The Genesis of Organized Crime

The Mafia is one of those organizations that Hollywood and the media have turned into a household name. Its current public face is the fictional Tony Soprano. The closing years of the nineteenth century and the dawning of the twentieth were the halcyon days of Giuseppe Morello, who was known to cop and criminal alike as ‘the Clutch Hand’ because of a deformed arm. The nickname could just as well have derived from his talent for seizing any opportunity to make crime pay.

Mike Dash has written an engrossing account of Morello’s ascendancy from the dusty streets of his native Corleone, Sicily to the saloons and tenements of New York, where he became the much-feared boss of the Italian-dominated rackets. He counterfeited American and Canadian currency, masterminded insurance scams, and unleashed Black Hand terror on his frightened countrymen, all the while building and strengthening a gang that became the first organized crime family. Morello’s vicious rule encompassed some of the most sensational examples of mob violence in the city’s history, such as the Barrel Murder of 1903 and the Masseria-Maranzano war of Sicilian succession. The ageing Clutch Hand served as advisor to Joe ‘the Boss’ Masseria in the latter conflict, and was killed by Maranzano gunmen in August 1930.

As with his previous books, Dash focuses on primary sources, such as the records of the U.S. Secret Service (which tracked Morello during his counterfeiting days) and the memoirs of its New York bureau chief, William Flynn, who pursued the Clutch Hand’s gang as doggedly as another legendary mob-buster, NYPD Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino (whose war with the Mafia and brutal murder are both covered in detail). Chilling anecdotes mingle with archival evidence to tell a story that rivals the best crime fiction.

“The First Family” is one of the finest accounts of the Mafia’s shady and bloody beginnings. Those who enjoyed this book are advised to also read Thomas Hunt and Martha Machecha Sheldon’s “Deep Water”, which is a similarly authoritative and original treatment of the 1890 assassination of New Orleans police chief David Hennessy, which was America’s first widely publicized Mafia hit.

The Demon in the Belfry

In April 1895, two young women followed a man they trusted into the Emmanuel Baptist Church in San Francisco’s Mission District and did not emerge alive. The bloody, disfigured corpse of 21-year-old Minnie Williams was found in the library the day before Easter Sunday, and soon afterward searchers discovered the naked body of Blanche Lamont, who had been missing since April 3, in the belfry. Clues and witness statements directed the police to Theo Durrant, a young medical student who also happened to be assistant Sunday School superintendent for the church.

Durrant’s murder trial was attended by such eminent spectators as Presidential hopeful William Jennings Bryan and Gold Rush millionaire John Mackay. The evidence against him was so overwhelming that the jury brought in a guilty verdict in less than half an hour. While his January 1898 execution brought closure to the families of Minnie Williams and Blanche Lamont, it also left a lot of unanswered questions. Why did he kill two young women whom he’d known well and never born any malice against? And what motivated a man who had been devoted to his parents and sister and active in church affairs to commit murder in the first place? The press hinted that he was a depraved monster disguised as a pious youth, and referred to him as ‘the Demon in the Belfry’. In Sympathy for the Devil, Virginia McConnell questions the justice of these assumptions.

I’ll admit that when I began reading the book, I had doubts about McConnell’s impartiality: in the introduction, she wrote, “His two tragic deeds aside, I would have been proud to call him ‘brother’ or ‘friend’.” But unlike the mindless, adoring women who simpered over Theo Durrant during his courtroom appearances, McConnell has credible reasons for her partiality. Reviewing his family and medical history, she points out that his father was manic-depressive and prone to impulsive actions, and Durrant himself nearly died from meningitis, or ‘brain fever’, a condition that often left survivors with brain damage. She suggests that he may have been in a manic phase when he killed the two women, and the behaviour he exhibited at that time corresponds to the profile: loquaciousness, impulsivity, and unnatural energy levels. When not in the throes of the disorder, Durrant was apparently a mild-mannered, caring individual who placed women on a pedestal.

Sympathy for the Devil is a sympathetic, but not sentimental, treatment of the Emmanuel Baptist murders. It includes rare and unsettling photos, such as a vibrant young Blanche Lamont, the belfry landing where her nude body was found, and the blood-spattered walls of the room where Minnie Williams met her death. Any future books about the case have a very high bar to leap over.

Attorney for the Damned

I have just finished reading Donald McRae's The Last Trials of Clarence Darrow. If a one-word review was sufficient, I'd just say "Wow". Or "Amazing." But it's not, so here goes.

Clarence Darrow had two principle reasons for living: winning and women. We know a lot about his courtroom victories, thanks to a succession of books, articles, and film adaptations. The Last Trials of Clarence Darrow delves into more intimate territory, namely his relationship with Mary Field Parton, socialist writer and reporter. She prevented him from committing suicide in 1912, and despite disillusion and heartache, supported him while he built his legacy as America’s greatest defense attorney. Compassionate yet conceited, equal parts earthy and intellectual, few American lawyers have attained the mythical status of Clarence Darrow. He turned seemingly hopeless cases into judicial triumphs, spawning the nickname ‘Attorney for the Damned’.

In 1924 he saved teenaged thrill killers Leopold and Loeb from the gallows by persuading the judge that mental illness was sufficient grounds to commute the death penalty. An ardent civil libertarian, Darrow defended John Scopes, who stood trial in Tennessee in July 1925 for teaching Darwinism in a state-funded school. The following October, he joined the defense team of a black physician, Ossian Sweet, who had moved into an all-white neighbourhood in Detroit and caused a riot that saw one white man killed and another injured. His closing statement in that trial is regarded as a civil rights landmark.

Previous reviewers have complained that this book contains no new information about Darrow’s career or personal life. That may be: I admit that this is the first biography I’ve read of the man whom Variety called "America's greatest one-man stage draw." As an introduction to Darrow’s legacy, I found McRae’s book to be engrossing. It may not be especially critical or insightful about the legal issues of the day, but this is a book aimed at the popular history market and has its limits in that regard.

What appears to be new in McRae’s treatment of Clarence Darrow’s story is his emphasis on the stormy relationship with Mary Field Parton. Although she had the misfortune of falling in love with a man whose moral compass was broken at birth and has been trivialized by some as a peripheral floozy, she was part of Darrow’s life for over thirty years, and shared in both his greatest highs and darkest lows. McRae’s access to her diaries gave him, and therefore the reader, a little more insight into how the ‘attorney for the damned’ affected those close to him.

Tenement Nights

On August 3, Bad Seeds in the Big Apple author Pat Downey and I gave a presentation at the Tenement House Museum in New York. The evening's theme was Dead Guys in Suits and the subject matter was- yes, you guessed it- New York gangsters. Thanks to mentions in Time Out New York and other publications, a good-sized and sincerely interested crowd turned up.

At the end of Pat's and my presentation, we gave the attendees a surprise treat. Actor Franklin Abrams and two colleagues performed a scene from an upcoming Monk 1903 webisode: a confrontation between Max 'Kid Twist' Zweifach (Abrams) and Ritchie Fitzpatrick (Mike Lubik) over who will assume the throne left vacant by Monk Eastman's prison sentence. Zweifach's granddaughter and other family members were in the crowd, and enjoyed the performance hugely. Just an FYI- Franklin and I are collaborating on a one-man show about Kid Twist, and hope to launch it at the museum in the New Year.

Why all this emphasis on Kid Twist? To begin with, he was a ruthless but fascinating figure whose impact on New York gangster history has been underestimated. Since Monk Eastman was likely not Jewish, Zweifach is therefore the New York City's first Jewish gang lord. When he was murdered at Coney Island in May 1908, he left an estate valued at $50,000 to $100,000 (over a million dollars today), an astronomical sum for a twenty-four-year-old gangster to possess, especially since he did not run women or sell drugs, the two major organized vices of the early twentieth century. We know that he dreamed big- in 1905, when he was barely twenty-one, Zweifach masterminded a scheme to forge $5,000 worth of phoney railroad passes. He was caught for that one, but judging from the unusual size of his estate, he must have gotten away with many more. As I told the crowd at the Tenement House Museum, "Further study into Zweifach's past will yield valuable information about early Jewish crime in America."

Chicago's Original Big Feller

Read any book about Chicago’s criminal past and chances are that you’ll come across the name of Michael Cassius ‘Big Mike’ McDonald. He was the founding father of a sophisticated, profitable, and far-reaching crime confederacy that included politicians, police officers, and even the mayor’s office. But so much time and chicanery has passed since his heyday that McDonald has receded into Chicago mythology. What Richard Lindberg has done in The Gambler King of Clark Street is employ dedicated research methods to crack through the lore and remind us that Big Mike was Chicago’s original ‘Big Feller’.

McDonald’s methods were alternately insidious and blatant. He bonded many a poor immigrant out of jail, aware that such favors translated into ethnic community votes. This in turn made him invaluable to the local bosses. His multi-storey gambling palace on Clark Street looted workingmen of their scant wages and sucked in the funds that enabled him to buy the police and the judiciary. No one could ever accuse McDonald’s game plan of lacking a grass-roots element.

Big Mike controlled everything except his wives. The first, Mary Noonan, ran off twice, first with an actor and the second time with a Catholic priest. His second spouse, a buxom blonde Jewess named Dora Feldman, was several years younger and ended up finding a teenaged lover whom she eventually killed for infidelity. The latter debacle is said to have hastened McDonald’s death in 1907.

The Internet Age has granted access to public records, newspaper archives, photo collections, etc, to anyone with a computer. History writers no longer have to be local or on a well-paid sabbatical to conduct research. The bar has been raised, but in this instance, Lindberg sails over it effortlessly. I was fascinated by the humanizing detail that he uncovered about Mike McDonald’s early years, and pleased to note his use of family stories and popular anecdotes, which demonstrate how the person is remembered by those who knew him or were affected by him.

Author Pat Hickey notes in his ingenious review of The Gambler King of Clark Street: “The story is an eye-opener…. the lakefront liberals who castigated John McCain and the GOP so savagely last fall, turn a blind eye and say nothing about the 130 years of non-stop corruption in the City of Chicago – most of it perpetrated by the Lords of the Machine, of which Mike McDonald was its founding father.” I heartily agree, and stand by what I wrote for the book’s jacket: “Chicago history aficionados owe Richard C. Lindberg a debt of gratitude for providing a deeper understanding of how the city became what it is today.”

Misled by a book, and loving it

In August 1849, Frederick Manning and his Swiss wife, Maria, lured a middle-aged moneylender named Patrick O'Connor to their home in the Bermondsey section of London. O'Connor and Mrs. Manning had been lovers prior to her marriage, and probably for awhile afterward too. They shot and clubbed him to death, covered his body with quicklime, and then buried it under their kitchen floor. Maria hurried to O'Connor's rented room, where she stole money and railway share certificates. Then she and Frederick fled in opposite directions: she went to Edinburgh while he sailed to the Channel Islands. When a concerned friend reported O'Connor's disappearance, the police went to the Manning home and discovered the makeshift grave. After a nationwide manhunt, the murderous couple was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death. They were hung at Horsemonger Lane Gaol in November 1849, in front of a raucous crowd.

Using the title alone as a point of reference, London 1849: a Victorian Murder Story appears to be about the Manning case. But it isn't. Michael Alpert has written a social history of London in the year 1849, when the O'Connor murder shocked the city. The first chapter is dedicated to the crime and the apprehension of Frederick and Maria Manning, and the concluding one uses their trial and execution to illustrate the workings of the British justice system. But the rest of the book is an admittedly fascinating look at the daily lives of mid-nineteenth century Londoners: what they ate, where they went for entertainment, how the class system worked, and the waning role of religion in their lives.

Whenever possible, Alpert frames his topic to suggest what the Mannings might have done in a given circumstance. For example, in the chapter about recreation, he proposes that Maria would not have been interested in the Frith paintings at the National Gallery, as she had been a lady's maid in wealthy homes prior to her marriage and probably seen her fill of such masterpieces. When discussing the modes of public transportation available in 1849, Alpert presents a reasonably accurate re-enactment of Frederick Manning's flight from London to the Channel island of Jersey, where he was finally apprehended.

I love social history and true crime, so have absolutely no complaints about Michael Alpert's marriage of the two genres. But he runs the risk of disappointing true crime fans who pick up his book expecting to read a concise account of the 'Bermondsey horror'. These people will be better off tracking down a copy of Albert Borowitz's The Woman Who Murdered Black Satin: The Bermondsey Horror.

Free Audiobook MP3s from BN

I've hopped on the audiobook bandwagon a little late in the game. I admit it. As a bibliophile, I've always been resistant to books being produced in any format that didn't involve paper and ink. Although I still prefer my reading matter to be in the traditional format, I warmed to e-books when so many valuable old volumes that I need for research were only available electronically. With that point of resistance pierced, the route to audiobook fan was not a long one. That mission was accomplished this week.

While browsing the Barnes and Noble website for new releases in the true crime genre, I discovered an Audiobook MP3 free download offer. You can choose one or all of the nine stories available. Nothing turns me into a potential customer more than a try-before-you-buy option, so I signed up and selected the titles that interested me. Seconds later an e-mail arrived containing the requisite download links, and I had something to listen to while I cleaned my workspace. I liked some more than others, but nothing was so heinous that I'd never listen to it again.

According to the Barnes and Noble site, the free audiobook offer ends May 16 at 2:59 a.m. EST., so if you're interested, act now.

If your first love of books came from the stories that your parents read to you at bedtime, there's something comforting about letting another person tell you a story. As an author, I also think it's important to embrace new technologies in the area of information dissemination. It's no field for a technophobe.