Boardwalk Gangster

by Tim Newark

  After two weeks of listening to a succession of prostitutes place him squarely in the middle of their world, booker Jack Ellenstein also threw in the towel and pleaded guilty. The prosecution case was now over and this left Luciano and eight other defendants to contest the charges. The first of these was Ralph Liguori. He had been accused by prostitute Nancy Presser of supplying her with narcotics and beating her when she didn’t bring in enough money. He had threatened Presser and her friend in Dewey’s office if they gave evidence against Luciano and the rest. The prosecution further alleged he was the holdup man for the vice Combination, raiding brothels when they failed to pay their bond money. By the time it was his turn to speak in his own defense, Liguori was itching to give the prosecutor both barrels, directing his fire at one of Dewey’s assistants, Henry Cole.

  “Cole said he knew I had nothing to do with the Combination,” said Liguori in the courtroom. “He said ‘We don’t want you as a defendant. We want to get Lucania.’ I said I knew nothing. He said they were going to make me out the stickup man for the Combination. He showed me pictures of Lucky, Betillo [Petillo], Frederico [Fredericks], and Pennochio and said they wanted those four. He wanted me to say Betillo gave me orders to collect $300 from a house. He wanted me to say Lucky and Betillo were there when I went downtown with the $300, that Lucky put the money in his pocket and gave me $10.”

  It was a strong performance from Liguori and he wouldn’t give up his version of events, accusing Dewey and the whole trial of being a setup to get Luciano.

  “When I said that didn’t happen,” he continued, “he threatened me with twenty-five years. He said if I cooperated they would give me and my girl six months in Europe and protection. He said Dewey was a big man and was going to be governor. He said Dewey prosecuted Waxey Gordon.”

  Dewey listened to it all with a poker face. Liguori was just a bit player trying to impress his boss. The whole case revolved around the testimony of Luciano and that came the following day, June 2. It was a more measured performance from the top mobster, reflecting his greater gravitas and his belief that the less he said the better—and at first he seemed to be getting the better of the trial.

  At 2:13 P.M., Luciano was sworn in and took the stand as a witness on his own behalf. He looked elegant and calm in a cool gray suit. For the defense, George Morton Levy conducted the direct examination, presenting some of Luciano’s personal history to the court.

  “Is that the correct way to pronounce your name, Lucania?”

  “That is right,” said Luciano.

  “Are your parents living, Mr. Lucania?”

  “Everybody except my mother.”

  Luciano’s mother had died the previous August. He explained that his sister lived with his father in White Plains, while one of his two brothers worked as a hairdresser and the other was a presser. At the age of eighteen, after he had served six months of his first prison sentence, he went back to live with his parents briefly. He resumed work at a hat factory for about a year, but his heart wasn’t in it.

  “I went to work for a crap game,” he told the court.

  After about three years of that, he started running his own crap games, and this developed into his career as a professional gambler, booking horses—“Go down the track, bet them, and book them”—much in the style of his mentor Arnold Rothstein. This was his line of defense—moving him far away from the dirty business of vice. Witnesses for the defense took to the stand testifying to the fact that Luciano ran a legal gambling establishment in Saratoga, known as the Chicago Club. His partner and front man for this was a lawyer called Jim Leary.

  As to his fellow defendants, Luciano didn’t know any of them, except for Petillo. The same went for the prosecution witnesses.

  “There has not been a witness that got on this stand of Mr. Dewey’s, that I ever saw in my life,” he said.

  “Did you ever say to anybody, in words or in substance, that you were going to raise the price of $2 whores to $3?” asked Levy.

  “No, sir.”

  “Four dollar whores to $5?”

  “No, sir.”

  “That you were going to create an A&P chain store system in the city of New York for whores? Did you ever say anything of that kind?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you ever give any orders in connection with any woman to beat her up in any conversations in any restaurants in New York City or elsewhere?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Were you ever paid a dollar in your life by any of these other defendants in this case?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Did you ever take a dollar proceeds from any whore or prostitute, directly or indirectly, in your life?”

  “I always gave,” said Luciano. “I never took.”

  No one laughed at the joke.

  After nearly half an hour of this, it was Dewey’s turn to cross-examine Luciano. The two were now face-to-face, and it would be a long and torturous verbal duel. Dewey started by asking the mobster about his previous convictions, then he wanted some facts about his early life.

  “Where were you born?”

  “U.S.,” said Luciano.

  “Where in New York?”

  “Thirteenth Street.”

  This was a blatant lie—Luciano was born in Sicily.

  Dewey let this hang in the air and turned instead to Luciano’s first criminal conviction for selling narcotics at the age of eighteen.

  “How long had you been selling narcotics before you got caught?”

  “Oh, about three weeks or a month.”

  “Where did you get caught?”

  “On Fourteenth Street.”

  “Whom were you selling to?”

  “To a dope fiend.”

  “What was his name?”

  “That I don’t know.”

  Dewey moved on to Luciano’s subsequent career.

  “From 1920 to 1925, did you ever at any time in that entire five-year period earn an honest dollar?”

  At that point, Levy intervened with an objection, but the judge said it was a legitimate question.

  “Did you have, for one moment during that entire five-year period,” repeated Dewey, “any employment with anybody for any purposes except crap shooting?”

  “No.”

  Dewey asked him about his occupation from 1925 to 1930. “You didn’t have a thing in the world to do with any business in the world, except crap shooting and horse race booking, is that your testimony?”

  “That is what I did.”

  Dewey wanted to know if he ever came up with the pretense of a legitimate occupation so he could present it as a front for his gambling business. At this point, under a succession of similar questions, Luciano was knocked off balance and admitted other illegal action.

  “Well, I was bootlegging for a while, for about a year and half … . And I pretended I had a real estate business.”

  Dewey seized on the bootlegging admission.

  “Somebody else was making it, and you were just selling it, is that it?”

  “Just buying the alcohol and selling it, yes.”

  “Have you any recollection in the world as to who the fellow was who sold you the alcohol?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Now tell us what his name was?”

  “I am trying to think of his name.”

  “Was it Dutch Schultz?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Bill Dwyer?”

  “No, sir.”

  Dewey switched tack and got Luciano to admit he owned part of a restaurant on Fifty-second Street and Broadway for six months, eight years previously, and had merely forgotten this one legitimate occupation. Dewey asked him about his claim that he once worked as a chauffeur. Did he drive around Joe Masseria—Joe the Boss?

  “No.”

  “You were a bodyguard for him, weren’t you, for some time?”

  “Oh, no—never a bodyguard for anyone.”

  He denied that he had ever told any policemen that he
ever was born in Italy—five times he denied his birthplace. At this point, Dewey had a question read out by the judge to underline Luciano’s avoidance of the truth.

  “I just want to know your philosophy about this. Now if you are under oath, you always tell the truth under any circumstance. Is that it?”

  “I am telling the truth now, Mr. Dewey.”

  The question was read out again.

  “I didn’t say I told the truth all the time, but now I am telling the truth.”

  Luciano admitted that the only occasion he lied under oath was about his occupation to get a pistol permit so he could carry a gun around the streets of New York. Dewey exposed further his elastic understanding of the truth by revisiting his arrest for dope peddling in 1923.

  “Isn’t it a fact that on June 2, 1923, you sold a two-ounce box of narcotics known as Diacetylmorphine hydrochloride to John Lyons, an informer for the Secret Service of the United States?”

  “I don’t know who they were,” said Luciano, “but I was arrested, and if I was charged with them, that I didn’t do.”

  “Didn’t you sell the dope to John Lyons on that date?”

  “No.”

  Luciano continued to deny selling dope to the same agent three days later, but did not deny being arrested.

  “Isn’t it a fact that in your apartment were found two onehalf ounce packages of morphine, and two ounces of heroin and some opium?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Isn’t it a fact that thereafter you gave to Joseph Van Bransky, a narcotic agent in charge in New York City, a statement that at 163 Mulberry Street they would find a whole trunk of narcotics?”

  Levy interceded to object to this line of questioning, but Luciano accepted that that was true.

  “You’re just a stool pigeon,” pushed Dewey. “Isn’t that it?”

  “I told them what I knew.”

  “You mean you went to those men and, like a big-hearted citizen, you told them where they could find the trunk?”

  “Something like that, maybe … what I want to know is where the hell does all this come from?”

  Luciano was clearly rattled.

  “And you still say you were not engaged in the business of narcotics in the year 1923?” persisted Dewey.

  “I was picked up for it, but I was not—I didn’t sell them.”

  Further holes were picked in Luciano’s testimony by references to phone calls that he denied making but that were a matter of record. Dewey then wanted to know the kind of men he associated with.

  “Do you know a Vito?”

  “I know of a Vito, yes.”

  “Vito who?”

  “Vito Genovese.”

  “What is his business?”

  “I think he has got a paper business,” said Luciano.

  “Where is he now?”

  “I don’t know, I haven’t seen him in maybe seven months, six or seven months.”

  “Isn’t it a fact that he is out of the state of New York?”

  “I am in jail,” said the defendant. “I couldn’t tell you if he is around the corner or he is in China.”

  Luciano also admitted to knowing Louis Lepke, as well as Bugsy Siegel, who lived at the Waldorf-Astoria.

  “I know Bug Siegel having—putting on a couple of shows, and he was interested in a dog track in Atlantic City.”

  “You were down at his room or he was up in your room at the Waldorf pretty constantly, weren’t you?”

  “Well, he used to come up to my room, and I went down to his room, yes, a couple of times.”

  “Almost every day?”

  “Not every day, no.”

  Dewey turned his attention to the ride of 1929, when Luciano was kidnapped and beaten, and got Luciano to admit that he lied under oath to the grand jury about his circumstances at the time. He also admitted he hadn’t paid any income tax in that year or the year following. It was not until 1935 that he had got around to filing late returns to the federal government for the previous six years. It was echoes of Al Capone’s prosecution for tax evasion.

  Luciano explained he never kept any books of record of his income, but he swore that his net income in 1929 was $15,000; in 1930 it was $16,500. In 1931 and 1932, he paid tax on an income of $20,000, although he had not the slightest idea what his gross income or expenses were. He paid the government on the basis of his conscience. He could only guess at his income in the following years.

  Luciano’s cross-examination by Dewey ended on this financial note at 6:36 P.M.—after four hours of hostile questioning. Levy, Luciano’s defense attorney, immediately stood up to get the mobster to explain some of the reasons behind his secrecy and evasion.

  “Now, Mr. Lucania, about the use, firstly, of the names Charles Ross and Charles Lane. Was there any particular reason you used either of those names at the Waldorf?”

  “Some people, I didn’t want them to know.”

  “A little louder, please,” said the judge.

  “I says some people, I didn’t want them to know where I live.”

  Luciano explained that he had been taken on the ride in 1929 because some people were extorting money from him under threats and he promised to give them $10,000. He admitted to lying about this to the grand jury at the time. It was not a good end to his testimony. His constant twisting and turning of the truth all came across as very suspicious and, on several occasions Luciano had exposed himself as a relentless and barefaced liar. Newspapers proclaimed Dewey the winner of the courtroom duel. “Dewey Riddles Lucky on Stand,” said one headline.

  Having failed to present the other defendants in a good light and having failed to knock down the testimony placed before them, some of the defense attorneys used their summing up to attack Dewey. By giving immunity to the prostitutes and pimps paraded before the jury, the special prosecutor was allowing them to go about their illegal business. This was true, but Dewey had already dealt with that, explaining that it was necessary to get bad people to testify against much worse criminals. He admired their bravery in speaking up.

  “Gentlemen of the jury, have you ever dealt with sheer, stark, paralyzing terror?” asked Dewey in his closing argument. “You heard Danny Brooks testify that he asked me to put him in some jail where he would not be murdered.

  “Then there was Thelma Jordan,” he continued, “who was asked by a defense lawyer why she did not tell her story when first questioned in my office. She said, ‘I’ll tell you why—because I’ve seen girls cut and burned when they squeal.’ They knew they’d made a mistake when they asked that question. They never asked it again.”

  It was a dramatic end to a sensational trial. The jury retired for a night of deliberations. Early on Sunday June 7, they gave their verdict.

  “How say you, gentlemen of the jury,” asked Judge McCook. “Do you find the defendant Luciano guilty or not guilty on count number one?”

  “Guilty,” said the foreman.

  Luciano betrayed no emotion. His lawyers had already told him he would be found guilty.

  “How say you as to the defendant Luciano? Is he guilty or not guilty on count number two?”

  “Guilty.”

  And so it went on for all sixty-two counts of compulsory prostitution.

  Then it was the other defendants’ turn—Thomas Pennochio, Dave Petillo, James Fredericks, Abe Heller, Jesse Jacobs, Benny Spiller, Meyer Berkman, and Ralph Liguori. They were found guilty on all counts.

  That afternoon, Dewey issued a statement to the press.

  “This, of course, was not a vice trial,” he said. “It was a racket prosecution. The control of all organized prostitution in New York by the convicted defendants was one of their lesser rackets. The four bookers of women who pleaded guilty were underlings. The prostitution racket was merely the vehicle by which these men were convicted. It is my understanding that certain of the top-ranking defendants in this case, together with the other criminals under Lucania, have gradually absorbed control of the narcotic, policy, loan shark and
Italian lottery syndicates, the receipt of stolen goods and certain industrial rackets.”

  Dewey ended by thanking his legal assistants and police colleagues for all their hard work throughout the case.

  “These men have worked on this case for many months, most of them sixteen and eighteen hours a day, and on a number of occasions as long as sixty hours without sleep.”

  The conviction of Lucky Luciano was a landmark in U.S. legal history as it was the first against a major organized crime figure for anything other than tax evasion. It was the pinnacle of Dewey’s crusade against the underworld. Mayor La Guardia joined in the praise of the young attorney and said it revealed the role of corrupt law-keepers in the rule of the Mob. He said Luciano “could never have run his rackets without the knowledge if not the connivance of some of the very people entrusted with law enforcement. I recommend that at least six public officials commit hara-kiri.”

  Eleven days later, on June 18, Judge McCook handed out the sentences.

  “You are responsible in law and morals for every foul and cruel deed with accompanying elements of extortion performed by the band of codefendants,” he told Luciano. “I am not here to reproach you, but, since there appears no excuse for your conduct nor hope for your rehabilitation, to administer adequate punishment.”

  He sentenced him to thirty to fifty years behind bars. This pronouncement rocked Luciano. He was not expecting such a heavy sentence. He was, in effect, being sent to prison for the rest of his life. His codefendants got lesser sentences: Tommy the Bull and Jimmy Fredericks got twenty-five years each; Little Davie Petillo twenty-five to forty; and Ralph Liguori got seven and a half to fifteen years. It seemed like it was the end of Luciano’s criminal career.

  The trial might have been over, but the Dewey prosecuting machine kept on gathering evidence against Luciano for the anticipated appeal. A letter dated June 3, 1936, directed the crime crusader toward a notorious house of prostitution at 83 Genung Street, Middletown, Orange County, New York. Called Madges, it was so well known in the area that local politicians frequently joked about it in public and even used it to entertain business associates.