“Anyway, we were over in the bookie (illegal betting parlor) at 700 Selden Avenue that is — Hymie and Joe and Izzy and me — when a call came from Ray Bernstein that he wanted to see us, because he had some suggestions he wanted us to get together on. He gave me the address of where he said his new office was at 1740 Collingwood Avenue, and I wrote it down on one of the pink slips we used for making bets.
“I wanted to know if I couldn’t leave Izzy to watch the book for me, but he said no, we were all to come. We wanted to go and get cleaned up and shave, but he said come now. We all got into Sutker’s car and drove over to Collingwood Avenue.’’
Solly then recounted what happened inside the apartment and immediately afterward. He said that just before the killers released him, “Bernstein shook hands with me again and said, 4 am your pal, Solly.’ He gave me three or four hundred dollars and said to go back to the book and he’d pick me up later.
“I found out later that they were going to make me tell where some dope was and then bump me off. Bernstein, my ‘pal,’ had kept one of the murder guns. I’d be found in the ditch with that gun, and a dead man would be blamed for the murder.’’
Solly said that detectives arrested him a half hour after he arrived at the book.
That ended Solly’s testimony.
The jury deliberated just one hour and thirty-seven minutes before finding Bernstein, Keywell and Milberg guilty of first degree murder.
The verdict created bedlam in the courtroom. Friends and relatives of the defendants began to scream hysterically and court officers climbed onto tables and chairs to restore order.
One week later, on November 17, 1931, Judge Donald E. Van Zile sentenced each man “for murder in the first degree to imprisonment in the branch of Michigan State Prison at Marquette for life.”
The prisoners, clean-shaven and dressed in new suits and shiny shoes, remained silent. Guards led them away after the judge spoke.
The next day the three killers were placed aboard a special Pullman car attached to a northern Michigan-bound train. They were shackled to their seats with a heavy chain. Seven Detroit policemen rode with them.
The three Purples remained cool. They joked and gossiped with their guards, read newspapers, munched corned beef sandwiches and played cards.
Bernstein, still the leader, flashed a roll of bills and tipped a Pullman waiter five dollars after breakfast.
As the train neared the end of its fifteen-hour trip, Keywell asked Bernstein. “I suppose it will be tough at first?”
“Yeah,” replied Bernstein. “Like everything else, you have to get settled and organized. It’ll be new and strange at first, but well get organized. We always did.”
“Sure we will,” said Keywell.
Once inside Marquette prison, however, the men lost their identities. Bernstein became No. 5449. Keywell, not yet 21 years old, became No. 5450. And Milberg, 28 years old, became No. 5451.4
Harry Milberg died in prison in 1938. Bernstein suffered a crippling stroke and was left partially paralyzed. He was released on mercy parole in 1964, after serving 33 years, and died two years later. Harry Keywell had a spotless prison record for 34 years before his life sentence was commuted. He was freed in 1965.5
Levine, the key witness, disappeared. Some said the police paid his way to France, other rumors placed him in St. Louis, Mobile, Oklahoma City or elsewhere.
Fleisher escaped and never was tried in connection with the killings. Although his name was linked with various crimes, he remained free for many years.
Thus ended what Detroit newspapers called the “Collingwood Massacre.” Despite its notoriety, this slaying was merely the latest in a long series of crimes perpetrated by the all-Jewish Purple Gang, Detroit’s most famous Prohibition era mob.
The Purple Gang had its origins in the Jewish section of Detroit’s east side. During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the east side contained a turbulent and colorful mix of ethnic groups, including Italians, Poles, Germans, Russians, Hungarians, African-Americans and others. In 1920, Detroit’s Jewish community numbered 34,727 persons, about 3.5 percent of the city’s total population of 993,678. While Jews predominated in their quarter, other ethnic groups lived there as well.6
One former resident of the old neighborhood joked that it was easy to distinguish the Jewish dwellings from those occupied by non-Jews. “The non-Jews grew flowers in front of their houses,” he said. “The Jews grew dirt.”7
Variously dubbed “New Jerusalem,” “Little Jerusalem,” and “the Ghetto” by the city’s press, the Jewish district abounded with
Police Department picture shows “Purple Gang” of the late ‘20’s: From left, Harry Fleisher, Abie Zussman, Jack Stein, Willie Laks, Harry Levine, Philip Keywell, Sam Goldfarb, Sam Axler and Edward Fletcher.
“Hebrew stores of every description: butchers, bakers, clothiers, shoemakers, printing shops and restaurants,” as one observer wrote. “A Hebrew might live his lifetime in the quarter and never leave its confines.”8
Detroit’s east side differed significantly from the classic tenement districts of New York’s Lower East Side in that it remained a city of single and two-family dwellings throughout the pre-World War I period and for many decades afterwards. Although congestion existed, it never came anywhere near the pushcart-laden streets of New York.9
Nevertheless, the east side was one of the least desirable areas of Detroit in which to live. It continually lagged behind the other districts in the number of water pipes laid, sewers installed, streets paved and streetcar lines extended. The district was also more crowded, had higher rents, and higher disease and death rates than other parts of the city.10
The Jewish American, Detroit’s Anglo-Jewish weekly, ruefully admitted that the Jewish quarter contained “tenement houses that are actually unfit to live in: old, decrepit, polluted and infected hovels, where human beings endeavor to exist and where a young generation is reared.”11 The members of the Purple Gang were bred in this environment.
The gang members were second-generation Americans whose parents had immigrated from Eastern Europe. Most of the boys had been born in the United States during the first decade of the twentieth century. Their parents were working class and, strictly speaking, non-Orthodox Jews. However, the parents did observe a number of Jewish holidays and traditions, such as the Jewish New Year and Day of Atonement, the Passover festival, and lighting the Sabbath candles in the home. Some of the fathers were active members of their synagogues, and one of Harry Keywell’s uncles was president of the Orthodox congregation B’nai David.12
On one particular Day of Atonement the FBI sent two agents to monitor the service at B’nai David in hopes that some of the wanted Purple gangsters would show up. The agents dressed as Hasidic Jews, believing this would allow them to blend in, unnoticed, with the other worshippers. They sat at the rear of the synagogue.
Everything went along smoothly until the recess between the morning and afternoon service. It was a mild autumn day, and the two agents stepped outside along with the other congregants. To the consternation of those around them, the agents lit cigarettes and began to smoke. Because striking a match, or lighting a fire is strictly forbidden on this holiest day in the Jewish calendar, their cover was completely blown.13
As children, the future Purple gangsters lived near each other and attended the same grade school. Few of them ever finished high school. They started off in crime as petty thieves stealing fruit and candy from peddlers and stores; they also stole money when they had the chance. Later they graduated to rolling drunks and waylaying pedestrians late at night. Occasionally they teamed up to shake down Jewish merchants or to take revenge on an enemy.14
Gradually the boys, who were too young to serve in World War I, grew up. They stopped preying on storekeepers and hucksters and turned their attention to bigger things — the blind pigs of the Prohibition era, the gambling joints, and the bawdy houses.
Detroit boomed during Prohibition
. By 1929, smuggling, manufacturing and distributing liquor had become Detroit’s second largest industry, exceeded in size only by the production of automobiles. Detroit’s illegal liquor industry was three times larger than her chemical industry, eight times the size of her stove and heating appliance industry, ten times the size of her cigar and tobacco industry, and about one-eighth the size of her automobile industry. Illegal booze employed fifty thousand people and grossed over $300 million a year.15
In 1923 there were 7,000 blind pigs in the city. By 1925 the number had risen to 15,000; three years later the figure stood at 25,000. The Detroit News reported that in some areas of the city “every house is either a bootleg stand or a blind pig.” One newspaper investigator found 150 blind pigs on one single block, and more than 500 blind pigs in one twenty-block neighborhood.16
A.B. Stroup, deputy administrator in charge of Prohibition enforcement in Detroit complained that “Detroit is the wettest city I have been assigned to. I have worked in several parts of the country and observed conditions carefully, and I can say without hesitation that nowhere else is the law so openly violated as it is here.”17
In 1923, the local police asked the federal government to help them crack down on the booze business. Washington responded by sending their number one Federal Prohibition Agent, Izzy Einstein, to Detroit.18
Izzy was one half of the team of Izzy and Moe, the most famous and wackiest Prohibition agents of all. Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith fit right into the Roaring Twenties. Both men were short and fat, weighing over 200 pounds, and looked nothing like government agents. This was the secret of their success. They became so successful that some speakeasies posted pictures of them as a warning to customers. Hundreds of hilarious newspaper stories were written about the pair, most of them probably true.19
The variety of disguises they used when making their raids seemed endless. They wore false whiskers and noses. They put on blackface. Once they donned football uniforms to bust a blind pig serving thirsty athletes playing in a Brooklyn park.
In order to bust one particular Coney Island speakeasy in midwinter, Izzy went swimming with a polar bear club, and almost froze. A concerned Moe rushed the shivering Izzy into the establishment. “Quick,” he cried, “some liquor before he freezes to death.” When the solicitous bartender complied, he was arrested.
From 1920 to 1925, the pair confiscated five million bottles of liquor and arrested 4,392 persons. Ninety-five percent of those arrested were convicted.
Izzy was a product of New York’s Lower East Side. He spoke fluent Yiddish, Italian, Hungarian, German and Polish. He had been a dry goods salesman and post office clerk before becoming a Prohibition agent.
Once, Izzy met his namesake Albert Einstein. He asked Einstein what he did for a living. “I discover stars in the sky,” replied the scientist.
“I’m a discoverer too,” said Izzy, “only I discover in the basements.”
The team worked primarily in the New York area, but their reputation led local bureaus in other cities to ask for their help in busting problems in their own towns. Thus it was that Izzy came to Detroit.
Izzy’s methods proved successful. Sporting a mustache and dressed as an auto worker, Izzy walked into a Woodward Avenue blind pig and asked for a drink. Now most illegal drinking saloons refused service to a prospective drinker if he was not known to the bartender or other customers, thus keeping plainclothes law officers from purchasing alcoholic beverages. As added protection, many blind pigs kept photographs of local and federal law enforcement officers in an album behind the bar.
The bartender refused to serve Izzy because, he said, pointing to a black-framed photograph of Einstein, “Izzy Epstein’s in town.”
“You mean Einstein, don’t you?’’ asked Izzy.
“Epstein,” insisted the bartender.
“I bet you a drink it’s Einstein,” said Izzy.
“You’re on,” said the bartender.
The bartender poured him a shot of whiskey which Izzy emptied into a secret funnel sewed to his breast pocket and connected by a long rubber tube to a concealed flask he used to gather evidence.
“There’s sad news here,” Izzy announced in a mournful voice. “You’re under arrest.”20
Izzy and Moe retired in 1925. They went into the insurance business and soon numbered among their clients many of the people they had arrested for liquor violations.
Supplying the blind pigs with alcoholic beverages became an extremely profitable enterprise. Booze smuggled across the Detroit River from Canada was the main source, supplemented by locally produced products. By 1928, five thousand Detroit stills bubbled forth alcohol to slake the city’s thirst. Many of these enterprises were large-scale operations, but most were small setups in family basements, living rooms, closets and attics.21
In Detroit, most branches of the illegal liquor business, from brewing and distilling to rumrunning and blind pig management, were controlled by well-organized underworld gangs. To Detroiters, the best-known gang operating in the city by the mid-1920s was the Purple Gang.
The Purples originated in the 1920s with the merger of two Jewish gangs. The first was called the Oakland Sugar House Gang because their base of operation was a sugar warehouse located on Oakland Street.22
The original members of the Oakland Sugar House Gang were Harry Fleisher, a hefty youngster who started out as a driver for the gang and later became a vicious thug and killer; Henry Shorr, a former potato sacker at a produce market who was the gang’s financial genius and business head; Irving Milberg, only 17 years old in 1920, but already known to be good with his fists, a club or a gun; Harry Altman, whose arrest sheet included armed robbery, extortion and murder before he was 21; Harry Keywell, a handsome, wavy-haired slugger and strong-arm man; and Morris and Phil Raider, two brothers who excelled at larceny and extortion.23
The Sugar House Gang sold corn to moonshiners, provided protection for local gambling establishments and manufactured alcohol for bootleg liquor.
The second group of east side Jewish criminals was originally formed by Sammy Cohen, a stout gunman and enforcer who was also known as “Sammy Purple.” In the early 1920s the leadership of the gang was assumed by the three Bernstein brothers — Abe, Isidore and Ray — who immigrated to Detroit from New York. At one time or another, each of the brothers had been arrested for robbery, extortion and murder.24
During Prohibition this group, like the Sugar House Gang, turned from shoplifting and extortion to distilling and brewing. To earn extra cash, the gang shook down blind pigs and gambling houses.
Eventually, instead of competing, the two groups joined forces under the leadership of the Bernsteins and branched out into the business of importing liquor across the Detroit River from Canada.
Detroit’s Canadian border and the existence of Jewish-owned Canadian distilleries, such as those owned by Sam and Harry Bronfman, offered opportunities to Detroit’s Jewish gangsters that rivaled bootlegging operations in Chicago and New York.
Instead of transporting the liquor themselves, the Purples arranged for the Jewish-dominated “Little Jewish Navy” gang to bring it across for them. The Purple Gang then managed the operation on the Michigan side of the border.25
The Purple Gang’s dealings also extended to the sale of stolen diamonds, narcotics and prostitution in Canada.26
The origin of the gang’s name is in dispute. One story has it that the name stemmed from the remark of a Hastings Street shopkeeper who had been victimized more than once by the gang. “They’re tainted, those boys,” he told a policeman. “Their characters are off-color. They’re purple. They’ll come to a bad end.”27
Another account says the nucleus of the gang, while cutting classes at the old Bishop School on Winder Street, spent hours at a cottage near Lake St. Clair. There the boys traipsed about in purple swimming trunks, calling themselves the “Purple Gang.” When an older and rougher group took command, they adopted the name the younger boys had chosen. And some say t
he gang simply took the name of Sammy Purple.28
David Levitt, a neighborhood associate and friend of the boys, has yet another version. “I was at the warehouse on Oakland Avenue where the boys hung out. It was a sugar warehouse. The boys called themselves the Sugar House Boys.
“We were sitting around and the boys discussed changing their name. One of the members, whose name was Silverstein, had a purple sweater on. Someone suggested Purple Gang. It stuck.”29
The name meant little in the early years. But as the gang’s deeds became more brazen, and their activities in shaking down blind pigs and gambling houses more widespread, the name came to mean terror, violence, slugging and clubbing. Sometimes it meant murder.
Police sources claim that the gang first achieved prominence in 1926 when local gamblers employed them to defend their establishments against pilfering by a gang of invaders from St. Louis known as “Egan’s Rats.”30
The Rats were a powerful St. Louis mob that had been founded at the turn of the century by Jellyroll Egan. He specialized in hiring out his army of thugs to anti-union businessmen as strikebreakers. Prohibition gave the gang a boost and they expanded their activities. Under the leadership of a hood named Dinty Colbeck, the Rats went into safecracking and jewelry heists, and supplied men to other criminal gangs that needed out-of-town talent.31
The Purples had imported several Rats to help them in their war against Detroit’s Italian mobs. A number of Rats then double-crossed the Purples and began operating on their own.
These men were blamed for the March 1926 kidnapping of Meyer “Fish” Bloomfield, a croupier at the Grand River Athletic Club, Charles T. “Doc” Brady’s gambling place. A $50,000 ransom was paid for Bloomfield’s release.32
The “snatching” of Bloomfield was the first in a series of kidnappings of rich gamblers for ransom. A debate raged as to whether the Purples played a defensive or an offensive role in the crimes.
But He Was Good to His Mother - The Lives and Crimes of Jewish Gangsters Page 6