Island of the Damned

by Alix Kirsta

  From the outset, Hines delivered without fail. If ever a Schultz employee faced criminal charges, his case was adjourned until Hines arranged for it to be heard by one of his two “tame” magistrates, Judge Francis Erwin and Judge Hulon Capshaw, who would dismiss the cases or issue a modest fine. On one occasion Weinberg was in a restaurant with Hines when they bumped into Judge Capshaw. When Hines mentioned that he had “a very important policy case” coming up in front of him, asking Capshaw “would you be able to handle it for me?” The magistrate promptly nodded, saying: “I have never failed you yet. I will take care of it.”

  Only a word was needed from Hines for heads to roll, especially in the New York police department. When “Boss” John Curry, the retired former leader of Tammany Hall gave evidence, he revealed a standard procedure for dealing with police who cautioned or arrested too many of Schultz’s associates. First, George Weinberg would call Hines, complaining about those policemen’s behaviour. Then, Hines phoned Curry, identifying the troublesome officers. Curry rang the Police Commissioner asking for those men to be taken off their beat, and the commissioner forwarded the message to their commanding officers. Even senior detectives, some with distinguished arrest records, were demoted and transferred to a “safe” beat. As the weeks progressed, it became clear that Hines was the orchestrator of the whole conspiracy. After Hines went onto Schultz’s payroll, the arrest record in one police division which had been as high as about twenty per day, dropped instantly to eight, and sometimes only four a day. By the end of 1932, arrests were few and far between.

  The extent of Hines’s power was also clear during the 1933 election of Thomas Dewey’s predecessor, former New York district attorney, William Dodge. That year, when it seemed possible the next New York mayor might be Fiorello La Guardia, enemy of all organised crime, Dutch Schultz began to fret about not having “the right kind of guys in high office in town.” Weinberg recalled Schultz saying to him: “we have to concentrate on the D.A more than anything else.” Again, Hines proved to be Schultz’s saviour, assuring him that William Dodge, a former magistrate, was the man for the job. As Hines reportedly told George Weinberg: “I want William Dodge because he is stupid, respectable and my man.” At the trial, Dixie Davis testified that when Hines informed him he was going to put recommend Dodge as the next district attorney, Davis thought it was a bad idea. “I told Hines, ‘Dodge is stupid, he doesn’t know what it’s all about, and he would be harmful to us because of his stupidity,’” said Davis, to which Hines replied: “I wouldn’t worry about it. I can handle him”. It was Schultz’s money that paid largely for Dodge’s campaign. According to Weinberg, he was once asked to deliver $3,000 for the campaign at the office of Hines’s lawyer. Hines turned to Dodge, sitting with him in the office, and said: “Do you know George? This is one of Dutch Schultz’s boys. This is where I am getting the money for your campaign.” Dodge grinned and shook Weinberg’s hand with obvious gratitude. Dodge’s campaign manager later confirmed in court that he had received up to $30,000 from Schultz’s organisation.

  Another staggering revelation was Dixie Davis’s admission that Hines insisted D.A Dodge quash the 1935 grand jury investigation into Schultz’s rackets. This ultimately led the grand jury to demand the appointment of Thomas Dewey as Special Prosecutor. Dixie Davis admitted telling Hines that Dewey’s appointment was to be avoided at all costs. “I knew Dewey was a bad guy from our standpoint. I went to see Hines at his country home and said to him: ‘Dewey will destroy us all.’ I urged him to go and see Dodge and see if he could stop the appointment.” Hines agreed immediately, promising “I will see what I can do.” It was the first time Hines failed to deliver.

  The Hines trial was a major political sensation. Thousands of New Yorkers thronged the streets in front of Lower Manhattan’s Supreme Court Building, and the proceedings made daily headlines. The drama was long and tense. After many weeks of astonishing evidence, in September the judge declared a mistrial on a technicality and the trial ended. Another trial was scheduled for January 1939, but on the first day, George Weinberg, Thomas Dewey’s star witness, stole a gun from one of the officers who was guarding him and other defendants at a house in White Plains, and blew his brains out. For several days it seemed as if without Weinberg’s crucial evidence Dewey might lose his case, until it was agreed that Weinberg’s testimony given in the first trial could be read out in court. As the second trial progressed, in a surprise move Dewey called Dutch Schultz’s widow, 24 year-old Frances Flegenheimer to the stand. She confirmed she had often met Hines in the company of her husband, sometimes in public restaurants, and that the two men had a close relationship. At times, her husband told her to “forget about seeing Jimmy Hines in here tonight.” Finally, in March 1939 after only seven hours deliberation, the jury found Hines guilty on all thirteen charges. On March 23rd, he was sentenced to four to eight years imprisonment, and after losing his appeal, served just over four years of his term in Sing Sing. He was released on parole in 1944 and lived in relative obscurity with his wife at their home in Long Island, where he died of natural causes in 1957, aged eighty. The Hines conviction dealt the Tammany tiger a crippling blow. Symbolically, good had won over evil and incorrupt government was seen to triumph over bad. New Yorkers again began to feel they could hold their heads up, as the city turned over a new page.

  *

  The removal of Jimmy Hines, New York’s most powerful “Mr Fixit” and of Lucky Luciano, with whom Welfare Island monarch Joe Rao had also built up a lucrative partnership, left the underworld in disarray. Hines’s imprisonment deprived gangland of its most influential and enthusiastic mediator, and Thomas Dewey’s triumphant crackdown on organised crime proved a significant setback for most of the big-time 1920s and 1930s racketeers. Gangsters, including the celebrated gang, Murder Inc., who had succeeded in preventing Dutch Schultz from assassinating Thomas Dewey, were themselves now paranoid and twitchy: the loss of their leader, Lucky Luciano, prompted once powerful Mafiosi to flee New York for ever. The exodus included Meyer Lansky, who set off for Havana to create casinos for the Cuban dictator General Batista. Frank Costello went to New Orleans to set up new businesses. And “Bugsy” Siegel headed West, first to Hollywood, then Las Vegas where he built the Flamingo Casino and Hotel.

  Although, on Welfare Island, the last remains of the penitentiary had been demolished in 1936 and the ground cleared to make way for eventual property development, by the time Hines was convicted, the chief players in the island’s final, darkest episode were either dead, behind bars, or had moved on. Commissioner Marcus MacCormick went on the transform and modernise the US penal system, concentrating in particular on the education and rehabilitation of young offenders. His chief aide, David Marcus, who was appointed Commissioner of Corrections, MacCormick’s former post, by Mayor La Guardia in 1940, served as a colonel in the Second World War. He went to Israel in 1948 as a field commander where he was appointed a Lieutenant General by Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, becoming Israel’s first Jewish general. A few hours before the Israeli-Arab cease-fire began, 42 year-old Marcus was killed by an Israeli sentry who mistook him for the enemy.

  Thomas Dewey pursued his political ambitions and became the 47th Governor of New York State in 1943, remaining in office until 1954. Although he won the Republican nomination for President in 1944, and again in 1948, he lost both elections. Fiorello La Guardia - New York’s beloved “Little Flower” - served three terms as Mayor of New York and is widely credited with having created the modern city of New York, leaving its citizens reinvigorated, proud and optimistic about their metropolis.

  One man however remained untouched by any ambition to reform. With his former protectors either dead or behind bars, Joey Rao returned to his old ways and remained in the news. Although Rao’s first reversal of fortune began on January 24th 1934, with the raid on Welfare Island, another setback occurred on 5th January 1935, when, after a brief trial, he was tried for savagely beating up a policeman outside a Ha
rlem dance hall in 1932. Although Rao had been sent to Welfare Island on charges of extortion while the trial for the policeman’s assault was pending, the authorities insisted he faced trial for the prior crime. So, just before Rao’s release date from Welfare Island in February 1935, he was found guilty of the assault and sent to Sing Sing for two years. Several years later, together with his old partner in crime, “Trigger” Mike Coppola, he was arrested and held in custody for over a year under suspicion of beating to death of a Republican district captain on election day 1946. Eventually Rao was released, and continued dabbling in drugs and gambling rackets until his sudden death from a stroke in May 1962 aged 61.

  *

  Today, almost eighty years after the scandal of Welfare Island, most people’s first response on arriving in Roosevelt Island – as it was renamed in 1976 – is disbelief. Can the cool breeze, the scent of brine and flowers, the fields, parklands and peaceful waterfront all exist a mere five minutes from the clamour and concrete of Manhattan?

  This leafy haven, known as New York’s best kept secret, has become one of the city’s most desirable residential locations, offering a near rural existence for its 10,000 locals who include actors and artists, writers, politicians working at the United Nations and medical staff from the hospitals on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. At weekends, old and young men fish on the river bank; a jazz quartet plays by the water’s edge; families and neighbours gossip over evening drinks; others picnic on the grassy slopes.

  Before long, passing visitors find the locals recounting tales of their island’s dark history. A favourite is how, in 1936, workmen demolishing the prison buildings unexpectedly uncovered vestiges of an apartment, in the old south cell blocks. It was used by Tammany Boss Tweed during his incarceration in 1874 following his trial on 220 counts of fraud and embezzlement. Although the windows of the old cells were supposed to be tall and narrow, the men found blocked-in remains of a huge window measuring six by eight feet which had offered Tweed a panoramic view of New York, the city he had looted for decades. By the end of the 19th Century, Tweed’s apartment was bricked up.

  The footprints remained.

  If you enjoyed Island of the Damned you may be interested in Manhattan Murder Mystery by Alix Kirsta, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from Manhattan Murder Mystery by Alix Kirsta

  Part One

  The Vanishing

  June 5th 1998 dawned clear and sunny in New York City. Even for a Sunday, Manhattan was unusually quiet. The night before, as part of the Independence Day celebrations, New Yorkers had joined crowds of visitors to watch the annual firework extravaganza on the East River; many went on to celebrate in the city’s bars until the early hours.. Elsewhere, people attended parties late into the night. Among them, two women, fashion designer Elva Shkreli and her friend Carole Hansen, a writer and fashion researcher, had been guests at a dinner party at a friend’s large mansion on East 65th Street, returning home shortly before 1 a.m. The morning after however, neither woman was in festive spirit. It had been a strange, unnerving evening. Elva Shkreli woke at dawn, too on edge to stay in bed. In New Jersey, Carole Hanson was also up early, her mind preoccupied by events of the previous night. Both women were concerned for the wellbeing of their hostess, Irene Silverman, who had struck them both as being troubled and unusually anxious. Just after midday, Shkreli decided it was late enough to call Silverman, a late riser, to thank her again for dinner and make sure she was alright. She let the phone ring half a dozen times, then hung up. If Irene didn’t answer by the sixth ring she must be out. With phones in every room in the house, she always answered promptly. Carole Hansen, who dialled Silverman’s number about 12.30, also got no answer and thought Irene was perhaps sleeping in. In the next few hours, until after lunchtime, both women became increasingly worried and kept dialling their friend’s number repeatedly. But the phone just rang. And rang.

  At about 4pm that Sunday afternoon, one of Irene Silverman’s housekeepers, Aricella Rodriguez, the only member of her staff who was on duty that day at 20 East 65th Street, realised she had not seen her employer since 11 o’clock that morning. At that time, Silverman, still in dressing gown and slippers, had come out of her ground floor office and asked Aricella to take the dog for a walk and then attend to several other chores. The rest of Silverman’s staff had been given the weekend off for the Independence Day holiday. Five hours later, realising that the mansion was eerily quiet with no sign anywhere of Mrs Silverman, Aricella became uneasy. At 5pm she phoned Mengistu “Mengi” Melesse, Silverman’s Ethiopian caretaker and Jeff Feig, a local Manhattan estate agent who helped Silverman organise the lettings of several luxury apartments in her house. Neither Feig nor Melesse, who was attending an Ethiopian soccer tournament in Atlanta, his first holiday in six years, had heard any word from their employer. However, both men were sufficiently concerned to phone the police.

  It was a quiet weekend down at the 19th precinct, and it didn’t take long for the NYPD’s missing persons unit to respond. One of the precinct’s senior officers, Inspector Joe Reznick was put in charge of the case. “Irene Silverman was classified not only as a missing person but as so-called special category because although fit and active, she was 82 years old” recalled Inspector Reznick. “Special category cases immediately kick off a big neighbourhood search, and a check of all the city’s hospitals. If that doesn’t lead anywhere, we search the missing person’s home and set up temporary headquarters on or near the premises.” Although 5th July was a bright and clear, and darkness did not fall until after 9pm, Inspector Reznick and his officers found no leads to Irene Silverman’s possible whereabouts. The only potentially ominous sign was a trace of blood on the pavement outside her home: forensic scientists eventually found this to be of animal origin, and not human blood. No one among her neighbours on East 65th Street, off Madison Avenue with its designer boutiques, art galleries and gourmet restaurants, had seen or heard anything of her that weekend. Nor could police question Silverman’s tenants who lived in rented apartments in her house. Everyone had gone away for the Independence Day holiday. “After nightfall that day, we began interviewing people who had last talked to her or had seen her, including her housekeeper Aricella. We contacted police in other areas, including New Jersey. By Monday evening we had exhausted all initial procedures” recalled Resnick. “By then we knew we had a problem”.

  How much of a problem would emerge several days later. A painstaking search of several city morgues, various garbage dumps and landfill sites in Staten Island as well as a recycling centre in the Hunt’s Point area of the Bronx yielded no further evidence. Although several body parts, a human arm and a human leg, were found among medical waste in the Bronx, when these were sent to the City Medical Examiner, tests showed that neither limb could have belonged to the missing woman.

  The disappearance of Irene Silverman made headlines in Tuesday’s New York Times, followed by front page reports in the Daily News and New York Post. The city was gripped, not least by a sense of fear that perhaps a kidnapper was on the prowl, targeting well to do New Yorkers and holding them hostage, or worse. On Monday July 6th, the NYPD set up a roadblock and cordoned off the pavement in front of Irene Silverman’s house. Nearby, Central Park and adjacent streets were swarming with police, while press and TV crews converged on the area. Reznick’s men were forced to admit they had so far drawn a blank. His men had found several sketches of a young man in Irene Silverman’s office, apparently drawn by her and said to be, according to her housekeeper, impressions of Manny Guerrin, a tenant who was renting the ground floor apartment at the back of the house. However, like all the other tenants, Guerrin was nowhere to be found. In his apartment, everything was tidy: all that was left lying around was a bundle of discarded large plastic bags and a tangled ball of duct tape: these came from a New York branch of Tru-Value hardware stores. According to Silverman’s housekeeper this was left by the tenant since it was a brand none of the staff ever bought. Fearing the
worst, Reznick sent out several NYPD loudspeaker vans to patrol the Upper East Side blaring announcements and calling on eyewitnesses to come forward.

  When news of Irene Silverman’s disappearance first hit the headlines, few of her friends took the report seriously. A wealthy, well connected widow, surrounded by influential friends and trusted staff, she seemed decades younger than her 82 years. Once a professional ballet dancer, she remained fit and in complete possession of her faculties, living a socially active life in one of Manhattan’s most exclusive neighbourhoods in a $10 million mansion which was a landmark and had been featured in glossy architectural and interior design magazines. “What harm could possibly come to Irene Silverman” said one of her bemused friends, publishing executive Bob Jakoubek when he heard the news. “ For years she did not even go out of the house unless accompanied by a friend or an employee. This wasn’t someone like you or I. This was a lady from such a protected environment that I, and all my friends, would unhesitatingly say she is the last person to come to harm. I just didn’t believe something could happen to her”.