The Purple Gang: Organized Crime in Detroit, 1910-1945 (19 page)

Both
Charles Dentith, the former Reading detective lieutenant, and Fred
Marks, head of the Berks County Pennsylvania detective force, were
brought to Detroit by the defense team and introduced as witnesses to
refute the charge that Fleisher's alibi evidence was manufactured.
Marks was to testify that he had been called to the jail to look at a
prisoner named Harry Fishman, who in reality was Harry Fleisher.
Neither was allowed to testify.

Detective
John R. Machlik of the Detroit police presented an affidavit that he
had talked with Detective Marks a year before in Reading. At that
time Marks told him that he had met Abe and Ray Bernstein in a New
York hotel and that he was acquainted with a Reading man named Max
Hassel. Hassel at that time was a powerful bootlegger in Pennsylvania
and New Jersey. He also owned a hotel in Reading.

It
was on the street corner in front of this hotel that Harry Fleisher
was supposedly arrested on September 16, 1931. Since that time both
Dentith and Marks had been discharged from the police force. Dentith
acted as a personal bodyguard for Max Hassel, a New York Syndicate
member, up until his murder. Hassel was connected with mobster
"Waxey" Gordon and Alex Greenberg, who controlled over
twenty of the New York underworld's major breweries.

On
April 12, 1933, Greenberg and Hassel were murdered in their beds at
the Cartaret Hotel in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Gordon miraculously
escaped. Police believed that the two men were possibly set up by
Gordon himself. Detective Marks coincidentally had two brothers in
Detroit who ran handbooks, which at that time were under the
protection and control of the Purple Gang.

The
final affidavit refuting Harry Fleisher's alibi was from Patrolman
Albert Bice of the Bethune Avenue Station. Bice claimed that he had
seen and spoken to Harry Fleisher on the morning of September 17th,
1931. This was the day after the massacre. He saw Fleisher at the
corner of Clairmount and Woodward Avenue. According to Bice, when he
spoke to Fleisher he responded with a wave of his hand. The next day
when a teletype came into the station naming Fleisher as a suspect in
the massacre, Bice mentioned to his superior that he had seen
Fleisher the previous day. He was reprimanded because he had failed
to arrest Fleisher on the outstanding Federal warrant charging him
with Prohibition violation in the Leonard Warehouse case.

Bice
admitted that he had known Harry Fleisher for years. His testimony
was in direct contradiction to Fleisher's statement claiming that he
had been released from the Reading jail at 7:30 am on September 17th,
1931. The patrolman claimed that he had seen and spoken to Fleisher
at 10:30 that same morning.

On
October 6th, 1933, Judge Van Zile denied the Purples' defense
attorneys their request for a new trial. Van Zile ruled out the alibi
affidavits as "surely not newly discovered evidence,"
adding that "they did not impress the court
as
the
truth." The judge also stated that Levine's story was
unbelievable.

It
is interesting to note how the Purples were able to pull strings with
the Eastern mob through Max Hassel. Through gang connections a
corrupt high ranking Reading police official was able to insert alibi
evidence into the official records of the Reading Police Department
placing Fleisher in jail the day of the massacre. Abe Bernstein
through his contacts was also able
to
get bookmakers in New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago to give sworn
affidavits that they had been on the phone with Ray Bernstein and
Keywell taking bets at the time that the massacre was taking place.
The Purple Gang defense team was even able to get an affidavit from a
Detroit bookmaker named Jacob Silverman. Silverman claimed that he
had set up Sutker, Lebowitz, and Paul (the massacre victims) in a
Selden Avenue handbook business. Silverman said that Sutker owed him
money and claimed that Sutker told him on the day of the massacre
that he and his partners had a Sept 16th meeting with some Italian
bookmakers from Toledo. By 1933, long prison sentences and inter-gang
sniping continued to destroy the gang. In November of 1933, two
Purple Gang lieutenants, Abe Axler and Eddie Fletcher, were
mysteriously shot to death, their bodies left on a lonely Oakland
County road. The murder of such powerful Purple's had previously been
unimaginable.

Chapter
10

The
Self-Destruction

"The
deliberate 'execution' of two notorious gangsters serves to remind us
of the fact that a criminal career runs always to the same finish.
Yet it runs for too long with society helpless to put a stop to it."

—
Detroit
Times Editorial, November 28, 1933

"I'm
through with the racket for keeps."

—
Abe
Axler, Purple gangster, November 1933

Early
one morning in November 1933 a constable named Fred Lincoln noticed a
brand new touring car parked on a lonely country lane 15 miles north
of Detroit. The car was barely discernible in the darkness. Forty
minutes earlier Lincoln had chased several couples from the area, and
at 2:00 A.M. pulled his patrol car up to the strange vehicle. Leaving
the lights on in his car, he cautiously approached. Pulling the back
door open, the constable pointed his flashlight into the darkness.

Two
bullet-riddled bodies leaned against each other on the blood-soaked
back seat. Struggling for composure, he raced to his nearby home and
called the Sheriff and the County Coroner. Investigators converged on
the scene to find the bodies still warm but their faces
unrecognizable, mangled by heavy caliber bullets at close range.

Detroit
police detectives identified the men from their fingerprints as Abe
Axler and Eddie Fletcher. These two were well known Purple
lieutenants and hit men, but most importantly they were also Detroit
public enemies number 1 and 2.

Both
men were unarmed and there was no sign of a struggle. Oakland County
Sheriff Roy Reynolds surmised that Fletcher was shot by the driver,
who turned around to fire. Axler had been killed by a man sitting
next to him in the back seat. As a last ghastly joke, or possibly a
sign of contempt, the dead men's hands had been joined together by
the killers.

When
the bodies were first discovered the police wondered why the slayings
took place in Oakland County. At one time the gang was reported to
have had three cottage hideouts on Cass Lake and another near Walled
Lake.

Sheriff
Reynolds knew it was Axler's body. Shortly after he had become
sheriff, Axler had offered a bribe to "lay off his slot
machines." But Reynolds ordered him out of his office and told
him his men would pick up every machine they found. Reynolds said
"That was the last time I saw him."

Detectives
learned that Axler and Fletcher had spent most of the Saturday night
before the murder drinking in a Pontiac beer garden. According to
witnesses, they had entered the saloon alone and walked
out
alone. As they walked to Axler's car, they were joined by two other
men—this was as far as the murder investigation would ever go.

Axler
and Fletcher, lieutenants of the Bernstein brothers, were known as
'the Siamese twins' of the Detroit underworld. They were the Purple
Gang's top contract men—thugs specializing in murder. In life
Abe Axler and Eddie Fletcher had been inseparable friends and
partners.

They
were a driving force in the evolution of the Purple Gang. Police
described them as "schemers and killers" with a lot of
"crazy nerve." Both men had grown up in the slums.

Fletcher
had been a featherweight boxer in New York with no criminal record
prior to his move to Detroit. Never a great professional fighter,
when he arrived in 1923 he immediately fell in with the future Purple
Gang. One of the rumors about how the Gang got its name began during
Fletcher's fights at the Fairview Athletic Club in Detroit.

In
the New York custom of donning colored jerseys, Fletcher wore bright
purple. It proved to be the color that would one day land him in the
back seat of that bloody abandoned car.

Axler's
criminal career included hijacking, rum running, drug peddling,
extortion, and murder. He and Fletcher were prime suspects in the
Milaflores Apartment Massacre. Both had been terrorists in the
"Cleaners and Dyers War".

They
had known for some time that they were going to be killed. A friend
of Axler's told police that several weeks before the murders he had
been late for a business appointment when his car wouldn't start. He
asked Axler for a ride, but Axler hesitated.

"All
right," he remarked, "but don't ask me again. I don't like
to let you drive with me along the street. It might not be so good
for you, anything could happen to me!"

Friends
of the Purples reported that both men had been nervous and distraught
for some time. Underworld rumor was that Axler had received $30,000
for a "gun job" years earlier. At first he had been afraid
to spend the money because he thought that it was too hot but within
the last year he'd taken elaborate vacations and spent copiously. Now
he
owed
money.

In
the winter of 1933, Axler and Fletcher had tried to go straight.
Fletcher reentered professional boxing as a manager. When money
wasn't forthcoming, Fletcher and Axler quit the business. After being
arrested as public enemies they used the fight racket as a ploy to
demonstrate that they had a legitimate means of support.

On
November 28th, 1933 Mrs. Axler and Mrs. Fletcher, guarded by Purples,
returned with their husband's bodies to Brooklyn for funeral
services. Prosecutor Harry Toy began to suspect Axler and Fletcher
had been killed by their own gang. The two men had tried to "muscle
in" on the rackets of other gang members.

"Everything
points to their deaths at the hands of members of their own gang,"
declared Chief of Detectives Fred Frahm. He indicated that if out of
town killers had done the job, other Purples would have been in
hiding. But this was not the case, they openly walked Detroit
streets.

Homicide
detectives thought Axler and Fletcher had attempted to take control
of the Purple Gang after more able leaders had been removed by
infighting or long prison sentences. Although both were known
opium
smokers, they were far too wary to have been ambushed easily.

Only
somebody whom the two men trusted implicitly could have gotten close
enough to put them on the spot. Axler had let one of the killers
drive his new car.

By
December of 1933, police gathered information that Axler and Fletcher
had double crossed Harry Fleisher, Harry Millman, and the Bernstein
brothers. Main leaders were being assassinated and gangsters were
turning into informants; the dismantling of organized crime had
clearly begun.

By
1935 the Purple Gang also lost control of their lucrative Detroit
race wire service—a significant decline of power—as the
result of internal decay. Underworld gossip buzzed that Abe Bernstein
and several lieutenants met with local Mafia chiefs.

Although
the Italian and Jewish mobs were cordial, Bernstein was told in no
uncertain terms that the Italian mob was taking over the Detroit wire
service. The Purples could either resolve it peacefully or go to war.
The gang was so weakened by internal killings and long prison
sentences, that Bernstein conceded the Detroit rackets to the Italian
mob peacefully.

In
return, the Italians gave Abe enough money to take care of him for
the rest of his life, with what was essentially his pension for
retirement from organized crime. Abe was taken care of by the
Italians, put out like an aging dog. But he was not the only Purple
Gang backbone to concede the gang's defeat and seek legitimacy.

Coming
Clean

In
the thirties, jailed Purple gangsters sought to prove their innocence
in the Collingwood massacre. They
did
this through political mystery man Isiah Leebove, a former New York
underworld attorney and a wealthy Michigan oil operator. The public
was outraged when the newspapers reported that Leebove had tried to
gain access to murderers Ray Bernstein, Irving Milberg, and Harry
Keywell for his former law partner, Fred Kaplan. The relationship
with Kaplan was suspicious. The attorney had been retained by Joe
Bernstein to get a new trial for the Collingwood trio. Rumors
circulated that Leebove was working with Fred Kaplan to seek pardons
for the trio from his friend Governor Comstock. Leebove's connection
to the Collingwood case grew when he was appointed to survey the
Michigan prison system. He was questioned about his background and
his requests for interviews, before a State investigating committee.
State Senator Ray Derham told the committee that Leebove, under the
guise of his survey of the prison system, had tried to persuade the
official in charge of prison industries, Edward Frensdorf, to
intercede in the Purple Gang case.