The Purple Gang: Organized Crime in Detroit, 1910-1945 (11 page)

Still
the gangsters escaped, by climbing back through the cars of the train
and speeding off in the agents' cars. The anchored boats also raced
away. In the end two trucks and 98 cases of whiskey were confiscated
by the officers.

In
a surprise move by Federal agents, twelve Purple gangsters were
arrested in May after five months of surveillance by a combined force
of police detectives and Federal Prohibition agents. The blanket
warrant charged them with conspiracy to violate the U.S. Dry Laws.
The defense attorney attempted a release the following day claiming
that with "2,700 provisions in the G.S. Code," the blanket
warrant was far too vague. But the specific charges were kept quiet.
The agents
were
hoping to use the Jones Stalker Act, referred to as the Jones law,
which did not penalize for possession of liquor but for the
manufacture, transportation, importation or sale of intoxicants for
beverage purposes. The goal was to get the Purple Gang suspects under
these provisions for many reasons.

The
Jones law did not differentiate between old and new offenses. Whether
or not violaters had to answer for past crimes was up to the judge,
and the rumrun-ning was a felony for which an alien could be
deported. It was squarely aimed at underworld liquor traffickers.

On
May 24th a Federal Grand Jury returned indictments against four
important Purples arrested in the raids. The Purple Gang was going to
court.

The
withheld information was revealed during the trial. Three Special
Treasury Agents had tapped the Purple's telephone lines. They'd
transcribed numerous conversations between the defendants and their
customers. This trial was the first incident of wire tapping used as
evidence instead of liquor, and the first time that Purple gangsters
faced a Federal judge.

The
Hart Novelty Company and the Max Gordon Realty Company was the alias
for their business. Agent Gregory Frederick explained to the jury
that the four men, with no liquor for sale at the address, carried on
a massive import/export business in liquor and beer. Frederick's
testimony was an attempt to prove in court that the companies were
actually an illegal liquor distributor's base of operations.

Checks,
papers, and account books had been seized in a raid and were entered
as evidence to support the wiretap transcripts. As with Al Capone,
the gangsters were not broken by conviction for their crimes but by
their own business records. The agents raided the apartment without a
warrant, however, based on what they heard over the wiretap. An
Inspector had ordered the raid after the gang members' arrest.

The
account books and delivery receipts documented imports of liquor from
Canada. Deliveries were made on the same day that telephone
conversations relating to them were heard. If they were inadmissable,
the case would be lost. The evidence could be used in Federal court
only if the raid had been made without the advice or aid of the Feds
who'd tapped the phones. Inspector Patrick O'Grady was called by the
defense. They attempted to draw an admission from O'Grady that he had
consulted with Federal agents before ordering the raid on the Purple
Gang's liquor distributing business. O'Grady proved the raid was
legitimate by insisting that he'd instructed his men to pick up
Purple gangsters "wherever they found them."

On
July 24th, 1929 the Purple Gang defendants were found guilty of
conspiracy to violate Prohibition. The jury was out only fifteen
minutes before bringing in a guilty verdict. The four men were only
sentenced to 22 months and fined $5,000 each, but it was the first
real blow by law enforcement agencies against the leadership of the
Purple Gang. Even as the police attempted to destroy the Purples, the
gang was so cutthroat that it was destroying itself—the
powerful gang had begun to implode.

The
Decline of the Purple Gang

Irving
Shapiro was the first to go. Shortly after 3:00 a.m., on July 27th,
1929, residents were awakened by the sound of gunshots reverberating
through their usually quiet neighborhood. Witnesses caught a glimpse
of a speeding touring car. In the dim light one woman
could
make out the crumpled body of a man in the gutter.

Detectives
quickly identified the body as that of Irving Shapiro, Purple Gang
gunman and hijacker. A fifty dollar bill and an expensive watch were
all that was found in Shapiro's pockets. All of the labels in his
expensive suit had been cut off.

A
private guard in the neighborhood had reported the large gray car
that raced from the scene. By the time police arrived they found two
.32 caliber slugs next to a crumpled body. The Wayne County Coroner
confirmed their suspicions that Shapiro had been "taken for a
ride".

He
was shot from the back seat and his body shoved out of the car. He
had been killed instantly. A bullet had entered the back of his head
and exited under his right eye.

Irving
Shapiro was only twenty-five, but his death was considered long
overdue. Known in the underworld as "Little Irving," he was
one of the toughest members of the gang, especially feared by police.
Once he'd gotten into a dispute with another prisoner which ended
when Shapiro put the man's eye out.

Irv
had grown up on Detroit's lower east side with the original Purple
gangsters. Always a tough guy, Shapiro was thrown out of Elementary
School and later the Bishop ungraded school—spawning ground of
the Purples. Although physically small, Shapiro always compensated
for his size with savage behavior.

As
an adult Shapiro was one of the Purple mob's most successful strong
arm men ever to put the muscle on Detroit's blind pigs. He extracted
thousands in protection money and strutted around town in expensive
tailor made suits and late model luxury cars. A suspect in scores of
Detroit gangland murders, he was never convicted of a serious crime.

By
the time of his murder, Shapiro had been picked up more than twenty
four times for felonious assault, robbery, extortion, kidnapping, and
murder. He had many enemies in the underworld and there were endless
theories behind his execution. He expected blind pig operators to pay
a 50% tribute to operate unmolested and was rumored to be reviving
the big industry protection racket and its high profile kidnappings.
Shapiro muscled in on building trades through his control of the
plumbers union, extorting more than $8,000 a month for protection.
The gang set prices and dictated which plumbers would work on which
contracts. It was so well organized that the extorted businesses were
divided into districts with Purple gangsters as zone captains to
insure no one escaped paying tribute to the gang.

When
a police inspector began an investigation into the construction
racket his home was bombed. Police believed that men from Max Ruben,
head of the Motion Picture Operators Onion, to Sam Gross, a wealthy
racketeer, were successfully kidnapped and ransomed by the gang.
Their terrorism knew no limits, even those of the legitimate business
world.

They'd
been running the well organized extortion racket for years and
performing kidnappings on the side. On an anonymous tip, police
picked up Purple associates who had been working with Shapiro
kidnapping local businessman. The tip confirmed their theory.

A
$25,000 ransom sought by Shapiro's gang for a kidnapped contractor
was haggled down to only $4,000. Shapiro believed that he had been
cheated by his partners when they tried to divide up $4,000 instead
of $25,000, and told Sam Bernstein and several other Purples that he
was going to get his cut of the ransom or somebody was going to get
hurt. That night he was murdered.

His
car turned up in a used car lot three days after the shooting.
Shapiro was the first Purple Gangster ever to be taken for a ride. No
one was brought to trial for his murder.

Shapiro's
killing was only the beginning.

On
October 28th, 1929, notorious Purple Gang gunman Zigmund "Ziggie"
Selbin was shot to death while he cowered in a doorway on the city's
west side. Selbin had been caught on the street without his gun. A
woman described to Detroit police how the gunman stood in the doorway
where Selbin cowered and casually emptied his revolver into the
Purple gangster.

The
killer then walked away without looking back. A crowd gathered around
the dying thug as he lay in a pool of his own blood. "Ziggie"
Selbin was 22 years old.

Like
his close friend, Irv Shapiro, the killing was long overdue. From the
beginning of his career as a Purple gunman, Selbin had been a loose
cannon.

Ziggie's
police record showed nine arrests and no convictions. Most had been
on serious charges. His specialty was extorting money from local
merchants and hijacking blind pigs and other underworld havens.

Selbin
was known as a mean drunk. During a binge in a blind pig he took a
liking to a patron's ring. He asked for it, was promptly refused,
then beat the man unconscious and tried without success to pull the
ring off his finger. He then pulled a knife out of his pocket and
removed the piece of jewelry, finger and all.

Ziggie
made a habit out of holding up nightclubs and blind pigs belonging to
the Hamtramck mob. The gang bought a lot of whiskey from the Purple
Gang, and Selbin had been warned several times by Purple mob
leadership to lay off. Finally, the Purple Gang and the Hamtramck mob
had to make peace by agreeing on Ziggie Selbin's extermination.

Having
threatened their security, Selbin was killed by his own gang. The
last days of the roaring twenties were taking their toll on the
manpower of the Purple Gang. Freelancing posed a threat to their
leadership. Beside receiving the first criminal convictions since
their meteoric rise to power, the mob was finding itself having to
take its own members for a ride. Gone, too were the days when they
could kill authority figures like Polakoff or Vivian Welch in cold
blood. The next major gangland incident exposed the police that had
protected them.

§
§ §

Inspector
Henry J. Garvin was the department's self-proclaimed Detroit
underworld nemesis. On January 2nd, 1930 he pulled out of his
driveway and turned his patrol car toward headquarters. He drove
slowly that early winter morning and did not notice the black sedan
pull up shortly after he left home.

Garvin
heard a horn behind him and pulled over to let the car pass. As the
Model A pulled up Garvin noticed curtains drawn across the back
windows, but it was too late to act. Two gunmen armed with a .45
pistol and a shotgun opened fire.

One
of the first rounds grazed the back of the police officer's head. As
he slumped to the floor, the gunmen poured round after round into his
car, which rolled up over the curb and stalled in a snowdrift.
Assuming
Garvin
to be dead, the gunmen raced away.

Dazed
and bleeding, Garvin crawled out of the battered car. He had received
only superficial wounds, avoiding the fire by falling to the floor.
As he rolled out into the snow he could hear a child whimpering, a
little girl who had been walking to school had been caught by a
bullet. Her injury would bring public scrutiny upon his attack.

Police
officials theorized that Garvin had been targeted because of the
pressure his Crime and Bomb Squad was exerting on organized crime.
But in the underworld, rumor tells the real story. It had been said
that the inspector failed to keep promises he made to gang leaders in
exchange for information, but his very necessary execution was
botched and now everyone was exposed.

In
January of 1930, a Board of Inquiry was assembled to investigate
shattering allegations made by Detective Van Coppenolle, a member of
the Black Hand Squad. Two months prior to Garvin's attack, Van
Coppenolle had claimed to have accompanied the chief of the Black
Hand Squad to a meeting with Italian gunmen where Garvin's murder was
arranged.

When
the shooting took place, Van Coppenolle was dragged before the Police
Trial Board to tell what he knew about the incident. By that time
he'd told police officials several different stories, and was charged
with "conduct unbecoming an officer." His allegations,
however, initiated a full departmental investigation.

Van
Coppenolle's story was that he attended a meeting with gangsters at
the Book-Cadillac Hotel and was informed Garvin would die for double
crossing members of the Laman mob, who'd paid $20,000 to insure that
a their hired kidnapper would only be tried for extortion. Garvin had
gotten him out of prison on
an
extortion charge only to have the gunman stand trial in another
kidnapping case. He was convicted and given fifty years.