The Purple Gang: Organized Crime in Detroit, 1910-1945 (26 page)

Harry
and Sam Fleisher, Jack Selbin, and Jack Stein had all been convicted
of conspiracy to violate I.R.S. laws in 1936. Paroled in 1940, the
Fleishers returned to crime and by 1945 were convicted of conspiracy
to murder Senator Warren Hooper. Convicted of armed robbery as well,
they were poised for life sentences.

In
1945 a Michigan Attorney General's investigation revealed that
inmates were literally running the state Prison. Among the leaders of
the inmate syndicate were Phil and Harry Keywell, and Ray Bernstein.
Also looming were the allegations of Bernstein and Harry Keywell's
roles in the Hooper murder. Finally State Corrections Director Garret
Hyns ordered the Keywell brothers and Ray Bernstein returned to the
maximum security of Marquette Prison in Michigan's upper peninsula.

As
recently as 1961, an attorney retained by the families of the two
Purple gangsters attempted to persuade the governor to commute their
sentences—the only way one convicted of first degree murder in
Michigan could be eligible for parole. This method of changing
sentences would reduce the men's charges to second degree murder,
allowing them to be released on time served.

Bernstein
and Keywell had served thirty years.

Attorney
John Babcock and a chaplain at the State Prison of Southern Michigan,
traveled to Kansas City to obtain a deposition from Solly Levine. All
that time the Detroit bookmaker had been in hiding, still fearing a
gangster execution for witnessing the Collingwood Massacre.

In
a sworn statement, Levine repudiated his trial testimony. "1
wasn't there, 1 never went there. 1 never saw those guys that day,"
Levine told Babcock. The story sounded as ridiculous then as it did
in 1931.

For
more than a year the Michigan Parole Board left the commutation
request pending. Finally the Board recommended that the governor not
commute the sentences of the two Purple gangsters. In a letter to the
governor, the chairperson wrote, "The parole board feels that
more years of imprisonment are needed before both men attain
commutation status."

In
1963 Ray Bernstein suffered a debilitating stroke that paralyzed his
left side and caused a serious speech impediment. Lawyers now pressed
for a mercy parole for the wheelchair-bound 58-year-old Purple.

Bernstein
was wheeled into his final Parole Board hearing. His spotless prison
record of thirty-two years and his contributions to other
inmates—including teaching school and contributing money—were
taken into consideration. Bernstein told the Board that if he was
well enough when he got out of prison he wanted to work with
delinquent boys.

In
1964 he was released on a mercy parole and admitted to University of
Michigan Hospital. In and out of hospitals and nursing homes, Raymond
Bernstein died at the U of M Medical Center on July 9, 1966. He was
61 years old.

Harry
Keywell remained in prison for two more
years,
until Governor Romney signed a commutation order. A week later
Keywell walked out of the gates of Jackson Prison a free man. He was
54 years old.

On
October 18th, 1965 Harry Fleisher became the last Purple gangster to
be released from State prison. In the late fifties, he'd worked as
the chief clerk of the Prison Food Department and organized other
convicts for "Operation Leaky Arm," the nickname for annual
prison blood drives. Fleisher personally donated thirty-nine pints of
blood, making him the top donor in Jackson Prison, an ironic claim to
fame, in view of how much blood he'd shed. Something of a jailhouse
lawyer in prison, he was preparing his own appeals to seek an early
parole.

In
1957, Lou Fleisher was released after nineteen years in Alcatraz.
Prison officials called him a model prisoner. When asked by reporters
what he thought about juvenile delinquency, Lou replied, "Juvenile
delinquency. It's no good. Look at me. I paid with half of my life!"
Upon release Fleisher claimed to be going into the scrap business.

A
year after release Fleisher and an accomplice named Joey Anielak were
arrested at the Dorsey Cleaners branch on Seven Mile Road in Detroit.
He'd been suspected by the police due to a sudden rash of arsons in
the cleaning industry. Police surrounded the Dorsey Cleaners and
watched while Lou Fleisher drilled holes in the roof through which
Anielak poured a can of gasoline.

Fleisher
and Anielak pleaded guilty to attempting to burn a building. On April
3, 1964, Louis Fleisher was found dead in his cell. The official
cause of death was heart attack, Fleisher was 56 years old.

By
1950 Philip Keywell had become a prison trustee.

By
then the former Purple had served twenty years of the life sentence
he'd earned with his 1930 murder. Psychologists called him "hostile
with a big shot complex," and his promotion sparked a
controversy.

Rumors
of payoffs circulated and he was transferred to the Maybury
Sanitarium in Northville, Michigan where he acted as the trustee
foreman of that institution's chicken ranch. For several years
Keywell lived in this minimum security environment until media
attention prompted the newly appointed Corrections Commission to take
action. Phil Keywell was returned to Jackson Prison.

In
1962 his attorneys attempted to win a com-muntation of the first
degree murder sentence. But for Phil Keywell commutation was an
emotionally charged issue. He'd shot a 16-year-old boy to death
simply for looking into the window of a cutting plant—a truly
senseless killing.

The
murder victim's 72-year-old mother appeared and pleaded with the
Parole Board to keep Keywell in prison. Philip Keywell's father also
made an impassioned and tearful plea.

"Please
give me my son back. . . . I'll set him up. I know he'll make up for
the past."

Philip
Keywell then made a statement to the Parole Board. "I've
regretted the incident all my life. I was twenty-one, naive, ignorant
and no doubt a little bit stupid." When asked by a Board member
if he carried a gun at the time of the Mixon murder, Keywell replied,
"I always carried a gun. During the Prohibition era . . . it was
the accepted thing—just like wearing an overcoat. Everybody
carried a gun."

Governor
Swainson decided to commute the sentence of Phil Keywell and several
other lifer convicts as one of his last acts in office.

Both
Philip and Harry Keywell married after their release from prison and
spent the remainder of their lives in obscurity as quiet, law abiding
citizens. Harry Fleisher spent the time working for an old friend as
a warehouse manager at Ewald Steel Company in Detroit. He died in May
1978. Sam Fleisher died of a heart attack at his Florida home in
1960.

Abe
Bernstein was found dead in his room at the Book Cadillac Hotel in
Detroit in March of 1968, the victim of a heart attack at 75. Mike
Selik went back to work for underworld gambling operations and at
this writing is still living in a Southfield, Michigan nursing home.
Selik is possibly the last living Purple gangster.

In
retrospect, the Purples ruled the Detroit underworld for a very short
time. Greed, lack of organization, and high profile methods insured
their short reign. But their ferocity, and the terror they induced in
underworld adversaries and citizens alike built a legend that lives
on.

They
were pioneers of an enduring mythos in our country's history, that of
the murderous, the glamourous and the all-powerful: the American mob.

-30-

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