The Violent Years (19 page)

As the gunmen were running for the getaway car, Detroit Police Patrolman Guyot W. Craig was walking out of a poolroom located directly across Lafayette Boulevard from the
News
building. In Craig’s official report of the incident, he claimed that he had stepped into the poolroom to get his raincoat. As he was walking out, he noticed the five bandits running towards the sedan and Barstad and another man lying wounded on the Lafayette entrance steps to the
News
building. Spotting a youngster nearby, he ordered the boy to lie down behind a telegraph pole. Craig then pulled his revolver from under his rain slicker and opened fire on the bandits. Craig would later state that he first took aim at the gunman who was carrying the shotgun and the satchel. He fired and the outlaw appeared to slip and fall on the sidewalk next to the getaway car. Another bandit jumped out of the car and pulled the wounded man into the sedan.

At this point, several of the other gunmen opened fire on Craig with shotguns and pistols. Craig continued shooting until he emptied his gun, ducking back into a building to reload. Craig was wounded in the left foot during the gun battle. Barstad, the other police officer at the scene, had been shot in the right eye, abdomen, and right arm, and was in critical condition. The
News
employee who had been just behind Barstad when he entered the building was wounded in the hand by the same shotgun charge that had hit Barstad.

The bandits’ car roared west on Lafayette, followed by a Detroit Police Department scout car that had just arrived at the scene of the carnage. The scout car was driven by Officer James Moffet, who pursued the bandits for more than 10 miles at high speed. He eventually lost sight of the gunmen’s car, which swerved down a side street off Vernor Highway. While Moffet was in pursuit of the bandits’ vehicle, the gunmen broke out the rear window of the car and began shooting at the police officer. Moffet thought that at least one of the men in the getaway car appeared to be badly wounded.

A large crowd had witnessed the gunfight in front of the
Detroit News
building. It was estimated that at least 100 people were in the immediate area. Miraculously, none of the observers were wounded. Patrolman George Barstad was rushed to Detroit Receiving Hospital, where doctors held little hope for his recovery.

The car used by the bandits in the
Detroit News
robbery was discovered the following day, when police received a phone call from a garage owner who operated a filling station on the corner of Grand River and Littlefield Avenues in Detroit. He had heard a description of the vehicle and the license numbers over the radio. He told police that around noon on the day of the robbery, he noticed two men wearing raincoats and caps park the car on Littlefield. This was just across the street from his gas station. He stated that he hadn’t paid much attention to the car until he heard the description of the vehicle on a radio broadcast about the robbery. Police soon discovered that the car had been stolen from the home of an Albert E. Stewart. Stewart, who was employed as a Supervisor of Properties for the Detroit Public Schools, had reported the car missing on May 20. The original license plates had been switched for a pair taken off a vehicle that was scrapped on May 1, 1928, and sold to the Independent Auto Parts Company in Detroit.

Rewards offered for the capture and conviction of the
Detroit News
bandits totaled $13,000. The
Detroit News
offered $6,000 dollars of the reward money, or $1,000 for the capture and conviction of each of the bandits. The
Detroit Times
offered $1,000 for the capture and conviction of the outlaws. A $6,000 reward was also approved by the Wayne County Board of Auditors.

The Detroit Police Department investigators believed that the bandits were probably Detroiters as they seemed to be very familiar with the layout of the city’s streets. According to one account, $25,000 in
Detroit News
payroll money was taken in the holdup. The
News
holdup was characterized as the most daring crime in Detroit history at that time.

The Paul Jaworski Gang was immediately suspected of having been involved in the holdup. An anonymous woman caller had reportedly tipped off the Detroit police that Jaworski had been seen in the city shortly before the holdup occurred.
Detroit News
employees that were eyewitnesses to the robbery were shown mug shots of Paul Jaworski and various members of his gang shortly after the incident. At first, none of the people present that morning were able to identify Jaworski as being a member of the gang. The man who appeared to be the leader of the gunmen during the holdup had a small mustache and wore glasses. When a Detroit Police Department artist drew a mustache and glasses on a police photo of Paul Jaworski, almost instantly three employees of the
Detroit News
identified Jaworski as the man who had directed the heist.

The positive identification of Paul Jaworski in the
Detroit News
robbery added another $5,000 to the reward money. The additional $5,000 was offered by Pennsylvania authorities. Jaworski and another convicted murderer were both awaiting a death sentence when they shot their way out of the Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh on August 18, 1927. The two men had been at large ever since.

• • •

Sometimes referred to as a “product of the back alleys of Hamtramck,” Michigan, Paul Jaworski was one of the most notorious bank robbers of the Prohibition era. Throughout his criminal career, Jaworski was known by a number of different aliases: Paul Topps, Paul Paluzwski, and Paul Jaworski.

Jaworski was born Paul Poluszynski in Polish Galicia in 1900. The family immigrated to the United States in 1905, first settling in Butler, Pennsylvania. Paul’s father, Thomas Poluszynski, was employed as a carpenter, and Paul grew up in what outwardly appeared to be a stable, working-class environment. He was first arrested as a child for stealing apples in Butler, Pennsylvania, a premonition of things to come. The Poluszynski family later moved to Pittsburgh and eventually settled in Hamtramck, Michigan, around 1915.

As a youngster, Jaworski became passionately interested in aeronautics and supposedly mastered the intricacies of the airplane. During the First World War, he tried to enlist in the U.S. Army air service, first in Detroit and later in Cleveland, Ohio. He was turned down both times. It was reported that as children Paul and his brothers Tom and Sam were all juvenile delinquents, constantly suspected by both the Hamtramck and Detroit police of various crimes by the time they became teenagers. According to a personal interview conducted with Paul’s father in 1928, Paul had fallen in with what he described as a bad crowd when the boy was around 16. Paul left home at age 19 and according to his father had no contact with the family after that. The only thing that they knew about him was what they read in the newspapers.

Paul began his early criminal career associating with members of the “Shotgun Gang,” which operated out of Hamtramck and robbed banks throughout the Detroit metropolitan area. This group of bank robbers, led by Stanley Gawlick, Frank Parmentye, and Vance Hardy, used sawed-off shotguns in their holdups, as the gang’s name implied. Known for their ruthlessness and speed in striking a target, Gawlick would often introduce himself as he walked into a bank with shotgun in hand, yelling, “Well here’s Stanley, back again!”

This outfit operated successfully for about one year, robbing banks and then scattering to various rural hideouts. The gang began to crumble when Parmentye and Gawlick were shot down by police during holdups. Hardy was eventually captured, convicted, and given a long prison sentence for armed robbery. Some of the other members of the Shotgun Gang, including Mike Komieczka aka “Mike the Pug,” Stanley “Big Stack” Podolski, and his brother John Podolski, would take charge of the remnants of the Shotgun Gang after its original leaders were killed or sent to prison.

Stanley “Big Stack” Podolski was born in Adron, Pennsylvania, in 1900. Both of his parents had immigrated from Poland. The family moved to Hamtramck, Michigan, around 1912. Like Paul Jaworski, Podolski was also a product of “the back alleys of Hamtramck.” Known as “Big Stack” because of his size, 6’2” and 210 pounds, Podolski became a close friend of Paul Jaworski and his mentor in crime. Jaworski and his group of thugs began their criminal careers robbing filling stations in Detroit and Hamtramck. Under the tutelage of Stanley “Big Stack” Podolski, the Jaworski Gang quickly graduated to robbing banks

The Jaworski Gang divided their time between Detroit and Pittsburgh. The Mob began making a name for itself robbing coal company payrolls in Pennsylvania. Part of the gang made its headquarters in Detroit and Hamtramck, Michigan, and another group worked out of rural hideouts in western Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, the Jaworski Gang was known as the “Flathead Gang.”

The first major robbery attributed to the Jaworski Gang was the 1923 holdup of the Detroit Bank branch at West Fort Street and West End, in which $30,000 was taken. The Mob gained its first national notoriety in the December 23, 1923, holdup of a paymaster for the Pittsburgh Terminal Coal Company Branch at Beadling, Pennsylvania. Ross Dennis, the company paymaster, had picked up a $23,000 payroll from a bank in Beadling. He was en route to a company mine when he was ambushed by members of the Jaworski Gang. Dennis, who was riding a motorcycle, was hit by a shotgun blast from bushes along the side of the road. Wounded, he lost control of his motorcycle and fell to the pavement. As Dennis lay on the pavement badly injured, the gangsters walked out of the cover of the bushes and approached him. The paymaster reached for something in his back pocket. Though it was later discovered that Dennis was not carrying a gun, the bandits assumed he was armed and immediately shot him dead. He had made the mistake of reaching for a handkerchief, probably to wipe the blood from his face. The payroll money was taken from a knapsack slung over Dennis’s shoulder.

The Jaworski/Flathead Mob then embarked on a long series of depredations in the Detroit and western Pennsylvania regions. Over a period of approximately six years, the gang was involved in at least 14 known major robberies and scores of other crimes including murder. The gangsters showed no mercy in their dealings with their victims. In a 1924 saloon holdup in Pennsylvania, Paul Jaworski was wounded and spent a month in the hospital under police guard. Given bail, he disappeared. On April 14, 1925, the American State Bank branch in Detroit was robbed by the gang. A young bank teller was shot and killed because he had failed to raise his hands quickly enough to suit the gunmen.

On June 13, 1925, members of the Jaworski Gang held up the Central Savings Bank branch in Detroit. The superstitious Jaworski did not participate in this holdup as the robbery had been planned for a Friday the 13th. Twenty-seven thousand dollars was taken by the bandits in this holdup, but all did not go well. During a gun battle in the aftermath of the robbery, a patrolman named Casimer Kaliszewski was shot to death while pursuing the thugs. Arthur Matchus aka “Matches,” Stanley Wykowski, and John Podolski, a brother of Stanley “Big Stack” Podolski, were later arrested in connection with the robbery and shooting. All eventually pled guilty to the murder of the police officer and were sentenced to life in Marquette Prison. Stanley “Big Stack” Podolski was arrested with some other suspects but was able to prove an alibi. He was immediately rearrested and held for the 1923 Detroit Bank job. A teller that worked in the bank positively identified “Big Stack” as one of the holdup men. The Jaworski Gang went to great extremes to have the well-liked Podolski acquitted, even offering the teller/witness $1,000 to change his testimony. The attempt was to no avail, and Stanley Podolski was convicted of armed robbery in Detroit Recorders Court and sentenced on June 19, 1925, to 20 to 40 years in Marquette Prison. These convictions represented the first major blow by law-enforcement agencies against the Jaworski Mob and began the gradual disintegration of the gang.

On November 20, 1925, the gangsters held up a Brinks armored car at Dubois and Franklin Streets in Detroit; $18,000 was taken. During the incident, a Brinks Company guard was killed and another seriously wounded. The guards had been en route to deliver a payroll to the Ainsworth Manufacturing Company Mike Komieczka aka “Mike the Pug” and Walter Makowski were later arrested in connection with the Brinks holdup and murder. Both men were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in Marquette Prison.

By far the most spectacular job pulled by the Jaworski Gang was the March 11, 1927, dynamiting of an armored car carrying a mine payroll at Coverdale, Pennsylvania. The road was mined with dynamite the night before the holdup. As the armored car passed over, the charge was ignited. The tremendous explosion that resulted flipped the vehicle over on its back and ripped the armored car almost in half. By some miracle, the guards inside the car escaped death. The force of the explosion blew a waist deep hole in the road. The armored car was carrying a payroll for the Pittsburgh Terminal Coal Company, which for some reason was a favorite target of the Jaworski Gang. The guards were ordered out of the demolished armored car, and a $104,000 payroll was taken. One of the guards had been slow when commanded by one of the bandits to lie face down in the snow and was shot and killed as a result. The gang got away from the crime scene with the payroll.

Several days later, Paul Jaworski was captured without a fight on a farm that was often used by the gang as a hideout. The farm was located in nearby Bentleyville, Pennsylvania. The police had reportedly been tipped off by a rival gangster as to Jaworski’s whereabouts. It was during his capture at Bentleyville, Pennsylvania, that Paul Poluszynski received the famous alias of Paul Jaworski. An arresting officer had asked Paul his name, and he said “Smith.” Another officer noticed a magazine on the floor of the farmhouse and picked it up. The name Jaworski was written in pencil across the top of the cover of the publication. “You’re a liar,” the officer told him. ‘Tour name’s not Smith, it’s Jaworski!” “That name will do as well as any other,” replied the bandit. The name stuck. From that time on, the name Jaworski would be synonymous with terror, robbery, and murder throughout the Midwest. Shortly after Jaworski was apprehended, the owner of the farm was arrested at Detroit. He admitted to detectives that the Jaworski Gang had used his farm as a hideout in the past after committing holdups in western Pennsylvania. He denied being a member of the gang and agreed to be brought back to the farm where he was to help officers obtain further evidence against the outlaws.