Authors: Paul R. Kavieff
Shortly after Jaworski was captured, he had been shown a fake telegram stating that an accomplice in the Coverdale robbery had been arrested and had confessed to the crime, implicating Jaworski. The man had supposedly been arrested at Detroit. This news brought a confession from Jaworski. He also agreed to show detectives where he had buried $35,000 of the Coverdale robbery loot. The money represented Jaworski’s share of the holdup money, and he had buried it on the Weckowski farm. The location of the $35,000 was then discovered on the farm and dug up by officers. Jaworski was charged with murder after he admitted that the gang was responsible for the Beadling, Pennsylvania, mine payroll holdup in 1923 and the Mollenauer, Pennsylvania, mine payroll holdup in 1925. In both robberies, a guard had been killed. Jaworski confessed that he had been the driver of the getaway car in the Coverdale holdup. Jaworski, the man who owned the farm, and four other members of the gang were indicted at Pittsburgh by the Allegheny County Grand Jury for armed robbery in connection with the Coverdale holdup. Paul Jaworski was also indicted for the two payroll robbery murders. Gang members Felix Furtak, John Herbe, Jack Ross, and Stanley Bodziakowski were named in the robbery indictment but not apprehended.
Jaworski pled guilty in both the robberies and the murders. He was first convicted of armed robbery at Pittsburgh and sentenced to 30-60 years in prison on April 11, 1927. He requested that he be brought in front of the grand jury to plead guilty to one of the two homicides to which he had confessed so that he could “have his troubles over with.” He was given his wish. Tried for murder in the slaying of a payroll guard during the December 24, 1925, holdup of the Pittsburgh Terminal Coal Company at Mollenauer, Pennsylvania, Jaworski was convicted of first-degree murder on May 18, 1927. He was later sentenced to die in the electric chair.
On August 18, 1927, Paul Jaworski and another convicted murderer named John Vassbinder shot their way out of the Allegheny County Jail at Pittsburgh and escaped. Vassbinder, like Jaworski, was also awaiting the execution of a death sentence. The pistols that Jaworski and Vassbinder used in their “blastout” were believed by police to have been delivered to Jaworski by a visitor to the jail shortly before the escape occurred. Paul Jaworski would later claim that he had bribed an official at the Allegheny County Jail and had gotten two guns as part of the deal. He was allowed to go into an area of the jail called the “bullpen,” where prisoners could receive visitors. It was here that a man handed Paul two pistols through the bars. The man, whose identity was unknown at the time, supposedly had been allowed to take the pistols through jail security without being searched. Jaworski claimed he paid $3,000 dollars to the anonymous jail official to allow this to happen. After the man handed the two pistols to Paul, he produced two more revolvers that he would use. Then Jaworski, his mysterious visitor and John Vassbinder shot their way out of the jail. Two guards were badly wounded in the jailbreak. One of the guards would later die as a result of his wounds.
Later, a letter was intercepted by police in Montevideo, Uruguay. It was sent from Detroit by a Sam Tallas to a fugitive bank robber named Jim Mesheek. The letter, which was postmarked shortly before Paul Jaworski had escaped from jail, read in part: “Jim, this may be the last letter I will write to you because I’m going to the jail with four guns. I will give two to Paul and two for myself and we are going to shoot our way out. If we get out we may be down to see you and if we don’t it’s the graveyard.”
As it turns out, the letter was written by Paul’s brother, Sam Jaworski. It was signed with the alias Sam Tallas. The return address on the correspondence was 2727 Yemans Avenue, Hamtramck, Michigan. This street number was the home of Paul and Sam Jaworski’s parents.
Coincidentally, a search had begun in Detroit for Sam Jaworski, shortly after the jailbreak, in connection with the $5,000 robbery of the General Baking Company on September 9, 1927. He was identified as one of the holdup men by a witness who worked for General Baking Company. At this point, the letter had not yet been discovered, and police still suspected Jaworski’s sister of orchestrating the escape.
On August 29, 1927, a man using the name C.S. Stark called on the home of Mrs. Mary Bastuba on 4439 Baldwin Avenue in Detroit. He wanted to rent her garage. Mrs. Bastuba agreed but was suspicious of Stark. One night soon afterward, Mrs. Bastuba’s daughter Helen noticed the light on in the garage. Peering through the window, she noticed Stark and another man changing the license plates on a car. Miss Bastuba went to the McClellan police station and notified police of the incident. At the woman’s insistence, the precinct sent an officer to watch the garage. On December 30, 1927, the two men returned and were immediately arrested.
C.S. Stark proved to be Sam Jaworski and the other man was Harry Watson. Both men had Detroit police records. They were charged with armed robbery and held for trial. Watson was later identified by Paul Jaworski as one of the six men who had robbed the business offices of the
Detroit News
on June 6, 1928. It was while Sam Jaworski and Harry Watson were sitting in the Wayne County Jail that the incriminating letter was discovered. The letter tied Sam directly to the jailbreak, and he was extradited to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Watson was later released due to lack of evidence.
Sam Jaworski was indicted at Pittsburgh on six different felony counts for helping Paul and Vassbinder escape from the Allegheny County Jail. Sam was later convicted and sentenced to 11-22 years in the Western Pennsylvania Penitentiary.
Paul Jaworski remained at large for more than a year. In 1928 he participated in at least two holdups. On June 6, 1928, he led the bandits who held up the
Detroit News
business offices. He was also suspected by the Detroit police of being one of the five bandits who held up the business office of the General Baking Company in Detroit on September 9, 1927. Jaworski managed to effectively evade the law in both Michigan and Pennsylvania, where it was assumed that he spent most of his time. Both states conducted extensive manhunts for the fugitive to no avail.
On September 13, 1928, a Cleveland, Ohio, grocery clerk named John Zavwroski noticed two men eating in a downtown restaurant as he walked by. One of the men looked strangely familiar to him. Zavwroski stopped and stared in the window of the restaurant. Suddenly, he recognized the stranger as Paul Poluszynski aka Jaworski. As a boy, Paul had sung in the choir of a small Ukrainian church in Butler, Pennsylvania. Zavwroski had been the choir director. He had been following Jaworski’s crime career in the papers and was shocked to come face to face with the outlaw, whom he hadn’t seen since both of them had been boys. Zavwroski had been a theology student but had to abandon his studies to go to Cleveland to find work. The thought of the thousands of dollars in reward money flashed through his mind. With the reward money, he could finish his studies. Zavwroski ran to a nearby telephone and notified the Cleveland Police of Jaworski’s presence.
Patrolman Anthony Wieczorek and Patrolman George Effinger were dispatched to the restaurant to check on the telephone tip. As the officers walked into the restaurant and approached the two suspects, one of the men jumped to his feet and opened fire with a pistol. The gunman was later identified as Paul Jaworski. Officer Wieczorek was hit and killed instantly in the first burst of gunfire. Effinger also fell, badly wounded, under the hail of lead. Customers in the crowded restaurant threw themselves on the floor or hid under tables at the first shots. Jaworski and his lunch companion scrambled out the back door of the restaurant into an alley. Jaworski ran in one direction and his unidentified associate in another. In the midst of the confusion, Jaworski’s colleague escaped. Two other Cleveland patrolmen arrived on the scene and chased Jaworski down an alley.
A bystander to the unfolding events named Ben Majsterek was wounded in the gun battle while standing in front of his nearby cigar store. Jaworski ran into an apartment building and up the stairs to the second floor. He threw open a window and jumped to the roof of an adjoining building. In the interim, a general alarm had been sounded and members of the Cleveland police force surrounded the building, exchanging shots with Jaworski. A crowd estimated to have been at least 500 people watched the gun battle. Under withering gunfire from the Cleveland police, Jaworski jumped from the roof back into the apartment house, eventually barricading himself in a first-floor kitchen. Hundreds of shots were fired into the apartment building.
Finally, the police began to fire tear gas into the flat. They fired five tear gas shells before forcing Jaworski out into the open. Suddenly, the bandit burst out of the door of the apartment building, a pistol blazing in each hand. A shotgun blast brought him down. Jaworski was wounded five times in his gunfight with the Cleveland police. The shotgun charge hit Jaworski in the side of the head. A revolver bullet also struck him in the left side of the chest just above the heart. He had two other slight wounds. The shotgun blast that struck Jaworski destroyed a group of nerve centers near the brain, which left him partially paralyzed on the right side of his body. His condition at first appeared to be serious, but by his second day in the hospital he seemed to be considerably improved. Patrolman George Effinger and Ben Majsterek, the bystander who was accidentally wounded in the gunfire, were reported to be in serious condition.
Jaworski began talking to police. He boasted that during his career of crime, he killed at least 26 men. At first he denied taking part in the
News
holdup, but confessed to the Brinks car robbery at the Ainsworth Manufacturing Company in Detroit in 1925. Jaworski also stated that he had taken another member of the gang for a “ride” shortly after the Ainsworth holdup. He shot Jimmy Wright because he had informed the police of the whereabouts of one of Jaworski’s close friends. Wright’s body was found on a little-frequented road in rural Farmington, Michigan, on November 22, 1925.
On September 14, 1928, Jaworski was indicted in Cleveland by a Cuyahoga County Grand Jury for the slaying of Patrolman Anthony Wieczorek. Jaworski remained completely surrounded in his Cleveland City Hospital ward by a heavy police guard. Law-enforcement officials believed that the Jaworski Gang would try to free their leader. Jaworski had been poorly dressed when he was captured by the Cleveland police. He explained to the officers that, despite the fact that he had made a quarter of a million dollars in his long career as a bank robber, he had spent all of his ill-gained wealth.
The bandit told the police that the man who escaped when he was captured was John Vassbinder. Jaworski claimed that he and Vassbinder had been working together since they both shot their way out of the Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh in August of 1927. He told police that they had been living at the exclusive Hotel Cleveland for several months. Jaworski later gave police the address of his actual hideout, which was located in Lakewood, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. At the Lakewood address, officers found a strong arsenal that included automatic shotguns, a machine gun, pistols, and a large store of ammunition.
Cleveland officers sent the weapons found in the Lakewood, Ohio, address to the Detroit Police Laboratory. A ballistics test was performed on an automatic rifle that had been found in the Jaworski hideout. Shells ejected by the automatic rifle during the test bore the same markings as some of the shells found in front of the
Detroit News
building on the day of the holdup. Presented with the results of the ballistics test, Jaworski confessed to the
Detroit News
robbery. He also stated that he was one of the two bandits who fatally wounded Sergeant George Barstad, as they were running out of the
Detroit News
building.
Jaworski also named Harry Watson and Frank “Whitey” Kraft as two of the five men who had held up the business offices of the
Detroit News.
Both Kraft and Watson had Detroit police records. Jaworski refused to say whether Frank Wallace, a friend of Watson’s, had also participated in the
News
job. Wallace aka Gustin was being held in Boston at that time. According to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, Wallace was known to have worked with Harry Watson. Frankie Wallace was one of the leaders of the Gustin Gang of Boston, Massachusetts. The Gustin outfit was one of the predominantly Irish Mobs that ruled the Boston underworld before 1930.
Jaworski identified a house on Littlefield Avenue in Detroit as the place where the gang had divided up the loot taken from the
Detroit News.
This was only a short distance from where the gang had abandoned the stolen car used in the robbery. He also confessed that Frank “Whitey” Kraft had been the man with him in the Cleveland restaurant on the day he was captured. Both Kraft and Watson were being sought at that time by Detroit police. Persons living in the vicinity of the Jaworski Gang’s Littlefield address told detectives that they had seen two men who were later identified as Jaworski and Kraft on the morning of June 6, 1928. Both men were carrying red paper bags. The red paper was used to wrap a box containing shotguns that were used in the
Detroit News
robbery. Ironically, Jaworski later claimed that he had lost his share of the
Detroit News
holdup loot in a poker game to accomplice Harry Watson the same day the robbery had occurred.
On October 20, 1928, Jaworski began the trip back to Pittsburgh. He had been extradited to Pennsylvania by Ohio authorities for execution of the death sentence that he had been waiting to complete when he broke out of the Allegheny County Jail in 1927. The Cleveland, Ohio, Prosecutor’s Office ran into legal difficulties in the prosecution of Jaworski for the murder of Patrolman Wieczorek. They thought it would be more expedient to send Jaworski back to a jurisdiction in which a death sentence was pending.
Upon arriving in Pittsburgh, Jaworski had 90 days to appeal his case to the State Supreme Court. His lawyers filed a motion for a new trial, which was promptly refused by a Pittsburgh judge. Jaworski was brought from Cleveland under heavy police guard, even though he was partially paralyzed. On his arrival in Pittsburgh, he had to be carried into the courtroom in a straight-back chair. His paralysis made it extremely difficult for Jaworski to walk. He told the judge that he would not appeal his case if the Allegheny County Court would not allow him to have a new trial.