Morris Barney "Moe" Dalitz - Las Vegas Jew Gangster

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Morris Barney "Moe" Dalitz

(December 25, 1899 – August 31, 1989) was a Jewish American bootlegger, racketeer, casino owner and philanthropist who was one of the major figures who helped shape Las Vegas, Nevada in the 20th century. He was often referred to as Mr. Las Vegas for his tireless work to mold Las Vegas into a modern city.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in Michigan, Dalitz worked in his family's laundry business early on, but began his career in bootlegging when Prohibition began in 1919, and capitalized on his access to the laundry trucks in the family business. He ran a leading criminal organization of Jewish American gangsters called the Cleveland Syndicate known for their violence and criminal ways, with partners Louis "Lou Roddy" Rothkopf, Leo "Charles Polizzi" Berkowitz, Morris Kleinman and Sammy Tucker all of whom operated primarily between Cleveland, Ohio, Detroit and Ann Arbor, Michigan during the Prohibition era. Moe Dalitz formed strong ties within Cleveland's Eastside, Little Italy community. He later merged his group with top underworld leaders from the Murray Hill and Mayfield Road area, such as brothers Fred "Freddy King" and John "Johnny King" Angersola, Alfred "The Owl" Polizzi and brothers Anthony and Frank Milano of the "Mayfield Road Mob" to form the leading underworld organization in Cleveland. While converting his profits into legitimate businesses, he also owned several illegal casinos in Cleveland.

His investments in Las Vegas began in the late 1940s with the Desert Inn when the original builder of the resort, Wilbur Clark, ran out of money, and Dalitz took over the construction. When it opened in 1950, Clark remained the public face and frontman of the resort, while Dalitz quietly remained in the background as the real owner. He also ran the Stardust Resort & Casino for a time after the death of Tony Cornero. Dalitz owned the Desert Inn until 1967, when he sold it to the billionaire Howard Hughes. Since he had been under constant pressure from law enforcement for many years, selling the resort was seen as an opportunity to get the authorities off his back. Dalitz had ties to both Jimmy Hoffa and Lew Wasserman of MCA, both of whom were subject to extensive criminal and anti-trust investigations in the 1960's. Hoffa had testified to his longtime relationship with Dalitz through union representation of his dry cleaners. Wasserman had first worked at a Cleveland club owned by Dalitz and his associates.

Moe Dalitz was also a longtime friend of Meyer Lansky, one of the main architects of modern organized crime. To the FBI, Dalitz played a vital role inside Lansky's powerful organization which also included men like Louis Chesler, The Cellini brothers, Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo, Harry "Nig Rosen" Stromberg, John Pullman, Sam Cohen, Eddie Levinson and actor, George Raft. In 1982, Dalitz received the "Torch of Liberty" award from the Anti-Defamation League.

In the 1970s Dalitz filed a massive defamation suit against Penthouse magazine over an article written by Lowell Bergman about Rancho La Costa, a resort funded by the Teamsters.

The last casino that Dalitz owned was the Sundance Hotel Casino, later renamed the Fitzgerald.

Dalitz built the Las Vegas Country Club, Sunrise Hospital, and many other important Las Vegas institutions. He was a frequent donor to the Las Vegas Public Library system along with other community organizations in Las Vegas.

He counted among his frequent visitors in his later years such well known personalities as Barbara Walters, Harry Reid, Suzanne Somers, Wayne Newton, Buddy Hackett, and Frank Sinatra. Dalitz was proud of helping performers like Frank Sinatra get their first big breaks in show business.

Dalitz continued to be active in the Las Vegas community, but except for trips to visit friends in the Las Vegas area or occasional trips in his Rolls Royce to Mt Charleston, he stayed in his Regency Towers penthouse apartment. When he died in 1989 many organizations received substantial donations he left in his will.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_Dalitz

[Ognir]

Interesting post, spent some time researching this guy last week

[satya]

I posted a topic about this book about a year ago but it is relevant to this one.  I recommend everyone read this book, even you guys will be surprised at the scope, history, and influence in modern America of this Jewish mafia.  

http://www.amazon.com/Supermob-Korshak- ... 1596912111

[Wimpy]

Lansky was the 20th century Boss of Bosses, the "Real Godfather".  I suspect Judicial Sayanim which allowed Lansky to go about relatively unnoticed throughout his Jewish Criminal Career.

 
"As late as 1951, when his name surfaced during the investigation of bookmaking czar Grank Erickson, the New York Times, with one of the most reliable news libraries in the world, did not know exactly who Meyer Lansky was. The newspaper identified him as "Meyer (Socks) Lansky," evidently mistaking him for Joseph (Socks) Lanza, the waterfront racketeer. During the Kefauver investigation (1950-1951) into crime, Lansky was considered so unimportant that he was not even called as a witness to testify. The committee did not even mention him in its first two interim reports. Only in the final report did the investigators correct their oversight and announce: "Evidence of the Costello-Adonis-Lansky operations was found in New York City, Saratoga, Bergen County, N.J., New Orleans, Miami, Las Vegas, the west coast, and Havana, Cuba."

 Arnold Rothstein was his early mentor.




Meyer "The Brain" Lansky
(1902-1983)
National Crime Syndicate Founder

There was a godfather of the national crime syndicate, the parent organization of what became the American Mafia - and thus a real godfather of the American Mafia. He was called with total respect the "little man," and Lucky Luciano's advice to his followers was always "listen to him." He himself would brag with typical quiet elation: "We're bigger than U.S. Steel." And an agent of the FBI would say of him with grudging admiration: "He would have been chairman of the board of General Motors if he'd gone into legitimate business."

He was Maier Suchowljansky, better known as Meyer Lansky, a Jew from Grodno, Poland. While many mafiosi speak of "our thing" which excludes all but Italians, it is a matter of record that none of the top mafiosi ever excluded Meyer Lansky from anything. Only among the lower-rung levels of the Mafia was there any belief that Lansky, because he was not Italian, was just a money man to be respected and trusted, one who lacked real power to "vote" in the top councils.

Lansky truly had the first and last word in organized crime. When the Big Six dominated the syndicate in the 1940s and 1950s, Lansky voted and all the others followed. Greasy Tumb Guzik from Chicago thought Lansky the genius of the age. Tony Accardo marveled at the money Lansky brought in. Longy Zwillman, head of the New Jersey rackets, followed Lansky's lead at all times. Ditto Frank Costello, who was Lansky's partner in New Orleans, Las Vegas and elsewhere. And Joey Adonis was under strict orders from the deported Lucky Luciano to "listen to Meyer." The voting usually went six-zip Lansky.

Everybody listened to Meyer because it paid. If they listened well, he might, for instance, give them a slice of the pre-Castro Cuban action. Lansky cut in Chicago, Detroit, New Jersey, New York. Then the Trafficantes of Tampa tried to go in big on their own in Cuba, Lansky used his Batista connection to squash the move. Then he gave them a slice, smaller than what many other mafiosi got. That was Lansky's way. Jack Dragna, the Los Angeles Mafia boss, once tried to use muscle on Lansky to get a piece in Las Vegas. Lansky talked him in circles, got him up on tiptoes, and then not only didn't kiss him but gave him nothing. It was Lansky's way.

Despite a rash of publicity during the last decade of his life, Lansky remained the most shadowy of the organized crime leaders. Although Luciano technically held the title, Lansky was regarded as equal and perhaps superior to Luciano as the godfather of organize crime as it emerged in the 1930s. Together, they were the successors of the warring Prohibition gangs as well as of the old-line Mafia, headed by the so-called Mustache Petes (particularly, Joe the Boss Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano. And the Mafia as it exists today, owes as much to the Jewish Lansky as to the Sicilian Lansky for its shape and prosperity.

They were the perfect match: the well-read, even studious Lansky, who could survey all the angles of a given situation, and the less-than-erudite Luciano (he could make out the New York Daily News or Daily Mirror but he freely admitted the New York Times threw him), who made up for his limitations with a brilliant flair for organization and the brutal character to set any plan in motion.

Throughout the years Lansky built an image of being alien to violence, but it was a myth. In the 1920s he and Bugsy Siegel organized the Bug and Meyer gang, which some described as the most violent of the Prohibition mobs in the East. They worked alternately as liquor hijackers and protectors of booze shipments for bootleggers willing to meet their prices, which were so exorbitant that it amounted to extortion.

Bug and Meyer muscle was also available for "slammings" and rubouts for a fee and was the forerunner of Murder, Inc., the enforcement troop of the national syndicate. Many Bug and Meyer graduates, in fact, moved into Murder, Inc., in the 1930s; Lansky had as much to do with the forming of that outfit as anyone. He proposed the enforcers be put under the command of a triumvirate composed of Louis Lepke, Albert Anastasia and Bugsy Siegel. Other leaders of the emerging national crime syndicate objected to the kill-happy Siegel, feeling he would be too loyal to Lansky and would give Lansky too powerful a hold on the apparatus of the extermination crew should the confederation fall apart in a war of extermination. Lansky agreed to drop Siegel from the murder troop, but his influence was not dented.

Both Luciano and Lansky independently said that they had planned the formation of a new syndicate as early as 1920, when Luciano was in his early 20s and Lansky was only 18. They were greatly influenced in this by the older Arnold Rothstein, the great gambler, criminal "brain" and mentor who, acting on his own plan for a national syndicate, nurtured Lansky's and Luciano's development. Rothstein's murder in 1928 shortened what the pair may have considered too long an apprenticeship. Lansky and Luciano together survived the crime wars of the 1920s by cunning alliances, eliminating one foe after another, even though they lacked the manpower and firepower of other gangs. When they effected the assassinations first of Masseria and the Maranzano, they stood at the pinnacle of power in the underworld. Even Al Capone realized they were more powerful than he.

In remarks attributed to Luciano, he once explained, "I learned a long time before that Meyer Lansky understood the Italian brain almost better than I did. . . . I used to tell Lansky that he may've had a Jewish mother, but someplace he must've been wet-nursed by a Sicilian." Luciano often said Lansky "could look around corners," or anticipate what would happen next in underworld intrigues, and that "the barrel of his gun was curved," meaning he knew how to keep himself out of the line of fire. Through the years that was Lansky's way.

Lansky never begrudged Luciano his top role, realizing that the title brought the clear dangers of notoriety and, no matter how many payoffs were made, the hazard of being the target of the law. It was also necessary to sell Luciano as the top man in order to win the support of the Italian mobsters. Lansky had fewer difficulties selling Jewish mobsters like Zwillman or Moe Dalitz, or even the often unpredictable Dutch Schultz, on the value of syndication; they understood the profits involved. The Italian mafiosi were different, many cut adrift by the war of survival that had just been concluded. Lansky told Luciano: "A lot of these guys need something to believe in." He urged Luciano to keep some of the old-style Mafia trappings used by the Mustache Petes. Luciano had no patience for the nonsense of "made men" and blood oaths but agreed to let those who wanted such rituals have them. He did eliminate the position of "boss of bosses" - and immediately, as Lansky anticipated, gained that position de facto. At Lansky's suggestion the organization took the name of Unione Siciliano, a corruption in spelling of the old fraternal organization. Eventually Luciano just called it the "outfit" of the "combination." Luciano imbued in his men that all the traditions really meant little, that the important thing was money-making. (In time, though, Luciano saw the merits of the structure of the Italian wing; it gave him a power base and cemented that power. Even when imprisoned for a decade, his support never eroded and he could issue orders and have his revenues set aside for him.)



As late as 1951, when his name surfaced during the investigation of bookmaking czar Grank Erickson, the New York Times, with one of the most reliable news libraries in the world, did not know exactly who Meyer Lansky was. The newspaper identified him as "Meyer (Socks) Lansky," evidently mistaking him for Joseph (Socks) Lanza, the waterfront racketeer. During the Kefauver investigation (1950-1951) into crime, Lansky was considered so unimportant that he was not even called as a witness to testify. The committee did not even mention him in its first two interim reports. Only in the final report did the investigators correct their oversight and announce: "Evidence of the Costello-Adonis-Lansky operations was found in New York City, Saratoga, Bergen County, N.J., New Orleans, Miami, Las Vegas, the west coast, and Havana, Cuba."



Lansky was revealed as "the brains of the combination." The "little man" became acknowledged as the one who held together Luciano's crime empire while he was behind bars. Lansky was the money man trusted to hide or invest millions for the syndicate, and he saw to it that Luciano got his share of the profits even after he was deported to Italy. It was Lansky who opened up what was for a time the syndicate's greatest source of income, gambling in Havana. He alone handled negotiations with dictator Fulgencio Batista for a complete monopoly of gambling in Cuba. Lansky was said to have personally deposited $3 million in a Zurich, Switzerland, bank for Batista and arranged to pay the ruling military junta, namely Batista, 50 percent of the profits thereafter.

In the rise and fall of underworld fortunes, Lansky was immune to replacement because he was too valuable to lose. Thus, he could agree with Vito Genovese that Albert Anastasia should die and then later he could take part in a fantastic conspiracy that delivered Genovese himself to the feds. Despite this duplicity, Lansky faced no retribution.

Lansky's arrest record over the years was bush-league stuff and it was not until 1970 that the federal government made a concerted effort to get him on income tax charges. Lansky had skimmed untold millions out of Las Vegas casinos which the syndicate secretly owned. The government also sought to deport him as an undesirable alien. In 1970, Lansky fled to Israel where so many of his Jewish underworld associates had retired. Lansky claimed Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return, which accorded citizenship to anyone born of a Jewish mother. Lansky poured millions of dollars into the country to win public support, but he proved an embarrassment to the Israeli government. Law enforcement officials warned that Lansky was not retiring from organized crime but would use Israel as a base of operations. After a long battle in the courts and bitter debate by the public, Lansky was forced to leave Israel in 1972.

In 1973, after undergoing open-heart surgery, Lansky was put on trial in Miami on the income tax charges that had worked so well against many crime bigwigs since Al Capone. It was a disaster for the government; Lansky was acquitted. In December 1974, the federal government gave up its efforts to put the then 72-year-old organized crime legend behind bars.

Lansky maintained his position in the syndicate right to the very end. In the early 1970s his personal wealth was estimated at around $300 million and by 1980 it must have grown to at least $400 million. Some profilers have tried to explain Lansky's continuing to make money as an indication of his inner need for power and the ability to exercise it. They tend to overlook the more simple explanation: Lansky felt a man could never have too much. His drive was always more.

However, in 1991 a British writer, Robert Lacey, published Little Man in which he insisted Lansky died hard up. The theory gained few supporters. A New York Times reviewer found the book "banal" and dismissed Lacey's claim that criminal investigators never pinned anything substantial on Lansky. "But such evidence proves exactly the opposite point, argue those who insist Meyer Lansky was a criminal mastermind who left behind a cast secret fortune. No one ever laid a finger on Lansky precisely because he left no fingerprints anywhere. The more you argue there was no fortune, the more you prove there has to have been," continued the article.

Similarly, Lacey's theory would mean that Lansky, who had shown such men as Huey Long and Fulgencio Batista of Cuba the joys of foreign numbered accounts, neglected to set up anything for himself out of the millions he admittedly accumulated.

Lansky had created organized crime in its syndicate form, but he was never interested in creating any dynasty. His children and wife were kept totally away from mob business. And he looked for no successor. In that sense Lansky was the quintessential Jewish-American mobster. They either stayed until they died or else they sold out their positions in the rackets and went into retirement.

Meyer Lansky had outlived Lucky Luciano by 20 years but, in the end, Luciano's handiwork in the national crime syndicate - the American Mafia - was the portion that survived, simply because it was a structure, an apparatus that needed running, that automatically filled all vacancies because it remained a money-making machine. Yet Lansky in large measure created the American Mafia and was its real godfather.

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

We have a lot of great posts on Jewish Gangsters over the ages by Ognir, MikeWB, Nierika, Nobody, RockClimber, Memory Hole, and others.

Lansky as a Kingpin brings out the classic Jewish Heists and Scams across history. He is worthy of study.
First time I read about details between Luciano and Lanksy, Thanks for Posting Wimpy!    

Here's a list of older posts on Lanksy:  


viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5468&p=21279&hilit=Lansky#p21279

viewtopic.php?f=23&t=5125&p=19874&hilit=Lansky#p19874

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=4887&p=18893&hilit=Lansky#p18893

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3059&p=12875&hilit=Lansky#p12875

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1574&p=7699&hilit=lansky#p7699

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1743&p=8919&hilit=lansky#p8919

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2345&p=10659&hilit=lansky#p10659

[Wimpy]

Nice one CrackSmokeRepublican,  thanks for pointing out the previous references to Lansky.

In the future I think I'll use the TIU search engine to avoid repetition.

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

I was thinking more that it is good to "resurrect" old threads now and then and combine them with new info.
We have so much info spread over so many threads that it is sometimes a challenge to see a bigger picture without bringing them together.

I always like DBS's, Ognir's, Rafeeq's  research in their shows for their focus on seeing how far the tenacles stretch out on this Zionistic Monster. The Jewish Mafias are a noxious badass arm that is sometimes hard to see!

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Max -"Boo-Boo" - Hoff poses 1934.  

Max "Boo Boo" Hoff was so-called "King of the Bootleggers." A South Philly native, he was in the habit of buying machine guns and bulletproof vests. Hoff and Harry 'Nig Rosen' Stromberg were major Jewish mob bosses. Their underworld ties went straight to Meyer Lansky, one of the founders of the national crime syndicate. Hoff's gang battled Irish and Italian gangs for the bootleg trade, as well as numbers, loan sharking and gambling rackets. Hoff was charged with counterfeiting in 1934.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/year- ... =102540079

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Yasha, "The Wandering Jew"

a/k/a Jacob "Yasha" Katzenberg played a minor role in the history of organized crime, yet he helped bring down some major mobsters and then disappreared forever.

by Allan May

Jacob "Yasha" Katzenberg played a minor role in the history of organized crime. His short, but sweet appearance confirms that narcotic and drug dealing was going on during the 1920s and 1930s and involved both Italian and Jewish mob leaders.

Born in Russia, Katzenberg grew up on Manhattan's Lower East Side. In Rich Cohen's nostalgic, if not somewhat misguided, "Tough Jews," he provides us with the following description of Katzenberg:

"I do not know what he looked like, but I have tried to imagine him. I see his eyes as mirrors, reflecting not what he is looking at, but what he will see: mountains, rivers, wars. I imagine him tall and slender, wearing a hood, taking his time – something long prophesied, a nomad who has crossed wastes to get here. Or maybe he was completely unremarkable, just another curly-haired Jew boy in back of Hebrew class, saying the words but thinking only of the presents his bar mitzvah will bring. To me, Yasha Katzenberg was the ultimate example of the wandering Jew, going country to country, east to west, always on the other side of the glass, lost in the wilderness."

In the mid-1920s, Arnold Rothstein saw illegal drugs as an untapped field, one that could be developed and profited from. The drug traffic was unorganized and there was little competition on the level Rothstein chose to enter. In fact, the only competition at that time was provided by unethical doctors. Rothstein's plan was to purchase and sell in quantities so large that no one could compete with him. He could regulate supply and demand on an international basis. In 1923, a kilo of heroin, 2.2 pounds, could be purchased for $2,000. It could then be cut and resold for $300,000.

Rothstein's interest in narcotics was strictly for wholesaling. He would need a network to sell the drugs and the rum running and bootlegging market already in existence would serve as his pipeline. Lucky Luciano and Waxey Gordon were in place in New York City and New Jersey. The Torrio – Capone Empire was interested in Chicago. Charles "King" Soloman was ready in Boston, as well as Harry "Nig Rosen" Stromberg in Philadelphia. In addition, mobsters in Detroit, Kansas City and St. Louis showed an interest.

Among the buyers Rothstein decided to do business with was Jacob Katzenberg, who was already serving the New York mob as a liquor buyer in Europe.

When Katzenberg teamed up with Rothstein in 1926, they began purchasing from European sources. Rothstein purchased "Vantines," a well-established importing house in New York City. The importing house had an excellent reputation and was known as a legitimate enterprise. When shipments arrived for them, customs officials gave their merchandise only a cursory search. Vantine's would become a perfect front for the smuggling operation. Rothstein also owned several art galleries and antique shops that would also serve as fronts.

Rothstein put all of his drug profits back into the business. When he was murdered in November 1928, he had untold millions invested. Upon his death Luciano and Louis "Lepke" Buchalter became the new overlords. Their first order of business was to make Katzenberg their principal buyer in Europe.

By 1931, the League of Nations had outlined a plan to reduce the world's drug production. Under the guidelines, countries could produce narcotics only in quantities large enough for domestic medical needs. As nations around the world ratified the agreement, the illegal drug supply line began to dry up. When Prohibition came to an end in 1933, Katzenberg was sent to Asia.

In the early 1930s, Katzenberg operated an opium plant on Seymour Avenue in Brooklyn. Buchalter and Meyer Lansky were rumored to be partners in the operation along with several other men. The plant processed raw opium into heroin. In December 1935, an explosion occurred which destroyed most of the manufacturing equipment in the plant. Enough evidence, however, was left to reveal to authorities what the plant's function was. However, Federal Narcotics Bureau agents were unable to put together enough evidence to indict the owners.

Buchalter, Katzenberg and Lansky met and agreed it would be too risky to establish another plant. Instead, Buchalter had a "fix in" with several United States Customs officials. So Katzenberg was sent packing again, this time to Hong Kong. Lansky supposedly bowed out of the operation at this time to focus his attention on gambling.

Katzenberg was soon making purchases in Hong Kong and Shanghai. After the heroin was purchased, it was brought to the United States by "mules" who were paid $1,000 plus expenses to bring the drugs into the country. Once the carriers were back with the drugs, bribed Customers employees would get the shipments through.

In the mid-1930s, clearance stamps were pasted on trunks and baggage to show that they had cleared inspection. Eight different colors were used, but agents would not know which color was in use until they arrived at work that day. For another $1,000 per shipment, Buchalter would be tipped as to the color of the day. The appropriate stamp would then be slapped on and the trunk containing the drugs would be carried through the gate by a porter to a waiting automobile. Officials estimated that between December 1935 and February 1937, six purchases made by Katzenberg generated a retail value of $10 million dollars. No wonder Sonny Corleone told his father, "lotta money in that white powder."

Harry J. Anslinger, who headed up the United States Narcotics Bureau, told this story about Katzenberg in his book "The Murderers":

"On his first trip to Shanghai he was to bring back two trunk loads of dope. Some of the crowd in Shanghai were afraid he might find out too much about their operations and blackmail them into lower prices. 'Shanghai streets are too dangerous,' they told him, 'you better stay right in the hotel room. We'll bring the trunks here.' This required a few days, and Katzenberg began to fume in his hotel prison. 'Hell, I'm on a kind of vacation. I want some action,' he told his 'protectors.' The boys said they would take care of that. They had access to a Russian princess. She was – they informed their impatient prisoner – 'the highest priced whore in Asia.' It would cost $1,000. But to give him a pleasant memory of the hotel and of their service they would provide the lady at no cost to him. They would pay the fee."

"When they brought her to the room, Katzenberg took one look at her and said, 'Hello there, baby.'"

"The Shanghai dealers looked startled. 'Oh, we didn't know you knew Her Highness,' one said."

"'Sure I know her,' Katzenberg told them. 'She was here last night. All night. For two lousy bucks.'"

In the late 1930s, the drug smuggling ring came to an end. As usual it would be informers within the gang that helped bring it down. Indictments were obtained against thirty gang members including Buchalter, who, at the time, was a fugitive from another indictment involving the garment industry.

When Katzenberg returned from China, he found out he was wanted and fled to Romania. Officials there refused to deport him back to America, but instead sent him to Greece. Friendly officials there held him until he could be brought back to the United States. By this time the League of Nations had declared Katzenberg an "international menace."

Katzenberg was convicted on narcotics charges, fined $10,000, and sent to prison for ten years. When Buchalter came out of hiding and was tried on the narcotics case, Katzenberg testified against him. Katzenberg would also testify at the tax evasion trial of Johnny Torrio.

Yasha's saga ends here. After serving his prison sentence, wherever the wandering Jew, Jacob Katzenberg, wandered to, he kept it to himself.

Copyright A. R. May 1999

http://www.crimemagazine.com/yasha-wand ... ew?page=47

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

This Jew  got killed off by the Irish mob in Boston...  

Biography

One of the earliest organized crime figures in New England's history, Solomon immigrated from the Russian Empire as a boy settling with his family in Boston's West End. The son of a local theater owner, Solomon and his three brothers came from a middle class background and, during his teenage years, worked as a counterman in his uncle's restaurant. However, by his early 20s, he had had become involved in prostitution, fencing and bail bonding prior to Prohibition.

By the early 1920s, he controlled the majority of illegal gambling and narcotics such as cocaine and morphine before expanding into bootlegging with Dan Carroll during Prohibition owning many of the cities most prominent speakeasies including the Coconut Grove nightclub. He enjoyed extensive contacts throughout the underworld including the Bronfmans in Canada as well as associates in New York and Chicago.

Although never indicted on bootlegging charges (due to his political connections), he was tried on narcotics charges in 1922. Represented by editor and general councilor of the Boston American Grenville MacFarlane, which had then been crusading against drug abuse, he was later acquitted of charges. He would however served thirteen months of a five year prison sentence at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary for intimidating a witness into perjury for his narcotics trial. During his imprisonment, a request for his transfer to a prison closer to Boston was made by Boston Congressmen George H. Tinkham and James A. Gallivan.

Attending the Atlantic City Conference in 1927, Solomon was one of the several leaders in the "Big Seven" who helped negotiate territorial disputes and establish policies which would influence the later National Crime Syndicate in 1932. Solomon continued to control illegal gambling in New England until his death on January 24, 1933 when he was killed in Boston's Cotton Club by rival gunmen (John Burke and James Coyne). His territories were eventually divided up among his lieutenants Joseph Linsey, Hyman Abrams and brothers Max and Louis Fox.

----------

Charles Solomon "King Solomon," "Boston Charlie"
Died Jan. 24, 1933.


Solomon was arguably the most important bootlegger in Prohibition Era Boston and allegedly worked alongside Joseph Patrick "Joe" Kennedy, father of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.(1)

Solomon, owner of several nightclubs including the Cocoanut Grove and operator of a rum-running fleet,(2) was among the original members of the cooperative Seven Group (or "Big Seven") on the East Coast and attended the organizational meeting of new wave gangsters in Atlantic City in May 1929. Johnny Torrio, retired leader of a Chicago gang, and Frank Costello, Charlie Luciano and Meyer Lansky of New York, are believed to have been key figures of the Seven Group, headquartered at New York's Hotel Belvedere.(3)

Solomon was indicted early in 1933 along with three other men, charged in New York federal court with operating a liquor-smuggling ring. Federal prosecutors believed his underworld associates feared he would cooperate with investigators and decided to have him killed. They urged him to remain in custody awaiting trial, but he returned to the Boston area after posting $5,000 bail.(4)

Solomon was assassinated in the Boston area Cotton Club (located in Roxbury) Jan. 24, 1933. He was attacked by four gunmen in the wash room and staggered out with three bullet wounds. He died a short time later. Questioned on his death bed by police, Solomon said only that his killer was "a dirty rat."(5)

Some believe the gunmen were employed by the Phil Buccola Mafia Family, which wanted to strengthen the family's grip on the Boston area underworld.(6) Others feel the assassination was orchestrated by local Irish mobsters.(7)

A Norfolk County MA court established after Solomon's death that his documented estate was valued at just $4,000.(

Solomon was repeatedly targeted by law enforcement but managed to escape most of the time. His longest prison stay was a 13-month term in Atlanta Federal Prison on a subornation of perjury charge arising from a narcotics possession case, in which he was found not guilty. He was charged in 1921 with $1 million mail robbery in Los Angeles but was later discharged.(9)

One of Solomon's alleged rum-running business partners was New Jersey's Alexander Lillien. Lillien was named in the same January 1933 indictment as Solomon. Lillien's base of operations was a former home of Oscar Hammerstein in the highlands area overlooking Sandy Hook. In that mansion, Lillien allegedly operated a radio station, by which he kept in touch with rum-running vessels at sea. The building was raided and broadcast equipment seized in 1929. Violations of radio laws were included in the 1933 indictment against Solomon, Lillien and two others. Lillien was shot to death on March 23, 1933 - just two months after Solomon's death.(10)

Notes:

   1. Though there is much anecdotal and circumstantial evidence, Joe Kennedy's bootlegging activities have never been proven. His family was known to be in the liquor business both before and after Prohibition. Bonanno, Joseph. A Man of Honor (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983) p. 174, 307-308.
   2. "Cabaret gunmen kill 'King' Solomon," New York Times, Jan. 25, 1933, p. 36.
   3. Wolf, George. Frank Costello: Prime Minister of the Underworld (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1974) p. 87. Messick, Hank. Lansky (New York: Berkley Medallion, 1971, p. 38. "Torrio's power in rum ring bared," New York Times, April 1, 1939, p. 8.
   4. "Cabaret gunmen," op. cit.
   5. Ibid, also Messick, op. cit., and "Four gangsters slay Charley Solomon, hub night club proprietor," Fitchburg MA Sentinel, Jan. 24, 1933, p. 1. But Nichols, Guild. "1900-today: Boston's Little Italy," An Historical Overview of the North End and other sources place the assassination outside the Cotton Club.
   6. O'Neill, Gerard and Dick Lehr. The Underboss (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989) p. 32.
   7. Lindbergh, Richard C. "The Mafia in America: Traditional Organized Crime in Transition," The Mob in America.
   8. "Rum King's estate $4,000," New York Times, Aug. 22, 1933, p. 20.
   9. "Four gangsters," op. cit.
  10. "Murder bares rum fleet war," Oakland CA Tribune, March 24, 1933, p. 2.

http://www.onewal.com/w-solomo.html

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

My Father and the Ghost of Bugsy Goldstein

© by Mike Bookman

"I fought this Italian kid for twenty minutes; it was very, very bloody. He wouldn't stop; I wouldn't stop. Bugsy was there cheering me on. Kept fighting 'til we couldn't lift our hands. Bugsy taught me how to fight."

Frank Bookman, 91, relating an incident that occurred in East New York, Brooklyn, 1918.

As I completed my recent first novel, God's Rat, my father - Frank Bookman - at 91, suffered his third stroke in less than a year. He died a short time later. The novel was written because of my father; it was written in spite of my father. It is his yartziett. A tribute, yes. But one drenched in ambivalence.

God's Rat is, among other things, an exploration of the Jewish criminal culture which was as much a defining aspect of life on the Lower East Side at the turn of the century as its vaunted Yiddish Theatre, Socialism, and thirst for Knowledge & Education.

1

In the garden of a nursing home, about a decade ago, my father's oldest sister, briefly surfaced from the senescence she would soon drown in, and spoke the last coherent words I heard from her: "I'll never understand why these hard eyed boys were always in our house," she whispered, her words hardly audible. "Your father came from such a good home; he was loved." I knew immediately whom she was talking about. But for confirmation I asked his kid brother.

"Bugsy," he said.

Moitle "Bugsy" Goldstein was my father's best friend. They lived in the same tenement on Cleveland Street, East New York, Brooklyn. Bugsy, like my father, was born in 1905. He died in 1941, electrocuted at Sing Sing for the contract murder of a small time Boro Park thug, Irving "Puggy" Feinstein. It is estimated by the DA who tried and convicted him, Burton B. Turkis, that Goldstein personally murdered at least ten men. Bugsy was a lieutenant of a notoriously efficient hit squad - the original Murder Incorporated - under the immediate command of Abe "Kid Twist" Relis who took his orders from Albert Anastasia and Louis "Lepke" Buchalter.

My father's life on the street was as exotic to me - a middle class Jew growing up in the fifties - as flying carpets in the tales of the Arabian Knights. And it was all Bugsy. I learned how brutal Bugsy was with his fists; how quick to fire a gun. How he saved my father's life; how, in their late teens they drifted apart and chose different lives. But Bugsy was never really gone. I know - I felt Bugsy Goldstein in the beatings my father inflicted on me - the beatings that defined our relationship. Hurling himself on top of me fists flailing; a man out of control - completely at one with his deepest rage; grunting, covered from head to toe with tufts of black hair he seemed - at 5' 10", and weighing almost 250 LB's - less a man than a huge predatory beast. Very dangerous. Capable of beating me to death.

But the real pain was that they - the beatings - were reserved for me. My father never raised his hand in anger to my kid brother. And was an almost perfect spouse - uxorious, hard working, a good provider; gentle.

Either I was a monster, or - when it came to me - Frank Bookman was posessed by one.

But Bugsy lived not only in my father's rage.

In his words: Me, Moitle, and five or six of the boys were cutting school, hiking in the swamps near the River - it's a garbage dump now. Suddenly I'm in quicksand - nothing to hold onto. I'm going down fast. I start screaming. The boys are trying to get me with their jackets; their belts. Nothing reaches.

I'm screaming for Moitle to do something. He's screaming back. We're screaming at each other - crying like two babies. The muck's up to my mouth. I can't move my arms. Moitle dives into the muck - goes under; I feel his hands under my arm pits. The boys grab hold of his legs; they pull us in. The next day we both come down with typhoid fever.

Bugsy Goldstein, lurked in my father's heart.

2

At twelve years old I became obsessed with Jewish gangsters and found books that brought pre-W.W.II Jewish thugdom to life. Mike Gold's classic Jews Without Money; Irving Schulman's The Amboy Dukes; Harry Stone's The Hoods; Irving Wallaces' A Stone for Danny Fisher.

This world became more real to me than my own.

Always a "difficult" kid my defiance - my anger - now had a context. I transformed myself - at least in style - into a "hood"; a "punk"; a "rock". I scrapped my mother's proper English for my father's street argot; my nondescript clothes, for hoodlum regalia - studded garrison belt to secure my "dungarees"; Eisenhower jacket; heavy black leather jackboots; pants with a 14" pegged cuff (black, pink stitching on the sides); a pack of Chesterfield's wrapped in the left short sleeve of my white "T" shirt. Saliva was my venom -I spit continuously.

It was a good act. Nice Jewish boys crossed the street when they saw me coming; teachers cowered when I strutted into their classroom - and for good reason; the anger was real. The local gangs found me something of a enigma - I remained adamantly unaffiliated: "Who your boys Bookman?" they wanted to know. My "boys" were in their forties; their fifties; their sixties. Many of them dead; or in jail; or (worse! ) reformed. My "boys" were specters haunting The Lower East Side and Brownsville/East New York, those lost citadels of a proud Jewish demimonde: their pool halls and candy stores and saloons and dance halls and horse parlors and tenement brothels gone and all but forgotten -even by the 50's. My "boys" had names like Edward "Monk Eastman" Osterman, Big Jack Zelig, Arnold Rothman, Lefty Louie Rosenberg, Gyp "The Blood" Horowitz, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Benny "Bugsy" Siegel, Arthur "Dutch Schultz" Fleigenheimer, Maier "Meyer Lansky" Luchowljansky, Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, Moitle "Bugsy" Goldstein. And yes, Frankie"Curley" Bookman.

From the age of 12 until my late teens I demolished time, space, and logic to be close to my father. It was always 1920 and Frankie Bookman was there - in the shadows - and one day I would turn a corner and see him, and I'd say "Hiya Frankie" and he'd say "Hiya, Mike" and slap me on the back and I'd smile and think: "He likes me, Bugsy's best friend thinks I'm OK."

Recently, I transferred a childhood obsession into sixty five thousand words of narrative. My novel, God's Rat, is my story; it is my father's story. And my Jewish brothers and sisters, it is our story. A story I could not have told if not for Bugsy Goldstein.

Frank Bookman's hero .

My muse.

http://www.jewishmag.com/13mag/bugsy/bugsy.htm

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Looks like the Jew Gangsters "Sedgwick" and Bugsy Seigel are likely connected with the Black Dahlia gruesome murder.  Another goyim killed by Jews -- CSR

The Black Dahlia Files: The Mob, the Mogul, and the Murder That Transfixed Los Angeles
 By Don Wolf
http://books.google.com/books?id=F6PpPr ... &lpg=PA189
----

FLAMINGO HAIR PINS





When I'm looking through my collection trying to decide on a subject for a post, I rely on free association.  According to Wikipedia free association is defined as:

 "The method of free association has no linear or preplanned agenda, but works by intuitive leaps and linkages which may lead to new personal insights and meanings. "

When I picked up the Flamingo hair pin card a few days ago and flipped it over, I saw that it was dated 1947.  The first leap in my free association was to the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, which I'd thought had opened in 1947 (actually it opened in December 1946).  The next few associations I made were easy and seemed to me to be a natural progression: Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel who was responsible for building the Flamingo Hotel (and was murdered in June 1947), Virginia Hill (Siegel's mistress, nicknamed "Flamingo"), and last I thought of Elizabeth Short (aka the "Black Dahlia") who was found murdered in Leimert Park in January 1947.

Someone else may have thought of the lovely pink birds, but that's just not how my mind works!

Virginia Hill was a stunner. Red haired, vivacious and headstrong, she was bound to get attention from men.  She was born in Alabama in 1916, and as a teenager she went to Chicago; however,  it's not clear if she went there to ply her trade as a prostitute at the 1933 World's Fair, or work there as a dancer.  In any case it was only a matter of time before she'd come to the attention of rich and powerful men looking for a little arm candy.  In Chicago in 1933 the rich and powerful men were primarily mobsters, or politicians.  She met Joseph Epstein, an associate of Jake "Greasy Thumb" Guzik (member of the Capone gang), and then she moved up through the mob hierarchy subsequently becoming mistress to Frank Costello, Frank Nitti, Charles Fischetti, and Joe Adonis.


Virginia testifying at Kefauver hearings.

"She was smart and she knew how to keep her mouth shut," said Bea Sedway, the wife of mobster Moe Sedway.  Eventually Virginia's smarts, and her tight lips, led her to become a courier for the mob. She'd deliver funds all over the country, and even make occasional trips to Switzerland with bags of cash for deposit in numbered bank accounts.

By 1940 Virginia had moved to Los Angeles where she met and fell for married wise guy Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel.  He would give her the nickname, "Flamingo". The relationship between the mobster and his mistress was volatile and their fights were legendary.  But they did make a handsome couple – the gorgeous red head and the mobster with the movie star looks.


Ben Siegel

Ben had met his match in Virginia.  She couldn't stop his womanizing, but she knew how to hold his attention in a way that his other lovers did not.  In a situation that could have come out of a Noel Coward comedy, Siegel once had three of his mistresses lodged simultaneously at the Flamingo Hotel: Virginia Hill, Wendy Barrie, and Countess DiFrasso.  Virginia couldn't abide the Countess and when she discovered that the woman was staying at the hotel she confronted her, and nearly broke her jaw. Virginia was definitely a tough broad. But then living and consorting with mobsters wouldn't have appealed to a dame with a weaker constitution.

When Siegel became involved in building the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas it soon became clear that he wasn't much of a businessman.  Cost overruns were adding up at a reckless pace. The local contractors were robbing Ben, literally!  They'd heist materials from the job site, and then re-sell them to Siegel at an enormous profit.  While the contractors were stealing from Ben, Ben was stealing from the mob.

The Flamingo opened in December 1946.  The weather was horrendous, and the hotel wasn't even finished, so crowds of celebrities weren't beating down the doors to get in. The big opening night was a total bust. Nursing a wounded ego, and fearing that the mob's multi-million dollar investment in the hotel wouldn't show a profit, Ben  scurried off to Beverly Hills where he holed up in the house that Virginia rented there on 810 N. Linden Drive.

On the night of June 20, 1947 Ben would pay the price for his mismanagement of the Flamingo Hotel deal with his life.   As  Siegel sat with his associate Allen Smiley in Virginia's Beverly Hills home reading the  Los Angeles Times, an unknown assailant fired at him through the window with a .30-caliber military M1 carbine. He was hit several times – twice in the head. No one was charged with the murder, and the crime remains officially unsolved.

Virginia was in Paris when she received the news of Ben's death. It's said that she fainted dead away.  There would always be speculation about Virginia's possible role in Ben's assassination.  But it's highly unlikely that Virginia would have been tipped off about the plan to rub out Siegel, and even more doubtful that she'd have left one of her brothers in his company with the knowledge that a stray bullet could make him collateral damage.  

The truth is that she and Ben had had an argument, and she stormed out in a huff and left for Paris.  Any knowledge that Virginia may have had about the killing went with her to her grave. She'd been a mob gal for way too long not to understand that her best chance for survival was to keep quiet.  In fact right after Ben's murder she was denying everything, including being his lover: "If anyone or anything was his mistress, it was that Las Vegas hotel. I never knew Ben was involved in all that gang stuff. I can't imagine who shot him or why," she reportedly told the police.

In 1950, Virginia would take center stage at the Kefauver hearings.  Senator Estes Kefauver headed a senate committee that was investigating organized crime.  The hearings were even televised; introducing Mr. and Mrs. America for the first time to the Mafia.  The televised hearings were compelling, but it was Virginia's comments in the private sessions that would raise eyebrows.

She'd spent most of her time during the public hearings denying knowledge of, or involvement in, the rackets. But privately she was much more candid. She admitted to never having worked, and told the commission that she was able to survive on the generous gifts that were given to her by some of her admirers.  Time magazine reported in its obituary of Hill on 1 April 1966, that Hill spent her time on the witness stand "boggling Senators with her full-grown curves and succinct explanation of just why men would lavish money on a hospitable girl from Bessemer, Alabama".  

What WAS her explanation for the gifts and money she received from mob big shots?  According to Virginia it was her unparalleled skill at giving oral sex!  Although I suspect Virginia would have phrased her explanation a little differently.

Virginia would eventually settle in Europe with her third husband, a former Sun Valley ski instructor, Hans Hauser. She was trying to avoid the IRS, and probably some of her former mob acquaintances.

By 1966 Virginia was broke, and it may have begun to occur to her to tell her story in a book or film.  In 1962 retired mob boss Charles "Lucky" Luciano had reportedly considered a film deal and was supposed to meet with a producer at the airport in Naples, Italy; however, his famous luck ran out before the deal could be made. He died of a heart attack at the airport on January 26, 1962.

Maybe a visit she'd had from her former lover, Joe Adonis, days before her death was a meant to be a reminder that people don't tell tales about the Mafia and live. Maybe their meeting was just the two ex-lovers chatting about old times.  We'll never know.  

In March 1966, Virginia Hill's body was found in a snow drift in Koppl, Austria.  She'd allegedly taken an overdose of sleeping pills.

Oh, and before I forget – the last leap in my free association exercise led me to Elizabeth Short (aka the "Black Dahlia").  Her bisected body was discovered in a vacant lot in Leimert Park on January 15, 1947.  Beth Short's murder is arguably the most famous in Los Angeles' history, and remains unsolved.

The reason I thought of Beth is simple, the 63rdanniversary of her murder is fast approaching; and as a tour guide for Esotouric, I'll be a part of the "Real Black Dahlia" tour this coming Saturday, January 9th.  I'll be reading from some of the letters that Beth carried in her suitcase, as well as giving a thumbnail personality sketch of her that I've developed based upon her choice of make-up.   For tour information visit Esotouric.com.

 

References:

    * 1. Time Magazine
    * 2. Los Angeles Times
    * 3. Wikipedia
    * 4. Tru TV Crime Library

http://vintagepowderroom.com/?tag=moe-sedway

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Death
Bugsy Siegel's Crypt

Bugsy's memorial plaque in the Bialystoker Synagogue[8]

(all in typical "American" Yiddish... --CSR)



Bugsy Siegel's memorial in the Flamingo Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, near the wedding chapel

On the night of June 20, 1947, as Siegel sat with his associate Allen Smiley in Virginia Hill's Beverly Hills home reading the Los Angeles Times, an unknown assailant fired at him through the window with a .30-caliber military M1 carbine, hitting him many times, including twice in the head. No one was charged with the murder, and the crime remains officially unsolved.[2]

Though descriptions held that Siegel was shot in the eye, he was actually struck twice on the right side of his head. Both death scene and postmortem photographs clearly show that one shot penetrated his right cheek and exited through the left side of his neck; the other struck the right bridge of his nose where it met the right eye socket. This second shot passed behind Siegel's left eye before exiting directly behind his left zygomatic bone where it meets the left temporal bone. Overpressure created by that bullet's striking and passing through Siegel's skull blew his left eye out of its socket. Both the Los Angeles' Coroner's Report (#37448) and his death certificate (Registrar's #816192) state the cause of death was cerebral hemorrhage.[9]

Though as noted, Siegel was actually not shot exactly through the eye (the eyeball would have been destroyed if this had been the case), the bullet-through-the-eye style of killing nevertheless became popular in Mafia lore and in movies, and was called the "Moe Greene special"[10] after the character Moe Greene - based on Siegel - who was killed in this manner in The Godfather.

Siegel was hit by several other bullets including shots through his lungs.[11] According to Florabel Muir, "Four of the nine shots fired that night destroyed a white marble statue of Bacchus on a grand piano, and then lodged in the far wall".

 Memorial

In the Bialystoker Synagogue on Manhattan's Lower East Side, Siegel is memorialized by a Yahrtzeit (remembrance) plaque that marks his death date so mourners can say Kaddish for the anniversary. Siegel's plaque is below that of his father, Max Siegel, who died two months prior to his son's murder.

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Harry "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss

Harry "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss (July 28, 1909 – June 12, 1941) was a prolific contract killer for Murder, Inc. in the 1930s. He killed over thirty men using a variety of methods; shooting, stabbing with ice picks, drowning, live burial and strangling rope. Strauss never carried a weapon unless he was about to make a hit.

Most of his associates called him "Pep". In the 1930s, he was committing assaults, larcenies, and drug dealing. He was arrested 18 times but was never convicted until he was found guilty of the homicide that sent him and fellow Murder Inc. hitman Martin "Buggsy" Goldstein to the electric chair. After hitman Abe "Kid Twist" Reles turned informant, Strauss was arrested for the murder of Irving Feinstein, and at least five other known murders. Strauss tried to avoid conviction by feigning insanity in the courtroom and on death row. He was executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing on June 12, 1941.

Harry " Pittsburgh Phil", "Pep" Strauss

Harry Strauss, more popularly known as Pittsburgh Phil, was a member of a crime syndicate known as Murder Incorporated. Phil was one of the most requested hit man within the organization, and their heaviest hitter. Some estimates to the number of contracts that Harry Strauss carried out surpass five-hundred, a more realistic total is approximately one-hundred. He was one of the members that wound up in the electric chair due in part to the testimony of Abe "Kid Twist" Reles. He died without a cent in hand, his earnings are said to have gone to legal fees and to ensure Reles's fate. This syndicate played a vital role in the workings of organized crime during the 1930's.

Pep was a dapper dresser who cared for his family. His suits usually ranged around $60, a large amount during the depression. He was often admired for his good looks and flashy attire. Ironically, a resentment always existed between Strauss and Reles. An event occurred during the early thirty's in a, deli. The counter person was preparing a sandwich for Reles upon request, and handed it to him. He promptly was unsatisfied with the amount of meat and threw the sandwich in his face. An argument and fight ensued between Strauss and Reles. Later that evening the deli was burned to the ground. Strauss's appearance led to an undeniable influence over women in Brownsville and afar. Love interest's even stemmed to Hollywood, as he enjoyed a brief interlude with the infamous Gene Harlow. He ultimately dated up with the Kiss of Death Girl.

On a professional level, Pittsburgh Phil was an efficient killer, which explained why he was always requested to carry out contracts. He lived in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn and always led a life tangent to written law. His nickname is misleading and unaccounted for, being he never was documented to have visited Pittsburgh. Killing didn't bother him, and any occurrence that interfered with the fluidity of his profession sparked outrage. The contracted killing of Puggy Feinstein for example. It took place in a Brooklyn home, where he was to meet his demise at the hands on Phil and an ice pick. As the struggle ensued Puggy bit Strauss's finger. Irate over the turn of events, Strauss and a few of his coworkers decided to make Feinsteins demise more painful and lengthened. They did so by a process which incorporates a rope being looped around the victims head and feet. As the person struggles the rope gets tighter and they strangle themselves to death. Still aggravated over the wound on his finger Phil and his associates took the body to a vacant lot and set it on fire. "The boys then adjourned to Sheepshead Bay for a seafood dinner. Phil, however, was not happy...Phil was so upset at dinner that he failed to finish his lobster." It is said that Strauss never carried a weapon, so as to protect against police intervention or to arise any suspicion. One contract, the only one he was ever known to have failed, sent him to Florida. Phil decided he would follow his victim until the opportune moment arose. Upon entering a movie theater he planned to use the fire ax hanging from the wall to kill his target and then he would run out with the crowd. Unfortunately the target kept changing seats and Phil quit out of disgust. The "savagery" of other contracts were confirmed by the discovery and inspection of surfaced bodies. Rudnick's body was found to have in excess of 63 stab wounds, and a gaping wound leading to the bone, another victim was tied to a pinball machine. Due to gases in the intestines the body floated to the surface despite the weight and stab wounds. Later on Phil was quoted as saying "With this bum, you gotta be a doctor or he floats."

Eventually Harry Strauss's decade long career would come to an end at the hands of the district attorney Burton Turkus, and the stool pigeon Abe "Kid Twist" Reles. Phil as well as , Louis Lempke, Mendy Weiss, and Louis Capone faced trial and the death penalty. Their was no chance of beating the wrap given the overwhelming evidence. So Strauss conceited to plead insanity and played out the role with some courtroom antics. Much of his trial was spent chewing on his lawyers briefcase handle. He often spoke that he needing milk to help his ulcer. Despite these efforts he as well as the others were convicted and sentenced to die by way of electrocution. Strauss and his cohorts refused to allow "the rat" to get away scot free. Mysteriously, under heavy police protection, Abe Reles leapt from the sixth floor of the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island. It was ruled that Reles committed suicide, but the body was found 20 feet away from the building. If this theory held true, than Abe Reles must have been an unidentified athlete in the field of long jumping.


http://toughjews.blogspot.com/2006/05/h ... ss_05.html

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Jean Elizabeth Spangler
 (September 2, 1923 – disappeared October 7, 1949) was an American dancer, model and bit-part actress in Hollywood films and in early television.

Disappearance

On October 7, 1949, Spangler left her home in Los Angeles around five p.m., leaving her daughter with her sister-in-law and telling her that she was going to meet her former husband to talk about his child support payment that had been due a week before, then on to work on a movie set. The last person to see her was a clerk in a store near her home, who said she appeared to be waiting for someone. She has not been seen again. Spangler's mother was visiting family in Kentucky at the time. Spangler's sister-in-law, Sophie, went to the police and filed a missing person report the next day.

Police investigation

Spangler had told her sister-in-law that she was going to work on movie set after she met with her former husband. She had worked as an extra and bit-part actress in movies for several different Hollywood studios. Police checked, but none of the studios had any work in progress or were even open the evening of October 7.

Spangler had been through a long custody battle with her former husband and won custody of the child Christine in 1948. Dexter Benner, her former husband, had been awarded custody in 1946 at the time of the divorce. Police questioned Benner about her statement to her sister-in-law that she was going to meet him about the overdue child support payment. He said that he had not seen his former wife for several weeks before Spangler disappeared. His wife Lynn Lasky Benner stated that he was with her at the time of the disappearance. Benner and Lasky had been married only one month before Spangler's disappearance.

Two days later on October 9, Spangler's purse was found near the entrance gate to Griffith Park in Los Angeles with both of the straps on one side torn loose as if it had been ripped from her arm. Sixty police officers and over one hundred volunteers searched the 4,107-acre (16.62 km2) natural terrain park, but no other clues were found. There was no money in the purse (her sister-in-law said that she had no money when she left her house the evening of her disappearance) so the police ruled out robbery as a motive. There was an unfinished note in the purse addressed to a "Kirk," which read, "Can't wait any longer, Going to see Dr. Scott. It will work best this way while mother is away,...". The note ended with a comma as if it hadn't been finished.

Neither "Kirk" nor "Dr. Scott" could be located, and neither Spangler's family nor her friends knew anyone by those names. Spangler's mother, Florence, returned to Los Angeles and told police that someone named Kirk had picked up Jean at her house twice, but he stayed in his car and didn't come in. Police searched for Kirk and questioned every doctor with the last name Scott in Los Angeles, but none of them had a patient with the last name Spangler or Benner, Jean Spangler's former married name. Spangler had once been involved with a person she called Scotty, who had beaten her, threatening to kill her if she broke the relationship off, but her lawyer said she had not seen him since 1945.

Spangler had completed a bit part in the then unfinished film Young Man with a Horn starring the actor Kirk Douglas. Douglas was vacationing in Palm Springs and heard about the disappearance. He called the police and told them he was not the Kirk mentioned in the note before police knew there was any connection. Douglas was interviewed by the head of the investigating team and stated that he had heard the name and that Spangler had been an extra in his new film, but he didn't know her personally.

Friends of Spangler told police that she was three months pregnant when she disappeared and that she had talked about having an abortion, which was illegal at that time. The police talked with several people who frequented the same nightclubs and bars that Spangler did, who told them they had heard that there was a former medical student known as "Doc," who had said that he would perform abortions for money. Police searched for "Doc" with the idea that Spangler had gone to him to have an abortion and died as a result, but they not could locate him or anyone who would say that they had actually met him.

Spangler had been seen with Davy Ogul, an associate of Mickey Cohen in Palm Springs, California, who disappeared two days after she did. This led police to investigate the possibility that Spangler and Ogul, who was under an indictment for conspiracy, had left to avoid prosecution. In 1950 a customs agent in El Paso, Texas had reported seeing Ogul and a woman who looked like Spangler in a hotel in El Paso. A hotel clerk in that city identified a picture of Spangler as having stayed in the hotel around that same time. Neither Davy Ogul nor Jean Spangler's name appeared on the hotel register and she could not be located in El Paso.

The Los Angeles Police department continued the search and circulated Spangler's picture for several years in an unsuccessful attempt to find her and any reliable information. There was a nationwide search for Spangler, but no further clues have ever turned up. People reported seeing her in Northern and Southern California, Phoenix, Arizona and Mexico City over the next two years, but none of those sightings could be validated. She is still listed as a missing person and the Los Angeles Police have not closed the case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Spangler

[CrackSmokeRepublican]

Meyer Harris "Mickey" Cohen

Early life

Mickey Cohen was born on September 4, 1913, of a Jewish family. His mother Fanny had immigrated to the U.S. from Kiev, Ukraine. At age six, Cohen was selling newspapers on the street; his brothers Sam or Isiack would drop him off at his regular corner. Soon Cohen and his brothers became involved in crime (Cohen's brother Paul, an Orthodox Jew, was an exception). In 1923, at age nine, Cohen was delivering alcohol to customers from a gin mill operated by his older brother in the drug store. Cohen was arrested that same year for this activity, but avoided prosecution due to his brother's connections.

As a teenager, Cohen began boxing in illegal prizefights in Los Angeles. He eventually moved to the East Coast to train as a professional boxer, doing fights in the Midwest along the way. His first professional boxing match was on April 8, 1930 against Patsy Farr in Cleveland, Ohio. This was one of the preliminary fights on the card for the Paul Pirrone/Jimmy Goodrich feature event. On April 11, 1933 he fought against Chalky Wright in Los Angeles, California. Wright won the match and Meyer was incorrectly identified as "Mickey Cohen from Denver, Colorado" in the Los Angeles Times sports page report. His last fight was on on May 14, 1933 against Baby Arizmendi in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico. On June 12, 1931 Cohen fought and lost a match against World Featherweight Champion Tommy Paul, having been knocked out cold after 2:20 into the first round. It was during this round he earned the moniker "Gangster Mickey Cohen". Cohen lived first in Cleveland, where he met Lou Rothkopf, an associate of Moe Dalitz. Cohen moved later to New York, where he became associates with Tommy Dioguardi, the brother of labor racketeer Johnny Dio, and with Owney Madden. Finally, Cohen went to Chicago, where he ran a gambling operation for the Chicago Outfit, Al Capone's powerful criminal organization.

Prohibition and the Chicago Outfit

During Prohibition, Cohen moved to Chicago and became involved in organized crime working as an enforcer for the Chicago Outfit, where he briefly met Al Capone. During this period Cohen was arrested for his role in the deaths of several gangsters in a card game that went wrong.

After a brief time in prison, Cohen was released and began running card games and other illegal gambling operations. He later became an associate of Mattie Capone, Al's younger brother. While working for Jake Guzik, Cohen was forced to flee Chicago after an argument with a rival gambler.

In Cleveland, Cohen again worked for Lou (Louis) Rothkopf, an associate of Meyer Lansky and Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. However, there was little work available for Cohen in Cleveland, so Rothkopf arranged for him to work with Siegel in California.

From syndicate bodyguard to Sunset kingpin

Mickey Cohen was sent to Los Angeles by Meyer Lansky and Lou Rothkopf to watch Bugsy Siegel. During their association, Mickey helped set up the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas and ran its sports book operation. He also was instrumental in setting up the race wire, which was essential to Las Vegas betting, a Nevada attraction perhaps only second to the Hoover Dam. In 1947, the crime families ordered the murder of Siegel due to his mismanagement of the Flamingo Hotel, most likely because Siegel or his girlfriend Virginia Hill was skimming money. According to one account which does not appear in newspapers, Cohen reacted violently to Siegel's murder. Entering the Hotel Roosevelt, where he believed the killers were staying, Cohen fired rounds from his two .45 caliber semi-automatic handguns into the lobby ceiling and demanded that the assassins meet him outside in ten minutes. However, no one appeared and Cohen was forced to flee when the cops arrived.

Cohen's violent methods came to the attention of state and federal authorities investigating the Dragna operations. During this time, Cohen faced many attempts on his life, including the bombing of his home on posh Moreno Avenue in Brentwood. Cohen soon converted his house into a fortress, installing floodlights, alarm systems, and a well-equipped arsenal kept, as he often joked, next to his 200 tailor-made suits. Cohen also briefly hired bodyguard Johnny Stompanato before his killing by actress Lana Turner's daughter. Cohen bought a cheap coffin for Stompanato's funeral and then sold Lana Turner's love letters to Stompanato to the press.

Stompanato ran a sexual extortion ring as well as a jewelry store. He was one of the most popular playboys in Hollywood. Singer Frank Sinatra once visited Cohen at his home and begged him to tell Stompanato to stop dating Sinatra's friend and ex-wife, actress Ava Gardner.

Later years

In 1950, Mickey Cohen was investigated along with numerous other underworld figures by a US Senate committee known as the Kefauver Commission. As a result of this investigation, Cohen was convicted of tax evasion and sentenced to prison for four years.

When he was released, he started again, and became an international celebrity. He sold more newspapers than anyone else in the country, according to author Brad Lewis. His appearance on television with Mike Wallace in the late 1950s rocked the media establishment. He ran floral shops, paint stores, nightclubs, casinos, gas stations, a men's haberdashery, and even an ice cream parlor on San Vicente Blvd. in Brentwood, according to author Richard Lamparski.

In 1957 Time Magazine wrote a brief about Mickey Cohen meeting with Billy Graham. Cohen said, "I am very high on the Christian way of life. Billy came up, and before we had food he said—What do you call it. that thing they say before food? Grace? Yeah, grace. Then we talked a lot about Christianity and stuff." Allegedly when Mickey did not change his lifestyle, he was confronted by some Christian acquaintances. His response: "Christian football players, Christian cowboys, Christian politicians; why not a Christian gangster?"

In 1961, Cohen was again convicted of tax evasion and sent to Alcatraz. His heavily armoured Cadillac from this period was confiscated by Los Angeles Police Department and is now on display at the Southward Car Museum in New Zealand.[1] During his time on "the Rock," another inmate attempted to kill Cohen with a lead pipe. In 1972, Cohen was released from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, where he had spoken out against prison abuse. He had been misdiagnosed with an ulcer, which turned out to be stomach cancer. After undergoing surgery, he continued touring the U.S., including television appearances, once with Ramsey Clark.

Cohen's girlfriend Liz Renay herself spent three years behind bars for refusing to squeal on him. One of his many other girlfriends, Candy Barr, served prison time for marijuana possession. Two of his other favorites were Tempest Storm and Beverly Hills, the former having her breasts insured with Lloyd's of London.

Mickey Cohen died in his sleep in 1976 and is interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California.

Cohen has cousins who reside today in New Jersey, New York, Florida, Washington and Vermont.