But He Was Good to His Mother - The Lives and Crimes of Jewish Gangsters

by Robert Rockaway

  Mickey lived in Brentwood, California in a $120,000 mansion surrounded by an electric fence and spotlights, and containing closets filled with expensive suits and shoes. In 1948, he bought a clothing store on Santa Monica Boulevard called “Michael’s Exclusive Haberdashery,” invested in a supermarket chain and promoted prizefighters. Mickey traveled everywhere in a Cadillac, followed by another car carrying his armed “helpers,” and enjoyed escorting beautiful showgirls to Los Angeles nightspots.50

  The Los Angeles Mafia boss, Jack Dragna, had deferred to Bugsy Siegel, but he was not about to do the same with Cohen. He made numerous attempts to kill Mickey, but each one failed.

  In 1949, Dragna’s men bombed Cohen’s home twice, once with a torpedo and once with dynamite. The first attempt failed; the second shattered every window in the house and blew a huge hole in his bedroom wall. Mickey, his wife, his dog and his maid were shaken but unharmed. What upset Mickey most of all was that more than forty suits, each costing $300, were shredded into rags.

  On another occasion that year, a Dragna gunman blasted away at Mickey with both barrels of a shotgun as he drove home late one night. The car was peppered with shot, but Mickey was untouched.

  Mickey survived another shooting in August 1949, when two gunmen opened up at him with shotguns as he was leaving a restaurant with a group of friends. Mickey bent over to examine a scratch on his car just as they squeezed the trigger. His bodyguard and a movie starlet were seriously wounded. Mickey took a slug in the shoulder and survived.51

  None of this surprised Mickey. “Throughout my career in the racket world, the element of force and violence was something that was expected of you. You didn’t ask any questions when you were told to do something, you just did it,” he said. “But whenever you’re asked to do something against somebody, it was always somebody in the racket world who had an in for you. And that guy would do it to you just as fast as you would do it to him.”52

  He knew Jack Dragna was behind the attempts on his life, but did not hold it against him. It was all part of the “line of work” they were in. “I don’t call a man a son of a bitch who’s in a walk of life that calls for him to be a son of a bitch,” he said.53

  During the Kefauver Committee hearings on organized crime in 1950, the committee’s counsel, Mr. Halley, asked Cohen whether it was not a fact that he lived “surrounded by violence.”

  “What do you mean, that I am surrounded by violence,” sputtered Cohen. “I have not murdered anybody. All the shooting has been done at me. What do you mean, I am surrounded by violence, because people are shooting at me?” he asked indignantly.

  “People are shooting at me,” Cohen said, turning to the committee, “and he (Halley) is asking me if I am surrounded by violence.”54

  Jack Dragna never got Mickey, but the Internal Revenue Service did. He served four years the first time in 1952, and ten years of a fifteen-year sentence the second time in 1962.

  Mickey emerged from prison in 1972, partially paralyzed as a result of being hit over the head by a convict wielding a lead pipe in 1963. Mickey claimed he didn’t know why the man tried to kill him.

  Cohen spent his last years in reduced circumstances in a rented apartment in West Los Angeles. He died in 1976.55

  Despite all its so-called glamour and the lure of the good life, most gangsters paid a terrible price for doing what they did.

  Appearing before the parole board in 1933, Jack Guzik said that he had “a hard life.”

  “What do you mean, dragging down $25,000 and $50,000 a month,” asked Arthur Wood, chairman of the parole board. “That isn’t very hard.”

  “The gambling life is a hard life,” answered Guzik.

  “How so?” queried Wood.

  “Nervous, dangerous,” answered Jack.

  “Dangerous, what do you mean,” asked Wood.

  “You are liable to be held up,” said Guzik. “Lot of things can happen.”

  The fear of “things” happening led Guzik to carry large sums of money with him, sometimes as much as $25,000, wherever he went. “With a roll like this,” he explained, “I don’t have to worry about getting kidnapped. I just give the dough to the guys who want to snatch me and they go away satisfied.”56

  Doc Stacher was another one who took precautions, albeit of a different sort, to protect himself. Doc had a fear of being “hit” while he slept, so he continually invited friends to spend the night with him. Once he asked Itzik Goldstein to sleep over. Itzik was warned by his friend Hymie Kugel, who knew Stacher well and had himself slept there, not to do it.

  “Don’t sleep there, Itzik,” said Hymie, “because you won’t have a minute’s rest. All night long Doc’ll ask you what time it is and keep coughing and hocking.”

  “Well, the next day,” recalls Itzik, “Doc says, ‘Listen, why don’t you move in here?’ I couldn’t say no, so I slept there one night.

  “He had a folding bed. There was a foyer. You had to walk in this way and there was this bedroom over there.

  “I said, ‘Where do I sleep?’

  “He says, ‘Move that bed over by my door.’

  “I stuck the bed by his door. He’s got the door open. ‘Here,’ he says, ‘put it closer to my door.’

  “I didn’t sleep all fucking night. They’re killing people, and this cocksucker wants me to sleep by his door. In case they do come in, he’ll jump out the window.

  “I said, ‘Listen Joe, I’d like to sleep here, but my mother’s all alone.’

  “Hymie told me right. All night long, at least half a dozen times, he asks, ‘What time is it, Itzik?’ Then I hear, ‘Hock, spit. Hock, spit.

  ‘ Hocking like that all night.

  “He was a nice fellow, but he was worried someone would knock him off.”57

  All of this uncertainty and tension could make a weaker man nervous and ill. That’s what it did to Moe Sedway, whose real name was Morris Sidwirtz. He was a long-time associate and front man for Bugsy Siegel, and became a vice-president of the Flamingo Hotel after Siegel was killed.

  Moe was born in Poland in 1894 and came to the United States with his parents in 1900. He grew up on the lower East Side of New York where he attended public school till the age of fifteen. Moe began his criminal career working for Waxy Gordon. His rap sheet included arrests for assault, robbery, vagrancy, and conspiracy.

  FBI files describe Moe as “a dwarf Jewish boy with all the worst traits of his nationality over-emphasized… Prone to be a snappy dresser, vain to the point of being boresome and in his own mind a terrific woman killer. Being deprived of physical power, Sedway relies upon his natural tendency to bargain and frequently follows the bribery theory. During periods of stress he wrings his hands, becomes wild-eyed and resembles a small dog about to be subjected to the distasteful procedure of being bathed. Sedway’s obsessions are monogrammed silk shirts and silk underwear, as well as well-manicured hands.”58

  This characterization says as much about the predilection of J. Edgar Hoover and his attitude toward Jews as it does about Sedway.

  Testifying before the Kefauver Committee, Sedway complained that he had “three major coronary thromboses, and I have had diarrhea for 6 weeks, and I have an ulcer, hemorrhoids, and an abscess on my upper intestines.”

  After listening to this list of ailments, Senator Tobey asked Sedway, “If you had your life to live over again, would you play the same kind of a game again?”

  “No, sir,” said Sedway.

  “You are in cahoots with a lot of people like Bugsy Siegel,” said Tobey, “and you wonder whether it pays or not or what it amounts to, and why men do these things.”

  “Senator, you see what it got for me,” replied Sedway, “three coronaries and ulcers.”

  “What does it all amount to?” asked Tobey. “Why do men play the game this way? What makes it attractive to them? What is the matter with men?”

  “Just go into that type of business and you get into it and you stay in it,” answered Sedway.

/>   “When decent men want to make a living, these men peel it off,” said Tobey. “They may have money, but that is all they have got.” “We don’t get as rich as you think we do,” said Sedway. “This is hard work. I work pretty hard in this business.”

  “But you get the rich end all the time,” said Tobey. “If you put the same talent you have got toward constructive things in life, producing something that makes real wealth and human happiness, men would arise and call you blessed.”

  “You asked me if I would want to do it over again,” said Sedway. “I would not do it over again. I would not want my children to do it again.”59

  This attitude, of not wanting one’s children to follow in one’s footsteps, characterized the Jewish gangster. For him, like other Jewish parents, the family always came first.

  Chapter Seven: The Family Came First

  The people in my walk of life that Eve been associated with throughout… the top Jews… they always had a very, very strong family tie,” said Mickey Cohen. “Even if they had an outside broad they fooled with, they only looked upon her as a broad. They still kept the highest regard and respect for their family…. We had a code of ethics like the ones among bankers, other people in other walks of life, that one never involved his wife or family in his work.”1

  As ruthless and violent as they may have been, Jewish gangsters adhered to this code throughout their lives.

  Dave Berman was a good example of this. Born in Russia in 1904, he came to the United States with his parents one year later and grew up in Ashley, North Dakota, and Sioux City, Iowa.2

  Very early, Dave displayed the aggressiveness and toughness that characterized him all his life. Those who knew him remember that “he was always looking for an angle” to make extra money. Like so many other children of immigrants, Davie sold newspapers, buying the papers for a penny apiece and selling them for two cents, or three for a nickel. He turned all the money he earned over to his mother.

  His fearlessness led him to become the protector of the Jewish newsboys. Once, when he and the other newsboys were in a drugstore drinking sodas, two big, strapping farm boys walked in. One of them glared at the Jewish boys, and in a loud voice announced that “for a penny, I’d kill a Jew today.”

  Davie went to the cash register and got change for a nickel. He then walked over to the much bigger boy, dropped a penny on the counter in front of him and said, “Fm a Jew, take me on.”

  In a flash, both boys were on the floor, punching, biting and kicking each other. The bigger boy’s friend jumped in, followed by the newsboys, battering each other with their fists and chairs. Blood was everywhere. When it looked like the bigger boys might kill the smaller ones, Davie pulled a knife and the farm boys fled.

  Davie’s friends regarded him with awe. As he put the knife away, he remarked, “You’ve got to use what you have to get by.” This became his lifelong motto.

  He soon discovered that he would never earn the kind of money he wanted by selling papers or working in a shop or store. Looking for another career, he chose gambling. Berman began hanging around the Chicago House Hotel, running errands for local and visiting gamblers. They liked Davie and taught him the tricks of their trade.

  Berman was a good pupil and rapidly mastered the art of rigging and cheating. He learned how to mark cards, to conceal tiny mirrors in the palm of his hand and to use loaded dice in crap games. At fifteen, Davie could beat anyone in Sioux City at pool, poker and shooting dice. Seeing a bright future for himself in his chosen profession, he dropped out of school.

  By the age of sixteen, Davie was working full-time for Sioux City’s gamblers. Because he was tough and good with his fists, they used him as a debt collector. Berman saw his opportunity and took it, putting together a gang of local hoodlums and hiring them out to gamblers. After the boys administered their first few beatings, the mere threat to send Davie and his friends to see someone was enough to get the debts paid.

  Before he was seventeen, Berman had his own apartment and wore fashionable clothes. He was tall, at 5 feet ten inches, lean and with high cheekbones. His friends referred to him as “Dave the Dude.”

  Davie never forgot his parents. He kept them supplied with the finest cuts of kosher meat and a steady supply of fresh fruit and vegetables. He bought his mother beautiful clothes and regularly gave his father money. His parents accepted his generosity.

  When Prohibition came, Berman became a bootlegger. Still a teenager, Davie rode shotgun in the back of cars and trucks transporting illegal booze to and from Iowa.

  Almost every night, lines of black automobiles filled with whiskey moved along Highway 75 north from Sioux City to Winnipeg, Manitoba, in Canada. The trip took three days and hijackings became an almost daily occurrence.

  Between 1922 and 1926, over two hundred Sioux City bootleggers lost their lives in the city’s “Beer Wars.” Berman took part in many of the battles and his reputation as a gunman grew.

  After a year of working for others, Berman became self-employed. By 1921, he operated twenty distillery plants. Using muscle and guns, Berman and his gang absorbed smaller bootlegging enterprises until he commanded the largest bootlegging syndicate in Iowa. Dave protected his operation by paying off the local politicians and police.

  His family still had no idea of what he did for a living. All they knew was that he was in some kind of “business.” Davie’s parents saw less and less of their son, but he still supported them generously. Berman also distributed money to his relatives, and when his sister Lillian married, he paid for a huge and lavish wedding.

  In 1923, just before his twentieth birthday, Berman was caught holding up a poker game at the Grand Hotel in Watertown, South Dakota and was arrested for the first time. He was sentenced to eight months in jail.

  Berman’s parents couldn’t believe it was true. Davie said it was all a mistake and refused to let them visit him in jail. After his release, he returned to Sioux City with his status enhanced.

  In 1925, Berman branched out from bootlegging to robbing banks and post offices, leading an ethnically mixed gang of Irish and Jewish hoodlums. One of the Irish members once described Berman as the bravest man in the gang. “You knew he’d take the rap first if we ever got caught. And Davie was fair,’’ he said. “He carried an equalizer (gun), but nobody ever wanted to push him to use it.’’

  Berman’s technique for robbing a bank or post office was the same. He would take one trusted man with him and drive to a small town far from Sioux City. Arriving at night, he would drive around until he spotted the local law officer. Berman would pretend to have car trouble and when the officer came to help, would capture him. He would then force the policeman to “escort” him to the bank or post office. Once there, Berman broke in with a crowbar or sledgehammer, taking the money and leaving the unfortunate cop tied up inside.

  Robbery proved to be a lucrative sideline. From 1925 to 1926, he stole $ 180,000 in cash from a bank in Laporte, Indiana; $280,000 in bonds from the Northwestern National Bank in Milwaukee; and $80,000 in registered mail from a post office in Superior, Wisconsin. He was never convicted in any of these cases.

  Along the way, Berman acquired notoriety for guts. “If anybody gets arrested or shot,” he said, “It’ll be me first.”

  One of Davie’s bank-robbing pals remembers Berman as being totally unafraid. “I never saw courage like that,” he said. “When he went in, he went in to win. You were safe with him, he wasn’t crazy like some of the guys. He was calm and steady. He was just after the money.

  “Other gangs were afraid of him. He didn’t talk much, but you knew he was smart. I once asked him if he was ever afraid he would be killed. He just smiled, his eyes got kind of cold and he said, ‘When your number’s up, it’s up’.”3

  Davie was also considerate of those he robbed. After the Wisconsin post office heist, the New York Times called Berman “a gentlemen yegg (robber) by his courtesy for his captive.”

  A confederate in one of Berman’s robb
eries remembers a time the gang unexpectedly encountered a night watchman. The men were just putting the money into bags when the watchman appeared holding a gun. “He told us to line up against the wall. Davie walked behind him and kicked the gun out of his hand. He didn’t kill him, just tied him up. We all had our caps pulled way down over our faces. We didn’t want to get no murder rap,” he said. “We just needed the dough.”

  In 1927, Berman ventured to New York to work in a new racket. New York mobsters retained him to kidnap wealthy men engaged in illegal activities and hold them for ransom. Since the men were

  Meyer Lansky

  criminals, they would not readily complain to the police. It seemed like a perfect setup.

  In May 1927, Davie and his associates kidnapped a bootlegger named Abraham Scharlin and held him for $20,000 ransom. A few days later police arrested Berman for the kidnapping in a shootout near Central Park.

  Berman and a co-conspirator, Joe Marcus, were lounging on West 66th Street when they saw two detectives approach. Berman had a pistol tucked in his belt, but a detective grabbed him before he could draw it. Marcus was not so lucky. He drew his gun, but not fast enough. The detective shot him dead.

  The police grilled Berman, but he wouldn’t talk. One of the detectives told him that if he pleaded guilty he would go free. Berman looked at him and said, “Hell, the worst I can get is life.”4

  Dave’s defiance made headlines and New Yorkers loved it. For weeks people went around saying, “Hell, the worst I can get is life.”

  The police finally found Scharlin hidden in Brooklyn, but he refused to identify Berman as the kidnapper. The authorities charged Davie with attempted felonious assault and violation of the Sullivan Law. Berman still kept mum.

  In November 1927, Davie was sentenced to twelve years in Sing Sing. While in prison he developed ulcers that would plague him all his life. The police never found out who Berman’s accomplices were.5