Boardwalk Gangster (10 page)
Read Boardwalk Gangster Online
Authors: Tim Newark
He explained the blood on her face by saying she probably hit her head on the wheel when she fell forward. Roland West’s testimony to the coroner on December 19 added to this conclusion.
“I went to the garage and rushed in the door,” said West, “and there was Miss Todd lying over there. I put my hand onto her face and there was blood and I wiped it off on my handkerchief.” He told the maid to get help. “[I] looked to see how much gas was in the tank and it was almost empty. I know from the position that she was trying to get out of that car. I know that, because otherwise she would not have been turned in the way she did.”
The time of Todd’s death was soon disputed, however, as a friend came forward to say she had spoken to the film star on Sunday afternoon. Martha Ford, wife of actor Wallace Ford, talked to her on the telephone. She had invited Todd to a cocktail party.
“Sunday afternoon she telephoned me,” insisted Ford. “She
said, ‘Darling, do you mind if I bring a guest?’ I replied, ‘Of course not. Who is it?’ ‘You’d never guess, and you’ll be surprised when you see,’ she said. I told her I was dying of curiosity, but she would not tell me anything more. Then she said: ‘You know who this is, of course? It’s Thelma—your Hot Toddy.’ That was a nickname she liked to call herself. Then she said, ‘Oh, and another thing—I went to a party last night and I’m still in evening clothes. Do you mind?’ I laughed and said to come in anything she wanted, but to hurry. Then she hung up.”
said, ‘Darling, do you mind if I bring a guest?’ I replied, ‘Of course not. Who is it?’ ‘You’d never guess, and you’ll be surprised when you see,’ she said. I told her I was dying of curiosity, but she would not tell me anything more. Then she said: ‘You know who this is, of course? It’s Thelma—your Hot Toddy.’ That was a nickname she liked to call herself. Then she said, ‘Oh, and another thing—I went to a party last night and I’m still in evening clothes. Do you mind?’ I laughed and said to come in anything she wanted, but to hurry. Then she hung up.”
Who was the mystery date? Was it Luciano? He was in L.A. that weekend. Several witnesses came forward to say they had seen an attractive blonde in an automobile like hers sitting next to a dark-featured man.
Jewel Carmen, Roland West’s ex-wife, gave a statement to the police in which she said she saw a blonde looking like Todd driving in a chocolate brown Lincoln Phaeton on the Sunday evening before her body was found. A mysterious man was sitting next to her. “He was dark, foreign-looking,” she said, “wearing a pepper and salt colored fedora hat and coat that matched.”
A shop assistant said she had seen Todd four days before her death and she was openly worried about money, paying up front for a hat she had ordered. “You’d better get your money now because I may be broke by the first of the year; a great many changes are going to take place in my life by the first of the year.”
The reasons for Todd’s financial concerns soon came out in the press. They said she had been the object of several extortion notes and threatening letters. All written on plain white paper of good quality, they bore New York postmarks. Signed “The Ace of Hearts,” one of the notes demanded $10,000 from the actress or he would blow up her café. They were followed up by several long-distance phone calls coming from the “Ace.”
In the months leading up to Todd’s death, two men were arrested in New York in connection with the threatening notes. One of the extortionists was identified as twenty-six-year-old Edward Schiffert, but his parents said he was mentally unsound
and shouldn’t have confessed to the charge. He ended up in Bellevue Hospital. The other man, arrested over the summer, had all charges dropped against him. Despite these arrests, the threats kept coming and worried Todd to the point that she dreaded picking up the telephone for a long-distance call.
and shouldn’t have confessed to the charge. He ended up in Bellevue Hospital. The other man, arrested over the summer, had all charges dropped against him. Despite these arrests, the threats kept coming and worried Todd to the point that she dreaded picking up the telephone for a long-distance call.
After her death, the headwaiter of Todd’s restaurant said he’d received several phone calls promising to murder him if he spoke out about the case. The maid who discovered the body said a “couple of mean-looking men” approached her and told her not to mention the Mob when giving evidence.
By December 24, there were too many suspicious circumstances for the police to let the case rest as an accidental death and it became a hunt for murder clues. A further autopsy report said “the throat of the actress bore swellings or bruises such as might have been made by the jamming of a bottle neck or a pipe into her mouth.” In addition to this, two of her ribs were fractured and her nose broken. The foreman of the grand jury, convened to investigate the death, added to the mood of malevolence by saying that “murder by monoxide” might be the conclusion of the case.
The final verdict, however, reverted to the original finding. On the fateful night, Todd’s chauffeur dropped her outside her restaurant. She couldn’t open the door to her apartment, so she walked up the hill to West’s house. It was after 2:00 A.M. West wasn’t in his home but sleeping in a bedroom he had in the café. When she got no answer from West’s home, rather than walk all the way back down to the café, she spent the night in her car in his garage. Drunk, she kept the motor on to keep herself warm and subsequently died from carbon monoxide poisoning. Roland Button, Todd’s lawyer, was not happy with the finding and told the district attorney he could prove that Luciano had murdered her, but her movie producer, Hal Roach, possibly under Mob duress, leaned on DA Fitts and the matter was dropped.
Thelma Todd’s heartbroken mother concurred with the official version.
“It would be quite natural of her to go to her car rather than inconvenience anybody,” she said. “The loneliness of the walk would not frighten her, because she had no fear—none whatsoever … . If her face was injured it would be due to her falling over when she became unconscious. I am sure of that because my daughter was happy, very happy, and she had no enemies.”
Todd’s ex-husband, Pat Di Cicco, echoed this sentiment when he was interviewed in New York. There was no truth to the rumor that they were going to remarry, he told an L.A. reporter.
“It was merely a coincidence that I was at the Trocadero Saturday night when she was there too. We were in two different parties. I merely observed her as she was dancing but I don’t know with whom she was dancing.”
Was Di Cicco keeping an eye on her for Luciano?
“I have no theory as to the cause of her death,” he insisted. “It certainly is confusing. But she had no enemies. There was no reason why she should have committed suicide. And she never took those threatening letters seriously.”
Pat Di Cicco was wrong. She took the letters very seriously; and she had the worst of enemies—Lucky Luciano.
If Luciano had the film star murdered to protect his own extortion business in Los Angeles, he had gotten away with it. But the clock was ticking on his own freedom. Other women he had exploited over the years were about to have their day in court when the biggest gang-busting trial came to Manhattan in 1936.
CITY OF SEX
“A
m writing this letter more for the benefit of the unfortunate women,” wrote an anonymous informer in June 1931. “I have a sister whom I saved and is now married happily.” The informer had apparently saved her from a life of prostitution and was now telling the Sixty-seventh Precinct police in Brooklyn about a pimp who controlled girls in several “disorderly houses.” His business was run from a restaurant on West Twenty-second Street, Coney Island, owned by a woman called Yedis Porgamin, who also had a profitable sideline in buying stolen jewelry and trading in illicit bonded whiskey. The pimp was Louis Weiner, known as “Cockeyed” Louis. “He sends the women to the disorderly houses and receives their pay every Saturday night or Sunday.” He and his assistant, Albert Letz, buy and sell women, said the informer. “White Slave girls from out of town 16 or 17 years old. Sells them off to Bethelem, Easton or Lancaster, Pa.”
m writing this letter more for the benefit of the unfortunate women,” wrote an anonymous informer in June 1931. “I have a sister whom I saved and is now married happily.” The informer had apparently saved her from a life of prostitution and was now telling the Sixty-seventh Precinct police in Brooklyn about a pimp who controlled girls in several “disorderly houses.” His business was run from a restaurant on West Twenty-second Street, Coney Island, owned by a woman called Yedis Porgamin, who also had a profitable sideline in buying stolen jewelry and trading in illicit bonded whiskey. The pimp was Louis Weiner, known as “Cockeyed” Louis. “He sends the women to the disorderly houses and receives their pay every Saturday night or Sunday.” He and his assistant, Albert Letz, buy and sell women, said the informer. “White Slave girls from out of town 16 or 17 years old. Sells them off to Bethelem, Easton or Lancaster, Pa.”
The informer recommended the police put a tap on the
restaurant telephone and directed them to one of the brothels. “Open all hours this is the biggest house in the business,” he or she said with some urgency. “Please work on these right away and I hope you don’t send men that you can bribe. Once you can land Cockeye Louis and Al Lucks or Yedis Porgamin you break the biggest white slave ring in the country fast and sure because they already pay police protection.”
restaurant telephone and directed them to one of the brothels. “Open all hours this is the biggest house in the business,” he or she said with some urgency. “Please work on these right away and I hope you don’t send men that you can bribe. Once you can land Cockeye Louis and Al Lucks or Yedis Porgamin you break the biggest white slave ring in the country fast and sure because they already pay police protection.”
The police took the advice seriously and tapped the restaurant phone, recording the following conversation on September 1, 1931, at 2:40 P.M.
“Hello Lucky, this is Frank.”
“Frank who?”
“The sheik.”
“Oh hello there Frank, how are you?”
“I am sick.”
“Listen Frank, the hell with the women, money and Cockeyed Louis, you take care of yourself. We need you to drive, you know that … .”
“Frank” then asked to speak to Louis, but “Lucky” dismissed that.
“Louis is too drunk to talk to you or anybody else so forget it.”
A copy of this phone tap and the informer’s letter ended up on the desk of Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Dewey. The reference to “Lucky” may have intrigued him, but it was most likely not Lucky Luciano but the lieutenant of Cockeyed Louis, Albert Letz, also known as “Al Lucks.”
The letter did corroborate other information that placed Cockeyed Louis at the center of a prostitution racket in New York State and, by 1935, that was very much on Dewey’s mind. When he declared his war against organized crime in July of that year, vice was at the top of his list. “We are concerned with those predatory vultures who traffic on a wholesale scale in the bodies of women and mere girls for profit,” he said. It chimed a bell with many fellow citizens who had sent in their own reports of organized vice.
On July 7, 1935, one concerned New Yorker called on Dewey to turn his attention to the homosexual trade of young men. He described it as a “meat market” located in Times Square, a little park behind the Forty-second Street Library, and Fifth Avenue up to Hotel Plaza. “You would find out that the streetboys in New York are mostly not born in this town,” he wrote. “They come from Boston, Hollywood, from all the different regions and states of this country. As to their former positions, if they had any, they are sailors, or ushers or bellboys—anyhow come mostly from positions which made them wear a uniform.”
It was not just the gay prostitutes themselves who concerned the author of this letter, but the criminals involved with them. “We all will be very grateful to you,” he told Dewey, “if you can clean this town from the overabundance of vice. Believe me, that the street boy ‘industry’ is one of the most dominant vices, because of the different crimes connected with this filthy business.”
It was a strong condemnation of just one aspect of the sexual criminal life that infected New York City in the early 1930s, but what really interested Dewey was the organized crime behind mainstream heterosexual prostitution. Letters from concerned citizens provided piecemeal evidence, but he needed to create a much more substantial picture of how prostitution in New York functioned and for that he needed to talk directly to the girls and pimps involved. On February 1, 1936, Dewey triggered a raid on brothels across Manhattan and Brooklyn that pulled in 125 prostitutes, madams, and bookers. By questioning them, Dewey and his investigators—chiefly Eunice H. Carter and Murray I. Gurfein—got just the information they needed.
An important link in the flesh trade was the “booker”—sometimes called a “bookie.” He supplied the girls for the madams who managed the brothels. It was the booker who ensured the flow of new girls through brothels throughout the city and the country, keeping regular clients happy with a change of faces. Cockeyed Louis was a booker on a major scale and his
son, Al Weiner, took over the business from him. Typically, a booker might handle two hundred girls at a time and would take 10 percent of what they earned. The madam took half—and in 1936 a prostitute might generate around $300 a week.
son, Al Weiner, took over the business from him. Typically, a booker might handle two hundred girls at a time and would take 10 percent of what they earned. The madam took half—and in 1936 a prostitute might generate around $300 a week.
Surprisingly perhaps, the profits of prostitution had not really interested organized crime in the 1920s, largely because they had their hands full handling the trade in illicit alcohol and narcotics, but with the end of Prohibition in 1933, mobsters began to search for other sources of income. A sign of this pressure being brought to bear on Luciano was recorded in an incident in February 1934.
The police received an anonymous telephone tip-off saying that five men had entered the offices of financial broker Balsam & Co. on Broad Street in New York’s Financial District on February 13 at 5:00 P.M. The men demanded several thousand dollars and a percentage of the business in return for their protection. Two of the tough guys were alleged to have been Luciano and Bugsy Siegel, and they intended to put pressure on twenty-five other brokers to join their racket. When the police interviewed Louis Balsam, he confirmed that two men had visited him, saying they were forming a committee to protect brokers in the area, but they did not ask for any money at the time and he could not identify them. Photographs of Luciano and Siegel were shown to other brokers around Broad Street, but none identified them as the racketeers. The police interest was enough to discourage the mobsters from persisting with this enterprise.
Moving in on legitimate business was much harder than putting pressure on illegal activities—victims who were also criminals could hardly go to the cops—so Luciano muscled in on the sex business. Bookers such as Cockeyed Louis and his son Al had been allowed to dominate it for several years, but now senior criminals took an interest and their days of independence were numbered.
Danny Brooks was one of the bookers brought in by the police and he had an interesting story to tell Dewey’s team. He
worked for Jimmy Fredericks, who was connected with the Mott Street Mob and was a dominant force in the vice trade. He worked out of an office at 117 West Tenth Street. In October 1933, he came to Brooks with bad news.
worked for Jimmy Fredericks, who was connected with the Mott Street Mob and was a dominant force in the vice trade. He worked out of an office at 117 West Tenth Street. In October 1933, he came to Brooks with bad news.
“I have just lost a decision downtown,” said Fredericks.
“What decision?”
“Lucky has given a decision against me.”
By that, Fredericks meant that Luciano had made it clear that he was getting into the business of prostitution and Fredericks had to hand over his books to Luciano’s associates Abie “the Jew” Heller and David “Little Davie” Petillo. Under the new regime, Brooks would act as both a booker and carry out “bonding.” Bonding demanded each girl pay $10 a week. For this money, when the girl was arrested, she would get the service of a lawyer and half her bail paid; her madam would put up the other half of the bail bond. The men who worked together to obtain this money called themselves “the Combination.” Brooks wasn’t happy with carrying out both of these criminal acts from his own office.
“You have nothing to worry about,” said Fredericks, “because this is the toughest thing to convict anybody on.”
“I am kind of scared,” said Brooks. “I don’t know what to do. I want to know who is behind this.”
Fredericks said that he was behind it.
“But you haven’t any money,” said Brooks. “I want to know the truth.”
Fredericks said that Abie the Jew and Little Davie were behind the racket, as he’d said before when they took the business directly away from him.
“And who?” insisted Brooks.
“Lucky,” said Fredericks.
The October 1933 meeting was a crucial moment. This was when Luciano moved in on the business of prostitution in New York. A week before, several small-time gangsters had come together to form their own bonding Combination. As well as
Jimmy Fredericks, they included Sam Warner, who later described the meeting in more detail. It took place in Alphonso’s Restaurant on Broome Street near Mulberry. Word then got out about their proposed Combination, and Luciano wasn’t happy with it. He called in all the participants to meet him at the restaurant. He arrived twenty minutes after they’d gathered. As soon as Luciano entered the room, “all the Italian men stood up and greeted him just as if he were a general,” said Warner. Little Davie Petillo spoke to them in Italian and then Luciano made his speech.
Jimmy Fredericks, they included Sam Warner, who later described the meeting in more detail. It took place in Alphonso’s Restaurant on Broome Street near Mulberry. Word then got out about their proposed Combination, and Luciano wasn’t happy with it. He called in all the participants to meet him at the restaurant. He arrived twenty minutes after they’d gathered. As soon as Luciano entered the room, “all the Italian men stood up and greeted him just as if he were a general,” said Warner. Little Davie Petillo spoke to them in Italian and then Luciano made his speech.
“Listen, you fellows are all through; from now on Little Davie is taking over the bonding.”
With that, Luciano walked out of the restaurant. Warner and the rest were too frightened to say anything. There was a new bonding Combination in town and that was headed by Luciano with the Mott Street Mob handling its administration. Little Davie Petillo, Abie the Jew, Tommy “the Bull” Pennochio, and Jimmy Fredericks were the senior managers charged with enforcing it.
Unwisely, Sam Warner and a few of his associates carried on collecting their bonds for a week after the meeting. Finally, at one brothel, one of the madams told them that Little Davie wanted to see them. He told them that if they didn’t cut it out, their heads would be broken. They instantly stopped their operations.
Later, in June 1935, Danny Brooks drove another booker called Dave Miller to a meeting in Mulberry Street. Jimmy Fredericks was there and so was Little Davie. Their main topic of conversation was another judgment from above that took over Cockeyed Louis’s part of the business and gave it to Miller, but Miller was concerned about his own security if things went wrong.
“Who is going to take care of me in case of trouble?” he asked Fredericks. “You know Cockeyed Louis got sent away.”
“What are you worrying about?” snapped Fredericks. “You are always worrying.”
“I ain’t got no money,” said Miller. “I would like to know what this is all about. Who is going to take care of me?”
“We will,” said Fredericks.
“Who is we?”
“Davie and Abie and … Charlie.”
This was just the information Dewey had hoped to get. He wanted to know that Charlie Luciano was at the apex of this particular crime pyramid.
Al Weiner, son of Cockeyed Louis, wasn’t happy about the new regime, either. He made a complaint to the police in June 1935 in which he said Luciano was extorting money from him. The official police department report said Luciano obtained the sum of $100 from Al Weiner “by wrongful use of force and fear on the part of the aforesaid Al Weiner by threatening the said Al Weiner to do an unlawful injury to his person.”
Luciano would accept no competition in this business.
Confirmation of Luciano’s reign of terror came from another source arrested in Dewey’s sweep of the brothels—Flo Brown. Also known as “Cokie Flo,” a name she detested, she was a morphine addict and madam. She had lived with a series of low-level gangsters in Chicago before deciding to set up her own brothel in Manhattan at 22 West Seventy-sixth Street. In 1933, she was booking with Cockeyed Louis Weiner, but this came to an end when the Combination took over. She bonded with them and opened a new house. She also became Jimmy Fredericks’s girlfriend, but this ended badly when she gave him $100 as a Christmas present and he gave her nothing. It only made things worse when she found out that Fredericks had given his previous long-term girlfriend a mink coat.
In spring 1934, Brown said she went with Fredericks to a meeting uptown at a Chinese restaurant on Broadway. Luciano was there with the head of the Mott Street Mob, Tommy “the Bull” Pennochio, and Little Davie Petillo. Brown said that most
of the conversation was in Italian, but what she did hear was that Fredericks told Luciano that some bookers were holding out on him—they didn’t want to surrender their joints and pay bonds to him.
of the conversation was in Italian, but what she did hear was that Fredericks told Luciano that some bookers were holding out on him—they didn’t want to surrender their joints and pay bonds to him.
“I’ll tell you what you do,” said Luciano. “Bring all the bookers down tomorrow and I will put them on the carpet and we will see that that doesn’t happen again.”
“Nick Montana is the worst offender,” said Fredericks. “He collects bonds and keeps it and then when the place gets pinched they run to me and I don’t know anything about it. I am not able to take the girls out because I didn’t know they had been paying bond.”
“Have them all come down,” said Luciano, “and we will straighten the matter out.”
Fredericks later told Brown that they “bawled the devil” out of the bookers and that Montana was the most defiant. “Nick thought he would get away with it because he had a brother—big shot in Harlem,” said Fredericks. “We didn’t care whether he had fifty brothers, he had to kick in just the same.” Luciano levied a fine of $500 on every booker holding out on a joint.
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