “constant smoker of cigarettes that he makes himself,” he could always “be found amongst Jews,” and he was “very fond of women.”7

  Just as the earlier German Jewish immigrants were the vanguard of a much larger wave, these criminals were the forerunners of more menacing Jewish gangsters and Jewish gangs in the decades to come.

  Beginning in 1881 and continuing until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, almost two million East European Jews entered the United States; over 75 percent of them came from Russia. They increased the country’s Jewish population from 250,000 in 1880 to 3.3 million by 1917. Jews comprised 9 percent of the nearly twenty million immigrants who came to America during this period.8

  The causes of this Jewish immigration lay in overpopulation, pogroms and devastating economic restrictions in Russia, government-sponsored discrimination in Rumania and grinding poverty in Austria-Hungary. Jews were also lured to America by tales of wondrous opportunity in the “Golden Land,” and by th
e advent of cheap trans-Atlantic ship fares.

  The East Europeans, commonly called “Russian Jews,” crowded into the great cities of the East Coast and the Midwest. Like other urban immigrants of that era, Russian Jews congregated in ethnic enclaves, often called “Jewtown,” “Little Jerusalem,” or the “Jewish Ghetto” by the local press. Boston’s North End, Chicago’s West Side, Philadelphia’s South Side and New York’s Lower East Side were among the better-known of these.

  The Jewish gangster sprang from these densely populated districts.

  The most notorious breeding ground for Jewish gangs and gangsters before World War I was the Lower East Side of New York. By 1910, 540,000 Jews lived within its 1.5 square miles, a population density greater than that of Bombay, India. In 1913, a report on crime conditions on the lower East Side listed 914 hangouts, mostly saloons where various forms of gambling took place, 423 houses of prostitution, over three hundred gang hideaways and 374 pool parlors, which were fronts for horse betting. Dance halls, a rendezvous for pimps and procurers, and gambling establishments could be found on almost every block.9

  Immigrant poverty, the trauma of transition from the Old World to the New, and loss of family and religious structure generated these conditions, and the district spawned men like Joseph “Yoski Nigger” Toblinsky, Dopey Benny Fein and hundreds of gangsters like them.

  Yoski (or “Yoshke”) Nigger led a gang that specialized in stealing and poisoning horses. The gang modeled themselves after the Italian Black Hand, an organization which terrorized newly arrived Italian immigrants by threatening to harm their families unless they paid for “protection.” Calling themselves the “Yiddish Black Hand,” Yoski’s outfit wrote letters to stablemen or businessmen whose companies used horses. They demanded a certain sum of money to insure the horses from unforeseen “accidents.” Should the victim refuse to comply, his horse would disappear or be poisoned. If he complained to the authorities, he risked bodily harm.