Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (79 page)

With Murder Inc. depleted
of most of  its top killers, Louie “Lepke” Buchalter, Louis Capone, and Mendy Weiss went on trial in late 1940 for the 1936 murder of Joe Rosen. At this point in time, Abe Reles was still very much alive, and singing. Reles testified he knew Lepke ordered the Rosen hit. And so did Allie Tannenbaum, who testified he heard Lepke give the order to Max Rubin to have Joe Rosen killed.

However, the final nail in Lepke’ coffin was pounded in by Max Rubin himself.

In late 1936, after being told by Lepke, through Weiss, to get out of town, Rubin did just that; disappearing for nine months. However, in 1937 Rubin slipped back into New York City without Lepke’s permission. Soon after, Rubin met with Lepke, and he begged Lepke to let him stay in New York City with his family.

Rubin told Lepke, “Louis, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to see my wife and child. You know how it is, Louis.”

Lepke looked at Rubin with doe-like eyes. “But Max, you came back without permission.”

“Don’t get any ideas,” Rubin told Lepke. “No one knows I’m in town. I didn’t talk to anybody.”

Lepke smiled, “By the way Max, how old are you?”

“I’m 48,
Lep,” Rubin said. “Exactly.”

“That’s a ripe old age, isn’t it,” Lepke replied.

In late 1937, Rubin exited the subway in the Bronx and plodded up Gun Hill Road. Suddenly, a gunman ran up to Rubin and shot him once in the back of the head.

Miraculously, the bullet went completely through Rubin’s skull, and exited between his nose and right eye. For 38 days Rubin lay dying in the hospital, thinking every day of Lepke’s last words to him: “48 is a ripe old age, isn’t it?”

Rubin recovered, but the nerves in his neck had been shattered and his head was left permanently crooked. Rubin wanted revenge against Lepke, and he wanted it badly.

When Rubin appeared on the witness stand, after Reles and Tannenbaum had already testified Lepke had ordered the murder of Joe Rosen, Lepke knew his days as a free man were over.

Rubin swore it was Lepke who ordered the murder of Joe Rosen, and that Lepke had given that order to Rubin himself. Rubin said he relayed Lepke’s message to Louis Capone, who forwarded it to Mendy Weiss. Weiss then rounded up his top killers, including Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss and Happy Maione, to clip Joe Rosen.

At 10:15 Saturday night, Nov. 1941, the jury was sent out to decide the fates of Lepke, Capone, and Weiss.

At 2:30 a.m., the judge was told the jury was ready with its verdicts. After the jurors were seated and the defendants returned to the courtroom, Charles E. Steven, the foreman of the jury, rose and said, “We find the defendants, and each of them, guilty of murder in the first degree, as charged.”

The penalty, by law, was death.

On Monday morning, Justice Taylor stood at the bench and cast a steely gaze that bore right through Lepke’s eyes.

Judge Taylor said, “Louis Buchalter, alias Lepke, for the murder of Joseph Rosen, whereof he is convicted, is hereby sentenced to the punishment of death.”

Judge Taylor also gave the same pronouncement to both Louis Capone and Mendy Weiss.

*****

For the next four
years, Lepke used every trick in the book to delay his and his two men’s executions. When all appeals failed, two days before he was scheduled to die, Lepke asked for a meeting with Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan. Lepke claimed he had information that would:

1. Implicate a prominent labor leader on a murder charge;
   
2. A noted public official on a conspiracy charge;
   
3. And information that a close relative of a very-high public officeholder was a “front man” for at least two of the ganglords who are credited with controlling crime in the United States.
   

      “If I would talk,” Lepke said, “a lot of big names would get hurt. When I say big, I mean big. These names would surprise you.”

Hogan met w
ith Lepke, and after they spoke Hogan immediately contacted the Governor of New York State: Thomas E. Dewey. Dewey gave the three men on death row a stay of execution for two more days, so that Dewey could contemplate the significance of what Lepke had told Hogan. At this point, Dewey was a serious candidate for the presidency of the United States.

Burton Turkus said in his book
Murder Incorporated
, “Obviously, then, Lepke’s information must have had, at least in his own convictions, a powerful and significant relationship to Dewey’s aspirations. The facts and the deductions all pointed unerringly in one direction: Lepke had an offer of information on politics which he felt was so national a sensation that, if publicly disclosed during a close presidential campaign, could put Dewey in the White House!”

The
New York Mirror
wrote the day after Dewey was told of Lepke’s revelations, “It is said Lepke offered material to Governor Dewey that would have made him an unbeatable presidential candidate.”

Governor Dewe
y, however, could not be swayed, and he rejected Lepke’s offer.

That same day, Lepke received a letter from his old pal
, Gurrah Shapiro, which said, “I told you we should have taken Dewey out when we had the chance.”

On March 4, 1944, Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, as befitting the boss, took the long walk down the last mile first, followed in minutes by Louis Capone and Mendy Weiss. All three were jolted in Sing Sing’s electric chair a few minutes after midnight, effectively ending Murder Incorporated’s reign of terror in the United States of America.

Other murders would be committed by organized crime figures in the future. But never again would a group of killers be united into one mighty organization (on a steady weekly salary) for the sole purpose of killing whomever their bosses said needed to be killed.

As of this date, Louis “Lepke” Buchalter remains the only American mob boss ever executed by the United States Government.

Gurrah Shapiro was right. They should have whacked Dewey like Dutch Schultz had said. If they had done in Dewey before he could do them any damage, who knows how many more years Murder Incorporated would have thrived unrestrained.

       A scary thought, indeed.

             
                  The End

*****

The Wrong Man: Who Ordered the Murder of Gambler Herman Rosenthal and Why.

By Joe Bruno

PUBLISHED BY:

Knickerbocker Literary Services

EDITED BY:

Marc A. Maturo

COVER BY:

Nitro Covers

Copyright 2012 -- Joseph Bruno Literary Services

******

  Introduction

2012 is the 100
-
year
anniversary of the murder of small-time gambler Herman Rosenthal - the most celebrated murder of its time. Make no mistake, there are no good guys here; no innocent victims. The fact is an offensive and offensive-looking well-known criminal framed a crooked New York City police lieutenant for the killing of an odious stool pigeon. People in the underworld cheered the death of Herman Rosenthal; he was that much disliked. But that doesn’t negate the fact that the wrong man sat in Sing Sing’s electric chair for ordering Rosenthal’s murder, while the man who framed him - and actually ordered the murder of Herman Rosenthal - walked away scot free, content in the knowledge that he was able to fool so many prominent law enforcement officials so easily.

This is how it
all happened.

*****

H
ERMAN ROSENTHAL

He was thoroughly
unlikeable
; mean and snarky, and he would swindle his own mother if it would earn him a few bucks. Yet, the murder of small-time gambler Herman Rosenthal ignited a firestorm in the New York City press, which resulted in New York City Police Lieutenant, Charles Becker, being unjustly fried in Sing Sing’s electric chair.

             
Herman Rosenthal was a runt of a man who was born in Russia and immigrated to the United States with his parents when he was five-years-old. They settled in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which, in the late 1800s, was a conglomeration of hard-working immigrants, infused with thieves, crooks, cheats, gamblers, and murderers.

Rosenthal’s
parents were Jewish. But there is no evidence that Rosenthal ever set foot in a Jewish temple after his tumultuous teenage years began. At the age of 14, Rosenthal eschewed school, and he began running with one of the many local street gangs. Rosenthal stole from pushcarts, and picked the pockets of drunks. He perpetrated a myriad of illegal schemes corruptible kids from that era did to amuse and enrich themselves.

Despite his size (he wa
s 5-foot-3-inches), Rosenthal was a competent street fighter, and he gained a reputation as someone who could handle himself in a pinch. (A friend once said of Rosenthal, “He was mighty fast on his feet, and he could hit hard.”)

To earn a meager living, Rosenthal sold newspapers on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge. However, the money he earned selling newspapers was peanuts compared to what Rosenthal envisioned as proper remuneration for a man of his guile, and what he considered to be – his superior intellect. Invariably, Rosenthal gravitated
to the money, and in the Lower East Side of Manhattan at the turn of the century that usually led to a poolroom. That’s where Rosenthal met Big Tim Sullivan, the Political Prince of the Lower East Side, who had as much scruples as a bald-headed eagle has hair.

Because of his spunk and willingn
ess to mix it up when necessary - and also because Sullivan knew that “smart Jew boys” like Rosenthal represented a huge voting block on the Lower East Side -Big Tim got Little Herman Rosenthal a job as a numbers runner for a downtown poolroom. Rosenthal soon graduated to working from a secret back room in the poolroom, where he took sporting bets, both in person and by code over the phone.

In 1897, Rosenthal married the lovely
Dora Gilbert, and they became partners in the profession of Dora’s choice: the back-bruising business of prostitution. Quite simply, Dora did her best work on her knees and on her back in their West 40
th
Street apartment bedroom, while Rosenthal stood guard outside the bedroom door to make sure the visitors behaved themselves and didn’t quibble over the price or the performance. In time, Dora employed two other “working girls,” and Rosenthal became their pimp, too.

In the early 1900s, t
hings were going quite well for Rosenthal when Dora decided to give him the gate. Dora divorced Herman, and she used the money she had saved from her sex business to open up a legitimate boardinghouse: no johns need apply. This, in effect, left Rosenthal without a job, and since unemployment insurance had not yet been devised, Rosenthal went back to Big Tim Sullivan with his hat in his hand.

Big Tim, still fond of Little Herman, got Rosenthal a job as the proprietor of a small Lower East Side crap
s game. Rosenthal did so well for Sullivan in this endeavor, Big Tim procured Rosenthal a prestigious gig as a bookmaker in a storefront in Far Rockaway, Queens, which was the last stop on the New York City subway transit system. Riding the subway daily gave Rosenthal plenty of time to think, and he envisioned the day when he would become a big shot himself.

As
a result of Rosenthal’s guile and Big Tim’s connections, Rosenthal moved up the underworld gambling ladder one step at a time. Rosenthal eventually became the manager of the prestigious Hesper Club, located on 111 Second Avenue and owned by Big Tim Sullivan’s brother, Patrick. The private Hesper Club was famous for its full casino. It featured roulette wheel and craps tables, and a back-room poker game which attracted some of the most illustrious gamblers in town. The gamblers included respected judges, assistant district attorneys, and a few mid-to-high-level government employees.

The Hesper Club was a c
lub where you obtained membership only through the recommendation of another member. Big Tim was so intent on his brother Patrick’s private club thriving, Big Tim even penned a flowery letter, which was framed and placed inside the club next to the front door.

The letter, dated
April 30, 1903, and addressed to then-Hesper president Sam Harris, read:

“Dear Sir: Regarding my election as a life member of the Hesper Club, I keenly appreciate the compliment you pay me, and should it be possible for me at any time to serve you, or any of the members, I would be glad to do so. A simple word from you will command me – Yours truly, TIMOTHY D. SULLIVAN.”