Uncle John’s True Crime

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  In college, serial killer Ted Bundy was an honors student studying psychology.

  A FAMOUS PHONY

  The story of one of history’s boldest—and funniest—imposters.

  BACKGROUND: In 1906 shoemaker and career criminal Wilhelm Voigt was released from a German prison after a 15-year sentence for robbery. His identity card and passport had been taken away, he was nearly broke, and his prospects weren’t good. He was desperate. Then he remembered how he had learned to mimic the speech and mannerisms of the self-important Prussian officers whose boots he had mended when he was young. It gave him an idea.

  MOMENT OF “TRUTH”: He bought a secondhand army uniform, went to a local army barracks, and waited for the right opportunity. When a corporal and five privates came marching by, he stepped in, started barking orders, and instantly became the leader of a tiny army. Their mission: To take over the town of Kopenick on the outskirts of Berlin.

  They marched down the road, got five more men along the way, and commandeered a bus. Once in Kopenick, Voigt marched his men into the town hall. There, after pretending to inspect the accounts, he had the mayor arrested, took over the telegraph and telephone lines, and helped himself to 4,000 marks from the treasury. The mayor was sent in custody to military headquarters in Berlin, and “Captain” Voigt quietly disappeared.

  UNMASKED: Nine days later, Voigt was captured and arrested. But the story made headlines around the world and unintentionally brought world attention to the abuses of the German prison system. Whether it was because of this, or as some believe, simply because he thought the ruse was funny, Kaiser Wilhelm pardoned the lifelong crook—who had already spent 27 of his 57 years in prison for petty crimes—and sent him on his way.

  IMMORTALITY ACHIEVED: The story inspired a 1932 German movie, Der Hauptmann von Köpenick (The Captain of Köpenick), which wickedly lampooned the bumbling Prussian officers. A 1956 remake won the 1957 Academy Award for the Best Foreign Language Film.

  Only one out of every 700 identity theft cases is solved.

  BEHIND THE (MOB) HITS

  A fancy hotel, a homey Italian restaurant, a local bar and grill. What do these seemingly innocent places have in common? Each was the scene of the assassination of a ruthless gangster.

  ARNOLD “THE BRAIN” ROTHSTEIN

  Background: Rothstein was one of the earliest leaders of American organized crime. He wasn’t a gun-toting mobster, though—he was a planner, bankroller, and political fixer. Instead of muscle, he used brains to forge alliances among underworld factions and crooked politicians. He kept a low profile as he financed the bootlegging activities of Dutch Schultz and other gangsters. But Rothstein was also a compulsive gambler. In September 1928, he bought into a high-stakes poker game run by a man named George McManus. The game lasted two days; Rothstein lost $320,000. Claiming the game was fixed, he refused to pay up.

  The Place: On November 4, Rothstein received an urgent phone call from McManus to meet him at the Park Central Hotel. The Park Central was (and still is) located across the street from Carnegie Hall. Opened in 1927, this ritzy hotel quickly became one of Manhattan’s most popular spots. Ben Pollack’s orchestra (featuring Benny Goodman) packed them in nightly at the hotel’s Florentine Grill. It was a public place with lots of people around—a place where Rothstein would have felt safe.

  The Hit: Hotel employees later found him in the stairwell holding his abdomen—he’d been shot. Was it because of the debt, or had one of his rivals simply found a viable excuse to eliminate him? No one knows for sure, because in the one day that Rothstein lived, every time police asked him who shot him, he answered, “Me mudder did it.”

  “JOE THE BOSS” MASSERIA

  Background: Masseria was an old-line Sicilian mob boss whose ultimate goal was to become head of the Mafia in New York. Not sharing Masseria’s dream, though, were younger “family” members Lucky Luciano and Vito Genovese. They wanted him out of the picture, as did powerful mobsters Lepke Buchalter and Owney Madden. When another rival mafioso, Salvatore Maranzano, began to encroach on Masseria’s businesses, Joe the Boss fought back. That was the beginning a power struggle that came to be known as the Castellammarese War, during which more than 60 men (on both sides) were killed. Luciano and Genovese secretly contacted Maranzano and offered him a deal: If he’d end the bloodshed, they’d whack Masseria. Maranzano agreed.

  World’s oldest bank robber: J.L. Rountree, 92. In 2003 he robbed a Texas bank of $2,000.

  The Place: On April 15, 1931, Luciano invited Joe the Boss to a meeting at the Nuova Villa Tammaro Restaurant, a cheap “spaghetti house” in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn. They ate, played some cards, and then Luciano went to the bathroom.

  The Hit: According to eyewitnesses, while Luciano was in the bathroom, two unknown men strolled into the restaurant, fired 20 shots at Masseria, and strolled out again. Luciano took over Masseria’s crime family. The Nuova Villa Tammaro’s owner, an Italian immigrant named Gerardo Scarpato, shut down the restaurant and moved back to Italy. Six months later he returned to New York and was murdered. No one was ever convicted.

  JOSEPH “CRAZY JOEY” GALLO

  Background: After Gallo and his two brothers split off from the Profaci Family in 1950s, they were involved in several high-profile mafia battles in New York City. The wars were put on hold in 1961 when Gallo was convicted of extortion and sent up the river. (In prison, he reportedly amused himself by trying to poison his fellow convicts with strychnine-laced Italian food.) When he got out in 1971, Gallo resumed his war against Joe Colombo, whom he had never forgiven for murdering one of his men. After Colombo was gunned down that June as he was walking to the podium to deliver a speech at the Italian-American Civil Rights League’s Italian Unity Day, the heads of the Five Families surmised that it was Gallo who had ordered the hit, even though they had no proof. They put out a contract on Gallo’s life.

  The Place: In the wee hours of the morning of April 7, 1972, Gallo was winding down after celebrating his 43rd birthday at the Copa Cabana (Don Rickles was performing). He and his friends wanted something to eat. They went to Chinatown, but everything was closed, so they went to nearby Little Italy. The only place that was open: Umberto’s Clam House—the newest restaurant in the “old neighborhood,” owned by another mobster, “Matty the Horse” Ianniello.

  FBI chemical explosives dogs can detect more than 19,000 different combinations of explosives.

  The Hit: Two (or possibly more) gunmen were waiting at Umberto’s. They opened fire. Gallo was hit five times and still managed to stagger out into the street, where he collapsed and died. No one was ever charged with Crazy Joey’s murder.

  ARTHUR “DUTCH SCHULTZ” FLEGENHEIMER

  Background: Only 33 when he died, Schultz was the FBI’s Public Enemy #1, and one of the best-known criminals of his day. During Prohibition, “The Dutchman” bootlegged beer, ran an illegal saloon in the Bronx, and forced rival saloons to buy beer from him...and only from him. He was an extortionist who also ran illegal gambling and slot machines, and didn’t hesitate to murder anyone who interfered with “business.”

  Schultz’s activities got a lot of attention from the Feds. In 1933 he was indicted on charges of income tax evasion, but he beat the rap. New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was furious. He banned Schultz from New York City and ordered special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey to investigate the Dutchman’s rackets. Now Schultz was furious—he asked the “National Crime Syndicate” for permission to take Dewey out. They said no (it would have brought the full force of the Feds down on all of them). After Schultz stormed out, the other bosses decided that he needed to go.

  The Place: The Palace Chophouse on E. 12th Street in Newark, New Jersey, was no palace—just a dark, narrow bar and diner. But since Schultz was no longer allowed to operate in New York, he used a room in the back of the Newark restaurant as his office. And that’s where he was on the night of October 23, 1935.

  The Hit: At 10:15 p.m., two gunmen walked into the Palac
e. They gunned down three of Schultz’s cronies in the restaurant’s back room and then found Schultz in the men’s room. What happened next? Go to page 259 for one of the strangest deathbed “confessions” in the history of organized crime.

  * * *

  “Justice may be blind, but she has very sophisticated listening devices.”

  —Edgar Argo

  The term “criminology” was coined by Italian law professor Raffaele Garofalo in 1885.

  BAD GRANNY

  Why, Grandma, what big teeth you’ve got!

  GRANNY’S GOT A GUN

  “A bored granny has been given a suspended prison sentence after staging a fake bank robbery as a practical joke. The 80-year-old, identified only as ‘Elfriede,’ threatened a cashier at a bank in Austria with a toy pistol and hissed, ‘This is a stickup.’ Then she started to laugh. ‘My heart stopped for a second,’ the terrified bank employee said later. ‘But when she started laughing, I realized that it was just a joke.’

  “When the pensioner told the court that she’d done it ‘for a laugh,’ the judge warned her that she wouldn’t be let off so lightly if she does it again within the next three years.

  “Elfriede replied, ‘If I live that long. But thanks.’”

  —Ananova

  BLACK MARKET BABA

  “Russian police have arrested a gun-smuggling granny who kept mobsters supplied with everything from artillery to assault rifles.

  “The newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda said Tuesday that ‘Baba Nina’ (Grandma Nina) and her eight-person gang had been bringing in weapons from the Baltics for more than a year. The report described the woman as a Robin Hoodish figure who supported a large number of relatives and a handicapped son while she and her husband lived in a modest apartment with only a black-and-white TV. But it added that the pensioner ran her gang with ‘an iron hand’ and knew most of the mobsters in the region.

  “Disguising herself as one of the millions of ‘shuttle traders’—small-time entrepreneurs who buy goods cheap abroad, then sell them at a profit back home—Baba Nina flew to Lithuania twice a month, returning with black-market weapons hidden in her bags among cheap T-shirts and trousers. On the telephone, she spoke in code to gang members, calling machine guns ‘big trousers’ and handguns ‘small trousers.’ The newspaper said she is now in jail, but has settled in nicely. ‘Other prisoners pay her respect.’”

  —Associated Press

  In the United States it’s a federal crime to imitate Smokey Bear or Woodsy Owl.

  GANJA GRANNY

  “Meet Molly Williams. The 78-year-old West Virginia woman may have the distinction of being America’s oldest pot dealer. She was nabbed last week on felony drug charges after state police investigators executed a search warrant on the woman’s home and discovered two pounds of marijuana (divided for distribution in plastic baggies) stashed in a grocery bag at the ‘bottom of a deep freeze.’ Williams’s boyfriend, 72-year-old Jack White, told cops that the pot was his old lady’s. She now faces 15 years in prison.”

  —The Smoking Gun

  ORGAN-IZED CRIME

  “The boy thought his grandmother was taking him to Disneyland, but Russian police say she had other plans: to sell her grandson so his organs could be used for transplants. Police in Ryazan, 125 miles southeast of Moscow, said Saturday that they arrested a woman after they were tipped that she was trying to sell her grandson to a man who was going to take him to the West. There his organs were to be removed and sold, a Ryazan police officer said. After a surveillance operation, police moved in to arrest the woman, who was being aided in the scheme by the boy’s uncle. They expected to get about $70,000. When asked how he could sell his nephew, the uncle replied: ‘My mother said that it is none of my business, he is her grandson.’”

  —Washington Post

  GRANDMADAM

  “Lindenwold, New Jersey, police made a surprising discovery when they busted the alleged madam of a prostitution ring. The woman running the show was an 80-year-old grandmother.

  “Authorities arrested Vera Tursi last month during a sting operation to crack down on prostitution rings posing as legal escort services. Tursi admitted her role in the business, saying she took it over a few years ago from her daughter, who had died. Tursi said she needed money to subsidize her Social Security checks.

  “Undercover police first began to wonder about the age of their suspect when they called the escort service as part of their sting operation. They said she seemed to have difficulty breathing.”

  —CNN

  Technically, the words “insane” and “insanity” are legal definitions, not medical terms.

  EPA’S MOST WANTED

  Like the FBI, the Environmental Protection Agency has its own list of most-wanted fugitives...only these are environmental criminals.

  CRIMINAL: William Morgan

  COMPANY: Hydromet Environmental

  STORY: Morgan was CEO of this Illinois-based hazardous-waste management and disposal company. Other companies—attempting to responsibly dispose of their own toxic and chemical waste—paid Morgan’s company to do it for them. One problem: Hydromet wasn’t always equipped to safely or legally handle the waste. The EPA alleges that between 1995 and ’98, Morgan allowed his company to accept more than 3.8 million pounds of cyanide, arsenic, and lead. Instead of doing what they were hired to do, Morgan ordered his workers to either store the stuff in warehouses or dump it in municipal landfills, potentially exposing thousands of people to hazardous materials. After the waste was traced back to Hydromet, Morgan denied any involvement. He was indicted in 2006 for making false statements to the Illinois state EPA, illegal transportation of hazardous waste, and conspiracy. He fled to Canada, where he lived until his death in 2008.

  CRIMINAL: John Karyannides

  COMPANY: Sabine Transportation

  STORY: Karyannides, a Sabine VP, received an urgent call in 1999 from the crew of one of the company’s cargo ships. They were in the middle of the South China Sea carrying about a million pounds of wheat to aid in humanitarian efforts in Bangladesh, but a diesel fuel leak had contaminated their cargo, rendering it useless. What should they do? Karyannides’s answer: Dump all of the tainted wheat into the ocean. The company’s lawyers later claimed that the crew cleaned the wheat before dumping it overboard, which investigators ruled was “impossible,” given the limited equipment on board. Sabine was ordered to pay a $2 million fine; Karyannides, however, disappeared and is still at large. Among other charges he faces are illegal oil dumping and conspiracy. His last known whereabouts: Athens, Greece.

  While in prison, serial killer John Wayne Gacy made over $100,000 from sales of his artwork.

  CRIMINAL: Bhavesh Kamdar

  COMPANY: Industrial Site Services

  STORY: In 2001 Kamdar won a $12 million contract with the state of New York to replace underground storage tanks for oil and gasoline at police stations, prisons, and other public buildings. But by 2004 it had become all too evident to state officials that Kamdar’s tanks were prone to leaks. As a result, an unknown amount of groundwater in upstate New York had been contaminated. In addition, Kamdar overbilled the state by $1.1 million for contractual expenses that actually totalled only $59,000. With the investigation heating up, Kamdar fled to his home country of India but was arrested by an Interpol agent in 2006. If he’s ever extradited to the United States, he’ll stand trial on more than 30 charges, for which he could receive prison time and as much as $5.9 million in fines.

  CRIMINAL: Denis Feron

  COMPANY: Chemetco

  STORY: Illinois-based Chemetco, one of the nation’s largest copper processors, produced a lot of toxic industrial waste in its day-to-day operations of refining lead, zinc, and cadmium—which, in high concentrations, are deadly to humans and animals. Rather than dispose of it responsibly (or legally), Chemetco CEO Denis Feron ordered a secret pipe be built from the company’s smelting plant to Long Lake in Illinois. For a decade, from 1986 to ’96, that pipe dumped pot
entially fatal concentrations of waste into the lake. After the pipe was discovered, Feron was indicted for conspiring to violate the Clean Water Act but fled (reportedly) to Belgium before his trial began. If captured, Feron faces a five-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine. Chemetco, meanwhile, went bankrupt, and the facility is likely to become an EPA Superfund toxic cleanup site, meaning it’s one of the most polluted places in the United States. Feron remains at large.

  * * *

  “The biggest corporation, like the humblest private citizen, must be held to strict compliance with the will of the people.”

  —Theodore Roosevelt

  After Japan’s biggest bank heist ($5.4 million), the bank got a thank-you note from the robbers.

  THE DISAPPEARANCE OF JUDGE CRATER

  We first ran this mysterious story in our 1999 edition, Uncle John’s Absolutely Absorbing Bathroom. In subsequent years, a new piece of evidence has been uncovered that may finally reveal the culprits responsible for one of the most-talked-about unsolved disappearances in American history.

  JUDGE JOSEPH CRATER

  Claim to Fame: Newly appointed justice of the New York Supreme Court—a shoo-in to win reelection in November, and a potential appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court

  Disappearance: Crater and his wife were vacationing in Maine on August 3, 1930, when he received a phone call from New York City. Clearly disturbed, he announced to her that he had to go “straighten those fellows out.” Then he left for New York.

  Crater was apparently taking a break from business when, on the evening of August 6, he bought a ticket for a show and arranged to pick it up at the box office. Then he went to Billy Haas’s restaurant, where he ran into friends and joined them for dinner. Later, he took a cab to the theater, waving from the taxi as it disappeared. Someone did pick up the theater ticket...but no one knows if it was Crater—he was never seen again. Nine days later, his wife notified the police, and a massive manhunt began.