The Purple Gang: Organized Crime in Detroit, 1910-1945 (25 page)

Special
Prosecutor Sigler told the press that Warren Hooper's death had
effectively killed the State's case against Frank McKay and his
associates. Hooper's earlier Grand Jury testimony was useless because
the defendants could not cross examine the now dead witness. Hooper
had been scheduled to testify the following Monday.

Sigler
spoke publicly: "... Hooper was killed because he was the star
State witness, pure and simple." Investigators had no clues as
to the identity of the killers, despite a $25,000 reward put up by
the legislature.

After
hundreds of anonymous tips, the break in the Hooper case came from a
23-year-old prisoner named Alfred Kurner. From jail, he wrote a
letter to the judge claiming that he was at O'Larry's Bar on
Christmas night in 1944 when Purple associate Sam Abramowitz called
him into the men's room and offered $3,000 if he wanted to be in on a
job.

Kurner
had agreed. Later that evening Abramowitz explained some details of
the job. They were going to "knock off" a politician who
was about to testify before the grand jury.

Several
days later, Abramowitz told Kurner they were waiting on a bribe of
the witness. Abramowitz handed Kurner a .38 caliber revolver,
supposedly from an arsenal hidden at O'Larry's Bar. Kurner was caught
the same night using the gun in a robbery for which he was sentenced
to twenty-five years in prison.

Kurner
was hoping this testimony might buy him a lighter sentence.

Abramowitz
made a full confession after a month of intense questioning. He told
police that early in December of 1944 he received a telegram from
Mike Selik asking him to come to Detroit's famous gangster hangout,
and knew an execution was afoot..

The
bar was not only controversial for its patrons but for its owner.
Larry "O'Larry" Pollack had grown up with the core group of
Purples, and was a close friend of the Bernstein brothers, Harry
Fleisher, and other bosses. Pollack was a legitimate businessman who
liked to fraternize with gangsters. He also had an uncanny knack for
being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

O'Larry
Pollack had been a key witness to the murder of a Detroit police
officer during the hold up of a business office by the Jaworski gang
in the summer of 1928. The gang had then actually kidnapped Pollack
shortly thereafter, intending to kill him. Harry Fleisher intervened
and Pollack was turned loose unharmed. Back in the days of the
Collingwood Massacre, Pollack had been driving by when he was almost
hit by the car containing the Purple gunmen fleeing the scene. When
questioned Pollack named the gunmen as Ray Bernstein, Harry Keywell,
Harry Fleisher, and Irv Milberg. During the trial, he perjured
himself on the witness stand by testifying in open court that these
were not the men he saw and was cited for contempt. And so, in true
form, it was at Pollack's "O'Larry's Bar" that Abramowitz
met with Harry Fleisher, Mike Selik, and young safecracker Henry
"Heinie" Luks. The Purples explained to the two ex-cons
that a $25,000 fund had been made available for the murder of Warren
Hooper. Abramowitz claimed that the Purples offered him $5,000 if he
participated in the plot.

Three
trips were made to Albion, Michigan, in planning the Senator's
murder. On the first, 'Heinie' Luks, with safecracking explosive
expertise, planned to wire dynamite to Hooper's car. This fell
through when it was learned that the senator kept his car in a
garage.

On
the second trip, Abramowitz and Sammy Fleisher drove to Albion to
kill Hooper in his office. It was aborted when the killers saw
Hooper's wife and children in his office too. On the third trip, the
thugs planned to waylay Hooper along the highway between Lansing and
Albion.

This
also failed when, like keystone cops, they missed the senator's car.
By the third failure, the frustrated Abramowitz met with Harry
Fleisher at O'Larry's and told him that he was dropping out.
Abramowitz
told
police that Fleisher's response was, "1 guess Mike and I will do
it ourselves."

'Heinie'
Luks was arrested based on Abramowitz's confession and tried to call
Abramowitz a liar. When confronted by Abramowitz, he corroborated the
story and both were granted immunity in return for being State
witnesses.

The
warrant specifically charged Harry Fleisher, Sam Fleisher, Mike
Selik, and Pete Mahoney with conspiracy to murder Senator Hooper. The
unfortunate Mahoney, a Detroit gambler and friend of Harry Fleisher,
had nothing to do with the planning of the job and was merely present
while the murder was discussed.

During
the time that the Hooper murder trial was being held in July 1945, a
shocking report made public by the Attorney General revealed the
findings of an investigation into the Michigan prison system. It
concluded that Senator Warren Hooper's murderers may have been
Jackson Prison inmates who had been let out of prison specifically to
assassinate Hooper.

Attorney
General Dethmers believed that arrangements to murder Hooper could
have been made when Mike Selik and Harry Fleisher visited Jackson
Prison several days prior to the murder. Defense attorneys filed for
a mistrial stating that Dethmers' hypothesis had prejudiced the jury.
The motion was denied.

But
rumors persisted that if a prisoner was in with the right clique, he
could own the men who jailed him. While Mike Selik served in Jackson
Prison, he had been Deputy Warden D.C. Petit's houseboy, and would
actually drive to Detroit in Petit's car. Petit would get happily
drunk at his favorite bar and be entertained by prostitutes at
Selik's expense while the latter drove off for the rest of the
evening.

The
glamour associated with gangsters in the thirties made them seem like
exciting mavericks with big bankrolls, even when they were in prison.
Ray Bernstein and the Keywell brothers basically ran Jackson Prison
in the early forties. These inmates and their friends got any types
of jobs they wanted and could essentially leave the prison whenever
they liked.

If
you were connected with the inner circle of Purple gangster inmates,
you would be taken out of prison during the summer months to attend
picnics or parties. Ray Bernstein personally ran one of the biggest
horse betting books there. According to one inmate, "the whole
joint was run on who you were and what you had!" Both Jackson
Prison Warden Harry Jackson and Deputy Warden D.C. Petit were in on
the action. Purple Gang inmates often drank at the basement bar of
Deputy Warden D.C. Petit's home in the company of various prison
officials with liquor supplied by O'Larry's Bar. Reports indicated
that members of the Purple Gang, including Mike Selik and Harry
Fleisher, were permitted to visit Ray Bernstein and other Jackson
inmates privately in Petit's office. The meetings took place
approximately a month after the Hooper murder.

Purples,
Feisher and Selik, along with several others, were eventually
convicted of conspiracy to murder in the Hooper case. Both Selik and
Fleisher jumped bonds of $25,000 each and fled the state. Both men
disappeared and remained fugitives for several years until F.B.I,
agents acting on an anonymous tip surrounded Harry Fleisher and a
female companion on a Pompano, Florida beach. For most of the time
that Harry Fleisher was a fugitive, he was reported to have claimed
to be a traveling salesman.

Close
friends said he actually prospered selling
cookware.

When
asked by Judge Levin if he had anything to say, Fleisher commented,
"I was forced to do what I did, I've been given a bad deal from
every place." Fleisher now faced a possible fifty years in
Federal and State prison sentences.

On
February 2nd, 1951 New York police department detectives arrested
a
man
named Max Green as a burglary suspect. Police checked Green's
fingerprints with F.B.I, records, and found that they matched those
of Purple gangster Mike Selik. Selik admitted his identity, but the
only reference he made to the Hooper murder was that he had been
persecuted for political reasons and framed in the Hooper case.

Selik
was returned to Michigan where he received an additional five years
as a fugitive, and, like Fleisher, faced more than fifty years in
Federal and State prison sentences. No one was ever indicted for the
murder of Senator Warren Hooper. In late 1946, a former Michigan
inmate came forward with a fantastic story that made all the pieces
of the puzzle fit.

Louis
Brown was a recently released parolee. During routine visits to his
parole officer, Brown implied that he was holding important
information about the Hooper murder. After some coaxing by police
detectives and a promise of police protection for the rest of his
life, Brown agreed to divulge his secret.

In
January of 1945, about a month before the Hooper murder, some Jackson
prison inmates, including Ray Bernstein and Harry Keywell, were
called to Deputy Warden D.C. Petit's office. At the meeting they were
offered $15,000 to kill Hooper by one of Frank McKay's errand boys.

McKay
and the warden made a brief appearance to show that the offer was
being made in good faith and the group was paid $10,000 in cash with
a promise of the additional $15,000 when the job was done. They were
provided guns, street clothes, and even phony license plates.

The
men left the prison in Petit's maroon colored convertible, followed
by Warden Harry Jackson. According to Brown, the two men were nervous
and jittery when they returned. Brown's story was based on his claim
that Harry Keywell had bragged of Hooper's smoothly executed murder
to a group of inmates. He'd described how they waited for Hooper to
drive past and then forced the senator's car to the shoulder so Ray
Bernstein could run up and blast the startled politician. By 1947
Louis Brown was reciting his story for a group of officials that
included the State Attorney General as well as the new governor and
former Special Prosecutor, Kim Sigler. He admitted that he had been
paid by the Deputy Warden to keep the story to himself. Amazingly, no
indictments were handed down from the testimony of Louis Brown, and
the Hooper murder remains officially unsolved to this day.

Although
the Purple's were once powerful enough to execute contracts while in
prison, the absence of indictments showed how incidental they'd
become to the criminal world. By the early fifties many Purple
leaders were dead, and survivors serving life sentences or lengthy
terms. The capture and convictions of Harry Fleisher and Mike Selik
ended the careers of the last acting Purples in the Detroit
underworld.

Chapter
14

The
Prison Years

"Spider
Murphy played the tenor sax-o-phone.

Little
Joe was blowin' on the slide trombone.

The
drummer boy from Illinois went crash, boom,
bang.

The
whole rhythm section was the Purple Gang."

—
Verse
from "Jailhouse Rock" by J. Leiber and M. Stoller

"
I
needed
correction and I got it. I met a lot of nice people, reputable ones.
1 learned that crime certainly does not pay."

—
Ray
Bernstein, 1963

By
1935 the heyday of the Purple Gang was over. At least 18 members met
violent deaths at the hands of one another. The loosely knit
organization, predictably, had self-destructed. Abe Bernstein
distanced himself from the few active associates of Detroit's
underworld to concentrate on what would become a lifelong struggle to
get his brother Ray out of prison.

Joe
Bernstein became a legitimate businessman and moved his operation to
California. Isadore Bernstein soon followed.

Charlie
Leiter had been operating a bar in Detroit since the early forties.
When questioned by a
Detroit
News
reporter,
Leiter replied, "I work fifteen to eighteen hours a day in this
joint, I never go anywhere else, I never see anybody. I'm content to
be a beer glass guy, a schmuck, selling beer by the glass."