Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (17 page)

Siegel's unseeing right eye was found on the floor, 15 feet from his lifeless body.

S
t. Clair, Stephanie (Madame Queenie)

She was chased out of the Harlem numbers rackets by Dutch Schultz, but when Schultz lay dying in a hospital bed from a bullet wound, Stephanie St. Clair had the last laugh.

Stephanie St. Clair was born in 1886, in Marseilles, a seaport in southern France. At 26, she emigrated to New York City, and she settled in Harlem. Almost immediately, St. Clair hooked up with the Forty Thieves, a white gang which were in existence since the 1850's. There is no record of what  St. Clair did for the next 10 years, but it's safe to say, considering her ties to the Forty Thieves, a notorious shake-down gang, what she did was anything but legal.

In 1922, St. Clair used $10,000 of her own money, and she started Harlem's first numbers rackets. St. Clair was known for having a violent temper, and she often cursed at her underlings, in several languages. When people questioned St. Clair about her heritage, she snapped that she was born in “European France,” and that she spoke flawless French, unlike the French-speaking rabble from the Caribbean. In Harlem, they called her Madame St. Clair, but in the rest of the city she was known as just plain “Queenie.”

In the mid-1920's, known bootlegger and stone killer Dutch Schultz, decided he wanted to take over all the policy rackets in Harlem. Schultz did not ask St. Clair to back away too nicely, resulting in the deaths of dozens of St. Clair's numbers runners.

St. Claire enlisted the help of  Bumpy Johnson, an ex-con with a hair-trigger temper, to take care of the Schultz situation. Johnson went downtown, and he visited Italian mob boss Lucky Luciano. Johnson asked Luciano to talk some sense into Schultz, before things got downright nasty. However, there was not much Luciano could do, since at the time Luciano was one of Schultz's partners in several illegal endeavors. Luciano suggested that St. Clair and Johnson throw in with Schultz, making them, in effect, a sub-division of Schultz's numbers business. This did not sit too well with St. Clair, and even though Johnson tried to convince her this was the
smart move, St. Clair turned down Luciano's offer.

As a result of her refusal to buckle under to Schultz's demands, St. Clair began having trouble with the police, whom she was paying off to look the other way. This was the work of Schultz, who through his connections with Tammany Hall, had several politicians in his back pocket, as well as half of the New York City police force. While Schultz's number runners worked the streets of Harlem with impunity, St. Clair's runners, when they were not being killed by Schultz's men, were being arrested for illegal gambling.

St. Clair decided to fight back with the power of the press. In December 1930, St. Clair took several ads in Harlem newspapers, accusing the police of graft, shakedowns, and corruption. That did not go over too well with the local fuzz, and they immediately arrested St. Clair for illegal gambling. St. Clair was tried, convicted, and sentenced to eight months of hard labor on Welfare Island.

Upon her release, St. Clair appeared before the Seabury Committee, which was investigating graft in the Bronx and in the Manhattan Magistrates Courts. St. Clair testified that from 1923-1926, to protect her runners from arrest, she had paid the police in Harlem $6,000. She added that after the police took  her money, they arrested her number runners anyway. Schultz  had a good laugh over that one, since $6,000 was less than he paid monthly to keep the cops in New York City happy.

Nothing came from St. Clair's testimony before the Seabury Committee, so St. Clair decided to plead her case directly to New York City Mayor Jimmy Walker, who was almost as crooked as Schultz. St. Clair told Walker that Schultz was pressuring her to join his gang, or else. Walker, who was being investigated by the Seabury Committee himself, answered  St. Clair by quitting his job as Mayor and relocating to Europe for the next few years, until the heat died down.

At her wit's end, St. Claire pleaded with the other black policy number bankers in Harlem to join forces with her in a battle against Schultz. Knowing that Schultz had too much juice in the government and too many shooters in his gang, the other Harlem policy bankers turned St. Clair down flat.

Bumpy Johnson soon found out that Schultz had put the word out on the streets that St. Clair was to be shot on sight. St. Clair went into hiding, refusing to even go outside to see the light of day. On one occasion, Johnson had to hide St. Clair in a coal bin, under a mound of coal, to save her from Schultz's men. That was the final straw for St. Claire. She sent word to Schultz that she would agree to his demands. Schultz sent word back to St. Clair, that she could remain alive as long as she gave Schultz a majority share of her numbers rackets. St. Clair reluctantly agreed.

Schultz had his own run of bad luck, when he demanded that Luciano and Luciano's pals, agree to the killing of Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey, who was breathing down Schultz's neck. Schultz's proposition was turned down flat, and when he said he would kill Dewey himself, Schultz was shot in the belly, in the bathroom of a New Jersey restaurant.

Schultz lingered in a delirious state in a hospital for a few days before he died. As Schultz was laying there mumbling inanities, a telegram arrived, saying
“As ye sow, so shall you reap.”

The telegram was sent by the Queen of Harlem: Stephanie St. Clair.

Wanting to get away from all the tensions, St. Clair eventually turned over her number business to Bumpy Johnson. Not being the boss “Madame Queenie” any longer, St. Clair faded into obscurity, and she died in her sleep in 1969.

In the 1997 movie “Hoodlum,” Lawrence Fishburne played Bumpy Johnson, Tim Roth played Dutch Schultz, Andy Garcia played Lucky Luciano, and Cicely Tyson played Stephanie St. Clair.

S
ullivan, Timothy (Big Tim)

“Big Tim” Sullivan was a Tammany Hall hack who gave true meaning to the term “crooked politician.”

Sullivan was born in 1863 at 25 Baxter Street, one of the worse slum buildings in New York City. At 25 Baxter Street, the squalor was so intense, in 1866, a
New York Times
article called it, “one of the filthiest tenements in New York City.”

Sullivan's parents had emigrated from County Kerry, Ireland, and with them being so poor, Sullivan was thrust into the streets at the age of eight, to shine shoes and sell newspapers. Being the enterprising lad that he was, Sullivan soon saved up enough cash to start his own newspaper delivery service, in which Sullivan employed dozens of poor kids from the neighborhood to do his deliveries. In a few short years, Sullivan had enough cash to purchase four local bars; the first of which he opened on Christie Street, just east of the Bowery.

One of Sullivan's bar customers was Thomas "Fatty" Walsh, a notorious ward leader in  Tammany Hall. Sullivan fell under Walsh's political wing, and in 1894, Sullivan was elected to the Third District's State Assembly.

Running roughshod over the rules, Sullivan became a large cog in Tammany Hall's corrupt wheel. Soon, Sullivan was appointed the District Leader of the entire Lower East Side of Manhattan.

That was like giving a vampire the key to the blood bank.

Sullivan bridged the gap between public service and common street thuggery, by recruiting infamous gang leaders, like Paul Kelly and Monk Eastman, to do his dirty work. This work included “voter influence” at election sites, which basically meant their gangs beat up voters who didn't see things exactly Sullivan's way.

In return for using his influence to keep these gangsters out of jail, Sullivan got a piece of all their illegal activities in the Lower East Side, including prostitution, gambling, loan-sharking, and extortion. To keep things looking on the up-and-up, Sullivan also entrenched himself in many legal endeavors, including becoming partners in the MGM and Loews cinema operations.

In Congress, Sullivan did pioneer a couple of key pieces of legislation. In 1896, Sullivan introduced a law that made boxing legal, only to see it made illegal again in 1900 after several boxers were killed in the ring.

In 1911, Sullivan also passed the dubious “Sullivan Act” which made it illegal to carry guns, unless you could afford to pay a hefty registration fee. Needless to say, Sullivan's cronies made so much illegal dough, they all were able to cough up the cash needed to carry guns legally, in order to enforce their illegal activities. Yet, the common schmo on the street was so poor, he had no choice but to walk the mean streets of New York City without a firearm to protect himself.

In late 1911, Sullivan's evil ways finally caught up with him. Sullivan contracted syphilis, probably in one of the many prostitution houses in which he was a partner. As a result of this disease, Sullivan became paranoid and delusional. Sullivan was judged mentally incompetent, and he was removed from his seat in the Senate. In 1912, Sullivan's family placed him in a mental institution, which made his condition worse. While in the sanitarium, Sullivan complained he was being watched and that his food was being poisoned.

In 1913, while the guards were playing cards, Sullivan escaped from the sanitarium. Two weeks  later, Sullivan's body was found near the railroad tracks in Pelham Parkway.  It appeared, he had been hit by a freight train.

For some unknown reason, Sullivan's body was not claimed until 13 days later. The city
declared him a vagrant, to be shamefully interred in a potter's field at Hart Island. As Sullivan's body was being readied for transport to Hart Island, a police officer made a final inspection of the corpse. He was astounded to discover that the dead man was, indeed, the missing Big Tim Sullivan. As a result, Big Tim was finally given a proper send-off.

After a jam-packed funeral ceremony at Old St. Patrick's Cathedral on Mulberry Street, an estimated 25,000 people lined the streets, as Sullivan's funeral reception made its way along Lower Manhattan and over the Williamsburg Bridge.

Sullivan was finally laid to rest at Calvary Cemetery in Long Island.

T
orrio, Johnny

Giovanni “Johnny” Torrio, nicknamed “The Brain,” “The Fox,” and “Terrible Johnny,” was born in Italy in 1882. His father died when Johnny was 2-years-old, and his mother emigrated with Torrio to America. They settled on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where Torrio's mother remarried a grocer.

After working as a porter at his stepfather's grocery store (which was really a front for illegal activities), Torrio embarked on a life of crime. He soon became the boss of the James Street Gang, and with the  money he saved  from his ill-gotten gains, Torrio opened his own pool hall, which was the  base of operations for his assorted crimes, which included burglaries, robberies, gambling, and loan-sharking.

Torrio caught the eye of Paul Kelly, the leader of the 1,500-member Five Points Gang. Kelly inserted the diminutive, but tough-as-nails Torrio as the bouncer at Kelly's nightclub on Pell Street, considered one of the roughest dives in Manhattan. In a short time, Kelly was so impressed with Torrio's business acumen, he made Torrio his second-in-command.

However, Torrio figured he could make more money by branching outside Kelly's gang. As a result, in 1912 Torrio moved his operations to Brooklyn, where he opened a bar with a hidden brothel, near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. His partner was the murderous Frankie Yale and one of their bouncers was a 19-year-old Al Capone.

In 1915, Torrio was summoned to Chicago by his uncle-through-marriage, “Big Jim” Colosimo, to help Colosimo rid himself of treacherous Chicago Black Hand shake-down artists. In Chicago, Torrio had killed whomever needed to be killed, and soon Torrio was in charge of Big Jim's numerous brothels. In 1919, Torrio brought Capone to Chicago, to help with the muscle he needed to keep things running smoothly in the flesh-peddling business.

In 1920, when Prohibition came into effect, Torrio saw the prospect for tremendous profits by importing, selling, and serving illegal booze. Torrio tried to convince Colosimo to pare down his brothels and to get into the illegal liquor business. However, Colosimo did not see the potential of Prohibition, and he turned Torrio down flat.

Frustrated, Torrio concluded Colosimo was in the way of Torrio making some big money. In late 1920, Torrio imported Yale from Brooklyn, to put Colosimo permanently out of commission. A few bullets did the trick, and Colosimo was erased from the Chicago rackets.

After taking over all of Colosimo's interests, Torrio decided to convince Chicago's several other gangs: Italians, Irish, and Poles, to join forces, each with their own exclusive territory. Most fell into line, with the exception of the North Side Gang headed by Irishman Dion O'Banion. Again, Torrio called on his pal Yale, and in November 1924, while toiling in his flower shop, O'Banion was cut down by a barrage of  bullets.

“Homicidal” Hymie Weiss took over O'Banion's operations, and his first order of business
was to eliminate Torrio. When his limousine was ambushed by Weiss's shooters, Torrio narrowly avoided death. His dog and chauffeur were killed, but Torrio escaped with just two bullet holes in his hat. Torrio was not so lucky a few months later, when he was cornered in front of his apartment building, and shot four times. The shooters were Weiss and George “Bugs” Moran.

For 10 days, Torrio was near death's door, and he was under constant watch by Capone and 30 of his best men. While Torrio was recovering from his wounds, he decided he would live longer if he got out of the Chicago rackets completely. Torrio was 43, and he had accumulated enough cash he could not spend it in several lifetimes.