In the post-Kefauver days, Zwillman’s crew did not have as deep a bench as it once had, but Zwillman still had some heavy hitters on the payroll. Mob hitmen and tough guys are the stuff of gangster-movie legend and lore. But in the annals of New Jersey mob history, Harold “Kayo” Konigsberg was a true tough guy and hitman who was originally under the wing of Zwillman. Whereas the dapper Zwillman cultivated an image of the businessman, Kayo was the opposite. Ruthless and effective, he is alleged to have racked up over twenty gangland killings. And he had a vicious temper. People that were around him kept their distance, afraid of saying anything to set off the bruiser.
Max “Puddy” Hinkes was a well-known Newark, New Jersey, Jewish gangster who was part of the Zwillman-Stacher mob from early youth. Puddy operated a card room and sports-betting operation on Chancellor Avenue in Newark. One day out of a clear blue sky appeared Kayo Konigsberg and beat up a guy in the place who owed Kayo money and had been ducking him. Besides working this guy over, Kayo trashed the place. Longy was no longer on this earth, so Puddy ran to Tony Bananas Caponigro, who in turn contacted Bayonne Joe Zicarelli to put a leash on Kayo so that Mr. Konigsberg wouldn’t be making himself troublesome in the future.[28]
Since Zwillman had appeared before the Kefauver Committee, he was continually dogged by the IRS. They tore through his business returns and kept a close eye on new investments. Longy was getting squeezed constantly, and it was starting to affect the way he managed his affairs. Longy was indicted on two counts of tax evasion in May of 1954, based on his and his wife’s tax records from the late 1940s. The trial was postponed until January of 1956. The IRS had been after Zwillman for close to a decade, scrutinizing his various business interests and tax returns going back to the days of Prohibition. The government thought they had an airtight case and so were taken aback when, on March 1, 1956, the jury came back and said it couldn’t reach a verdict. It wasn’t until two years later, in 1958, that a wiretap placed in the Supreme Beverage Company at 631 Bergen Street in Newark, a known hangout of Zwillman, revealed that two jurors in the trial had been bribed. A third potential juror had been paid off by Sam “Big Sue” Katz,[29] but that person was not empaneled.
Longy still held sway over criminal activities in Newark, “still an imposing figure, brainier than most of his contemporaries, wiser, more experienced in handling the daily problems that cropped up in any illicit undertaking—and few in the rackets wanted to try and toss him aside.”[30] In 1957 an internal FBI report indicated than an informant told the feds that Zwillman was still one of the big kingpins of New Jersey organized crime, along with mafioso Ritchie the Boot, John “Big Pussy” Russo, Angelo “Gyp” DeCarlo, and Tony Caponigro. Zwillman was still sought after by Catena for advice long after the rising Genovese mobster would have needed to defer to him. Meyer Lansky still considered Longy a good friend, and the two often socialized in Florida or when Meyer was back in New York. Zwillman knew his days as the top racketeer were behind him, and he knew that the continued pressure of IRS investigations, press fixation on his every move, and the changing nature of the underworld scene were taking their toll on him both physically and mentally. But his fellow racketeers were not privy to his feelings. Longy kept them at arm’s length, though he did occasionally let it slip how the court cases were draining him. His doctor later told police that Zwillman was suffering from high blood pressure, heart issues, and depression. And maybe in the back of Zwillman’s mind was the concern that, what with all the pressure building, things would crack and he might fall out of favor with the very friends and business associates he had helped get their start.
On the night of February 25, 1959, Longy went to dinner with his wife. He left the restaurant early, telling her he had somewhere to go. He was driven to the home of his friend Jerry Catena, where he stayed for a few hours, talking. He got home and went to bed. His wife told investigators that she awoke around 2 a.m. and that Zwillman was pacing, saying he was having trouble sleeping. At 8 a.m. the next day, his wife awoke, assuming Longy had gone to work at the Public Service Tobacco Company. At 10 a.m. she went to the basement storeroom. There she found Longy, dressed in bathrobe and slippers, hanging from a cord looped around supports in the ceiling. He was dropped down to his knees. She immediately called the family physician, who arrived at the home just after 10 a.m. He pronounced Longy dead and called the police.
The prosecutor at the time was future governor Brendan Byrne. “The first thing I knew about Longy’s death was when Dr. Edwin Albano, the medical examiner, called me. He and his assistant, a man named Kaehler, were at Zwillman’s house with the West Orange police. He said Zwillman was hanging in the basement and that it looked like suicide.”[31] Later that day, Dr. Albano officially declared Zwillman’s death a suicide.
In keeping with Jewish tradition, Zwillman’s body was prepared for a burial within twenty-four hours of his death. The funeral took place at the Philip Apter Funeral Home in Newark. The funeral drew a modest crowd of family, friends, curiosity seekers, and FBI agents looking for names and faces. It was a far cry from the lavish gangland funerals of other well-known racketeers, but enough of Zwillman’s contemporaries showed up to make it known how well-liked he was in the neighborhood and the business worlds, legit and not. Some of his closest friends couldn’t attend. Jerry Catena was in Florida, unable to make it back up in time; friends reported him despondent for days after Zwillman’s death. Meyer Lansky and others were out of town but sent regards. A funeral procession of twenty-seven cars took his body to the B’nai Abraham Memorial Park off Route 22 in Union, just next to the Rahway River.
When Longy died, there were lots of questions: Did he really commit suicide, or was he murdered? One source said he had heard that a couple days before his death Longy had gone to see Eugene Catena, Jerry’s brother and head of his own crew. Longy told Gene that he was really feeling the pressure from the IRS investigation and that they were squeezing him hard. There were other people who told of Zwillman’s declining state. His stepson told reporters that he had been depressed and that Saul Kantz’s indictment for bribery in his tax case had been the final straw.
Even entertaining the possibility that Zwillman was murdered, it’s highly unlikely that a mob hitman or team would enter a house when a man’s family was sleeping and kill him by making it look like a suicide. That is an idea wrapped in issues both moral and logistical—even for organized crime. Syndicated columnist Dorothy Kilgallen opined that “it’s no secret in the underworld that when the mob boys want one of their tribesman erased, they know just how to do the job so it looks like a perfect suicide.”[32] Brendan Byrne dismissed the idea that Zwillman was murdered. “From all our findings, that was nonsense. The autopsy, the man’s actions on the night before his death, the fact that at fifty-five he was still strong enough to raise quite a racket if someone tried anything funny, everything pointed to suicide due to temporary insanity.”[33]
But even though Longy was gone, business had to continue. And that meant a sea change in the way Longy’s old rackets were divvied up.
After Longy died, the Jews no longer had a roof over their head. Shortly after his passing, Messrs. Irving Berlin and Max Puddy Hinkes, who had a share of the Newark, New Jersey, numbers business, were being sought after by the authorities. They took off for the night and stayed at the Luxor Baths on Forty-Sixth Street in Manhattan. When they came back to Jersey shortly thereafter they were told that their numbers business was now in the hands of Jerry Catena, Tony Boy Boiardo, Gyp de Carlo, and Tony Bananas Caponigro. As long as Longy was alive, the Jews who were operating businesses outside the law were under his protection. Once he was gone, the Italians took over.[34]
But beyond the implications for Jewish members of the Newark crime scene, the death of Longy Zwillman was the final nail in the coffin of the old Newark gambling syndicate. Jerry Catena was now affiliated with a Mafia family, Longy’s other associates partnered up with Mafia crews for protection and business ventures, and the Mafia’
s control over the other rackets expanded. Much like the Irish were pushed aside in many areas to make room for the Jews and the Italians, now it was the Jewish gangster of the Prohibition era leaving the scene. Most left the scene voluntarily or by natural causes. But within the world of organized crime, murder was still the ultimate way to take care of a problem.
1. United Press. “Billion Annual Tribute at Stake in New York’s Vice and Racket Inquiry.” (Hammond, IN) Times, July 24, 1935, 68.
2. Paul Sann, Kill The Dutchman! The Story Of Dutch Schultz, 1st ed. (N.p.: Birdye’s Books LLC, 2015).
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. The Disposable Heroes of Hiphopricy, “The Last Words of Dutch Schultz (This Is Insane),” Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales, Island Red Label PRCD 5003-2, 1993, CD.
7. Richard Stratton, “The Man Who Killed Dutch Schultz,” GQ, September 2001.
8. (Bridgewater, NJ) Courier-News, “Zwillman Balks in Crime Quiz; Faces Recall by Jury Today,” August 16, 1939, 1.
9. E. A. Tamm, Re: Crime Situation in Newark, memo to the director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Newark, 1935.
10. Federal Bureau of Investigation, “Abner Zwillman, Part 1 of 3,” May 21, 1935–October 25, 1955, BUFILE 62-36085, https://vault.fbi.gov/Abner%20Zwillman/Abner%20Zwillman%20Part%201%20of%207.
11. Special Agent M. B. Parker, Nevada Gambling Industry, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Las Vegas, 1964.
12. Myron Sugerman, personal interview on New Jersey organized crime, Newark, New Jersey, February 7, 2017.
13. US Congress, Hearings Before The Select Committee . . . Commerce (1951).
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Richard Linnett, In the Godfather Garden: The Long Life and Times of Richie “the Boot” Boiardo (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2013).
20. (Wilmington, DE) Evening Journal, “Men, Ablaze, Flee as Still Explodes,” October 25, 1927.
21. Asbury Park (NJ) Press, “Bassone Put on Year Probation,” May 24, 1930.
22. Stuart, Gangster No. 2.
23. (Wilmington, DE) Morning News, “Newark Gangster Is ‘Put On Spot,’” November 27, 1930.
24. John Lipari, “Vittorio Castle 1937–1952,” Newark’s Attic (blog), March 27, 2016, https://newarksattic.blog/2016/03/27/vittorio-castle-1937-1952/. The site where Vittorio’s Castle used to stand is now the Winona Lippman Gardens apartment complex.
25. Linnett, In the Godfather Garden, 58.
26. Victor Carelli, Benjamin Kutlow, Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York, 1959.
27. “They had now the hopper . . .” Mickey Wichinsky of Las Vegas, associate of Catena and Green, was the one who came up with the hopper unit that revolutionized the slot-machine business. Myron Sugerman, personal interview on New Jersey organized crime, Newark, New Jersey, February 7, 2017.
28. Ibid.
29. Katz was convicted of bribery and sentenced to seven years in prison. He was paroled on March 27, 1964.
30. Stuart, Gangster No. 2.
31. Ibid.
32. Dorothy Kilgallen, “Some Question Suicide of ‘Longie’ Zwillman,” syndicated, March 5, 1959.
33. Stuart, Gangster No. 2.
34. Myron Sugerman, personal interview on New Jersey organized crime, Newark, New Jersey, February 7, 2017.
Chapter 5
The Moretti Hit
The World War II–era Jersey underworld was a pastiche of existing Jersey-based mafiosi coupled with the presence of New York crime figures who had fled Manhattan in the face of increasing law-enforcement attention. These New York wiseguys set up operations across the Hudson River. The inter-Mafia ties established during the Prohibition years reached fruition as the underworld’s focus turned toward the docks, drugs, labor unions, and the New Jersey Mafia’s bread and butter of the time, illegal gambling. And with the expansion of gambling operations came loansharking, extortion, political corruption, and, when competition grew fierce, murder.
Essex County may have housed the largest number of crime figures, but it was in Bergen County that residents felt the New York syndicates’ reach most directly. Bergen, New Jersey’s northeasternmost county, is located across the George Washington Bridge from New York City. In the postwar years, the county had experienced a significant population boom, growing more than 30 percent between 1940 and 1950. The smaller towns tried to keep up with the rapid pace of suburbanization fueled by the influx of new residents, including the wiseguys.
Palisade Avenue in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, is one of Bergen County’s major thoroughfares. The street runs parallel to the Hudson River and offers a scenic view of Manhattan. On this street sat the unofficial headquarters of Bergen County’s major Mafia figures. The establishment was Duke’s Restaurant,[1] on the corner of Palisade Avenue and Hudson Place. Duke’s first became a popular hangout in the late 1930s, and by 1941 it was not only a regular hangout for wiseguys and politicians, it also served as the New York wiseguy diaspora’s nerve center. From May 1948 to February 1949, 6,191 phone calls were made from Duke’s to 509 different mob-connected numbers in New York City.
Duke’s was owned by John “Duke” DeNoia, a mob associate who had as many friends in the underworld as he did in law enforcement and politics. DeNoia gained notoriety during exposés of organized crime’s penetration of the New Jersey and New York docks, as well as the longshoremen’s union. DeNoia had been hired by Dade Brothers, Inc., to oversee the nighttime unloading of ships at Jersey City’s Claremont Terminal Channel. Investigators found that, under DeNoia’s oversight, workers “shot dice, bribed, pilfered, peddled dope, and amused themselves by crashing Army forklifts into each other.”[2]
Quite a few major Mafia powerhouses were based in Bergen by the early 1940s. Some arrived from New York City, having been edged out by a crusading mayor. When New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia commenced his mob crackdown, he boasted that he would “dive the bums out of town.” Later he warned, “Let the gamblers, tinhorns, racketeers, and gangsters take notice that they have to keep away from New York from now on.”[3] To some extent, La Guardia succeeded. Still, the mobsters who had relocated to New Jersey were not about to let go of their lucrative customers. Combining the latest in telephone technology with bribes, the Bergen County mob crews set up a sophisticated network of phone lines throughout the county, paying some residents fifty dollars a week to access their phone lines for a few hours a day. The phone system was used to tap into the betting action in New York, as well as to take in calls from payoff bets around the country. It was reminiscent of the old nationwide wire services, but with a decidedly high-tech flair for the time. Authorities estimated that more than 2,600 Bergen County residents rented their phone lines out for the weekly payout.
The operations were orchestrated to perfection. Bellhops, bartenders, and concierges in hotels across Manhattan coordinated cab and limousine pickups for rich potential customers to be driven across the George Washington Bridge, where they were then ferried to clubs across Bergen County. These clubs ranged from low-class establishments known as sawdust joints to elegant, higher-end gambling palaces, called carpet joints. Particularly well-off gamblers were plied with free food and wine.
One of the more renowned higher-end establishments was the Riviera, owned by Ben Marden, a Longy Zwillman associate, as well as New York mob boss Frank Costello and Owney Madden, who owned the Cotton Club in Harlem. Marden’s Riviera opened in 1931, but a fire destroyed the original building in 1936. Marden built a second, just to the south of the original, and it became a hub for top entertainers of the day, from Frank Sinatra to Lena Horne to the Andrews Sisters. Perched high above the Palisades, its large sign tilted toward the George Washington Bridge; the club became a mecca for New York City’s well-to-do. It also became an underworld hangout. Marden himself was fined for contempt for his refusal to answer questions about mob involvement in
the Riviera.
The nightly trips across the GW Bridge to places like the Riviera were inevitably noticed by elements of law enforcement on both sides of the state line. But while New York City District Attorney Frank S. Hogan sent his detectives to investigate the activities of the New York mafiosi in New Jersey, various local police departments in Bergen County also kept tabs on Hogan’s men, and US Treasury agents looked into the vast gambling empire. The corruption of local police didn’t extend to the New Jersey State Police as much, so mobsters in areas where the State Police held jurisdiction moved the games around frequently, trying to stay one step ahead of the law.
Garden State Gangland Page 8