The Price of Friendship

Around noon on November 20, 1933 the naked body of New Jersey racketeer Albert Silvers was found on a lonely stretch of road outside of Somers, Connecticut partially covered with a blanket. He had been stabbed twice in the heart with an ice pick and garroted with a sash cord and neck tie. When found, his tongue protruded from his mouth and blood still oozed from the stab wounds. 

Though an east coast racketeer, Silvers, who was a lieutenant of New York racket chief Lepke Buchalter, was murdered for his loyal friendship to a mid-westerner; South Dakota ex-sheriff Verne Miller. Miller was the hottest criminal in America during the second half of 1933 due to his orchestrating the Kansas City Massacre, which resulted in the deaths of five law enforcement officers, including an FBI agent.

Silvers helped Miller elude capture with the help of his brother who was an optometrist. The Silvers supplied Miller with a salesman's case full of optometry equipment so he could travel the country posing as a salesman. Silvers also set Miller up with an automobile.

On November 1, 1933 Miller escaped a shootout with FBI and police and they later found his shot up car with the optometry equipment. The FBI was able to trace the equipment to Silvers, who lammed it. Since Silvers was a close associate of Lepke, the syndicate leader had a decision to make. If the FBI got hold of Silvers, what might he say to get out of trouble? Men, no doubt associates of Silvers, were sent out to him, Possibly in Hartford where he was known to stay, or at a hotel in Massachusetts; no one knows for sure. Wherever they met him, they left him on that lonely road in Somers, Connecticut.

Al Silvers