Really Bad Gangsters You Probably Never Heard Of

List

Part 1

New York & Chicago

a project by

Curtis Shalo

2020

Dedicated To

All the great directors of film and television who brought the world of really bad gangsters into my life

& my imagination

Table of Contents

NEW YORK

Page 14.   Louis Lepke Buckhalter

Page 21.   Frankie Prince of Pals Yale

Page 28.   Emanuel Mendy Weiss

Page 33.  Abraham Kid Twist Reles

Page 38.   The Shapiro Brothers

Page 42.   Jacob Gurrah Shapiro

Page 46.   Albert Tick-Tock Tannenbaum

Page 49.   Harry Pittsburgh Phil Strauss

Page 53.   Harry Happy Maione

Page 56.   Frank The Dasher Abbandando

Page 60.   Irving Big Gangi Cohen

Page 65.   Giuseppe Joe the Boss Masseria

Page 70.   Albert The Mad Hatter Anastasia

Page 77.   Vincent Mad Dog Coll

Page 82.   Ciro The Artichoke King Terranova

Page 87.  Ignazio The Wolf Lupo 

Table of Contents 

NEW YORK

Page 92.  Carmine The Cigar Galante

Page 97.  Giuseppe The Olive Oil King Profaci

Page 101.  William Slick Willie Sutton

Page 108.  Gaetano Tommy Reina

Page 111.  Francis Two Gun Crowley

Page 116.  Salvatore Little Caeser Maranzano

Page 121.  Giuseppe The Clutch Hand Morello

Page 125.  Salvatore Toto D’Aquila

Page 129.  Manfredi Alfred Mineo

Page 132.  Vincent The Executioner Mangano

Page 135.  Francesco Wacky Scalice

Page 140.  Arnold The Brain Rothstein

Page 146.  Owney The Killer Madden

Page 153.  Tommy Three Finger Brown Lucchese

Page 157.  Frankie Jimmy the Wop Carbo

Page 164.  Otto Abba Dabba Berman          

Table of Contents

NEW YORK 

Page 167.   Joseph Joe Adonis Doto

Page 173.   Ellsworth Bumpy Johnson

Page 179.   Nicola Su Cola Gentile

Page 184.   Richard Peg Leg Lonergan

Page 189.  Umberto The Ghost Valenti

Page 192.  Anthony Little Augie Pisano Carfano

Page 197.  Irving Waxey Gordon Wexler

Page 202.  Jimmy The Shiv DeStefano

Page 207.  Harry The Big Yid Zelig

Page 212.  Abner Longie Zwillman

Page 216.  Jacob Little Augie Orgen

Page 219.  Paul Kelly

Page 224.  Nathan Kid Dropper Kaplan

Page 228.  Gerald The Gentleman Bandit Chapman

Page 233.  Jack Legs Diamond

Page 240.  Murder, Inc., a few more

Table of Contents       

CHICAGO

Page 254.   Dean Dion O’Banion 

Page 262.   Hymie The Pole Weiss

Page 266.   George Bugs Moran

Page 271.  Johnny The Fox Torrio 

Page 277.   James Diamond Jim Colosimo

Page 281.   Jack Machine Gun McGurn

Page 287.  Angelo The Devil Genna

Page 293.  Vincent The Schemer Drucci

Page 298.  Giuseppe Joe Aiello

Page 307.  Salvatore Frank Capone

Page 312.  Jake Greasy Thumb Guzik

Page 315.  Ted Newberry

Page 319.  Louis Little New York Compagna

Page 324.  Herman The Baron Lamm

––––––––

Table of Contents 

CHICAGO

Page 328.  Frank Tight Lips Gusenberg

Page 332.  Frank Madman McErlane 

Page 337.  Paul The Waiter Ricca

Page 342.  Tony Big Tuna Accardo

Page 348.  George Remus 

Page 354.  John Three Finger Jack Hamilton

Page 360.  Louis Two Gun Alterie

Page 364.  Roger The Terrible Touhy

Page 371.  Salvatore Samoots Ammatuna

Page 375.  Sam Golf Bag Hunt

Page 378.   Albert Anselmi & Giovanni Scalice

Page 383.  Murray The Camel Humphreys

Page 388.  William Jack Three Fingers Wright

Page 392.   Samuel Mad Sam DeStefano

Page 399.   Gus Winkeler

Table of Contents 

CHICAGO

Page 404.  James The Mad Bomber Belcastro 

Page 407.  Jack Zuta

Page 410.  James Fur Sammons   

Page 413.  Slippery Frank Rio

Page 417.  Edward Spike O’Donnell

Page 422.  George Red Barker

Page 426.  Homer Van Meter

Page 433.  Frank The Enforcer Nitti

Page 440.  A few facts you probably didn’t know

Page 444.  References

Page 450.  Craig Cigar Butt Gilpin

Foreward

I’m enamored with the Roaring Twenties, especially the prohibition era and all that it entailed; the speakeasies, the music, the dancing, the flappers, the fashion, the hair styles...but especially the mobsters.  I often remember my Great Uncle Izzy, dressed in a shiny Italian suit, hair slicked back, smoking a cigarette and telling me about his days as a bootlegger during Prohibition.

I’m not sure what it is about all the ruthless, evil people that make me want to go back in time.  Perhaps it’s the nicknames (I’ve always wanted one), the gangster code of ethics (can kill a person but never a dog) or the power given to them if only for a moment in time.  Then again, it might be the vendettas, the money, the way they lived and even the way they died with their lavish funerals that seemed almost as if they were all romantic characters in a Shakespearian play.

From The Public Enemy where James Cagney did his famous grapefruit-to-the-face scene, to rooting for Bonnie & Clyde to escape a bank robbery, to Al Capone foiling Eliot Ness time after time in The Untouchables, to a little boy’s fascination with a mob boss in A Bronx Tale, to when Henry Hill takes his wife Karen to the rear entrance of the Copacabana to the soundtrack of "Then He Kissed Me" by the Crystals and especially to Vito and Michael Corleone seeking revenge on the Five Families in The Godfather and The Godfather part 2. These have been, and always will be, my favorite movies.  My favorite TV series of all time is, of course, The Sopranos, when week after week I couldn’t wait to see a brutal revenge murder on every episode. 

I still get excited when I find out something new about all my ant-heroes like Al Capone or John Dillinger or Baby face Nelson.   I guess what it comes down to is their distorted code of ethics and what was important to them; Money for sure, Family, that was always out of bounds, Dressing in the finest of clothes, Driving the fanciest cars, and of course, Never ratting on a friend or acting on emotion.

To sum it up in the immortal words of Clemenza in The Godfather:  always Leave the gun and Take the Cannoli.

I did not write a single word in this book...this is a simple book report where all I did was edit information gathered from existing sources.  Putting these bios together was the most fun I’ve ever had on any project I’ve pursued.  Discovering all the unusual, gruesome, preposterous and sometimes funny facts that I never knew, was invigorating...especially all the nicknames.  As for my nickname on the cover...talk to my wife.  Hope you enjoy the 100 bios in the pages ahead of some really bad gangsters you probably never heard of! 

NEW YORK 

I may have done a hundred things wrong,   but my conscience is clear

Louis Lepke Buchalter

Louis Buckhalter was born on February 6, 1897, in New York.  His mother called him lepkeleh, a Yiddish word which translates to Little Louis but his friends called him Lepke which stuck with him the rest of his life.  He grew up in a family comprising of one sister and three brothers.  His father was a Russian immigrant who owned and operated a hardware store on the Lower East Side and died in 1909 when Louis was twelve.  Soon after, his mother moved to Arizona for health reasons and Louis remained under the care of his sister.

In 1915, Buckhalter was arrested for the first time for burglary and assault and after the case was dismissed, Buckhalter went to live with his uncle in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Within weeks, he was arrested for burglary and sent to the Cheshire Reformatory for juvenile offenders for a year.  Upon his release, Buckhalter moved back to New York where he joined the Gorilla Boys, a gang of teens who carried out orders for various mobsters.

In 1917, Buckhalter was arrested for grand larceny and sentenced to eighteen months at Sing Sing prison just outside of New York.  Ten months after he was released, he was arrested again on attempted burglary charges and sentenced to thirty months at Sing Sing.  Buckhalter was released in early 1922 and began working with his friend Jacob Gurrah Shaprio taking control of the garment industry unions.  The unions became very profitable for Buckhalter, and soon he and Shapiro formed an alliance with the Lucchese crime family and controlled the entire garment district.

In 1927 Buckhalter and Shapiro were arrested for the murder of Jacob Little Augie Orgen and the attempted murder of rival Jack Legs Diamond, but the charges were eventually dropped for lack of evidence.  By the early 1930s Buckhalter had created and became head of an organized process for performing contract killings for the Cosa Nostra mobsters later to be called Murder Inc.  Buckhalter would receive contract requests and then assign the killings to street gang members in Brooklyn.

In 1935 Buckhalter arranged for the murder of the then powerful mob boss, Dutch Schultz, but after the newly formed Nation Crime Syndicate denied Schultz the go-ahead to murder New York District Attorney Thomas Dewey, Schultz became furious and decided to kill Dewey on his own.  But on October 23, Schultz was shot and killed by Charles The Bug Workman, a gunman sent by Buckhalter. By the end of 1935, Buckhalter had over 250 men working for him and was earning over one million dollars a year, controlling all the trucking, baking and garment industries in New York. 

In addition, Buckhalter owned and operated a ritzy nightclub called Riobamba.  The club was small, had no stage for the performers, and included a chorus line of girls singing the song Riobamba which was written and sold to Buckhalter for $50 by Leonard Bernstein.  In 1943, after Frank Sinatra was turned down by the Copacabana, he signed a three-week contract and debuted his act as an undercard at Riobamba.  He became an instant hit and ended up performing there for ten weeks to standing room only crowds.

On September 13, 1936, Buckhalter ordered the killing of Joseph Rosen, a candy store owner and former garment industry trucker who refused to leave town as he demanded.  Two months later, Buckhalter and Shapiro were convicted of violating anti-trust laws, but while out on bail, both men disappeared.  On April 14, 1938, Shapiro surrendered to authorities while Buckhalter remained a fugitive and for the next two years, an extensive manhunt was conducted in the United States and Europe.  After D.A. Thomas Dewey offered a $25,000 reward, Buckhalter finally surrendered to FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover in front of a Manhattan hotel on August 24, 1939.  He was sentenced to thirty years to life on labor extortion charges and sent to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas.

On August 20, 1941, Buckhalter was arraigned in New York state court for the murder of Rosen in addition to three other murders.  The trial ended on November 30, after the jury took four hours of deliberation and convicted Buckhalter of first degree murder and sentenced him to death. After several failed appeals Buckhalter petitioned the United States Supreme Court to review the case which was granted, and in 1943 the court affirmed the conviction in a 7-0 vote with two justices abstaining (319 U.S. 427.)

Sentencing of Buckhalter

New York state authorities demanded that the Federal government send Buckhalter back to New York for execution.  After many delays and controversy, Buckhalter was transported back to Sing Sing prison and on March 4, 1944, his associate Louis Capone was taken to the electric chair and declared dead at 11:05 pm followed by Mendy Weiss, another associate of Murder Inc., who was declared dead at 11:10 pm. Buckhalter was executed in Old Sparky and was pronounced dead at 11:16 pm.  He could have saved his own life if he turned informant but refused, despite pleas from his wife to save his life.

Old Sparky  Aerial view of Sing Sing prison

Buckhalter was portrayed by David J. Stewart in the 1960 film, Murder, Inc., by   Tony Curtis in the 1975 film Lepke, and by Evan Boymel in the 2015 film The Making of the Mob: New York.   

The poet Robert Lowell, while incarcerated for being a conscientious objector, wrote a poem entitled, "Memories of West Street and Lepke," after meeting Buckhalter in prison.  In the poem Lowell claims that Buckhalter was lobotomized prior to his execution and was buried at Mount Hebron Cemetery in Flushing Queens, New York.

My profession? Undertaker.

Frankie Prince of Pals Yale

Francesco Ioele, better known as Frankie Yale (Uale), was born on January 22, 1893, in Longobucco, Italy.  His family arrived in the United States around 1900. Yale was welcomed into the Five Points Gang by Johnny Torrio when he was a teenager; his first arrest was on suspicion of homicide at nineteen, but the charges were eventually dropped.

Yale soon took control of Brooklyn’s ice delivery trade by selling protection, and in 1917 he opened a bar in Coney Island known as the Harvard Inn.  Yale hired Al Capone to his first job as a bouncer and it was at this bar that Capone received his famous facial scars while in a dispute with Frank Galluccio over Capone’s insulting remarks about Galluccio’s sister.  After two years of working for Yale, Capone left for Chicago and joined Torrio’s gang.

Frank Galluccio  Al Capone

Besides running a string of brothels and offering protection to local merchants, Yale owned and operated his own funeral home and producing a line of cigars that bore his smiling face on the cigar box and wrapper.

Cigar label

By the beginning of prohibition, Yale had become Brooklyn’s biggest bootlegger.  Other gangsters that worked under Yale’s Black Hand gang included Joe Adonis, Anthony Little Augie Carfano and Albert Anastasia.  Yale’s chief enforcer and top assassin was Willie Two Knife Altierri, his nickname attributed to his method of killing.

Yale had a short temper.  Although short and stocky in stature he enjoyed inflicting pain on others, including his brother, often battering them to unconsciousness.  In May 1920, Torrio asked Yale to come to Chicago to murder gang boss Big Jim Colosimo.  Yale completed the order, killed Colosimo, and was never charged.  When asked by police what his profession was, Yale responded, "My profession? Undertaker."

Yale had several attempts made on his life.  The first attempt was on February 6th, 1921, when he and two of his men were ambushed while getting out of his car to attend a banquet in Manhattan.  One of his men was killed, the other wounded, while Yale sustained a serious lung injury but pulled through.  Five months later, on July 15th while riding in a car with his brother and four of his gang members, another car filled with rival gang members overtook them and opened fire, wounding his brother.  When Yale discovered that Silvio Melchiorre was seeking revenge for Yale killing his brother, Yale’s men gunned him down eight days later.  Yet another attempt on his life occurred on July 9th, 1923, when gunmen mistakenly shot and killed Yale’s chauffeur while he was driving his wife and children home from church thinking it was Yale driving the car.

In November 1924, Yale was asked once again by Torrio and Capone to come to Chicago to murder their rival gang leader, Dean O’Banion.  Eight days after he committed the murder, Yale was arrested at Chicago’s Union Train Station as he was heading back to New York.  Yale claimed he was having lunch at the time of the murder and after the police could not disprove his alibi, Yale was released.

On December 26, 1925, while Capone was visiting Yale at the Adonis Club, he got into a heated argument with rival White Hand gang boss Richard Pegleg Lonergan.  The following day, on Capone’s order, Yale and his Black Hand gang opened fire and killed Lonergan, James Ragtime Howard, Cornelius Needles Ferry and three others. 

By the mid-1920’s Yale had expanded his business into labor racketeering and dockside extortion.  By early 1927, Yale’s relationship with Capone deteriorated; Yale would oversee all the Chicago-bound trucks filled with whiskey ensuring their safety as they passed through New York, but after many of the trucks were being hijacked, Capone suspected Yale was stealing his whiskey and asked James Filesy DeAmato to spy on Yale’s trucks.  DeAmato confirmed that Yale was hijacking Capone’s whiskey and when Capone realized his cover had been blown, he ordered a hit on Yale on July 1, which turned out to be unsuccessful.  Six nights later, DeAmato was gunned down and killed.

In a last-ditch effort to mend the relationship with his longtime friend, Capone invited Yale to Chicago to attend the Dempsey-Tunney heavyweight rematch fight on September 22, 1927. But their friendship continued to deteriorate after Yale returned to New York and on Sunday afternoon, July 1, 1928, Yale received a cryptic call advising him that something was wrong with his wife who was at home looking after their one-year-old daughter.  Yale quickly jumped into his brand-new Lincoln coupe and headed home.  While stopped at a light, a Buick sedan stopped next to him with four armed individuals.  While Yale’s new Lincoln had armored plating, he never had his windows bullet-proofed.  When the light changed, a chase pursued until a shotgun blast struck Yale on the side of the head and a submachine gun bullet ripped through his brain.  This was the first time a submachine gun had been used in a gangland killing in New York City. 

Rare photo of Yale’s murder      Yale lies dead next to his car

Yale’s killers were later identified as Fred Killer Burke, Gus Winkler, George Shotgun Ziegler, and Louis Little New York Campagna.  All four