GANG WARFARE IN AMERICA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 57, 7 March 1936, Page 4 (Supplement)

GANG WARFARE IN AMERICA.

BITTER FEUDS CONTINUE

I TMnFor/rroi n FIGHT AND KILL FOR TERRITORY — NEW YORK'S VICE AND CRIME — BARBARIC TORTURE OF RIVAI 5 AND REPULSIVE METHODS OF DEATH — "BOOKIES" TAKE THE PLACE OF "BOOKLEGS" — FINANCING BY FORCE.

The impression may exist that the amendment of the American Constitution "which banished prohibition also removed the modus operandi of the bootlegger, the beer barons and the vast concourse of underworld gangsters who lived on the proceeds of vice and law-breaking associated with the illegal sale of liquor'. The accompanying article, written by Emanuel H. La vine, a New York newspaperman, throws a lurid light on the avenues along ■which American criminals are now operating. Way back last March police found the murdered body of Sam Druckman in a Brooklyn garage. Druckman was a bookie "who had gone to the loan sharks for £2000 when he lost bets on the horses. When he was unable to pay his obligation, the loan sharks said, "Get it —or else." Druckman was able to beg, borrow, or steal only £600. So the "or else" was accomplished, but not with the customary neatness and dispatch, for some passer-by heard his screams when he was being given the works —including burning the soles of his feet with lighted candles— and the police cars came screeching. The boys who had just tortured him to death •were caught red-handed. Whereupon the loan-shark big shots went into action in a hurry. One of them phoned their financial backer. "We got to have one hundred grand right away to square a 'burning rap,' he whispered tc the backer, a supposedly reputable Brooklyn business man. This

business man, with about a million dollars in cash, had decided that the loanehark business would double his. money ill a short while. He was right, for he received regular weekly payments with liigh interest rates on all loans. When he ■was asked to cough up £20,000 to square the murder rap, he grudgingly paid it, but it gave him food for thought. The case was hushed neatly with the £20,000—a detective confessed later to his superiors, when this slaying became a cause celebre in Brooklyn politics, that £20,000 was offered for a ten-way split. But in the Druckman murder lies the answer to the question, liy did they drill Dutch Sehultz?" A Money-lending Racket. After the backer of the loan-sharks was forced to part with £20,000 hush money he tried to free himself from the clutches of the murdering racketeers. Ckier among his clients were the Amberg brothers —Oscar, Joe and Louis. Louis controlled the newly-founded big-scale money lending racket. He was doing nicely, thank you, by lending at rates ot interest ranging from 100 to 1040 per cent. Joe Amberg controlled the white-apron and white-eoat laundry racket, exacting his tithe from dentists, bartenders," butchers, cafeteria workers, and so on. When you use a blackjack to impress on the debtor the urgency of paying up, it is easy to collect. This principle impressed Sehultz. It looked like even easier money than the policy-game racket and it sounded almost respectable—like being a banker. Sehultz talked the thing over with "Bo" Weinberg, his right-hand helper. "Bo" thought it sounded good, too, and started a few inquiries which led to the big business man in Brooklyn, who was looking for an out in_ his entanglement with the Amberg racketeers. "Look here," "Bo" told the gentleman, "Sehultz can make you a much better proposition than the Ambergs and you won't have any more headaches. We 11 cive you a more generous cut-in tor tne use of your money. We're going to operate big in New York and Brooklyn so that Louis Amberg will look like a punk. "0.K." the business man said, and handed Weinberg £2000 to seal the bargain. "I'll tell Louis I'm pulling out from his mob." Then Sehultz sent l'rank Dolak ■ and Benjamin Holinsky into Brooklyn to start a rival Sliylock office. "Keep Out." When Louis learned that his money man was being stolen from him, he told Dolak and Holinsky: You better tell Sehultz to keep his nose out of here. The Sehultz henchmen reported the conversation. Sehultz felt just a sligh tremor,' for Weinberg had been mysteriously missing for several days. Could it be possible the Ambergs had done away with him—maybe sealed him up in a barrel of wet cement, waited tor itto<lry and dumped him in the river? Well, he wouldn't back down for a bunch oi punks. He'd muscle in and stick. „ "You go back with music and flags, Sehui;3 ordered. A few days later the bodies of Dolak and Holinsky were found riddled with bullets, and the Ambergs were thereby credited _ with two notches in the guns they had trained on Sehultz Sehultz immediately had a heart-to-heart talk with several members of the former Coll and Rao gangs; thirteen days later hired killers got Joe Ambeig. Joe and his chauffeur were liavmg a bite to eat before driving to the golt links when Joe received a plione call to con over to Manhattan and pick up a p of thousand which had just been pa'd by a man who had been suspected or holding out on ■ the money lenders. pleased Joe. He'd run over to 2s cw x orK for a few minutes and then go to the links. His big La Salle with the bulletsroof5 roof body was in a nearby garage. When oe and his chauffeur entered the garage, three men stood them against the wall and let them have it.

Schultz gave bis short, snorting laugh when he heard the job had been done. When Frankie Teitelbaum, bosom pal of the dead Joe, heard the tidings he vowed revenge and made no secret of his intentions. He gave his watch, set with 79 diamonds, to Louis Amberg to keep for him. "I may not come back alive," he said, although he was pretty sure that his automatic would bark first. But eleven days later they got Frankie and didn't treat him very nicely. A girl friend suggested a drink in a nearby hotel. There an "entertainment" committee met Frankie. The boys stuffed his body into a trunk which went down the freight elevator of the hotel. The trunk was loaded on a small (truck and near the Brooklyn Bridge the driver pushed the trunk off into the street and sped away. When the trunk was opened, Frankie's body was still warm. Schultz chuckled. He'd show these punks what made him overlord of Manhattan and the Bronx. Louis, when he heard of the deed, didn't like it. So Schultz was really going to get tough. All right, he'd show him how tough an Amberg could be. '>He made a proposition to a Paterson, N.J., mob of machine gun artists, backing i£ with a thickisb packet of notes. Rub Out Schultz. "I want Schultz rubbed out and as many of his mob as you can get," Louis said. "0.K., pal, -we'll do it with pleasure," he was assured. "We'd even do it for We don't like him anyway. But who'll put the finger on Schultz? He ain't showing himself these days where we can get at him and make an e.asy getaway." "I'll attend to the details," said Louis. He went to work right away, too, and

soon had the date and place of Schultz's execution in the bag. Meanwhile Sehultz wasn't asleep. He had already arranged with his boys to put Louis out of the way. Louis went to keep a tryst with a friendly girl who had been compelled to make a telephone call with an automatic pressed to her side. Two well-dressed young men picked him up for a little talk and he knew he through. They took him to .the same hotel used for the other "conference" with Frankie Teitelbaum. They went about their work in cold blood. They watched Louis die a death of torture, then placed him in a car and near the Brooklyn Navy Yard poured gasoline over the blanketed body and set fire to it. The charred body was found after residents called the firemen. The fingerprints identified it. Trespassers Prosecuted. In the meantime the Paterson mob felt it a solemn duty to get Sehultz, even if Louis was dead. Louis had paid them their £10,000 fee; besides, Sehultz was making his headquarters in their territory and giving the place a bad name. New York punks, they opined, ought to stay In their own backyards. So two men with hats pulled down over their eyes entered the chop house where Sehultz and some of his men were conferring. They drilled Schultss's three henchmen with 17 shots and then shot Sehultz through the abdomen. They didn't kill him or his pals instantly, but left them mortally wounded to suffer a while and ponder over their pasts. In Times Square during the theatre rush severtil Harlem boys shot Marty Krompier, who was on Schultz's books as a lieutenant at £300 a week, as he emerged from a barber shop. His pal, Sam Gold, a cheap bookie who loved to associate with big shots, was also riddled. They both recovered. The boys in the know insist that "Bo" Weinberg, last of the Sehultz hierarchy, also went out of a hotel room. They say he was carried out in an undertaker's casket and taken to a garage, where the body lies in a lye solution. At least that's what the boys are saying. But that's only hearsay. l