by Gordon Kerr
Sobibór was built in 1942, in eastern Poland. It had five gas chambers in which 250,000 Jews from Russia, Poland, Slovakia and western Europe met their deaths. Only 50 prisoners of Sobibór survived the extreme cruelties they faced.
Treblinka was the location of the extermination of the entire Warsaw ghetto. More than 700,000 Jews died there in the same way as at Sobibór and Bełżec. They were told they were being transported to labour camps, but first were ordered to remove their clothing so that they could be bathed and disinfected. They were then gassed – and if they resisted, they were beaten and clubbed with rifle butts. Special work units of Jewish prisoners, known as Sonderkommandos, were used to remove gold teeth and dentures from the corpses. They also dealt with the burial and cremation of the victims. When they were too weak to continue working, they, themselves, went to the gas chambers.
The Kommandant of Treblinka, Franz Stangl, was arrested in Brazil, in 1967, and extradited to Germany, where he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the part he played in the murder of 900,000 people. He died six months later.
Majdanek held some non-Jewish prisoners and there was some work done there. However, in October 1942, a crude gas chamber was constructed in a wooden barracks. Later, a more sophisticated chamber was built of concrete, with airtight steel doors. Carbon monoxide gas was used initially, but, as with the other camps, Zyklon-B soon became the preferred method. It is unclear exactly how many died at Majdanek. Some say it may have been as many as 1,380,000. In 1943, as the Russians closed in on Lublin, the camp was being closed. The 17,000 prisoners still held at the camp were shot in an operation euphemistically called Erntefest – Fall Harvest.
Bugsy Siegel
810 Linden Drive, Beverly Hills, California, USA
In the 1930s and 40s, 810 Linden Drive was the picture of Beverly Hills luxury. The house was rented by Bugsy Siegel's 'moll', Virginia Hall, who happened to be in Paris on the night of 20 June 1947, when her lover was pumped full of bullets by a mafia hitman, intent on silencing the troublesome mobster once and for all.
It was 20 June 1947, and Bugsy Siegel was king of the world. He had just returned to the sumptuous villa at 810 Linden Drive in Beverly Hills, having enjoyed a manicure and a haircut, and he was looking forward to a relaxing evening. Finally, things were going well. Business had been ropey for a while and he had not been absolutely certain he would make it, but now the money was rolling in and everything he had promised was coming to pass. What’s more, his daughters were on their way to spend the summer with him. What more could a man want?
Meanwhile, outside, in the garden of the house, Charlie Fischetti, a hired killer, squeezed the trigger of his Springfield rifle and the sound of gunfire splintered the hot Las Vegas evening.
At just under 1.8m (6 ft) tall, black-haired and blue-eyed, Bugsy Siegel was the prototype racketeer. He was born Benjamin Siegelbaum, in 1902, to poor immigrant Russian parents and grew up in Brooklyn’s tough Williamsburg area. By his early teens Bugsy had devised his first racket, extorting protection money from street vendors.
Around this time, he met the teenage Meyer Lansky, a Polish Jew who, in partnership with Bugsy, would put together a notorious gang of ruthless thugs and killers, known as the Bugs and Meyer Mob.
The gang contained men who would later become some of America’s most notorious gangsters – Abner ‘Longy’ Zwillman, Lepke Buchalter, future head of the infamous Murder Inc. – the only Mob leader ever to die in the electric chair – and Arthur Flegenheimer, later to achieve notoriety as Dutch Schultz.
Meyer soon realized that it would be better to have the Sicilian gangs on his side. So, he and upcoming Sicilian gangster, Charlie ‘Lucky’ Luciano, forged an invaluable link. It was for Luciano, in fact, that Bugs and Meyer carried out their first hit when they killed the son of an Irish cop who had set Luciano up on a narcotics charge.
By 1919, the Bugs and Meyer Mob was making its money from floating crap games, trade unions and robbery. However, the big time was where their ambitions lay. They put aside money from robberies and their craps and protection rackets, money they invested in established bookmaking businesses and also found its way into the pockets of Lower East Side politicians and policemen who could provide them with protection to carry on their business.
When the Volstead Act became law in 1919, making the manufacture and sale of alcohol illegal in the United States, it was a red-letter day for racketeers everywhere, but especially for Luciano, Lansky and Siegel.
From about 1927 – 1931, the warring factions of the New York underworld went head to head and the Castellamarese war, as it came to be called, between Mafia bosses, Joe Masseria and Sal Maranzano, would define organized crime in America for decades to come. When Luciano changed his sympathies and went over to Maranzano’s side, he did so on the understanding that he would deal with Joe Masseria.
On 15 April, 1931, he invited Masseria to Scarpato’s Restaurant in Coney Island. Towards the end of the meal, Luciano excused himself and went to the bathroom. As he closed the door, four gunmen burst into the room, guns blazing. They were Albert Anastasia, Vito Genovese, Joe Adonis and, leading the charge, as ever, Bugsy Siegel. Masseria was hit six times and another 14 bullets lodged themselves in the restaurant walls.
Charlie Luciano completed his rise to the top by rubbing out Sal Maranzano. Bugsy, however, was never one to abide by the rules and, after one murder too many for which he had not obtained the permission of his superiors, he was becoming too much of a liability. But, the National Crime Syndicate liked him and decided to give him another chance. He was sent to the West Coast where the Mob’s influence was nowhere near as great as in the east.
Bugsy arrived in California with his wife and kids, and bought a $200,000 (£100,000) mansion in the upmarket area of Holmby Hills. He began moving in elite circles, hanging out with George Raft, an old friend from Williamsburg who had become a major movie star. Raft provided Bugsy with a ticket into the high-octane world of Hollywood’s movie stars and starlets. With his suave good looks, he began to occupy the gossip columns, attending parties and premieres.
But, Bugsy was also busy during the day. He infiltrated the unions and began to make serious money for the Mob. However, he could not be kept away from the action and, on more than one occasion, became more involved in a situation than a man of his high status should have been. In 1939, when Harry ‘Big Greenie’ Greenberg was eliminated in California, Bugsy was in it up to his neck. As one of his cohorts said, ‘We all begged Bugsy to keep out of the shooting. He was too big a man by this time to become personally involved. But Bugsy wouldn’t listen.’
He had got under the Syndicate’s skin once too often, but Las Vegas was his last hurrah. In 1931, the Nevada legislature had legalized gambling to raise revenue. In the 1940s, it also legalized off-track betting on horse races. This was what interested Bugsy. Opening a legitimate casino in Vegas had unlimited of potential for making money for the Mob. He resolved to open a casino-hotel in the one-horse town of Las Vegas. He called it the Flamingo.
Right from the beginning, the Flamingo proved to be a money-pit. He was ripped off by construction workers and the money he needed to complete the hotel grew from $1 million (£500,000) to $6 million (£3 million). His Mob investors became twitchy.
By 1946, the hotel had still not opened its doors and Bugsy was asking for even more money. Finally, at a Mafia conference in Havana, Cuba, on 22 December that year, Meyer Lansky delivered some bad news. Bugsy had been skimming from the cash provided by the Mob for the Flamingo. He was thought to be depositing it in Swiss bank accounts, ready to flee if all did not go according to plan. The Syndicate turned to Lansky and asked him what they should do. He reluctantly told them that Bugsy had to be hit, a motion that was passed unanimously, and the contract was given to Charlie Fischetti. Lansky, nonetheless, provided his old friend with a stay of execution, persuading them that the contract should be delayed until after the opening of the casino – Boxing Day – to see what h
appened. Who knows, he suggested, it might even be a huge success and they could get Siegel to pay back the money.
In spite of top-notch entertainment – George Raft, Jimmy Durante, Xavier Cugat’s orchestra, all big names back then – and the presence at the opening of movie stars Clark Gable, Lana Turner, Joan Crawford and many more, the Flamingo was a flop.
It was with a heavy heart that Lansky reported the troubling situation in Las Vegas, and the Syndicate demanded the fulfilment of the contract. Nonetheless, he gained another stay of execution and the Flamingo limped along until Bugsy closed it to enable the hotel part of his complex to be finished.
It reopened in March and by May it had returned a healthy profit of $250,000 (£125,000). But it was all too late for the Syndicate.
Charlie Fischetti’s first bullet hit Bugsy Siegel in his handsome head as he lolled on his sofa and another four rammed into him in quick succession, smashing his ribs and destroying his lungs.
Aged 42, Benjamin ‘Bugsy Siegel’ Siegelbaum, who had been born in the slums of Brooklyn, and had once owned a 35-room mansion in Hollywood, was dead.
His memorial stands, shimmering to this day, in the Nevada desert – the gambling capital of the world – the city of Las Vegas.
Pentonville Prison
Caledonian Road, North London, England
Pentonville Prison was built in the style of Eastern State Penitentiary, and had the same effect on many of its inmates. Some went mad, some became delusional and some committed suicide. The dehumanizing tactics used by the prison authorities were simply too much for some people to bear.
The bad news for prisoners arriving at the Model Prison, in the 19th century, was that the system for controlling them was borrowed from the harsh regime in operation at America’s Eastern State Penitentiary, sometimes known as the ‘separate system’. Inmates were forbidden from communicating with each other and when exercising or being taken anywhere in the prison grounds, had to march rapidly, in straight lines, close to each other, wearing masks of brown cloth on their faces. This dehumanizing effect was carried through to their daily attendance at chapel, when each man sat in a tiny cubicle, his head visible to the warder, but not to his fellow inmates. The result, as in Eastern State, was mental illness. One study found that for every 60,000 prisoners at Pentonville 220 went mad, 210 became delusional and 40 committed suicide.
The day was hard. Work began at 6am and continued until 7pm. Prisoners would weave or make rope and they enjoyed only paltry rations. For breakfast there was 284g (10 oz) of bread and 355ml (0.75 pints) of cocoa. Dinner was a 237ml (0.5 pints) of soup or 114g (4oz) of meat, 142g (5oz) of bread and 454g (1lb) of potatoes. Then, for supper they would have 473ml (1 pint) of gruel – oatmeal boiled in water –and 142g (5oz) of bread. In the 1840s, it cost around 15 shillings (75 pence or $1.50) a week to feed and house a prisoner in Pentonville. However, it was a system much admired for its effectiveness and its cost. A further 54 prisons were constructed in the UK based on the Pentonville model, and many throughout the British Empire.
Pentonville was a hanging prison, and successful applicants for the job of hangman were trained there. They attended a one-week course that included lessons such as how to calculate and set the drop, using tables of measurement provided by the Home Office, how to pinion the condemned man and, critically, how to expedite the entire process. Everything was practiced using a dummy called ‘Old Bill’.
Apprentice hangmen met Old Bill on the second day of the course, the first being taken up with a medical, an interview with the governor and a tour of the execution shed. Using Old Bill, they learned how to put the white hood on and how to get the eyelet of the noose in exactly the right place. This was essential for what was termed the system of ‘humane hanging’. They repeated the process over and over until it was second nature – putting on the hood, adjusting the noose, pulling out the safety pin, pushing the lever and watching the prisoner drop. They were also shown how to manage double executions.
Every eventuality was catered for – prisoners with only one leg or arm and a prisoner who had attempted suicide by cutting his throat, for example.
The last two hangmen to be trained in this way were Samuel Plant and John Underhill, who took the course in 1960, remaining on the list of hangmen until they were rendered redundant by the abolition of the death penalty in the UK in 1965. The most prolific hangman in Pentonville’s history was Albert Pierrepoint, the third man in his family to be a hangman. Of the total of 433 men and 17 women he hanged between 1932 and 1955, 43 were carried out at Pentonville.
In the 20th century, more hangings were carried out at Pentonville than at any other British prison. There were 120 hangings altogether there between 1902 and 1961 – 112 for murder, two for treason and six for spying during wartime.
The first man to be hanged there was John Macdonald, who stabbed another man to death over five shillings (25 pence or 50 cents). But it had its share of famous executions over the years.
Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen was perhaps one of the most sensational murderers in English criminal history. Crippen murdered his wife, Belle, and fled with his mistress, Ethel Le Neve, to Canada on the SS Montrose. On board, he was recognized by the ship’s captain from a newspaper photograph and a telegraph message was sent, informing the ship’s owners, who alerted Scotland Yard; the first time a ship to shore telegraph had been used in a criminal case. Crippen was arrested and found guilty of murder, while Le Neve was acquitted. He was hanged at 9am on 23 November 1911, by John Ellis, and his last request was to be allowed to have a picture of his lover, Ethel Le Neve in his jacket pocket. Ellis recorded in his memoirs that Crippen smiled as he walked towards him.
The execution of the poisoner John Sedden, on 18 April 1912, was one of the fastest on record, taking just 25 seconds. En route to the gallows, it seemed as if the condemned man was about to faint at the sight of the noose. A passing tourist bus also sounded its horn at that moment, further frightening him. Again, John Ellis was the executioner.
Ellis hanged Irish revolutionary Sir Roger Casement, for treason, on 3 August 1916. Casement, who was Irish by birth, but crucially held a British passport, had solicited help from Germany for the Easter uprising in Ireland, in 1916. However, the British intercepted a message he sent to his Irish colleagues and, after returning to Ireland on board a German submarine, he was arrested and taken to London and tried for conspiring with Britain’s enemies during a time of war. His trial lasted just three days, and shortly before his execution was stripped of his knighthood.
Six spies were hanged at Pentonville during World War II and 27 year-old Private John Schurch was executed, in 1946, for treachery, the last person to be hanged in Britain for an offence other than murder. A member of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists, prior to the war, Schurch was captured by the Germans in Tobruk and began working for both Italian and German intelligence. He would pose as a captured prisoner-of-war to gain the trust of fellow Allied prisoners. He was the only British soldier to be executed for treachery during World War II.
Among other well-known executions were those of Neville Heath, who killed two women, sadistically, in 1946; Timothy Evans and John Reginald Christie, who were hanged in 1950 and 1953 in a sensational case, and the last double-hanging in Britain, when 22-year-old Kenneth Gilbert and 24-year-old Ian Grant were executed for a murder during the course of a robbery they were carrying out.
John Reginald Christie
10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London, England
10 Rillington Place, as far as the British courts are concerned, was once home to more than one killer. Two tenants: Timothy Evans and John Reginald Christie were tried and found guilty of murder and both were eventually executed for their crimes. Evans eventually received a posthumous pardon for the murder of his young daughter, but did he kill his wife, or was Christie the real culprit? This run-down three-storey terrace house in Notting Hill held the answers.
10 Rillington Place was a small Victor
ian house, built in the 1860s, when the Notting Hill and North Kensington areas were undergoing development. Located where the elevated dual carriageway, the Westway runs today, number 10 was located in a row of three-storey terraced houses. The house was split into three flats, none of which had a bathroom. Instead, an outhouse in the garden was used by the occupants of all three flats, and a wash house was also located there for the use of tenants, but it was not always functioning.
John Reginald Christie moved into the ground floor flat at 10 Rillington Place in December 1938 with his wife, Ethel. They were pleased with the flat because, as it was on the ground floor, they would enjoy use of the garden.
Christie had been raised in Halifax, in Yorkshire, but had been unpopular with school friends. He suffered from chronic impotence throughout his life, and it is presumed that this was probably what caused him to commit the terrible crimes for which he was responsible. He was also a hypochondriac, using feigned illnesses to attract attention to himself as well as to avoid work. He had married Ethel in 1920, but the marriage failed and they separated. Ten years later, however, they got back together, moving to London to start afresh.
Christie, while separated from Ethel, had been convicted and imprisoned several times for petty criminal offences – stealing postal orders while employed as a postman, car theft and assaulting a prostitute. Strangely, at the outbreak of World War II, this raft of offences did not prevent him from becoming a policeman. Neither did his reconciliation with his wife prevent him from continuing to sleep with prostitutes, especially when Ethel was away visiting relatives.
