The Violent Years (13 page)

Frustrated and enraged by Laman’s indifference and his arrogant, smirking attitude throughout the trial, Stein exclaimed, “You’re lucky that the maximum penalty for the offense of which you have been found guilty is only two years. It is a pity you were not brought in on the charge of kidnapping rather than extortion. I think that under the same facts you might have been found guilty, and it would have been the privilege of this court to sentence you to life.”

Probably feeling slighted by the judge’s remarks, Wayne County Prosecutor James E. Chenot took exception to Judge Stein’s statement, explaining, “There was not a single shred of evidence against Laman on a kidnapping charge.”

As Laman was being led out of the courtroom, the judge added, “I think you still know a lot about the Cass kidnapping!” Laman just glanced back at the judge with a wide grin on his face.

From the time that Laman had first been arrested in connection with the Cass case, Detroit police officials had continued to leak information to the newspapers that Laman had confessed and implicated other members of the gang. These leaks were an attempt by police to discredit Laman. They wanted to make him look like a turncoat in the eyes of the Detroit underworld. It was also hoped that other members of the gang might believe that Laman had confessed and voluntarily turn themselves in. When Henry Andrews was arrested several days after Laman had been shot, Detroit newspapers carried the story that the police had found Andrews and the Dearborn house through information obtained from Laman when he was arrested. In truth it was Fred Begeman who had led police to the Dearborn address where Andrews and his wife had been arrested.

On October 23, 1929, Henry “Ray” Andrews was found guilty in the kidnapping of retired Wyandotte bootlegger Fred Begeman. On October 31, 1929, Andrews was sentenced by Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Arthur Webster to 35 to 50 years in prison. When asked if he had anything to say before sentencing, Andrews replied, “I’d rather let the matter rest in your hands, I have nothing to say except that I am not guilty.”

“Do you mean you are not guilty of this crime but are guilty of others?” Judge Webster asked.

“I am guilty of bootlegging but not of anything of this sort,” Andrews replied.

“Was there any reason why Begeman should have come into this court and to have sworn you were his abductor?” Judge Webster asked.

“Begeman said what the Detroit police wanted him to say, they framed me!” Andrews retorted.

• • •

On October 30, 1929, a trapper checking his lines along the Flint River, about four miles north of Lapeer, Michigan, made a gruesome discovery. As he was walking along the river bank, through the sumac bushes in a ravine between the river and a nearby road, he caught sight of what appeared to be a body. The badly decomposed corpse could not be identified at first. The remains were taken to Lapeer where a local doctor performed an autopsy. Two .32 and two .38 caliber bullets were removed from the body. They had been fired at close range near the heart and were determined to be the immediate cause of death. The body was taken to Detroit the following day, where it was positively identified as being the remains of David Cass.

The identification had been by the Cass family dentist through dental records. Cass had been severely beaten before he was murdered. His jaw had been fractured, and the body was covered with cuts and bruises. When Detroit police began their investigation into the Cass kidnapping in July of 1929, they tried to establish whether there was any trouble between Cass and any Detroit underworld characters. They discovered that David Cass was an addicted gambler, and they believed that he may have given out a number of IOUs that he had welshed on.

Apparently the body of Cass had been carried from a car parked on nearby Columbiaville Road and thrown off a ravine a distance of about 25 feet down into a stand of sumac bushes along the banks of the Flint River. The badly decomposed state of the body indicated that Cass had probably been killed shortly after being abducted. At first, the brutal murder of David Cass was blamed on Legs Laman, and according to rumors that were being circulated, Laman was to be brought back from Jackson Prison to stand trial for murder. On November 1, 1929, Laman was identified by Fred Begeman as the man who had put a cocked revolver to his head and forced him to write a ransom letter. A friend of Fred Begeman’s also identified Laman as one of the men he had paid the ransom to for Begeman’s release.

Begeman, who had been the principal witness for the state in the trial of Henry “Ray” Andrews, had originally identified Laman as a member of the gang that had kidnapped him several months earlier. He positively identified Laman in the hospital shortly after Legs had been shot by the police in July of 1929. At that time, Begeman had refused to sign a kidnapping complaint against Laman until Andrews was convicted. Detroit police were also quick to point out that at the time of Legs Laman’s conviction on the original extortion charge, the body of David Cass and other important evidence had not yet been found. This was the reason given for only charging Laman with extortion in the Cass kidnapping case, a relatively minor felony compared to kidnapping.

Laman was officially paroled from his extortion sentence so that he could be brought back to Detroit to be tried for kidnapping in the Begeman case. Laman’s parole was signed by the governor at the request of the Wayne County prosecutor. If complicity could not be proven in the Begeman kidnapping case, Laman would be returned to Jackson Prison to serve out his extortion sentence. On November 8, 1929, Laman was brought back to Wayne County to be examined on the Begeman kidnapping charge. At his arraignment, Laman pleaded not guilty. On November 14, 1929, Joseph “Legs” Laman was ordered held for trial on the kidnapping charge, after being examined by a Wyandotte Justice of the Peace. A $1-million bond was set for Laman at the request of the Wayne County assistant prosecutor.

In the meantime, crime lab specialists at the Detroit Police Department ran a ballistics test on the pistols that had been taken from Frank Hohfer and Edward Wiles when they surrendered to Detroit police. The test results showed that two of the .32 caliber bullets removed from the body of David Cass had been fired from Hohfer’s gun. They also showed that at least one of two .38 caliber bullets taken from the body had been fired from Wiles’s pistol. Detroit Police Department detectives presented Wiles and Hohfer with the results of the ballistics test in Marquette Prison. When they were questioned by the police, both Hohfer and Wiles denied that the guns were in their possession at the time David Cass was murdered. Both of these men would later be positively identified as the murderers of David Cass.

The Begeman kidnapping trial was held in Wayne County Circuit Court. During the testimony, Laman was positively identified by Fred Begeman as the man who had forced him at gunpoint to write a ransom letter. Begeman also identified Laman as the person who had called him repeatedly after his initial release and threatened him in an attempt to extort more money. During the trial, Mrs. Henry Andrews admitted to the prosecutors that she and her husband were close friends of Laman and his wife. She also admitted that the Lamans had lived with them for a while at the address in Dearborn. Laman’s attorney made a motion for a mistrial during Begeman’s testimony because the only identification that Begeman could give was that he recognized Laman’s voice. He could not positively state that he could recognize Laman by sight, as the latter had been wearing a handkerchief around the lower part of his face. The motion was denied by Judge Murphy. During the trial, Laman fondled a rabbit’s foot that had been given to him by his attorney.

On December 14, 1929, Laman was found guilty of kidnapping in the Begeman case. The jury was out only 55 minutes before returning a guilty verdict. Laman laughed out loud as court officers led him out of the crowded courtroom. Somehow his bravado was not quite as convincing as it had been two months earlier when he had been sentenced on his extortion conviction in the Cass case. On December 21, 1929, Laman was sentenced to 30 to 40 years in the State Prison of Southern Michigan at Jackson.

From the time that Laman had been shot by the police while collecting the ransom money from Gerson Cass, he had been pressured to name his accomplices. Throughout the questioning, Laman had remained stoically silent. Despite the pressure from his peers caused by the false stories that were leaked to the media by the police, it looked like Laman intended to be a “standup guy” and do his time without implicating anyone. But as soon as Laman was back in Jackson Prison on the kidnapping conviction, Captain Armstrong of the Michigan State Police began visiting him regularly. Armstrong continued to attempt to get Laman to confess and to name the other members of the gang. Exactly why Legs Laman decided to become a state’s witness and testify against the rest of the gang is not known for certain. His conviction for kidnapping Begeman and lengthy prison sentence may have helped to put Laman in the frame of mind to expose the rest of the gang. According to one account, Armstrong finally convinced him by promising a reduction in his sentence. It would be Captain Armstrong and Lt. Holland of the Detroit Police Department who were credited with destroying the Laman Gang.

The Laman Gang was reputedly so well organized that its members had agreed to take care of the families of incarcerated gang members. With no means of support, the wives and children of convicted criminals often became destitute and were forced to go on relief. The Laman Gang’s arrangement helped relieve the stress on imprisoned gangsters and helped prevent the convicted Mob member from the temptation of turning on the gang as a bargain for a reduction in sentence. Supposedly, when Andrews and Laman were sent to prison, their families had been financially neglected by their former pals. The fact that the gang had turned their backs on the families of Laman and Andrews may have been incentive enough for the two men to become state’s witnesses.

According to Harry Bennett, notorious chief of the Ford Motor Company Service Department, “When Laman went to prison, apparently ‘Red’ O’Riordan had promised Laman to take care of his wife and daughter. Now two state policemen got hold of Mrs. Laman and the daughter. They mussed the two of them all up and then took them to see Laman. This is how much Red O’Riordan thinks of you,’ the two officers told Laman. Believing that he had been double-crossed by the gang, Laman turned state’s evidence and pointed out everyone involved in the kidnapping of Cass.” Bennett claimed that Henry Ford had a profound morbid interest in crime and criminals. He also had a deep sympathy for them. As a result, thousands of ex-convicts were hired by the Ford Motor Company over the years in the name of rehabilitation. This put Harry Bennett in a unique position to have some inside knowledge of the workings of the Detroit underworld. In later years, Bennett would help to get Laman paroled with the promise of a job at Ford.

All of these circumstances evidently had an effect on Laman. He would later state that shortly before he decided to confess and become a witness against his gang, Capt. Armstrong and another officer visited him in his cell. They gave him a copy of a signed statement showing him that Henry Andrews had confessed to his role in the kidnappings of the Laman Gang and had implicated all of the other gangsters. At this point, Laman caved in and also confessed.

In June of 1930, Andrews and Laman were brought to Detroit to testify against their Mob. One revelation followed another. Andrews and Laman told police the details of 14 kidnappings and the murder of David Cass. According to one account, Cass was murdered because of the failure of a deal supposedly made by the gang with Detroit police to trade Cass for the release of Andrews and Laman. This aspect of the case appears to have been an embellishment. There was never any attempt made to trade Cass for the release of Andrews and Laman.

Laman named Walters, himself, William Cardinal aka Skin Murphy, Andrews, Wiles, and Hohfer as being members of the group that had kidnapped and murdered Cass. Jimmy Walters, according to Laman, was the fingerman in the Cass kidnapping. Andrews, Cardinal, Wiles, and Hohfer were the actual kidnappers. Cass had not been kidnapped at the Savoy Hotel as police first thought. He had been picked up near his father’s home and taken to a house on Moenart Avenue near Six Mile Road in Detroit. There he was guarded by Hohfer and Wiles, while the ransom negotiations were being completed. When Laman was shot by police while picking up the ransom money, the two thugs had panicked. According to Laman, Wiles, Hohfer, and Cardinal drove Cass to a place near Lapeer. Cass was then ordered out of the car at gunpoint and walked into the woods. Wiles ordered Cass to lie down on the ground. Cass refused and Wiles struck him in the mouth with his pistol. This could explain the fractured jaw found on the body. Cass lay down on the ground, and Wiles patted him on the head. Murphy aka Cardinal, Wiles, and Hohfer then each took turns firing a bullet into the prostrate body of David Cass.

Laman named Jimmy Walters as the fingerman in the Holdreith kidnapping, too, but by June of 1930, Walters had already been killed by rival gangsters. It was also rumored at that time that William Cardinal aka Skin Murphy had died of the wounds he had received when he, Wiles, and Hohfer had a shootout with Detroit police. Laman also confessed that the ransom in the Begeman kidnapping had been split between himself, Andrews, DeLong, and the three others.

Testimony given by Joseph “Legs” Laman and Henry “Ray” Andrews revealed that the Laman Gang had more than 20 associates. During its most successful period, it included: Joseph “Legs” Laman, Stanley DeLong, Benny Rubenstein, Henry “Ray” Andrews, Frank Hohfer, Edward Wiles, Andrew Germano, Roy Cornelius, Jimmy “Jumpy” Kane, Jimmy Walters, Lou Ross, Jerry Mullane, William Cardinal aka Gerald “Skin” Murphy, Harry Hallisey, Virgil Hartman aka Luke Hartman, Joseph “Red” O’Riordan, Edward McMullen, Mariano DeMaria aka Joe Mariano, Emmanual Badalementi aka Dude Manual, Martin Feldman, and Jerry Riley.

The first case in which Laman and Andrews were used as witnesses was the trial of Harry Hallisey, Benny Rubenstein, and Stanley DeLong for the August 2, 1928, kidnapping of Reubin J. Cohen. Cohen was taken to Legs Laman’s home in Detroit, where he was chained to the chimney in the attic of the house. The gang wanted a $10,000 ransom for the release of Cohen. DeLong made the arrangements to take Cohen to Laman’s home. Reubin Cohen had once been a partner of Benny Rubenstein in the wholesale liquor business. It would be Rubenstein who would pick up the ransom from Cohen’s wife, a total of $7,100, and deliver it to the gang. In this job, according to Laman, Kane, Mullane, DeLong, Hallisey, and Cardinal all shared in the ransom money.