The Purple Gang: Organized Crime in Detroit, 1910-1945 (3 page)

Michigan
was declared officially dry by 1918. There were 1,534 licensed
saloons and 800 unlicensed blind pigs in Detroit. By 1925 the number
of blind pigs was estimated between 15,000 and 25,000.

Chapter
2

The
Birth of the Oakland Sugar House Gang

"All
of us started carrying guns back in 1923 in the old Sugar House Days.
One of our Jewish boys killed a Dago named Speed on Hastings Street.
Then all hell broke loose."

—
Izzy
Schwartz Sugar House Gangster

The
Purple Gang rose to power in the mid-twenties as a result of two
occurrences. The first was when the newly formed Purples aligned
themselves with the older Oakland Sugar House Gang. They saw the
old-timers as a tool for becoming a respected gang.

The
second occurred in 1923, while Sugar House gangster and proprietor
Isadora Cantor, strolled down Hendrie Street on Detroit's east side.
As he turned the corner he noticed a touring car pull to the curb
ahead of him. The driver climbed out and they casually made eye
contact.

In
that split second of recognition both men reached for their hip
pockets and gunfire echoed in the street. The touring car driver
staggered several steps before crumpling to the ground. Women
screamed and people scrambled for cover while Cantor shoved the
smoking pistol in his pocket and disappeared into the forming crowd.

Later
Cantor walked into the Bethune Street Police Station and turned
himself in for murder. He'd shot Frank Speed, an associate of a gang
shaking down local bootleggers and independent blind pig operators.
The gunman had languished in the hospital for several hours and then
died.

Frank
Speed came to Detroit from New York City with a lengthy police
record. He fled the city following a hold-up but was returned and
convicted of armed robbery. Sentenced to seven years in the state
prison of Southern Michigan, he was paroled after serving two and a
half.

During
the inquiry into the Speed shooting, Cantor told police that he and
his partner George Goldberg operated a wholesale sugar business. The
"Sugar House," as the operation was called, was a
legitimate business which dealt in brewing products. Its purpose was
to cater to those who wanted to home-brew.

A
prescribed amount of beer and wine could be made under the
Prohibition law for personal consumption. The boom in corn sugar
production during prohibition was one of the most spectacular
agricultural events of the twenties. Corn sugar was a popular brewing
ingredient because it leaves no ash and no odor— ideal for
large scale underworld brewing.

During
the early twenties, Speed's mob had an interest in a greyhound
racetrack. One of the ways the gang made money on it was by forcing
underworld operators to buy hundreds of dollars worth of betting
slips. If the 'offer' was rejected, the victim would be intimidated
until he folded under the pressure of their extortion.

One
fateful day in 1923, Frank Speed showed up at Isadore Cantor's Sugar
House and offered to sell him $250 worth of dog track slips. Cantor,
well aware of what was happening, politely refused. Speed knew the
Oakland Sugar House was lucrative and pushed the issue, threatening
to tell Prohibition authorities.

Cantor
still refused and Speed stormed out of the Sugar House, mumbling
threats.

Cantor
then received anonymous threatening letters and phone calls almost
daily. Both men were under severe stress, and neither knew they would
see the other on the street that day. By then they'd become so highly
strung that their trigger fingers had a mind of their own.

Cantor
was actually exonerated in the killing of Speed, based on a ruling of
justifiable homicide. It was typical of the luck of the Sugar House
Gang. Its survival despite its gangsters' impossible odds of being
jailed or killed would carry into the Purple Gang's life span, a
fortuity due as much to bullying cops and other criminals as it was
to blind luck.

Cantor
may have killed Speed out of self-preservation, but he was still a
target of revenge for the dead man's gang. Two months later, while
Cantor stood in front of a restaurant with friends, a maroon sedan
seen earlier pulled slowly up to the curb.

For
a brief, silent moment passersby stared at the silhouettes inside the
vehicle. Suddenly the air was filled with bullets and debris. Police
would later estimate that 50 to 100 rounds of ammunition had been
fired at the group, right in broad daylight.

A
Cantor bodyguard was the first to go down in the attack. The attacker
had fired indiscriminately into the crowd. Threats by the Speed's
gang in retaliation for his killing had finally become a reality, yet
Cantor was still alive.

He
identified the gunmen from the hospital but was offered $5000 not to
testify with the stipulation that he leave Detroit permanently.
Cantor failed to appear at trial. The charges were dismissed without
prejudice.

According
to Detroit Police the only reason Cantor had been offered hush money
was because Speed's gang found it impossible to eliminate him.
Cantor's absence at trial was soon to be explained to police. In
early April of 1924, his bullet-riddled body was fished out of the
East River in New York City. No one was arrested in connection with
the murder.

All
of the killings and turmoil had really been the result of the power
struggle between the gang in control of the Sugar House operation—the
Sugar House Gang—and the gangs that wanted to conquer them.
Despite their murder of Isador Canter, Speed's gang never gained
control of the Oakland Sugar House.

Evidence
suggests that Purples Henry Shorr and Charles Leiter were active in
the Oakland Sugar House business since it's inception. It was Leiter
and Shorr who continued to operate the house after Cantor's death.

When
the house first opened, Isadore Cantor et. al had been front men for
Charles Leiter, Henry Shorr, and other mobsters who made the business
prosper by selling supplies to underworld brewers as well as
operating their own plants. It was Leiter and Shorr who kept Cantor
alive for so long after the Frank Speed shooting, making him
impossible to hit.

Shorr
and Leiter surrounded themselves with the young strong-arm men who
would become the Purple Gang. They were expert at the installation
and concealment of high capacity brewing plants with excellent
product. Building these operations required money, which they made
through hijacking and extortion rackets.

The
Oakland Sugar House would become the financial bulwark of the Purple
Gang because of Henry Shorr's business acumen. The gang became so
powerful that they controlled prices of bootleg liquor in Detroit,
financed moonshiners, and ran their own Blind Pigs. They dwarfed
their competition when they developed nationwide underworld alliances
with the New York and Chicago mobs.

According
to one crime investigator "The Sugar House Gang became a gang
within a gang allied by birth, friendships and by illegitimate
enterprise." A number of Purple Gang gunmen came from New York,
imported by Shorr and Leiter as muscle. The core group of Detroit
Purples included: Harry Fleisher aka "H.F."; Hyman Altman
aka "the Indian"; Jacob Silverstein aka "Scotty";
Sam Davis aka "the Gorilla"; Isadore Kaminsky aka "Uncle";
Abe Zussman aka "Abie the Agent"; Sam Bernstein aka
"Fatty"; Joe Miller aka "Honey"; Lou Fleisher;
Jack Budd; Raymond and Joe Bernstein; Lou Gellerman; Jacob Levites;
Ben Marcus; and John Wolff.

Most
of these men were eight to twelve years younger than Leiter or Shorr
and would form the nucleus of the "Purple Gang."

The
Soldiers of the Purple Gang

Harry
Fleisher or H. F., in the idiom of the underworld, started his
criminal career as a truck driver and bodyguard for Charlie Leiter.
In his capacity as Oakland Sugar House driver, Fleisher would fill
corn sugar and brewing supply orders. The address would be near the
site of someone elses hidden still or cache of completed product.

If
he found it, he would return with several others and either steal or
hijack the load of liquor, depending on whether the location was
guarded. One of his favorite tricks was to locate the storage area
and kick in the door. He'd locate a bum loafing nearby and offer the
man a few dollars to load the truck.

When
the man came around to the cab to collect his money, he would get the
muzzle of Fleisher's gun instead. The loaded truck would pull away,
leaving the body of the laborer where it fell. From these exploits,
Harry Fleisher became known and feared in the underworld as a man who
did his own work.

If
a competing mobster encroached on one of his rackets, he would give
the man a polite warning to back off. His second warning was a meal
with the man who, when finished eating, would be shot in the head.
Sam Davis was known as "the Gorilla" because of his simian
appearance and low I.Q. He was used to ferret out hidden cases of
bootleg liquor at a still site. He also provided other gangsters with
entertainment when describing its location. Davis liked to use the
word partition to describe a wall and would mispronounce it
"pishmission".

His
excitement grew with his description. Hardened gangsters would double
over with glee at the sound of Davis repeatedly talking about liquor
behind the pishmission. But Davis was also an experienced strong-arm
man or
"shtarker"
who would not hesitate to use a gun or knife on an unwary enemy.
Although unsophisticated for use in sensitive jobs, he was a very
effective muscleman and collector.

Hyman
Altman, aka "Two Gun Harry" and "the Indian"
because of his resemblance to a native American, started out running
errands for the Sugar House Mob and was referred to as the office boy
of the Purple Gang. At 5'8 and 200 pounds he was a fearsome-looking
thug who, ironically, was not very tough.

Because
of his formidable stature, the Russian born Altman was effective at
strong arm work as long as he carried a gun or a knife.

Jacob
Silverstein was
a
schoolmate
of the original group of Purples in the old Hastings Street
neighborhood. Apparently the only one who paid attention in class, he
would eventually gain fame as bookkeeper for the Purple Gang.

Jack
Budd was another strong arm man. Also born in Russia and brought to
America as an infant, he was a product of the Hastings Street
neighborhood, and acted as Purple Gang Leader Abe Bernstein's
bodyguard and driver before being sent up for murder.

Joe
Miller, known as "Honey" because of his early employment as
gunman in the Oakland Sugar House Gang, was a lamster from the Ohio
area. He had been involved in the murder of a police officer during a
liquor dispute. Wanted in Ohio under his real name, Salvatore
Mirogliotta, "Honey" Miller became one of the few
non-Jewish associates of the Purple Gang.

Abe
Zussman, aka "Abie the Agent" after a popular
Detroit
Times
comic
strip, was a professional killer.

Zussman
acted as an agent for several prominent bootleggers during
Prohibition, placing their liquor in underworld resorts. He was
rumored to have enjoyed his work so much that he would occasionally
kill someone as a favor to a friend, free of charge.

Movie
houses of the era began installing theater seats with metal backs
possibly due to Zussman, who liked to work with a knife. He would
follow a victim into a darkened theater, take a seat directly behind
them until a noisy scene and run his knife through the back of the
chair. When the movie ended and the house attendants tried to wake
the 'sleeper', they would find a body instead.

The
balance of the gang: Isadore Kaminsky, Sam Bernstein, Lou Fleisher,
Lou Qellerman, Jacob Levites, Ben Marcus and John Wolff, were
involved in a litany of similarly brutal activities as strong arm men
and hijackers. Hijacking liquor from older and better established
Detroit mobs earned the Purple's reputation for daring, ruthlessness
and ferocity.