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

by Robert Rockaway

  In June 1934, two years after he was incarcerated, Jack wrote to Sanford Bates, director of the federal prisons, portraying himself as a misunderstood and wronged man, and pleading for relief.16

  ‘As you may or may not know,” wrote Guzik, “I have met with quite a few disappointing experiences as a prisoner in your custody. I entered the penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas, with an artificial evil reputation as the result of newspaper ‘ballyhoo’ ascribing to me so-called ‘gang’ or ‘mobster’ activities and connections that found their origin in the fertile imaginations of professional publicity hounds in the employ of the press. Why it was permitted to follow me once the prison doors clanged shut is an unanswerable riddle.

  “But follow me it did. For some reason, despite the declared policy of your department that all inmates are treated alike, with no favoritism or oppression shown to any particular individual behind the walls of federal penitentiaries, I have been given to understand by various acts and the attitude of your subordinates — even including the parole board that has denied me a well-earned parole despite the provisions of a wise law — that the odium of unjust and unfair evil must still be mine and I must be treated accordingly.”

  Guzik went on to complain that at Leavenworth and at Lewisburg Prison, Pennsylvania, “I have been the subject of what I honestly believe to be a repressive and studied espionage over and above what is the lot of the average prisoner: my goings and comings within the inmate body being the subject of unusually severe scrutiny over and above what is accorded others; all of my visits being held under the sharp supervision of a high official of the institution; my mail extraordinarily scrutinized and censored; and the general tone being one of distrust and suspicion.”

  Because of his treatment, Guzik concluded that Bates must “consider me a real bad character, an evil man, despite my good birth and parentage, my magnificent family and the all-important item to a prison administrator, that I have no criminal record of any kind.”

  Should this litany of injustices fail to sway Bates, Jack included health and medical reasons for being transferred. “I am in poor health all-around, with but one kidney. I am suffering acutely with sinus trouble and am existing solely on such low-protein diet as they can afford here. The climate of the west coast has, in the past, been most beneficial to me, and I honestly believe it will help me again were I there.”17

  Guzik’s request was denied. But this did not prevent dozens of friends and acquaintances from bombarding the parole board with letters requesting his parole. They usually based their pleas on family considerations.

  Jack’s parents, Max and Fannie, had moved to Los Angeles in the late 1920s to be with their other children. Jack’s mother died there of heart trouble in 1931. When Jack was sent to prison, the elder Guzik wrote to the parole board on Jack’s behalf and asked his Los Angeles acquaintances to do the same.

  “I’m asking you to have pity on an old sick man,” wrote Max. “I am 84. My health failing me, my eyes failing me. I am on the way and I want to see my dear son before anything happens. He was good to everybody, especially to his sick father and mother. His mother passed away from trouble on account of him. She found out that her son must go to prison. She passed away suddenly from a heart attack.”18

  Guzik’s father explained that his “dear son supported us for a long time with all the goods, with doctors and medicine. Now I am holding a vacant flat for him to live together in my building.” He guaranteed the board that Jack would “be a very good boy,” if released.

  “Your honor,” writes Max, “I ask you a second time and a million times more, have feeling and pity on me, an old and very sick nearly blind father. Please don’t throw away this letter in the waste basket and help me to get my dear son and supporter home.”

  Max concluded his letter by promising the board that if they would release Jack, he would “pray for you and your dear family all the rest of my life. Even in my grave I will remember what you did for me and my good son.”19

  Max’s Los Angeles friends also tried to help Jack out by writing the parole board. Dr. Herman Lando, the elderly Guzik’s Los Angeles physician and family friend, sent a letter asking for Jack’s release. “I have known Jack Guzik for many years; also his family,” he wrote. Jack “has been a good friend, good husband, and an extremely good son. He has always been a good provider and has helped his family just for the asking.”

  The doctor asked for Jack’s release “for the sake of his father, who is in his 84th year, is rapidly failing in health and losing the sight of his eyes.” He ended by saying that he would “gladly vouch for Jack Guzik anytime and all the time.”20

  Rabbi M. Kohn of Congregation B’nai Jacob in Los Angeles, the synagogue Max attended, also pleaded for Jack to be released for his father’s sake. The good rabbi wrote that Guzik’s “father has absolutely guaranteed me that if Jack is paroled he will not return to his old haunts, but will come to live with his father.”21

  Another Los Angeles resident, Mike Lyman, wrote that he and Jack had grown up together and were “real close pals.” He assured the parole board that, at heart, Jack “was as fine a boy as you could possibly find in any walk of life.” Lyman was positive that, should Jack be released, “he could easily rehabilitate himself.” Furthermore, if a parole were granted, Lyman “would be more than happy to take him in the business with me, and personally guarantee that he would not break any of the laws of the land.”22

  One of Jack’s friends in Youngstown, Ohio, tried another approach. “Whenever I think of the New Deal our president, Franklin D. Roosevelt has inaugurated,” wrote Fred Kohler in October 1933, “my mind goes out to an old friend that I have known for a good many years. Mr. Jack Guzik is the man I refer to.” He then went on to praise Jack as a man “very much attached to his family and home,” and “interested in his children to a degree that made him outstanding as a father.”

  Kohler believed that if Jack was given “a new deal,” he would “prove himself worthy of parole in every respect.”23

  The appeals were of little avail. Jack’s first petition for parole was denied “upon the premise that this subject is a menace to society and a dangerous criminal; that in all probability his intentions… are to resume his criminal activities as soon as he is released.”24

  The parole board’s analysis proved correct. Jack was released from prison in December 1935, after serving three years of his four year sentence and resumed his criminal career immediately upon his return to Chicago. He never went to prison again.

  Guzik died of a heart attack at age 69 in 1956, while dining on a couple of lamb chops and a glass of wine. His friends gave him a lavish funeral. The bronze coffin alone cost $5,000. One attending gangster remarked that ‘Tor that money, we could have buried him in a Cadillac.”25

  Like Waxey Gordon, Jacob “Gurrah’’ Shapiro, Lepke Buchalter’s sidekick of many years, died in prison. Shapiro was born in Russia in 1895 and came to the United States with his parents when he was twelve. One of nine children, Jacob left school at an early age and never learned to read or write properly. This proved to be no handicap in his chosen profession of slugging and strong-arming.26

  Jake’s nickname “Gurrah” allegedly evolved from his difficulty with the English language. When annoyed at someone, he would shout “Gurrarah here.” Translated, this meant “Get out of here.” Jake usually tendered this command with a blow or kick. To his peers and the police he became “Gurrah Jake.”

  Jacob grew up ugly. He was five feet, five inches in height, weighed 200 pounds, had a flattened nose, thick lips, fat fingers, brown, tightly curled hair, and large ears.

  He also grew up bad. Before he was eighteen, he was a pushcart thief, bully and East Side hoodlum. While still a teenager, Jake met Lepke on the Lower East Side while they were both attempting to rob the same pushcart. Rather than compete, they decided to form a partnership. Lepke realized he could use Jake’s muscle, and Jake likely realized he would need Lepke’s brain. The duo be
came known as “L and G,” or simply “the boys.”27

  Both men started off working for New York’s criminal mastermind, Arnold Rothstein. At first, their only jobs were those they received from Rothstein, but this changed during the New York garment center strike of 1926. Both sides used gangsters in the conflict. Rothstein supplied mobsters, among them Lepke and Gurrah, to the unions. When the strike ended, Lepke and Gurrah stayed on, taking over the unions. After 1926, Lepke and Gurrah worked with Rothstein, instead of for him.

  Once the boys gained control of a union local, they would take kickbacks and skim off the dues from union members. At the same time, they extorted huge payoffs from garment manufacturers who wished to avoid strikes.

  Between 1915 and 1933, Gurrah was arrested fifteen times on charges including burglary, assault, kidnapping, carrying concealed weapons, larceny and violation of the federal antitrust laws. He served five prison sentences, all short. Though underworld gossip and police information linked him with murder, especially the killing of Jacob “Little Augie’’ Orgen, the evidence was always too obscure to make the charges stick.28

  Gurrah was happiest when he could use force. He believed a punch in the mouth was better than a harsh word, and that a bullet or a bottle of acid was more fun than a bust in the chops.

  In 1936, Gurrah and Lepke were convicted by the federal government for violation of the antitrust laws. Both men received sentences of two years in jail, but were released on bond pending appeal. U.S. Circuit Court Judge Martin T. Mantin overturned Buchalter’s conviction, but not Shapiro’s. It was rumored, although never proven, that Judge Mantin had been bribed.

  Gurrah jumped bail and completely disappeared. The New York State and federal government searched for him everywhere, including Poland and Palestine, but he surrendered to the FBI after hiding out for less than a year.

  In 1938, Shapiro was tried and convicted of labor racketeering and sentenced to life in prison. He died in prison at age 50 in 1947. A few months before his death, Gurrah bitterly told other convicts that he had been a fool to follow Luciano, Lansky and Lepke. If only he had done things his way, using more violence, “I wudda been free,” he said.29

  Lepke Buchalter’s real troubles started after Judge Mantin released him. Special District Attorney Dewey, who had already convicted Waxey Gordon for tax evasion and Lucky Luciano for prostitution, went after Lepke with a vengeance. Dewey believed that catching Lepke would deal a death blow to organized crime in New York, and ensure his own election to the governorship. He conducted midnight raids on union and company offices and seized their books. He tapped telephones and subpoenaed hundreds of witnesses. Anyone connected to Lepke in any way was brought in, questioned, threatened with indictments and put under enormous pressure to talk.

  Lepke’s life became a nightmare. His office was watched, his phones were tapped and police followed him everywhere. He was forced to meet his henchmen in building and hotel lobbies, on subway platforms and in restaurant washrooms.

  “I sneak away from the cops… I lose them… mostly in the subway,” he explained to Paul Berger, one of his labor organizers.30

  Adding to Lepke’s troubles, the federal government began to investigate his involvement in drug trafficking.

  Unable to find relief, Lepke went into hiding in 1937. “Things are getting too hot here,” he told Berger. ‘Til have to lam. Be careful.”31

  A warrant was issued for his arrest, but he eluded his pursuers for two years. Albert Anastasia, one of the Mafia’s prized executioners, and Abe Reles hid Buchalter in a secret apartment above the Oriental Palace, a cheap dance hall in Brooklyn. While the authorities combed the United States for him, a disguised Buchalter lived under their very noses.32

  While in hiding, Lepke tried to protect himself against informers by having Abe Reles, Harry Strauss, Buggsy Goldstein and the rest of Murder, Inc. kill anyone and everyone who could finger him. Brooklyn became a slaughterhouse.

  As the terror spread, the law applied more pressure. The authorities questioned every underworld figure of note in their search for Lepke. A special federal grand jury in Newark subpoenaed Longy Zwillman to ask if he knew where Lepke might be hiding.

  “I know Lepke a long time,” Zwillman admitted, “but I haven’t seen him in three-four years. So far as I know, he was a pleasant fellow… and clean morally.” Zwillman received a six-month jail sentence for refusing to answer the grand jury’s questions.33

  Bugsy Siegel was asked whether he had spoken to Lepke. Siegel replied that he could not remember. Judge John Knox ruled that Siegel’s alleged lapse of memory was “frivolous and contumacious” and sent him to jail pending a return of memory.34

  Desperate to find Lepke, the federal government and New York State put out a $50,000 reward for his capture and published his picture on handbills, movie screens and in newspapers. He became the most wanted man in the country, perhaps in the world.

  The last of the wanted circulars distributed by the New York police contained the following description of Lepke’s “peculiarities”: “Eyes, piercing and shifting; nose, large, somewhat blunt at nostrils; ears, prominent and close to head; mouth, large, slight dimple left side; right-handed; suffering from kidney ailment. Frequents baseball games.”

  The New York underworld was in turmoil, threatened by Dewey on one side and menaced by Buchalter on the other. It couldn’t go on like this. The manhunt for Lepke was ruining their business. It

  Jacob Shapiro

  became obvious to the crime bosses that the only way to keep their operations from being destroyed was for Lepke to surrender.

  According to Lucky Luciano, he, Thomas “Three Finger Brown” Lucchese and others discussed the problem at Dannemora Prison. Luciano modestly claims he solved it.

  The idea was to make it appear to Lepke that a deal had been worked out with J. Edgar Hoover. “If he’d give himself up to the FBI and take the narcotics rap, he’d have Hoover’s guarantee that he wouldn’t be turned over to Dewey, and by the time he finished the federal stretch, the Dewey case would probably’ve caved in.

  “I knew that Lep was scared to death of Tom Dewey, especially after what the prick done to me,” said Luciano. “Of course we didn’t make no deal at all with Hoover, but it had to look damn sure to Lepke like we did.”35

  Whether Luciano conceived the plan or not, it worked. Meyer Lansky sent Moe “Dimples” Wolensky, Lepke’s trusted lieutenant and friend, to tell Buchalter that a deal had been made with J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover promised not to turn Buchalter over to Dewey, said Wolensky. Once Lepke was in jail, the “heat” would be off the bosses and everything would return to normal. After serving a “short” sentence of ten to twelve years, he would be free.

  Lepke remained suspicious. He told Abe Reles, “Those bastards are more interested in their own take than they are in my hide.”36

  He was right. But he also realized that unless he complied, his criminal associates would take matters into their own hands, just as they had done with Dutch Schultz. Nothing personal, but business is business.

  Buchalter agreed to the plan.

  On August 5, 1939, Walter Winchell, the famous gossip columnist and news broadcaster, received an anonymous call that Lepke “wants to come in,” but was afraid he would be shot before he could surrender.

  Winchell was a close friend of J. Edgar Hoover. The two men often shared the same table at New York’s Stork Club and each helped the other in important ways. From his extensive files, Hoover illegally supplied Winchell with secret tidbits on the private lives of famous people. In return, Winchell willingly served as Hoover’s biggest fan, press agent and booster.

  Winchell contacted Hoover, who assured him that Lepke would be arrested and not shot. During one of his broadcasts, Winchell relayed Hoover’s assurance of a safe-conduct to a federal jail for Lepke.

  On the evening of August 24, 1939, Lepke came out of his hideout in an apartment on Foster Avenue in Brooklyn and got into a waiting car. Behind the wheel
sat Albert Anastasia who drove the automobile over the bridge into Manhattan. At a predetermined spot he stopped the car. Buchalter got out and walked over to a car with two men parked nearby. The door opened and Lepke got in.

  “Mr. Hoover,” said Walter Winchell, who was the driver, “this is Lepke.”

  “How do you do,” said Hoover, who sat in the back.

  “Glad to meet you,” said Lepke. “Let’s go.”37

  With Winchell driving, and surrounded by a fleet of other cars filled with FBI agents, they took Lepke straight to prison.

  From the moment he entered the car, Lepke sensed that he had been double-crossed. There was no fix, no deal. By then it was too late.

  Lepke’s federal narcotics trial took place in December 1939. Lepke, together with several co-defendants, was convicted of “Conspiracy to Unlawfully Import, Possess, Conceal, Transport and Sell Narcotics.” In January 1940, Buchalter received sentences totalling 192 years. Since most of the sentences ran concurrently, the actual time involved was 14 years.38

  The terror Buchalter inspired was evident at his trial. One of the witnesses against Lepke was a middle-aged convict named Solomon Stein who, at the time of the trial, was serving a seven-year sentence for larceny. Stein had worked in Buchalter’s narcotics smuggling operation and identified Buchalter as his boss.

  The judge asked Stein to identify Buchalter by placing a hand on his shoulder. Stein took a few steps toward Buchalter, then stopped. Buchalter glared coldly at him. Stein turned pale and started trembling. Speaking in Russian through an interpreter, Stein said he was afraid and would go no closer. He asked the judge if he could point to Buchalter. The judge, seeing Stein’s distress, agreed. Stein then pointed his finger at Buchalter.39

  After his conviction, Buchalter was held for a time in the Federal Detention Headquarters in New York pending the outcome of the proposed action against him by the State of New York. Buchalter’s attorney filed an action for a stay of execution of the state’s writ, but the Court of Appeals denied this. Successive appeals to higher courts affirmed this decision. Buchalter was then turned over to Thomas Dewey for trial.