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bullshityounot · 6 months ago

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The Siamese Twins Assassins, And The Rise And Fall Of Detroit's Notorious Purple Gang

[By A.L. Lee, 2024]

Edward "Eddie" Fletcher and Abraham "Abe" Axler, members of Detroit's notorious criminal organization known as The Purple Gang, who came to be known as “The Siamese Twins” assassins, were shot to death on Nov. 27, 1933, in the backseat of a car and left on the side of a road in Bloomfield, Michigan.

The unsolved murders marked the end of a brutal era in Detroit, where Fletcher and Axler gained infamy as two of the most violent figures in the 1920s criminal underworld, while both men were named as suspects in hundreds of gangland killings before they too were gunned down.

The Purple Gang flourished during the Prohibition era as a ragtag group of tough Jewish racketeers who moved to the Motor City from New York, and became Detroit's most dominant criminal outfit for almost a decade.

Originally led by Samuel “Sammie Purple” Cohen, the small band of petty criminals coalesced under four Jewish brothers — Abe, Joseph, Ray and Isadore Bernstein — who started off in Detroit as shoplifters and extortionists, but swiftly rose to power after joining forces with the Sugar House Gang, leading to bootlegging and other lucrative rackets.

The Purple Gang was headquartered on the city’s East Side, and its members stood out in Detroit's heyday due to their flamboyance and constant visibility in the city's nightlife.

The Inner Circle

The leader of The Purple Gang was Abe Bernstein, the oldest member and mastermind of the group, who immigrated from Russia with his parents.

Joseph Bernstein, the second oldest sibling, who was born in America, developed a strong business acumen, laundering money for the organization through legitimate businesses and overseeing the gang's bootlegging operations.

Raymond Bernstein, younger than Joe, was the enforcer of the gang, instilling fear in those who dared to cross him. Despite his pivotal role in the gang's success, Ray's violent temper would later undermine the gang when he orchestrated a revenge killing in 1931 that resulted in the incarceration of several Purple Gang members, including himself.

Isadore "Izzy" Bernstein, the youngest brother and the family's gopher, was the least involved in criminal activities but managed the majority of the gambling operations, collaborating closely with Abe.

Others in the original circle of trust included Axler and Fletcher, Henry Shore, Abe Kaminsky, Abe Miller, Harry Keywell, Irving Milberg, Harry Altman, George Cordell, Joe "Honeyboy" Miller, Morris and Phil Raider, Sam Axler and Irving Shapiro, who was one of the first Purples to be murdered on July 27, 1929.

Ray Bernstein, Milberg and Keywell were sentenced to life in prison in 1931, and two years later Axler and Fletcher were murdered.

Joseph Miller was declared mentally insane and was confined to a psychiatric facility.

Abe Bernstein fled Detroit and went into hiding, while Joe Bernstein reportedly left the gang and became a legitimate businessman.

Rise And Fall

Fletcher and Axler, known for their ruthlessness, were once feared on the streets of Detroit, but by 1933 they were in hiding as the Purples found themselves in severe decline and mostly exiled from their home turf.

Detroit’s once indomitable criminal empire, built on murder and mayhem, was suddenly in collapse, with gang members on the run from both law enforcement and other mobsters.

Just a few years earlier, The Purple Gang sat at the pinnacle of the criminal underbelly of the upper-Midwest, and had a hand in countless rackets, including armed robberies, burglary, bootlegging, hijacking, drug smuggling, book making, illegal casino gambling, sports and prizefight fixing, extortion, loan sharking, labor and political intimidation, protection, insurance fraud, fire bombings, and other mob activities, including murder for hire.

The gang also operated the local wire service, which supplied horse racing information to nearby betting parlors.

At its height in 1927, the Purple Gang was a highly profitable criminal enterprise, rivaling and even surpassing many of the dominant cartels of the era.

Nevertheless, a series of significant setbacks accompanied the Purples’ early success, leading to its sudden departure, almost as abruptly as the gang had appeared.

As the Purples expanded, they began offering their services as hitmen and became involved in the so-called Cleaners & Dyers War, where the gang infiltrated Detroit's laundry industry by intimidating union members and independent workers with tactics like bombings, arson, theft, and murder to enforce their will.

Harry Rosman, president of Famous Cleaners & Dyers, testified against the Purple Gang, accusing them of demanding $1,000 per week for "protection."

Axler and Fletcher were said to be the muscle behind this scheme, and in 1927, nine Purple Gang members, including leader Abe Bernstein, were indicted for extorting money from Detroit wholesale launders.

However, they were acquitted of all charges, suggesting the jury was tainted.

Al Capone Wants His Cut

Following the trial, The Purple Gang continued bringing in an extraordinary amount of money, which eventually caught the attention of Chicago mob boss Al Capone.

Legend has it that one day Capone came to Detroit, asserting his authority and demanding a meeting with the Bernsteins to cut up the profits from the local rackets.

Despite Capone's fearsome reputation, as well as his ties to the Italian mafia in Detroit and the potential for a violent conflict over control of the Detroit River, leaders of The Purple Gang refused to yield to all of his demands.

Instead, they negotiated a partnership where the gang would become the sole importer of Canadian whiskey for the Chicago outfit during Prohibition. This arrangement proved to be a profitable venture for The Purple Gang, as well as dozens of former World War I pilots who were brought on by Capone to help transport illegal booze across the border on planes.

Ultimately, the deal made Detroit the gateway of illegal liquor in the United States throughout Prohibition, helped by the city's geographic location and proximity to the northern border.

The lucrative operation earned the gang the nickname the "Little Jewish Navy" as the outfit also used speedboats to run liquor from Canada to Detroit.

Valentine’s Day In Gangland

One of the most brutal episodes of violence in the history of organized crime occurred on the morning of February 14, 1929, inside a garage in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago, where seven members and associates of the Northside Gang were murdered in a hail of gunfire.

Capone reputedly orchestrated the killings as retribution for a series of unsuccessful attempts on his life by his main rival, George "Bugs" Moran, who was also known to be hijacking Capone's Detroit-based liquor shipments from The Purple Gang.

On the morning of the massacre, Moran received a tip that another truckload of Capone’s bootlegged whiskey had been hijacked and would be available for sale at a nearby warehouse.

Moran told his men to set up a meeting to buy the stoen booze, and chose the gang’s secret hideout, a garage on North Clark Street in Chicago, as the place for the rendezvous.

What Moran didn’t realize was that the deal was a trap, set by Capone to lure Moran and his top lieutenants to a place where they could be eliminated all at once.

Moran was told that the stolen booze was supplied by The Purple Gang, which lended credibility to the setup because the Purples were widely known as close allies of Capone.

Moran’s men waited at the garage for the shipment to arrive, but when two police officers showed up instead, the Moran crew immediately felt they’d been betrayed.

Unbeknownst, the uniformed officers were actually Capone’s henchmen, who refused to be bribed as they ordered the victims into the garage at gunpoint and lined them up against the wall.

Believing this to be a routine raid by law enforcement, the seven unwitting crew members complied before an unimaginable nightmare unfolded.

The shooters used two Thompson submachine guns and two shotguns to blast the gangsters to smithereens.

There were no survivors.

The victims included five members and two associates of Moran's Northside Gang.

However, Moran — the head of the snake — was not among those killed as he had other plans that day and didn’t go to the meeting as Capone had hoped.

Through the years, several theories emerged that members of the Purple Gang may have played a role in the slaughter, potentially working alongside or on behalf of Capone's Chicago outfit to rub out Moran.

During Prohibition, it was not uncommon for mob leaders in any city to hire hitmen from out of town to carry out assassinations closer to home.

These hired killers, sometimes called "torpedo men," would travel to a target city, commit murder, and then quickly leave town to avoid arrest.

Their prior involvement in bootlegging and other crimes would have made it ideal for Chicago and Detroit to make such a murderous agreement.

Witnesses later identified three Purple Gang members who rented rooms directly across the street from the North Clark Street garage ten days before the massacre.

When questioned by investigators, the old landladies who ran the boardinghouse initially picked out mugshots of Purple Gang members George Lewis, Eddie Fletcher, Phil Keywell, and his younger brother, Harry Keywell, but later the women recanted, saying they couldn't be sure.

Ultimately, Fletcher, Lewis, and Harry Keywell were questioned by authorities and dismissed as suspects.

Police also suspected that gunmen associated with Capone, including John Scalise, Albert Anselmi, "Machine Gun" Jack McGurn, and Frank Rio, were also involved.

McGurn and Scalise were eventually charged, but Capone later killed Scalise, Anselmi, and Joseph "Hop Toad" Giunta after discovering their plot to assassinate him, while also seeking to eliminate anyone who could link Scarface Al to the order to take out Moran's crew.

Meanwhile, murder charges against McGurn were eventually dropped due to insufficient evidence.

Still, McGurn — an avid golfer — was imprisoned in 1933 after an alert Chicago detective noticed his alias on a pairing sheet at the Western Open championship and sent two sergeants to the tournament course to arrest him.

He served nearly three years for violating the Mann Act after he transported his girlfriend across state lines to marry her.

Despite McGurn's involvement in dozens of murders, authorities were never able to prove his crimes, allowing him to evade prison for more than a decade, while the government was eager for even minor charges to stick, just to get another public enemy off the streets.

And it was just a matter of time before street justice would seal McGurn’s fate before any court of law would have the chance.

Three years after getting out of prison, McGurn was murdered on Feb. 15, 1936, at a Chicago bowling alley. His killers left behind a Valentine card next to his body with a cryptic poem written on the back.

It was revenge by the Moran gang for the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

In the years that followed, The Purple Gang remained suspects in the massacre, while many Chicagoans came to believe that the police were involved, too, leading to rumors and confusion about who was truly responsible.

While there is no conclusive evidence linking the Purple Gang to the massacre, speculation surrounding their involvement is difficult to ignore and remains the subject of intense debate.

Fred “The Killer” Burke

The main focus of speculation regarding the involvement of Detroit's Jewish-American mob essentially comes down to one man — Fred "The Killer" Burke, a notorious hitman and close associate of the Detroit mob during Prohibition, who first became a suspect nearly ten months after the massacre.

Police got a major break on Dec. 14, 1929, when the Sheriff in Berrien County, Michigan, raided a bungalow in St. Joseph, Michigan, belonging to a "Fred Dane," who was the registered owner of a vehicle that was suspected in the murder of a local patrolman, Charles Skelly.

Earlier that night, Skelly witnessed Burke's car rear-end another vehicle and flee the scene.

Skelly gave chase and when he finally caught up with the car, a struggle ensued and Burke shot the officer three times, killing him.

Investigators later found the suspect vehicle wrecked and abandoned outside town, and traced it back to a Fred Dane in St. Joseph, leading to the raid at "Dane's" bungalow.

Later, police confirmed through photos that Dane was actually Fred "The Killer" Burke.

When police raided the hideout, they found a trove of incriminating evidence against Burke, including a large gun safe that contained a bulletproof vest, nearly $320,000 in stolen bank bonds, and a cache of weapons and ammunition, including two Thompson submachine guns.

Michigan authorities contacted police in Chicago, who would later confirm through ballistics that these guns were same ones used in the murder of New York mobster Frankie Yale in July 1928, as well as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre only seven months later.

A warrant was issued for Burke's arrest but for the moment he was nowhere to be found.

More than a year later, Burke was finally apprehended on a farm in Missouri and put on trial for the killing of Officer Skelly, for which he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Burke remained in prison until his death in 1940, but he was never charged or prosecuted for the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

The Bolton Confession

Six years after the massacre, Burke was further linked to the notorious crime when Byron Bolton, a member of the Barker-Karpis gang, confessed to federal agents that he and Burke were among the four gunners who carried out the shooting.

During his confession, Bolton claimed he was the lookout for the operation, positioned across the street from the garage when he mistook one of Moran's men to be Moran, after which he signaled the kill team, who was having breakfast down the street at the Circus Café.

The killers planned to murder Bugs Moran and two of his men, but they were surprised when seven men showed up at the garage, so they simply decided to kill everyone, but Moran of course wasn't there.

Bolton claimed that Capone was infuriated that Moran was not dead and threatened to kill him for the mistake he made, but Fred Goetz ultimately managed to talk him out of it.

With Capone three years behind bars for tax evasion, Bolton began naming names.

The assassination crew, he said, was comprised of several Chicago mobsters, including Claude Maddox, Raymond "Crane Neck" Nugent, Fred Goetz, Murray "The Camel" Humphreys and Gus Winkler, who mowed down Moran's gangsters under Burke’s leadership.

Among the team, he said, were at least four shooters and two getaway drivers.

After taking Bolton's confession, however, the FBI lacked any jurisdiction to get involved in the investigation, so they kept Bolton's confession a secret from Chicago law enforcement and never took any action to seek justice.

Somehow Bolton's confession got leaked to the Chicago American, which published a story claiming the massacre had been solved, even though the FBI stayed mum and refused to confirm the reports.

Bolton told authorities that the plan to kill Bugs Moran was officially hatched in late 1928 at a luxury resort in Wisconsin owned by Fred Goetz.

He said he stayed at the resort for several weeks with nearly a dozen other mobsters, including Capone, hunting and fishing in their spare time as they planned the murder.

As part of the plan, Capone and McGurn would solidify their alibis by being out of town, with Capone heading to his vacation home in Miami, and McGurn and his wife, Louise Rolfe, checked into a hotel at the time of the shootings, making sure they were seen.

This confession by Bolton, a former ally of Capone, was a betrayal of the highest order, with Bolton claiming he was the lookout for the Valentine's Day assassins, and that the gang had discussed the massacre for the better part of two years while running their usual rackets.

At the time of the massacre, Burke was a fugitive in a bank robbery in Ohio, and ten months later he would murder Officer Skelly during the harrowing traffic stop in St. Joseph.

A truck driver who had been near the Chicago massacre identified Burke as a uniformed officer who was sitting in a parked police car that he sideswiped shortly before gunfire erupted.

The officer, who was missing a front tooth, simply waved the truck by and did not issue a citation. Meanwhile, a witness to the accident gave the same description of the officer with a gap-tooth grin.

Police at the time were confident that they were describing Killer Burke.

However, Burke, known to wear police uniforms during robberies, was questioned in prison but he was never positively linked to the massacre.

Many years later, in his 1973 autobiography, bank robber Harvey Bailey claimed that he and Fred Burke were drinking beer in Calumet City, Illinois, when the massacre took place.

At the time, Bailey said the heat was so bad from police that they were forced to abandon plans for several upcoming bank robberies. Historians still debate whether the crew was indeed responsible for the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

Another prominent name that came up in the investigation was Joseph O’Riordan, another member of The Purple Gang, who once plotted to kidnap automobile pioneer Henry Ford’s son Edsel for $1 million ransom in 1927, but this plot never materialized, and his alleged involvement in the massacre was never proven.

Due to lack of evidence, none of the killers in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre was ever brought to justice.

The Writing On The Wall

The downfall of The Purple Gang occurred in a short time period as a result of expanding internal conflicts and increasing law enforcement pressure as evidence piled up against Axler, Fletcher and other Purples. Additionally, deadly gun battles with rival Sicilian gangs and a confluence of other factors marked the beginning of the end for the gang.

By 1933, members of the gang were turning up dead one by one, leading many of the remaining crew to flee Detroit, including Fletcher and Axler, however, they were required to be in town occasionally to attend court proceedings for their alleged crimes.

This made them sitting ducks as a takeover was underway by Sicilian mobsters, who were so cunning and ruthless that any of the remaining Purples knew their days were numbered.

The Milaflores Massacre

The Milaflores Apartment massacre on March 28, 1927, was another crucial turning point that led to The Purple Gang's eventual downfall as it put the outfit under increased police pressure.

The tragic events of that day were set in motion almost four months earlier, when a Purple Gang liquor distributor named Johnny Reed was shot to death in December 1926, allegedly by Chicago mobster Frank Wright.

Purple Gang leaders wanted revenge and knew just the man for the job — Detroit gangster Fred "The Killer" Burke, who would become the main suspect in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre a couple years later.

After getting the contract, Burke kidnapped Wright's friend, Meyer "Fish" Bloomfield, and forced Bloomfield to call Wright and lure him to the Milaflores.

Wright arrived at the Milaflores with two of his men, Joseph Bloom and George Cohen, and knocked on Door #308, prepared to call a truce.

Suddenly, Burke and the Siamese Twins appeared at the end of the hallway, where they opened fire with pistols and a Thompson submachine gun.

In a horrifying scene, all three gangsters were filled with bullets and lay mortally wounded in a pool of blood on the floor while the shooters escaped down a rear stairwell.

Bloom and Cohen were pronounced dead, but amazingly Frank Wright was still alive despite being shot fourteen times.

He lived for another 20 hours before succumbing to his wounds.

The day after the shooting, police arrested Axler and Burke as suspects, but neither man was charged, nor was anyone else, and the incident further cemented the Purple Gang's myth in Detroit.

Murder at Collingwood Manor

More than four years after the Milaflores slayings, members of The Purple Gang were involved in yet another gangland massacre at the Collingwood Manor Apartments in Detroit, where three banished mobsters from Chicago were shot dead on Sept. 16, 1931, after they tried to muscle in on The Purple Gang's territory.

The Collingwood hit was plotted and carried out by Purple Gang enforcer Ray Bernstein with the assistance of crew members Harry Fleisher, Irving Milberg, and Harry Keywell, a suspect in the 1929 massacre in Chicago.

A witness identified the perpetrators and all except Fleisher were put on trial later that year, convicted and sent away for life.

Fleisher vanished after the triple murder and remained on the lam for nine months before surrendering to prosecutors in June 1932.

However, the case against him was later dismissed for lack of evidence.

Corrupt Cop Signs Own Death Warrant

Previously, members of The Purple Gang were implicated in the murder of a Detroit policeman in February 1927, putting the crew under intense scrutiny by law enforcement.

Patrolman Vivian Welch, a dirty cop who was taking payoffs from the gang, was double-crossed and murdered after he threatened to expose some of the Purple Gang's crimes unless they agreed to pay him more, a demand that spelled his doom.

One day, while riding in a jalopy with several members of the gang, Welch realized he was in danger and threw himself from the moving vehicle.

Mangled from the stunt, Welch was still on the ground when the driver backed up over the officer, crushing him to death.

Several members of the Purple Gang were soon rounded up, but Abe Bernstein, the leader of the gang, went on the run as he owned the car that ran over Welch.

Welch's killing brought the full weight of law enforcement to the gang's door, with numerous members being sentenced to prison, leaving turf unprotected, and Fletcher and Axler more vulnerable to their enemies.

Die By The Gun

Fletcher and Axler were rubbed out amid a growing turf war between rival gangs, vying for control of Detroit's narcotics rackets as the Purple Gang's influence had waned due to members being eliminated or imprisoned.

Many members of the gang were also bankrupted during the early years of the Great Depression, which was squeezing the United States right at the time Fletcher and Axler were killed.

Both men had been rounded up in a sting just two weeks before they were killed, and had been facing multiple felony charges as Detroit's undisputed Public Enemy No. 1 and No. 2.

Before his death, Axler was arrested a total 18 times, but convicted only thrice during a 13-year criminal career. The cunning criminal only served two terms at Sing Sing Prison, which amounted to no more than five years behind bars.

Fletcher was arrested a total of 11 times throughout his criminal career but was convicted only once, while he served less than two years at the U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Before Fletcher and Axler could go to trial on new charges, however, they were discovered dead in the middle of the night, riddled with bullets and propped up against one another in the back seat of a shiny new Chrysler sedan, which was registered to Axler's wife, Evelyn.

Both men were shot at close range, and were unarmed in the back seat, leading police to believe that two shooters were inside the car when they killed the inseparable twins, who were rarely ever seen out of each other’s company, and they remained close even in death.

Police said one of the shooters opened fire from the front seat, while a second gunman shot while seated next to both victims in the rear. Fletcher died while clutching Axler's right hand, according to investigators who recovered .38 caliber bullets and multiple .45-caliber shell casings.

The bodies were eventually identified through fingerprints.

At the time, Fletcher was 35, and Axler was 32.

The pair had been lured to their deaths by killers who were never identified.

#random #interesting facts #the mob #purple gang #detroit history #gangland #gang wars #siamese twins #siamese twins assassins #1920s aesthetic #racketeering #bootlegging #prohibition #speakeasy #bullshit you not

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