The Purple Gang, also known as the Sugar House Gang, was a criminal mob of bootleggers and hijackers composed predominantly of Jewish gangsters. They operated in Detroit, Michigan, during the 1920s of the Prohibition era and came to be Detroit's dominant criminal gang. Excessive violence and infighting caused the gang to destroy itself in the 1930s.
The Michigan legislature prohibited the sale of liquor in 1917, three years before national Prohibition was established by a constitutional amendment.[1][2] Along with temperance supporters, industrialist Henry Ford owned the River Rouge plant and desired a sober workforce, so he backed the Damon Act,[2] a state law that, along with the Wiley Act, prohibited virtually all possession, manufacture, or sale of alcohol starting in 1918.[3] Detroit is close to Ohio, so bootleggers and others would import liquor from Toledo where it was still legal.[2] They also smuggled liquor in from Canada.
Judges took a lenient view of offenders. The Damon Act was declared unconstitutional in 1919 by the state supreme court.[4]
In 1920 the Eighteenth Amendment was adopted and prohibition took effect throughout the United States.[2] Canada, particularly the port city of Windsor, Ontario directly across the Detroit River from Detroit, became a major point for smuggling alcohol products into the US. The Canadian government had also banned the use of alcoholic beverages but still approved and licensed distilleries and breweries to manufacture and export alcohol.[1][2]
Origin
Detroit's immigrant neighborhoods suffered from widespread poverty, as did many in major cities at the beginning of the 20th century. To survive, some residents turned to crime, which they enforced with violence.[5] The Hastings Street neighborhood in Detroit's lower east side was known as "Paradise Valley". Most of the Purple Gang's core members went to Bishop School, where many had been placed in the division for "problem" children.[6] The gang members were mostly American-born children of Jewish immigrants, primarily from Russia and Poland, who had come to the United States in the great immigration wave from 1881 to 1914.[7] The gang was led by brothers Abe, Joe, Raymond, and Izzy Bernstein,[8] who had moved to Detroit from New York City.[9]
While in Detroit casino operator Lincoln Fitzgerald was a gambler and he became associated with the Detroit Purple Gang.[10] In 1976 Fitzgerald opened a 16 story casino which he named Fitzgeralds Casino & Hotel.[11] At the time of his death he was operating three casinos: Fitzgeralds Casino & Hotel (Reno), the Nevada Club (Reno), and the Nevada Lodge of Lake Tahoe.[12]
Rise
The Purple Gang started off as petty thieves and extortionists,[5][6] but they quickly progressed to armed robbery and truck hijacking under the tutelage of older neighborhood gangsters (Charles Leiter and Henry Shorr).[6][8][13] They gained notoriety for their operations and savagery,[5] and they imported gangsters from other cities to work as "muscle" for the gang.[6]
There are various theories as to the origin of the name "Purple Gang". One version says that a member of the gang was a boxer who wore purple shorts during his bouts.[6] Another was that the name came from a conversation between two shop keepers:
These boys are not like other children of their age, they're tainted, off color. "Yes," replied the other shopkeeper. "They're rotten, purple like the color of bad meat, they're a Purple Gang."[1][5]
It was known that in 1929, there were 25,000 illegal saloons in the Detroit city, so there was a large business for bootleggers, including the Purple Gang.[14] The gang became hijackers and gained a reputation for stealing the alcohol cargos of older and more established criminal gangs.[5] The Purple Gang also employed gangs for raw labor and transport; for example, the Purple Gang enlisted “The Little Jewish Navy” to carry alcohol over the Detroit River from Canada before selling it themselves.[15] Chicago gangster Al Capone was against expanding his rackets in Detroit, so he began a business accommodation with the Purple Gang in order to prevent a bloody war.[6] For several years, the gang managed the prosperous business of supplying Canadian whisky to the Capone organization in Chicago.[9][16] The Purple Gang was involved in various other criminal actions, such as kidnapping other gangsters for ransom, which became very popular during this era. The FBI suspected that they were involved with the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.[6][17]
By the late 1920s, the Purple Gang reigned supreme over the Detroit underworld, controlling the city's vice, gambling, liquor, and drug trade.[18] They also ran the local wire service, providing horse racing information to local horse betting parlors.[1] The gang members consorted with more infamous mobsters, branching into other cities, as well. Abe Bernstein was a friend of Meyer Lansky and Joe Adonis, with whom he owned several Miami, Florida gambling casinos in his later years.[19] The gang hijacked prizefight films and forced movie theaters to show them for a high fee. They also defrauded insurance companies by staging fake accidents.[9] Altogether, the Purple Gang is alleged to have been responsible for 500 murders in the city.[20]
Cleaners and Dyers War
As the gang grew in size and influence, they began hiring themselves out as hitmen[19] and took part in the Cleaners and Dyers war. The Purples profited from the Detroit laundry industry unions and associations.[8] They were hired out to keep union members in line and to harass non-union independents.[8]Bombing, arson, theft, and murder were the usual tactics that the gang employed to enforce union policy.[6][19]
Abe Axler and Eddie Fletcher were reputedly imported from New York City to take part in the scheme (although other sources put their origins in Detroit).[6][13] In 1927, nine members of the Purple Gang (Abe Bernstein, Raymond Bernstein, Irving Milberg, Eddie Fletcher, Joe Miller, Irving Shapiro, Abe Kaminsty, Abe Axler, and Simon Axler) were arrested and charged with conspiracy to extort money from Detroit wholesale cleaners and dyers.[19] They were eventually acquitted of all charges.[6]
Harry Rosman (1891–1958) was president and owner of Famous Cleaners & Dyers in Detroit, Michigan. He gained public notoriety for being the key witness testifying against the Purple Gang in a trial that lasted from 1928 to 1929.[21] The prosecution alleged extortion activities against Detroit area businesses during the sometime violent showdown known as the Cleaners & Dyers Wars. Rosman testified that the Purple Gang asked for $1000 per week from his and other area cleaners & dyers' businesses for their "protection" against violence.[22]
A Detroit Mob War soon ensued between the Italian, Irish, and Jewish bootleggers over territory. The Purples fought a vicious turf war with the Licavoli Squad led by the brothers Tommy and Pete Licavoli.[1][4] In March 1927, three men were killed. The deceased men had been brought into Detroit as hired assassins for the Purple Gang and the motive for the murder was believed to be retaliation for a "double cross". The homicides took place in an apartment leased by Purple Gang members Eddie Fletcher and Abe Axler (and reportedly Fred Burke, an associate of the Purples originally connected to the Egan's Rats gang of St. Louis), which made them prime suspects in the slaying.[13] The three suspects (Fletcher, Axler, and Burke) were questioned, as were the other Purples and associates.[23] No one was ever convicted of the murders.[6] These murders were reportedly the first use of a submachine gun in a Detroit underworld slaying.[24]
The Purple Gang was suspected of taking part in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in Chicago.[9] On February 13, 1929, Abe Bernstein reputedly called Bugs Moran to tell him that a hijacked load of booze was on its way to Chicago. Moran, who was in the middle of a turf war with Capone, had only recently begun to trust Bernstein, who had previously been Capone's chief supplier of Canadian liquor.[19] The next day, instead of delivering a load of liquor, four men, two in police uniforms, went to S.M.C. Cartage on North Clark Street (Moran's North Side hangout) and opened fire with Thompson submachine guns, killing seven men in what has become known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.[19] Several witnesses and some items of physical evidence implicated Burke in the slayings; he was never charged.
The Purple Gang began terrorizing Detroiters with the street executions of their enemies.[1] Among their victims was city police officer Vivian Welsh, killed on February 1, 1927; he was later revealed to be a dirty cop who was reputedly trying to extort money from the Purple Gang.[25] In 1930 the gang was accused of murdering Jerry Buckley, a well-known radio figure, in the lobby of a downtown hotel.[1][26] Whether the Purples were involved with Buckley's death is disputed, as the police suspected the local Sicilian mob.[27] No one was charged in either case, and both of the murders remain officially unsolved.[25][27]
In 1931, an intra-gang dispute ended in the murder of three Purples by Chicago gangsters who had been imported to Detroit to help out the Purple Gang.[6] The three men had violated an underworld code by operating outside the territory allotted to them by the Purple Gang leadership.[8] Herman "Hymie" Paul, Isadore Sutker a.k.a. "Joe Sutker", and Joseph "Nigger Joe" Lebowitz were lured to an apartment on Collingwood Avenue on September 16, 1931.[28] They believed they were going to a peace conference with the Purple leaders.[8] After a brief discussion, the three men were gunned down.[28] Authorities caught up with the gang when they burst into Fletcher's apartment and found the suspects (Abe Axler, Irving Milberg, and Eddie Fletcher) playing cards. Ray Bernstein and Harry Keywell were also arrested.[28]
Aftermath
Irving Milberg, Harry Keywell, and Raymond Bernstein, three high-ranking Purples, were convicted of first-degree murder in the Collingwood Manor Massacre and were sentenced to life in prison.[8] Bernstein, Milberg, and Keywell were accompanied by police officers on a special Pullman train bound for Michigan's Upper Peninsula to begin serving their sentences in the state's maximum security prison in Marquette, Michigan.[29] Harry Fleisher, another suspect, remained on the run until 1932, but he was never convicted in connection with the massacre. Later on, he served time in Jackson Prison, the world's largest walled prison, in the early 1950s for armed robbery of an Oakland County gambling house.[29] According to Detroit Police Chief of Detectives, James E. McCarty, the convictions in the Collingwood Massacre "broke the back of the once powerful Purple Gang, writing finis to more than five years of arrogance and terrorism".[29]
Downfall
For many years, the Purples enjoyed seemingly complete immunity from police interference as witnesses to crimes were terrified of testifying against any criminal identified as a Purple gangster.[8] The Purple Gang reputedly became more arrogant and sloppy as time progressed. They dressed flamboyantly, frequented the city's night spots, and were well known to the public. They lived in fine houses and soon a romantic aura surrounded the Purples that distinguished them from the other gangs in Detroit.[9] Jealousies, egos, and intra-gang quarrels would eventually cause the Purple Gang to collapse.[8][13] The police eventually moved against them as gang members began leaving behind too much evidence of their crimes.
Phillip Keywell had already been convicted of murder, and Joe Bernstein and Abe Bernstein both were given lengthy prison sentences after previously escaping significant jail time through intimidation and corrupt officials. Different waves of bloodier-than-previous infighting ensued, with the aggressive and high-ranking members Abe Axler and Eddie Fletcher getting shot dead. Then one-time partial-boss (there wasn't a strict hierarchy) Henry Shorr was killed in further infighting. Some gangsters drifted away, a few fleeing Detroit,[30] others were executed by fellow members or rival gangsters,[8] and several members were subsequently imprisoned.[29] A rival Sicilian gang, tired of competing with the Purples, eventually decided to eliminate them.[9]
The gang continued in a diminished capacity, but the predecessors of Detroit's modern-day Mafia stepped in and filled the void as The Purple Gang ultimately self-destructed.[1][8][13]
In popular culture
Although heavily fictionalized, the 1935 film Public Hero No. 1 deals with the hunting down and capture of the Purple Gang.
The 1959 film The Purple Gang, also heavily fictionalized, includes details of the gang's rise to prominence.
A 1960 second-season episode of The Untouchables simply titled "The Purple Gang", provides a fictional account of the Purple Gang's kidnapping of a mob courier.
We curved through the bright mile or two of the Strip, past the Antique shops with famous screen names on them, past the windows full of point lace and ancient pewter, past the gleaming new nightclubs with famous chefs and equally famous gambling rooms, run by polished graduates of the Purple Gang ...[31]
The Purple Gang was also referenced by Ross Macdonald in his 1952 novel The Ivory Grin.
Although he was gunned down in the first scene, Max Allan Collins identified "The Rodent" as a Purple Gang torpedo in his novelization of the 1990 film Dick Tracy.
An episode of Detroit 1-8-7 featured a man whose grandfather was a member of the gang.
The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre was the murder of seven members and associates of Chicago's North Side Gang on Saint Valentine's Day 1929. The men were gathered at a Lincoln Park, Chicago, garage on the morning of February 14, 1929. They were lined up against a wall and shot by four unknown assailants, two of whom were disguised as police officers.
The Irish Mob is a usually crime family–based ethnic collective of organized crime syndicates composed of primarily ethnic Irish members which operate primarily in Ireland, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, and have been in existence since the early 19th century. Originating in Irish-American street gangs – famously first depicted in Herbert Asbury's 1927 book, The Gangs of New York – the Irish Mob has appeared in most major U.S. and Canadian cities, especially in the Northeast and the urban industrial Midwest, including Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Chicago.
Jewish-American organized crime initially emerged within the American Jewish community during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In media and popular culture, it has variously been referred to as the Jewish Mob, the Jewish Mafia, the Kosher Mob, the Kosher Mafia, the Yiddish Connection, and Kosher Nostra or Undzer Shtik. The last two of these terms are direct references to the Italian Cosa Nostra; the former is a play on the word for kosher, referring to Jewish dietary laws, while the latter is a calque of the Italian phrase 'cosa nostra' into Yiddish, which was at the time the predominant language of the Jewish diaspora in the United States.
The Atlantic City Conference held between 13–16 May 1929 was a historic summit of leaders of organized crime in the United States. It is considered by most crime historians to be the earliest organized crime summit held in the US. The conference had a major impact on the future direction of the criminal underworld and it held more importance and significance than the Havana Conference of 1946 and the Apalachin meeting of 1957. It also represented the first concrete move toward a National Crime Syndicate.
Thomas "Yonnie" Licavoli was an American gangster and bootlegger during Prohibition. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Licavoli, along with brother Peter Joseph Licavoli and cousin James Licavoli, worked with Jewish gangsters to take over illegal gambling in St. Louis. The Licavolis soon moved on to Detroit, Michigan and would control criminal operations in Detroit and Toledo, Ohio, throughout the Prohibition era.
Abe Bernstein was a Detroit-based Jewish-American organized crime figure and leader of the infamous Prohibition-era Purple Gang.
Joseph Zerilli was an Italian-born American mobster who rose to power in the crime family known as the Detroit Partnership, leading from the 1930s through much of the 1970s. He immigrated to the United States from Sicily in 1914 at the age of 17.
Gus Winkler was an American gangster who headed a Prohibition-era criminal gang specializing in armed robbery and murder for hire with Fred "Killer" Burke. Winkler was a senior associate of Chicago Outfit boss Al Capone and is considered a suspect in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Winkler is believed to be the first member of the National Crime Syndicate to be murdered for talking to the FBI.
The Flathead Gang, also known as The Flatheads, was a group of bank robbers. The gang was operating in the Detroit, Michigan area. When the police became a major problem for the gang they decided to move their robberies and other crimes to the state of Pennsylvania. Paul Jaworski, the leader of the gang was executed in Pennsylvania in 1929 for murder.
The Detroit Partnership is an Italian-American Mafia crime family based in Detroit, Michigan. The family mainly operates in Detroit and the Greater Detroit area, as well as in other locations including Windsor, Ontario; Toledo, Ohio; and Las Vegas.
Angelo Meli was an Italian-American mobster who became a consigliere and then leading Chairman of the Detroit Partnership criminal organization of La Cosa Nostra.
The Milaflores Massacre is the name given to the shooting of three gangsters in retaliation for two murders and a kidnapping in the winter of 1927 in Detroit, Michigan. The crime was suspected to have been perpetrated by the Purple Gang.
Charles Dean O'Banion was an American mobster who was the main rival of Johnny Torrio and Al Capone during the brutal Chicago bootlegging wars of the 1920s. The newspapers of his day made him better known as Dion O'Banion, although he never went by that first name. He led the North Side Gang until 1924, when he was shot and killed, reportedly by Frankie Yale, John Scalise and Albert Anselmi.
The Mob Museum, officially the National Museum of Organized Crime and Law Enforcement, is a history museum located in Downtown Las Vegas, Nevada, United States.
The Collingwood Manor Massacre is the name of an infamous hit on three Chicago gunmen by the notorious Purple Gang on September 16, 1931 after the men had betrayed the trust of the others in the gang.
Harry Keywell was a convicted member of the infamous Purple Gang, that terrorized Detroit, US during Prohibition. Chicago Police questioned him about the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in February 1929, on the suspicion that Keywell acted as a lookout for the killers, however Harry had a cast-iron alibi for the day.
Max "Boo Boo" Hoff was an ex-boxer who later became a bootlegger and gambler.
Nucky Johnson's Organization was a corrupt political machine based in Atlantic City, New Jersey that held power during the Prohibition era. Its boss, Enoch "Nucky" Johnson, coordinated the Organizations's bootlegging, gambling, racketeering, and prostitution activities.
Joseph D. Massei, or Joe Massey, was an American gangster of Italian-Irish origins. He was involved in the Detroit bootleg liquor trade in the Prohibition era and was arrested many times, but was only imprisoned once. In 1936 he moved to Miami Beach, Florida, and became a central figure in illegal gambling. He was a consiglieri of the mob, and helped resolve disputes between the gangsters. He acted as the Detroit mob's money man, funneling illegal earnings into legitimate businesses in Miami. He died at home in Miami Beach at the age of 71.
This is a list of organized crime in the 1930s, arranged chronologically.
↑ Lowndes, David (November 28, 2016). Reno's Heyday: 1931-1991. Mount Pleasant, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing. p.93. ISBN978-1-4396-5858-1. Archived from the original on October 30, 2023. Retrieved October 30, 2023.
↑ "Gaming Pioneer Dead at Age 88". Santa Cruz Sentinel. Associated Press. April 20, 1981. Archived from the original on October 30, 2023. Retrieved October 30, 2023.
↑ Schoenberg, Robert J. (1993). Mr. Capone: The Real—and Complete—Story of Al Capone. New York: William Morrow Paperbacks. p.209. ISBN978-0-688-12838-8.
↑ "Purple Gang Part 3". FBI Records: The Vault. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Retrieved November 16, 2012.
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