MURDER SYNDICATE

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 177, 29 July 1939, Page 9 (Supplement)

MURDER SYNDICATE

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Part X How The Last Coup Failed

fXN Sunday morning, July 7, I Rettich and his men waited I eagerly. The prisoners marched to Mass. Rettich looked at his watch. The hour had come. The door opened. Into the cell block walked not the gangsters who were to deliver the Rettich gang, but an extra guard of 10 armed men, three of them blue-uniformed State Troopers. Rettich was too stupefied to curse. What had happened was this: Days earlier, Sheriff Joseph \V. McElroy of the Kast Cambridge (iaol had overheard a low-tuned conversation between Rettich and his men. They ha<l kept referring to "Thursday" and "Friday." Sheriff McKlroy explained it to me: "I was mystified. Marshal. Then it occurred to mo as odd that none of them ever mentioned Wednesday— always Thursday or Friday. I'd had the guards checked who worked on Thursdays and Friday* and found thorn all right. I decided to watch the Wednesday guards. Sure enough, one of the Wednesday sulntitutn guards waA holding whispered conversations with Rettich and the others. I notified Chief Breslin." Chief Broslin's postal inspectors tailed the substitute guard to the Arlington Tost Office, and saw him take mail from a private letter box. He led them finally to an exclusive hotel in the heart of Cambridge. There ho met Harrigan's gangster pal, Jim Sweeney. Sweeney vanished, the substitute guard resigned, and Carl Rettich's gaolbreak plan was smashed. The trial led to a swift verdict: guilty. Sentence wa* 2~> years in Alcatraz for Rettich, Dugan, Harrigan, McOlonc and Fisher. A year later Homstcin was convicted and placed on probation for five, years. Meanwhile I received orders from Washington to transport the gang to the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta, Cfeorjria—their first stop on the way to Alcatraz,

After systematically training himself first with the Net* York gangs, then with Al Capone in Chicago during the riotous prohibition days, Carl Rettich, son of a respectable CermanAmerican of Hobol?en, NeT» Jersey, carefully built up an organisation which exceeded in its sheer efficiency any of the earlier and more famous gangs. Using murder by every method known to mobsters, using graft, and, above all, using brains, Rettich swung his organisation across five States, smuggling liquor, raiding banks, kidnapping Wealthy people, holding up payroll trucks and almost impregnable armoured bank delivery vans. Nemesis came at last — at long last — and the Rettich gang found itself behind gaol bars. But Carl's master mind conceived and put into execution an amazingly cool and simple gaol-break plan, which, as you will read in this concluding instalment, failed.

I am working on which may shed some light on one of the most-publicised and controversial crimes ever committed, one which has been only partially solved. When I have the facts, I shall have more to <say. As we neared Atlanta, 1 went over to them. "Listen, boys," I said. "You've got a stretch to do. Do it without trouble. There's' not much they'll let you keep or wear where you're going. You can wear these if you'd like to." From my pocket I produced some religious medals I had obtained on a visit to the shrine of Ste. Anne de Beauprc in Quebec. They looked at the medals and were silent. Then each took one and thanked me.

I arrived at tho East Cambridge Gaol on tho morning of July 30, 193.">. I had ii heavily-armed detail of United States Marshals, also a special escort of Boston police with machine-guns and riot guns, r had instructed them: "If they start trouble, shoot to kill." I handcuffed Rettieh to Harrigan, Dngan to McClonc and Fisher to one of my deputies*. Nevertheless. I can assure you I breathed a sigh of relief the moment we had them safely aboard ti. irnnrognable Lezeka. the Government's specially constructed prison car. 1 had invited Postal Inspectors Jefferson, f'ronin and Hadfield and Detective Captain Buchanan —all of whom had helped to bring the Rettieh mob to book —to make the trip with me. As the train gathered speed, I told 1 Rettieh and his men: "I'm going to • take the handcuffs, off. You can have ■ anything you want to eat or drink. You can go into any kind of a 'huddle.' But .... if you get tough, God help you." They eyed me .sullenly. Tommy Dugan ! finally grinned, and raised his hands: • "You're tho boss, Marshal." Dinnertime came, and they were fed well, from tenderloin steak down to pie a lii mode. After dinner, Carl Rettieh pulled out a crisp 100-dollar bill ' from bis wallet. He sent the porter for half a dozen packs of cards and several boxes of expensive cijjars. When they came. Joe Fisher banded a box to one i of my deputies. > "Pass, 'em around." he suggested, "to , every one except to those postal inspeo- < tors. When T got out, I'm going to 'bump off' a couple of those guys."

They began to play poker. I watched them with interest. None of them bluffed. If one did not have a good hand, he did not bet. They played the game, whether card*, or crime, only for sure things. As the train left Providence, headquarters of the gang during Prohibition. Rettieh was staring out of the window. Me pointed out a cove to me: "Many a load of liquor we landed there. Marshal." Later, passing a shipyard, his eyes danced with pride. He had seen one of his boats, the Mitzi. At Washington we had a three-hour wait until the Lezeka was coupled to the Atlanta train. After we started on, the poker game was resumed. Not until three in the morning did it break up. The gang, fatigued, climbed into upper berths. They were soon asleep—snoring, fidgeting restlessly. I sat in a chair that night, watching those upper berths. Tt wa* that night that I vowed some day to learn every fact I could about Carl Rettieh and his gang. The story you have been reading is only a small part of the materia] I have gathered in consequence. The gang resumed their poker game after breakfast the next morning. From a remark Sonny McGlone dropped later in the day I was led to believe that these men might be able to tell something of the strange, still unsolved disappearance of Judge Joseph Force Crater, of New York City. There is still another of America's great crimes that

A&U U.S. MARSHAL if JOHN Wo MURPHY

prisoner; they found the Italian woman he had heard calling "Antoinette;" the little boy who had caUed the dog Jackie; the Italian who sang "O Sole Mio." One by one, they caught up with the participants in that crime. They brought Garguilo from Massachusetts State Prison; Harrigan, Dugan and McGlone from Alcatraz. They caught the Oley brothers, John and Francis. With only Jim Sweeney (who was caught later in Los Angeles) still at large, they prepared to go to trial. Francis Oley promptly hanged him- , self in his cell. So <lk\ "Doc." Miller, one of the men hired by the mob to ' guard young O'Coanell The 1 two other guards turned State's evidence. Norma Price, the girl Sonny Mci Clone had attempted to attack, identi- , tied him in Court. So did her sister Helen, who had sworn to remember his 1 leering face. They placed Sonny, HarriI gan, Dugan. Strewl, John Oley and e "Angel-Face" Geary at the restaurant e meeting where the kidnapping had been plotted. Dutch Handel was called to testify that Harrigan had once been in the beer business with him. Harrigan glared t with his one eye at the man who had ;, shot out the other. The O'Connell trial lasted 48 days. All r, the defendants were found guilty. HarII rigan, Dugan and McGlone got 77 years :, each. That, plus their time to be served ' t . at Alcatraz, meant 102 years each, n Garguilo got 77 years, making for him t a total of 114. He soon committed ). suicide in Massachusetts State Prison t by hanging himself to his cell door. d On July 10, 1937, Dutch Handel was found in an alcoholic stupor in a Newark hotel room. Beside him lay his wife, Grace. She had been dead 12 hours. Police said her <!eath had been caused by "alcoholism, overdose of sleeping powders and intensive heat." Six months later the Dutchman himself died of an overdose of sleeping powders. Was this suicide, accident or murder? It matters little now. On this sombre note the story of America's worst gang and how it was smashed must end. There should not be need to point a moral. Carl Rettich and Joe Fisher will be old, broken men in a strange world when they have served their time. More ghastly still are the endless years that await Sonny McGlone, Tommy Dugan and Harrigan. Theirs was the heritage of liberty. They traded it for the privilege of becoming, each one, a living corpse at Alcatraz. (The End.) <3» 4>

Rettich broke the silence by calling the porter. '"Buy yourself some cigars, boy," he said, ami gave the delighted fellow a 20-dollar bill. The Lezeka arrived at the prison gutes. The heavy barred outer door swung open. Rettich and hie men marched in. The receiving officer looked them over contemptuously. "So you're the tough gang we've heard about," he said. A prison lieutenant came up. "Get in line!" he snapped. "March!" They marched. They had gone about 7"> feet when, as one man, they turned, waved farewell to me. I saw no more of the Rettich gang, but the law was not yet done with all of them. After three years of work, police solved the O'Connell kidnapping. They traced the false auto registration application for the car used in that crime to George ("Gorilla") Garguilo. They located the Hoboken hide-out where young O'Connell had been held .«>