Island of the Damned

by Alix Kirsta

  Chapter Three - Business as Usual

  In the days and weeks following their raid on Welfare Island, Austin MacCormick and David Marcus not only made it a priority to clean up the jail in every sense, but, as importantly, to determine the extent of the mob’s power in running their activities on the island. When MacCormick went on his second inspection round of the cells he was surprised to find himself being loudly cheered by over 1400 rank and file prisoners who had been slowly starving to death and subjected to inhuman conditions while the gangster elite lived in obscene luxury. Realising that these inequities were now at an end and that they were to receive ample and edible food, medical care and a clean-up of their cells, the inmates regarded MacCormick not as their foe but a friend: in the days following the raid, they were prepared to answer his questions and provide him with further information about the rackets.

  On the other hand, when David Marcus interrogated prison staff, he was appalled to discover that far from being regarded as a vicious, power-crazed thug, Rao was held to be a positive influence by some of the authorities. Although Deputy Warden Sheehan and his superior, Warden Joseph McCann, had been stripped of their duties and placed under arrest pending charges, they had to remain temporarily on the island to help investigators with interrogations and further searches. When Marcus questioned McCann about Rao’s activities, he was stunned to be told that Rao was “the most valuable prisoner” on the island, and “better than a deputy warden in preserving order.” As McCann saw it: “Joey Rao is an influence for good in here. He is most affable, tractable and sensible. Whenever trouble was brewing, I would call Rao in and talk the matter over with him, with the result that a short while later everything would be smoothed out”. In his role as gang chieftain, Rao, said McCann, was: “the intelligent one who smoothed out differences whenever there was trouble with his Italian mob, and the rival Irish gang headed by Cleary.”

  Following the raid, Rao and Cleary along with their teams, were placed in solitary confinement. When Marcus visited Rao in his cell, he was struck by the mobster’s low mood and unwillingness to talk. Previously jaunty and insouciant, to the point of cockiness, Rao now appeared exhausted and withdrawn, even depressed. Deciding to speak to him another day, Marcus instead questioned other inmates and keepers, determined to find out which figures of influence and power in New York City - over and above known underworld thugs - had masterminded the Welfare Island rackets. It didn’t take him long to discover that one so-called “higher up”, a prominent politician, was indeed regarded as the ultimate protector of the mob and their rackets, which included the provision of early paroles. The only problem was that no one would identify him.

  None of this came as any surprise to David Marcus. For several years he had heard allegations of a thriving business in the “sale” of early paroles for long term prisoners: now the evidence was emerging. Because of the surrounding publicity, the raid on Welfare Island was all of a sudden encouraging people with inside information to speak out. Reluctant whistle blowers, once too frightened about losing their jobs, were now given a green light. As the President of the New York Prison Association, Edward Cass, revealed to Marcus: “I have heard stories from time to time right here across my desk about money that was paid for early release on parole. The people came here and told me about it. In one instance, a man said he had paid $500 and he involved a member of the city judiciary.” Cass assured Marcus that these were not isolated cases: “Perhaps ten cases have been brought to my attention, but in none of them could I persuade the complainants to sign affidavits that would have enabled me to take action in the matter. They were afraid, in most cases, that something would happen to the man on the inside – that he might have to serve his maximum sentence.”

  Another frustrated whistle blower who broke his silence was Harry Schulman, a former research director for the New York State Crime Commission, who decided to call a press conference to disclose what he knew – and how long it had been going on. According to Schulman, the worst evils uncovered by the raid were already well established two years previously, when he too carried out a lengthy survey of conditions at the prison. The survey was made up of interviews Schulman and his team carried out with 1,000 prisoners. Although Schulman had issued a detailed report to the city authorities about the extent to which gangsters were in control of the jail, no action was taken. At the time of the survey, Schulman said that Joe Rao was already the recognised monarch of Welfare Island. “I personally saw Warden McCann spend a half-hour, on one of his busy days, getting a lot of lemons for Rao in order that Rao might have lemonade,” he told reporters. “The Rao group, in turn for the many favours conferred by the warden, always did the noble thing. When the warden returned from a vacation or from an absence due to illness, they would always decorate his office with flowers. Some of these flowers they grew in Rao’s private greenhouse on the island and some they bought on the outside. But the warden never came back without finding that evidence of their appreciation.”

  Schulman described other gross examples of the trafficking of favours: “I have been in Warden McCann’s office when Joe Rao came in, and seen the warden hand Rao a list containing the marks given to prisoners by the parole board, and ask Rao if they were satisfactory. Rao, in this instance, marched out with the list looking very sour and glum. The warden called after him: ‘Hey, what’s the idea of walking out with that?’ Rao came back with the list and pointed out that some of the men whom he had recommended for parole before Christmas would not get out until March. He was obviously dissatisfied.” In one case, said Schulman, a prisoner told him of a case where an inmate obtained an early release by having members of his family pay a relative of a member of the parole board at the rate of $100 for every month that was cut off his prison time. In another case, a former deputy commissioner of the Department of Correction – employed before Austin MacCormick and David Marcus were appointed – acted as a go-between for the New York City’s district leaders and certain members of the parole board.

  Shulman revealed that the four most important rackets in the prison controlled by Rao and Cleary’s groups, were the traffic in drugs, the trade in stolen food, the distribution of privileges and the sale of inmates’ clothing. “The man assigned to the ‘clothes box’, the place where newcomers shed their civilian garments, would pick out the best clothing and sell it. He would also confiscate anything of value he found in the pockets. Very often prisoners were released in the dead of winter with the thinnest of clothing because their own garments had been sold.” Schulman told reporters, adding that in contrast, Rao and Cleary had valets to press their clothes, polish their shoes, cook their food and wait on them hand and foot as if they were feudal barons. “The average prisoner on the island could recognise the gang leader and prison boss by the sharp crease in his trousers, his polished shoes, the good cigars he smoked and his general bandbox sleekness that bespoke the best of personal attention.”

  When it came to jobs on the island, these had to be purchased by prisoners. “Who got the money? I don’t know. I heard from inmates that men paid from $50 to several hundred dollars for graft jobs,” said Shulman. Gambling was conducted by the “captains” – gangsters who occupied strategic positions in the dormitories and wings of the prison blocks. “They got a ‘cut’ on every play and averaged about $15 a day in cash and in commodities such as cigarettes.” So complete was the gangsters’ control according to Schulman, that they installed their own wiring systems for radio and private telephones. “They used this telephone system to send warnings back to isolated blocks when guards or keepers were approaching.” Schulman also revealed that any orders made to the warden by officers from the headquarters of the Department of Correction were generally ignored. “But on the other hand, as far as I could determine, orders from outside politicians – district leaders and the like – were obeyed with alacrity. There were constant phone calls to the warden from outside. Every time the warden heard that a certain leader was on the wire, he woul
d jump up as if he were shot from a catapult, and run to the phone booth. He took all those calls in the booth.” Schulman quoted a former deputy warden of the prison who had confessed to him: “I am often asked to do things that would make even a hardened prisoner blush.”

  As if on cue, several prominent establishment figures also went public about the longstanding situation on Welfare Island. Joseph Fishman, a respected former deputy commissioner of the Department of Correction, noted for unsuccessfully attempting to reform the prison service, declared that undermanned prison staff had little option but to delegate authority to certain prisoners, relying on them to keep order. “Curiously enough, the worst class of prisoners wields the influence. Men like Rao, bad as they are, have to be used to a certain extent. There should however be a demarcation line, so the prisoner will understand that he is still a prisoner,” said Fishman, who had written an article revealing the full extent of the illegal activities on Welfare Island, published two weeks after the raid in the February 1934 issue of Vanity Fair. Former U.S Attorney George Medalie, for whom David Marcus had previously worked as an assistant, claimed publicly that outside corruption lay at the root of the current crisis: “A major contributing cause to what occurred on Welfare Island was politics. I know from an investigation I made last October, with the connivance of the warden and his assistants, of eminent politicians who used to go to visit prisoners without ever having been recorded. Why did they go there and what was their influence with the warden?”

  Further damning evidence emerged from an unexpected inside source. A Texas newspaper, The San Antonio Light, ran a series of sensational articles by a former New York journalist, Joseph Clark, who had been sent to the workhouse on Welfare Island five years earlier for failing to pay support to his wife and children because he had fallen on hard times.

  “In 1929 I served four months in the workhouse of the prison. Let me tell you, it wasn’t bad. I lived like a king. I saw and did things on Welfare Island that sound like an opium smoker’s wildest dreams,” wrote Clark in his first report. “I went to steak parties in fancily decorated cells where big shot gangsters lived with all the comforts of a high class hotel. I was the pal of Jimmy the Wop, the convict boss of the workhouse who threw a party every night - and cursed some keepers as if they were slaves.”

  A shocking aspect of Clark’s reports is the amount of inhumanity he witnessed among prison staff. “I saw ten prisoners kick another convict into insensibility while a guard stood idly by. I saw six men try to kill themselves by jumping off tiers or slashing their wrists with jagged knives made out of tin scrap. I have seen drunken men reel about a cell block, watched drug addicts hop about the premises, crazy with the white stuff as all prisoners call cocaine. Guards saw all of this. They never did a thing.”

  Clark also admitted, sexual relations between male and female prisoners, including his own relationship with “the most beautiful brunette I have ever seen”, were commonplace while staff turned a blind eye. Nor was there any need to smuggle in booze or drugs Clark explained, because “civilian employees trafficked in booze. Drugs were sold as openly as coffee or tea in a cafeteria. I know that if I was a junkie I could have bought dope more easily on Welfare Island than I could in New York.” Lies and theft seem to have been the order of the day. While working as a bricklayer to build a garage on another part of the island, when the labourers ran out of bricks and cement, the guards ordered Clark to steal a new supply from another building site: the stolen bricks and cement were then paid for by another department. Because many construction workers were alcoholics, bootleggers were attached to the teams to peddle alcohol to addicts throughout the working day. Meanwhile, big shot prisoners lived an easy life said Clark: “Maxie Klein, a big tough ex-pug from the East Side, seemed to be the white haired boy of this end of the prison. Maxie spent all his time lying in the grass in the sun. He was called “the butcher” because he had access to the kitchen and made a good living peddling steaks to other prisoners.”

  In subsequent articles, Clark described serving a second term in 1930 at the institution he described as “New York’s Devil’s Island”. “But this time I was a ‘trustie’..…an OK guy, a big shot, a pampered prisoner who ate and drank the best. I had the best job on the island for six months. I was chief clerk of the recently opened men’s ward in the correction hospital. I lived as we prisoners believed the ‘rich guys’ lived in the apartments across the East River in Manhattan. I quickly got wise to the angles and before long I was either drunk, or half drunk, all the time. I’m not kidding when I say that I saw more drunken men on Welfare Island than I ever did on Broadway which I once covered for police news for a New York newspaper. It was nothing to go wandering around the prison and get invited in for a ‘snifter’ or two by a couple of convicts who had a party in their cells. And some of these guys had the best liquor money could buy. It was brought into the prison by keepers or prison employees.”

  Clark’s experiences suggest that Joey Rao was not the first “overlord” of Welfare Island. “Jimmy the Wop was a tough geezer from the East Side. He looked as handsomely evil as any mobsters in the movies. Jimmy was boss of his dormitory and ruled his section of the workhouse with an iron hand. I saw him arouse and heckle keepers and slug prisoners who dared to disobey his commands .….it was common knowledge that he was the chief drug peddler. It was against prison rules to have money on your person but I saw him with as high as $500 in his possession. His nook in the dormitory was pretty classy. He had a dresser, a mirror and many other comforts. I am not exaggerating when I say he gave a party nearly every night. Steaks – booze – singing. No one ever stopped him.”

  If the New York authorities needed any evidence that Joe Rao’s rule over Welfare Island was not a one-off phenomenon, Clark had supplied it. A thorough review of official records dating back several years also indicated how many early warning signals had been overlooked – or ignored – by their predecessors prior to 1934.

  The most serious event that took place at the prison before the 1934 raid was in 1932, when a prisoner, 36 year-old George Holshoe, was stabbed to death in a brawl which sparked a huge riot at the jail. The murdered man was one of the leaders of a band of Irish prisoners who at that time were locked in an ongoing feud with the Italian gang of prisoners. Joe Rao had arrived at the prison on January 7th 1932, and by October had earned the nickname “the Harlem Terror” being by then a feared leader of the Italian group. On the morning of October 22nd, representatives of the two factions, including George Holshoe and Joseph Bendix from the Irish group, together with Joe Rao, Patsy Cuomo, and Frank Mazzio from the Italian gang, had gone to Warden McCann’s office to discuss their grievances. In the midst of the discussion, Holshoe, who became outraged at a comment made by Frank Mazzio, leapt up and hit him. Rao darted forward trying to intervene and got hit too. A scrum ensued and suddenly a knife appeared and was plunged into Holshoe’s chest just as Warden McCann rushed over to separate the men.

  Crowds of prisoners who had congregated outside McCann’s open office door immediately took sides with the two gangs and began fighting, using their fists, knives, rocks, broken furniture, lead pipes and anything else that came to hand. As Holshoe lay on the ground, dying from deep wounds to the chest and back, the riot escalated. Guards who tried to control the rioters were shoved aside; Warden McCann’s orders to stop were ignored. Word spread to several hundred prisoners exercising outside in the yard: they rushed in and joined the riot. After McCann reported the emergency New York’s police headquarters, more than 350 policemen, armed with machine guns and tear gas bombs were rushed to the island in boats. They managed to corral several hundred rioting convicts and lock the ring leaders into solitary confinement. Three planes circled overhead and a squad of patrol boats surrounded the island to prevent attempts by prisoners to escape by swimming away.

  Although it was impossible to establish who had killed George Holshoe, Joe Rao, as well as Frank Mazzio and Patsy Cuomo, were held for questioning,
since they were in close physical proximity to Holshoe when he was stabbed. The following day, as quiet returned to the jail, the District Attorney’s office in Manhattan started an investigation into Holshoe’s murder. Warden McCann claimed that “racial animosity” between the Irish and Italian prisoners was to blame for the killing and the riot. He absolved Joe Rao of blame for the riot, claiming that all Rao had tried to do was take the role of peacemaker. The real problem, asserted McCann, was overcrowding, since the prison’s maximum capacity was 1,400 but the current number of inmates was 1,642. When asked whether there had been any rivalry over the control of alleged drug trafficking within the prison walls, McCann vehemently denied that any such trafficking existed.

  Having reared its ugly head in 1932, the rumour of drug trafficking would not go away. Within days, a report surfaced stating that Federal agents and New York State officials had received a tip-off about a drug trafficking ring in the prison. The U.S. Attorney George Medalie ordered a searching investigation into conditions at the jail, with particular focus on the riot. “This is a very serious case. This must be a vigorous investigation, not some wishy-washy affair,” announced Medalie, adding that he had been personally told by former inmates that the activities of the drugs ring were probably responsible for the riot. Meanwhile, things were looking bleak for Rao and his friends. The District Attorney’s office ordered evidence surrounding Holshoe’s murder to be presented to a grand jury, the first step in bringing charges of homicide against Rao, Mazzio and Cuomo. Although eighteen witnesses, including Warden McCann, were called to give evidence before the grand jury, and the two assistant D.As in charge of the investigation stated they intended to bring homicide indictments against all three men, the case never came to court.