The Purple Gang: Organized Crime in Detroit, 1910-1945 (4 page)

The
Bernstein Brothers

Joe
and Raymond Bernstein were to become important leaders in the Purple
Gang. Joe almost always dabbled in legitimate businesses. At one time
he had owned a barber shop which was located on the present site of
the Fox Theater in downtown Detroit. In later years Joe would be the
owner of a men's clothing store, an automotive parts company,
gambling casinos in Mexico, and oil wells in the Mt. Pleasant,
Michigan, area, with a lifelong friend named Sam Garfield. Joe would
prosper as a consequence of his investments in the oil business. He
would distance himself from the Purples in later years as the result
of his success in legitimate business. During the mid- to late
twenties, he was actively involved in the operations of the Oakland
Sugar House and Purple Gangs. It was then that he built the bankroll
that would eventually help finance legitimate enterprises. Raymond
Bernstein started out with
a
powerful
underworld gambler and resort owner named Joe Murphy. He later worked
as a guard and a dealer in the Detroit area gambling dens. His blind
pig, known as the "Kibbutzer Club," was located on the east
side of Woodward Avenue at Columbia in downtown Detroit.

Both
Joe and Ray Bernstein had grown up with the young mobsters associated
with the Oakland Sugar House Gang and were close friends and business
associates of many of these men. By the mid-twenties both Joe and
Ray, as well as many other Purples, were spending as much time
working their own individual rackets as they did with the Oakland
Sugar House business. It was during this period that Joe Bernstein
began to muscle in on the thriving Detroit area handbook rackets,
over which the Bernstein brothers would eventually gain considerable
control. During the late twenties Joe Bernstein would also be loosely
linked to the narcotics racket by Federal authorities.

The
Sam Lerner Case

Sugar
House mobsters often picked up additional income by extorting money
out of both legitimate and illegitimate neighborhood businesses. The
Sam Lerner case is a typical example of the type of strong arm
extortion practiced by the various ethnic underworld gangs of that
time against business people within their ethnic communities. This
extortion attempt had probably been the scheme of Harry Fleisher,
Phil Keywell, and Sam "Gorilla" Davis. The four men
originally arrested were Harry Fleisher, John Wolff (bookkeeper for
the Oakland Sugar House business), Sam "Gorilla" Davis, and
Isadore Kaminsky aka "Uncle." These men were formally
charged with extorting $25 a week from Sam Lerner for a period of
three weeks. Sam Lerner was the President of Michigan Millwork and
Lumber Company.

Why
Sam Lerner became an extortion victim of the Sugar House mobsters is
not known. There had been a rumor circulating at that time that
Lerner was operating a 30-gallon still in his lumber yard to
supplement his income. He may have been buying his brewing supplies
from the Oakland Sugar House.

The
original arrest warrants were later expanded to include Charles
Leiter, Philip Keywell, and two unknown persons, i.e., Richard Roe
and John Doe, legal pseudonyms used by the Court to describe
unidentified people in a legal warrant.

On
April 23, 1928, Fleisher, Wolff, Kaminsky, and Davis were arraigned
on charges of extortion. The following day Sam Lerner, accompanied by
his wife and a police guard, appeared in front of Judge Thomas M.
Cotter and identified the four men as having been involved in the
extortion plot. That evening a man later identified as Sam Potasnik
visited Lerner at his home. Potasnik, a Sugar House associate, warned
Lerner that he would be killed if he pressed the extortion case.
Lerner had two choices. If he wanted to live, he could repudiate his
previous testimony or leave town. Sam Potasnik was later arrested as
the result of his threat to Lerner and held for Obstruction of
Justice.

On
April 25, 1928, Lerner appeared at the hearing of the four men and
begged Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor James Chenot and Judge
Cotter to drop the extortion case. When Judge Cotter discovered that
Lerner's life had been threatened he became infuriated. Fleisher,
Wolff, Davis, and Kaminsky were immediately held for trial by Cotter
under
a
bond
of $10,000 each. Lerner eventually agreed to stay on and testify at
the trial.

This
event was occurring at the same time that Charles Jacoby, vice
president of Jacoby's French Cleaners and Dyers, and ten associates
of the Oakland Sugar House Gang, now being called Purple Gangsters by
the local press, were indicted and held for trial on charges of
extortion. The extortion charge was based on the bombings, beatings
and murder perpetrated against various Detroit area cleaning and
dying plants and their employees over the previous three years. This
period of labor strife in the Detroit cleaning and dying industry
would become known as the "Cleaners and Dyers War", and the
case against the extortionists would culminate in the so-called
"Purple Gang Trial" of 1928.

It
is likely that the confusion between the Purple Gang and the Oakland
Sugar House Gangs began during this period. Both were essentially the
same organization. In the Sam Lerner case, one paper stated that
Lerner had claimed that he "was not afraid of the Purple Gang
and that he would not run away from them." In other newspaper
articles, defendants Fleisher, Davis, Kaminsky, and Wolff are
identified as members of the Oakland Sugar House Gang.

According
to erroneous information supplied to the Detroit press by the
self-proclaimed nemesis of the Purple Gang, Inspector Henry J.
Garvin, the Purples had taken over the Sugar House operation. Garvin
blamed the recent spurt in extortion attempts on the gangsters'
desire to develop a defense fund to cover legal costs incurred by the
Purple gangster defendants in the Cleaners and Dyers extortion case.
In an article in the Detroit Free Press edition of April 21, 1928,
Garvin is quoted as saying that "the Oakland Sugar House
mobsters were shaking down prosperous businessmen in the community to
pay them tribute under threat of death, their strong arm methods
going unpunished as the result of [the public's] general fear ... to
testify in court against these men."

There
is no existing evidence that would suggest that the money extorted
from local businessmen had ever been used by the gang to pay legal
defense fees in the Purple Gang case. By this time the names of Sugar
House gangsters and Purple gangsters seemed to become interchangeable
in the local press. The Oakland gang had existed several years before
the local newspapers began to refer to the underworld group as the
Purple Gang.

In
reality the Sugar House mob was not a separate group of gangsters
taken over by the Purple Gang, but was comprised of many of the same
mobsters that would be lumped under the general heading of the Purple
Gang by the Detroit press. This confusion probably led writers in
later years to conclude that the Oakland Sugar House Gang and Purple
Gang were rival underworld organizations when, in fact, they were
just different factions of the same underworld alliance of gangsters.

The
original criminal complaint in the Sam Lerner extortion case had
accused the defendants of threatening Sam Lerner by promising, "You
pay us twenty-five dollars a week or we will kill you."

The
preliminary hearing of the Lerner case was held in the courtroom of
Recorders Court Judge Thomas M. Cotter on April 30, 1928. Sam Lerner
was first questioned by Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor James E.
Chenot. Lerner explained that he managed a lumber yard and that he
knew all of the defendants. He had sold some lumber to a friend named
Isadore Seligman.

While
he was talking with Seligman, a man named Maurice Solomon had stopped
by Seligman's house and asked to speak to Lerner. Solomon, who
managed a tire store at the corner of Oakland and Holbrook Avenues in
Detroit, told Lerner that several men, including a man later
identified as Sam "Gorilla" Davis, were looking for Lerner
and had threatened to kill him. Solomon suggested to Lerner that he
should come back with him to the tire store and get a look at the
gangsters who had been hanging around the shop earlier. Lerner told
the court that he had gone back to the tire store with Solomon.

As
Lerner walked into the garage he noticed Sam Davis talking to one of
the employees. In Lerner's testimony he claimed that he had overheard
the "Gorilla" say "if Sam Lerner makes a wrong move he
is going to get it plenty tonight!" Lerner had noticed the
handle of
a
pistol
sticking out of Sam Davis' pocket. Davis then left the tire store
without saying anything directly to Lerner and joined two other men
who pulled up in a car. Lerner told the court that he had then walked
up to the corner to see which way the men had gone when the car
turned onto Oakland Avenue. He saw the car proceed north on Oakland
and drive into the Sugar House. It was at this point that Lerner said
he realized
that
he was dealing with members of the Oakland Sugar House Gang.

Lerner
decided to go to the sugar warehouse and talk to Charlie Leiter and
Henry Shorr, whom he knew to be the leaders of the mob, to try to
find out why the gang had wanted to kill him and try to straighten
things out. Before Lerner went over to the Sugar House he stopped at
his friend, Isadore Seligman's, home and borrowed Seligman's pistol
to take along with him, because by this time, he had explained to the
court, he was terrified.

By
the time that Lerner walked into the Oakland Sugar House it was 4:15
in the afternoon. He stated to the court that when he walked into the
building he noticed the gang's bookkeeper, Jack Wolff, sitting at a
desk near the front of the warehouse. Harry Fleisher sat reading a
newspaper. Sam Davis was also present. Lerner asked Wolff if he could
speak to either Charlie Leiter or Henry Shorr. He was told that Shorr
was in New York and that Leiter was out. Lerner told the court that
he had asked the stranger who was sitting with Fleisher if he might
have some idea where Leiter could be found. Lerner was directed to a
restaurant across Oakland Avenue opposite the Sugar House.

Lerner
walked over to the restaurant where he found Charlie Leiter, Leiter's
wife, and two other men eating dinner. He explained to Leiter that
Davis had threatened him and that he was trying to find out why the
mob was after him. Lerner claimed that Leiter had asked him if he was
carrying a gun. When Lerner admitted that he was armed, Leiter
suggested that he go and kill Davis. Lerner told Leiter that he was
not afraid to fight one or even two men but he did not want to do
battle with the whole gang.

Lerner
was terrified by this time, and told Leiter that he did not want any
trouble, he just wanted to get things sorted out. Leiter then asked
Lerner to give him his gun. When Lerner refused, Leiter then
suggested that they both go over to the Sugar House and try to
straighten things out. Lerner then followed Leiter out of the
restaurant across Oakland Avenue and back into the sugar warehouse.
When the two men entered the building Leiter told Lerner to wait
outside his (Leiter's) office. Leiter had then gone into the office
and had a private conversation with Harry Fleisher. Suddenly,
Fleisher lunged out of the office door with what Lerner would later
describe as
a
black,
automatic pistol, pushed it into Lerner's belly, and said, "Give
me your gun, you son of a bitch, or I'm going to kill you."
Lerner, who was frozen with fear, slowly handed Fleisher his pistol.

Fleisher
then pushed his pistol harder into Lerner's stomach and pulled the
trigger. Lerner held his breath as he heard the trigger fall on an
empty chamber. He was now thoroughly terrorized. About this time Phil
Keywell walked into the Sugar House. Leiter called Fleisher and
Keywell into his office. Lerner would later claim that he saw the
three men go into a huddle and that he had overheard Leiter say, "Let
him square up with the boys and let him live." Fleisher and
Keywell then came out and suggested to Lerner that they accompany him
back to his friend Seligman's house to protect him and to have Lerner
point out where he had seen Sam "Gorilla" Davis when he had
threatened to kill Lerner. Fleisher then told Sam Lerner that he knew
the men who wanted to kill him. Fleisher had then unloaded Lerner's
pistol and handed it back to him.

Lerner
testified that later that same evening a man who gave his name as
William Bernstein had stopped by the lumber yard. Whether William
Bernstein was in reality one of the four Bernstein brothers is not
known. Bernstein, who was a stranger to Lerner, told him that he had
learned of his trouble with the Sugar House Gangsters and asked if he
could be of any help in resolving the problem. Bernstein offered to
play the role of mediator between Sam Lerner and the Sugar House mob.
This incident represented a very similar scenario to the way that the
Italian and Sicilian Black Handers extorted money from the
businessmen in their community—first a death threat, then a
mysterious mediator appears to straighten out the problem—the
mediator all along being a member of the extortion gang himself.