Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (15 page)

As Dropper was being released from prison on a gun charge at the Essex Market Court on Second Avenue and Second Street, Little Augie and his gang stood anxiously in the street outside the court, mayhem on their minds. A dozen cops surrounded  Dropper, with their eyes on Orgen, who was rumored to be there to kill Dropper. The police pushed Dropper into a waiting cab, when out nowhere, a nobody named Louis Kushner rushed the cab from the back and shot Dropper twice in the head. Kushner denied all involvement with Orgen (but the cops knew better), and he was sentenced  to 20 years-to-life in prison for the murder of Dropper.

Orgen immediately took over Dropper's rackets, and he enlisted a dangerous crew of killers, including “Jack Legs” Diamond, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, and Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro, to keep in line people who needed to be kept in line.

Pressure from the police (who were embarrassed Dropper was killed right under their
noses), forced Orgen to abandon the labor rackets. Dropper segued right into the bootlegging business, supplying illegal hooch to various speakeasies around town. This did not sit too well with the bootleggers whom he had displaced in those joints.

Orgen was told, in no uncertain terms, by Arnold Rothstein and by Meyer Lansky, to get out of the bootlegging business, or bad things would happen to him real quick. Orgen ignored these warnings, so the offended bootleggers struck a deal with Louie “Lepke” Buchalter and Jacob Shapiro, offering them employment in their vast operations if they murdered Orgen.

On October 16, 1927, Orgen was walking in front of 103 Norfolk Street, with his new bodyguard Jack “Legs” Diamond, when a black touring car pulled up alongside him, guns a-blazing. Orgen was killed and Diamond severely wounded, but Diamond lived to die another day.

Orgen was buried by his estranged father, in a huge cherry-wood coffin, lined with white satin. On the top of the coffins was a silver plate that simply said: “Jacob Orgen – Aged 25 years.”

Orgen was 33 at the time of his death, but his father, a legitimate, God-fearing man, considered his son dead eight years earlier when he could not convince Orgen to get out of the rackets.

P
ioggi, Louis (Louie the Lump)

Louis Pioggi, affectionately called Louie the Lump, was a diminutive and dapper Italian-American Five Points Gang member. Pioggi thrust himself into the spotlight one starry night in Coney Island, when he snuffed out the life of Kid Twist, the boss of the former Monk Eastman Jewish Lower East Side gang.

Kid Twist's gang and the Five Pointers were in a constant battle for control of the Lower East Side rackets. Under Kid Twist's reign, Twist and his gang had made great inroads into the Five Pointer's territory. The ire was so great between the two gangs, they made the Hatfields and the McCoys look like choir boys singing in church.

Born in 1889 on the Lower East Side, Pioggi was basically a footnote in the history of the American gangster. Pioggi was a small-timer, who as fate would have it, fell in love with the same dancehall girl the more illustrious Kid Twist (Maxwell Zwerbach) was seeing on the side.

It was the custom at the start of the 20
th
Century, for gangsters who had more than a few bucks in their pockets, to break free from the dumps and dives on the Lower East Side and “go out on the town,” to the wondrous expanses of Coney Island in Brooklyn. On May 14, 1908, Pioggi took a trip out to Coney Island to see Carroll Terry, a gorgeous Coney Island dancehall girl who was the regular squeeze of Kid Twist.

Unknown to Pioggi, Kid Twist was also in Coney Island to see Miss Terry, and he was accompanied by his bodyguard, Cyclone Louie, real name
Vach Lewis. Cyclone Louie was a killer for Kid Twist, but he was better known as a Coney Island circus strongman who bent large pieces steel around his neck for a living.

Pioggi visited the dancehall Terry worked in, and he enticed her to have a few dances with him, which was her job anyway. Pioggi became hopelessly lovesick, and before he left he begged Terry to promise him, after her had shift ended, she'd come back to New York City with him. Saying anything to get rid of Pioggi, Terry said she would, but only if Pioggi left at once so she could do her job without his interference.

The real reason Terry gave Pioggi the bum's rush was because she expected to see Kid Twist shorty. And that she did, when just moments after Pioggi left, Kid Twist and Cyclone Louie made their grand entrance into the dancehall. Terry joined them at a table, and after a few drinks her lips loosened, and she told Twist about Pioggi's amorous advances.

Soon after, Pioggi returned to the dancehall, and he saw Kid Twist holding hands with Terry, with Cyclone Louie standing guard nearby. Knowing he had been had, Pioggi wandered into a dive on Surf Avenue, to drown his sorrows on the second floor of the saloon. Minutes later, Kid Twist and Cyclone Louie burst into the saloon and climbed the stairs. They confronted Pioggi.

“I just seen Carroll,” Kid Twist told Pioggi. “And she said youse is the biggest bum she knows. So she says you are an active cuss, always jumpin' around. Let's see how active youse is.” Kid Twist pointed to the open window. “Take a jump out of the window.”

Pioggi was in no mood for the 25-foot jump, but when Kid Twist made a move for the revolver in his belt, Pioggi, as requested, quickly jumped out of the window.  Pioggi landed on all fours, but he later found out he had fractured his ankle. Pioggi limped to a telephone and called Paul Kelly, the boss of the Five Points gang. Pioggi told Kelly what had transpired concerning Kid Twist.

“I've got to cook him,” Pioggi told Kelly.

“Sure you got to cook him,” Kelly said. “I'll send a fleet down. When my boys get there, you get these bums on the street and open up with your cannons.”

Kelly's boys arrived an hour later, and when they did, they saw Kid Twist and Cyclone Louie having a grand old time in Terry's dancehall, laughing and talking loudly about Pioggi's daring jump. Terry had vacated the premises for a while and was nowhere to be seen. Pioggi sent a kid inside with a note, telling Kid Twist that Terry was waiting for him outside.

As soon as Kid Twist and Cyclone Louie made it to the sidewalk, Kid Twist heard a voice call him from the side.

“Over this way, Kid,” Pioggi yelled.

Before Kid Twist could react, Pioggi put a bullet in his head, killing him instantly. Cyclone Louie stood with his mouth open for an instant, then he started to run for his life. Pioggi and the Five Pointers chased Cyclone Louie, pumping bullets at him at a dazzling rate. Finally, shot five times in the chest and back, Cyclone Louie fell dead as a rock to the pavement.

Pioggi, still outraged, refused to stop shooting. As luck would have it, Terry showed up seconds later, and just for the fun of it, Pioggi pumped a slug into her hip. Terry fell on top of the dead Kid Twist, but she lived to dance another day.

As Pioggi jumped into a getaway car, a cop showed up at the scene. Pioggi fired again. This bullet knocked the cop's helmet off his head, but otherwise did him no harm.

Pioggi finally made his getaway, and he went into hiding, while Kelly contacted Tammany Hall to see if he could negotiate Pioggi a favorable deal.

A few days later, Pioggi turned himself in and pleaded guilty to manslaughter. He also testified that he had acted completely alone, which was quite disingenuous of him, since scores of people had seen the Coney Island executions.

Pioggi was sentenced to 11 months in Elmira State Prison. He left the courthouse sneering. “What's 11 months?” Pioggi said. “I could do that standin' on me head.”

R
odgers, Mary, “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 New York City's history.

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

On  Sunday morning, July 25, 1841, at a Nassau Street boarding house owned by her mother, Rogers told one of the boarders, her fiancé 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 on the next day, Rogers's sister told them that Rogers had never shown up at all, nor had she expected Rogers to visit. Joined by Rogers's ex-fiancé, Alfred
Crommelin, they searched the city, but could find no trace of Rogers.

Unfortunately, this was not the first time that Rogers had disappeared. In October 1838, Rogers's 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 to do so.

After Rogers's second disappearance, Rogers's 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 25
th
, who was wearing a white dress, black shawl, blue scarf, Leghorn hat, light colored shoes, and light-colored parasol.”

No one responded to the 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. The men jumped in a rowboat, and they quickly rowed to the area where the object was located. When they got there, they found the dead 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, in addition to severe discoloration all over her once- beautiful face, he found a red mark, the shape of a man's thumb, on the right side of her neck. There were also several marks on the left side of her neck, the size of a man's finger, indicating Rogers had been strangled and her body dumped in the river.
Crommelin, after reading the accounts in the newspapers of the body found in the Hudson River, traveled to Hoboken, and he identified the body as that of Mary Rogers.

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

The mystery of Rogers's death soon disappeared from the daily newspapers. The New York City police then consisted of motley night-time Watchmen and day-time Roundsmen, who were untrained and lowly paid commoners, with little incentive to solve crimes. These pseudo-policemen decided not to investigate any further, since the body of Rogers 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's body had been found. On August 25, 1841, two of Loss's young sons, who had been playing in the woods, found various articles of women's clothing, including a handkerchief with the initials “M.R.” on it.  Mrs. Loss immediately notified the police of her sons' findings

This new discovery ignited an investigation by the New Jersey police, since they now decided Rogers had indeed been killed in New Jersey. However, 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 has ever materialized and no one was ever charged with the crime.

A year after Rogers's 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 it duplicated the events that had occurred surrounding Rogers's 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.  This mysterious Naval officer then killed Rogers in 1841 after she refused to marry him a second time.

Poe's novel closely mirrored the most credible explanation of Mary Rogers's death, which was put forth by author Raymond Paul in the early 1970s.  Paul's theory was that Daniel Payne had murdered Rogers, but not on the Sunday she disappeared (for which Payne had a solid alibi), but on the following Tuesday. Because Rogers'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.