It's In The Bag

On October 21, 1932 one time Legs Diamond associate Dominick "Wicky" Bifano was found trussed up in a burlap sack in the back seat of a car. Prior to being bagged he was shot through the head. Bifano was with Legs' brother Eddie in Denver, Colorado back in 1928 when Dutch Schultz gunmen Joe Piteo and Gene Moran failed to bump off the younger Diamond brother. Both Eddie and Bifano barely escaped execution.

What Bifano was up to following Legs' death is unknown but he was well dressed and the recent recipient of a manicure.  It was assumed that foes of Legs Diamond finally caught up with him.

 

Dominick "Wicky" Bifano

Orgen Transplant

October 15, 1927 saw the demise of New York City gang leader Jacob Little Augie Orgen who, following the 1923 murder of his rival - Nathan Kid Dropper Kaplan, was the most powerful labor racketeer in the city. 

By 1927 Orgen was branching out into new fields. He had befriended Jack Legs Diamond who was one of Arnold Rothstein's top guys. Legs made a handful of trips to Europe as part of Rothstein's narcotic ring. Diamond was letting Orgen in on some drug deals and, in return, Little Augie was letting Diamond into the labor rackets. This didn't sit well with Orgen's chief lieutenants Lepke Buchalter and Gurrah Shapiro who were losing money on the jobs that went to Diamond.

Lepke and Shapiro decided that their boss had to go. Orgen had an appointment to meet Diamond on the lower eastside. Diamond showed up and met Orgen and the men began to walk. A sedan followed them. After a bit, a number of gunmen got out of the car and ran up behind the two gangsters. Orgen was shot in the head. Legs turned and was shot in the stomach. This was to neutralize him. They wanted him dead he would have been killed outright like Orgen.

The gunmen jumped back in the car and sped away. Diamond picked himself up off the sidewalk and staggered to a nearby hospital. 

Jacob "Little Augie" Orgen

Spot on the Spot

October 1, 1933 marked the demise of one Joseph "Spot" Leahy. Spot was said to be one of the last of New York's infamous Gopher gang and the toughest man in Hell's Kitchen. Though he gathered a bit of press in his day, he never grew into a gangster of stature. Spot got his drinking money from bully work, such has strong arming for gangster Larry Fay. In addition to his other interest, Fay owned a fleet of taxi cabs. Leahy and others would keep rival taxi drivers from popular stops, allowing only Fay's drivers to pick up the fairs. He also had ties to a bootleg gang lead by Alfred "Dutch" Handel that operated on Mahattan's west side.

Leahy boasted at one time that gangsters Legs Diamond and Vannie Higgins were afraid to operate in the Hell's Kitchen district on Manhattan's west side because they didn't want to deal with him. In addition to a handful of underworld killings, in 1931 he arrested for beating his wife to death but managed to beat the rap. 

The knife was Spot's weapon of choice and it was by the knife that he was dispatched. Before sunrise, Spot was entering a hallway that would take him to a speakeasy. Someone came up from behind and slashed his throat a number of times.

Joseph "Spot" Leahy

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

Part Of The Purge?

September 12, 1931 saw the murder of Italian gangster Giuseppi Mannino or Manino depending on which paper told the story. Mannino was arrested in 1918 for a barrel murder but acquitted. This was followed for an arrest in 1920 for stealing alcohol for which he received a suspended sentence.

Mannino had just parked his car on a Brooklyn street and exited the auto along with two cohorts. As they walked, the two men fell behind Mannino and, pulling out pistols, fired a number of times into his back. Mannino staggered up to the nearest building and collapsed in the hallway. The two gunmen ran up and finished him off before escaping.

The Police Inspector suggested that the murder may have been related to the killing of Salvatore Maranzano the day before. The following day the New York Daily News reported that Mannino was the former partner of mob boss Giuseppi "the Clutching Hand" Piraino, who was bumped off the previous year. The same article stated that Mannino was killed by Charles "Lucky" Luciano, who happened to be the architect of Maranzano's demise as well.

Giuseppe Mannino

Battos And Balls

On September 11, 1929 a group of kids were playing in the street when the ball they were using bounced into the open window of a sedan. One of the kids went to fetch it. Climbing on the running board, he opened the door and let out a scream. Instead of the expected ball, he was staring into the eyes of a dead man.

The dead man, who was shot once in the heart and once through the right eye, was James Batto, one of the killers of Eugene Moran whose body, or what was left of it, was found in a burnt Packard the previous month in Newark, New Jersey.

According to his brother, Batto had recently had a fight with Monkey Schubert, his partner in a peanut vending machine company in New Jersey and another one of Moran's murderers. Schubert was picked up by police and questioned but released.

Batto had a record dating back over thirty years and served two sentences when he was a teenager but, even though he had been arrested on seven occasions since 1910, he was discharged every time. At the time of Batto’s death Eugene Moran’s body had not yet been identified so the police were unaware of his participation and had no leads to go.

James Batto

No Way To Treat A Lady

Just before sun-up on August 27, 1937 someones unknown drove to Shore Boulevard and around 21st Drive in Astoria, Queens. From their vehicle they tossed a wooden cask down an embankment into the East River, hoping that the tide in the narrow known as Hell Gate would carry the object out to sea. Unfortunately for them, the tide had already gone out and the barrel wedged itself on a large rock.

A few hours later a man was walking along the shore and saw the barrel. What caught his eye more was the red hair, hand and foot that protruded from the top. Cops were called. Crammed inside the cask was the trussed up body of a woman. She had been stabbed multiple times with an ice-pick. The final jab was in her skull where the tip had broken off. She had also been shot once in the forehead with a .38. 

She was quickly identified as 39 year-old Esther Gordon, widow of intra-state drug dealer Max "One-Eye" Gordon. So called because he lost an eye in a gun fight in 1922. Max died in a car accident in Texas the previous July 31, after a drug buying trip to Mexico.

Initial reports had it that the drug syndicate that Gordon worked for had his wife bumped off because she knew to much and may have been trying to get some money out of them. The following year, it was stated that police believed that the murder was orchestrated by a drug dealer named Lonnie Affronti. According to the report Affronti owed One Eye Gordon a large amount of money which his widow was in the process of trying to collect. 

Esther Gordon

Double Play

It was August 18, 1931 and Joe Cigna and Anthony Justiano stood among eight other guys on a corner in New York City's Little Italy. As the men conversed, four other men approached the group and drew pistols. Cigna and Justiano seemed to realize that they were on the spot because they both took off running followed by the gunmen who unleashed a barrage of gunfire.

Justiano tried for a tenement but dropped dead in the doorway while his partner dropped dead in front of another building. Police said that the dead men were involved in both bootlegging and narcotics and that the killers may have been imported from Buffalo, NY where both men had operated in the past.

      Joe Cigna             Anthony Justiano

Joe Is Now The Boss

 A Mafia war came to an abrupt end on this day back in 1922 when Joe "Soon to be the Boss" Masseria managed to put rival mob boss Umberto Valenti on the spot. Since the previous spring when Valenti and some gunmen bumped off Vincent Terranova, lower Manhattan was up for grabs. 

Three days previous, Valenti gunmen had managed to corner Masseria after the latter had exited his apartment. They fired at him numerous times but missed. It is believed that afterwards Masseria contacted Valenti and set up a peace conference. However, the meeting was a ruse to lure his enemy into the open. When Valenti showed up on at the designated meeting place a number of gunmen opened fire on him. Hit in the chest, he tried to return the fire but barely had the strength to make it to a taxi where he dropped dead on it's running board.

Umberto Valenti

Is it Better to Burn Out then Fade Away?

 Gene Moran was a Jack of all crimes. He took part in a high profile jewel heist in the early Twenties that sent him to the slammer. He worked for Arnold Rothstein and he was part of the hit team that failed to knock of Legs Diamond's brother Eddie in Colorado in November of 1928.

Early in the evening of August 9, 1929, a couple of sedans pulled up to Moran's New Jersey bungalow. His moll Anna, heard him tell the men that they need to hurry because they were already late for the job. He entered one of the sedans and the crew took off. 

A few hours later, the night watch man of a Newark dump saw two sedans pull in. Two men got out of a Packard and doused it with gasoline then put it to the match. They all left in the remaining car. A few hours later one of the men returned to Moran's bungalow and told his moll that Gene was dead and that she should beat it.

By the time the fire was doused, Moran, who had been shot to death, was burnt beyond recognition. It wouldn't be until early 1930 that he was identified through his dental work. Since he was one of those involved in the failed attempt on Eddie Diamond, Legs Diamond is credited with the murder. It's also possible that he was killed at he bequest of Dutch Schultz. The Bronx beer baron had paid for the assassination crew to travel to Colorado to kill Eddie. Moran and another Schultz man were captured and took a powder, leading Schultz to be out the thousands he spend for Moran's bail.

Eugene Moran