Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set

by Bruno, Joe

  At this point in time, Goldstein and Helen were experiencing their first few days of married bliss in the Catskills. Capone (no relation to Al Capone) contacted Pretty Levine and told him, “Go up to Loch Sheldrake in the mountains, where Pep is staying to do some work. Pep will tell you.”

  Levine jumped into a car with another Murder Inc. operative named Dukey Maffetore, and they drove to the Catskills where they located Strauss and two more Murder Inc. killers, Mikey Syckoff and Jack Cutler. Strauss knew, since his face and reputation were well-known to Goldstein, he could not be in on the snatch. But Goldstein had never met Levine, Syckoff, or Cutler, so Strauss told them what to do.

  “Just snatch the bum and bring him here,” Strauss told them. “Don't knock him off.”

  At approximately 9 p.m. on August 3, 1936, Goldstein received a phone call in the honeymoon cottage he was sharing with wife, Helen. Even though Goldstein was dressed to the nines, as was Helen for that night's dance, whatever the caller told Goldstein was enough for him to leave the side of his lovely bride for what he thought would only be a few minutes at most. At least, that's what Goldstein told Helen.

  Helen spotted a car driving up to the cottage with three men sitting inside. She watched as her husband got into the back seat next to Levine.

  Within a few seconds, Levine had laid Goldstein out cold with a hammer. Soon, the three men deposited Goldstein at Strauss's lakeside cottage, where Strauss personally killed Goldstein, tied him up with rope, and wrapped him in a blanket.

  The men then dragged Goldstein's dead body to the lake's shore, where Tannenbaum and Jack Drucker, another Murder Inc. operative, were waiting in a rowboat. The two men rowed out to the deepest part of the lake and dropped Goldstein's body into the drink.

  In cases like this, it was quite unusual for a man like Strauss to order the murder victim be brought to him alive so that Strauss could finish him off personally. But this was personal to Strauss, not just business. Goldstein had been Evelyn's boyfriend, and Strauss liked it better when Evelyn's ex-boyfriends were quite dead. Not that Strauss feared Evelyn would ever go back to Goldstein, but why not eliminate the possibility anyway?

  Chalk up Goldstein as Evelyn Mittelman's dead boyfriend No. 3.

  The next five years passed by without any more of Evelyn’s boyfriends or ex-boyfriends turning up dead. Evelyn was quite devoted to Strauss, so much so, to please Strauss, she dyed her beautiful blond hair to raven brunette.

  In 1940, Strauss was arrested on information given to the Feds by Abe “Kid Twist” Reles. District Attorney Burton Turkus had enough evidence to implicate Strauss in at least six murders, but the most solid case Turkus had on Strauss was the murder of a nobody named Puggy Feinstein, who was rumored to have been taking book in Brooklyn without the proper permission.

  While Strauss stewed in jail, he received repeated visits by a woman described by Turkus as “a striking brunette” who signed herself in as Strauss's sister, “Eve.”

  Turkus and his crew noticed absolutely no family resemblance between Strauss and “Eve,” so on her next visit, they picked her up and found out that “Eve” was none other than Evelyn Mittelman. At the time of her arrest, Evelyn was wearing three diamond rings and a diamond bracelet.

  “Pep (Strauss) gave them to me,” Evelyn told Turkus. Then she said something so remarkably stupid, Turkus couldn't believe his ears. “And I have several more trinkets like this in a bank vault.”

  Turkus checked, and sure enough, there was enough jewelry in her safety deposit box to open up a small jewelry store.

  Turkus immediately held Evelyn as a material witness, with bail set at $50,000, and he commenced getting as much information out of her as he could. However, Evelyn immediately lawyered up and subsequently clammed up. Turkus figured, with all she knew about Strauss and his pals at Murder Incorporated, she was as good as dead if she were set free on the mean streets of Brooklyn.

  At her bail hearing, Evelyn’s lawyer, who was provided by Murder Inc., argued fiercely for a bail reduction so that she could be released.

  “She's a good decent girl,” her lawyer told the judge.

  Turkus countered with, “She knows all there is to know about how the Syndicate works.”

  Her lawyer then said, “Can't your honor conceive that this young lady, even though she may be the sweetheart of this man, might be the one person in the whole world who would know nothing at all of what he is doing?”

  The judge said he could conceive of no such thing, so Evelyn's bail stood at $50,000. No one rushed to put up the money to get her out, so Evelyn stayed in jail for six weeks while Turkus cemented his case against Strauss.

  As Strauss's trial neared, Evelyn realized that the only way she could save her man was to convince Strauss to do what Reles had done before, become an informant. Evelyn asked Turkus for permission to speak to Strauss to try to convince him to turn canary. Amazingly, Strauss agreed to do just that, on one condition: “I got to walk out clean.”

  Turkus knew it was impossible to set a man free after he had committed as many as 50-100 murders, so Strauss's offer to sing was rejected.

  During Strauss's trial, he acted like a lunatic. Strauss refused to shave and he came into court with a long, scraggly beard, looking like a bum on the Bowery. Strauss even went so far as to chew on his lawyer's briefcase straps, without salt.

  But it was all to no avail.

  Strauss was found guilty of the murder of Puggy Feinstein, whom Strauss set on fire after he strangled him to death. (Turkus said he could have tried Strauss and have him found guilty of at least six other murders). As a result, Strauss was sentenced to sit in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison.

  On June 12, 1941, the day of his execution, Strauss's last visitor was Evelyn Mittelman. Evelyn kissed Strauss goodbye, and soon he was dead too.

  As a result, Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss became the fourth and final victim of “The Kiss of Death” - Evelyn Mittelman.

  As far as we can determine.

  Old Brewery

  It was called the “most decadent building ever built,” and there is no doubt the Old Brewery, located in the Five Points area of Lower Manhattan, was the quintessential den of iniquity.

  The Old Brewery was originally what the name implies: a brewery, built by Isaac Coulthard, just southeast of a body of fresh water called the Collect Pond. After more than a hundred years of being polluted by various industrial enterprises, including Coulthard's Brewery, Collect Pond was filled in during the time period of 1811-1812. New streets sprung up on the former body of water, and other existing streets were extended onto it.

  By 1812, Cross Street (then Park Street and now Mosco Street) passed in front of the Coulthard's Brewery, and Orange Street (now Baxter Street) intersected Cross just north of the brewery. At the intersection of Cross and Orange, Anthony Street originated, and soon two more streets intersected at this very point: Mulberry Street and Little Water Street (which no longer exists). This became the notorious area known as the Five Points, and Coulthard's Brewery was the hub.

  After the Financial Panic of 1837, during which 363 United States banks closed and thousands of businesses fell into financial ruin, Coulthard's Brewery went out of business. It was converted into a tenement building and renamed the Old Brewery.

  The Old Brewery, which was partitioned off into more than 100 small rooms housing more than 1,000 people, was five stories high, but only the top three floors had windows. Most rooms had no sunlight and fresh air, and some of the babies born there did not see the light of day until they were in their teens. The outside of the building was originally painted bright yellow, but by the time it had been converted into a tenement, the outside walls were peeling and now had a sickly greenish color, looking like an old dragon ready to die.

  There was a narrow three-foot-wide alley on the south side of the building, which narrowed even further until it ended at a large first-floor room called the “Den of Thieves.” More than 75 men, woman, and chi
ldren lived in the Den of Thieves, without furniture or any conveniences whatsoever. The women were mostly prostitutes, and they entertained their customers in this large room in full view of everyone who occupied the room with them.

  The cellar, which formerly stored brewery machinery, was converted into 20 small rooms, occupied by black men with their wives, who were mostly white. In one basement room about 15-feet-square, 26 people lived under conditions that can best be described as misery and squalor.

  One day, a little girl was stabbed to death in the cellar, after it was discovered she was in the possession of a bright-new penny. The girl's dead body lay in a corner for five days before her mother buried her in a shallow grave in the floor.

  On the top three floors, which were occupied by Irish-Catholics, ran a long corridor aptly named “Murderer's Alley.” Along Murderer's Alley there were 75 rooms, occupied by murderers, thieves, pickpockets, prostitutes, and degenerates of every type known to man. Incest was common, and fights were a constant occurrence.

  During every hour of the day there was some sort of disturbance going on in Murderer's Alley. Victims, who had been lured into the brewery with the promise of booze, or sex, or both, were killed and stuffed into the walls or under the floorboards. It was estimated that during the last 15 years of its existence, at least one murder a night was committed in the Old Brewery.

  Things were so dangerous, if only a handful of policeman entered the brewery to quell a disturbance, they were instantly attacked and killed, and their clothes stolen, before their bodies were buried in some small crevice in Murderer's Alley. As a result, when the police did storm the building, they came in full force of 50-75 men, armed with clubs, bats, knives, and guns.

  Just as it was dangerous for people to enter the building, it was just as dangerous for the building's inhabitants to venture outside into the fresh air. The denizens of the Old Brewery were so hated and feared by the general public, any human who walked out the front door of the brewery was immediately pelted with stones and hit with bats. This caused people who wanted to leave the brewery to do so through a maze of tunnels that snaked throughout the Five Points area.

  As outlandish as it might seem, some of the inhabitants of the Old Brewery had once been prosperous people of some importance. The Financial Panic of 1837 had something to do with that, but mostly people, who knew better, sank to the level of the slime-balls who surrounded them. It was rumored that the last of the Blennerhassetts, the second son of Harman Blennerhassett, who conspired with Aaron Burr to form a Western dictatorship, died in the Old Brewery, as did other families of a higher calling. They decided of their own free will that they would spend their last days entrenched in the violence, insanity, drunkenness, and promiscuity which was the daily way of life in the brewery.

  The churches of that time voiced great distress at the goings-on in the brewery. However, they were unable to make a dent in the brewery's myriad problems because those churches were mostly Presbyterian, while the inhabitants of the brewery were overwhelmingly Irish-Catholics, who detested the Protestants due to the prosecution of Catholics in Ireland where most of these wretched people were born.

  In 1840, a Congregational Church called the Broadway Tabernacle was built on Broadway near Anthony Street, just a short walk from the brewery. Although many attempts were made to do humanitarian social work at the brewery, nothing of consequence was ever accomplished.

  In 1850, the Ladies Home Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church sent the Rev. Lewis Morris Pease into the Five Points, along with his wife, to open a mission on Cross Street near the brewery. Pease was considered one of the great humanitarians of his time. But soon he realized that the ills in the brewery could not be combated unless the conditions that caused the crime, vice, and poverty were eliminated.

  Pease started schools for both adults and children, and he also established work rooms in the brewery where clothing manufacturers sent clothing materials, so that Pease and his wife could manufacture decent clothes for the brewery inhabitants. This did not please the Ladies Home Missionary Society, which insisted that preaching the word of God was Pease's job, not getting involved with worldly activities.

  A year into his work at the Old Brewery, Pease was replaced by the Reverend J. Luckey, a noted evangelist. Pease was let go was because a group of ladies from the Ladies Home Missionary Society visited Pease's mission and discovered, that since Pease and his wife were so busy manufacturing clothes for the poor, Pease had not given a religious sermon in more than two days. However, Luckey fared no better than Pease, and it was decided that in order for the misery and decadence to end, the brewery had to be razed to the ground and replaced by a church.

  In 1852, the Ladies Home Missionary Society, with money raised from a group of philanthropists headed by Daniel Drew, bought the Old Brewery. The purchase price was $16,000, and the city of New York contributed $1,000 to the purchase. On December 1, 1852, the Ladies Home Missionary Society asked the police to raid the brewery and evict the wretched people still living there. Scores of armed policemen stormed inside, and numerous vicious battles at close quarters occurred.

  By the end of the day, the police had arrested 20 known murderers. Children, who had never seen sunlight, blinked in terror as they were led from the building by the police.

  The next day, the demolition of the Old Brewery commenced.

  As the building was being torn down, laborers were seen carrying copious sacks of human bones that had been found inside the walls, underneath the floorboards, and underneath the cellar. In the next few days, dozens of gang members raided the premises looking for buried treasure they heard had been hidden there.

  Yet, nothing of value was ever found.

  It cost $36,000 to build, and on January 27, 1853, Bishop Jones laid the cornerstone of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which was now on the site of the Old Brewery.

  The City of New York rejoiced at the demolition of the Old Brewery and the creation of the church.

  The Reverend Thomas Fitz Mercein was so moved, he wrote a poem celebrating the occasion.

  It said:

  God knows it's time thy walls are going!

  Through every stone

  Lifeblood, as through a heart, is flowing:

  Murmurs a smothered groan

  Long years the cup of poison filling

  From leaves of gall;

  Long years a darker cup distilling

  From withered hearts that fall!

  O! this world is stern and dreary,

  Everywhere they roam;

  God! Hast thou never called the weary

  Have they in thee no home?

  Foul haunt! A glorious resurrection,

  Springs from thy grave!

  Faith, hope and purified affection,

  Praising the “Strong to save!”

  God bless the love that, like an angel,

  Flies to each call,

  Till every lip hath this evangel,

  “Christ pleaded for us all!”

  Oh! This world is stern and dreary,

  Everywhere they roam;

  Praise God! A voice has called the weary,

  In thee has found a home!

  Satan's Circus

  At the end of the Civil War, New York City was a den of iniquity, with prostitution as common as warm beer in a cold dive.

  Although flesh-peddling was available on the Lower East and West Sides of Manhattan, the most prolific area of prostitution was called Satan's Circus, which was the area between 24th and 40th Streets, and between Fifth and Seventh Avenues. The “Main Street” of Satan's Circus was Broadway between 23rd and 42nd Streets, which was then known as “The Line.” Satan's Circus later became part of a larger tract of decadence known as “The Tenderloin,” which was also infamous for its grifters and numerous gambling dens.

  In the 1890s, after Tom Edison electrified New York City, that stretch of Broadway in the Tenderloin, because of the numerous lighted advertising signs promi
nent on the streets, was called “The Great White Way.” In the early 1900s, when the theater district moved uptown, the “Great White Way's” name was conveyed to the area on Broadway above Times Square.

  After the Civil War, the New York City police were greatly demoralized; destroyed by corruption within their own ranks and by a Tammany Hall political system that reeked of graft. As a result, the police spent very little time actually policing Satan's Circus. In fact, there is great evidence that the police themselves profited from the prostitution houses by getting weekly cuts from the proceeds.

  John A. Kennedy, the Superintendent of Police in New York City, was one of the few New York City cops not on the take. During the Civil War Riots of 1863, Kennedy was almost beaten to death when he tried to step in and personally stop the riots. The angry crowd descended upon Kennedy, pummeling him unmercifully. Kennedy was saved only because a sympathetic passerby witnessed his beating and told the angry crowd that Kennedy was already dead.

  Kennedy tried as hard as he could to diminish the bordello epidemic in Satan's Circus, but he was overwhelmed by the noncooperation of his cops and by the direct intervention of the powers that be at Tammany Hall. The simple fact was, as soon as Kennedy ordered a bordello closed and its occupants arrested, the dirty politicians stepped in. The very next day, the bordello was back open and its employees dutifully back at work.

  In 1866, Kennedy released a report to Bishop Simpson of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who lorded over 20,000 parishioners. Bishop Simpson had made a sermon in which he said there were more prostitutes in New York City than he had parishioners. Kennedy rebutted Bishop Simpson’s statement by saying his police records showed that there were “3,300 prostitutes in New York City, working in 621 bordellos and 99 hotels. This figure also included 747 waiter girls employed in concert saloons and dance halls.”