Банда The Purple Gang
The beginning of the end for the Purple Gang came as Detroit prepared for an upcoming national convention of the American Legion. Stressed bootleggers struggled to keep up with demand for booze and tempers wore thin as rival gangs hijacked and re-hijacked shipments of alcohol.
A bookmaking operation that couldn’t cover its bets, a crackdown by federal agents and a long-time feud between the Purple Gang and some out-of-town upstarts who wouldn’t follow orders set the stage for a showdown that is unmatched in the history of Detroit for its ferocity.
In a killing that would the shock city and result in banner headlines for weeks in the three Detroit newspapers, some hard-line Purple gangsters settled an old score but set themselves up for a fall that would signal the end of the gang’s influence in Detroit rackets.
Hymie Paul, Joe "Nigger Joe" Lebowitz, both 31, and 28-year-old Joe "Izzy" Sutker were brought to Detroit by Leiter and Schorr’s Oakland Sugar House Gang as "rod men" to protect the mobs lucrative alcohol supply racket.
But the three men weren’t interested in being someone else’s gunsels and they soon decided to branch out on their own. Paul, Lebowitz (a.k.a. Liebold), and Sutker (a.k.a. Sutton) chose the racetrack handbook racket and the wholesale liquor business.
The trio did their job well, associating with the Third Avenue Navy, a gang which earned its moniker because it landed its cargoes of Canadian whiskey in the railroad yards between Detroit’s Third and Fourth Avenues. But the men disregarded the strict code of Detroit’s underworld. They hijacked from friends and enemies and double-crossed business partners. They refused to stay within their own boundaries and stepped on the toes of neighboring gangs.
They were known as "the Terrors of the Third street district," according to police Inspector Frank Fraley, who had sparred with the gang. Fraley evicted the boys from the Orlando Hotel after he received complaints that the gang was using rooms there as an office.
"I told them we did not want them in our precinct and to get out," he told the Detroit Times.
In the spring of 1931, the trio’s bookmaking operation was gearing up. They had taken in a local hood, Solomon "Solly" Levine and everything was looking good for the boys until the East Side Mafia, which had been giving their book some serious play hit a big parlay worth a couple hundred grand.
It was money the gang didn’t have. In fact, they were broke. Sutker, his wife Doris and their 5-year-old daughter had recently been evicted from their apartment for non-payment of rent and the boys had lost their "large, high-powered cars" because they were unable to keep up the payments.
The trio, afraid of reprisals if they welshed on the bet, bought some booze from the Purples on credit, diluted it and undersold the market for a quick profit.
"The east side gang came back again with another ‘boat race," a fixed horse race, taking the handbook for even more money," wrote Joe Wolff, a Detroit News writer, in 1971. "Again a deal was made with the Purple Gang to get 50 gallons on credit. Again they diluted the stock and undersold the market price.
"They had pushed their luck. Their activities spelled death; it was just a matter of time and which gang would move to stop them first."
Autumn 1931 was a busy time for bootleggers in Detroit. The American Legion convention was coming to town and huge orders for illicit booze had been placed by the various blind pigs, cabarets and speakeasies around the city.
The three partners knew that they were in deep and felt that they could make it up when the Legionnaires came to town.
"They owed (Ray) Bernstein some money for whiskey and they wanted to get him to hold off until after the legion convention," Solly Levine told the Detroit News the day after the fates caught up with the trio. Bernstein said he would get in touch and that something would be worked out.
"We’ve got everything straightened out and we’re going to let you boys handle the horse bets and alcohol when you straighten out that bill," Bernstein, slim, a blue-eyed, man with a perpetual scowl, told Levine.
Levine was the perfect go-between for the rivals. He was a partner in the bookmaking operation and had a long-time acquaintance with many of the Purple Gang, growing up in the same neighborhood as the Bernstein brothers.
A peace conference sounded good to the three partners and they relaxed a bit, thinking that they were back on the way to Easy Street.
authorities burst into Fletcher’s apartment they found Abe Axler, Milberg and Eddie Fletcher playing cards, a packed suitcase in Axler’s car and five pistols and a rifle at the ready. The men surrendered without a fight, although Milberg tried to escape by flinging open a window and punching out a screen.
The killers were in custody.
The Real McCoy
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