The Purple Gang: Organized Crime in Detroit, 1910-1945 (24 page)

A
Fire Department Rescue truck rushed the barely alive and mangled
valet to Detroit Receiving Hospital, where he died shortly after
being admitted. In his deposition, police asked Harry Millman why he
did not investigate after the explosion.

Millman
replied, "Well, when the explosion come I thought it was the
building, and someone, I don't remember quite who . . . said 'It is
your car,' and they said, The colored fellow was in it and he is
dead.'"

"Didn't
you go back and look at the car?" Millman was asked.

"After
that kind of a explosion there was no use in going back there,"
replied Millman.

Willie
Holmes's death was the first car bomb Detroit slaying.

Although
he openly continued to walk the streets, Millman had been served a
death sentence by the Italian mob because of competition in the
numbers racket. He did stop hanging around downtown nightclubs after
the 1040 Club incident and now could be seen alone in the Boesky's
cocktail lounge on all night drinking sprees and heroin binges.

As
if he harbored a death wish, Millman continued to taunt the Italian
mob. Shortly after his car was bombed, he shot up a Mafia controlled
brothel in a drunken rage. Millman's days were numbered.

On
the evening of November 24th, 1937 Millman, Hymie Cooper, and Harry
Gross stopped at Boesky's cocktail lounge. The restaurant was
unusually crowded that Thanksgiving Eve, and Cooper and Gross left
for a movie around 9:15. Millman stayed on to drink.

When
Cooper and Gross returned after the movie they rejoined Millman at a
table, where he'd picked up two ladies. Just before 1:00 A.M.,
Millman crossed to the bar.

At
the same time two men in overcoats and snap brim hats strode into the
adjoining restaurant. No one noticed them walk briskly through the
crowded restaurant and disappear into the cocktail lounge. The two
men opened fire on Millman from a range of two feet.

The
roar of the pistols was deafening. Terrified customers ran for the
doors and dove under tables. Trays full of dishes flew in all
directions as waiters ran for cover.

Ten
slugs tore into Millman's body. The force of the barrage threw him
back against the bar. He was dead before his bullet-riddled body hit
the floor.

The
killers then turned their guns on Cooper and Gross, who'd hid under
the table when the shooting began. The gunmen were relentless. Both
men opened fire on a customer who crossed their path to the door,
pushing past his wife as the man collapsed into her arms.

Because
the getaway car was registered to a suspect with a New York address,
Detroit police suspected that Millman's killers had been imported for
the job. Detective Delbert Raymond of the Homicide Squad was sent to
New York City to investigate the alleged car owner. Raymond found
that the address on the title didn't exist.

Police
admitted that they were stymied by the variety of possible motives.
Millman's enemies were legion. Detectives were most interested in
Millman's ongoing feud with Joe Bommarito.

By
December 11th the getaway car was discovered parked in front of 3750
Richton Avenue in Detroit. Police found a 1937 sedan with the license
plate reported by witnesses. Two fingerprints were found on the frame
of the left front door.

The
fix was in. The vehicle was towed to Police Headquarters and the left
front door removed for evidence. Stains were found on the rear seat
that proved to be human blood. Police surmised that one of the gunmen
had been injured.

Harry
Gross languished in the hospital until mid-December but died without
naming the killers. The
murders
of Gross and Millman were never solved.

Millman
was the last rebel. By the mid-thirties there was no longer room in
the Detroit underworld for wild cards. The Italian mob gradually
supplanted the Purple Gang while one by one the members
self-destructed.

The
intensely violent nature of the groups was conspicuously absent as
one eclipsed another, the transition gradual and ironically peaceful.
Or perhaps the peace was due to each Purples' inability to look
sentimentally upon anything, including the integrity of their own
gang.

Although
the decision to get rid of Millman was no surprise, it did involve a
shocking twist. It had been jointly made between the Purple Gang and
the local Mafia. Here were men who were murderous and criminal, yet
intolerant of the uncivilized behavior demonstrated by Millman in
violating their agreement.

In
the last year of his life the stress of living on the edge had
finally caught up to him. It was so well known on the street that
Millman was going to be hit that he was unwelcome at most Detroit
hotels. Nobody wanted Millman's murder to take place in his
establishment.

In
1940 more light was shed on the Millman murder when a Brooklyn D.A.
investigation uncovered Murder Inc.

Murder,
Inc. was a journalism's pseudonym for the Jewish and Italian mobsters
who controlled Brooklyn. The thugs possessed a national reputation as
killers and were actually kept on retainer for contracts all over the
U.S. Professional hit men would fly in, kill their victim, and be on
a plane to Mew York before local police could connect the crime to
its perpetrators.

This
group was estimated to have carried out as many as 1,000 execution
contracts in ten years. In 1940 a leader of the Brownsville mob known
as Abe "Kid Twist" Reles became one of the most important
organized crime figures to ever come forward. He poured information
forth unchecked, constructing the first accurate blueprint of a
national mob organization years before law enforcement agencies would
infiltrate them.

Reles
claimed that "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss and "Happy"
Maione were sent to Detroit to kill Millman. The local boys had
failed to get him with a car bomb, and as a result, the Detroit mob
contacted New York for help in eliminating the problem. Strauss and
Maione were two of Murder Incorporated's most accomplished "hit
men."

The
murder was never officially solved, but these two killers probably
finished the job. Both Strauss and Maione were eventually convicted
of first degree murder in another killing and died in the Sing Sing
electric chair.

Despite
the fact that by the early forties, the Purple Gang was no longer a
force in Detroit, individual Purples continued to operate. In 1940
Harry and Sam Fleisher were released from Alcatraz. The Fleishers,
Morris Raider, Myron "Mike" Selik, and remnants of the gang
set up headquarters at a Dexter Avenue bar and grill known as
O'Larry's. Here, unbelievably, the surviving Purples planned one of
the outfit's most infamous murders. It seemed the old timers simply
could not resist a good crime.

Chapter
13

The
Murder of Warren Hooper

"With
honesty he lived for honesty he was taken."

—
inscription
on grave stone Michigan State Senator Warren G. Hooper

It
was late in the cold, gray afternoon of Thursday, January 11, 1945.
Floyd Modjeska was driving south on a lonely and desolate stretch of
highway between the State Capital at Lansing and Albion, Michigan. As
he rounded a bend in the road he noticed a smoking car pulled onto
the shoulder. Modjeska drove up behind the '39 Mercury sedan, and got
out to investigate. As he walked around the Mercury, smoke began to
billow from the doors.

A
man was slumped over in the front seat, and there was a bullet hole
in the rear window. Modjeska glanced at his wristwatch. It was 5:30
and night was falling fast. By now a second driver named Kyle Van
Auker had stopped.

Frightened
and unsure of what to do, both men stood in the rapidly falling
darkness and stared at the car. A third motorist pulled up and
decided to open the now burning vehicle's passenger door. Howard and
Van Auker pulled the body out of the front seat and laid it in the
snow next to the car. The men then heaped snow on the victim's
smoldering pants and into the front seat of the car in an attempt to
put out the steadily growing blaze.

Modjeska
finally raced to a nearby farmhouse to summon Michigan Police. After
firemen and detectives swarmed the scene, the scenario began to
emerge. Campaign literature for the election of Warren G. Hooper for
State Senate along with clothing, a shaving kit, and other personal
belongings were found in the back seat. The man had evidently turned
his head to look at his slayer. One bullet entered behind the left
ear and another at the top of the head. Powder burns indicated the
murder weapon had been 8-10 inches from the head. The body was taken
to the Hoffman Funeral Home where an autopsy was performed. The badly
charred remains were positively identified as those of Senator
Hooper. At first it appear as though a fire had been started at the
murder scene to destroy evidence. But it was discovered that Hooper
had been smoking a cigarette when he was shot, as though the gunfire
was an unexpected eruption from someone he'd trusted.

Senator
Warren Hooper had been one of the State's chief witnesses in the
Grand Jury's ongoing investigation into graft by government
officials. He was also the State's star witness against political
boss Frank McKay. The Grand Jury had been called when rumors surfaced
that Michigan lawmakers were accepting graft from lobbyists.

The
appointed special prosecutor Kimber Sigler had political ambitions.
He believed that if he could bring down Boss McKay and his henchmen
by convicting them of bribing politicians he could build a great
political career. It was known that Hooper had essentially been a
gopher in the State government who offered his services to McKay in
any capacity and Sigler went after him with a vengeance.

In
return for doing favors for Frank McKay, Hooper was occasionally
mildly compensated. When called before the Grand Jury, he quickly
broke down and admitted accepting the boss's bribes.

Hooper
was offered immunity in the pending graft case in exchange for his
testimony against Frank McKay et al. In 1944 warrants were issued for
the arrest of Frank McKay; Floyd Fitzsimmons, a Benton Harbor
promoter; and William Green, a former State Representative. The three
were charged with bribing legislators to defeat a horse racing bill.

Referred
to as the Totalizer Bill, the legislation would have required the
Detroit Racing Association to install a totalizer at the Detroit Race
Track. This device was intended to minimize the danger of corruption
by computing odds instantly. A totalizer would have severely cut
underworld racetrack profits, since most tracks were mob controlled.

Political
bosses like Frank McKay were determined to see that this legislation
was not passed. Special Prosecutor Sigler believed that Frank McKay
was responsible for the Hooper murder based on word on the street.
He'd supposedly put up $25,000 in an open contract to have Hooper
silenced permanently. Frank McKay had strong connections with the
Purple Gang dating back to the early thirties. Former Purple
mob
bosses Charles Leiter and Izzy Schwartz worked for McKay in various
capacities for twenty years. Schwartz and Leiter had also acted as
his bodyguards.

The
Hooper murder had all of the earmarks of a professional underworld
hit—excellently planned and executed with precision. A maroon
car had been observed by local residents laying in wait where Hooper
was eventually murdered. The police surmised that the maroon colored
vehicle carried the gunmen.

Hooper
had been traveling with someone he knew and trusted enough to drive
his car. At the point in the road where the gunmen lay in wait, the
maroon car swerved front of Hooper to distract him. The driver
slammed on the brakes, pulled a .38 caliber revolver, skidded to a
stop, and shot him.

A
passing motorist said he'd seen a small man next to Hooper's car
shortly after the murder, a claim which corresponded with evidence at
the scene. According to the witness, the man was standing on the
driver's side and the door was open. The car was actually blocking
the road and pulled onto the shoulder to let him pass before tearing
off.