Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set

by Bruno, Joe

  Robinson was incredulous at the ferocity of Helen's attacks, and he told her, in no uncertain terms, their relationship was over. Helen was crushed, and she started bombarding Robinson with letter after letter, begging him for forgiveness. But it was not to be. Robinson discarded Helen like an old newspaper, and Helen, dismayed at the turn of events, left New York City for places unknown.

  Helen returned to New York City in October 1835, and she immediately became employed at the brothel of Rosina Townsend, located at 41 Thomas Street. As luck would have it, while Helen was strolling on the docks by the East River, she ran into Robinson. They reconciled, and “Frank Rivers” became a frequent visitor at 41 Thomas Street.

  A few months later, Helen found out, that while she was away, Robinson had become involved with another girl, who inexplicably had died from ingesting poison, allegedly administered to her by Robinson. Helen confronted Robinson with this accusation, which he vehemently denied. Ultimately, Robinson was able to convince Helen of his innocence in the death of the girl in question. Robinson also told Helen that he was so in love with her, he wanted her to abandon her wicked life at 41 Thomas Street and marry him instead.

  On April 10, 1836, Robinson, the cad that he was, informed Helen that not only was he not going to marry her, but that he was, in fact, engaged to be married to a young woman of great wealth and position. Helen was heartbroken.

  She wrote Robinson a letter saying, “You know how I have loved, but for God's sake don't compel me to show how I can hate.”

  On the following day, Robinson wrote Helen a letter in a disguised hand, telling her that he would come to her place of business at 9 p.m. that evening. Robinson also insisted that Helen should be the one to greet him at the front door.

  On April 11, 1836, at exactly 9 p.m., “Frank Rivers” knocked at the front door of 41 Thomas Street. However, by coincidence, Rosina Townsend was near the front door at the exact moment Robinson knocked, and she admitted Robinson instead of Helen. As was his custom, Robinson wore his distinctive long Spanish cloak.

  Helen, upon hearing Robinson's voice, rushed to the front door and hugged Robinson. She said, “Oh, my dear Frank, how glad I am that you have come.”

  Robinson and Helen then retired to Helen's apartment.

  Marie Stevens was another prostitute, who occupied the apartment next door to Helen's. At approximately 1 a.m., Stevens heard noises emanating from Helen's apartment. Stevens later said it sounded like someone had been struck by a heavy blow, and then the injured person had emitted a long, mournful moan. Moments later, Stevens heard Helen's door being opened. Stevens opened her door just a crack, and she spotted a tall man, wearing a long cloak and holding a dimly lit candle, slither out of Helen's apartment. Terrified, Stevens locked herself in her apartment.

  A few minutes later, Stevens heard a knock on the front door. Rosina Townsend answered the front door and admitted another male guest. After this guest went to the apartment of the lady he was visiting, Townsend noticed that there was a lit lamp in the parlor. Townsend examined the lamp and determined it belonged either to Helen, or Stevens. Townsend also noticed that the back door to the building was ajar. She yelled out, “Who's there?” But there was no answer.

  Townsend first knocked on Stevens's door. After determining that the lamp did not belong to Stevens, Townsend knocked on Helen's door. Upon hearing no answer, Townsend opened the door to Helen's apartment, and she was overcome by a large cloud of smoke. Townsend's screams aroused the rest of the house's occupants. In a panic, the male guests put on their trousers, dressed quickly and ran from the building, lest they be caught in an embarrassing situation by the authorities.

  Townsend opened the window, and she began screaming into the night air, “Fire!”

  A night watchman, who was the precursor to the New York City policeman, heard Townsend's cries. He rushed into the house, into Helen's room, and he extinguished the fire. What he saw next, caused Ms. Townsend and the rest of the female inhabitants of the building to scream in horror.

  The scantily clad body of Helen Jewett was lying on the bed. Her skull had been split open with three powerful blows, apparently made by a hatchet. Any one of the three blows would have been enough to kill her. The left side of Helen's upper body was charred, from her having been set on fire after she was savagely attacked.

  When the authorities searched the backyard at 41 Thomas Street, they found a bloody hatchet, which apparently was the murder weapon. Found next to the hatchet was the type of cloak which Robinson normally wore. Apparently, the murderer had fled out the back door, dropped the hatchet and cloak, and scaled a white fence that had recently been painted. The murderer then fled down a side street, where he was spotted by a Negro woman. The woman said she could not detail the man's facial features, but that his general appearance was similar to that of Robinson.

  No one at 41 Thomas Street knew Frank Rivers's real name. However, one of the working girls did know that Frank Rivers worked as a clerk for a merchant in a dry goods shop on Maiden Lane. This young lady also knew the address of that dry goods store.

  That night, watchmen Dennis Brink and George Noble went to the dry goods store on Maiden Lane and asked if anyone knew a Frank Rivers. They were told the man they were looking for was actually Richard Robinson, aged 19, and that he lived at a boarding house at 42 Dey Street.

  Brink and Noble went to that address and found Robinson in bed. Robinson claimed he had been in his room for many hours. Robinson's roommate verified the fact that Robinson had been home almost the entire night.

  Brink and Noble searched the room, and they found Robinson's trousers stained with white paint; the same type of white paint that was on the fence at 41 Thomas Street. As a result, Robinson, although he said he was innocent of all charges, was arrested and taken to the jail on Chambers Street. After an indictment came down, saying there was sufficient evidence to try Robinson for murder, he was taken to a prison cell in Bellevue Hospital on 29th Street, where he was housed with the criminally insane.

  Since Robinson came from a wealthy family, his relatives immediately hired the best criminal attorneys in town. These attorneys were up against New York City prosecutors who claimed that Robinson had killed Helen Jewett, because she had threatened to reveal to his present fiancé that he had, in fact, killed his former girlfriend.

  The trial was scheduled for June 2, 1836.

  Several mysterious circumstances suddenly started working in Robinson's favor. The colored woman, who had seen Helen Jewett's killer run from the scene, mysteriously disappeared. And Marie Stevens, who had seen the killer slip out of Helen Jewett's room, died in her bed before the trial started. It could not be determined if Stevens had died of natural causes, committed suicide, or was murdered.

  Without advance notice to the prosecutors, Robinson's lawyers called a man named Robert Furlong to the witness stand. Furlong stated that Robinson, at the time of Helen Jewett's murder, had been, in fact, sitting in Furlong's cigar store, smoking a cigar and reading the newspapers.

  Notwithstanding the two missing witnesses and the surprise alibi supplied by Furlong, the case against Robinson seemed to be overwhelming. Robinson was seen entering Helen Jewett's room by Ms. Townsend. In addition, Ms. Townsend said that at 11 p.m. on the night of the murder, she had entered Helen Jewett's room to deliver a bottle of champagne. When she entered the room, she saw both Helen Jewett and Robinson laying on the bed.

  The hatchet, which was the murder weapon, was identified by an employee at the dry goods store where Robinson worked as the hatchet that Robinson had used frequently at work. Also, Robinson's roommate admitted on the witness stand, under oath, that Robinson, in fact, had not been home the entire night of Helen Jewett's murder.

  After Robinson's lead attorney gave his closing statement, and the district attorney gave his closing statement, the judge inexplicably told the jury that any testimony given by prostitutes, including Ms. Townsend, because of the nature of their employment, should not be b
elieved. This slanted the case decidedly in Robinson's favor. The jury took less than a half an hour to render a verdict of not guilty.

  The consensus in the New York City newspapers was that a guilty man had been set free. Two weeks after the trial, Robert Furlong, who had conveniently provided Robinson with an alibi for the time of Helen Jewett's murder, inexplicably killed himself by jumping into the Hudson River. And besides the judge in the case obviously favoring the defendant, it was suspected that several members of the jury had been bought off by Robinson's rich relatives.

  However, nothing could be proven and Robinson walked away a free man. The murderer of Helen Jewett was never found, nor can it be ascertained if anyone did, in fact, look for that murderer.

  Yet, justice may have been served in an unexpected manner.

  Ostracized by the Helen Jewett murder trial, Robinson left New York City and took up residence in the Republic of Texas. Two years later, Robinson contracted an unspecified illness. In a state of delirium, Robinson was taken to a local hospital. Before he died at the age of 21, on his death bed Robinson muttered his last words: “Helen Jewett.”

  The story of Helen Jewett and Richard Robinson did not end after their deaths. In the following years, their wax figurines traveled in sideshows throughout the northeastern states. The implied message in these traveling shows was that young people should think twice before getting involved in a life that is steeped in decadence and immorality.

  Kennedy, Joseph P

  You could verily call Joseph P. Kennedy, the father of United States President John F. Kennedy, a mobster by association, because many of his friends and associates in New York City were big-time mobsters. Joe Kennedy never actually belonged to an organized crime gang, but he was the head of one of the most cold-blooded gangs ever in politic, the Kennedy clan itself, a ruthless trio of men (JFK and his brother RFK included), who steamrolled opponents, political, or otherwise, by any means necessary. It's also true to say Joe Kennedy was a crook, because of the way he manipulated stocks and hurt the little people in doing so. Finally, there is no doubt that Joe Kennedy was a creep; a creep of the highest order. And now I'm going to tell you why.

  Joe Kennedy was born Joseph Patrick Kennedy in Boston, Massachusetts, on September 6, 1888, the son of Patrick Joseph “PJ” Kennedy and Mary Hickey. PJ Kennedy was a very popular person in the Boston community, known as a go-getter and someone who had risen from a common laborer to a successful businessman. PJ was one of the top guns who organized two separate Boston financial institutions: the Columbia Trust Company and the Sumner Savings Bank. Soon, PJ entered politics and by the time Joe Kennedy was born, PJ was in his third term in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. But the real feather in PJ's cap was when he was installed as the unofficial "ward boss" of East Boston Ward 2, a position he used to his monetary advantage for more than 30 years.

  Young Joe Kennedy attended Catholic school in East Boston until the eighth grade. Instead of going to a local public high school or a local Catholic high school, PJ thought so much of his son Joe's potential, he enrolled Joe into Boston Latin School, a college preparatory academy in the Boston public school system. Unfortunately, although Joe had a way with numbers, his grades were far from exemplary. But Joe was a likable guy and even though he was no “Einstein,” his fellow students voted Joe class president during his senior year.

  In 1908, using his father's pull in local politics (remember Joe's high school grades were nothing special), Joe was admitted into the highbrow Ivy League Harvard University. Joe did well enough at Harvard to earn his B.A. In 1912, immediately after Joe graduated from Harvard, using his facility with numbers as a springboard, and of course his father's political connections, Kennedy got a prestigious job as an assistant bank examiner for the state of Massachusetts.

  Joe Kennedy's love life bloomed while he was in his senior year at Harvard. That's when Kennedy met the lovely Rose Fitzgerald, the daughter of Boston Mayor John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald. With both his father and her father being with the “in crowd” in Boston politics, this seemed like the perfect match. And it was, until Kennedy's true colors came to the surface, and he began chasing every skirt in sight. But we'll get to that later.

  Joe Kennedy and Rose were married on October 7, 1914 and they made their love cottage in the Boston suburb of Brookline. Their first son, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., was born on July 28, 1915 and thus started a prestigious new wing of the Kennedy/Fitzgerald dynasty.

  Needing to make some decent cash to support his wife and their new child in the manner to which they had been accustomed, Kennedy obtained a controlling interest (with his father's money, of course) in the Columbia Trust, the bank his father had helped found. Using his father's pull, Kennedy soon became manager of the bank, making him at 25 the youngest bank president in America. It was at the Columbia Trust that Kennedy realized that using his street smarts and political connections there was nothing he couldn't accomplish in this fine country of America.

  Climbing the financial ladder quickly and hungrily, on May 29, 1917, Kennedy was elected to the Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts Electric Company, the same day his second child John Fitzgerald Kennedy was born. Soon afterwards, fellow board member Guy Currier, who was a hotshot Boston attorney and the company counsel at Bethlehem Steel, did Kennedy a solid, when he recommended Kennedy to Bethlehem chief executive Charles M. Schwab for the position of assistant general manager at the company's Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts.

  Now Kennedy was on the verge of making some big-time money and a name for himself, and he wasn't going to let a silly thing like ethics stand in his way. This is illustrated by the following case in point.

  In 1918, Kennedy joined his father-in-law's campaign team for Honey Fitz's attempt to win the Massachusetts Congressional seat, then occupied by fellow Democrat Peter F. Hague. This set the political back-alley-dealing groundwork for Kennedy, which came into play when he pulled all the strings needed to make his son John the President of the United States.

  Kennedy realized that the ethnic mixture in Boston was making a very subtle change. First occupied by the Anglo-Saxton “swells” and now joined by the Boston/Irish rabble, Boston had recently received an influx of the “darkies,” which immigrants from Italy were then called, sometimes even to their faces. Kennedy knew that an Italian vote for his father-in-law was as good as a vote from an upper-class voter, so he formulated a strategy whereby Honey Fitz would get almost the entire Italian vote. Kennedy found out who the Italian mob bosses were in all the districts, and he paid them well to bring out the vote for Honey Fitz; even if it meant stuffing a ballot box or two, or cracking a head or three.

  And that's exactly what the Italian bosses did. As a result, Joe Kennedy's father-in-law defeated Hague by a mere 238 votes.

  Unfortunately, Honey Fitz's reign did not last too long, when a year later a congressional investigation turned up the voter fraud, perpetrated behind the scenes by Joe Kennedy. The election was overturned and Honey Fitz was booted from office, never again to hold a meaningful political position. However, Joe Kennedy himself remained unscathed. Luckily for Kennedy, Italians know how to keep their mouths shut, especially if you greased their palms sufficiently.

  However, Joe Kennedy learned his lessons well, realizing the real trick was not only to tilt the election in your favor, but not to get caught doing so. Kennedy would never make this same mistake again.

  Kennedy's work at Fore River for Bethlehem Steel was exhausting until World War I ended. In late 1918, with business slacking off considerably, Kennedy decided on making an upwardly mobile move. He hooked up with Galen Stone, an associate at the Massachusetts Electric Company Board and a partner in the brokerage firm of Hayden, Stone, and Company. Under Stone's tutelage, Kennedy learned the intricacies of the stock market. Being good with numbers, Kennedy not only managed his client's money, but his own money as well.

  When Stone retired from the firm in 1923, Kennedy, figuring he had learned a
ll he could in stock investing and the banking industry, decided to quit Hayden, Stone, and Company and branch out on his own. He called his new company "Joseph P. Kennedy, Banker." In just three short years, using the precepts he had learned at Hayden, Stone, and Company, Kennedy's net worth had ballooned to more than $2 million.

  Well, not exactly.

  In 1919, the Volstead Act, which prohibited the production, sale, and transport of "intoxicating liquors," made a lot of crooks rich. One of them was Joseph P. Kennedy. In 1922, flush with cash in his pocket as a result of his manipulations on Wall Street, Kennedy decided to branch out into the business of “rum running,” which was the illegal transport of alcohol from outside the United States.

  People have said that Kennedy was a “bootlegger,” but by definition that is not accurate. Bootleggers produced the alcohol, sometimes in bathtubs, hence the term “bathtub gin.” “Rum runners” like Kennedy found the best places outside America to buy the product, then they purchased ships, speedboats, trucks, and warehouses, in order to move the liquor into America and then distribute the booze to whomever wanted it.

  In his first foray into the rum running business, Kennedy discovered a great source of top-flight Scotch on St. Pierre and Muldoon, a group of eight islands approximately 16 miles off the coast of Newfoundland. There, Kennedy was able to purchase Scotch for $45 a case. Using his head for numbers, Kennedy calculated that shipping and labor cost added about another $20 per case, making it a total of $65. Since Kennedy sold the scotch for $85 a case, that was not much of a profit margin for so dangerous an operation.

  So Kennedy copied what many other rum runners had done before him. He cut the 90-proof scotch with water and other additives. Then Kennedy re-bottled the Scotch, which transformed an $85 case of 90-proof Scotch into two cases of 45 proof scotch, which Kennedy then sold at $85 per case. Using this chicanery, Kennedy turned the usual 5,000-case shipment, which cost him $325,000, into a tidy profit of $200,000 per shipment; a King's ransom in the Roaring 20's.