Confessions of a Second Story Man

by Allen M. Hornblum

  One of the more curious footnotes to this rugged slice of Kensington life was the contribution of the “Hebrew Gladiator,” a tough, hard-nosed professional boxer who was paid to keep order in rowdy Irish taprooms and banish troublemakers. A pint-sized Sherman tank, Marvin “Marvelous Marvin” Edelman was a classy middleweight whose record (34 and 3) earned him a Top 10 ranking in 1952. It was said that a shot in the ribs or kidneys from Marvin was like getting “kicked in the side by a horse.”

  Marvin’s one-punch knockouts are legendary. Jimmy Moran remembers Marvin hitting a bar-room challenger in the ribs and the guy going down for the count. One, or maybe two, of the guy’s ribs had been broken with one shot. Junior Kripplebauer recalls the time Marvin dropped Tommy Seher with a head shot in the aftermath of a truck hijacking. “We had just knocked off a truck hauling $600,000 in Alaskan King Crab,” says Junior, “and had taken the truck to a remote Jersey farm for safekeeping while we sold the stash. A dispute rose between Tommy and Marvin over a sale, and Marvin got pissed and hit him in the head. Knocked Tommy out cold. Normally, I’d have to shoot a guy like that, but we all liked Marvin.”

  Trustworthy, fearless, and skilled with his hands, Edelman was a familiar fixture as doorman and troubleshooter at several popular Kensington night spots in the fifties and sixties. He worked the door of the Shamrock for 10 years and spent another 20 years directing traffic at the Randolph Social Club. Because he was a Jew and a prominent professional prizefighter, Edelman was often the target of drunken tough guys looking to make a name for themselves. Their challenges were invariably unsuccessful. Even Charlie Devlin knew better than to test him. Those who did, like Frankie Wetzel and Leo Gillis, regretted it.

  “I had to knock out a guy a night for the first fuckin’ year,” says Edelman of those early days on the job. The recurring bar-room challenges were of no great concern: after confronting the likes of Tiger Jones in the ring, untrained, inebriated Irishmen were a minor threat. Fighting at the Cambria gym, a local Kensington Avenue blood pit, Edelman had grown used to the catcalls, the ridicule, and the rowdy patrons’ desire to see the Hebrew Gladiator get his butt handed to him. “I used to pack the place,” says Edelman with an amused chuckle. “They came to see the Jew get beat.” But he never did and thereby gained quite a following. If there was anything blue collar Kensington stevedores and roofers valued, it was toughness, and Marvin was tough. He may have been a Jew, but he was a tough Jew.

  HE COULD OCCASIONALLY be seen on an old rocking chair in the back of a bar at Front and South Streets like a weary old working-class Buddha, but his pensive exterior belied his many death-defying exploits over the years. Even most of the K&A regulars who brought him swag to move each week probably didn’t realize the full extent of “Bones” Gales’s criminal career. For them, he was just another Kensington fixture, a dependable, harmless old-timer, a fence who took their jewelry, furs, and silver tea sets with no questions asked. In fact, Edwin “Bones” Gale was a throwback to another era, to the roaring ’20s and bloody ’30s, when kidnappings for profit and mass murder by warring gangs were commonplace.

  A gambler, numbers writer, burglar, bank robber, stickup man, leg-breaker, fence, and prison road-gang escape artist, Bones Gale had seen and done it all. In fact, there wasn’t much in the catalogue of criminal activity that Bones hadn’t done. Six feet tall, 230 pounds, Gale was a big man, a tough guy, a “muscle man,” and a criminal “kingpin,” as the cops liked to say. First incarcerated in New York City at the age of 14, Bones spent a good portion of his teenage years learning the ropes in Montgomery County Prison, Huntingdon Reformatory, and Eastern State Penitentiary. He was serving an eight-to 12-year term for armed robbery on a Georgia chain gang before he was out of his teens. Brutal country roadwork under a blazing sun and the ominous eye of callous guards on horseback had little appeal for him, so he escaped—not once, but three times.

  Back in Philadelphia, he became involved in everything from illegal lotteries and burglary to gambling and armed robbery. A stickup at the Two Pines Inn in Media, Pennsylvania, resulted in chaos and mayhem; the establishment’s orchestra leader had his leg blown off by a shotgun blast.

  Gale was famous as the sole surviving member of the notorious Mais-Legenza Gang, a particularly violent crew of gunmen from the early 1930s who unceremoniously disposed of bullet-riddled bodies up and down the East Coast. Also known as the “Tri-State Mob,” the gang had once kidnapped Willie “Big Nose” Weiss, a Philadelphia racketeer, and demanded $50,000 from his family for his safe return. After receiving an initial payment of $8,000, the gang decided to abort the scheme, but not before putting two bullets into Weiss’s head and throwing him off a Neshaminy Creek bridge. Caught in Manhattan by an army of sub-machinegun-toting Philadelphia and New York City policemen, Robert Mais and Walter Legenza hoped to be brought back to Philadelphia for the Weiss murder, but the state of Virginia—where they had already been convicted of murder and sentenced to die in the electric chair—had first dibs on them.

  Gale managed to avoid the chair, and the experience caused no soul-searching turnabout in his professional life. He remained an enterprising criminal who would be arrested over two dozen times (everything from drunken driving to knifing an adversary) and was suspected of doing some of the biggest contract hits in Philadelphia. Eventually, up-and-coming Kensington burglars of the 1960s came to know him not as an archcriminal, but as a friendly, reliable neighborhood swag dealer. “He sat in a small office at Front and York Streets,” recalls one regular patron, “and chain-smoked and drank all day long while reminiscing about the old days. The old guy had a million stories.”

  “AS FAR AS I’M CONCERNED, Jackie Johnson is the classic example of a standup guy. The cops, the DA, the prison wardens—they all punished him beyond belief, but the guy never wavered, never showed weakness, never cracked. There’s no doubt about it, Jack’s the poster boy for someone with a standup reputation.”

  The heartfelt praise for a fellow crew member is typical of the universal respect accorded Jackie Johnson by Philly burglars. The tribute should not be taken lightly. If there was a stepladder of community values in Kensington’s criminal milieu, the highest rung was reserved for “standup guys,” those men who never broke under police pressure, never cooperated with legal authorities, and never rolled over on a partner. “Tough guy” and “moneymaker” were also neighborhood terms of honor, but the highest accolade was reserved for those who “kept their mouth shut” and “never talked.” As one believer said, it wasn’t just important—“it was everything.”

  “It was a big thing when we were growing up in the forties and fifties,” says Jim Moran of the community standard. “You didn’t tell the cops anything, especially if it was going to jeopardize other people. You don’t tell the man anything. You never ratted on anybody. It was very serious stuff; people who talked were highly ostracized and often given a good beating.”

  The notion of keeping silent and keeping the police at arms length was instilled in Kensingtonians at an early age. “From the day you were born it was bred into you,” adds Kensington native George Holmes. “It was part of the Kensington mentality; it was a great honor to be known as a standup guy. It meant always doing the right thing. If you ratted to the cops, you were a rat, and people treated you like a rat.”

  In a neighborhood that also honored its tough guys, it is interesting how few of them were accorded the “standup” designation. Being a feared street fighter wasn’t necessarily equivalent to being a standup guy. Willie Sears, Joey Cooper Smith, and Charlie Devlin were infamous street fighters who were given a wide berth, but few in Kensington considered them standup guys. They were all suspected at one time or another of “going bad” or “going south” on their partners. As Jim Moran says, “Some of the strongest guys couldn’t handle prison and rolled over. They didn’t become neighborhood patsies, because they could fight, but nobody saw them as standup guys.” Cooper Smith, especially, was a known rat who would do anything—inc
luding inform on his partners—to stay out of prison. He was physically formidable, but the prospect of doing time humbled and weakened him. Yet some little guys with no reputation as tough guy were psychologically strong and could do the time. They earned people’s respect and were the ones “everyone wanted to work with.”

  Jackie Johnson was one of those guys. Five-foot-eight and 145 pounds soaking wet, Jack had a healthy head of dark hair and a penchant for dry, witty repartee. He talked out of one side of his mouth, reserving the other side for the nonstop intake of Budweiser. Johnson met Effie Burke in the 197 Bar in the late fifties and immediately became a cornerstone of an elite burglary crew. Though he occasionally came to work drunk, no one had to worry about Johnson spilling his guts to the cops if he was caught on the job. His partners slept tight at night, knowing Jack would never give them up, regardless of the physical or psychological pressure he was under.

  The Devlin murder and the Holmesburg Prison riot of 1970 illustrate Jack’s standup character. On February 27, 1969, the body of Charlie Devlin was found on Luzerne Street, stuffed between two steel pillars under the Second Street overpass. Dressed in a “rumpled blue suit and white shirt, the badly bruised and battered corpse” was initially thought by police to have been a victim of a hit-and-run automobile accident. On autopsy, two bullet holes were discovered on the right side of the head. Devlin had been killed execution style somewhere else, and his body had been moved to the Luzerne Street site to make his death look like a traffic accident.

  Police were faced with an endless array of suspects: Devlin had terrorized the neighborhood for years, cops as well as private citizens. Just a month earlier he had been arrested for assault and battery on a police officer. It was said that spontaneous celebrations broke out in bars all over Kensington as word spread of his demise.

  The first lead came with the discovery of Devlin’s 1961 Pontiac station wagon in a driveway near “A” Street and Roosevelt Boulevard, the home of Jackie Johnson. Johnson, 34, had over a dozen arrests dating back to 1957. An alcoholic with a soft heart, Johnson was widely known for drinking away the hours at various Kensington bars while giving fives, tens, and twenties to local residents down on their luck, but he wasn’t known for being physically aggressive. At the time of the murder, he was on probation for a prior burglary.

  Cops, prosecutors, and judges thought they had discovered the weak link in the conspiracy. They knew Devlin had been killed in Johnson’s home. An informant had told them that Johnson was one of six or seven people in the house at the time of the murder. Ray Brahm, another burglar, was fingered as the actual shooter, but the government’s informant was shaky; his testimony needed backup. The authorities figured that Jack Johnson was their man. They figured wrong.

  Johnson was brought down to police headquarters and the district attorney’s office numerous times to hear a laundry list of threats and deals, but he refused to cooperate. He claimed he wasn’t in the house at the time of the murder and didn’t know a thing. Prosecutors threatened to revoke his probation and have a judge re-sentence him to a lengthy prison term if he didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear. Johnson maintained his silence.

  “Back then,” says Johnson, “you were ostracized if you ratted on somebody. Police informants had to hang with each other ’cause nobody else would deal with them. There weren’t many around. If I had talked, I’d have to go against everything I believed in. I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it.”

  Though they knew he wasn’t the shooter, Johnson was given eight to 20 years for a relatively minor prior conviction for which he had originally received probation. The new sentence would be vacated, he was told, as soon as he decided to cooperate. Even after Ray Brahm was tried for Devlin’s murder in December 1970 (he was acquitted), the authorities kept the heat on Johnson. Periodically shipping him from one state prison to another in order to make his life more difficult (“diesel therapy”), they continued to inform his attorneys that the deal was still open—Johnson talks and he walks. Jackie Johnson “could have walked out of prison any day” over the next 10 years, but he maintained his silence.

  Even more than the Devlin case, perhaps, the Holmesburg Prison riot of July 4, 1970, underscored Johnson’s commitment to noncooperation with the police. In the summer of 1970, radical blacks and members of the Black Muslims instigated a riot in the prison dining hall. Unprepared and outnumbered, white prisoners were beaten and knifed at will while guards and other inmates scattered for their lives. Cries of “Kill Whitey” and “Death to all honkies” reverberated throughout the chow hall as the few dozen white prisoners tried to hold off several hundred black prisoners who had invaded the scullery and gained access to an assortment of kitchen knives, meat cleavers, and heavy, bone-crushing mallets.

  When Philadelphia police under the forceful leadership of Frank Rizzo regained control of the institution many hours later, scores of inmates required hospitalization. Jackie Johnson was one of them, stabbed nine times, his wrist broken, and his scalp torn open by a meat cleaver. In the riot’s aftermath, city police and prosecutors from the district attorney’s office went from cell to cell, methodically interviewing witnesses and victims. They were determined to prosecute all those involved in planning and participating in the bloody disturbance. A number of inmates testified in court against the riot’s ringleaders, but Johnson wasn’t one of them.

  Though labeled “Exhibit A” by prosecutors and pressured to testify, Johnson remained adamant. He refused to provide any assistance to the authorities. He left no doubt how he felt, saying to prosecutors: “Let me tell you something. If you bring me down to court and say I was hit by this guy or that guy, I can assure you that I’m gonna say that’s the wrong guy. I’m gonna tell everyone he’s not the one who stabbed me.”

  Investigators were stunned. They couldn’t believe that a white guy who had nearly been killed by radical black separatists would not relish the opportunity to get back at his tormentors. They knew there was no love lost between the Irish burglar and the Muslims, but Jack wouldn’t budge. Encouraged by cellmates and pressured by authorities, Jackie Johnson maintained his lifelong principle of never assisting “the man.”

  HE SCAMPERED ACROSS backyards and hurdled fence posts like an Olympic decathlon champion, and his ability to scale the sides of commercial and residential buildings reminded some of a hungry chimpanzee foraging for food, but what Marty Bell really was, was a consummate second story man. Small, swift, and wiry, Bell was a gifted athlete who chose breaking into homes over pole vaulting and the long jump as vocational interests. No structure could resist Bell’s reflexes, speed, and primate-like climbing ability.

  “Nobody could catch me,” says Bell. “I was quick and I could climb. I could enter a home or building from any floor. Even if the cops were onto me, they could never catch me. I was the best at scaling walls and fences. The cops once had me pinned by an eight-foot wall. They had chased me through an alley and thought they had finally cornered me. They fired six shots at me, but I hopped that wall in a second and got away.”

  Marty Bell was from an Irish-Italian family that resided in Frankford, an old Philadelphia neighborhood just a mile or so north of Kensington. His formal education ended after a two-day stint in ninth grade. A year earlier, a painful sixth-month stretch at Daniel Boone, a disciplinary school for troubled youths, had soured him on school. Life on the streets, however, presented a far more enticing educational prospect.

  “I started to hang with all the guys,” says Bell, “and learned the business. Burglary was the thing everybody was into, and I learned from some of the best. I learned safe work from the older guys and became pretty good at it. They taught me everything. I kept five or six safe boxes in my basement and would practice with them. The first time I did one on a job, it was a big eight-foot double-door safe in a clothing store on Frankford Avenue.”

  Though he never worked with the more elite crews, he still did well, his best score being a $25,000 heist from another Frankfor
d Avenue business. Celebrating such achievements, Marty made the customary rounds of popular drinking establishments. It wasn’t unusual for Bell himself to become the evening’s entertainment. Rather than a dramatic rendition of “Danny Boy,” however, the performance piece would be a 60-yard dash. The JR Club, in particular, always “a den of thieves and pirates,” would instantly be transformed into a frenetic betting parlor while contestants and customers assembled on Frankford Avenue for the impromptu track and field competition.

  “Guys would come from all over the city to challenge Marty,” recalls one bar patron. “I don’t think he ever lost. He was fast as hell. Sometimes he’d even challenge them to a race where he’d run backwards while they ran forwards. Dozens of people would empty out onto the street and watch the guys race under the Frankford El. Marty would be in a suit and tie and he’d be running backwards. It was the funniest thing you ever saw, but he’d still win. He’d beat them running backwards. Nobody could beat him.”

  BESIDES ITS STREET FIGHTERS, criminals who could keep their mouths shut, and athletic crooks, Kensington’s vast collection of Runyonesque characters included noncombatants and noncriminals as well. Joe Doc was a lovable, good-natured bar-room denizen whose affability was much admired. Fairly early in life, Joe abandoned his considerable potential for a comfortable bar stool. Raised on Wishart Street just a block away from Kensington and Allegheny Avenues, Joe Dougherty spent his youth like many other neighborhood kids and eventually made the obligatory pilgrimage to Holmesburg Prison. But as time passed his interests gradually narrowed down to consuming as much alcohol as possible.

  “Each morning,” says Jim Moran, “Joe Doc’s mother would send him out clean-shaven and in a clean, pressed shirt. She’d give him a pack of cigarettes and a one-dollar bill and he’d head over to the Crescent Bar at Front and Allegheny. He’d probably have his first beer around lunchtime and proceed to spend the rest of the day there. He just spent the whole day drinking at the Crescent, the 192 Bar, or Nino’s. Beers were only 10 cents back then, so a dollar went a long way, but everybody loved Joe and they’d buy him beers and often give him money. In fact, he’d sometimes come home at night with more money than he started the day with.