When
people think of Prohibition-era gangsters, they naturally think of Chicago and
New York. The fascinating exploits of iconic mob bosses like Al Capone, Lucky
Luciano and Meyer Lansky have provided endless fodder for articles, books and
films. Even lesser-known mobsters such as Enoch Johnson, George Remus, Abe
Burnstein and William “Dinty” Colbeck have taken tentative steps into the
limelight with the beginning of the 21st century. Yet for every
Capone or Luciano that plied their trade in the Dry Era, there are dozens of
other hardcases from that period who remain unknown. These men did not get
biographies and HBO series made about their lives, mostly because they did not
deserve it and also because they slipped through the cracks of history.
During my research into the Detroit
gangsters of old, I inadvertently discovered the existence of Joe Baktashi. I
had never heard of him before, but as I gathered the fragments of his story
together, I gradually grew intrigued. Baktashi’s career spanned two very
different locales; the Eastern city of Detroit and the Western frontier of
north-central Utah. What I found interesting is that this man seemed to have
two separate identities, two criminal specialties and as it turned out, two
separate sets of enemies. Bandit. Prison Escapee. Safe Cracker. Drug
Wholesaler. Killer. This skel had seemingly done it all.
Only trouble was, there just was not a
whole lot of information about him. Even after a modern research push with all
the resources of the second decade of the 21st century at my
disposal, Joe Baktashi’s life remains only partially known, at best. In fact,
this author is not even certain of Baktashi’s birth name. Nevertheless, what
can be revealed about him reveals a tough and violent yet imperfect hoodlum.
While Baktashi’s career was not as Earth-shattering as that of a Capone or
Luciano, assembling the pieces of his life paints a fascinating picture of a
gritty underbelly of the Prohibition-era underworld that is seldom heard about.
Albania
in the late nineteenth century was an isolated, mountainous nation that was
increasingly chafing under the heavy-handed rule of the Ottoman Empire, which
they had been subjected for well over three hundred years. The country was
divided by the Ottomans into four districts known as vilayets (Kosovo, Janina, Monastir and Scutari). It was in the vilayet of Janina, in southeastern
Albania, that our story begins. Like the rest of the country, Janina was a
mixture of ethnic Albanians and Ottoman Turks. Due to its proximity to the
border with Greece, the vilayet was
also home to a substantial Greek population.[i]
The Albanian vilayets of the late 19th century. Joe Baktashi's hometown of Leskovik was three miles from the Greek border.
Amongst the Ottoman Turks who peopled
the Albanian vilayet of Janina were a
considerable number of Muslim settlers who adhered to the Bektashi Order, a
Sufi dervish that base their faith on non-Orthodox and mystical interpretations
of the Quran. The Bektashi occupied a considerable place in Ottoman culture;
they were the primary conscripts of the Ottoman Army’s feared shock troops, the
Janissary. Eventually, the Bektashi would be ostracized by other Muslims as
practicing a non-traditional form of Islam that more closely resembled Orthodox
Christianity.[ii]
According to his World War I draft card,
the man whom American law enforcement would come to know as Joseph Baktashi was
born on May 15, 1895 in the picturesque Janina mountain village of Leskovik,
located a mere three miles away from the Greek border. It is uncertain what his
birth name was or exactly who his parents were. Leskovik was a small town of a
bit less than a thousand residents at the turn of the 20th century.
Its inhabitants were about evenly divided between Bektashi Muslims and
Greek migrants. Given his name and later American events, young Joseph and his
family were almost certainly Bektashi Muslims. As Joseph was growing up in
Leskovik, the main language of his home was Albanian with Ottoman Turkish being
spoken in school and during religious ceremonies. Due to his hometown’s Greek
community and its proximity to the Hellenic nation, Joseph also gained a decent
knowledge of the Greek language in his youth; a proficiency that would serve
him well in later years.[iii]
While nothing concrete is known of
Baktashi’s childhood, it seems as if he grew up in turbulent times. By his
eleventh birthday, opposition groups within the Ottoman-controlled sections of
Albania had risen up in rebellion. They were known as the Committee of Union
and Progress, or Young Turks. They favored replacing the Ottoman Empire’s
absolute monarchy with a constitutional government. The Young Turks fostered
insurrection both in civilian and military life. They successfully lifted the
Ottoman ban on the Albanian language being taught in schools and replaced the
Arabic alphabet with Latin script.
After the abdication of Sultan Abdul
Hamid II in April 1909, the new Constantinople government sought to maintain
control of the disintegrating empire by levying new taxes and outlawing guerrilla groups. The Young Turks responded by imposing the bastinado (foot whipping) on those who carried rifles, committed
misdemeanors or demeaned the independent Albanian state. Separate violent
revolts in 1910 and 1911 saw widespread clashes and executions between the Ottoman
loyalists and Albanian nationalists.
It was in this rough, stressful period
that Joe Baktashi passed through his formative years. His earliest memories
would have been of his isolated hometown being gradually torn asunder by forces
outside of their control. Baktashi would have seen and learned violence up
close from an early age. Perhaps he witnessed Young Turks administering bastinado on a fellow Bektashi Muslim.
Perhaps he saw kriminale victimizing
his neighbors.[iv]
Whatever the cause, Joseph Baktashi
followed the example of many of his countrymen by immigrating to America around
the age of seventeen, right around the time that Albania was formally
recognized as an independent nation. While it is unknown exactly when he
arrived in the United States, Baktashi told a census taker in 1920 that he
landed in 1912.[v]
Upon his arrival in North America, the young Albanian journeyed two-thirds of
the way across the continent to Utah. What exactly drew Baktashi the Beehive
State is uncertain. It seems likely that he had either a familial or fraternal
connection with the area for him to uproot there.
Utah
in the early 1910s had been a state for just less than two decades and was
still considered the frontier by many of their fellow countrymen. Long the home
of practitioners of The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, or
Mormons, Utah is a contrasting state of craggy mountains, beautiful canyons and
arid deserts. Many of Utah’s main towns are in close proximity to the Great
Salt Lake in the north-central part of the state. Beginning in the late 19th
century, Utah’s substantial mining boom attracted immigrants from all over the
world to try their luck in excavating such diverse minerals as copper, gold,
silver, molybdenum, zinc, lead and beryllium. Many get-rich-quick boomtowns
sprung up virtually overnight and housed ambitious people who were looking to
strike it rich in any way that they could.[vi]
It was into this new frontier that
teenaged Joe Baktashi moved around 1912-13. He stood about medium height with a
slim build and an olive complexion. Baktashi had brown eyes, black hair, and
was noted as having a serious yet cool demeanor. Far from striking it rich in
his new country, the 18-year old Baktashi was forced to walk great distances
from town to town looking for work. Joe generally followed railroad tracks and
hitched rides aboard freight trains. Walking with Baktashi in these first
months was nineteen-year old Abdul Alli.[vii]
Like Joe Baktashi, Alli was from
southeastern Albania and a Bektashi Muslim. Both men formed a close friendship,
their age and their fraternal connection serving as a solid foundation as they
attempted to make their way in the New World. Their nomadic existence was a
harsh one of few creature comforts that was occasionally punctuated by grueling
labor that brought them a plate of beans and a silver dollar at the end of the
day.
By the spring of 1914, the hungry Albanians
had set their sights on the town of Spanish Fork, nine miles south of Provo.
Located in the Goshen Valley with the Wasatch Mountains to the east, Spanish
Fork was a bustling village that was near two key railroad lines that passed southeast
through nearby Spanish Fork Canyon, up the steep Soldier Summit and passing by
a small burg named Tucker before they hit the coal mines at Winter’s Quarters.
In the early 1910s, the powers-that-be had
decided they wanted to reduce the steep 4% grade of Soldier Summit to a more
manageable 2%. This task would entail rerouting rail lines and moving untold
amounts of earth to improve the ease of train navigation. The work for this
project was grueling and frequently dangerous for the men who blasted, dug and
laid out new railroad tracks after the earth had been sufficiently altered.
Baktashi and Alli appear to have been anxious to join this project. [viii]
The area around and south of Salt Lake City as it appeared in the 1910s.
The afternoon of April 8, 1914 was cold
and blustery in Spanish Fork Canyon. Around noon, Joe Baktashi and Abdul Alli
were observed following the railroad tracks out of Gilluly in the direction of
Tucker. The Reynolds-Ely Construction Company was doing a significant amount of
work in the area, and they may have been looking to shape up for work.
Somewhere outside of Tucker, the two Albanians had an encounter that would
change their lives forever.
Joe Lavella was an Italian immigrant who
worked as a watchman with the Reynolds-Ely company. A former copper miner,
Lavella made a point of sending the majority of his wages to his wife and two
children in his native Calabria.[ix]
By mid-afternoon, he was taking a break and warming himself at a fire alone while
watching a steam shovel work. As he did, Baktashi and Alli approached and
joined him at the fire. Despite their language barrier, the trio began talking
with each other. Some later accounts suggested that Baktashi and Lavella had
gotten into an ethnic dispute of some kind; with Baktashi taking offense to
Lavella’s disparaging remarks about Turks.[x]
A
Mexican laborer named Miguel Aguirre later testified he saw Lavella fighting
with Baktashi and Alli from a great distance. While Aguirre was too far away to
hear anything, at some point during the struggle a fatal bullet was fired into
Lavella’s head. Both Albanians quickly fled the area, only to be arrested later
in the small town of Thistle.[xi]
A headline from the Provo Daily Herald announcing the arrest of Joe Baktashi and Abdul Alli.
Once in custody, both men professed not
to speak English and requested that an Albanian interpreter be sent down from
Salt Lake City. Both suspects were recorded as being given the “third degree”
in an effort to “sweat” a confession out of them. Authorities determined that
robbery had been the motive for the crime and charged Joe Baktashi and Abdul
Alli with first-degree murder. Both men pleaded not guilty and were scheduled
to be tried separately. Baktashi, through his court-appointed attorney J.W.N.
Whitecotton, claimed that Alli had done the actual killing during the fight.[xii]
While interpreter George Kypros
translated his testimony, Baktashi claimed that Alli had asked Lavella for
money to return to Salt Lake City with. When Lavella protested that he was
broke, Alli allegedly knocked him down and killed him before stealing $2.45
from his person. The jury, however, was not convinced and found Baktashi guilty
as charged. At Abdul Alli’s trial a week later, Baktashi insisted on taking the
stand for the prosecution without the aid of an interpreter. Speaking in broken
English, Joe reiterated his claim about Alli’s culpability. This jury believed
his tale and found Alli guilty of murder. Both young men were then sent off to
serve life sentences in a prison in a country they barely knew.[xiii]
The old Utah State Penitentiary, located in the Sugar House section of Salt Lake City.
The
Utah State Prison was a 180 acre brick complex located in the Sugar House
neighborhood of Salt Lake City. Surrounded by 18-foot high walls, the current
prison had been built in the 1890s to replace its crumbling predecessor. Joe
Baktashi arrived in the spring of 1914 as an embittered 19-year old Albanian
immigrant. Only able to speak a few words of English, Baktashi was delivered
into one of the harshest prison systems in America. While the overall capacity
of the Utah State Prison was small compared to those of other states, the
prison had still not quite made the transition to the 20th century
(electrical lighting would not be installed until 1920).
No details of Baktashi’s prison life
survive, but if reports of other Western prisons of the era are any indication,
Joe would have had to deal with back-breaking labor and callous discipline from
the guards to accompany the threat of various forms of abuse from his fellow
convicts. The scraps of evidence from this period show that Joe Baktashi and
Abdul Alli were at each other throats from the moment they set foot inside the
prison’s walls. Alli understandably had a beef against Baktashi for testifying
against him in his trial. The two reportedly clashed multiple times.
Prisoners at the “Sugar House,” as
it was colloquially referred to, made brushes, saddle niches and shoes. They
also worked heavily in road construction.[xiv]
The prison was also where inmates who had been sentenced to death were
executed; during Joe Baktashi’s first year of imprisonment, Swedish-born labor
activist and convicted murderer Joe Hill was put to death via firing squad. While
inside, the young Albanian killer rubbed elbows with criminals of all stripes
and learned the ins-and-outs of the underworld trade. While he may have been a
foolish youth with self-destructive tendencies at the time of Joe Lavella’s
murder, Baktashi’s prison experience transformed him into a career criminal.
Abdul Alli had undergone a similar metamorphosis. The afternoon of August 14, 1918 found Alli on a work detail
outside the prison walls. While cutting the prison’s lawn grass, he and an
inmate named William McVey took the opportunity to make a run for it and made a
successful break from their captors.[xv]
Both men were recaptured soon after. In a surprise move later that same year,
Joe Baktashi confessed to prison authorities that it was he, and not Alli, who
had fired the shot that killed Joe Lavella. The warden and state corrections officials
believed the confession. As a result, Alli was subsequently pardoned and
released from prison on March 22, 1919.[xvi]
Outside of the walls of the Sugar House,
great change with sweeping not only Utah but the whole country in the form of
the World War and the enactment of Prohibition. What little news Joe Baktashi
got of the outside world most probably came from incoming prisoners. In November
1921, the now 26-year old Baktashi went before the parole board and claimed to
be a changed man. Baktashi pointed to his love of birds and flowers as well as
a letter of support from Wilford Giles, Chief of Police of the city of Provo.
Despite his efforts, Baktashi’s petition for release was denied.[xvii]
Disheartened and embittered, Joe
Baktashi focused his rage on his old frenenemy Abdul Alli, who had recently
been convicted of armed robbery and sent right back to the Sugar House.[xviii]
Their resultant fight netted them a predictable beating from the guards and
time in “The Hole.” Unable to gain parole, Baktashi’s fertile mind began
looking for other ways to effect his release.
On August 28, 1922, Joe Baktashi and a
couple dozen other inmates were led outside the prison walls in order to be
loaded onto a truck and driven to Parley’s Canyon, where they would work undermining
a hillside in order to clear a path for a highway. Baktashi and several others
spent the morning excavating a blast tunnel, which would eventually be stuffed
with dynamite into order to blow out a section of the hill. At one point in the
afternoon, Baktashi was sent by his guard to fetch something (accounts are
uncertain as to what). After a full hour passed without his return, it became
obvious that Joe Baktashi had put himself “into the wind.”[xix]
Whether
Joe Baktashi planned his escape in advance or acted on impulse is unknown. With
no money of his own and no transportation, it would seem that Joe had at least
a little help on his way out of Parley’s Canyon. With Utah authorities on the
lookout for him, Baktashi decided to leave for another part of the country where
he was relatively unknown. The fugitive Albanian set his sights on the city of
Detroit, nearly seventeen hundred miles to the east.
When
the fugitive Utah murderer first arrived in the Motor City in the autumn of
1922, he encountered a growing metropolis of around one million residents from
various walks of life and ethnic groups. The city’s now-bustling economy
revolved around numerous automobile plants and other assorted factories. More
appealing to Joe Baktashi was the fact that Detroit was the country’s major
entry point for illegal alcohol. Like many criminals across America, the newly
freed Baktashi was most likely drawn like a moth to the flame of Detroit’s
immense booze business.
The only trouble was that men much more
powerful than Baktashi ran the bootlegging rackets. The city’s growing Mafia
family controlled a large piece of the action while extracting tributes from
independents who wished to smuggle booze across the Detroit River to their
landing spots. While the Mafia had the East Side and Hamtramck, a young yet
volatile group of Jewish hoods called the Oakland Sugar House Gang were just
starting to make noise in the North End (they wouldn’t become known as the
Purple Gang for a few more years).[xx]
On the run and with little money
available to him, Joe Baktashi gravitated to downtown Detroit’s Greektown neighborhood.
Branching out for a few blocks in each direction from the intersection of
Beaubien and Monroe streets, Greektown was the perfect place for the Albanian
fugitive to lay low while he got his bearings in his new city. Introducing
himself around town as Pete Milo, Baktashi began to ingrain himself with
members of the local underworld.
While it was remarkably easy to get a
drink in Greektown, the local hoods primarily made their money off of illegal
gambling. While the local coffee houses acted as traditional gathering places
for immigrant Greek men, their back and basement rooms often housed card and
dice games for trustworthy individuals. Baktashi made the rounds, with his
ethnicity and Greek language ability opening doors that may well have otherwise
remained closed. Sipping strong coffee in the smoke-filled cafes and conversing
with local hoodlums, Baktashi seems to have made a favorable impression; he
apparently took great pains to not disclose that he was a prison escapee. Joe
was soon introduced to the hidden gambling casinos.
While Baktashi seems to have supported
himself through the occasional armed robbery or safe-cracking (he apparently
learned the rudiments of the latter racket while incarcerated in Utah), he
sought to enter the upper tier of organized crime. As Pete Milo, mysterious
Greek-fluent Albanian hard case, he was befriended by Greektown gambling boss
James Thompson sometime in early 1923.
About the same age as his new pal
“Milo,” Thompson (real name Dimitrios Poulos) had emigrated from Greece as an
adolescent. Around 1921, he had migrated to Detroit’s Greektown and set up shop
in the neighborhood’s coffee houses. Known in the city’s underworld as “Jimmy
the Greek,” Thompson was known as an expert card player and dice thrower who
rubbed elbows with the cream of the Motor City underworld.[xxi]
While it is impossible to know what was
going through Joe Baktashi’s head during these early Detroit months, it’s quite
possible he saw in Jimmy Thompson what he could have possibily become if fate
had dealt him a bit of a different hand. Baktashi began working as a
capper/doorman for Thompson’s secret gambling den, which was then located in
the 400 block of Monroe Avenue in the heart of Greektown. This was an entry
level position for many aspiring Detroit gangsters of the era. Baktashi,
hardened both mentally and physically by his years of incarceration, also acted
as an armed guard when Jimmy the Greek went to other Detroit joints to gamble.
While Thompson moved in a dangerous world, he himself was not a
violent man. Thus, it was Baktashi’s job to ensure that no one tried to rob
“The Greek” after he exited a game with thousands of dollars on his person.
Joe Baktashi as he appeared at the height of his Detroit underworld career.
Over the course of 1923 and into 1924,
Joe Baktashi became a fixture in the Greektown gambling underworld. Making more
money than he ever had before, Baktashi's days of grueling railroad work and hard
prison time seemed to be receding into the past. Baktashi began dressing better
and frequenting high-class restaurants and nightclubs. Moving through Jazz Age
Detroit, the Albanian gangster must have felt like he had finally arrived.
One of Joe’s new pals was a tall,
muscular Albanian Greek named Zero Puchi. At least ten years older than
Baktashi, Puchi had a build and demeanor of a much younger man. Having migrated
north to Detroit from Ohio, Puchi was known as the powerful “attitude adjuster”
of Thompson’s gambling joint.[xxii]
Between Puchi’s fists and Baktashi’s quick trigger finger, their Monroe Avenue
casino seemed like a solid operation. By now, Baktashi had begun living in a
decent apartment at 3632 Cass Avenue in midtown Detroit.
A fateful trip to Johnny Reid’s blind
pig at Third and Peterboro streets in February 1924 put Joe Baktashi in the
company of many former members of the St. Louis underworld. Reid had once been
a member of the Gateway City’s premier gang, Egan’s Rats. Among those who
frequented his joint in the winter of 1924 were notorious gangsters such as Robert
Carey, Arthur Wilson, Isadore Londe and Fred “Killer” Burke. Joe Baktashi may
well have made the St. Louisans’ acquaintance, but he specifically hit it off
with a St. Louis hood named Harry Halloway. The two men, probably on Baktashi’s
recommendation, decided to rob a wealthy Chaldean saloonkeeper named James
George. While no details of the crime survive, they had gotten away clean for
the moment.[xxiii]
As the year 1924 progressed, Joe
Baktashi became intimate with another aspect of the Greek underworld that was
seldom spoken of; the dope racket. Since the passage of the Harrison Narcotics
Act in 1914, a large market for illegal drugs existed in America’s cities. In
the city of Detroit, the primary commodities were opiates such as heroin, opium
or pure morphine. There was also a market for cocaine, but like it is in modern
times, the white powder tended to be a drug for the upper crust. The drugs of
choice in Greektown seem to have been hashish and morphine. Whether or not
Baktashi experimented with any of these substances is unknown, but he seems to
have realized that a good deal of money could be made by selling them.
Around this same time Joe Baktashi got a
brief taste of the gang violence that periodically swept through the Detroit
underworld. Around 3 o’clock on the morning of March 12, 1924, the heart of
Greektown was rocked by a tremendous explosion that startled residents from
their beds and caused concerned citizens to spill out into the street. A large,
battery-detonated dynamite bomb had exploded in the doorway of Nick Smerles’
coffee house at 579 Monroe Avenue, destroying much of the front part of the
building along with two adjoining structures. A total of thirty people were
wounded in the blast and required medical attention. Amazingly, no one was
killed. Plaster, bricks and broken glass littered the street in front of the
wrecked coffee shop. Police thought it may have been related to the recent
beating of a Mafia associate named Frank Bommarito in the coffee house. Both
Bommarito and his friend Pietro “Pete” Corrado were arrested and charged, but
both managed to beat the rap.[xxiv]
On the night of April 2, thirty-year old
John Deplaris emerged from the coffee house at 547 Monroe Avenue with his buddy
Nick Mavros. As they began to cross the street, they were confronted by an
angry looking man. Deplaris uttered an exclamation in Greek as he jerked a
pistol from his pocket and opened fire. The hurried gambler missed while his
adversary pulled his own gun and struck Deplaris twice in the abdomen. Another
shot from the adversary hit a bystander named Chris Kolinsgos in the foot. As
Deplaris fell screaming to the street, the winner of the duel vanished into the
night. While bystander Kolinsgos recovered from his injury, Deplaris died of
his wounds two days later at Grace Hospital.[xxv]
The Detroit police had two theories as
to who the killer was. The first possibility was Fotios “Frank” Kokalaris, who
was from the same Greek village as the victim and would go onto to an
exceptionally violent career in the Greektown underworld.[xxvi]
The other suspect was none other than Joseph Baktashi. No one who knew the
temperamental Albanian would doubt his guilt in such a situation. Nevertheless, neither this shooting or the bombing that preceded it was ever solved.
Joe
Baktashi’s newfound criminal career in Detroit showed just how much he had
progressed since his original 1914 incarceration. Now showing a bit more polish
in his dress and mannerisms, Baktashi made decent money working for Jimmy the
Greek in the Greektown gambling business. Despite his status as a budding
racketeer, Baktashi could not seem to resist dabbling in small-time crimes such
as robberies and safe-cracking. The newfound money and status he had appears to
have gone to his head. Perhaps emboldened by his success, Baktashi began to get
careless. By the end of 1924, at least a half-dozen people knew of his status
as a fugitive Utah murderer. Baktashi had reportedly boasted to fellow henchman
Zero Puchi that he had escaped from the “Utah State Pen.” All in all, it was an
incredibly foolish thing to do.
Joe Baktashi’s hubris came home to roost
on New Year’s Day, 1925 when he was arrested by Detroit police along with his
St. Louis pal Harry Halloway. Booked under his alias of Peter Milo, Baktashi
clammed up under questioning. Detective Lieutenant Andrew O’Day grew suspicious
when he received a tip that his prisoner “Milo” had busted out of a Utah prison.
A national fingerprint check soon confirmed Pete Milo’s true identity. An
extradition order was quickly filed, and detectives soon arrived from Salt Lake
City to take Baktashi into custody. One can only wonder what was going through
the Albanian gangster’s mind on his long train ride back to Utah. Baktashi held
Zero Puchi responsible for his fugitive status being learned and vowed to kill
him, but as the documentation from his arrest shows, he had no one but himself
to blame.[xxvii]
Joe Baktashi had been flying higher than
he ever had in his life, only to come crashing back to Earth because of his own
big mouth.
The
Sugar House Prison in Salt Lake City had changed little since Baktashi escaped
over two years before. Closely scrutinized by the guards as a security risk,
the re-imprisoned Baktashi re-assimilated into the daily grind of jailhouse
life. With years of imprisonment, a successful escape and big city racket time
under his belt, the Albanian gangster now occupied a pretty high place in the inmate
hierarchy. Joe renewed his rivalry with Abdul Alli, who was still serving time
for his botched 1921 robbery. Baktashi watched with envy and hatred as his
former pal was granted parole in October 1925.[xxviii]
Baktashi focused his rage into chiseling
his already wiry physique into a rock-hard machine with endless hours of
calisthenics. Having learned long ago how to psychologically manipulate people,
Baktashi went out of his way to keep a clean prison record and give the impression
that he was a changed man. A year after his return to the Sugar House, the
Albanian crook applied for the vacation of his original murder sentence. In a
surprise move, Baktashi’s motion was granted. On October 16, 1926, thirty-one
year old Joseph Baktashi walked out of the Utah State Prison a free man.[xxix]
The
newly freed gangster immediately caught an east-bound train for Detroit.
Baktashi was welcomed back into the Greektown underworld and resumed working
for Jimmy “The Greek” Thompson at his Monroe Avenue casino. Joe seemingly
displayed no enmity towards Zero Puchi, whom he held responsible for his return
to prison. By late 1926, Thompson was the gambling boss of Greektown and had
begun dabbling in the narcotics trade. While Baktashi was content to take
orders from Thompson, he yearned to fashion his own criminal identity. The
Albanian gangster saw his ticket to independence in the dope racket.
Through means that remain unknown,
Baktashi (using his alias of Pete Milo) connected with a drug supplier that
agreed to sell him large quantities of hashish and morphine. Joe may have made
this connection through the Greek-Turkish underworld in order circumvent the
local Mafia and their heavy-handed pizzu
taxes. A lesser possibility is that Baktashi made his drug connection through
the North End-based Oakland Sugar House Gang. The Albanian gangster took on an Italian-born drug
peddler named James Carloze as his partner. Carloze (real name Albert Valento)
had been operating on the fringes of Detroit’s Mafia family for a few years.[xxx]
On the surface, this deal seems both bold and foolhardy. Such a large business
would almost certainly attract the attention of both the Mafia and the Sugar
House Boys.[xxxi]
Nevertheless, in January 1927, Joe
Baktashi took his leave of Jimmy “The Greek” Thompson’s gambling joint and went
into the dope business for himself. His new headquarters was the Afghanistan
Coffee House, located on the eastern edge of Greektown at 742 St. Antoine
Street. To the rear of the coffee house were a small tobacco shop and an
apartment on the second floor of the building. Night after night, Baktashi and
Carloze held court in the coffee house and did business with the low-level
dealers who pushed their narcotics into the streets. Judging from a later
investigation, Carloze seems to have been something of a front man while “Pete
Milo” remained in the background pulling the strings.
For a few months, Baktashi’s new
dope business went swimmingly. Money started flowing in for the Albanian
gangster. In addition to establishing himself as a drug wholesaler, Baktashi
appears to have fallen in love with a neighborhood waitress. This courtship, with
a woman whose name is not known to history, may well have been the first
serious relationship that Baktashi had ever been in. In hindsight, it seems
that the first half of 1927 may well have been the happiest time of Joe
Baktashi’s life; he headed a profitable drug wholesale operation in a major
American city, made copious amounts of money and was in love.
It seemed almost too good to be
true, and it was indeed. It wasn’t long before the Milo/Carloze dope operation
attracted the attention of the local Mafia, headed by Salvatore “Sam”
Catalanotti. Evidence suggests that Baktashi rebuffed the Mafia’s efforts to
make him pay protection money for the privilege moving his drugs. By June 1927,
it seemed that a violent confrontation of some kind was imminent. Joe
Baktashi’s previously sweet world had suddenly turned rotten.
It was probably in this grim mindset
that Baktashi left his coffee house headquarters and made the rounds in
Greektown on the warm evening of June 15. The Albanian gangster visited several
coffee houses and gambling dens, all while getting progressively drunker. While
Baktashi was not known as a heavy drinker, the critical situation with his dope
business and his increasingly rocky relationship with the waitress had
apparently prompted his current binge.
Sometime after midnight, he wandered
over to Jimmy the Greek’s place in the 400 block of Monroe Avenue. The menacing
Zero Puchi was at his usual post at the front door, shooting the breeze with a
local Greek gambler. Under normal circumstances, Joe Baktashi was as cool as a
cucumber. Tonight his personal and professional crises, combined with his
alcohol intake, caused his rage to erupt to the surface. Baktashi angrily
accused Puchi of ratting him out to the cops back in late 1924. Some accounts
also intimated that Puchi had informed Baktashi’s sweetheart of his ex-convict
past. Puchi attempted to pacify the Albanian gangster with peaceful words, but
Baktashi persisted. Inside the joint, Jimmy the Greek had been alerted to the
situation brewing outside.
After seeing he couldn’t handle things
peacefully, Puchi apparently prepared to settle things with his ham-like fists.
In response, the much smaller Baktashi suddenly whipped out a pistol and fired
two shots into Puchi’s abdomen. The bouncer crumpled in pain while a third shot
missed him completely. Men inside the casino began shouting and a handful of
passerby yelled as Baktashi ran east and rounded the corner north onto Beaubien
Street. A crowd of Jimmy the Greek’s friends angrily chased after him.
After sprinting north for a block,
Baktashi hopped on the running board of a yellow Checker Cab parked directly
across the street from the Detroit Police Headquarters at 1300 Beaubien. With
adrenaline pumping almost visibly through his system, Baktashi thrust the
still-warm barrel of his gun against the left temple of cab driver Udo Andres
and told him to step on it. The cabbie punched the gas pedal and sped his
captor away into the night. Baktashi’s commandeered taxi was last seen speeding
north on Brush Street with a dark sedan in hot pursuit. Baktashi managed to get
away clean from both the police and Jimmy the Greek’s men that night.
Zero Puchi was rushed to Receiving
Hospital, where he soon died from his gunshot wounds. Joe Baktashi was arrested
a couple of days later and charged with murder. The Albanian killer claimed
that he had acted in self-defense when Puchi had tried to attack him. Baktashi
was housed in the Wayne County Jail until his case was adjudicated. After
considerable deliberation, Baktashi was ruled to have shot and killed Puchi in
self-defense.[xxxii]
A Detroit News article detailing the shooting of Zero Puchi.
While the Albanian gangster may have
gotten off the hook with the law, he was now persona-non-grata in the Greektown
underworld after having killed popular bouncer Puchi. Baktashi returned to his
St. Antoine Street headquarters to find out that his dope business partner
James Carloze had apparently cut a deal with the local Mafia in his absence.
Baktashi seems to have had an aversion to dealing with Italian gangsters that
probably dated to his original long-ago fight with Joe Lavella back in Utah.
Carloze’s contact appears to have
been twenty-four year old Pete Corrado, an up-and-coming mafiùsu who was noted as the Detroit family’s unofficial liaison to
the Greektown underworld. Carloze may have begun buying narcotics directly from
the Mafia and/or paying a protection fee to move his product. Baktashi seems to
have once again earned the enmity of the local Mafia; he may have refused to
pay them tribute or otherwise insulted them. As the autumn of 1927 began,
Detroit seemed to be growing increasingly unwelcoming to Joe Baktashi.
Unwilling to directly lock heads with the Mafia and with Greektown closed to
him, the Albanian gangster once again put himself into the wind.
This time is seems that Baktashi
made the right decision to split. A month after his departure, on the night of
November 11, agents Joseph Bell and Arnold C. Lachenauer of the Federal Bureau
of Narcotics infiltrated the Afghanistan Coffee House at 742 St. Antoine Street.
The two agents posed as drug buyers and ended up purchasing 440 grains of
morphine for forty dollars. Once the transaction was completed, the raid was
announced. As Bell and Lachenauer were walking three suspects to their car, a
hidden assailant opened fire on them from a darkened doorway. Agent Bell was
seriously wounded while Agent Lachenauer escaped injury.
James Carloze and one of his helpers,
Joseph Elahia, were arrested and charged with the shooting. Police searching
the coffee house found a stash of morphine in the basement as well as a cache
of firearms. Both Carloze and Elahia managed to beat the assault rap but could
not avoid being sentenced to federal prison for narcotics violations. While
federal narcotics agents were confident that they had busted up the St. Antoine
Street dope operation, they were frustrated that the mysterious “Pete Milo” had
apparently slipped through their fingers.[xxxiii]
By
his account, Joseph Baktashi stepped off the train in Salt Lake City on October
12, 1927. In a sense, it was a bitter homecoming. Just five months earlier, he
had seemingly been on top of the world. His successful Detroit underworld career
had been laid to waste by Mafia pressure and the killing of Zero Puchi. At
thirty-two years old, Baktashi was a killer and ex-convict with an increasingly
bleak future. Quickly burning through his traveling stake, he was apparently
forced to borrow money from friends just to make ends meet. By late November,
Baktashi had connected with members of the Salt Lake City underworld, most
probably through a mutual network of fellow Utah State Prison alumni.[xxxiv]
Baktashi’s new partner was
forty-four year old Hamilton “Harry” Daywalt, a grizzled yegg who had served prison
time in Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary.[xxxv]
Baktashi and Daywalt almost certainly knew each other from the Sugar House, as
they were both locked up there at the same time in 1922. Daywalt and two
unknown accomplices proposed a safecracking job. The S.H. Kress & Co.
department store reportedly had an $8,000 monthly payroll at a specific time at
the beginning of every month. Joe Baktashi told them that he was in. The boys
carefully staked out the store to see when the payroll money would be
delivered. Once the money was in place, they would strike that very night. On
the afternoon of December 3, their surveillance paid off when they saw the bank
messenger visit the Kress store. The job was a go.
As it was a Saturday evening, all
the men had to do was waiting for closing time, infiltrate the store and crack
the “crib.” Around 7 o’clock that evening, however, an anonymous phone call to
the Salt Lake City Police Department alerted them that thieves were planning on
hitting the Kress department store that very evening. A squad of detectives and
patrolmen took up surveillance positions inside the store at 257 Main Street
and waited for their quarry to arrive.
Completely unaware that they were
heading into a trap, Joe Baktashi, Harry Daywalt and their two accomplices set
out to pull the job around ten-thirty that night. From his position in the
shadows of the Kress store, Detective Martin McGinness watched as two figures
darkened the skylight of the main room and carefully entered the building.
After dropping to the floor, the two intruders hurried to the rear door of the
store. They then let in a third man who was carrying a heavy iron jimmy bar and
other burglary tools. Once the trio began to make their way to the office that
held the safe, Detective McGinness and his men sprang from their hiding places
with aimed pistols, “Throw up your hands!”
Baktashi, Daywalt and their
accomplice momentarily froze like deer in headlights. One of them loudly cursed
before the three bolted for the back door while pulling pistols from their
pockets. A frantic, close-quarters gun battle erupted between the trapped
thieves and the police. Baktashi later said a bullet passed so close to his eye
that he felt its passage; yet another slug passed harmlessly through his pants
leg. Daywalt had just made it to the back door when a .45 ACP slug slammed into
his back, eventually lodging in his right lung. Although wounded, he managed to
make it outside and stagger away from the scene. Three of the officers tackled
Baktashi and subdued him with fists and gun butts. The unnamed accomplice
dashed up a stairwell and crashed clear out a second-story window to the alley
below. This individual managed to make it to his feet and disappear into the
night; his identity remains unknown.
While Baktashi was cuffed and led
away, police spread out through the neighborhood looking for the other
suspects. Harry Daywalt was found lying on the sidewalk outside the nearby American
Theatre. A witness said he had been led there by a mysterious man in a leather
jacket. Another suspect named John Pirtle was arrested, but he was soon
released.
After keeping his mouth shut for about
twenty-four hours, Joe Baktashi admitted his true identity and confessed to the
attempted burglary. The Albanian gangster explained his past criminal history
(while carefully omitting his Detroit adventures) and the events leading up to
the burglary. Baktashi also made a point of saying that he had lied to Utah
prison officials back in 1918 on Abdul Alli’s behalf. Joe now said that Alli
had been Joe Lavella’s actual killer, all along. While refusing to name his
accomplices in the Kress store job, Joe had harsh words for the anonymous
tipster, “I know the fellow who got away is the bird who squealed to the police
before we started to work on the crib,” he was quoted as saying. Baktashi’s
eyes blazed as he said, “If he is caught he will be sent to the State Prison
and I will be there and I will kill him.”
By December 6, Harry Daywalt had
recovered enough to be moved to his arraignment. As they sat together, Baktashi
looked Daywalt in the eye and said point blank, “I wish when they had fired at
me that they had of killed me.” It seems from the beginning that Joe Baktashi
had no illusions about how things would turn out. In his final comments about
the case, the Albanian gangster pled guilty to burglary and stated his desire
to begin serving his sentence at once. The state of Utah obliged him by pronouncing
a sentence of 5 to 20 years imprisonment. Salt Lake City officials commented favorably
that Baktashi had saved the taxpayers the expense of having a trial. For the
third time in his life, Joe Baktashi was on his way to the Sugar House.[xxxvi]
After
going through the standard in-processing, Baktashi was reintroduced to prison
life. The Sugar House had not changed at all since he had walked out its gates
just fourteen months earlier. Back then, he potentially had a clean slate in
front of him. Nowadays, Joe thought of little else but getting even with those
he believed had wronged him. Joe Baktashi was labeled as a discipline problem
right off the bat. To make matters worse, Bureau of Immigration officials let Baktashi know that they planned on commencing deportation proceedings against him upon completion of his prison sentence.
Despite the odds stacked against him,
Baktashi found an unlikely ally in Chief Deputy Warden Wilford Giles. The former
chief of police of Provo, Giles remembered when police had beaten a murder confession
out of then-young and scared Joe Baktashi back in 1914. The Deputy Warden
figured that Baktashi had turned down the wrong path in life due to being given
a raw deal in the Joe Lavella case. Far from the frightened kid he was when
Giles first met him, the sociopathic Baktashi promptly began to manipulate
Giles by speaking of the rotten luck he had encountered while working as a
“mechanic” in Detroit. Joe often talked with the Deputy Warden about his love
of flowers and birds. Largely through Giles’ efforts, Baktashi was designated
as a trusty in the spring of 1928 and charged with maintaining the prison’s
garden just outside the walls.
During the spring and summer of 1928,
the Utah State Prison was rocked by a number of disturbances that included
numerous fights; several escape attempts, and one near riot. One of the
escapees, Bert Sorenson, managed to make it all the way to Indiana before being
shot and killed by police. Warden R.E. Davis and Deputy Warden Wilford Giles
attempted to isolate troublemakers by putting them in positions where they
could not stir up trouble amongst the other inmates. Joe Baktashi, in his
trusty position as a gardener, spent most of his days outside of the wall away
from the pressure cooker atmosphere of the cell house.
After supper was served on August 15,
Joe was allowed outside the walls to water the prison’s flower garden. The
activity seems to have had little to no supervision. By 8 o’clock, the guards
realized that the Albanian convict had not yet returned. When he was still
missing at the final head count before lights out, the prison administration
realized that Baktashi had done it again.[xxxvii]
An Ogden Standard Examiner headline announcing Joe Baktashi's second prison escape.
Joe
Baktashi’s second successful escape from the Utah State Prison made headlines
all over the state. Authorities in both Utah and neighboring Nevada were put on
alert. Deputy Warden Wilford Giles took full responsibility for the escape, as
he had put Baktashi in the trusty position that allowed him outside of the
prison’s walls. Warden R.E. Davis spoke in his colleague’s defense, “It’s just
a case of misplaced confidence…I realize we are open to censure by the press
and the public for letting a man like him outside the walls. But we figured it
was the easiest way to handle him. He was a disagreeable prisoner inside.”[xxxviii]
As with his first break in 1922, its
unknown if Baktashi planned this escape in advance or acted on impulse. Unlike
his previous escape, there were few places where the Albanian gangster could
go. With police all over Utah on the lookout for him, staying put was not
advisable. In retrospect, Baktashi’s best bet would have been to leave the
country, perhaps heading north for someplace like Calgary or Vancouver. To this
day, no one knows his exact motivation. Baktashi had always been a
temperamental criminal, and perhaps he still desired to exact revenge on the
man who ratted him out.
There is no exact information, then
or now, about Joe Baktashi’s whereabouts in the ten days or so after he escaped
from his gardening detail. On August 27, twelve days after his break, Baktashi
was seen in Detroit, renting a room at 3163 Meldrum Street. One can only guess
why he decided to return to the Motor City, which had become even more
inhospitable to him than Salt Lake City. The Greek underworld still wanted
revenge against him for Zero Puchi, while the Sicilian mob was still angry
about their dope racket beef. Some investigators would postulate that the
target of his vengeance was in town. Unconfirmed reports even stated that his
old nemesis, Abdul Alli, was now living in Detroit as a racketeer. Perhaps Joe
was indeed in town to get revenge, or perhaps he was looking to pick up the
pieces of his drug business. Maybe, when all was said and done, Baktashi simply
did not know where else to go after his prison break.
Word quickly began to filter through
the Detroit underworld that Pete Milo was back in town. On the evening of
August 30, Baktashi was observed making the underworld rounds in Greektown.
Moving through the smoke-filled coffee houses and gambling dens filled with
hard men speaking in rapid-fire Greek, Baktashi may have felt soothed by the
familiar environment. While he does not appear to have been making waves, he
almost certainly would have noticed the chilly reception he was getting. At
some point in the night, Baktashi encountered a familiar face that was actually
somewhat glad to see him. Who this individual was is unknown, but this man was
in Joe’s company by no later than midnight.
By two-forty that morning, Joe
Baktashi and his buddy were walking east on East Lafayette Avenue, leaving
Greektown and heading into Little Sicily. The street was largely deserted at
this time of the night. Baktashi’s business in the Sicilian district is
unknown. Perhaps he was going to meet someone. Joe and his companion were about
a quarter-block past Hastings Street when a dark sedan pulled to the curb and
noiselessly slowed behind them. A man hopped out of the passenger door and was
on the sidewalk before the vehicle had come to a complete stop. Baktashi did
not even notice the car behind him, or the man with the .45 automatic in his
fist. Eight bullets ripped into Baktashi’s head and body, the muzzle blasts
from the .45 staining the back of Joe’s neck with powder burns. The Albanian
gangster was killed instantly.
John Lichenberg turned his
automobile into Lafayette Avenue from Hastings Street just as the attack
concluded. The motorist was able to see the killer return to his car, the dead
form of Baktashi lying on the sidewalk and his companion running apparently
unharmed into the darkness. Lichenberg slowly pulled forward as the killers’
car accelerated east on Lafayette. Lichenberg noted that the rear of the auto
was so slathered with mud that he could not make out the license plate.
A Detroit Free Press headline detailing Joe Baktashi's murder.
Joe Baktashi’s murder made the
national news wire; the only time in his career that he would rate such
coverage. Detroit police investigating the homicide were confounded by the fact
that the victim apparently lived two lives; known in the Utah underworld as Joe
Baktashi while he sold dope in Detroit’s Greektown as Pete Milo. Since the
victim’s double life and produced a double amount of enemies, it was difficult
to know where to go for suspects. The Greek underworld may have finally exacted
revenge for Zero Puchi, while the fact that Baktashi had been killed in Little
Sicily indicated to some that the Mafia had eliminated Pete Milo as a potential
rival in the dope business. Members of the Purple Gang were also considered as possible
suspects, as they were major players in Detroit’s narcotics racket. Maybe the
quasi-mythical Abdul Alli had finally ended their longtime feud. Whoever was
responsible, it seemed likely that Baktashi’s unknown companion had decoyed him
to his death.[xxxix]
Any and all of the aforementioned
reasons were plausible motives for Baktashi’s murder. After all his years and
miles of scuffling, Joe had finally run out of options, out of places to hide
and out of time. No one knows if his family members, if he had any remaining,
were notified. On September 4, 1928, thirty-three year old Joseph Baktashi was
laid to rest in an unmarked grave in Roseland Park Cemetery in the suburb of Berkley,
Michigan.
Meanwhile, in the dog-eat-dog Detroit underworld, the deadly cycle of life continued unabated.
[i]
Miranda Vickers, The Albanians: A Modern
History, London: I.B Tauris, 1999.
[ii]
H.T. Norris, Islam in the Balkans:
Religion and Society between Europe and the Arab World, London: Hurst &
Company, 1993, pgs. 92-96.
[iii]
World War I draft card; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leskovik
[iv]
Stavro Skendi, The Albanian National
Awakening, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967.
[v]
The 1920 U.S. Census recorded Joe Baktashi as being an inmate at the Utah State
Prison.
[vi] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Utah
[vii] According
to his World War I draft card, Abdul Alli was born on May 15, 1894 in Korçë, Manastir, Albania to unknown
parents. Like Joe Baktashi (with whom he apparently shared a birthday), it is
unknown when Alli came to America; he told the census taker in 1920 that he
immigrated in 1912.
[viii]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldier_Summit,_Utah
[ix]
Giuseppe La Vella was born circa 1879 in Pedivigliano, Calabria, Italy to
unknown parents. He told the census taker in 1910 that he had immigrated to
America in 1904. Once in the U.S., Joe Lavella (as he was known to English
speakers) began working in a copper mine in Salt Lake County, Utah. Sometime in
1910, Lavella returned to his native Italy and reunited with his family. A year
or so later, he returned to Utah and began working for the Reynolds-Ely
Construction Company. Lavella and his wife Maria had two children, Francesco
(b. 1899) and Antonietta (b. 1911); State of Utah: Death Certificate, No. 120
(1914); 1910 U.S. Census; Utah, Utah County, Probate Estate Files, Case No.
23125-2370, 1914.
[x] Ogden Standard Examiner, August 29,
1922.
[xi] Provo Daily Herald, April 13, 1914.
[xii] Provo Daily Herald, April 20, 1914.
[xiii]
Ogden Standard, April 21 and 29, May
2, 6, 8-9 and 12, 1914; Provo Daily
Herald, May 7, 1914.
[xiv] https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900015814/utah-state-prison-history-favored-penal-sites-always-way-out-of-town.html
[xv] Salt Lake Telegram, August 15, 1918.
[xvi] Salt Lake Telegram, December 21, 1918
and March 24, 1919.
[xvii]
Ogden Standard Examiner, November 6
and 21, 1921.
[xviii]
Abdul Alli, along with Toy Smith and another man, was convicted of robbing J.L.
Jordan in Ogden, Utah on September 6, 1921. The Albanian bandit was given a
sentence of five years. Why Alli had another falling out with Joe Baktashi is
unknown. It seems that Baktashi had taken the blame for Joe Lavella in return
for something from Alli. Perhaps Alli was to have assisted Baktashi in his own
1921 parole hearing and failed. The answer is lost to history. Details of Alli’s
robbery case can be found in the following Ogden
Standard Examiner issues; September 26 and October 22, 1921; January 16, 18
and 25, 1922.
[xix] Ogden Standard Examiner, August 29,
1922.
[xx]
Daniel Waugh, Off Color: The Violent
History of Detroit’s Notorious Purple Gang, Holland, MI: In-Depth Editions,
2014, pgs. 73-83.
[xxi] According
to his death certificate, Dimitrios Poulos aka James Thompson was born on May
15, 1894 in Stemnitsa, Greece to Thomas and Maria Vlachogiannis Poulos. It is
unknown exactly when he immigrated to America. Poulos would eventually anglicize
his name to William James Thompson, but he was primarily known in the Detroit
underworld as “Jimmy the Greek.” Michigan Department of Health, Certificate of
Death, (1933), No. 984.
[xxii]
Zero Puchi was born in Gjirokastër, Albania to Nazif
Puchi and an unknown woman. While his death certificate gives an approximate
birth year of 1885, Puchi’s World War I draft card gave his birth date as
September 22, 1874. The same draft card gave his address as 8 N. Howard Street
in Akron, Ohio, with a relative living in Detroit at 180 Brush Street. After he
moved to the Motor City, Puchi lived at 2215 Fifth Street; Michigan
Department of Health, Certificate of Death, (1927), No. 8099.
[xxiii]
Detroit Free Press, January 3, 1925.
The author was unable to find any further information on Harry Halloway and
believes that this name was most probably an alias. James George was noted as
running a Greektown blind pig at 347 Monroe Avenue. The fact that Baktashi victimized a respected
saloonkeeper on his boss Thompson’s turf pointed to the Albanian gangster’s
wholly unpredictable nature.
[xxiv]
The bombing was thoroughly covered in Detroit newspapers, notably the March
12-14, 1924 issues of the Detroit Free
Press and the March 12, 1924 issue of the Detroit News.
[xxv]
Ioannis (John) Deplaris was born on either September 7, 1893 or July 5, 1894 in
Filatria, Greece to Dionysus and Helen Christopoulos Deplaris. By the time of
his death, Deplaris was noted as living in a suite at the Hotel Tuller and
operating a Greektown coffee house/gambling den at 347 Monroe Avenue. Michigan
Department of Health, Certificate of Death, (1924), No. 4003; World War I draft
card. Details of his murder from the April 3, 1924 issues of the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News.
[xxvi]
Fotios (Frank) Kokalaris was born on March 18, 1891 in Filatria, Greece to
Petro Kokalaris and an unknown woman. Kokalaris would be noted as the prime
suspect in several unsolved homicides in and around Greektown during
Prohibition, including one 1929 case when he and Detroit gangster Pete Corrado
were acquitted of killing gambler Tom Serenotes in front of his Hastings Street
laundromat/gambling den. Michigan Department of Health, Certificate of Death,
(1931), No. 8374; additional information from the July 11, 1931 issue of the Detroit Times and the October 29, 1931
issue of the Detroit Free Press.
[xxvii]
While the information surrounding Joe Baktashi’s capture is sparse, my account
was derived from the following sources; Salt
Lake Telegram, January 2, 1925; Detroit
Free Press, January 3, 1925; Detroit
Times, August 31, 1928.
[xxviii]
Salt Lake Telegram, October 18, 1925.
Abdul Alli appears to have faded into obscurity after his release. Unconfirmed
accounts in contemporary Utah newspapers claimed he moved to Detroit and went
into the rackets, but this author was unable to find any confirmation for that
hypothesis.
[xxix]
Salt Lake Telegram, October 17, 1926.
All told, Joe Baktashi had served a total of ten years and twenty days in
prison for the murder of Joe Lavella.
[xxx]
The author was unable to discover much about James Carloze other than that his
real name seems to have been Albert Valento (or Valente). He was apparently
born circa 1905 and began selling dope in Detroit around 1924. After serving a
two-year term in Leavenworth, Carloze would be confined in New York’s Sing Sing
Penitentiary. Contemporary news accounts often spell his alias as “Carlozzi.”
[xxxi]
Little is known for certain about Joe Baktashi’s dope business other than he
operated it under the Pete Milo alias and was considered enough of a threat by the
Federal Narcotics Bureau that they continued to hound him until the day he
died. Some fragments of his dope business can be found in the following
articles; Detroit Free Press, November
12, 13 and 15, 1927; August 31 and September 1, 1928; Detroit News, November 12, 1927 and August 31, 1928; Detroit Times, August 31, 1928.
[xxxii]
Details on the Zero Puchi killing and its aftermath were drawn from the June
16, 1927 and August 31, 1928 issues of the Detroit
Free Press, Detroit News and Detroit Times.
[xxxiii]
Detroit Free Press, November 12, 13
and 15, 1927; August 31, 1928; Detroit
News, November 12, 1927 and August 31, 1928.
[xxxiv]
Salt Lake Telegram, December 5, 1927.
[xxxv]
The son of a Civil War veteran turned gold miner, Hamilton Daywalt was born on
November 12, 1883 in Breckenridge, Colorado to David and Frances Ready Daywalt.
Hamilton, or Harry as he was called, was in constant trouble from an early age;
he was noted as having run away from home more than once and hitching a ride on
freight trains. Daywalt’s extensive criminal career began when he was sentenced
to serve time in Colorado’s Canon City Penitentiary in April 1908 and paroled
three years later. Daywalt married Anna Elizabeth Welch in Pueblo, Colorado on
November 1, 1911. After working as an iron worker for a number of years, Harry
struck back out on the outlaw trail. In the autumn of 1919, he would be
incarcerated in the Idaho State Penitentiary for burglary for one to five
years; he was released on October 9, 1920.
Daywalt headed south to Salt
Lake City, Utah, where he was arrested after burglarizing a house on June 1,
1921. During his six-month term for petty larceny in the Salt Lake County Jail,
he was thrown into solitary confinement for the last eight weeks of his
sentence for using his position as a trusty to smuggle drugs to fellow inmates.
Free again during the winter of 1922, Daywalt was busted yet again for burglary
and sentenced to a longer term at the Sugar House Prison. It was at this point
that Daywalt almost certainly met Joe Baktashi before the latter escaped that
August. Daywalt walked out the gates of the Sugar House in December 1924 into
the arms of federal officers, who laid in wait to bust him for altering the
name on a $50 Liberty Bond he had stolen in his June 1921 heist. After serving
a two-year term in Leavenworth Federal Prison, Harry Daywalt headed west again
to his rendezvous with Joe Baktashi.
Aspen
Daily Times, April 4, 1897; Salt Lake
Telegram, June 2 and December 15, 1921; February 13-14, 1922; December 23,
1924 and December 7, 1927. Idaho, Old Penitentiary
Prison Records, 1920, Harry Hamilton Daywalt; World War I draft card; Colorado
Steel Works Employment Records, Hamilton Daywalt; Colorado State Census, 1885;
1910 and 1930 U.S. Censuses.
[xxxvi]
My recreation of the ill-fated Kress store safecracking was drawn from the December
4-8, 1927 and February 29, 1928 issues of the Salt Lake Telegram.
[xxxvii]
Salt Lake Telegram, August 16 and 31,
1928; Ogden Standard Examiner, August
16, 17 and 31, 1928.
[xxxviii]
Salt Lake Telegram, August 16, 1928.
[xxxix]
While differing on some minor points, I recreated Joe Baktashi’s final days and
death from the following articles; the August 31, 1928 issues of the Detroit News, Detroit Times and Salt Lake
Telegram. Supplemental material from the September 1 and 5, 1928 issues of
the Detroit Free Press.
