18 December 2020

Capone-Johnson photo: A new identification

The Atlantic City Al Capone - Nucky Johnson Photo: A New Identification?



Updated January 9, 2021

The Conference

On May 13, 1929, Al Capone and several of his associates - along with several of his gangland enemies - converged on Atlantic City, New Jersey, for a conference with the stated goal of bringing peace between the powerful bootlegging gangs of Chicago. It was at least the third peace conference that we know of. Ever since the photo was published in 1930 there have been questions over the identities of the men with Al Capone and Enoch L. "Nucky" Johnson. After an evaluation of the available evidence it may now possible to narrow down the mystery to one person.

Chicago Gang Conferences Before Atlantic City

On October 8, 1926, the Chicago Daily News reported that the Windy City held its first big gangland peace conference. According to information supplied by "an important official and a policeman" (later identified as a police lieutenant and an official of the Italo-American National Union) who sat in on the grand meeting held at the Hotel, one of the city's premier hotels. The Chicago Daily Tribune adds that Maxie Eisen, a labor racketeer associated with the late Samuel "Nails" Morton (some sources believe the friend of Morton and the labor racketeer were two different people), joined with Antonino "Tony" Lombardo, the rappresentante of the Chicago Mafia, to bring together the leaders of the Cicero-based organization headed by Capone, the North Side gang led by Hymie Weiss, Vincent "the Schemer" Drucci and George "Bugs" Moran, and their second-tier allies.

Preliminary to the meeting, Eisen met with the Mafia boss in Lombardo's office, and ideas were then passed from Eisen to Drucci and Moran, and Lombardo to Capone. They then agreed to send delegates to appear in person for the conference. The Cicero group was represented by Lombardo, Capone, Frank Nitto and Jack Guzik; the North Siders by Drucci, Moran, Eisen, Barney Bertsche and William Skidmore; and the minor racketeers included members of the North Side-friendly Myles O'Donnell and McErlane-Saltis gangs, and the Capone allies Ralph Sheldon and Danny McFall gangs. Sheldon was one of the participants. 

Reportedly both sides agreed to cease killings and beatings, consider past killings and shootings to be closed, disregard malicious gossip, and have leaders responsible for violations by the rank and file. However, a snag hit when Weiss and Drucci insisted that Capone put two of his men "on the spot" in retaliation for an ambush shooting a month prior. Lombardo refused the demand. When the Mafia boss told the Big Fella he supposedly said, "I wouldn't do a thing like that to a yellow dog." One of the two men whose death was demanded by Weiss and Drucci  (and the only one named), Frank Clemente, was reportedly wounded by machine-gun fire in Cicero. A follow-up piece identified the second potential victim as "Mops" - but not Anthony "Mops" Volpe. (This writer is unaware of any other Outfit member with that nickname. Later sources identify the two men as Volpe and Frank Rio, or Albert Anselmi and John Scalise.)

Later, the conference attendees were whittled down to five men sitting around a table: a prominent attorney, a police lieutenant, an official of the Italo-American National Union (known as the Unione Siciliana until 1925), and presumably Eisen and Lombardo. Not long after the conference, on October 11, Hymie Weiss and associate Paddy Murray gunned down in the street. Three others with them were hit by gunfire.

FBI HSCA Subject file LCN, MI 92-262

A second meeting was held in Milwaukee between 1926 and 1927, or maybe even 1928, in a nightclub owned by that city's boss, Pete Guardalabene. According to a member of the Milwaukee borgata (and confidential informant), Chicago Mafia underboss Joseph Aiello, regularly lost large sums of money gambling in Capone-owned joints. Afterward, Aiello sent his men to raid the games to take back what he lost - and more. The peace conference consisted of members of both factions, as well as leaders of other crime families from across the country. "The meeting ended with everybody throwing fruit and vegetables at each other," the source said. Aiello, who led a renegade faction of the Chicago Mafia allegedly over Lombardo's friendliness to Capone, was machine-gunned to death by Outfit killers while hiding out at a friend's home in 1930.

Lead-Up To A Third Conference

The third mobster conference, held in Atlantic City, followed the attempts on the life of top Capone gunman Jack McGurn (born Vincenzo Gibaldi in Licata, Sicily), first on March 7, 1928, and then barely a month later on April 17. The first attempt left McGurn with serious injuries after gang rivals fired off a Tommy gun in a drive-by shooting. The second shooting was also a drive-by using a machine gun. The Gusenberg brothers, James Clark and Billy Davern - all North Siders - were suspected of the brazen attacks.

It followed the assassination of Mafia chief Lombardo on September 7, 1928, and his successor Pasqualino Lolordo on January 8, 1929. Lombardo, who had been an ally of Capone, was reportedly killed either by Aiello or Frankie Yale of Brooklyn. Insider sources, however, gave a different story. Informants Nick Gentile and August Maniaci reported that Capone was actually inducted into the Mafia by Joe "the Boss" Masseria, head of what is now the Genovese crime family, as a capodecina (equivalent to captain or boss of a street crew) in 1928 with the authority to "make" ten men into his crew. Masseria told him that if he eliminated Lombardo he would recognize him as the head of the Chicago borgata. It was Al Capone, not Aiello or Yale, who was responsible for killing Lombardo. 

Mob turncoat Joe Valachi also supports this version. He recalled attending a lecture given by Salvatore Maranzano of what is now the Bonanno crime family in early 1931 after he was made the Capo di Capi (Boss of Bosses). At a large meeting celebrating his victory over Masseria, Maranzano recited the crimes committed by his enemy Masseria, including the murder of a "big boss" named Don Antonio, who was undoubtedly Lombardo.

It followed a national Mafia gathering in Cleveland on December 5, 1928, that featured a large contingent from Chicago. Local police were suspicious of the outsiders entering the swank Hotel Statler early in the morning and soon it was raided. Police arrested 23 men, most of whom were armed. Among those arrested were Tampa Don Ignazio Italiano, future Brooklyn bosses Vincenzo Mangano and Joseph Profaci, and from Chicago came Mafia chief Pasqualino Lolordo, Joseph Giunta, Frank Alo, James Intravia, Sam Oliveri, Giuseppe Sacco, and Phil Bacino (AKA Tony Bello). It was rumored that Al Capone was due to arrive but turned around when he heard of the raid, however, his presence probably wasn't necessary. Lolordo was said to be Capone's "puppet."

Arrested Mafiosi after meeting in Cleveland on December 5, 1928

It followed the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre, which resulted in the deaths of seven members and associates of the North Side Gang, then headed by Moran after Drucci was slain in a shoot-out with police. Among those killed was Moran's second-in-command Albert Kachellek and his top gunmen Pete and Frank Gusenberg.

It also followed the brutal killings of Joseph "Hop Toad" Giunta - Lolordo's replacement - and mob executioners Anselmi and Scalise by beating and gunfire. Giunta, who attended the Cleveland meeting with Lolordo, allegedly connived with Aiello, Anselmi and Scalise to eliminate Capone until their plot was discovered. Al Capone, who had been staying at his Florida home, returned to the Windy City on May 7, 1929, narrowly avoiding two Moran gunmen who just happened to be picked up by police.

A banquet was held in Capone's honor, and the guests included the aforementioned three Mafiosi. Depending on the source the dinner was either held in a Hammond, Indiana, roadhouse called The Plantation, or the Chicago Heights nightclub Miami Gardens. Jesse George Murray, a columnist for the Chicago American, imagined a ruse concocted by Frank Rio and Capone to expose the plotters. However it happened, they suffered a painful death. An inside source associated with Accardo's original crew told this writer that future Outfit boss Anthony Accardo did indeed earn his moniker "Joe Batters" by beating the men at a dinner before they were shot on May 8, and their bodies left in a vacant section of Hammond, Indiana. (It should be made clear that this triple homicide remains officially unsolved and that the Moran gang was also suspected of the killings.)

Five days after the deaths of the three traitors Al Capone found himself in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The city, which was considered the gambling mecca of the East Coast, thrived under the rule of Republican political boss Enoch "Nucky" Johnson. The two had known each other since 1921, when Capone's mentor John Torrio took him to see the Dempsey-Carpentier fight in Jersey City. They met again for the 1927 Dempsey-Tunney bout at Soldier Field in Chicago, known as the Long Count. Nucky was welcomed by entourages from fellow GOP leaders, such as Illinois States' Attorney Robert E. Crowe. Capone made sure the visiting dignitary had a fleet of limousines at his disposal.

Despite Nucky Johnson's influence his control over the city was not absolute. Capone and his bodyguard were seen at a nightclub and a boxing match, and there was a rumor that he was staying as a guest "who has a palatial home in the [center] of the fashionable Chelsea district." When Director of Public Safety W. S. Cuthbert found out about the gangster's presence he ordered the police "to pick up Al Capone if he is found in the city and arrest him as an undesirable." 

Conference Details

After the Atlantic City conference concluded, Capone and his entourage drove for Philadelphia to board a train bound for Chicago. Unfortunately, their vehicle broke down near Camden and they did not arrive in Philadelphia until the evening. Capone made arrangement for a later train and decided to take in a movie. He and bodyguard Frank Rio were promptly arrested as soon as they exited the theater. They were charged with carrying concealed weapons and rushed before a judge and jury, where they were convicted and sentenced to a year in prison. The speed of the entire process was mind-blowing. Capone and Rio arrived in Philadelphia at approximately 6:30 pm, they were arrested at 8:30 pm, brought before a grand jury at 10:15 am, tried at 12 noon, then pleaded guilty and sentenced at 12:21 pm.

Fortunately for us, however, Capone was interviewed by Philadelphia Director of Public Safety Lemuel B.. Schofield, and the director shared his conversation with the press. Capone, Moran, and several other Chicago gang leaders signed a "peace pact" during his brief stay in Atlantic City. "With the idea in mind of making peace among the gangster in Chicago I spent the week in Atlantic City, and I have the word of each of the men participating that there shall be no more shootings," the crime lord said.

Capone added a few details of the conference. "We stopped at the President Hotel, where I registered under an assumed name. Bugs Moran, the leader of the West Side gang, seven of whose men were killed in the St. Valentine's Day massacre, and three or four other Chicago gang leaders whose names I don't care to mention participated. We talked over our troubles for three days. We all agreed at the end of that time to sign on the dotted line to bury the past and forget warfare in the future for the general good of all concerned," he said. The only names he provided besides his own were Rio and Moran. He also implied that the parley was small with only a handful of attendees.

The local newspaper, the Atlantic City Daily Press, reported that "the past few nights found him making whoopee, boom-boom, or what have you in several of the resort's best known night clubs." Look magazine wrote that Tony Accardo got a blue dove tattoo on the back of his left hand between the thumb and index finger during the trip to Atlantic City when he was acting as one of Capone's bodyguards.

Guesses as to the names of the other conference attendees began immediately. The Tribune believed that Joe Aiello, [Frank] McErlane, Joe Saltis, and John Torrio were there "either in person or by proxy." George Wolf, a criminal defense attorney who represented Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello, claimed in his biography of Costello that the two New York mob leaders organized the conference. Their guest list included Jewish and Italian mobsters from all over the country, such as "Lou Rothkopf and Moe Dalitz from Cleveland, King Solomon from Boston, John Lazia from Kansas City, Joe Bernstein and others from Detroit, Sam Lazar from Philadelphia...and Al Capone and his boys from Chicago." Luciano and Costello brought Joe Adonis, Lepke Buchalter, and Torrio. In this account not only do Torrio and Costello tell Capone to turn himself in for prison, but that they were forming the Commission, which we know from other sources was not created until 1931.

Some journalists, like Robert T. Loughran of the United Press, created an imaginary tale that stretched out the few points of agreement Capone spoke of into a fourteen-point plan. Among the points in Loughran's plan, Aiello was to be the head of the "Unione Siciliano," but subject to Torrio; and Torrio was to be the "king" of the rackets over Chicago. These and other points simply had no basis in reality.

The New York Evening Journal, owned by William Randolph Hearst, an FDR-supporting Democrat who drooled at embarrassing the Republican political boss, was the first to publish the photo. The authenticity of the photo was confirmed in 1941 when Elmer Irey of the IRS Intelligence Unit was targeting Johnson for tax fraud. Irey not only took down Capone in 1931, but his mentor John Torrio in 1939. In July 1941, newspapers all across the country reported Johnson's admission that he was with Capone when a New York photographer grabbed his image.

Arizona Republic, July 13, 1941

The Chicago beer baron admitted that he and all of his mobster guests registered using false names. Rio, for example, gave his name as Frank Cline. In the caption underneath only four of the five men are identified. The man on the far left was the man not ID'd, but next to him was David Palter, then Charles T. "Chuck" Greene, Capone, Johnson, and Lou Irwin. Palter and Greene were said to have been "high pressure" men, a euphemism for gangsters. Greene is also very likely an alias. All three men to Capone's left were underworld figures from Chicago.

New York Evening Journal, January 17, 1930

Mystery Man Number One: David Palter

The man second to the end to the left of Capone (from the viewer's perspective) is identified by the New York Evening Journal as David Palter, who "admitted paying $65,000 to avoid a year vacation in Atlanta, Ga. Federal Penitentiary after being convicted of mail fraud." This matches the David Palter listed as a defendant in a 1927 story from the Associated Press. Twelve individuals and a corporation were convicted of "using the mails to defraud in the sale of stock of the Glass Casket Corporation of Altoona, Pa." On March 7, 1927, the convictions were upheld by the Circuit Court of Appeals. Gaston B. Means, an ex-Secret Service agent, and the late attorney Thomas B. Felder had promised to "fix things" for $65,000. In a separate case from 1938, a 46-year-old David Palter was described as a "former associate of 'Jake the Barber' Factor." Jake the Barber was known to be a crony of Capone and Nitto.

David Palter was born in New York on June 12, 1893, and worked as a jewelry salesman before serving in the military. He is probably the same person who in early 1924, along with his wife, was robbed by two armed burglars who forced their maid to lead them to his bedroom in a Manhattan high-rise. They forced Palter, a broker, and his wife, to hand over $5,400 worth of cash and jewelry. In the summer of 1930 a Mr. and Mrs. David L. Palter celebrated their niece's fourth birthday at the Hotel Roosevelt in Hollywood. In 1933 Palter and his partner Martin Lederer, who owned a stock brokerage at 82 Wall Street, were charged with conspiracy and threatened with a permanent injunction for selling worthless gold stock.

David Palter

On January 11, 1938, the Hollywood Citizen-News reported that David Palter, alias David Hunter, 46, who was indicted the previous October in New York for a bait and switch of $14,200 worth of whiskey warehouse receipts, was arrested at his apartment on the Sunset Strip. Another friend of Palter's was J. Richard "Dixie" Davis, mobster Dutch Schultz's former attorney. "In Palter we have one of the cleverest stock racketeers who ever operated in New York," Gang buster John A. Klein said.

Later it was reported that the fraud case was in Reading, Pennsylvania, not New York. On February 10, 1938, the case against him was dismissed for lack of evidence. On March 15 he was exonerated after it was shown that Palter had separated from the warehouse company before the fraud took place. Palter returned to New York and passed away on April 15, 1965.

Mystery Man Number Two: Charles T. Greene

The man to Capone's immediate left (from our viewpoint) is more problematic than Palter. Due to the constant threat of death, Capone did not venture out in public without a bodyguard unless circumstances ruled it out. None of the men in the famous photograph, however, are identified as being one of his bodyguards. If the Chicago mob boss did have a bodyguard he most likely would have been walking next to him, and the person next to him was reportedly one Charles T. Greene. So who was Charles T. Greene? Could he have been a local gangster?

A search of newspapers in that time period using the newspaper databases at Newspapers.com, GenealogyBand.com, and Fulton Post Cards do not make a single reference to a mobster, gangster, or criminal named Charles T. Greene or Charles Greene in either New Jersey nor the East Coast. However, there was one mobster who had an alias of Charles Green (not Greene), and that was Charles Entratter. Entratter was a top lieutenant of Jack "Legs" Diamond who was murdered in New York in 1931. This Charles Green, however, did not resemble the man in the photo.

Charles Entratter (AKA Charles Green)

When Capone was arrested in Philadelphia he readily admitted to registering at an Atlantic City hotel using an alias, as did the other men who attended the conference. So perhaps Charles T. Greene was an alias for one of Capone's other bodyguards. We know that Capone traveled with Frank Rio, who was one of his many bodyguards (who often tended to be high-ranking lieutenants), since they were arrested together in Philadelphia. Yet, Rio does not resemble anyone in the photo.

Frank Rio, 1929

His other bodyguards were well known. Gunmen such as Jack McGurn, Louis Campagna, Willie Heeney, Phil D'Andrea, Mike Spranze, and Tony Accardo were all known bodyguards who accompanied him at various times. Yet none of them resembles the mysterious man in the photo.

Tony Accardo, 1930

Another candidate is Anthony "Mops" Volpe, whose features appear to very closely match the man in the photo. The height of the man in the photo is between the height of the Palter, who stood 5'6," and the nearly 5'11" tall Al Capone. Volpe's height ranges between 5'7" and 5'10," which averages to 5'8.5" and accords with Greene.

Who was Volpe? "Mops" was born in Argentina to Italian parents and worked in Chicago Mafia-affiliated Giuseppe "Diamond Joe" Esposito's Italian restaurant before joining Capone's Outfit. When the press first became aware of his existence back in 1916, he was a gang leader arrested for a shooting that was apparently ruled self-defense. Arrested with him was a gang member nicknamed Nickelodeon, whose real name was Nick Circella. Later known as Nicky Dean, Circella would become a close friend of Capone and involved in extorting the Hollywood studios with labor racketeer Willie Bioff in the 1930s.

Anthony "Mops" Volpe, 1930

In 1921, Volpe was a Cook County deputy sheriff and a secretary to (and brother-in-law of) Diamond Joe, a Republican committeeman in the old Nineteenth Ward. In 1925 Volpe was described as a "notorious gun fighter," and by 1928 he, along with Rio, Nitto and a Joe Kelly, was noted to be one of Capone's bodyguards. In 1930 he joined Capone, Rio, Moran and twenty-four others on the first list of Public Enemies.

On December 15, 1930, the Secretary of Labor had Volpe arrested by immigration agents to deport him to Italy. Several months later it was confirmed that he was born in Santa Fe, Argentina, sometime in October between 1890 and 1892, but his Italian-born parents had taken him back to their home country to be naturalized as a child. He came to the U.S. at age 15 and became a citizen in 1920. Italy and Argentina, however, refused to accept him, asserting that he lost his right to return when he was naturalized in America. Nevertheless the government did not give up its fight to deport him until 1953. As for his mob status, Volpe remained a fixture in Cicero as an old-timer in the crew headed by Joseph Aiuppa until his death in January 1965.

So was Volpe the mysterious Charles T. Greene? John Binder, who teaches at the University of Illinois and has written two books on the Chicago Syndicate, followed-up this question. Using Biometric Vision's FaceMatch software, which claims a success rate of 99.9% accuracy, Binder compared four photos of Volpe taken between 1930 and 1945 with a high quality scan of the Atlantic City photo contributed by researcher Mario Gomes. The result was that the man identified as Greene did not match Anthony "Mops" Volpe. So for now the definitive identification of the man next to Al Capone in the 1929 photo remains an unsolved mystery.

This essay will be updated if new information becomes available.

Sources

"3 Slain; Scalisi [sic], Anselmi?" Chicago Daily Tribune, May 8, 1929.

"Al Capone's Machine Runs Rackets As He Hides From Police." Chicago Daily News, September 22, 1930.

"And This Completes The Picture." New York Evening Journal, January 17, 1930.

"Asserted N.Y. Racketeer Seized Here." Los Angeles Daily News, January 12, 1938.

"Atlantic City Calls Capone 'Undesirable." New York Times, May 16, 1929.

"Al Capone Suns Held In Roller Chair," Atlantic City Daily Press, May 16, 1929.

Binder, John J. Al Capone's Beer Wars: A Complete History of Organized Crime in Chicago During Prohibition. New York: Prometheus Books, 2017.

"Broker And Wife In Bed Forced At Gun Point To Give Up Gems Concealed Under Her Pillow." New York Evening Telegram, January 8, 1924.

"Capone Considers Starting To Prison." New York Times, October 30, 1931.

"Capone Moves; Fails To Report His New Address." Chicago Daily Tribune, August 8, 1928.

"Capone Takes Cover In Jail." Chicago Daily Tribune, May 18, 1929.

"Chicago's Own 'Scarface' Held In $35,000 Here." Philadelphia Inquirer, May 17, 1929.

"Capone's Pal 'Mops' Volpe Dies In Cicero." Chicago Tribune, January 21, 1965.

"Colorful Atlantic City Republican Boss Awaits Tax Trial." Arizona Republic, July 13, 1941.

"Conspiracy Charged." New York Evening Post, October 17, 1933.

"Conviction of 12 in Glass Casket Case Is Upheld." Tampa Tribune, March 8, 1927.

"Cops On West Coast Arrest David Palter." Pottstown (PA) Mercury, January 12, 1938.

Critchley, David. The Origin of Organized Crime in America. New York and London: Routledge, 2008.

"Diamond Aide Slain, Capone Hand Seen." The Morning Post (Camden, NJ), July 7, 1931.

Eghigian, Mars. After Capone: The Life and World of Chicago Mob Boss Frank "the Enforcer" Nitti. Nashville, TN: Cumberland House, 2005.

"Fake Gold Stock Is Flooding City, Says Bennett Aid." New York Evening Post, October 31, 1933.

FBI HSCA Subject file LCN, MI 92-262, Report of SA Alexander P. Le Grand, Milwaukee, May 28, 1964, NARA Record Number 124-10287-10189.

Ferry, Frank J. Nucky: The Real Story of the Atlantic Boardwalk Boss. Margate, NJ: ComteQ Publishing, 2012.

"Fraud Charge Against Stock Broker Dropped." Hollywood Citizen-News, February 10, 1938.

"Gang Chief To Be Deported." Chicago Daily Tribune, December 16, 1930.

"Gangland Expose Is Near." Chicago Daily News, October 12, 1926.

"Gangland Lays Its Guns Aside; Peace Declared." Chicago Daily Tribune, October 21, 1926.

Gentile, Nick. Translated Transcription of the Life of Nicolo (E) Gentile. Washington, D. C.: Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1947?

Gomes, Mario. "Albert Anselmi and Giovanni Scalise." My Al Capone Museum, June 2009. http://www.myalcaponemuseum.com/id132.htm (Accessed December 6, 2020).

"Gun Fighter Taken As Fake Stamp Seller." Chicago Daily Tribune, January 14, 1925.

"Gunmen Kill One, Wound Another, In Saloon Fight." Chicago Daily Tribune, February 3, 1916.

Heise, Kenan. "Jesse George Murray, 86, Wrote For Chicago Papers and Theater." Chicago Tribune, September 19, 1996.

Helmer, William J. Al Capone and His American Boys: Memoir's of a Mobster's Wife. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2011.

Hoover, J. Edgar. Memorandum For Mr. Joseph B. Keenan, Acting Attorney General, August 27, 1936. FBI Subject file St. Valentines Day Massacre, Part 1.

Hunt, Thomas, and Michael A. Tona. "Cleveland Convention Was To Be Masseria Coronation." Informer Journal 3:1 (January, 2010).

Irey, Elmer, and William J. Slocum. The Tax Dodgers. Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing Company, 1949.

"List 28 As 'Public Enemies'." Chicago Daily Tribune, April 24, 1930.

"Machine Gun Roars; 2 Shot." Chicago Daily Tribune, March 8, 1928.

"McGurn Again Guns' Target; Escapes Unhit." Chicago Daily Tribune, April 18, 1928.

Mappen, Marc. Prohibition Gangsters: The Rise and Fall of a Bad Generation. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2013.

Murray, George. The Legacy of Al Capone: Portraits and Annals of Chicago's Public Enemies. New York: Putnam, 1975.

Newman, Scott. "Hotel Sherman." Jazz Age Chicago: Urban Leisure from 1893 to 1945. https://jazzagechicago.wordpress.com/hotel-sherman/#:~:text=The%20Hotel%20Sherman%20was%20one,of%20the%20early%20twentieth%20century.&text=Sherman%2C%20a%20three%2Dtime%20mayor,Street%20between%20Clark%20and%20LaSalle. (Accessed December 16, 2020).

"Officials Probe Booze Deals In Gang Shooting." Chicago Daily Tribune, February 15, 1929.

Palter, David. U.S. Veterans Administration Master Index, 1917-1940, Ancestry.com.

Palter, David. World War I Draft Registration Card, No. 11538, San Francisco, California, May 23, 1917.

"Peace Seen For Chicago." Chicago Daily News, May 17, 1929.

"Philadelphia Justice For Al Capone." Literary Digest, June 15, 1929.

"Phyllis Stille Honored On Birthday Anniversary." San Pedro News-Pilot, July 23, 1930.

"Publicity Annoys Capone, He Leaves." Atlantic City Daily Press, May 17, 1929.

"Rio Burke." Edwin's Roadhouse aka Capone's Miami Gardens. http://caponesmiamigardens.com/burke.htm. (Accessed December 16, 2020.)

Schweder, Hanna. "Have A Whiskey For Nucky." Press of Atlantic City, January 20, 2017. https://pressofatlanticcity.com/life/have-a-whiskey-for-nucky-jan-20-is-atlantic-city-racketeers-birthday/article_1912d46a-a727-560d-b8ae-3fd5ba030acf.html (Accessed December 16, 2020.)

"Slay Doctor In Massacre." Chicago Daily Tribune, February 15, 1929.

"Start Search For Aiello In Triple Killing." Chicago Daily Tribune, May 10, 1929.

"Stock Broker Here Cleared of Old Theft Charge." Los Angeles Daily News, March 16, 1938.

"Suspect Hunted On N.Y. Charges Arrested Here." Hollywood Citizen-News, January 11, 1938.

"Tony Accardo, The New Mr. Big In Crime, Al Capone’s Former Bodyguard, The Mob." Look, July 28, 1953.

"Triple Killing Laid To Gang Feud." Chicago Daily Tribune, May 9, 1929.

"Triple Slaying Bares Plot To Kill Capone." Chicago Daily News, May 9, 1929.

"U.S. Defeated In New Suit To Deport Volpe." Chicago Daily Tribune, July 31, 1953.

"U.S. Moves To Avert New Beer War." Chicago Daily News, October 8, 1926.

Valachi, Joseph. The Real Thing. Typed manuscript, 1963-1964. RG 60. National Archives, College Park, MD. (Also available online at http://mafiahistory.us/a023/therealthing.htm.)

Volpe, Anthony. Declaration of Intention, No. 165, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, March 24, 1924.

Volpe, Anthony. World War II Draft Registration Card, No. 1898, Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, April 27, 1942.

"Volpe, Facing Deportation, Is Barred From Italy." Chicago Daily Tribune, July 8, 1933.

Warner, Richard N. "The Dreaded D'Andrea." Informer Journal 2:2 (April, 2009).

"Whiskey Runner Is Found Slain." Chicago Daily Tribune, April 30, 1921.

Wolf, George, with Joseph DiMona. Frank Costello: Prime Minister of the Underworld. New York: Morrow, 1975.


Thanks to John Binder for providing photo analysis, David Critchley for additional material, and to Edmond Valin for his editorial comments and suggestions.

29 November 2020

McKeever-McNeiley: Troublesome robbery gang

 Jeffery S. King, author of The Rise and Fall of the Dillinger Gang, The Life and Death of Pretty Boy Floyd and Kill-Crazy Gang, here turns his attention to less well known Depression Era gangsters of the American Midwest, George McKeever and Francis McNeiley. Noting their physical (and professional) similarities to Pretty Boy Floyd and Floyd's bank robbery partner Adam Richetti, King persuasively argues that McKeever-McNeiley robberies and violence were mistakenly attributed to Floyd-Richetti, adding significantly to the Floyd-Richetti legend.

Built upon FBI files, court and prison records and other government documents, in addition to published book, newspaper and magazine sources, One of the Most Troublesome Robbery Gangs is a record of the murders and robberies committed by McKeever, McNeiley and their associates. The book establishes the often overlooked McKeever-McNeiley gang as one of the more successful and elusive outlaw bands of the period.

Along with the dramatic details of the McKeever and McNeiley careers, King provides broader context, exploring regional economic ills, the condition of penal institutions and the organization and techniques of police agencies in the era. King follows his subjects through their final arrests and to the ends of their lives - one expiring at the end of a rope in Missouri and the other surviving a lengthy prison sentence to pass away decades later.

King includes eighteen pages of photographs, extensive source citations and a select bibliography.

One of the Most Troublesome Robbery Gangs is an informative, entertaining and easy read. It is not without some technical flaws - there are a number of typographical errors in the text and some photos and captions are skewed on their pages - but these do not significantly detract from the book.


Disclosure: I have been acquainted with Jeffery S. King for about a decade. He has contributed several articles - on Baby Face Nelson, George McKeever and Tommy Carroll - and several advertisements to my Informer: The History of American Crime and Law Enforcement publication since 2011.

19 October 2020

October 2020 Informer focuses on Nick Gentile

This Informer special issue (No. 30) focuses on Nicola "Nick" Gentile, underworld leader in U.S. and Sicily, who published an Italian-language tell-all autobiography in 1963. The issue is available as a 214-page printed and bound magazine, a 382-page paperback book and in PDF and Kindle e-book formats. (Searchable PDF and EPUB e-book formats should be available soon.)

Informer strives to bring Gentile's entire life story to the English-language reader. Building on extensive original research by a team of Mafia history experts and on U.S. government documents designed to extract meaning from the memoirs, this issue attempts to balance Gentile's obviously self-serving and self-aggrandizing autobiographical work with verifiable history, to correct his misinformation and to fill in the wide gaps left in his personal account.

Informer closely examines a number of aspects of Gentile's life, such as the launch of his underworld career in the Kansas City area; relationships with Mafia leaders, including Salvatore "Charlie Luciano" Lucania, Vito Genovese, Al Capone, Albert Anastasia, Vincent Mangano, and others; early murders performed by him in Pittsburgh; involvement in narcotics trafficking in New York, New Orleans and Houston; interactions with Mafia leaders in Cleveland, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles; links to underworld figures in Pueblo, Colorado; dealings with U.S. and Soviet spies in Italy during and after World War II.

Informer provides biographical information for dozens of individuals who contributed in interesting ways to Gentile's life story, including:
Frank Amato; Albert Anastasia; John "King" Angersola;  Alfonso Attardi; John Bazzano; Joseph Biondo; Mario Brod; Fortunato Calabro; Salvatore Calderone; Vincenzo "James" Capizzi; Al Capone; Domenico Catalano; J.C. and Phillip Catalano; Salvatore Catanzaro; Charles "Cadillac Charlie" Cavallaro; Felice Chilanti; Charles Colletti; Dr. Gaetano Conti; Gregorio Conti; Francesco "Three Fingers" Coppola; Antonino "Nino" Cucuzzella; Gaspare D'Amico; Salvatore "Toto" D'Aquila; Rosario DeSimone; Salvatore "Sam" DiBella; Dominick "Terry Burns" DiDato; Vito DiGiorgio; Accursio DiMino; Archbishop Ernesto Filippi; Vito Genovese; Vincent and Gerlando Gentile; Umberto Gibilaro; Vito Guardalabene; Leonid Kolosov; Calogero "Big Nose" LaGaipa; Frank LaRocco; Orazio Leone; Salvatore "Lucky Luciano" Lucania; William Magee; Antonino "Mangano" Messina; Carlo, John "Johnny Mag" and Vincent Mangiaracina; Salvatore Maranzano; Luigi Marciante; Ferdinando "Fred" Mauro; Monroe Harrison Meader; Gaspare Messina; Frank "Ciccio" Milano; Joseph Natali; Giuseppe Parlapiano; Filippo Piazza; Valentino Piazza; Pietro Pirro; Aldo Charles Poletti; Saverio Pollaccia; Dr. Giuseppe Romano, Pellegrino Scaglia; Nicola Schiro; Giuseppe "Peppino" Siragusa; Joseph Talarico; Vincenzo "Big Vince" Troia; Gaetano Tropia; King Umberto II; Giovanni "Prince Johnny," James and Arthur Volpe; Andrew, Frank and Joseph Zappala.

Also in this issue:

  •     1900s Mafia feuds in Los Angeles,
  •     Book excerpts,
  •     Book announcements,
  •     Impact of COVID-19 on the underworld,
  •     Obituary - Martha Macheca Sheldon.

Writers/researchers contributing to this issue: Thomas Hunt, David Critchley, Steve Turner, Lennert van't Riet, Richard N. Warner, Justin Cascio, Sam Carlino, Michael O'Haire, Jon Black, Margaret Janco, Bill Feather and Christian Cipollini.

Advertisers: Black Lives Matter by Justin Cascio; Colorado's Carlino Brothers (book) by Sam Carlino; Deep Water: Joseph P. Macheca and the Birth of the American Mafia by Thomas Hunt and Martha Macheca Sheldon; DiCarlo: Buffalo's First Family of Crime (book) by Thomas Hunt and Michael A. Tona; Gangsters Inc. (website); Los Angeles Mafia Group on Facebook (website); Mafia Membership Charts (website) by Bill Feather; One of the Most Troublesome Robbery Gangs (book) by Jeffery S. King; The Origin of Organized Crime in America (book) by David Critchley; Rat Trap on mafiahistory.us (website); Secret Societies (book) by Jon Black; Vinnitta: The Birth of the Detroit Mafia (book) by Daniel Waugh; Wrongly Executed? (book) by Thomas Hunt.

More information on this issue and its contents is available on Informer's website.

 

27 May 2020

Heart, lung ailments take 'Joe Batters'

Longtime Outfit boss started as Capone bodyguard

On this date in 1992...



Longtime Chicago Outfit boss Anthony Accardo succumbed on May 27, 1992, to lung and heart ailments at the age of eighty-six.

The former underworld leader had just returned to the Chicago area (he spent summers in the Barrington Hills home of son-in-law Ernest Kumerow) from his winter home in Palm Springs, California, when on Thursday, May 14, he was admitted to St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital Center. He died there at 7:36 p.m. on Wednesday, the twenty-seventh. A nursing supervisor told the press that the causes of death were congestive heart failure, acute respiratory failure, pneumonia and chronic obstructive pulmorary disease.

Funeral cortege. (Chicago Tribune)

Accardo was given a private funeral service two days later at the Montclair-Lucania Funeral Home, 6901 W. Belmont Avenue in Chicago. A Catholic priest was observed entering the funeral home through a rear entrance. Accardo's send-off was far more modest than the funerals of many of his underworld contemporaries. Police and press noted no gangland leaders in attendance. Just two floral offerings were seen - "two sprays of yellow and pink roses inside a slate gray hearse," reported the Chicago Tribune. Accardo was laid to rest at the Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.

A life in Chicago crime
Accardo c.1930
Accardo was born in Chicago on April 28, 1906. His parents, Francesco and Maria Tillotta Accardo, were Sicilian immigrants, originally from Castelvetrano, who settled around 1904 on Gault Court in Chicago. His birth name was reportedly Anthony Leonardo Accardo, but later he was known as Anthony Joseph Accardo. Over time, he acquired the nicknames, "Joe Batters," "Joe B." and "Big Tuna."

According to the press, he was a full-time hoodlum by the age of sixteen. In the late 1920s, he served as an enforcer and bodyguard for Chicago underworld boss Al Capone. Accardo was largely able to avoid law enforcement notice until the Capone-orchestrated St. Valentine's Day Massacre intensified the scrutiny.

On February 1, 1930, Accardo was arrested along with "Machine Gun Jack" McGurn (Gibaldi) following the murder of informant Julius Rosenheim. Rosenheim was walking near his home after breakfast that morning, when an automobile pulled up to him and two men got out of it. The men drew handguns and fired five bullets into Roseheim's head, then returned to their car and sped away. Shortly after that, police detectives William Drury and John Howe spotted Accardo and McGurn riding in a taxicab at Dearborn and Harrison Streets and stopped them. They found both men illegally carrying firearms. McGurn had a loaded .45-calibre automatic pistol, and Accardo had a .32-calibre revolver.


Just six months later, Accardo and Sam "Golf Bag" Hunt were named as suspects in the murder of Chicago vice racketeer Jack Zuta. Zuta was killed at a Wisconsin resort hotel. The descriptions of two of his killers matched Accardo and Hunt. Authorities speculated that Zuta was murdered because he knew of Capone connections to the June 9 murder of Chicago Tribune reporter Alfred "Jake" Lingle.

Accardo was again arrested in May 2, 1931, police raids that were part of an investigation into the supposed murder of brothel keeper Mike Heitler. Police believed that a charred body found in smoldering ruins near Barrington, Illinois, was Heitler. The raids were conducted at known Capone headquarters and business enterprises. Accardo and three other men were grabbed at the Club Floridian, 674 West Madison Street. Other raids took place at the Lexington Hotel at Michigan Avenue and Twenty-second Street and at the Western Hotel in Cicero.

At the end of July 1931, the Chicago Crime Commission designated Accardo a "public enemy," adding him and twenty-seven other area hoodlums (including Charles Fischetti, Sam Hunt and Claude Maddox), to a list that had grown to fifty-six men. A photo of Accardo, then about twenty-five, was printed in the newspaper, along with photos of dozens of other crime figures.

Despite the increased attention, Accardo was able to avoid criminal conviction.

After Capone
Accardo's mentor, Capone, was sent off to prison for tax violations the following spring. Over the next decade, Accardo moved into positions of increasing importance within the Chicago Outfit. By the 1940s, he was considered one of the Outfit's top bosses, along with Frank Nitti, Paul Ricca (Felice DeLucia), Louis Campagna and Charles Gioe.

In 1943, the Outfit leadership was decimated by exposure of an extortion racket conducted against the Hollywood movie industry. As indictments were returned against those implicated in the racket, Nitti committed suicide. Near the end of the year, a federal jury returned guilty verdicts against Ricca, Campagna, Gioe, Johnny Rosselli (Filippo Sacco), Philip D'Andrea and Francis Maritote. They were sent to prison for ten-year terms.

With other bosses confined to federal prison, Accardo emerged as the single most powerful figure in Chicago organized crime. (Authorities took note of his visits to the imprisoned Ricca.) It appeared that the role weighed heavy on him, and in the 1950s he stepped away from day-to-day management, allowing Sam Giancana to serve as Outfit boss. Accardo continued in an advisory capacity. The FBI learned that Accardo and Giancana were regularly seen together outside of Chicago in the period between 1950 and 1956. They were spotted at meetings in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Miami Beach.

In 1957, the year of the Apalachin, New York, convention, the Bureau learned that Accardo had turned over to Giancana his role as Chicago's representative to the Commission, the U.S. Mafia's supreme arbitration panel.

The following summer, the Senate's McClellan Committee accused Accardo of frivolously invoking the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering its questions. Accardo declined to answer basic questions about his birthplace and employment as well as more probing questions about his underworld associates and alleged involvement in mob murders. On August 18, 1958, the United States Senate unanimously held Accardo and a dozen other witnesses, who appeared before the McClellan Committee, in contempt of Congress. The Senate recommended that the Justice Department prosecute the witnesses. Along with Accardo on the list cited for contempt were Jack Cerone, Sam Battaglia, Marshall Caifano, Joseph Aiuppa and Ross Prio of Chicago and Pete Licavoli of Detroit.

Decline
Accardo was charged with federal tax fraud in April 1960, and that case came closest to putting the crime boss behind bars.

The government accused him of lying about business expense deductions for the years 1956, 1957 and 1958. He was convicted on all three counts in November 1960 and was sentenced to six years in prison. However, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found numerous errors in the case and in January 1962 ordered a new trial. Accardo was then acquitted of the tax charges in October 1962.

Giancana's mid-1960s problems with the law and flight from the U.S., pulled apparently reluctant Accardo and Paul Ricca out of their retirements for a time. The aging Accardo seemed to guide the Outfit through a government investigation of Las Vegas casino skimming operations and the sudden reappearance and 1975 murder of ex-boss Giancana.

Accardo's health became a major issue for him the 1980s. In 1984, he visited the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, for treatment of heart and lung conditions. Shortly after returning home to Chicago, he became dizzy and suffered a head injury during a fall. His injury required a hospital stay. Despite his declining health, some believe he continued to advise Outfit bosses until his last days.

Just when his last days occurred seems to be a matter of some disagreement. While contemporary news sources and biographer William F. Roemer, Jr., clearly place his death on Wednesday, May 27, 1992, as of this writing a number of online sources (including Wikipedia and Find A Grave) insist that Accardo's death occurred five days earlier, on May 22 (a Friday). This is made more curious by the fact that a source cited for the Wikipedia death date is a May 29, 1992, Hartford Courant (Associated Press) article that states death occurred the previous Wednesday.
 

Sources:

  • "28 more public enemies named by crime board," Chicago Daily Tribune, Aug. 1, 1931, p. 5.
  • Cohen, Jerry, "U.S. grand jury summons two Mafia chieftains," Los Angeles Times, July 4, 1970, p. 19.
  • Conroy, L.N., "Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly, Committee on the Judiciary, Estes Kefauver Chairman," FBI memorandum to Mr. Rosen, file no. 62-102198-116, NARA no. 124-10347-10011, Nov. 12, 1959.
  • Daniels, Lee A., "Anthony Accardo, long a figure in mob world, dies in bed at 86," New York Times, May 29, 1992.
  • FBI memorandum to Mr. McAndrews, file no. 92-6054-2092, NARA no. 124-10287-10397, July 25, 1967.
  • Hill, Ralph R., "Anthony Joseph Accardo,..." FBI report, file no. 92-3182-79, NARA no. 124-10203-10000, May 26, 1960, p. A-6.
  • Hill, Ralph R. Jr., "Samuel M. Giancana, ..." FBI report, file no. 92-636-3, NARA no. 124-90024-10122, May 5, 1961, p. 10-11.
  • "Illinois shorts," Dixon IL Evening Telegraph, Jan. 6, 1962, p. 4.
  • "Informer is slain by Chicago gunmen," New York Times, Feb. 2, 1930, p. 11.
  • Investigation of Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, Hearings Before the Select Committee on Improper Activities in the Labor or Management Field, Part 33, 85th Congress, Second Session, Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1958, p. 12782-12797.
  • Kiesling, Mark, "Anthony Accardo's death closes Capone Era," Munster (IN) Times, May 28, 1992, p. 11.
  • Koziol, Ronald, and John O'Brien, "Reputed mob boss Accardo dies," Chicago Tribune, May 28, 1992, p. B1.
  • "McGurn, on trial, claims illegal arrest," Chicago Daily Tribune, June 25, 1930, p. 7.
  • "New names introduced in Zuta killing," Streator IL Daily Times-Press, Aug. 6, 1930, p. 1.
  • O'Brien, John, "Low-key sendoff for Accardo," Chicago Tribune, May 30, 1992, p. 5.
  • Passenger manifest of S.S. Sicilian Prince, departed Palermo, arrived New York on Feb. 25, 1904.
  • "Raid gangdom for 'slayers' of Mike Heitler," Chicago Daily Tribune, May 2, 1931, p. 1.
  • Roberts, John W. Jr., "The Criminal commission; et al Chicago Division," FBI report from Chicago office, file no. 92-6054-131, NARA no. 124-10216-10239, Dec. 21, 1962, p. 2.
  • Roemer, William F. Jr., Accardo: The Genuine Godfather, New York: Donald I. Fine, 1995.
  • "Senate, 87-0, cites 13 for contempt," New York Times, Aug. 19, 1958, p. 16.
  • Smith, Sandy, "Jury acquits Tony Accardo," Chicago Tribune, Oct. 4, 1962, p. 1.
  • Social Security Death Index, SSN 360-14-0886.
  • "Tony Accardo reputedly led Chicago mob," Hartford CT Courant, May 29, 1992, p. C10.
  • "Two more slain by gangs," Chicago Daily Tribune, Feb. 5, 1930, p. 1.
  • "U.S. indicts 23 Capone men," Chicago Daily Tribune, May 2, 1931, p. 1.
  • Wehrwein, Austin C., "Accardo receives 6-year jail term," New York Times, Nov. 19, 1960, p. 11.
  • Yost, Newton E., "La Cosa Nostra," FBI report, file no. 92-6054-683, NARA no. 124-10208-10406, July 22, 1964, p. 18.

25 April 2020

Sláinte: The Strange Tale of “Durable Mike” Malloy

One of my favorite criminal stories of Prohibition isn’t gangster-related, but the story of “Durable Mike” Malloy, a New York derelict who had the misfortune of being targeted for murder by a group of grubby Bronx speakeasy habitués, who intended to collect a life insurance policy upon his demise. Only trouble was, Malloy refused to die. It was as if Rasputin had relocated to the Bronx. The clumsy murder attempts of the four perpetrators, nicknamed by the tabloids “The Murder Trust,” are both disturbing and darkly funny, as if they were ripped straight from the script of a Coen Brothers movie. The saga of Durable Mike Malloy and the Murder Trust is so strange and off-the-wall; it’s the kind of story that just can’t be made up. The truth is crazy enough on its own…

New York City, like the rest of the country, was getting the shit kicked out of it by the Great Depression in the early 1930s. The carefree America of the Jazz Age had vanished like smoke. In its place, a somber populace waited in blocks-long breadlines for food. Unemployment was skyrocketing to near 30%. Banks were closing at a rapid rate. Once wealthy Wall Street bankers now sat in gutters beginning for change. Prohibition was still the law of the land, though it had no real teeth. The increasingly large block of poor and homeless transients that roamed the city often scrounged whatever free food and drink they could at their neighborhood speakeasy.

Twenty-seven-year old Anthony Marino managed to weather the Dirty Thirties by the skin of his teeth. A grungy man who suffered from perpetual financial troubles and an advancing case of syphilis, Marino ran a small, bare-bones speakeasy in the back of an abandoned storefront at 3775 Third Avenue in the Bronx. It wasn’t much; a sofa, four tables, a twelve-foot long plywood bar along the back wall, and a modest supply of bootleg liquor (the saloon was so bland and nondescript that it didn’t even have a name). Marino's bartender was a twenty-eight-year-old Joseph "Red" Murphy, an alcoholic simpleton and one-time chemist who had been a vagrant for most of his life. While Tony sporadically paid Red a dollar-a-day wage, it was unspoken yet understood that Murphy’s real payment was the free run of his boss's stock of booze behind the bar. The homeless Murphy usually crashed on the bar’s couch after he closed, curling up under a single blanket to stay warm. By his own later admission, he "had nowhere else to go."

The front of Tony Marino's Bronx speakeasy at 3775 Third Avenue (New York Daily News)
It was a miserable way to make a living. Sometimes Marino’s customers paid him, sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes they’d empty whatever coins they had in their pockets and put the rest of their bill on a tab. Sometimes they paid the tab, sometimes they didn't. Some nights it seemed to Tony Marino as if he was pouring his meager profits down the collective gullet of his lowly clientele.  

By the beginning of 1932, Marino was up to his asshole in bills and he couldn’t seem to find a way out of the red ink. One evening, while looking out at his cruddy barroom, he hatched a particularly odious plan. Most of the people who drank here were tough neighborhood residents or shifty bums looking to cadge free booze and sandwiches. No one would miss those latter types. Tony Marino began sizing up a young homeless woman named Mabel “Betty” Carlson. After giving her food and a place to sleep, Tony carefully questioned her about her past. She had no family, no friends, and no future.

A couple of weeks later, Marino produced an official-looking document for the inebriated Carlson. Tony explained that he was running for alderman, and his petition needed signatures so he could get on the ballot. Miss Carlson gladly obliged. Little did Betty know that she had signed a $2000 life insurance policy that made Anthony Marino the sole beneficiary in the event of her death. A week later on St. Patrick’s Day, Marino got Carlson so drunk she passed out. He then carried her to an upstairs bedroom, stripped off her clothes, and doused her with ice water. Marino then opened the window, wheeled the bed right underneath it, and let the cold March air do the rest. Betty Carlson was found dead the next day. The cause of death was listed as bronchial pneumonia, and Marino collected his $2000 without incident. This money managed to hold Marino until the summer of 1932 when the bills began piling up once again…

Anthony Marino (New York Daily News)
It all began, like many bad ideas, with drinks at a bar. Two of Tony Marino’s trusted friends, Francis Pasqua and Daniel Kreisberg, joined him for a glass of hooch at one of the saloon’s four tables on a sweltering afternoon in late July 1932. The three men discussed how hard times were and how they just couldn't catch a break. It was a grim, desperate era they were living in. Marino harped on his two foremost concerns; a bad case of blue balls and his saloon’s extreme lack of business. In fact, at that moment, they were the only customers in the place. Well…except for the tall, rail-thin Irishman standing at the end of the bar trying to wheedle another drink out of bartender Red Murphy.

No one knew much about Michael Malloy – not even Malloy himself, it seemed - other than that he was originally from Ireland. The man had no family or friends. No known date of birth (they guessed him to be about sixty). It was said that he was once a firefighter, but nowadays his chief vocation seemed to be drinking. The man was a hopeless alcoholic. From dawn to dusk and back again, Malloy would drink whatever was placed in front of him; gin, whiskey, rum, beer, or anything else that could be distilled or brewed. He got by doing occasional odd jobs such as sweeping stores or collecting garbage. He was more than happy to be paid in booze instead of money. Malloy was, according to the New York Daily Mirror, part of the “flotsam and jetsam in the swift current of underworld speakeasy life, those no-longer-responsible derelicts who stumble through the last days of their lives in a continual haze of ‘Bowery Smoke.’ ”

Frank Pasqua sipped his drink as he turned his flat, lizard-like gaze on Malloy. Twenty-four years old, Frank was an undertaker by trade who ran a funeral home on E. 116th Street in East Harlem. A clever, cold-blooded type, Pasqua was one of the only people around who knew what Tony Marino had done to Betty Carlson. As he listened to Tony go on about his penurious business, Pasqua said softly, “Why don’t you take out insurance on Malloy?” Marino looked at his friend with a kind of famished hope, as if Pasqua had just tossed him a life preserver made of cash. “I can take care of the rest,” the young undertaker assured.

Tony agreed, “He looks all in. He ain’t got much longer anyhow. The stuff is getting’ him.” Both Marino and Pasqua turned to look at the stone-faced Dan Kreisberg. A twenty-nine-year-old greengrocer with a wife and three kids at home, Dan wasn’t quite as benign as he seemed on the surface. Despite being married, Kreisberg was an accomplice of Marino’s cousin Marie Baker, known to the police and media as “The Pants Bandit.” Marie, with a Bonnie Parker-like flair, would hold up men on the street and after relieving them of their money and valuables, force them at gunpoint to remove their pants. The victims’ lack of trousers made them unable (or unwilling) to give chase to the fleeing robber. Baker’s lone male companion would stand guard during the proceedings. For that minimal task, Kreisberg was paid a small share of the take. All things considered, however, Dan Kreisberg wasn't cut out to be a criminal; he lacked Pasqua's cunning and Marino's brutality. Kreisberg would later tell police he took part in the coming shenanigans only to support his family. Nevertheless, with the specter of murder placed on the table before him, Kreisberg gave his pals a firm nod. He was in. After all, it beat being the sidekick of “The Pants Bandit.”

With the plan in place, the insurance policies had to be set up. The boys convinced Mike Malloy that he needed some insurance on himself. Malloy, who had spent untold years in an alcohol-induced haze, didn't seem to think anything was amiss and allowed Frank Pasqua to steer him towards the insurance office. Malloy was instructed to identify himself as Nicholas Mellory and claim to be a florist, a detail that one of Pasqua’s funeral business colleagues would verify. However, no amount of pomade and toilet water could clean up the pestiferous Malloy. The policy application came back stamped REJECTED. As did a half-dozen others. It occurred to the boys that if Malloy was going to be insured by some gullible company, he could not show his face.

Frank Pasqua (New York Daily News)

It ultimately took Pasqua a total of five months (and the assistance of an unscrupulous insurance agent) to secure three policies – all double indemnity- on Nicholas Mellory’s life; two with Prudential Life Insurance Company and the final one with Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Marino’s barkeep, Red Murphy, was enlisted to identify the deceased man as Nicholas Mellory and claim to be his brother and beneficiary. If all went as planned, the four plotters (Pasqua, Marino, Kreisberg, and Murphy) would split $3,576 (about $67,400 by current standards).

These four initial conspirators would soon be nicknamed “The Murder Trust” by the New York tabloids. By the time D-Day approached in December 1932, their ranks had swelled to include a handful of Marino’s regulars. Two petty crooks wanted in on the scheme, John McNally and Edward “Tin Ear” Smith (his prosthetic ear was actually made of wax). A vicious lower level member of the Dutch Schultz mob called “Tough Tony” Bastone learned of the plot and coerced a piece of the pie out of the plotters. Also tagging along was Bastone’s sidekick Joseph Maglione. After this, Tony Marino’s peculiar club was closed to further memberships…for the time being.

The lethal octet assembled in Marino’s speakeasy a few days before Christmas 1932 to remove Mike Malloy from the land of the living. When the shabbily dressed target wandered into the warm saloon, he was surprised to hear Tony Marino greet him by saying he now had an open tab. A price war between other neighborhood gin mills had forced him to ease his rules. Malloy, who was more accustomed to getting the bum’s rush from local taverns, grinned with gratitude at the news and happily sat down at the bar.

The boys initially tried to get Malloy to drink himself to death, but the man had been drinking so much for so long, his tolerance for alcohol seemed inhuman. That first night, Mike had so many refills that Marino's wrist got sore from tipping bottles. After putting away enough Prohibition-era alky to paralyze the New York Giants’ entire offensive line, Mike bid his new friends farewell and staggered out into the Bronx night. For three straight evenings, Malloy returned to the saloon and drank prodigious amounts of liquor with no ill after-effects. The plotters were stumped. Perhaps Mike would choke on his vomit or fall and fracture his skull if they just kept serving him. Nothing happened. It seemed as if Tony Marino would run out of booze before Mike Malloy breathed his last.

Tough Tony Bastone grew impatient by the fourth night and suggested that they stop fucking around and just blow Malloy’s brains out on a deserted side street. Red Murphy had a cooler head and suggested they feed their target wood alcohol. As a bartender and chemist, Murphy was intimately familiar with all the lethal poisons floating around the country’s speakeasies. The main ingredient of wood alcohol is methanol, a highly toxic chemical substance often found in such industrial compounds as paint thinner and automobile antifreeze. Consuming just ten milliliters of methanol was enough to induce blindness in humans. Two to eight ounces was enough to kill a grown adult. Marino loved the idea. Even the normally staid Dan Kreisberg broke into a grin, “Yeah, feed ‘im wood alcohol cocktails and see what happens.”

The next afternoon, Murphy procured several ten-cent cans of wood alcohol from a nearby paint store. Red then spent the next hour or so transferring the poison to innocuous-looking liquor bottles. That evening, Mike Malloy arrived for his usual gargantuan ration of booze. Murphy gave him a few pops of Marino’s standard rotgut to get him “feeling good.” He then announced to Mike that some “new stuff” had just come in today. Would he like to try it? As the plotters anxiously watched, Malloy downed a shot of booze laced with wood alcohol. To their amazement, he commented that it was quite smooth. Could he have another? Red poured him another…and another. Malloy kept drinking shots of whiskey mixed with wood alcohol and showed no signs of discomfort other than the usual symptoms of drunkenness. In the coming nights, Murphy and Marino took to lacing Malloy’s drinks with stronger doses of wood alcohol. Finally throwing caution to the wind, they served Mike straight wood alcohol. Seemingly oblivious to the noxious odor and taste, Malloy guzzled this poison night after night as the Murder Trust looked on in utter disbelief, probably wondering just what the hell Malloy had been drinking all his life.


After a full week’s diet of raw wood alcohol, Malloy suddenly collapsed to the floor of the virtually empty speakeasy one night. The crew fell silent. Frank Pasqua, the undertaker, moved in close to check Malloy’s vital signs. Mike was still breathing, but slowly and erratically. The boys eagerly watched for his chest to stop moving. Malloy let out a long, seemingly final ragged exhale…and then began snoring loudly. Mike woke up early the next morning to greet Red Murphy with, “Gimme some of th’ old regular, lad!”

The plot to kill Mike Malloy was not only turning into a giant pain in the ass, but it was also costing Tony Marino increasingly large sums of money; Mike’s open bar tab, the cans of wood alcohol, the monthly insurance premiums. Marino complained that he was going to go bankrupt before they knocked off Malloy. Tough Tony Bastone flashed two pistols and proposed to cut off Malloy’s tab the easy way. Frank Pasqua had another solution. He claimed to have once seen a man die after eating raw oysters mixed with alcohol. And their target had a well-known fondness for seafood. Pasqua suggested they pickle some oysters in wood alcohol, let them sit for a few days, and feed them to the unsuspecting Malloy while he boozed. As Frank told his partners, “Alcohol taken during a meal of oysters will invariably cause acute indigestion, for the oysters tend to remain preserved.”

Per Pasqua’s plan, Mike Malloy dug into his putrid meal. He amazingly sang its praises, “You oughta open a restaurant Tony, you know first-class food!” Malloy continued to gorge himself on Oysters Ptomaine while requesting refills of that “new booze” to wash them down with. The Murder Trust dealt themselves a few hands of pinochle while waiting for their mark to finally give up the ghost. Instead of dying, Malloy downed another glass of wood alcohol and issued a loud belch.

The conspirators were growing angry and well as desperate. By this point, killing Mike Malloy was as much about pride as it was about profit. They didn't even bother giving Malloy regular booze anymore, serving him straight wood alcohol from a large jug kept behind the bar. Some of the plotters started bitching about how they’d have to divide the loot with so many people that they wouldn’t see much of a reward.

Meanwhile, a dim light flickered in the corroded neurons of Red Murphy's alcohol-sodden brain. He opened a tin of sardines, proceeded to let them spoil for several days, and then ground the sardine tin itself in tiny metal shavings, which he proceeded to mix in with the rotten sardines. Several shards of broken glass were added, as well. Chef Red then garnished his pièce de résistance with a few small carpet tacks. After smearing this abysmal concoction onto two slices of bread, Murphy served Mike Malloy the sandwich. Mike tore into it with aplomb. The Murder Trust watched him with the intensity of vampires staring at a shaving cut. Any second now, the minuscule shards of metal would begin shredding Malloy’s internal organs. Mike was unfazed, however, and after snarfing the rest of his sandwich down polished off another glass of wood alcohol. Malloy politely asked Murphy for more of both, his breath fairly reeking of fish and chemicals.

Tony Marino called the plotters together to discuss what course of action to take next. The name “Rasputin” was muttered more than once during their conversation. Just how was this fucking guy still alive? One suggested merely beating Malloy over the head until he died. They could do it while he sat at the bar, or jump him out in the street and pass it off as a random mugging. In a flair of gratuitous ultra-violence that had Tough Tony Bastone’s name written all over it, the Murder Trust discussed getting their hands on a Thompson submachine gun and giving Malloy a Chicago-style sendoff. As tough as Malloy was, he certainly wasn’t bulletproof. The boys combed the underbelly of the neighborhood until they found a young Black hoodlum who was willing to sell them a “Tommy Gun” for $50. However, the plan fell through because Marino was unwilling to part with such a large sum of money. Mike Malloy had dodged yet another bullet (pun intended).

Ironically, Malloy took a week-long break from his booze consumption during this period to seek treatment for a festering sore on his leg at Fordham Hospital. It showed the Murder Trust that despite everything, Mike Malloy was indeed physically fallible. There was still hope...

From left to right, Dan Kreisberg, Joseph "Red" Murphy, and Tony Marino (New York Daily News)
By mid-January, the city of New York was locked amid a dangerous cold snap. Tony Marino harkened back to his successful dispatching of Betty Carlson. If the ice water and cold air could kill Carson, they could kill Mike Malloy.

That very night, Marino and Frank Pasqua waited until Malloy passed out drunk at the bar and hauled him outside to Pasqua’s roadster. The weather, the worst of the winter of 1933, was perfect for their mission. An intense blizzard was in progress and a demonic wind straight from the bowels of hell blew in from the northwest. The temperature was a bone-chilling -14 Fahrenheit. The two conspirators drove in silence to Crotona Park, a few blocks to the east. Once there, they dragged the unconscious Malloy into the snowy park. This task was not as easy as it sounded. Neither Marino nor Pasqua were great physical specimens, and Malloy was not a small man. In addition to Mike’s dead weight, they were also lugging a 5-gallon jug of water. Before long, their cumbersome stroll had both men panting and popping sweat despite the Arctic-like weather conditions. After laying Malloy on a suitable park bench, they stripped off his shirt and doused his head and bare torso with the contents of the water jug. Through it all, Malloy never stirred. Confident that Mike would quickly freeze to death, Marino and Pasqua retreated to the car.

When Tony Marino arrived at his saloon the next afternoon, he was astounded to find a half-frozen Mike Malloy asleep in his basement. It seemed at some point during the night, Malloy had woken up and instinctively staggered through the snowstorm back to Marino’s Third Avenue dive bar, where a drink-befuddled Red Murphy let him in. The sheer barbarity of Marino and Pasqua’s act was overshadowed by Malloy’s mind-boggling survival. As the New York Daily News would later put it, “He didn’t even get the sniffles and was back the next day for his alky ration.”

Not long after his icy jaunt through Crotona Park, Frank Pasqua began trying to cover his ass by spending as little time at the Bronx speakeasy as possible. Probably the shrewdest passenger on the ship of fools known as the S.S. Murder Trust, Pasqua and his father-in-law had just opened a beer garden of their own to the rear of their East Harlem funeral home. It was a nice touch; the bereaved could enjoy a cold glass of suds while their loved ones were embalmed in the next room. Unlike the syphilitic Marino, Pasqua wanted to at least try to appear respectable. Unlike the slimy Pasqua, however, Tough Tony Bastone was itching to kill someone, anyone. Unable to whack Malloy, Bastone set his sights on fellow conspirator John McNally. When Tony Marino asked why, Bastone merely replied, "I don't like that Irish cocksucker." Marino was coerced into helping Tough Tony and Joe Maglione stake out McNally’s house late one cold January night before bailing on the deranged plot. The bloodthirsty Bastone managed to back off for a bit.

February rapidly approached. Another round of insurance premium payments was due. By now, the increasingly frantic Murder Trust had reached a Clausewitzian state of total war against Mike Malloy. As such, the days of tainted oysters and broken glass sandwiches were long past. Far more drastic measures were required. Joe Maglione had a friend who, on the surface, was a harmless cab driver. In reality, Harry Green was a heartless sociopath who was eager to try out murder for the first time. For a $150 cut of the insurance money, Green was willing to run Mike Malloy down in the street with his cab. It seemed that deliverance was finally at hand for the Murder Trust.

The next night, January 30, Mike Malloy was gotten near-comatose drunk and loaded into Harry Green’s cab. Five of the conspirators (Tony Marino, Red Murphy, Tough Tony Bastone, Joe Maglione, and John McNally) crammed themselves into the vehicle (the insensible Malloy was shoved down onto the floorboards to serve as a crude footrest.) Snow had just begun to gently fall as the Murder Trust headed northeast towards Baychester, then a remote, sparsely populated section of the Bronx. They stopped in the northbound lane of Baychester Avenue, not far from Gun Hill Road. The street was deserted at midnight, so there were no witnesses to worry about. Bastone and Murphy dragged Malloy out of the cab and held him upright, crucifixion-style. Green backed his cab up two full city blocks to make sure he had enough room to accelerate to a high rate of speed. The cabbie gunned his engine as the boys tensed with anticipation. Bastone and Murphy ducked out of the way. Maglione suddenly screamed, “STOP!” Green halted the cab in a loud cacophony of squealing tires. Maglione had seen a light out of the corner of his eye. It turned to be just a local woman turning on a light in her room.

Green reversed his hack the requisite two blocks for another try. Once Malloy was propped upright in the street, the cabbie floored his accelerator. The weaving drunk rapidly swelled in the windshield, looking to the plotters like some crazy camera trick at the picture show. Just at the moment of truth, the completely oblivious Malloy blundered out of the path of the speeding taxi, which rocketed past him with inches to spare. Tony Marino and his pals literally howled with frustration.

Harry Green was angrily muttering curses under his breath as he backed his cab up yet another time. Bastone and Murphy, who were bickering incessantly by this point, once again stood up poor old Mike Malloy in the middle of the street to await his miserable fate. This time, Bastone and Murphy held up Malloy until the last possible second. Green was traveling between 45 and 50 mph when his cab struck the drunken man head-on. Malloy briefly flung up on the hood before disappearing from view. The plotters felt two pronounced thuds as the cab rolled over the body. The cab came to a stop. Just to make sure Malloy was dead, Green threw his hack in reverse and shot backward directly over Malloy’s unmoving form, which was spun sideways by the force of the impact. However, the headlights of an approaching vehicle scared off the boys before they could confirm their success.

Red Murphy, who had been cast in the role of Nicholas Mellory’s “brother,” was tasked with calling the area hospitals and morgues in an attempt to locate his “sibling.” No one had heard a thing. Nor was there anything in the newspapers about a man being run down by a hit-and-run driver in Baychester. The conspirators were mystified. Mike Malloy had seemingly vanished into thin air. Five days rolled past with nary a peep.

Harry Green (New York Daily News)
On the fifth night, his mind almost audibly snapping loose from its moorings, Tony Marino sat at his bar feverishly planning to shanghai and kill another anonymous derelict – any fucking anonymous derelict would do – and pass him off as Nicholas Mellory. Bastone and the others agreed. With Mike Malloy gone to who knew where they need someone to fill in. The boys decided to search the speakeasies and dive bars across the river in Harlem, where no one would recognize them.

Joseph Patrick Murray was a thirty-one-year-old unemployed plasterer's assistant when, on the night of February 6, 1933, he unknowingly wandered into the violent, insane universe of the Murder Trust. Like Mike Malloy, he was a heavy drinker. It was his misfortune that he bore an astonishing physical resemblance to the durable barfly whom he had never (and would never) meet. Murray was approached outside a 128th Street speakeasy by a "gentleman", later identified as Tough Tony Bastone, who offered him a job. With a little urging, the tipsy Murray was coaxed into Harry Green's cab. Despite the crowd of hungry-eyed men inside, Murray leaned back and drank heavily from the whiskey bottle they offered. Amazingly, they saw fellow Trustee John McNally on the sidewalk and flagged him down. Still unaware of Bastone's threats, McNally climbed inside the crowded taxi.

By this time, the Murder Trust wasn't wasting any time on niceties. Once they arrived back at Marino's Bronx dive bar, they offered the intoxicated Joe Murray a Malloyesque line of unlimited credit. The Murder Trusters certainly didn't care; they merely wanted Murray drunk enough so he could be run over with ease. Within just an hour or so, Murray obliged them by passing out cold at the bar. Tony Marino, perhaps sensing an end to this ordeal, let out a ghoulish chuckle, "Gee, he's almost a double for Malloy!" The hapless Murray was then shoved down onto the floor of Harry Green's cab. As they set out for Trinity Avenue to do the job, the Murder Trust was dismayed to see that there were far too much vehicle and pedestrian traffic to hit their target.

Since it was still too early in the evening, the boys retreated to Marino's speakeasy, where the unconscious Joe Murray was dropped on the grimy floor like a sack of potatoes. The Murder Trust perched at the bar like vultures and guzzled booze while they waited for the slender black hands of time to move around the clock. By midnight, they set out again. Harry Green said, "I know a place by Southern Boulevard." Murray was shoved back onto the floor of the cab as they set out.

While no one who knew John McNally would argue that he was some choir boy proudly sporting a chestful of Boy Scout merit badges, this whole situation had gotten just too crazy for him. An indestructible bum, missing bodies, kidnapping...and now on his way out to God knew where to run this poor bastard down like a dog in the street. McNally barked at Green to stop the cab and let him out. At the corner of Westchester and Forest avenues, McNally opted out of the whole mess. Before long, the Murder Trust would have good reason to wish that Tough Tony Bastone had killed "the Irish cocksucker" as he had originally intended.

After finding Southern Boulevard suitably deserted for their nefarious deed, Bastone and Red Murphy shoved a phony "Nicholas Mellory" ID in Joe Murray's pocket and propped him up to receive a kiss from the Mike Malloy Express. If possible, this attempt was even sloppier than their previous runs at Malloy. Harry Green was going a mere 30 miles an hour when he hit Murray's staggering frame. After seeing the poor man crunch under all four wheels, the Murder Trust figured he had to be dead. They split from the scene after seeing the lights of an approaching car.

Not only was Joe Murray still alive, but he was also found in the street by a passing policeman. He would stay in the hospital for the next fifty-five days. Unfortunately for our grubby anti-heroes, a nearby watchman had seen this whole grisly farce from start to finish and recorded the license plate number of Harry Green's cab.

When Green and Joe Maglione returned his cab to the garage around two that morning, Harry got word that the cops wanted to see him. Both Murder Trustees blanched. Green was interviewed by NYPD Detective Lloyd of the 40th Precinct, who wanted to question him about reportedly hitting a pedestrian earlier in the evening. Unaware of the bizarre conspiracy that he had inadvertently stumbled onto, Detective Lloyd allowed Harry Green to leave around five that morning. He and Maglione promptly woke up Tony Marino and told him of their grilling. All three agreed that even if Murray died, they couldn’t collect the insurance money. While they weren’t in jail yet, the sudden prospect of heat from the cops was unsettling, to say the least.

With Joe Murray clinging to life in the hospital and Mike Malloy still missing, the Murder Trust was at a crossroads. They could either call the whole thing off or search for yet another victim. Less than two days after the Murray fiasco, the door to Tony Marino’s speakeasy flew open and in hobbled Mike Malloy. Although banged up and swathed in bandages, he was otherwise as fit as a fiddle. In a strange touch, like a hat on a horse, the downtrodden Malloy was dressed in a brand-new suit. Marino, Pasqua, and the rest of the Murder Trust could only stare, jaws agape. 

Mike didn’t remember too much. He’d been pretty tied, after all. He remembered the taste of Tony’s booze. The sharp cold of the night air. The bright gleam of car headlights. Then, bang, blackness. Next thing he knew, he was in the hospital with a broken collar bone and a concussion. A passing beat cop had come upon him and called an ambulance to take him to Fordham Hospital (it turned out that Mike Malloy had been listed in the hospital under his real name, thus explaining why Red Murphy had come up empty when he called Fordham looking for ‘Nicholas Mellory.’) A charity organization took pity and outfitted him with this here suit. Anyhoo, he was just glad to be back here with his good friends! And…“I sure am dying for a drink!”

Taking his cue, Red Murphy reached for the jug of wood alcohol and poured Malloy a stiff one. The eye-watering stench of methanol rose heavily from the bar and quickly permeated every crevice of Marino’s shitty little saloon. It was a wonder the paint on the walls hadn’t started to dissolve. It was later left to the New York Times to dryly sum it all up with this headline: GIN RESISTS MOTORCAR.

The Murder Trust was utterly defeated. Every plan they cooked up that should have succeeded ended up failing miserably. In a bitter yet fitting irony, even if their early attempts to kill Malloy had worked, they would not have been paid a cent. The insurance policies for “Nicholas Mellory” were double indemnity. While death by automobile qualified for double indemnity, death by liquid poisoning, hypothermia, tainted seafood, and carpet tack sandwich did not. The Murder Trust had been unknowingly shooting themselves in the foot since Day One. As a bonus, Malloy (blissfully ignorant of the sinister forces at work against him) was still hanging around the bar, drinking large amounts of wood alcohol. Indeed, Malloy probably thought he had never had it so good. Unlimited booze and free lunch. A warm place to hang his hat on cold winter nights. Good conversation with his friends. Never mind that he might occasionally wake up half-naked on a park bench or concussed in the middle of the street. Mike Malloy had finally found a place where he felt… at home.

It was the very definition of insanity. By mid-February, both Tony Marino and Frank Pasqua were teetering on the edge of nervous breakdowns; that point of dementia where they began to believe that Mike Malloy could not be killed under any circumstances. A small fortune was so close they could taste it. Only one apparently indestructible man stood between them and their money. Finally, they decided that Tough Tony Bastone had been right all along; only straight-up murder would work.

Late in the afternoon of February 22, 1933, all appeared to be normal in Tony Marino’s speakeasy. Red Murphy stood behind the bar helping himself to the inventory while Marino sat at a nearby table glancing indifferently over a newspaper. Tough Tony Bastone and another man named James Salone were drinking at the bar, as was charter Murder Truster Dan Kreisberg. Per usual, Mike Malloy sat at the bar nursing a drink. For a change of pace, Malloy was drinking regular whiskey; the small saloon was blessedly free of the overpowering stink of wood alcohol.

In a surprise move around suppertime, Bastone challenged Malloy to a drinking contest. Already quite sloshed, Mike eagerly accepted. Glasses of whiskey were poured. Soon after starting, Tough Tony gave Red Murphy a menacing look. The feeble bartender knew what that look meant and deftly switched out Malloy’s whiskey for wood alcohol. Bastone and Malloy slugged it out for about twenty minutes; Kreisberg later estimated that Malloy drank nearly two quarts of wood alcohol in that brief period.

As strong as he was, a survivor of so much violent incompetence over the last two months, Mike had finally reached his limit. Malloy swayed at the bar, clutching the rail as his cast-iron constitution struggled against the surfeit of methanol now coursing through his system. Mike slowly sank to the floor as he passed out, while Tough Tony whooped and raised his arms as if he had just won a title fight. Red Murphy got his arms around Malloy and half-dragged, half-carried him nearly a mile through their Bronx neighborhood to a furnished room at 1210 Fulton Avenue. Dan Kreisberg and Tough Tony Bastone trailed behind them. None of the Murder Trustees seemed too concerned that passerby would notice them dragging an unconscious derelict along the sidewalk. 

As Bastone stood guard outside (just to make sure the little fucksticks didn’t chicken out), the huffing-and-puffing Murphy lugged Malloy up to the room. The landlady of the building, Delia Murphy (no relation), heard the commotion and asked what was happening. A surprisingly quick-thinking Red told her that his brother was feeling ill and that he needed to lay down. Once inside the room, Red Murphy deposited him on the bed. Murphy and Kreisberg put into the motion the plan that Frank Pasqua had outlined over the last week. A rubber hose would be connected to a gaslight fixture and the open end fed down Malloy’s throat. The resulting stream of poisonous fumes would succeed where they had so frequently failed.

After they connected the hose to the valve, they were dismayed to discover that it wouldn’t reach the bed. Murphy and Kreisberg merely stood over the semi-conscious Malloy, blinking stupidly at each other and the too-short hose. They solved their dilemma by dragging Malloy onto the floor. Murphy then stuffed a towel in Malloy’s mouth and fed the open end of the hose down his throat while Dan Kreisberg turned on the gas valve. A hissing sound filled the room as Murphy held the hose down fast. Malloy seemed to sense what was happening and began squirming and moaning. Mike’s face turned purple as he fought valiantly to live. Suddenly Red Murphy let out a disgusted grunt, “Christ, the sonofabitch pissed all over me!” Seemingly in response, Malloy stopped struggling and breathing.

The moment they had been so desperately seeking was at hand.

The furnished room where Durable Mike Malloy met his end (New York Daily News)
Dan Kreisberg quickly exited the death room while Red Murphy dragged Malloy’s body back up onto the bed. They had to make it look good for the old bitty that would eventually find him, after all. After Kreisberg made his way back to 3775 Third Avenue, he saw Tony Marino and Tough Tony Bastone. Not saying a word and probably disgusted with what had just gone down, the mild-mannered greengrocer sat at a table and began to drink. Red Murphy followed him in about ten minutes later. Although he had just erased a human life, he seemed vaguely nonplussed. Red stepped behind the bar and poured himself a drink, as if by habit. “Well, Red, how is it?” Tough Tony asked. “I think it is all right.”

Marino and Bastone were skeptical. After all, how many times had they tried to kill Mike Malloy? For all they knew, he would be staggering in the door any minute, demanding a tall glass of whiskey and a sardine sandwich. Needless to say, all the drastic failed attempts of the last two months had made the boys more than a little paranoid. Red Murphy was instructed to spend the night with the body at 1210 Fulton Avenue, to have a proper story for the landlady who would inevitably discover the body. Red didn’t kick up a fuss; after all, how often did he get to sleep in an actual bed? After arriving back at the crime scene, Red shoved the now-dead Mike Malloy over onto the other side of the bed. Mike smelled of sweat, funk, methanol, and urine, but Red didn’t mind. The room was blessedly quiet. After drawing the single sheet over him, Red Murphy slept soundly. 

The next morning after the body was discovered, the boys got on the horn to Dr. Frank Manzella, a shady former alderman who moonlighted as a quack doctor. Manzella obligingly filled out the death certificate of “Nicholas Mellory,” citing “lobar pneumonia” as the cause of death with “alcoholism as a contributing cause.” The good doctor was to be paid a total of $150 for this deed.

It was left to undertaker Frank Pasqua to dispose of the body. Pasqua, who by now just wanted to get this mucking fess over with, didn’t even bother to embalm the corpse. Michael Malloy was unceremoniously dumped into an $18 wooden box and buried in a pauper’s grave at Ferncliff Cemetery a mere thirty-six hours after his death. Never one to pass on a quick buck, Pasqua billed his insurance company for an expensive coffin and non-existent floral arrangements.

A post-mortem shot of Mike Malloy (New York Medical Examiner's Office)
After a legendary fight, Mike Malloy had lost his battle against the Murder Trust. Ultimately, however, even though he wasn't around to see it, Malloy would win the war…

Red Murphy successfully passed himself off as the brother of “Nicholas Mellory” and collected $800 from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Murphy and Marino both spent their shares of this money on new suits. Frank Pasqua repaired to the Prudential office to inform them that “Mellory” was dead and to request payout on the other two policies. When Frank finished speaking, the agent surprised him with a question, “When can I see the body?” Pasqua quickly replied that it had already been buried. The agent furrowed his brow. An Irishman buried so quickly, and without a wake? That was unusual. It was suspicious enough to warrant some investigation. The same agent soon asked around for Nicholas Mellory’s “brother,” only to find out that he had seemingly disappeared.

Whatever ACME glue was holding the Murder Trust’s scheme together quickly began to melt away. For one thing, way too many people were involved in this thing. Some of the plotters hadn’t been given their full shares; others hadn’t gotten anything at all. Taxi driver Harry Green had been paid only a fraction of what he was owed, and he complained to friends that that meager amount wouldn’t even be enough to fix the damage incurred to his cab. Not to mention the fact that the cops had grilled him on the Murray hit-and-run. Dr. Frank Manzella had yet to be paid for services rendered. Tough Tony Bastone grew even more unstable and threatened to kill everyone involved if he didn’t get the bulk of the Prudential policies. That intrepid Prudential insurance claims investigator was sniffing around asking for “Joseph Mellory.” The beginning of the end came suddenly in the early morning hours of March 19, almost a month after Mike Malloy’s death.

Tony Marino sipped a glass of whiskey while looking around his nearly empty barroom this late night. Clad in his new suit, Marino was feeling relatively good, all things considered. Not even the ceaseless burning in his crotch could break his mood. Sure the place was almost empty, but they had finally succeeded in knocking off Mike Malloy. Ironically, the long-delayed success of this murder plan had deprived Marino of his most loyal customer. Yes, he was a customer who never paid, but he was one all the same. Everything had worked out in the end. Marino had recently confided to Red Murphy that had the gassing plan failed, he would have scrapped the whole plot. At that moment, the only people in the place were Tough Tony Bastone and Joe Maglione, who were sitting at a table heatedly arguing with each other in a mixture of English and Italian. What else was new? Marino polished off his drink and told his bartender he was heading home. Red Murphy, his blood alcohol content somewhere in the stratosphere, raised a shaky glass at his boss. Tony Marino thus left the saloon in his hands for the night. As long as everyone kept their mouths shut and their heads cool, everything would be alright.

After all these years, Joe Maglione was finally fed up with his friend’s abuse and afraid for his life. He and Tough Tony had known each other for over a decade and Maglione was sure of one thing; that Bastone would kill him when the dust settled. Tough Tony had spent the better part of the last week bitching about the lack of money from the Prudential policies. Maglione countered that Bastone didn’t deserve any more of that money than anyone else. This latest round of bickering had started when the two had gone out to beat up a numbers deadbeat in Harlem earlier in the week. Unable to find him, Maglione declined to come along on future search parties. Word spread through the grapevine that Bastone was referring to his pal as “yellow” behind his back. After running into each other tonight at Marino’s joint, they had been arguing non-stop about the money and the backbiting, getting drunker all the while.

"Tough Tony" Bastone (New York Daily News)
Maglione interrupted his dark ruminations and got up to use the restroom. Bastone refilled his whiskey glass while muttering to himself in Italian. Joe Maglione stepped into the speakeasy’s bathroom. It stank of stale piss and wasted lives. After running some cold sink water on his rough face, Joe had only one thought as he whizzed; get him before he gets me. Fucking A right. After tucking himself away and flushing the toilet, Maglione quickly pulled and inspected his .38 caliber revolver.

Red Murphy had merely stood silently behind the empty bar drinking while Tough Tony Bastone and Joe Maglione argued. Even though most of their conversation was in Italian (which he didn’t understand), Red knew that they were arguing about the money. Things were getting quite hot. A lifetime of living on the streets and excessive alcohol consumption had left Murphy an emotionally hard man, but he felt a vague sense of fear. Red was staring at Bastone’s table when Tough Tony glared at him and barked, “The fuck you lookin’ at, dummy?" Murphy said nothing in response and finished his glass of whiskey. Except for a few grunts and unintelligible sounds, that final profane question represented the last words Tough Tony Bastone would ever speak. 

Murphy heard the sound of the toilet flushing and saw Joe Maglione emerge from the can with a gun in his hand. Bastone didn’t seem him until it was too late. The first gunshot sounded thunderous in the cramped confines of the small speakeasy. Tough Tony staggered to his feet, clutching his shoulder. Maglione fired again and Bastone screamed as he fell to the floor. Frozen where he stood behind the bar, Red watched as Maglione quickly walked over. Joe ran his hands through Bastone's clothes and confiscated his famed two pistols; a .45 Colt automatic and a smaller .25 automatic. Tough Tony suddenly leaped to his feet, a wild look in his eyes. The startled Joe Maglione let out a scream of his own. It turned out both of his shots had missed. Taking advantage of his former friend’s shock, Bastone dashed out of the speakeasy’s door. Maglione quickly snapped out it and gave chase, a gun in each hand. Out on the sidewalk, Joe raised his two pistols and fired at least four quick shots. One bullet caught Bastone in the left thigh and another tore through his heart, killing him instantly. Tough Tony collapsed in a heap to the sidewalk.

Joe Maglione looked to make his escape, but a passing beat cop had heard the shots and collared him after a short foot chase. Red Murphy found himself under arrest as a material witness to the homicide of Tough Tony Bastone. Despite his chronic intoxication and mild mental retardation, Murphy suspected that the shit was going to hit the fan. As the cops led Red away in handcuffs, it may or may not have occurred to him that this was his last night as a free man.

Joe Maglione and Red Murphy were held at the Bronx County Jail (Murphy was so intoxicated it took five full days to dry him out for questioning). Tony Marino read a newspaper account of the shooting at his dive bar and felt his world begin to collapse. Now the cops were crawling over his place with a microscope. After being charged with first-degree murder, Maglione played his hole card and first revealed to police the incredible story of the barfly who just wouldn’t die.

At first, investigators refused to believe Maglione’s outrageous story. Nothing and/or no one could be that convoluted, incompetent, and just flat-out bizarre. Nevertheless, the evidence slowly started to add up from other directions. The Prudential insurance investigator confronted Frank Pasqua with his expensive funeral billing sheet and said he still couldn’t find anyone that actually knew the deceased. For a guy no one seemed to know, “Nicholas Mellory” sure had one hell of a funeral.

The cops and the D.A. sniffed around Tony Marino’s past a bit and uncovered the story of the lonely death of Betty Carlson, whose sole beneficiary just happened to be Marino. John McNally and Harry Green were picked up for carrying concealed weapons while Dan Kreisberg was arrested for his role in a recent “Pants Bandit” caper; these busts were unrelated to the Malloy case and mere blind luck on the part of the police. Frank Pasqua was arrested at his funeral home. Tony Marino, who by now had resigned himself to arrest, went quietly at his Bronx house.

Once in custody, the Murder Trust promptly turned on each other and each man attempted to shift the blame to the others involved. Mike Malloy’s body was exhumed from Ferncliff Cemetery and examined by the coroner. High levels of carbon monoxide were present in his remaining tissue samples, which indicated death by carbon monoxide poisoning, rather than lobar pneumonia. The newspapers had a field day. “Durable Mike” Malloy, as he was nicknamed by the press, was transformed into a quasi-mythic figure in Depression-era New York.

The Murder Trust on trial: Dan Kriesberg (A), Joseph "Red" Murphy (B), Tony Marino (C), Frank Pasqua (D) - (New York Daily News)
Harry Green, Joseph Maglione, Edward “Tin Ear” Smith, John McNally, and Dr. Frank Manzella all turned state’s evidence, and in exchange for reduced prison sentences, agreed to testify against the Murder Trust. The now-recovered Joseph Murray told of his run-in with the Keystone Killers from the Bronx. In their trial that autumn, the boys tried to pin the whole scheme on the deceased Tough Tony Bastone. In what had become something of a pattern over the last year, they came up snake eyes. Anthony Marino, Francis Pasqua, Daniel Kreisberg, and Joseph “Red” Murphy were all found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. As the now ashen-faced young men were led out of the courtroom, one could almost hear Durable Mike Malloy cackling with glee.

On June 7, 1934, three core members of the Murder Trust (Pasqua, Marino, and Kreisberg) were strapped into Sing Sing Prison’s electric chair. Red Murphy, beneficiary of a brief reprieve, followed them on July 5.  As a New York Daily Mirror reporter wrote, "Elliot, the official killer, twirls the wheel of death. The 'kwe-e-e-' of the dynamo. Ten-thousand volts and 10 amperes. The rip-saw current that tears one apart. Three shocks."

In a final irony, the electric chair killed all four of them on the very first try.


Sources

Read, Simon. On the House: The Bizarre Killing of Michael Malloy. New York, Berkley Books, 2005.

Bronx Home News, March 20, 1933; May 13-14, 18, 1933; October 10-16, 1933.

New York Daily Mirror, June 8, 1934.

New York Daily News, March 20, October 29, 1933.

New York Herald Tribune, May 13, 26, 1933; October 20, 1933.

New York Times, May 14, 26, 1933; October 3, 5, 11, 14, 17, 20, 1933; June 8, 1934; July 6, 1934.