Joseph Bruno's Blog, page 85

Joe Bruno on the Mob – The Sawing Off of Manhattan Island

It was a hoax to end all hoaxes, perpetrated by a man known only as Lozier.

Lozier was neither a mobster, nor did he belong to a gang. And certainly, by all historical accounts, Lozier was not a crook. However, considering the havoc he caused in New York City in 1824, Lozier was certainly, by all definitions, a creep.

In 1824, the population on Manhattan Island was approximately 150,000 people. Centre Market, an area at the junction of Baxter, Grand, and Centre Street, was where the townspeople congregated daily, to buy and sell goods, and to shoot the breeze about anything, and everything, that had an impact on their lives. The most vocal person who came to Centre Market daily, was a charismatic man named Lozier. Lozier had traveled the world, and was considered to possess the highest intellectual capacity. When Lozier spoke, people listened. Lozier, a carpenter by trade, was pals with a man with the dubious name of Uncle John Devoe. That's right, Uncle John.

In early 1824, for some unexplained reason, Lozier remained absent from his bench in Centre Market for several days. When he returned, the usually loquacious Lozier was suddenly, and inexplicably, mute. He spoke to no one except Uncle John Devoe. The rest of the people, who congregated daily at Centre Market, were curious as to why Lozier's temperament had changed so dramatically.

Finally, Lozier broke down, and told the assemblage that for the past few weeks he had been huddled with the mayor of New York City, Stephen Allen. The reason for those serious discussions was that Manhattan Island, as a result of the many large downtown buildings, was so heavy at the Battery end, the south-most point of the island was in danger of breaking off, and falling into the water.

Some doubted Lozier's conclusions. So he led them to the middle of Centre Street, and asked them to look for themselves. It was obvious that the street was tilted extremely downhill, as Lozier pointed out to them, "from all the weight of the south-most buildings."

The crowd was aghast. "What can we do?" they implored Lozier.

Lozier said not to worry. He and the Mayor had come to the conclusion that the only way they could save the southern end of Manhattan Island, was to cut off the island at its North end, in the Kingsbridge region, and turn the island around. Then the would anchor the sagging end to the north mainland. So in effect, North would be South, and South would be North, averting the terrible loss of lives and property.

The only problem was that Mayor Allen thought Long Island was in the way of the proposed operation. Mayor Allen said, there was no way Manhattan Island could be turned completely around without smashing into Long Island. Mayor Allen said it was necessary to detached Long Island from its moorings, tow it out of the way, and after Manhattan Island was properly rotated and re-attached to the mainland, Long Island then could be returned to its proper place.

Lozier finally convinced the mayor that there was enough space in the harbor to rotate Manhattan Island, without dislodging Long Island. Lozier said all they had to do was saw off Manhattan island at Kingsbridge, tow it past Governors Island and Ellis Island, spin it around, and then tow it back to its new position, and anchor it. After much consultation, the mayor reluctantly agreed to doing it Lozier's way.

Being the political animal that he was, Mayor Allen thought it best to keep the government (meaning him) completely out of the picture. The mayor thought this should be a private endeavor, and he appointed Lozier to handle the entire project, including the hiring of labor, and the supervising of the work.

Not everyone in Manhattan bought the convoluted idea that the southern tip of Manhattan Island was in any danger. However, because of Lozier's fine reputation as a thinking man's thinker, those who did believe, quickly either silenced, or convinced Lozier's doubters.

To make matters more conclusive, Lozier came to his own defense. He cited the recent building of the famous Erie Canal, as proof that his project could indeed be done. Lozier said that when the building of the Erie Canal was proposed, even the best engineers thought, to run a river through the middle of a mountain, was an impossible task. This dubious analogy convinced even the most ardent doubters that not only could it be done, but that Lozier was indeed the man to supervise the operation.

For Lozier, his first task was to hire the hundreds of people needed for such a monumental project. Lozier appeared in Centre Market, with a large ledger, on which he tediously began the task of jotting down applicants, for all types of employment needed to to sever, then turn around Manhattan Island. While attention was diverted elsewhere, Lozier entrusted his pal Uncle John Devoe to complete this task. Devoe personally wrote on the ledger the names, ages, and place of residence, of all who applied, most of whom were the newly-arrived Irish peasants.

While Devoe was compiling a list of workers, Lozier was busy huddling with butchers, to assemble herds of cattle, hogs, and chickens, which were necessary to feed the hundreds of workers on the proposed project. Lozier was especially concerned with getting enough chickens, because he had promised that all workers would have chicken dinners twice a week. One poor butcher was so anxious to please Lozier, he took 50 fat hogs, that were ready for slaughter, and herded them north near Kingsbridge, where he fed them for a month; the feed money coming out of his own pocket, not Lozier's.

Getting his food-supply-system for the workers out of the way, Lozier now turned his attention to building a barracks for the workers to sleep in at night, after they had finished working in the day. Lozier gathered 20-something carpenters and contractors to furnish the lumber, and the expertise needed to build the barracks. Several of these contractors and carpenters jumped the gun, and hauled a few dozen loads of lumber to the northern end of the island, and deposited it near Kingsbridge, so it would be right there when they needed it. This was done at the carpenter's and contractor's expense, of course. Not Lozier's.

Lozier said he also needed at least 20 saws, each being 100 feet long, and each needing 50 men to manipulate them. In addition, Lozier said he required 24 huge oars, each 250 feet long, and 24 cast-iron oar-locks, in which the gigantic oars would be mounted. Lozier said that at least 100 men would be needed to tow Manhattan Island, after it had been sawed off from the mainland. Lozier provided scores of blacksmiths, carpenters, and mechanics, with the plans to provide the oars, and the oar-locks.

However, Lozier was not finished with this foolishness. He said he would need hundreds of men to do the actual sawing off of Manhattan Island. Lozier promised he would pay triple wages to those who did the sawing under water.

To see which men were most qualified for this hazardous duty, Lozier lined up hundreds of men, and one at a time, he used a stopwatch to measure how much time each man could hold his breath. As each man huffed and puffed, then held his breath until his face almost exploded, Uncle John Devoe entered the breath-holding times in his ledger. Some men were so eager to please, they pleaded with Lozier to let them try several more times, so that they could improve their scores. Lozier happily agreed to their folly.

As the weeks went by, the Manhattan natives were getting restless for the work to be started. Lozier kept putting them off, telling them that he did not have enough laborers, and that the equipment needed had not been completed. Finally, Lozier had no choice but to set a date on which hundreds of people would gather to commence on their mission to saw off Manhattan Island, tow it up the East River, spin it around, and reattach it. Lozier instructed everyone, who was to be involved in the project, to report to work at the corner of the Bowery and Spring Street. Lozier even hired a drum and bugle corps to accompany the large contingent of people on their march to upstate Kingsbridge.

At the appointed time, a group estimated to be at anywhere from 500 to 1000 people, assembled at the corner of the Bowery and Spring Street. Included in the crowd were laborers, accompanied by their wives and children, contractors, carpenters, and butchers, with their cattle, hogs, and chickens, all crated,and ready to go.

But alas, no Lozier. And no Uncle John Devoe.

As the wait for the two men continued, the crowd at the corner of Bowery and Spring Street was growing inpatient: the cattle mooed, the hogs grunted, the chickens cackled, and the young children started squealing in dismay.

After the crowd had waited several hours, of group of men was sent to Centre Market to search for Lozier, and Uncle John Devoe. When the search party returned from Centre Market empty-handed, the more intelligent people started realizing they had all been had, scammed, buffaloed, and humiliated. Some were angry enough to arm themselves with bats and sticks, as they searched the streets of lower Manhattan, looking for Lozier and Uncle John Devoe. However, the two men were nowhere to be found.

Months went by, and still no Lozier, and no Uncle John Devoe. Rumor had it that, their hoax being exposed, the two men had escaped to a friend's house in Brooklyn, and were in deep hiding. Some of the people, who had invested their own time and money to no avail, wanted to have the two fugitives caught, arrested, and punished. However, the bulk of those who had been duped, argued against doing so, since they didn't want to admit that they had been stupid enough to accept the outlandish plan that Lozier had made them believe.

Here is where the end of the story diverges into truth, and possible fantasy.

In those days, it was not the job of the newspapers to write about hoaxes. They wrote hard news, and the sawing off of Manhattan Island did not fall into that category. Therefore, there is no record in the newspapers that this event had ever actually taken place. As the years went by, word-of-mouth was the only way the story of the sawing off of Manhattan Island was perpetuated.

One version is, that after several months on the run, Lozier and Uncle John Devoe finally returned to Centre Market, where were ostracized by their victims, and forced to leave New York City. Lucky for them, without major bodily injury.

Another version is that this whole hoax never happened in the first place.

However, the latter version was basically accepted as the townsfolk being so embarrassed by the load of garbage they had been fed by Lozier, and accepted without question, they felt it was better to say that Lozier's scam had never happened in the first place

I believe in the former version. You be the judge.

Joe Bruno on the Mob – Allie "Tick Tock" Tannenbaum

He was rail-thin (140 pounds – tops), and strikingly handsome. Yet Allie Tannenbaum, who started out as a worker in his father's Catskill hotel, became one of Murder Incorporated's most accomplished killers. Tannenbaum also became a rat, who helped put his boss, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, into the electric chair.

Tannenbaum was born on January 17, 1906, in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania. When Tannenbaum was just two years old, his father Sam moved the family to Orchard Street, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. In New York City, Sam Tannenbaum, as he did in Pennsylvania, ran a general store. As a teenager, Allie Tannenbaum had the habit of always talking, talking, talking. He talked so much, people said he sounded like a clock — hence, the nickname "Tick Tock."

After World War I, Sam Tannenbaum accumulated enough cash to purchase the Loch Sheldrake Country Club, in the Catskills, in upstate New York. By the time his father bought the country club, Allie was already in his third year of high school (he also later attended college for a few semesters). This was quite an accomplishment, since most boys Tannenbaum's age, on the Lower East Side, had already dropped out of school after the 8th grade, and were working at jobs, some legal, and some not so legal. Making use of his son's capabilities, Sam Tannenbaum employed Allie at his hotel, either waiting on tables, or setting up beach chairs at the lake. Despite the early grunt work he imposed on his son, Sam Tannenbaum was grooming Allie as his eventual replacement. Yet, that was not to be.

The Loch Sheldrake Country Club was a ritzy establishment, and it housed many rich Jewish families, for their summer vacations. Jewish gangsters also frequented the country club. Among them were Harry "Greenie" Greenberg, Louis Lepke, and his partner Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro. Shapiro was a thick-chested gorilla-of-a-man, who supplied the muscle for Lepke's many illegal enterprises. Whenever Shapiro was angry, and that was often, his favorite phrase was "Get out of here." Yet, with his gravelly voice, the phrase sounded like "Gurra dahere." Hence, his pals gave Shapiro the nickname "Gurrah."

Allie Tannenbaum became acquainted with several of the country clubs visitors, including Shimmy Salles, who was a bagman for Lepke's rackets, Curly Holtz, a labor racketeer, and even Lepke himself. As the owner's son, the Jewish gangsters invited Tannenbaum to all their parties. Tannenbaum, as per his arrangement with his father, did not get paid a single dime, until after the summer, which basically ended the resort season. While Tannenbaum walked around his father's resort dead broke, he noticed that all the Jewish gangsters had plenty of cash to spread around. This made him a likely suspect to be drawn into their world of organized crime.

At the end of the summer in 1931, Tannenbaum was strolling down Broadway in Manhattan, when he bumped into Big Harry Schacter, one of Lepke's underlings.

Schacter asked Tannenbaum, "Do you want a job?"

"I could use one, if it pays," Tannenbaum said.

Schacter smiled. "This one is for Lepke. You know what kind of a job it will be."

Tannenbaum shrugged, and said he would do whatever it took to earn some fancy cash.

Tannenbaum started working for Lepke, initially for $35 a week. His job included general assignments like slugging, strikebreaking, and throwing stink bombs where they were needed to be thrown. Tannenbaum later graduated to more important duties, like "schlammings," which meant he "schlammed,"or cracked the heads of union workers, who were not towing Lepke's line.

As his work production increased, so did Tannenbaum's pay. Eventually Tannenbaum, who by then had been involved in six murders, and helped dispose of the body of a seventh murder victim, was raking in an impressive $125 a week. Because of Tannenbaum's summer location in the Catskills, his job mostly included murders, and extortions, in upstate New York. Tannenbaum was a valuable asset to Lepke in Sullivan County, because Tannenbaum was familiar with the back highways, and numerous lakes, where bodies could be stashed. During the winter, Tannenbaum, and his family, vacationed in Florida, where Tannenbaum worked as a strong-arm-man, in several of Lepke's gambling joints.

Tannenbaum's biggest hit for Lepke was the 1939 killing of Harry "Big Greenie" Greenberg, who was suspected of talking to the government about Lepke's activities. Tannenbaum was given the assignment to murder Greenberg by Lepke, through one of Lepke's intermediaries (to insulate himself from any connection to a murder, Lepke never gave orders to his killers himself).

Tannenbaum stalked Greenberg, first to Montréal, then to Detroit, before finally cornering Greenberg in Los Angeles. On November 23, 1939, Tannenbaum, along with Bugsy Siegel, stood in wait outside Greenberg's apartment building. When Greenberg emerged, Tannenbaum and Siegel riddled "Big Greenie" with bullets. This was considered the first "mob killing" in Southern California.

In 1940, Tannenbaum was vacationing in Florida, when he received the news that Lepke had been arrested, and that Murder Incorporated killer, Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, was now singing like a canary, about the work of Murder Incorporated. Tannenbaum immediately took a train to New York City, and went to the house of Charlie "The Bug" Workman, another one of Lepke's top killers. The reason for Tannenbaum's visit, was that he sought financing from Workman to go on the lam in Detroit. As luck would have it, as Tannenbaum and Workman were sitting in Workman's living room, Detective Abraham Belsky knocked on the door to arrest Workman. Belsky was pleasantly surprised when he found Tannenbaum there too.

At first, Tannenbaum refused to squeal. When Tannenbaum was questioned by the police over a three-day period, he repeatedly said, "I refuse to answer on the grounds of my constitutional rights."

However, District Attorney Deckelman suddenly hit Tannenbaum with an indictment, charging Tannenbaum, and "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss, with the 1936 murder of Irv Ashkenaz, a taxicab owner, who was ratting to the cops about Lepke's cab racket in Manhattan. Ashkenaz's body was found near the entrance of a Catskills hotel, riddled with sixteen bullets.

"We've got enough on you to put you in the chair," District Attorney Deckelman told Tannenbaum.

All of a sudden Tannenbaum, living up to his nickname of "Tick Tock," started talking nonstop. Tannenbaum told Deckelman about all the murders he was involved with, and how they were connected to Lepke.

On the witness stand, during Lepke's trail, Tannenbaum put the final nail in Lepke's coffin, when he testified about the day he heard Lepke order the murder of a candy store owner named Joe Rosen. Lepke was always cool and collected, and careful about what he said in front of anyone. In fact, Lepke never gave Tannenbaum a direct order to kill. This information was always relayed to Tannenbaum through an intermediary, close to Lepke.

However, in 1936, Tannenbaum was given the order, through Mendy Weiss, to kill Irv Ashkenaz. Yet, Tannenbaum was told by Weiss to report directly to Lepke, when the deed was done. After disposing of Ashkenaz, Tannenbaum went to Lepke's midtown office, to tell Lepke that Ashkenaz was indeed dead. When he entered Lepke's office, Tannenbaum encountered an irate Lepke, screaming at Max Rubin, one of Lepke's closest confidants.

Tannenbaum testified on the witness stand to District Attorney Burton Turkus, "Lepke was yelling that he gave this Joe Rosen money to go away, and then he sneaks back into a candy store, after he tells him to stay away. Lepke was hollering: 'There is one son of a bitch that will never go down to talk to Dewey about me.' Max (Rubin) was trying to calm him down. He was saying, "take it easy; take it easy Louis. I'll handle Joe Rosen; he's all right.'"

"What did Lepke say to that?" Turkus asked Tannenbaum.

Tannenbaum replied, "He says, 'You told me that before.' He says 'This is the end of it. I'm fed up with that son of a bitch.' He says, 'and I'll take care of him."

Tannenbaum testified that two days after his encounter with Lepke and Rubin, in Lepke's office, he read in the newspapers that Joe Rosen had been shot 16 times, as he was opening up his candy store in Brownsville, Brooklyn.

Tannenbaum's testimony, concerning the Rosen murder, corroborated the testimony of Abe Reles, and was a deadly blow to Lepke. It took the jury only four hours to convict Lepke of first-degree murder, which landed Lepke in the electric chair four years later. For his testimony against Lepke, Tannenbaum was given a short jail sentence, a light slap on the wrist for a man, who had committed at least six murders.

Little is known about what Tannenbaum did for the rest of his life. He seemed to have disappeared from the face of the earth, except for the times when he reappeared, to testify against his old murderous pals. In the book "Tough Jews" by Rich Cohen, Cohen says, in the 1950′s, Tannenbaum worked in Atlanta for a while, as a lampshade salesmen.

In 1950, Tannenbaum came out of the woodwork, and testified at the murder trial of Jack Parisi, another Murder Incorporated hit-man, who had been on the lam for ten years. Despite Tannenbaum's testimony, a judge found Parisi not guilty.

In 1976, unlike most of his contemporaries, Tannenbaum died of natural causes, on an unnamed island off the coast of Florida. He was 70 years old.

Joe Bruno on the Mob- William J. Sharkey

He was a crook, a pickpocket, a Tammany Hall politician, and finally, — a murderer. Yet William J. Sharkey was best known for his daring escape from death row, in New York City's Tombs Prison.

Sharkey was born in New York City in 1945, to well-to-do family, which resided in the Ninth Ward in Manhattan. Despite the affluence of his family, Sharkey gravitated over to the dark side. He began hanging out with pickpockets, gamblers, and crooks, and soon he became a very capable pickpocket himself, and a gambler of some renown. One sad day, Sharkey was arrested for pickpocketing, and he had his picture taken by the municipal photographer, giving himself a definitive presence in the criminal record section, of New York City Police Department.

Sharkey soon elevated himself in the criminal ladder, dealing in stolen bonds. With the money from his endeavors piling in, Sharkey formed his own gang called "Sharkey's Guards," which had their headquarters at the corner of Wooster and Houston Streets. It was there that Sharkey insinuated himself into the local political scene, and soon he was the darling of the crooks who ran Tammany Hall. Sharkey dressed himself in the finest clothes, wearing sparkling diamonds on his fingers, and around his neck. Soon, Tammany Hall put Sharkey up for election, for Assistant Alderman. Even though Tammany Hall's had influence, and muscle, working in their favor at the polls, Sharkey somehow lost the election. Disappointed with his political failure, Sharkey decided to go back to his first loves – stealing and gambling.

With the money he made from various illegal endeavors, Sharkey traveled to Buffalo, New York, and started a faro game. However, Sharkey was so unlucky, he managed to lose $4000 in just five days. Downtrodden, Sharkey returned to New York City, and hooked up with his old friend Robert Dunn, real name Bob Isaacs. Dunn was an employee of the City's Comptroller's Office, but he also was a faro dealer, in a Fulton Street gambling house. Figuring Dunn was a more capable faro expert then he, Sharkey gave Dunn $600, and told him to go to Buffalo, and try his hand at faro. Dunn agreed that if he was successful in Buffalo, he promised to repay Sharkey the $600, plus half his winnings. As luck would have it, Dunn was just as unlucky in Buffalo as Sharkey was, and he lost his entire stake. Dunn returned to New York City, and told Sharkey the bad news.

On September 1, 1872, Dunn and Sharkey attended the funeral of James Riley, a prominent member of the Michael Norton Association, a political arm of Tammany Hall. After the funeral, Sharkey and Dunn traveled separately to a saloon owned by Charles Harvey, called "The Place," located at 288 Hudson Street. By the time Sharkey had arrived, Dunn had already imbibed a few rye whiskeys at the bar. Sharkey ordered a rye himself, and after he knocked it down in one gulp, Sharkey demanded his $600 back from Dunn. Dunn told Sharkey he was tapped out himself, and couldn't repay the money. Sharkey immediately drew a single-shot Derringer pistol, and pointed it at Dunn's chest.

Dunn screamed, "Don't shoot, Billy! I'll pay you as soon as I can!"

Sharkey would have none of that. He bellowed back, "You better pay me now!"

Before Dunn could reply, Sharkey fired the Derringer point-blank at Dunn. The bullet pierced Dunn's heart, killing him instantly. Sharkey fled the scene of the crime, but he was captured a few hours later, in a boarding house on Washington Street, near Perry Street.

Sharkey was tried, convicted, and sentenced to be hanged at the Tombs Prison, on August 15, 1873. However, Sharkey's connections at Tammany Hall pushed back his execution date to early December.

While Sharkey was imprisoned, he was visited daily by the most beautiful Maggie Jourdan, herself a very successful pickpocket. Miss Jourdan arrived early every morning, and always stood until visiting hours were over. Miss Jourdan was a great friend of Mrs. Wesley Allen, the wife of a burglar, whose brother John Allen owned a bawdy dance hall on Water Street. John Allen was known as "The Wickedest Man in New York City."

While most prisoners at the Tombs lived in perpetual squalor, Sharkey lived quite nicely on the second tier of the prison, in an area called "Murderer's Row." With the money Jourdan earned stealing, and also by her hocking her jewelry, including her gold watch, Sharkey was able to decorate his jail cell number 40 (which was never locked), with the finest furniture. Jordan bought Sharkey a walnut table, a Kidderminster carpet, a canary in a cage, and a book–and–magazine rack, which was suspended from the ceiling by silken cords. Jourdan also supplied Sharkey with a soft mattress for his bed, a comfortable chair for his lounging, draperies for his cell door, an elegant dressing gown made of velvet and cherry-colored silk, and velvet slippers.

Jourdan often told Sharkey during her visits, that if he died, she no longer wanted to live. "Willie, I could never let you suffer," she tearfully told him.

On November 19, 1873, at exactly 10 AM, Jourdan arrived at the Franklin Street entrance to the Tombs. The guard on duty gave her the usual pass given to all visitors. The bottom part of her body was noticeably bulky, but the prison guards thought she had just put on additional petticoats, to protect herself the from the cold November air. Jourdan immediately went to Sharkey's cell, and she spoke to him for several hours. The prison guards were so accustomed to her being there, they hardly paid any attention to what she did, and what she said to Sharkey.

Mrs. Wesley Allen arrived at the prison at 12:30 PM. She stopped at Sharkey's cell on the second tier, and spoke to both Jourdan and Sharkey. Then Mrs. Allen went upstairs to the third tier, to visit a prisoner named Flood. At 1 PM, Jourdan exited the prison, which was quite unusual, since she always stood until the end of the day.

A half an hour later, a strange-looking woman, with especially broad shoulders, walked down the second-tier corridor, through two lower gates, and out of the prison. As this dubious lady exited the prison, she handed her pass to the guard minding the exit. This woman wore a heavy black woolen dress, a black coat, an Alpine bonnet, and a thick green veil, which covered her entire face. Patrolmen Dolan was walking down Franklin Street, when he saw this woman nimbly jump onto a passing streetcar, even though she was wearing high French heels.

At 2:05 PM, Mrs. Wesley Allen tried to exit the prison. As she passed the guard standing at the exit, the guard asked her for her visitor's pass. Mrs. Allen nervously fumbled in her dress pockets for several seconds, before she said, "I put it in my pocket, but I must have lost it."

The guard, realizing something was up, immediately summoned Warden Johnson. Mrs. Allen was detained, while Warden Johnson ordered all cells in the prison to be immediately searched. During this search, they were dismayed to find out that Sharkey's cell was empty. His elegant clothes were scattered about his cell, and right above his washbasin, were the remnants of his flowing mustache, which had obviously just been shaved off.

Mrs. Allen was immediately arrested, but since there was no concrete evidence to incriminate her, the police reluctantly released her. Jourdan was arrested that night at her mother's home at 167 9th Ave. When the detectives told her she was under arrest, Jourdan replied, "I am the happiest little woman in the world."

Jourdan was tried in General Sessions Court, and was defended by the infamous attorney Big Bill Howe. Howe was so efficient in Jourdan's defense, the jury acquitted her on all charges.

It was later determined, that despite the fact the police had searched all the piers in the city looking for Sharkey, Sharkey had escaped on the schooner Frank Atwood, and made his way to Haiti. Not liking that country too much, Sharkey boarded another boat, and travel to Cuba, where he settled.

Two years after Sharkey had made his escape from the Tombs Prison, Maggie Jourdan joined Sharkey in Cuba. Yet for some unknown reason (probably because Sharkey was an incorrigible creature), Sharkey badly mistreated Jourdan, the very woman responsible for Sharkey avoiding the gallows in New York City. Sharkey abused Jourdan so much, the captain of the ship who had taken Jourdan to Cuba, hustled her back on board, and took her back to New York City.

Soon afterwards, Jourdan found her true love, whom she married. They presumably lived happily ever after.

As far as it can be determined, William J. Sharkey never returned to New York City.

" Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps-Volume 1- New York City"

Preface

Having grown up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, I've always been fascinated by my neighborhood's history. I spent the first years of my life living in Brooklyn, but when I was six, my parents moved to 134 White Street, the corner of Baxter, about 50 feet from the city prison called The Tombs. I spent the years before I went into the military service hanging out in Columbus Park (originally Mulberry Park), which was built in the late 1890s. Before Columbus Park existed, the area and the streets surrounding it were the site of the notorious Five Points, which was formed by the intersection of Cross (first Park, now Mosco), Anthony (now Worth), Little Water (no longer exists), Orange (now Baxter) and Mulberry streets.

In 1825, the Five Points is where the first known street gang was formed. It was called the Forty Thieves, named after "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." The Forty Thieves originated at Rosanna Peers' produce store on Centre Street, just south of Anthony. Rotting vegetables were sold out in front of the store and there was an illegal speakeasy in the back, where Ms. Peers sold rotgut liquor at discount prices. Soon the store, under the rule of Edward Coleman, became a haven for pickpockets, murderers, burglars and thieves.

After the Forty Thieves, other gangs sprung up in the Five Points area like weeds sticking out from a rotted landfill. Gangs with names like the Bowery Boys, the Dead Rabbits and the Roach Guards plundered, robbed, and sometimes even murdered. Not only did these gangs accost unsuspecting sailors, or people from other areas who just happened to wind up in a Five Points dive, but these thugs committed crimes against their own neighbors. No one, and nothing was sacred to the Five Point Gangs. If you had something of value, they wanted it and they took it by force. Their reign of terror ended after the Civil War, mainly because most of the gang members were drafted into the army. Some died miserably on the battle fields of the south, and others came home wounded and maimed, and hardly in any condition to resume committing their previous crimes.

Starting in the late 1860s, new gangs, the most prominent of which was called the Whyos, started cropping up again in the Five Points Area. In the late 1880′s, the most prestigious gang in the area was the Five Pointers led by Paul Kelly, real name Paulo Vaccarelli. Kelly's chief nemesis was a crude, guerrilla-like individual named Monk Eastman, who ran a mob called the Eastman Gang. Kelly was a former boxer, who changed his name so that he could get more fights (Being Italian was not very popular in those days). One day, Kelly, at the urging of Tammany Hall, challenged the hulking Eastman, to a fist fight to determine who controlled the rackets in the Five Points area. Even though Eastman was 50 pounds heavier than Kelly, the two men fought to a brutal draw. When the fight was over, both bosses returned to their gangs and continued doing exactly what they were doing before, as if the fight had never taken place.

The New York gangs were not confined to the Five Points Area. To the south of the Five Points, was the Fourth Ward (where I lived for 32 years – in Knickerbocker Village, the same place where the Rosenbergs lived and were arrested). In the 1840s – 1850s, the notorious Daybreak Boys prowled the streets of the Fourth Ward and the nearby piers on the East River, killing people with the utmost viciousness and enthusiasm. Approximately one mile to the north, a gang called the Gophers fought with the Hudson Dusters for control of the West Side docks on the Hudson River, and the area called Hell's Kitchen, which runs north from 23rd St. to 57th St, and west from 8th Avenue to 12th Ave.

Not all the crimes were committed by gangs, but also by individual gangsters, some of whom formed organized crime syndicates. Men like Lucky Luciano, Joe "The Boss" Masseria, and Salvatore Maranzano, fought for control of the Italian mobs. They were joined by such notorious Jewish gangsters like Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel and Louis "Lepke" Buchalter. Then there were the brutal Morello brothers, who along with Ciro Terranova and Ignazio "Lupo the Wolf" Saietta, formed the vicious Black Hand, which robbed, tortured, and killed other Italian immigrants, who did not pay the extortion money the Black Handers demanded.

New York City was dominated by male gangsters, but there were a few females who were just as vicious as the men. Take Gallus Mag for instance. This hulking 6-foot British woman was a bouncer in the notorious Hole-In-the-Wall Tavern, which was located on Dover Street, near the docks of the East River in the Fourth Ward. Mag patrolled the inside of the bar with a pistol in her belt, and a small bat attached to her wrist. She dispatched unruly patrons by dragging them to the door, then throwing them out by the scruff of their necks. If a rowdy drunk resisted, Mag bit off their ear and put it in a jar filled with alcohol, which she kept behind the bar. Patrons called this display "Gallus Mag's Trophy Case."

One day, a female thief named Sadie the Goat made the bad mistake of getting drunk in Mag's establishment. Mag asked Sadie to leave nicely, but Sadie refused. Miffed, Mag dragged Sadie to the door and when Sadie resisted being flung outside, Mag bit off her ear and threw Sadie out onto the pavement. Mag immediately placed Sadie's ear in a jar behind the bar to join her other trophies. Years later, Sadie returned and apologized to Mag. Her heart suddenly warmed, Mag went behind the bar, retrieved Sadie's ear and returned it to its rightful owner. Rumor has it that Sadie wore her ear in a locket around the neck for the rest of the life.

In "Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps," I also describe several riots and natural disasters that occured in New York City. In 1835, The Great New York City Fire took place, decimating the entire financial center in downtown Manhattan. It remains the worse fire in New York City's history. When the three-day conflagration ended, 17 blocks and 693 buildings were entirely destroyed. Amazingly, only two people died, but the damage was estimated at $20 million dollars, almost $1 billion in today's money. A year later, the area was rebuilt with stone buildings, much more resistant to fires. Some of these buildings exist to this very day.

There were also The Anti-Abolition Riots of 1834, The Grain Riots of 1837, The Astor Theater Riots of 1848, and The Police Riots of 1857. But the worst riot of all was The Civil War Draft Riots of 1863. To fight the war down south, President Abraham Lincoln had called for the drafting of all able-bodied men between the ages of 20 to 40. But if a man had $300, he could buy his way out of the draft. Of course, only the rich could afford the $300, so it was the lower class Irish people who were the ones being drafted into the war, against their wills. This did not sit well with them and they decided to do something about.

On Monday, July 13, 1863, the second day of the draft which had started on Saturday, tens of thousands of the irate poor Irish congregated in the Fourth Ward slums of the Lower East Side and marched uptown, gathering fellow rioters along the way, including thousands of Five Point gang members. The mob's initial purpose was to storm several draft headquarters in uptown Manhattan, to destroy those buildings and all the draft records inside.

But but then things got out of hand.

The ever-increasing mob burnt down the draft buildings, while beating up scores of police officers in the process, including the Police Superintendent of New York City, John A. Kennedy. Then the mob, which grew to be anywhere from 50,000 to 70,000 people, turned their anger on every Negro in sight. The reason for their despicable actions, was that the Irish blamed the Negroes for the Civil War and for their present predicament in particular. Some Negroes were beaten to death. Others were hung from trees and lampposts, then tortured by female rioters, using knives to carve up their victim's bodies. While singing bloodcurdling songs, these screaming banshees mutilated the Negroes, until they finally succumbed to their wounds.

After four days of rioting, Mayor George Updyke wired the War Department in Washington for help. The Federal Government sent in 10,000 armed and trained members of the United States Militia to quell the riots. And that they did, using guns, bats and bayonets to beat the angry mob back to the slums of the Five Points and the Fourth Ward. There is no way to correctly estimate the number of people who were killed during the Civil War Riots of 1863. Under the blanket of darkness, the dead bodies of many rioters were shipped across the East River and buried quietly in Brooklyn. Police Superintendent Kennedy put the dead total at 1,155 people, but that did not include those rioters buried secretly at night.

"Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks, and Other Creeps-Volume 1- New York City" starts in the period around 1825 and ends at approximately 1940. "Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps-Volume 2 – New York City," will pick up at that point and continue up until the present time. Yet, there may be some miscreants that I didn't write about in the time period covered in Volume 1, that may find their way into Volume 2.

The problem is, the more I look, the more felons I find.

After finishing "Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps – Volumes 1 and 2," I will start a third, and possibly a fourth volume, which will cover the criminals in other parts of the United States America.

Of course, New York City, having the most concentrated population in the country, has more than its share of mobsters, gangs, crooks and other creeps. Yet, the northeastern areas of upstate New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, have their share of lowlifes too. Cradles of criminality are also located in the Midwest; in cities like Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Kansas City. And don't forget, the states of Texas and California are teeming with hooligans too.

"Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps-Volume 1- New York City" is written in alphabetical order, starting with "Ah Hoon – The Murder of Chinese Comedian Ah Hoon," and ending with Big Jack Zelig.

I hope you enjoy mingling with some of the worst human beings God has ever created. I know I enjoyed writing about them.

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

If it weren't for the greed of sweatshop bosses, this tragedy may never have occurred. But on March 25, 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire took the lives of 141 people, most of them women.

At the turn of the 20th century, working conditions in the New York City sweatshops were abysmal. Men, woman and children toiled in dirty factories, warehouses and tenements, doing menial tasks that made the garment industry one of the most profitable businesses in the nation. Labor laws were inadequate and hardly ever enforced. Factory inspections were rare, and if they were done at all, the factory owners knew where to grease the proper palms to get high marks, when condemnation of the factory was the more proper course of action. In 1899, a law banning night work for women was declared unconstitutional. The absurd reason given by the courts, whose members were often in the sweatshop bosses' pockets, was that the law "deprived woman of the liberty to work in factories at night, or for as long as they wished to." In 1907, his ruling was upheld by the New York Court of Appeals. Even though the International Ladies Garment Worker's Union was formed in 1900, the sweetshop bosses hired thugs as strikebreakers, to keep the ladies' union in line.

Of all the greedy sweatshop owners, the worst offenders were Max Blanck and Issac Harris, who owned the Triangle Waist Company, located on the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of the 10-story Asch Building building, at 22 Washington Place, on the corner of Greene Street. The factory produced women's blouses, known at the time as "shirtwaists." The firm employed around 500-600 people, most of them young female Jewish and Italian immigrants, who worked under horrible conditions for 9 hours a day on weekdays, and 7 hours on Saturdays. The bosses were such tyrants, they charged their employees for needles and other supples. They also charged them a fee for using their chairs, and if one of the employees damaged a piece of goods, they had to pay three times the value of the item to replace it.

In 1908, Blanck and Harris formed a sham company union that served their purposes much better that it served their hundreds of employees. Several employees, who tried to join a legitimate union, like the International Ladies Garment Worker's Union, or the United Hebrew Trades, were quickly fired. The reason management gave for the firing was that because of poor economic conditions, it had to cut staff. Yet strangely enough, new workers were hired almost immediately after the dismissal of the others.

Because Triangle Waist Company had locked out their dismissed workers, Local 25 of the International Ladies Garment Worker's Union called a strike against them. Blanck and Harris hired union strike breakers, or "schlammers," to beat up the male pickets, and they also hired prostitutes to mingle with the female workers in the picket lines. The police and the judges, obviously working at the behest of the owner, sided with Blanck and Harris, one judge even saying at the sentencing of one picketer, "You are on strike against God."

On March 25, 1911, it was a cold and windy day, as the 5pm closing time approached. It was estimated that 600 employees, packed in like sardines, were working at the sewing machines. Most were woman between the ages of 13 and 23. The 5pm bell rang and the woman scrambled to get their coats and hats, and rush for the elevators. Suddenly, a fire broke out on the southeast corner of the 8th floor. It was later determined that the fire was inadvertently caused by a cigarette butt that had been thrown into a litter basket near a sewing machine. An updraft of air sent the flames and smoke shooting upwards towards the roof.

The building had no sprinkler system and the fire quickly enveloped the entire 8th, 9th and 10th floors. Girls on the 8th floor ran to a stairwell on the Washington Place side of the building, but the door was locked. The fire was so intense, all the windows on the top three floors of the building blew out from the heat. Some workers were able to jam themselves into the elevators while the elevators were still working. Others, including Blanck and Harris were saved, because they were able to make it to the safety of the roof. A passerby named Joe Zito and an elevator operator named Gaspar Mortillalo, used the only working elevator to make five trips up to the 9th floor, taking down 25-30 terrified people at a time. But soon that elevator became inoperable too.

Within five minutes, the fire trucks arrived, but there was not much they could do. Their extension ladders only reached the 6th floor, and the stream of their hoses only reach the 7th floor. Rather than burning to death, people began jumping out of the windows, sometimes in groups of two, three, and four. A man and a woman appeared in a 9th floor window, their clothes ablaze. They kissed, then hugged and jumped together, their bodies smashing on the cold pavement.

The firemen brought out safety nets to catch the jumpers, but it was hopeless. One fire chief later said, "Life nets? What good were life nets? The little ones went right through the life nets and the pavement too. Nobody could hold a life net when those girls from the ninth floor came down." The fire only lasted 10 minutes, but when it was over, 141 workers had died. 125 were women.

Nine months after the fire, Blanck and Harris were put on trial on manslaughter charges. But the trial, like the earlier building inspections, was a farce. The judge was Thomas Crain, a Tammany Hall appointee, with little interest in justice for the dead workers. He manipulated a trial where only an acquittal was possible. It took the jury just 100 minutes to render a verdict of not-guilty.

This did not go down too well with the families of the victims. The day after the not-guilty verdict, hundreds of despondent relatives of the victims stood outside the Tombs. Blanck and Harris, surrounded by five police officers, tried to slither out the building through the Leonard Street exit. When they were spotted, they were quick enveloped by an angry crowd. David Weiner, whose sister had died in the fire, charged at the sweatshop bosses, swing his fist in the air. "Not Guilty? Not Guilty?" he screamed. "It was murder! Murder!" Weiner was quickly subdued by the police, but he was so distraught, he fainted and had to be taken to the hospital."

In 1913, the families of the victims won a lawsuit against Blanck and Harris. The families were awarded a measly $75 per victim, whereas Blanck and Harris were paid by the insurance company $60,000 more than the reported loses of life and property. Ironically, in late 1913, Blanck was arrested again for locking the doors to his sweatshop.

The tragedy of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire did not go for naught. The New York State State Legislature, whose members included future Presidential candidate Al Smith and Robert Wagner, the father of the future Mayor of New York City by the same name, forced the state to completely re-write the labor laws. The State Legislature created the New York State Factory Investigating Committee to "investigate factory conditions in this and other cities, and to report remedial measures of legislation to prevent hazard, or loss of life, among employees through fire, insanitary conditions, and occupational diseases."

As a direct result of The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, The American Society of Safety Engineers was founded on October 14, 1911.

Joe Bruno on the Mob – Watchmen (Leatherheads) and Roundsmen

The first New York City police force was created in 1845, but before then, the streets of New York city were "protected" by a motley crew of incompetents called Watchmen and Roundsmen.

The Watchmen first came into existence in the late 1700′s, when the Dutch ruled New York City. Their job was little more than patrolling the streets at night, looking for any possible disturbances, but mostly avoiding them. They would also call out the hours of the night, with such inane declarations as, "By the grace of God, two o'clock in peace." Or, "By the grace of God, four o'clock and a cold, raw morning."

Watchmen carried no arms, except for a 33-inch club. And they wore no uniforms except for a fireman's leather hat, that they varnished twice a year, which made the hat hard as a rock. Hence the name "Leatherheads." They were also called "Old Charlies," which also was not a term of endearment.

Starting in 1829, Watchmen were required by New York City ordinance to call out fires. If they saw smoke, the Watchmen would scream out either the name of his post, or the street of the fire. There was a also street curfew that stated anyone seen outdoors after 9 pm were considered to be of "bad morals." It was the Watchmen's duty to arrest anyone they caught wandering the streets at night, then bring them to the local jail, to be locked up until daylight. The Watchmen's pay was a mere $1 a night. They were also paid an additional fifty cents extra to attend as witnesses at Special Court Sessions, to testify as to any particular crime they may have seen while on duty, which hardly ever happened.

The criminals and gangs of New York City had little respect for the Watchmen, who numbered only 30-40 in the entire city. The Watchmen were considered not to be very bright, nor very ambitious, and were known to be frequently drunk on duty. Each Watchmen had a post, or watch-box, which consisted of an un-anchored wooden shack, where they would frequently fall asleep on duty, usually after consuming huge amounts of whiskey. A favorite activity of the young ruffians throughout the city, was to catch a Watchmen sleeping in his watch-box, lasso the watch-box with a rope, and drag it through the streets, whooping and hollering like banshees. The soon-to-be-famous writer Washington Irving was known to be one of those pranksters.

Whereas Watchmen patrolled New York City at night, the crime solvers, or Roundsmen, were the daytime duty men. Roundsmen were considered the plainclothesmen, or detectives of the era, but solving crimes were certainly not their strong suit. Roundsmen were usually common laborers, or stevedores who could not find work in their chosen field of endeavor. As a result, they were not especially adept at solving crimes, or catching criminals

Roundsmen were paid no salary, and they derived their income solely by serving legals papers, or collecting rewards from citizens for returning their stolen property. This led to some very enterprising Roundsmen forming alliances with groups of criminals. The crooks would steal the goods, and the victims would post a reward for the return of their property. The Roundsmen would then "find" the stolen property, collect the reward, and split it with the crooks.

Very low on the list of the Roundmen's priorities was solving murders, since there was usually no reward given for finding the killer. The only way a Roundsmen could make a profit going after murderers, was if the family of the victim posted a reward, and if the Roundsmen was lucky enough to catch the killer, which was very unusual, he would collect the reward, and a further stipend from the city for serving a legal summons on the perpetrator.

Because of their outright incompetence, the Roundsmen and Watchmen were fast becoming an endangered species. It was the 1841 murder of Mary Rogers, that put the final nail in their coffin. With plenty of clues as to who the murderer was, the Roundsmen dragged their heels long enough that Roger's killer was never found.

In 1845, the public was fed up with the archaic system of Watchmen and Roundsmen acting as an incompetent and un-industrious quasi-police force. Spurred on by the fury of the press, New York City's reformers disbanded the Watchmen and Roundsmen system, and replaced it with a functional police department, which was then copied by many cities throughout the United States of America.

Joe Bruno on the Mob – Book Review – "I Heard You Paint Houses – Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa"

"I Heard You Paint House's – Closing the Case on Jimmy Hoffa," is the autobiography of mobster Frank "The Irishman" Sheehan, written by former homicide prosecutor and Chief Deputy Attorney General of the State of Delaware, Charles Brandt. The main point of the book is that Sheehan, more than 25 years after the disappearance of Teamsters union President Jimmy Hoffa, finally admitted to putting two bullets in Hoffa's head. The book is interspersed with Brant's writing, which are precise and quite detailed, and the transcripts of recordings Brant made with Sheehan in the early 2000′s. By the time of Sheehan's "confession," he was a fragile old man living in an assisted living facility.

The term "paint houses," means you are a killer; the thought being, when you shoot somebody in a house, you "paint" the walls with their blood. The 6-foot-4-inch Sheehan claimed the first time he spoke to Hoffa, at the behest of mob boss Russell Bufalino, the first words Hoffa ever said to Sheehan on the phone were, "I heard you paint houses," which is a subtle way of Hoffa asking Sheehan if he could depend on him to kill whomever Hoffa said needed to be killed. And Sheehan did kill for Hoffa, according to Sheehan, many times. In this book, Sheehan mentions several murders he committed for Hoffa and for other union officials too. But he mentions no names of the victims, except for Hoffa and Crazy Joe Gallo, whom Sheehan also claims he killed.

Brandt details Hoffa's rise from a mere union member to the head of the Teamsters, the strongest, and possibly the most corrupt union in American history. Hoffa was tight with several members of the American Mafia, including Bufalino, and Anthony "Tony Pro" Provanzano, who was allegedly the one to insist Jimmy Hoffa had to be killed. Hoffa had complete control over the Teamsters lucrative retirement accounts, which he used as a quasi-loan system for several gangsters for various causes, some legal, some not so legal. Of course, Hoffa skimmed a little off the top for himself, so everybody was happy.

When Hoffa, after a decade quest by Robert Kennedy (Kennedy called his legal team "Get Hoffa"), finally was sent to prison for various union crimes, Hoffa hand-picked his old friend Frank Fitzsimmons as the interim President of the Teamsters. The intention was, after Hoffa was released from jail, he would resume his old duties with the Teamsters. Only the mob and Fitzsimmons had different ideas.

Released from prison after serving five years, Hoffa insisted that he be allowed to run for election to get his old job back. Hoffa was told by Bufalino and Provenzano to forget about doing so. They were perfectly happy with Fitzsimmons, whom they could control more easily than the bombastic Hoffa. Stupidly, Hoffa began making threats; saying that he had enough information on plenty of people to put them in jail. Hoffa also said he would squeal to the Feds if he was not given his old job back. Soon the order was handed down that it was Hoffa who had to go. According to Sheehan, he was one of Hoffa's closest friends and the only one who could get close enough to Hoffa to do the job.

According to Sheehan, on July 30, 1975, Hoffa was summoned to a meeting by Bufalino and Provenzano at the Machus Red Fox Restaurant located in a suburb outside Detroit. When Hoffa arrived no one was there, but minutes later Sheehan arrived in a car driven by Chuckie O'Brien, whom Hoffa treated like his own son. Sheehan told Hoffa the place of the meeting had been moved to a private house. Hoffa didn't like the idea, but knowing that the two mob bosses out-ranked him, Hoffa agreed to go anyway and he got into the car. It was a fatal mistake.

When they arrived at the private house, O'Brien drove away, and Sheehan followed Hoffa into the house. Once inside, Sheehan said he fired two bullets into his "friend" Hoffa's head. A "clean-up crew" already on the premises, stuffed Hoffa's body into the trunk of a waiting car, hidden in the garage out back. Then they drove Hoffa to a local funeral parlor, to be cremated immediately.

Sheehan claimed he had no choice but to kill Hoffa, or he would have been killed himself. He also claims he was heart-broken that he had to kill his best friend, and as a result, soon turned into a hopeless alcoholic.

Sheehan is one of many people who have claimed to have killed Jimmy Hoffa. But he was the only one to actually be a close friend of Hoffa's and was a suspect by the FBI from the beginning. Maybe Sheehan killed Hoffa and maybe he didn't. Brandt laid out a concise blueprint of the Hoffa murder that is quite convincing. But Sheehan's claim to have killed Crazy Joe Gallo, by himself, is beyond belief.

By all accounts of the Gallo murder, Crazy Joe Gallo was killed by two Mafia associates in Umberto's Clam House on Mulberry Street, in the early morning hours of April 7th, 1972. There were eyewitnesses to the murder, and in no account was a single gunman described as the killer. And certainly not a 6-foot-4-inch Irish gunman, who would stick out like a sore thumb in Manhattan's Little Italy, where I lived for 48 years.

So it stands to reason, if Sheehan lied about killing Gallo, he may have lied about killing Hoffa too. Only the "Irishman," Jimmy Hoffa, and the real killers, if Sheehan didn't kill Hoffa, know for sure.

Joe Bruno on the Mob – The Funeral – Movie Review

You'd think a movie directed by Abel Ferrara, and with a stellar cast including, Christopher Walken, Vincent Gallo, Chris Penn, Anabella Sciorra, Gretchen Mol, Benicio Del Toro and Isabella Rossellini, would be a can't-miss flick. Yet, "The Funeral," a somber mob movie set in the Depression era 1930′s, falls flat on it's face, with and ending so surreal and depressing, it almost makes watching the movie a total waste of time.

The movie begins with Gallo, who plays Johnny, the youngest of three mobster brothers, being carried in a coffin into the family house for viewing. The casket is opened and viewed by the oldest brother Ray (Christopher Walken) who says, "He died so young. Only 22 years old and look what they did to him."

Now enters the crazy-eyed, middle brother Chez (Chris Penn), who intermittently laughs and cries at the sight of his younger brother in the coffin, and you get the idea that maybe Chez is not playing with a full deck; or maybe without any cards at all. Then we get the flashbacks, which try to explain how young Johnny got into the coffin in the first place.

The three Italian/American brothers are in cahoots with fellow mobster Gaspare (Benecio Del Toro), in some sort of a union busting operation. At a meeting in Chez' bar, Gaspare lays down the law that things are to be done his way, or people may get hurt. Ray and Chez, reluctantly agree to Gaspare's demands, but young Johnny laughs in Gaspare's face, making Gaspare not too happy himself. When Gaspare exits the scene, Chez screams at Johnny, "What's wrong with you?" Ray chimes in with, "You know what? You're looking for trouble."

Johnny was looking for more trouble than his two brother's realized, and they found out quick how much trouble, when Johnny brings Gaspare's wife, obviously drunk, to the family home for a few more pops. Ray demands that Johnny leave immediately and take the girl with him, but Johnny scoffs, "I'll leave, but only after I have sex with her."

One thing leads to another and we find out that Johnny is not only an adulterer, but also a Communist, who disdains the business he and his brother are engaged in, not to mention Gaspare in particular. There is scene in a union hall where a female agitator (Edie Falco of The Sopranos fame) incites the Communist pro-union crowd with a fiery speech, and afterwards, we realize Johnny was lucky he wasn't killed long before he was 22 years old.

All three brothers have long suffering wives. Ray's is played by the talented Anabella Sciorra (who co-produced the movie); Chez' by the very beautiful Isabella Rossellini and Johnny's by a very young, blond and pretty Grethcen Mol. None of the three women do anything more than look sad and hopeless throughout the movie, and you can't blame them, considering they're married to three base hoodlums, with no obvious redeeming values and not one iota of likeablity.

There is one memorable scene where Ray and his crew bring Gaspare to a "sitdown." Ray accuses Gaspare of murdering Johnny, because Johnny was sleeping with Gaspare's wife. Gaspare, as cool as a pina colada in Miami Beach, says with a shrug, "I'm only going to tell you this once. I did not kill your brother."

The rest of the movie is one surreal scene after another, where Ray somehow turns into a two-bit philosopher, then a predictable murderer. (Oh I forgot, when Ray was a child of maybe 12 years old, Ray's father, great man that he was, handed young Ray a gun and made him blow out the brains of some poor sucker, for reasons unknown.)

The final scene is so unbelievable, I can't believe an accomplisher director like Ferrara didn't leave it on the cutting room floor. And if necessary, end the movie with no ending at all, right in the middle of a scene (like in the last Soprano episode).

I'd like to give this morose movie zero stars, but the actors, especially Chris Penn, give believable, if not over-the-top performances. So in the interest of fairness, I'll give "The Funeral" 1 out of 5 stars.

But don't say I didn't warn you not to waste the 98 minutes needed to sit through this very bad movie.

Joe Bruno on the Mob – The Mysterious Murder of Mary Rogers- The Beautiful Cigar Girl

She was known as "The Beautiful Cigar Girl," but the 1841 murder of 20-year-old Mary Rogers remains one of the most baffling unsolved murders in the history of New York City.

Rogers was a clerk in the upscale John Anderson's Tobacco Shop in downtown Manhattan. She was an amazingly beautiful girl, and famous writers such as Edgar Allen Poe, James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving became her regular customers. Poet Fitz Green-Halleck was so smitten by her, he wrote a poem in Rogers' honor. Many of the tops newspaper editors and writers were also frequent customers at Anderson's, some just to get a brief glimpse of Rogers' beauty.

On Sunday morning, July 25, 1841, at a Nassau Street boarding house owned by her mother, Rogers told one of the boarders, her finacee Daniel Payne, that she was going out for the afternoon to visit her sister, a Mrs. Downing. That night, New York was hit by a severe thunderstorm, and Rogers did not return to the boarding house. Both her mother and Payne figured that because of the storm, Rogers was spending the night at her sister's house. Yet the next day, Rogers' sister told them that Rogers had never shown up at all, nor had she expected her to visit. Joined by Roger's ex-finacee, Alfred Crommelin, they searched the city, but could not find any trace of Rogers. Unfortunately, this was not the first time that Rogers had disappeared. In October 1838, Rogers' whereabouts were unknown for several days. When she returned, she said she had visited a friend in Brooklyn, even though she had not told her mother, or her employers of her intentions.

This time, the mother placed an ad in the New York Sun daily newspaper asking if anyone knew the whereabouts of a young lady, aged 20, last seen on the morning of the 25th, who was wearing a white dress, black shawl, blue scarf, Leghorn hat, light colored shoes, and light-colored parasol. No one responded to that ad.

On Wednesday, July 28, at Sybil's Cave in Hoboken, New Jersey, three men spotted something floating and bobbing on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River. They jumped in a rowboat and quickly rowed to the area where the object was located. When they got there, they found the body of a young woman. They tired pulling the body onto the rowboat, but after a few unsuccessful attempts, they tied a rope under the dead woman's chin and rowed toward shore.

When the coroner examined the body, he found a red mark, the shape of a man's thumb, on the right side of her neck, and several marks on the left side of her neck, the size of a man's finger, indicating she had been strangled and her body dumped into the river. Crommelin, after reading the accounts in the newspapers of the body found in the Hudson River, traveled to Hoboken and identified the body as that of Mary Rogers.

Because of her popularity with the press, Rogers' death became front page news in all the New York City newspapers. Members of the press cast suspicion on her fiancée Daniel Payne, who had told the police that on the day of Roger's disappearance, he had visited his brother and had spent the day bouncing to and from several bars and restaurants. To prove his innocence, Payne, produced sworn affidavits from witnesses, saying he was indeed where he said he was on the day Rogers' disappeared.

The mystery of Rogers' death soon disappeared from the newspapers. The New York City police, which then consisted of motley night-time Watchmen and day-time Roundsmen, who were untrained and lowly paid commoners with little incentive to solve crimes, decided not to investigate any further since the body was found in New Jersey. The New Jersey police felt Rogers had most likely been killed in New York City and that the murder investigation was not their problem.

Frederica Loss owned a tavern called Nick Moore's House near Hoboken, New Jersey, not far from where Mary Rogers' body had been found On August 25, 1841, two of her sons, who were playing in the woods, found various articles of women's clothing, including a handkerchief with the initials M.R. Mrs. Loss immediately notified the police. This new discovery ignited an investigation by the New Jersey police, since they now decided Rogers had indeed been killed in New Jersey. But nothing became of the investigation and it soon ended.

Throughout the years, several criminologists tried to explain who killed Mary Rogers and why. Yet no credible evidence ever materialized and no one was ever charged with the crime. A year after Rogers' death, Edgar Allen Poe, obviously saddened by the tragedy of "The Beautiful Cigar Girl," wrote his famous novel "The Mystery of Marie Roget." The novel was set in Paris, and duplicated the events that had occurred in Rogers' death. In the novel, Poe's famous detective Austin Dupin concluded that the murderer was a naval officer of dark complexion, who had previously attempted to elope with Marie (Rogers), which explained her first disappearance in 1838. He then killed her in 1841, when she refused to marry him a second time.

Poe's novel closely mirrored the most credible explanation of Mary Rogers' death, which was put forth by author Raymond Paul in the early 1970s. Paul's theory was that Daniel Payne murdered Rogers, but not on the Sunday she disappeared, for which Payne had a solid alibi, but on the following Tuesday. Because Mary's body was still in rigor mortis when she was found, she could not have been dead for more than 24 hours. Rigor mortis starts scant hours after a person dies, but then after 24 hours, it gradually dissipates.

Paul concluded, from the evidence compiled more than 130 years earlier, that Payne had gotten Roger's pregnant, and on Sunday July, 25 1841, he ferried her off to Hoboken to have an abortion. While her mother and former fiancée were looking for Rogers, Rogers was recuperating from the abortion in a Hoboken inn. Payne then returned to Hoboken on Tuesday, July 27, to pick Rogers up and bring her back to New York City. When Rogers told Payne she was breaking off their relationship, Paul concluded Payne strangled her and dropped her body into the Hudson River. Paul also deduced from the circumstances that Rogers' brief disappearance in 1838, was for the same reason; to have an abortion.

After Rogers' death, Payne started drinking heavily. On October 7, 1841, Payne, after making the rounds of several New York bars, purchased the poison laudanum. He took the ferry to Hoboken and went to Nick Moore's House, where he got properly drunk. Soused, he staggered, holding a bottle of brandy, to the spot in the woods where Rogers' clothes had been found. He wrote on a piece of paper, "To the world here I am on the very spot. May God forgive me for my misspent life." He put the note in his pocket, drank the laudanum and washed it down with the brandy. Then he laid down and died.

The newspapers and the New York City police, thinking that Rogers had been killed on a Sunday for which Payne had an airtight alibi, figured Payne had committed suicide, because the love of his life had been murdered. Yet, the police investigation had been so cursory, incomplete and totally inefficient, they never considered the fact that it was impossible for Rogers to have been killed four days before she was found, because her body was still in the state of rigor mortis.

Although the murder of Mary Rogers has never officially been solved, her death was not in vain. The complete incompetency of the New York City police force, combined with pressure from an outraged New York City press and populace, compelled the city to totally revamp its policing procedures. Starting in 1845, Watchmen and Roundsmen became obsolete, as New York City finally created a police force, comprised of men trained specifically to prevent and investigate crimes.

Joe Bruno on the Mob – The Great New York City Fire of 1835

It was the worst fire in New York City's history. But that didn't stop the poor Irish from the slums of the Five Points area, from going on a dazzling display of looting, which led to one of the biggest free champagne parties ever witnessed.

The city was in the throes of one of the coldest winters on record. On the days preceding "The Great Fire," the temperature had dropped as low as seventeen degrees below zero. By the night of December 16, 1835, there was 2 feet of frozen snow on the ground, and the temperature was exactly zero frigid degrees. It was so cold, both the Hudson River and East Rivers were completely frozen.

Around 9 pm, a watchman (the precursor to a New York City policeman) named Warren Hayes was crossing the corner of Merchant (now Beaver Street) and Pearl Street, and he thought he smelled smoke. He looked up at the last floor of a five-story building at 25 Merchant Street, rented by Comstock and Andrews, a famous dry goods store, and spotted smoke coming out of a window. Unbeknownst to Hayes, a gas pipe had ruptured, and had ignited some coals that were left on a stove. Hayes immediately ran through the streets yelling "Fire!!" In minutes, the great fire bell that stood above City Hall began peeling loudly, summoning what was left of the New York City Fire Department. The bell at the Tombs Prison, about a mile north, also started ringing, summoning the volunteer firemen in that area.

In 1832, New York City was stricken with the worst case of cholera in the city's history. Four thousand people died and more than half of the city's quarter million population fled the city in fear. This decimated the New York City Fire Department, and by 1835, the Fire Department had less than half of its previous members. The volunteer fire department that responded on December 16, 1835, had spent the previous night fighting a fire at Burlington Street on the East River, and were now near exhaustion. By the time the local fire department arrived 30 minutes later, due to forty mile an hour winds, the fire had already spread to fifty structures. Buildings were going up in flames on Water Street, Exchange Place, Beaver, Front and South Streets. By midnight, the fire had also consumed Broad and Wall Street, which was the heart of the business and financial center of New York City, if not the entire country. Also engulfed by the conflagration was most of the city's newspaper plants, retail and wholesale stores and warehouses.

The call went out to every fire department in the city, but it was of no use. Seventy-five hook and ladder companies were at the scene less than two hours after the fire started. Hundreds of citizens pitched in too, carrying water in bucket, pails and even tubs. Unfortunately, because of the cold weather, fire hoses were mostly useless. Also, the entire city's cistern, wells and fire hydrants were frozen too. Whatever water did stream thinly from the hydrants through the hoses, only went thirty feet into the air, then quickly turned into ice. What made matters worse, due to the high minds, this ice/water mixture, feebly coming out of the hoses, was blown back onto the fireman themselves, and soon scores of firemen were living ice structures. Many firemen poured brandy into their boots, to keep their feet from getting frostbite. Some drank the brandy too, in order to warm the rest of their bodies.

Other firemen raced to the East River and started chopping the ice to reach the water below. Black Joke Engine No. 33 was dragged onto the deck of a ship and started pumping water through the gaps in the ice. It directed the water though three other engines, until it finally reached the fire on Water Street. But in a few hours, those four engines were frozen too, and were no longer of any use.

Two building were saved in an odd way. Barrels of vinegar were rolled out of the Oyster King Restaurant in the Downing Building on Garden Street. This vinegar was poured into several fire engines, and used to douse the fires in the Downing Building and the Journal of Commerce Building next door. But the vinegar ran out and could not be used to save any more structures.

As the city was engulfed in mayhem, a man ran into a church on Garden Street and began playing a funeral dirge on an organ, which could be heard all throughout Lower Manhattan. But in minutes, that church caught fire too, and the organist was seen running from the flaming building.

Soon the fire spread to Hanover Square, Williams Street, Hanover Street and Exchange Place. Burning cloths and twines from various buildings were blown into the air and flew across the East River, igniting the roofs of homes in Brooklyn. The city was ablaze so intensely, smoke could be seen as far south as Philadelphia, and as far north as New Haven. New York City was so desperate, Philadelphia firemen were summoned from 90 miles away to help fight the blaze.

After consulting with experts, Mayor Cornelius W. Lawrence agreed that the fire could be stopped if he blew up certain buildings in strategic places, so that the flames could not travel from building to building. The only problem was, the sale of gunpowder was forbidden in New York City. The nearest ample supply was in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in Red Hook, Brooklyn, as well as on Governor's Island. Mayor Strong sent word the gunpowder was needed immediately, but it did not arrive until noon of December 17, accompanied by eighty marines and a dozen sailors. The military, with the help of James Hamilton, the son of former United States Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, began blowing up buildings, and in a few hours, the blaze was contained at Coenties Slip.

As downtown Manhattan continued smoldering, hundreds of Irish men, woman and children, from the slums of the Five Points area, rushed into the devastated area, eyes sparkling and hands a-grabbing. For a full 24 hours, the hoodlums looted whatever they could get their hands on; stealing cloaks, frock coats, plug hats, and silk and satin of the finest quality. Cases and kegs of booze, beer and wine were smashed open, and the mob drank heartily in the smoky, frigid streets. Fights broke out between drunk and delirious rioters, over who had the right to steal what. Ten thousand bottles of the finest champagne was stolen too, and what the mob could not guzzle on site, they lugged back to their slums for later consumption.

Noted diarist and future Mayor of New York City, Philip Hone later wrote, "The miserable wretches, who prowled around the ruins, and became beastly drunk on the champagne and other wines and liquors, with which the streets and roads were lined, seemed to exult in the misfortune of others."

Finally, the area was placed under martial law, and was patrolled by the marines from the Navy Yard, and by the Third and Ninth Military Regiments. But this did not completely stop the looters from continuing their felonious frenzy. Dozens rushed to unaffected areas outside the burn zone, and torched buildings, so they could loot those buildings too. Five arsonists were arrested by the marines, but a sixth one, who was caught torching a building on the corner of Stone and Broad, was captured by angry citizens and immediately hung from a tree. His frozen body stood dangling there and was not cut down by the police until three days later.

From the start of the fire, three days passed until the last spark was extinguished. By then, 17 blocks of lower Manhattan, covering 52 acres, and consisting of 693 buildings, had burned to the ground. Two people were killed and the damages was assessed at 20 million dollars, almost a billion dollars in today's money.

There was 10 million dollars in insurance money owed for the damages, but only a scant amount of that was ever paid, since the insurance companies and banks had also burned to the ground, forcing them out of business. Not being able to collect on their insurance, and not being able to get loans from banks that no longer existed, hundred of businesses that burned to the ground during "The Great New York Fire of 1835," never re-opened.

In 1836, the downtown area was rebuilt, with structures made of stone and concrete, which were less susceptible to spreading fires. Some of these building are still standing.