The Purple Gang: Organized Crime in Detroit, 1910-1945 (7 page)

*The
holdup of the First National Bank of Indiana

*The
St. Valentine's Day Massacre

*A
mail truck robbery worth $200,000

*The
United Railways Robbery

*The
holdup of the Farmers and Merchants Bank
of
Wisconsin

*The
holdup of the Farmers National Bank of Kentucky

*
The holdup of the Lincoln National Bank & Trust Company

The
above list of crimes is by no means complete or even representative
of the many murders, robberies, and kidnappings in which he played a
part. By the time of his final capture and life imprisonment Burke
was considered America's most dangerous man.

By
the mid-twenties, Egan's Rats and The Purples were consolidating
their brute power. With rats as gunmen, the Purple Gang tolerated no
interlopers—including the police. The murder of Detroit
Patrolman Vivian Welch crossed the shaky line between their criminal
world and the authority outside of it.

Chapter
5

The
Murder of Vivian Welch

"Welch
was strictly on the shakedown. We have found that he
made
the
rounds of many blind pigs and threatened to have them raided if they
did not pay him . . . from what we have learned he got plenty. But he
finally ran up against the wrong boys."

Inspector
Fred Frahm, February 4th, 1928

On
New Year's Day 1928, the future of Detroit Police Officer Vivian
Welch could not have looked brighter. But by the end of January he
would be found unconscious and near death, the victim of a gangland
attack. As a rookie, Welch had become friends with veteran police
officer Max Whisman. The older man introduced Welch around the
department and took him into his confidence: he had developed a
racket. Officer Whisman was shaking down blind pig operators and
bootleggers on his beat.

A
raid could be very costly in terms of the loss of an operator's
equipment when Prohibition officers busted it up. All Whisman had to
do was threaten Prohibition violators with a police raid and the
money rolled in. So, Whisman and Welch became partners in the
protection business.

They
were aware that bootleggers were protected by organized crime.
Gangsters were quick to put their competitors out of business
'permanantly' as long as they were other gangsters, but never police.
It was not considered good business to kill police, there was enough
money for everybody.

Unfortunately
for Whisman and Welch, this protocol was not embraced by the Purple
Gang. Barely out of their teens in 1926 the purples were already
fearsome, and did not adhere to codes. What gave them their edge was
that anyone who crossed paths with them was fair game.

Whisman
and Welch had begun to prosper but whispers of Whisman's extortion
racket circulated throughout the Department. Oddly, Welch escaped
suspicion. Amidst rumors Whisman resigned. The resignation took place
presumably to protect his lucrative underworld shakedowns because
after a cooling off period, Whisman was reinstated on the force and,
still under suspicion, began making pickups on days off. He kept his
distance from Welch during duty hours but the two remained partners
in extortion.

Greed
got the best of them, and they increased their payoff demands.
Bitterness grew until a group of bootleggers actually complained to
police about Whisman. There was no way to arrest them as the
operators, predictably, wouldn't testify in court.

However,
their complaints provided ammunition for a police trial board to
bring Whisman up on charges. He was officially discharged from the
Detroit Police Force. Still, Welch was untouched.

The
law had nothing left to say about what they were up to, but someone
more powerful and infinitely more intimidating did. When Welch and
Whisman shook down a Purple Gang operated brewery, Welch was singled
out for vengeance. Detroit Police theorized that Whisman was forced
by the Purple's to set up his partner for them by driving him to his
execution.

At
1:10 P.M. on a January day in 1928 a woman, startled by gunfire,
rushed to her living room window. She saw a man limping through her
yard, chased by two men firing pistols as they ran. They disappeared
down the street and after several more shots, she heard the screech
of tires.

Down
the block, a second woman saw the man collapse in the street. One of
the gunmen stood over the body and took careful aim, firing several
rounds into his head as he lay prone. The woman wrote down the
license plate of the getaway car and phoned police.

Information
on his body identified the dead man as Vivian Welch. The attack was
so blatant that many eye witnesse accounts pieced together the events
of the murder. Those present from the beginning related how the car
stopped suddenly in the middle of the street and a man (Welch) jumped
out and started running.

Two
men then vaulted from the car with pistols, shooting as they ran.
When the victim fell in the street, both men fired several rounds
into him. They turned around the car and passed right over the body
as they roared away.

Arrests
in the police dragnet ranged from every known Purple to Whisman and
his common law wife, whose alibis didn't match. Whisman told police
he arrived home around noon the day of the murder and left again at 3
P.M. She said he'd not returned until four, which would've given him
time to set Welch up for the attack.

In
addition to the gangsters taken in the dragnet, police arrested six
Purples by February 2nd. Blind pig operator Ben Weiss was booked on
the murder charge, and Whisman was closely watched. Police felt he
was at least present for the murder.

All
were booked under their aliases and sent around the loop while the
police scrambled desperately for leads. After travelling through
every Detroit precinct house, they ended up at police headquarters.
Whisman was being held on a technical charge of homicide.

In
the meantime, Vivian Welch was being given a hero's funeral
accompanied by a police marching band. Police were unable to connect
him to any crimes because his record appeared clean. The prosecutor
made a statement to the Detroit press that he believed the actual
murderers of Welch were now in police custody. On February 4th Police
Inspector Frahm, Prosecutor Chenot, and commissioner Rutledge told
Detroit press that Welch was definitely not killed in the line of
duty. They revealed that Welch and Whisman extorted money from blind
pigs, and that Welch was killed as a result. It was a bold move by
high ranking officials increasingly tired of protecting criminals.

The
original nine suspects arrested were released on writs of habeas
corpus and then re-arrested the same evening on suspicion of murder,
due to evidence supposedly discovered by corrupt Inspector Henry J.
Garvin.
Gangleader Abe Bernstein was actually handcuffed leaving the Court
Building on his writ of habeas corpus.

Ten
minutes after the arrest, Bernstein's lawyer served another writ of
habeas corpus that demanded Abe be produced before the Judge. He was
released on a bond of $10,000 the following day. In the twenties, a
good defense lawyer was as essential to a gangster as his favorite
gun.

The
Prosecutor went to the press, describing Abe Bernstein as organizer
and leader of the Purple Gang who provided hired guns to underworld
operators in need of protection. By going public about organized
crime in Detroit the Prosecutor was declaring war. The drastic police
crackdown was the only positive consequence of the murder of Vivian
Welch.

The
Detroit underworld was on guard. To gun down a cop in broad daylight
as the Purples had was the ultimate ruthless act of protection of a
gang's interests. One that had been executed with total indifference
to the authority of the police. No one ever went to trial for Vivian
Welch's murder.

The
killing enhanced the Purple Gang's reputation for retaliation and for
their untouchable veneer. It also proved that even law enforcement
officers could become targeted by the Purples if they thought that
they were being crossed. The spectacular execution occurred at a
significant point in the Purple Gang's evolution.

For
several years a trade war had been raging in the cleaning and dying
industry. It cost local businessmen hundreds of thousands of dollars
in plant damage and resulted in the murder of at least two union
officials.

Now
officially the hardest, harshest gang to hire, the Purples began a
reign of terror in the cleaning industry. They were hired as muscle
for a racketeer-operated trade organization called the Wholesale
Cleaners and Dyers Association. By the war's bloody end the gang
would be revealed as more than just muscle.

Detroit
Federation of Labor President Francis X. Martel persuaded independent
shops to join the Wholesale Cleaners and Dyers union, and those who
declined suffered the consequences that a visit by the Purples could
bring. Abe Bernstein, his brother-in-law Charles Jacoby, and Francis
Martel were secretly partners from the start. The trade war would
finally culminate in a Purple Gang extortion trial that would be the
first serious legal threat to their power.

Chapter
6

The
Cleaners and Dyers War

"Rounded
up and waiting for trial, are a bunch of Jacoby's terrorists, the so
called 'Purple Gang.' It is now up to the Prosecutor and the courts
to go to the very bottom of this case and exterminate for all time
this vicious gang and its influence."

Police
Commissioner William Rutledge April 10th, 1928

"I
never heard of an organization of businessmen where men with guns
would come around and collect dues."

Judge
John M. Cotter

One
night in early spring of 1928 a local doctor turned into his driveway
only to discover someone had parked across it. Irritated, he put the
sedan in neutral and pushed it out of the way with his car. In the
darkness, he never noticed the blood soaked body lying inside.

On
the floor against the back seat was the body of Samuel Polakoff, vice
president of the Onion Cleaners and Dyers Company of Detroit. More
importantly he was the representative of the Wholesale Cleaners and
Dyers Association, and the last man in the 1925 trade war to be
"taken for a ride." A coroner's examination of the body
revealed he'd been beaten to death with a hammer.

The
signifigance of Polakoff's murder was that it finally broke the code
of silence that enabled the Purples to dominate the cleaners and
dyers for so long. Fearing for their lives, ten cleaning plant
operators went to the police to explain the reason for the killing.
Polakoff was so high profile that the Purples obviously didn't care
who they eliminated, any one of them could have been next.

They
told police that there were twenty other independent Cleaners and
Dyers who had been harrassed by death threats and bombings, and
blamed the situation on Jacoby and the Purple Gang. Detroit police
did not realize at the time that the suspects in custody for Sam
Polakoff's murder were the gang's most dangerous men.

The
arrests culminated in the trial that not only ended the Cleaners and
Dyers War, but exposed organized crime's pivotal role in the famous
labor conflict.

Before
organized crime took over, the cleaning industry was a
straightforward business plagued by price wars. It was comprised of
many large scale wholesale cleaning plants that performed all the
cleaning and dyeing functions for retail tailor shops.

A
group of independent laundry drivers, known in the business as
Commission Men, picked up clothing at tailor shops, transported it to
central cleaning plants
and
then brought it back to the shops. They worked for wholesalers as
well as private clientele. On commission they averaged at least $300
per week, a strong wage for the twenties.