The Purple Gang: Organized Crime in Detroit, 1910-1945 (6 page)

But
if Reid was enjoying Mike Dipisa's discomfort, it was to be
short-lived. Early one morning in December of 1926, Reid pulled into
the parking lot of his apartment building and as he came to a stop, a
gunman with a sawed-off shotgun stepped out of the shadows and fired.
The force of the shot in the back of Reid's head threw his body into
the windshield, killing him instantly.

The
murder was reported when a passerby noticed blood on the running
board. The killer was nowhere to be found. More importantly, in the
eyes of the Purple Gang, their most valuable distributor was gone
with the death of Johnny Reid, and someone had to pay.

The
rumor that Mike Dipisa had hired a Chicago gunman for the execution
spurred the gang on. The identity of the gunman was learned and
Reid's murder avenged. It sent a valuable message about how even
distant connections to the gang were protected to the death.

The
Purple Gang was now allied with the cream of
Egan's
Rats mob. Reid had brought in Fred Burke, Milford Jones, and other
Egan's Rats to freelance as executioners for Detroit gangs. In his
death, his Rats friends shared a cause with his Purple friends that
put them into business together.

The
Purple Gang became twice as powerful as any other Detroit gang with
Egan's rats by their side. Mike Dipisa was feeling powerful too. He
had the last word in his feud with Reid, spoken through the business
end of a shotgun.

The
gangster world thought Mike Dipisa led a charmed life and that
bullets would never be the cause of his demise. For several years he
was one of the most shot at characters in the Detroit underworld, yet
amazingly had never been hit. Even close friends of Dipisa were
afraid to take a walk with him, but his luck ran out less than two
years after the murder of Johnny Reid.

In
1928 Dipisa, up to his old tricks, sent one of his musclemen to a
blind pig to extort profits. Police were told two versions of what
transpired that night. One was that the thug walked into the blind
pig and made the 'business proposal,' at which point he was slapped
in the face and told to go back and tell what he'd gotten for his
trouble.

The
other story was that the thug had been sitting in his car waiting for
the blind pig owner. The owner arrived and accidently bumped Dipisa's
thug while parking. The two men argued and, incredibly, the strong
arm man sent to intimidate was knocked down by the owner.

According
to both versions the embarrassed thug, Zanetti, left and returned
with Mike Dipisa to help him save face. Unknown to Dipisa and
Zanetti, a constable named Edward McPherson was sitting in the blind
pig waiting to serve it a summons. In his statement to Detroit
police, McPherson explained that when Dipisa and Zanetti returned to
the blind pig Dipisa asked the owner to step outside.

Mcpherson
crouched inside the blind pig's door, gun drawn. They argued outside,
and Dipisa and Zanetti fired five shots at point blank range.
McPherson rushed out and the gunfight was on. Suddenly one man fell—
it was Mike Dipisa. The impossible to hit gangster had finally been
gunned down, defeated by an argument over his embarrassed thug.

Dipisa's
funeral was one of the first lavish gangster funerals in Detroit.
Eight cars filled with flowers followed the hearse to Mt. Olivet
Cemetary after a high mass. Attended by Detoit's most prominent
racketeers, the mile long funeral procession was preceded by a
15-piece band which played dirges all the way to the cemetary.

Although
a bit of a clown in the underworld, Dipisa did order the killling of
Reid that brought together Egan's Rats and the Purple Gang.
Ironically, his clumsy crimes created the monster that was the Purple
Gang and its accomplices, Egan's Rats.

Rats
member, Fred "Killer" Burke would go on to become the main
talent in Detroit's first machine gun murders. These shootings took
place in a building known as Milaflores Apartments, the site of the
Prohibition Era's famous "Milaflores Massacre".

The
unprecedented ruthlessness of Milaflores would guarantee the
reputation of the Purple Gang in their aspirations to control
Detroit.

Chapter
4

The
Milaflores Apartment Massacre

"The
machine gun worked, that's all I remember."

—
Deathbed
statement Frank Wright March 28, 1927

It
was only 4:45 one March morning in 1927, when the tenants of the
Milaflores Apartment Building were jolted out of their beds by the
deafening roar of machine gun and pistol fire. For several moments
all hell broke loose in the building. The last sounds were of shoes
scraping down the back stairway into the alley, and the roar of an
automobile engine into the morning darkness.

A
deadly silence enveloped the building's corridors. No one dared look
out their door.

Finally,
one of the tenants on the third floor peered into the hallway. The
air was still thick with the smell of burned gunpowder and cloudy
with plaster that had been ripped from the walls by bullets.

Near
the doorway of Apartment 308 lay three bullet-riddled bodies. Two had
literally been cut to pieces by the machine gun fire. One man still
seemd to be breathing shallowly.

Blood
pooled into the hallway. The incident, dubbed the Milaflores
Apartment Massacre, was now part of the bloody history of Detroit's
gangland wars. The three victims were identified as Isaac Reisfield,
William Harrison and Frank Wright, all local gangsters.

Both
Reisfield and Harrison were killed instantly. Frank Wright was still
barely alive when police arrived. Wright and the two bodies were
taken to the hospital, where attendants would comment that the bodies
had so many bullet holes in them it was impossible to distinguish
wounds.

The
machine gun incident was without precedent. It predated the days when
machine guns were almost a symbol of the underworld, the gangster's
weapon of choice. It had not been illegal to own a machine gun in
Michigan until the Massacre, but legislation was soon passed making
ownership a crime.

Soon
after the murder of Johnny Reid, it was rumored that one of the
Milaflore victims, Frank Wright, had been hired to kill Johnny Reid.
Whether or not Wright's contractor was Mike Dipisa is open to
speculation. Typically a hired gunmen was used in order to come in
for one day, complete his contract, and leave the state to keep local
police from solving the murder.

Wright
had arrived in Detroit from Chicago in October of 1926, and, after
killing Johnny Reid, stayed on. This was his first mistake. He made
his services available to local gambling houses as a guard and
gunman, where he met befriended fellow victims Isaac

Reisfield
and William Harrison, that was
their
first
mistake.

Frank
was shaking down local gamblers for protection money. He probably
preyed on gamblers protected by Purple Gangsters. This indiscretion
as well as the murder of Johnny Reid, would easily have brought on
the massacre.

The
Purples devised a scheme to lure Frankie Wright to his death.
Reisfield and Harrison merely went along to Milaflores that morning,
and were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Purples knew
Wright's recently kidnapped business associate Meyer Bloomfield, was
also a close friend and figured he'd be willing to meet with the
kidnappers.

With
his last breath, Frank Wright told everything. On the morning of
March 28th, he received a phone call in his room at the Book Cadillac
Hotel. His friend was being held in room 308 of the Milaflores
Apartments and if he came to this address he could negotiate for his
release.

Reisfield
and Harrison heard Wright take the call and suspected a trap. They
drove to Milaflores armed. When they arrived Wright rapped on the
door to no answer.

As
the three men turned to leave, the fire door at the end of the
hallway burst open and erupted with gunfire. The ambush happened so
fast that none of the men had a chance to pull their pistols.

Detroit
homicide investigators would later trace Apartment 308 in the
Milaflores complex to a Purple gangster. The crime scene unit found
an arsenal of 12 pistols, dumdum bullets, three shotguns and
blackjacks. Items found in apartment 308 made it look like any number
of people used the place.

When
shown a wanted poster found in the the rooms, the landlady identified
Salvatore Mirogliotta as a man who frequently visited. She told
police that Mirogliotta went by the name of Sam Miller, better known
to police as Joe "Honey" Miller, a notorious gunman. It was
obvious that the place was a base of operations.

But
if this group had actually kidnapped Bloomfield, why would they have
lured Wright and his associates to the front door of their own
hideout for a murder?

The
first break in the investigation was soon to come. At 2:00 a.m. on
March 29th, police arrested two
men.
An automatic pistol and a revolver with extra ammunition for both
were found in their vehicle. They
gave
their names as Harry Levine and Robert Burke.

Harry
Levine turned out to be Purple Abe Axler. The other man was Thomas
Camp, but it was the alias he'd first given that would make him
infamous: Fred "Killer" Burke was the close friend and
associate of the deceased Johnny Reid.

The
massacre was the first time a machine gun had been used in such a
depraved manner, and Fred "Killer" Burke's specialty was
machine gun work. These events drew a direct connection between the
Purple Gang, Fred "Killer" Burke, the murder of Johnny Reid
and the Milaflores Massacre.

On
the same day Axler and Burke were arrested Purple Gang associate
Jules Jaffee was picked up in connection with the Milaflores
slayings. The police received an anonymous tip that Jaffee knew
something. Investigators had two days to produce evidence. The judge
could only continue to hold Axler and Burke for trial if something
substantial was produced. When the habeas corpus review came before
him no conviction worthy evidence had surfaced, and the two men were
released. No one was ever brought to trial for the Milaflores
apartment murders; to this day the crime remains officially unsolved.

The
brutal murders of Wright, Reisfield, and Harrison rocked the Detroit
underworld, marking a turning point in the evolution of the gang. As
early as 1925 the Purples gained notoriety as hijackers, labor
racketeers, and free lance gunmen, but the massacre made them. They
were proven cunning, would obviously do anything to teach a lesson to
whomever betrayed them and had powerful allies.

The
most notorious Egan's Rats affiliated with the Purples in order of
nerve were Fred Burke, Isadore "Bubs" Londe and Ezra
Milford Jones. Isadore Londe was known for violent and sensational
bank robberies executed in daylight as well as for his frequent use
of submachine guns his killings were simply depraved indifference.

Ezra
Milford Jones ran many Italian and Sicilian gangsters out of St.
Louis. These Mafioso in turn became powerful Detroit leaders by the
late twenties. Jones carried a grudge, and so when they turned up in
Detroit he began a personal feud with the Italian underworld.

According
to rumor, he killed 29 Sicilian mobsters. Although Jones was a
physically small, psychotic punk with schoolboy looks, he made up for
his physical stature with ferocity. He would yell "Take it,
Dago!" as he shot his victim down. Although unpredictable and
greatly feared throughout the underworld, he was particularly hated
by the Italians and was eventually murdered by the Mafia.

Their
dossiers alone were enough for other gangs to submit to the Purples.
Already ranked high on local and Federal Public Enemy lists, Burke
was the icing on the
cake.
Within seven years he would help commit:

*Racketeer
kidnappings in Detroit.

*The
John Kay Jewelry Robbery