'Monk' indicted for assault

Gang leader caught after shootout with Pinkertons

On this date in 1904:

Eastman

A New York grand jury on February 4, 1904, indicted gang leader Edward "Monk" Eastman for assault and attempted murder. He was charged with attacking and trying to kill agents of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, who confronted him after he robbed a drunk man of some cash two days earlier.

Eastman, his pal Christopher Wallace and other members of Eastman's gang ventured beyond the confines of their usual Lower East Side territory in the early morning of February 2. On Forty-second Street in Midtown, they spotted a drunk young man counting out cash in a doorway. Eastman and Wallace advanced. Eastman delivered a devastating punch to the man's abdomen, while Wallace grabbed the money.

Two Pinkerton agents, George F. Bryan and John Rogers, then jumped out at the robbers. A scuffle occurred, handguns were drawn and shots were fired. Additional Eastman gangsters rushed in to help Eastman and Wallace escape the Pinkertons. The group ran off on Forty-second Street toward Broadway. But they ran right into New York Police Officer Healy.

Once arrested, Wallace confessed to attempted grand larceny and is believed to have cooperated in the case against Eastman.

At trial in April, it was revealed that the Eastmans' robbery target had been a wayward son of the wealthy Wetmore family and the Pinkertons had been hired by the family to watch over him.

Eastman was convicted of felonious assault. General Sessions Court Judge John W. Goff sentenced him on April 19 to ten years in Sing Sing Prison, the maximum term allowed. The cooperative Wallace was sentenced to just two and a half years for his part in the crime.

While held at Tombs Prison in Manhattan awaiting transfer to Sing Sing, Monk Eastman was interviewed by New York reporters. He expressed just one concern: several of his pet pigeons had eggs that were ready to hatch and he hoped to learn "how they came out" before he was taken out of the city.

Sing Sing Admission Register

He entered Sing Sing on April 22. He would serve better than seven years of his sentence before being released. 

Much more on Monk Eastman and other gangsters of Manhattan's Lower East Side can be found in the 2023 issue of Informer: The History of U.S. Crime and Law Enforcement (available in magazine, book and electronic formats).

Sources:

• Edward Eastman, no. 54863, Sing Sing Prison Admission Register, received April 22, 1904.
• "Monk Eastman in pistol battle," New York Evening World, Feb. 2, 1904, p. 2
• "'Monk' Eastman now indicted," New York Evening World, Feb. 4, 1904, p. 3.
• "Monk Eastman on trial," New York Sun, April 13, 1904, p. 12.
• "Monk's pal gets light sentence," New York Evening World, April 21, 1904, p. 7.
• Statement of commitments to the Sing Sing State Prison during the month of April 1904.
• "Ten years for 'Monk,'" New York Daily Tribune, April 20, 1904, p. 6.

Disturbance at trial of Hennessy assassins

On this date in 1891, one of nine accused Mafiosi, standing trial in New Orleans for plotting and carrying out the assassination of Police Chief David Hennessy, created a sensation in the courtroom.

There had been just one day of prosecution testimony in the case, which began on Saturday, Feb. 28. Manuel Polizzi already had been identified by witnesses as one of the five gunmen who participated in the October 1890 murder of the police chief.

When brought into the courtroom with his codefendants on Monday morning, March 2, Polizzi hesitated to take his seat. He talked loudly in Italian and tried to get the attention of Judge Joshua Baker. Two deputies forced him to sit, but he once again stood and addressed Baker rapidly in his native tongue, waving his arms and punching at his own chest as he spoke. As a deputy attempted to force the defendant into his chair, Baker instructed, "Let him alone."

The judge asked defendant Charles Matranga (the reputed leader of the regional Mafia organization and an accused accessory to the Hennessy assassination) what was happening. Matranga replied only that Polizzi wanted an interpreter. "Talk to him and find out what he wants," Baker said. Matranga and Polizzi exchanged a few words, and Matranga told the judge, "He don't want to talk to me." Baker then attempted to use defendant Joseph Macheca (a politically influential, Mafia-linked businessman who also was an indicted accessory in the Hennessy killing) as an interpreter, but Polizzi was entirely unreceptive to that as well.

Before Baker could send for an independent interpreter, a defense attorney objected. "We would like an opportunity to speak to this man ourselves," attorney Lionel Adams said. "He is our client and it is our right."

Noting that Polizzi clearly had something he wished to express directly to the court, Baker brushed aside the complaint and sent for an interpreter. Baker met with Polizzi and the interpreter, as well as attorneys from both sides of the case, in his chambers.

Polizzi

Polizzi's statement to the judge was kept secret. However, when the group returned to open court, defense counsel Thomas J. Semmes announced that the defense team could no longer represent Polizzi. That appeared to confirm the widespread suspicion that Polizzi was turning state's evidence, but prosecutors apparently were unimpressed with the quality of Polizzi's statement and did not separate him from the case. Lead prosecutor Charles H. Luzenberg would not comment on the matter. (Though he did not speak of it, thanks to an undercover Pinkerton operative inserted into the Orleans Parish Prison with the defendants, Luzenberg possessed information others did not have about Polizzi's mental state and its underlying causes.)  Another defense attorney was selected to represent Polizzi, and the trial went on.

Polizzi was visibly afraid and tried to keep away from his codefendants. The court agreed to Polizzi's request to be held in separate quarters from the other accused.

Newspapermen learned that Polizzi made a confession "of a startling character" to Judge Baker, and they reported on his paranoid behavior. Defense attorneys told the press that Polizzi insisted both that he knew all about the conspiracy to murder Chief Hennessy and yet also took no part in the killing. They suggested that Polizzi was crazy. Reporters said they learned the defendant acknowledged being present when $4,000 was divided up among men selected to be the triggermen in the Hennessy assassination. He claimed, however, to have been at his home on Julia Street at the time witnesses saw him take part in the shooting of Chief Hennessy on Girod Street.

Just a few days after giving his statement to Judge Baker, Polizzi created an even greater disturbance, as he had an emotional breakdown in open court. When he was removed to the office of the sheriff, he attempted to throw himself through a closed window.

The trial continued until March 13, when a jury failed to reach agreement on the guilt of Polizzi and two other accused assassins and found the six remaining defendants not guilty. The New Orleans community became aware of evidence of jury tampering in the case, and Polizzi was one of eleven Italian inmates lynched at Orleans Parish Prison the next morning. Only much later was Polizzi's apparently irrational behavior at trial fully explained...

For more about this subject:
  Deep Water: 
  Joseph P. Macheca and the  
  Birth of the American Mafia
    by Thomas Hunt and 
    Martha Macheca Sheldon 
    (Second Edition, Createspace, 2010)

Sources:

• "Desperate Politz," New York World, March 7, 1891, p. 1.
• "Hennessy assassin confesses," New York Tribune, March 3, 1891, p. 1.
• "Hennessy murder," New Orleans Times-Democrat, March 3, 1891, p. 6.
• "Hennessy murder," New Orleans Times-Democrat, March 7, 1891, p. 3.
• "The Hennessy case," New Orleans Daily Picayune, March 3, 1891, p. 3.
• "Hennessy's murderers," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 6, 1891, p. 2.
• "The Mafia at bay," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 3, 1891, p. 2.
• "The New Orleans vendetta," New York Sun, March 3, 1891, p. 2.