Train In Vain

Back in 1931 the NY Central Railroad had an elevated train running up Park Avenue. On the evening of September 24, as the train was passing between 132nd and 133rd Streets, a neighborhood resident saw a man fall from the passing locomotive. (another witness stated the body was tossed out of an auto) At first it was considered a freak accident that somebody fell from the train. During the autopsy however, it was discovered that the man had been shot behind the left ear with the bullet exiting his right cheek. It was the first gangster one-way train ride.

Finger prints determined that the dead man was ex-convict David Mazzer who had an extensive police record dating back to 1912 when he was sent to Sing Sing on a seven year rap for robbery. This was followed by numerous arrests and a few more stints in Sing Sing. He was last in police custody on October 11, 1930 when he was shot and wounded trying to escape the NYPD who had picked him on behalf of the Philadelphia police after he jumped bail in that City following his capture after cracking a safe. After recovering, he managed to beat the rap in Philly but was wanted in New Jersey at the time of his death.

David Mazzer

Running Can Be Unhealthy

 A bootleggers feud was the reason given for the murders of New Jersey gangsters Agostino Delappia and Vincenzo Follo on the evening of August 19, 1929. The two gangsters had just exited a club and after they had been walking a bit, they noticed two men behind and, assuming correctly that they were on the spot, took off running. The men behind them hot on their heels.

The quartet actually ran past a Newark police station but no police happened to be outside. A few blocks away Delappia and Follo split up at an intersection. The gunmen stopped and opened fire on Delappi and hit him a number of times. The gangster let out a scream, grabbed a telephone pole and collapsed. 

With his partner down, the gunmen turned their pistols on Follo and fired a few shots that missed then stopped shooting. If Follo thought he got away because the gunmen stopped firing he was mistaken, the reason they stopped was because they saw a familiar gray sedan coming down the street from the opposite direction. When it was parallel to Follo, a man leaned out and opened fire killing the gangster.

Delappia was taken to the hospital but died a few hours 

Agostino Delappia     Vincenzo Follo

They Never Forget

In December 1930, Philadelphia and South Jersey gangster Tony Masino was released from Eastern Penitentiary after serving a sentence for carrying concealed weapons. Upon leaving he asked for a police escort. "If somebody doesn't take me home, I'll never make it alive," he told them. Why rivals wanted him dead was never ascertained.

Masino was a former boxer who became a member of Philly/South Jersey gangster Danny Day's gang. Among other things, they specialized in shaking down legitimate businesses. Masino garnered a bit of media attention, along with his boss, in 1929 when both survived a machine-gun attempt on their lives. Two other gangsters and a young woman were killed.

Masino was keeping clear of Philadelphia in the months following his release, and one report had him involved in some gambling houses in Camden, New Jersey. One can only avoid one's enemies for so long however. It was nearing six-thirty in the evening of July 29, 1931 when two farmers came upon his body on the outskirts of Hammonton, New Jersey. His body was still warm, though perforated with about sixteen shots. Some reports say he was machine-gunned others shotgunned. Regardless the guns used, the desired effect was obtained.

Tony Masino

Permanent Vacation at the Jersey Shore

It was the early afternoon of July 20, 1941 when a vacationing Philadelphia family went out crabbing in Skunk Sound, a tributary off Cape May harbor. Seeing a bundle half protruding from the water they investigated. "It looked like something in brown wrapping paper," the family patriarch recalled. "It stuck up about a foot out of the water. We rowed over and felt it. And what we felt was a human foot."

The foot belonged to fifty-two year old Philly gangster John "Chink" Goodman, who had a record dating back to 1903 when he was arrested for being a pickpocket. Since that time he had been picked up about 20 times in his home city as well as others for everything including murder. He served time for grand larceny and passing counterfeit money. He was also a member of Mickey Duffy's gang back in Prohibition times.

Authorities stated that Goodman ran a string of disorderly houses as well as running numbers and bootlegging. Cause of death was an extreme blows to face and head. His body was then trussed up in an army tent and bound with sash cord and clothes line. His killers drove the body to the Cape May area and tossed the grisly package off of a bridge. Though there was a concrete block attached. Air filled out and the shroud rose high enough in the water for the crabbing family to discover.

John Chink Goodman

No Dynamite for the Fourth of July

Unfortunately for New Jersey gangster, Dynamite Joe Tricoli, the explosions in the wee hours of July 4, 1929 were the ones resulting in his demise. He was shot twice in the back of the head and twice beneath the rear left shoulder.

He was last seen leaving a Newark restaurant at 1:30 a.m. Four hours later a man was walking his dog through the Eagle Rock reservation in West Orange, New Jersey when his dog ran up and found Tricoli laying face down in the road.

Tricoli on the spot

Police stated that they were going to question him that day regarding the kidnapping of local bank executive and that the kidnap gang bumped him off before he had a chance to speak to detectives. The executive in question went to the morgue but stated that Tricoli was not one of his abductors.

Tricoli had been accused of kidnapping in the past, as well as robberies and being a beer runner. Another motive given was that he was killed for messing around with another gangsters girl.

On his person was found a wallet containing $295, drivers licenses from four states, a diamond studded pocket watch and a large diamond ring.

Dynamite Joe Tricoli

Say it ain't so, Joe

New York City-

A man stepped out of his East Side tenement on his way to church. Slouched on the steps was a man whom he took for a drunk. He shook his head and passed. Upon returning from mass he saw the man still lying there, giving him a shake,the man's hat fell off and he saw that it was a corpse. The man summoned a cop and before long identification was made. Joseph Flanagan.

Called "Baby Joe" because he was youngest of the Four Fierce Flanagans, a quartet of East Side brothers who cut a swathe through New York's underworld during the Roaring Twenties, Joseph Flanagan met his end on this date back in 1929.

His career went back to his youth when he was sent to reform school at the age of fifteen. He spent a portion of the Jazz Age in the New Jersey State Penitentiary after being arrested during a jewelry store robbery in Perth Amboy. Like his brothers, Baby Joe was mainly an armed bandit but as the decade was coming to an end police surmised that he was also involved with beer running and, right or wrong, it was for the latter that they blamed. While on his final ride, somebody had placed a gun to Baby Joe's temple around 4 a.m. that Sunday morning and pulled the trigger. The job done, they dumped his body on the stoop.

Baby Joe Flanagan 

Grape Ape

Newark, New Jersey -

On this date in 1930, Dominick "The Ape" Passelli, described as a ranking member of Newark mob boss Richard Boiardo's gang, walked into the Newark General Hospital with a slight scalp wound. He claimed he had had an accident but in reality his head had been creased by a bullet. He was on the spot.

The staff patched him up and told him he could go on his way. "No, if it's all right with you, I think I'll stay here a couple of days." He told them. He was given room 33 where he received a few visitors, two men, around three o'clock. They stayed a short time then left.

A few minutes after six two men entered the hospital and, according to different stories, it was the same two men from earlier or two new men who made there way upstairs and asked where they could find room no. 33.

Also depending on who wrote the story one man stood at the door while the other fired, or both fired. The end result was the same; The Ape caught two bullets in the head and was killed.

At the time of the murder long time Newark gangland adversaries Longy Zwillman and Richard Boiardo supposedly had a peace pact so police didn't feel that it was rival gangsters that killed him. Since some reports stated the Ape's killers were his visitors from earlier, it was suggested that he was done in by his own gang. There was also a theory that he was muscling in on the grape racket

Dominick "The Ape" Passelli

Slot Machines Don't Pay Out

Newark, New Jersey - The evening of October 27, 1930 found Joseph Hamley, a slot machine racketeer in a nervous state. He had recently been expanding his slot machine business in Northern New Jersey. Supposedly he had the backing of New York City gangster Jack Legs Diamond.

Word on the street was that Hamley was a former slot machine repairman who talked himself into being Legs' New Jersey slot guy. Supposedly another Legs man, Abe Figura, was Legs' liaison with Hamley. Things were fine until the evening of October 11 when Figura was on his way to Jersey to meet with Hamley but wound up going for a ride; a one-way ride that is. His body was found the next day. The day Figura was found was the same day that Legs Diamond was shot down in his room at the Hotel Monticello. He lived.

Shortly after the two shootings Hamley received a note which read, "You are next on the spot Windy". Windy being his nickname. At around 8 pm on the 27th Hamley's brother visited him at his room at the Newark's Elk Club where the twenty-seven year old told him had a date that night. After visiting with his brother he went to his girl's house. He was nervous and told her that he expected to get bumped off. He left her place around 10 pm. Three hours later Hamley was found near Milburn, New Jersey with, depending which paper you read, either two or six bullets in him. All papers agreed on the fact that a number of them were through the head.

Body of Joseph Hamley

You shouldn't horse around

Originally from St. Louis, gambler Milton White Henry - Milsey to his pals- made his way to Washington D.C. circa 1926 and opened a gambling joint. On this date in 1932 he was pulling up to his home when he was cut off by a milk truck. As he patiently waited for the truck to move, a man with a sawed off shot gun got out of a nearby car and crept up to Henry's auto. He fired twice into Henry then, climbing onto the running board of the victim's car, fired three more times making sure Henry was officially out of business.

It was speculated that Henry was rubbed out by Jersey gunmen hired to bump him off by local bookmakers. It seems that Henry had fixed a number of horse races and made a killing. Then, finding out the truth, the bookies decided to make a killing of their own.

Milton White Henry

Two Maxs' One Hit

Today marks the eighty-sixth anniversary of the double murder of Max Greenberg and Max Hassell, both top executives in Waxey Gordon's brewery empire. Both Max' were in a six room suite in side the Elizabeth-Carteret Hotel in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Greenberg had a lengthy police record going back over a decade in his home town of St. Louis, Missouri where he was a member of the infamous Egan's Rats until the gang's namesake felt that Greenberg had double crossed him on a liquor deal. Greenberg survived an attempted murder and Egan was bumped off later. Whether or not Greenberg was behind the murder is not known but Greenberg left town. By the mid 1920s he had hooked up with Waxey Gordon and became a wealthy bootlegger, buying into a number of hotels in both New York and New Jersey.

Hassell was an immigrant from Russia who opened a string of breweries in Eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

At the time of their murder, there was a meeting going on between Greenberg and Hassell with a handful of men. It may have been a hit from the onset or perhaps the meeting didn't go the way the gunmen wanted so the shooting irons came out. Either way, it was lucky for Gordon that he wasn't in the meeting or he would have went as well. These murders were the opening salvo in the war to exterminate Waxey and his minions.

Max Greenberg                    Max Hassell

The Jersey Devlin

On this date back in 1929 a man was walking in a field near what was known as the Somerville-Clinton Highway in Whitehouse, New Jersey when he saw what he thought to be a pile of clothes near a clump of pine trees. [Long time readers of DGIS have probably already figured out what it was]. Investigating, he made the grisly discovery that it was a frozen DGIS who had been shot in the left temple three times.

Police identified the dead man as Frank "Blubber" Devlin and figured that he had been "taken for a ride" roughly forty-eight hours earlier. The condition of his pants and coat showed that he had been dumped from a car and dragged to his resting spot by the pine trees.

"Legs" Diamond was credited with killing Devlin although it was never proved. Revenge was given as the reason because Devlin, supposedly on orders from Arnold Rothstein, was sent to Denver, Colorado with fellow gangsters Eugene Moran and Joe Piteo, to kill Legs' brother Eddie who was convalescing there from with tuberculosis. [Moran and Piteo were definitely on the hit team. There was a third man but as of yet he hasn't been positively identified]

Devlin had an extensive record dating back to the September 6,1921 murder of Walter Vogel with whom he shot it out with at the Transfer saloon. Since that time police said that he had been involved with Owney Madden's gang as well as keeping busy as a robber. When he left his home for the last time on February 6, he had three indictments against him from the previous year, one for assault and robbery, one for robbery  and one  for grand larceny. Where he was going that February 6, is unknown but after he said good-bye to his mother and brother he went to the bank, withdrew $1000 and disappeared.