The Violent Years (21 page)

The Jaworski execution was scheduled for 7 a.m., January 21, 1929, in the death house of the Rockview Penitentiary at Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. His attorney’s attempts at getting a commutation of the death sentence and a last-minute stay of execution had all failed. In the long hours before the execution, Jaworski gave no sign of a break in his nerve. At 7 a.m. on January 21, 1929, Paul Poluszynski aka Paul Jaworski was brought into the death chamber at the Rockview Prison supported by two guards. Jaworski entered the death chamber chewing on a stogie, one of a number of cigars that he remarked on the way to the death house “must last me all my life.” At the door of the death chamber, the cigar was removed from his mouth. He refused any attempts at religious consultation. When asked why by prison officials, he replied, “Aw, I used to talk against that stuff on a soap box. I want to die just like I lived.” At 7:02 a.m., Jaworski was strapped into the electric chair and current was applied. At 7:06 a.m., Paul Jaworski was officially pronounced dead.

In the end, he was officially considered to have been the murderer of six people and not the 26 he had once boasted of killing. Jaworski at one point had told police officials that he had killed John Vassbinder because he was a dope addict. Shortly before he was executed, Jaworski told police that he hadn’t seen Vassbinder since the two men had broken out of jail together.

The Jaworski family never claimed the body. Paul Jaworski was buried in a potter’s field near Rockview Penitentiary. Shortly before he was executed, Deputy Warden William MacFarland asked Jaworski how much money he had left. “There ain’t none,” replied Jaworski. “It’s all gone. Easy come, easy go!”

The Jaworski/Flathead Mob was responsible for a long series of depredations over a period of approximately six years that included:

• 1923—The holdup of the Detroit Savings Bank Branch in Detroit: $30,000 taken

• December 23, 1923—Holdup of a coal company paymaster at Beadling, Pennsylvania: $23,000 taken and paymaster killed

• May 17, 1924—Holdup of the Detroit Bank Branch at West Fort Street and West End in Detroit: $40,000 taken

• December 1924—Holdup of a coal company paymaster at Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania: guard killed, unknown amount taken

• April 14, 1925—Holdup of the American State Bank Branch in Detroit: Charles J. Taggert Jr., a young teller is killed, unknown amount taken

• April 30, 1925—Saloon holdup at Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania: unknown amount taken

• June 5, 1925—Attempted holdup of the Peninsular State Bank in Detroit

• June 13, 1925—Holdup of the Central Savings Bank in Detroit: $27,000 taken and a police officer killed

• August 8, 1925—Holdup of Henry Velick, a scrap-iron dealer at Detroit: $1,500 taken

• November 20, 1925—Holdup of a Brinks armored car taking a payroll to the Ainsworth Manufacturing Company in Detroit: $18,000 taken and a guard killed

• December 24, 1925—Holdup of a payroll of the Pittsburgh Terminal Coal Company at Mollenauer, Pennsylvania: $48,000 taken and a guard killed

• March 11, 1927—Dynamiting of an armored car owned by the Pittsburgh Terminal Coal Company at Coverdale, Pennsylvania: $104,000 taken and a guard killed

• August 18, 1927—After being convicted of murder and sentenced to die in the electric chair, Jaworski and another man shot their way out of the Allegheny County Jail at Pittsburgh and escaped; a guard is killed

• September 29, 1927—Holdup of the offices of the General Baking Company at Detroit: $5,000 taken

• June 6, 1928—Holdup of the business offices of the
Detroit News:
$25,000 taken and a patrolman killed

• • •

On the night of November 24, 1925, a group of bandits descended on the village of Cassopolis, Michigan. Cassopolis is located in the southern part of the state about 100 miles southwest of Detroit. The outlaws had plans to rob the First National Bank of Cassopolis and came prepared to do whatever was necessary to get the vault opened. The Cassopolis job had been well planned. At about 2:30 a.m., the gang entered the town. Their first job was to round up anybody who was up and about. The village had two all-night restaurants, since it was located along highway M-60, a popular truck route to Chicago. The bandits made their first stop at the restaurant owned by Pat Wallace. Wallace was alone in the building when three of the thugs entered his place and produced pistols. Wallace was ordered to put his hands behind his back and was quickly tied up. He was marched across the street at gunpoint to another all-night diner. There they found three men including a Cass County Deputy Sheriff named Clyde Benham. These men were also tied up and taken out of the diner. While the local townspeople who were awake were rounded up, other members of the gang were busy prying open the front door to the bank. When the door was broken down, all four of the gang’s prisoners were walked down to the bank and seated in a cloakroom inside the building, where they were tied to their chairs. The gangsters then set to work on the vault door. The prisoners were told to keep their heads down, since there was going to be a little blasting. Several members of the gang remained on guard outside the bank with pistols and shotguns. Using sledge hammers, the gang had first broken out a hole in the brick wall surrounding the safe. Finding that the vault was steel lined, they went to work on the heavy door. The joints of the door were “soaped” (sealed by rubbing soap into the joints) and a charge of nitroglycerin was put in and exploded. After several charges were exploded, the main vault door was blasted off. The vault was found to have a second inner door as an extra security measure. Two more charges were placed in an attempt to blast off this additional obstacle. Failing to get the safe’s inner door open, the bandits fled, taking several hundred dollars in postage stamps from desks they had ransacked in the bank offices. The postage stamps were the gang’s only loot for a whole night’s work. The prisoners eventually freed themselves and walked out of the partially destroyed bank building unharmed.

Before the gang had taken hostages that night and attempted to rob the Cassopolis Bank, they cut the telephone cables in the front and rear of the village telephone office building. This had effectively cut the town off from the outside world. The local operator on duty that night eventually found that the bandits had missed one wire leading to Dowagiac, Michigan, a nearby hamlet approximately seven miles north of Cassopolis. Through this line, an alarm was eventually put out.

The repeated explosions at the bank awoke the whole village, and several of the town’s braver souls set out to investigate the disturbance. Dr. James Kelsey, who was president of the village and the town doctor, lived in a flat over his office. The building was situated across the street from the bank. As the doctor left the building and walked toward the county jail, he was ordered to halt by the bandits who were standing in front of the bank. The doctor ignored the order and kept on walking. He ducked behind a building, where he watched one of the bandits later identified as Steven Raczkowski blowing out street lamps in the vicinity of the bank with a shotgun. Kelsey pulled out a Lugar pistol he was carrying and fired in the direction of the bank. His shot was returned by a barrage from a rifle and several shotguns. He scrambled for cover near the jail, where he found the Cass County Sheriff, Earl Sill, hiding in the dark. The sheriff, armed with only a .38 caliber revolver, felt that he was no match for the fire power of the bandits. Another man named George Jones came running out of his house in the direction of the bank. Several blasts from one of the gangsters’ shotguns knocked Jones to the ground. Jones was slightly wounded as a pellet had penetrated his neck. Regaining his nerve, he picked himself up and ran home. The president of the Cassopolis Bank, Dr. J.B. Bonine, made the mistake of driving by the front of the bank and stopping his car. Blasts from several shotguns shattered the running board and body of the vehicle. The banker quickly drove home. The village druggist made a vain attempt to get a shotgun that he kept downstairs in his store. As he turned on the light and descended the stairs, a shotgun blast blew out the plate glass window and lights of his shop. The buildings near the bank were riddled with bullet and buckshot holes. Windows and doors in the immediate vicinity were in a shambles. The interior of the bank had been completely destroyed by the bandits in their attempts to blast open the safe. The gunmen kept up a steady bombardment of rifle, pistol, and shotgun fire during the time they controlled the village. The bandits fired at anything that moved or anyone who turned on a light.

Shortly after the bandits fled, officers from surrounding towns began arriving. Roadblocks were set up, and the area was scoured for the gang, but they had disappeared. The exact number of men involved in the holdup was estimated to be between five and 10. The gangsters had been careful not to kill any of the people of the town, generally shooting wide of their targets.

The Cassopolis bank job was to be the last major robbery attempted by the Kozak/Carson Mob of Detroit. It also proved to be the debut of Chester Tutha into the Detroit underworld. Tutha at that time was a 16-year-old petty thief from Hamtramck, Michigan, who had befriended some of the older gangsters in the Kozak Mob. It was Tutha’s first involvement in a big-time bank robbery.

An investigation was immediately launched by the Michigan State Police in coordination with the Detroit Police Department. The gunmen, who were all Detroiters, had failed to wear masks during the forced occupation of Cassopolis, probably assuming they could never be identified by the local people. Detective Fred G. Armstrong of the Michigan State Police showed some mug shots to the men who were held prisoner during the holdup attempt. An ex-convict named Clarence Madden was picked out of the photographs and identified as one of the gunmen. Madden was a member of the Kozak Mob who lived in Lansing, Michigan. At approximately the same time that Madden was identified at Cassopolis as one of the bandits, an informer tipped off the Lansing, Michigan, police about Madden.

According to the anonymous caller, Madden and other members of the Kozak Gang were to meet at Madden’s Lansing address to plan the robbery of a local bank. Police were given the time and date that the meeting was supposed to take place. At the given time, members of the Michigan State Police and Lansing Police Department raided Madden’s house but found only Madden and his wife at the location. Madden was questioned and released. Lansing police posted men to follow the gangster, and the Detroit police were notified. During this time, the Detroit police were watching a house at 525 East Elizabeth in Detroit. Their information had also been based on an anonymous tip. The day after Madden’s home had been raided in Lansing, Madden, his wife, and another member of the gang named James Allen made a trip to Detroit. They were observed pulling up in front of the East Elizabeth Street address. All three of the suspects went into the building. A short time later, they returned to their car in the company of Chester Tutha, Steven Raczkowski, Sam Bokosky, and Joe Konon. All of these men were known associates of the Kozak Gang.

The six men and the woman were immediately arrested by Detroit police officers. All of the men had Detroit Police Department records. According to a State Police report, Bokosky was carrying a .38 caliber pistol at the time of his arrest. A .32 caliber pistol was also found in 525 East Elizabeth, which turned out to be Chester Tutha’s apartment. According to another newspaper account, all of the men were found to be carrying pistols when they were searched. The six men were taken to police headquarters and held for investigation of armed robbery. The woman was held for investigation and later released. All were considered suspects in the Cassopolis robbery.

On December 12, 1925, Clyde Benham, a Cass County deputy sheriff, positively identified Allen, Madden, and Raczkowski as the men who had surprised him in a Cassopolis restaurant the night of November 24, 1925. Benham was one of the four men the gang had taken prisoner before they tried to rob the bank.

Mrs. E.C. Dunning, who lived in a flat directly above the Cassopolis Bank, later told State Police investigators that two men who were later identified as Chester Tutha and Joe Konon had come to her flat. This incident occurred several days before the Cassopolis bank robbery. The two strangers had asked Mrs. Dunning if there was a stenographer in the building. She told them no, and they departed. On December 13, 1925, she picked Tutha and Konon out of a lineup at Detroit police headquarters. The two men were taken back to Cassopolis and held at the Cass County Jail where they were charged with “robbing a bank in the night time.” Konon and Tutha were arraigned on this charge on December 19, 1925. Examination was planned for January 11, 1926, but was postponed until February 8, 1926. Tutha, Konon, Madden, and Allen were bound over for trial at Cassopolis by the Circuit Court. Raczkowski was later discharged and turned over to the Detroit police for a D.S.R. car barn holdup.

On January 9, 1926, Detective Armstrong of the Michigan State Police arrested another suspect in the Cassopolis job. Alex Hanacki was picked up coming out of a Detroit restaurant. Hanacki was associated with the Kozak Gang. He later confessed to Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor James E. Chenot that he had been involved in at least a dozen holdups in Detroit during the previous year. He named Konon and Tutha as two of the six men who held up the Cassopolis, Michigan, bank. Hanacki was held on a charge of armed robbery. While these events were unfolding, the recognized leaders of the Kozak Gang were being sought by police on a first-degree murder charge. On January 11, 1926, Patrolman Andrew Rusinko was shot down by two gunmen who were attempting to hold up a jitney driver at Six Mile and Woodward in Detroit.

Sometimes referred to as a modern-day “James Gang,” the Kozak Mob terrorized southeastern Michigan for almost a year, before the destruction of the gang after the Cassopolis job. The gang was named for Phillip “Russian Shorty” Kozak. Kozak, who stood 5’2” tall, more than made up for his size in ferocity. Born in the village of Pienski, Russia, in 1896, the pint-sized gunman had immigrated to the U.S. around 1914. After working as a day laborer for several years, Kozak decided that there were easier ways to make a buck. He began his criminal career actually involved in the process of making money. He was arrested by federal officers and later convicted as a counterfeiter. He served 18 months in the federal penitentiary at Atlanta, Georgia.