"He must have done something. They don't kill you for nothing." - Chicago Gangster Ted Newberry. Rubbed out January 7, 1933

Monday, October 6, 2014

The bookie's number came up

At some point seventy-six eighty years ago today John Amenbola stumbled out the back door of a New York City tenement building and dropped dead with three bullets in his body. Though only twenty-three years old he was a hardened criminal with a record dating back to 1926.

Amenbola served a term in Sing Sing for robbery and was paroled in 1930. He went back in in March of 1934 for parole violation and was released a short time before his demise. The janitor of the building found him at 11:00pm and reported his grisly find to the police who subsequently found a plethora of policy tickets on and around Amenbola's body. It appears that his post Sing Sing employment was that of a bookie

2 comments:

John DuMond said...

It was damn nice of that policy racket to give an ex-con a chance for employment.

Patrick Downey said...

Yes, the underworld was quite progressive.