Red's Dead Baby, Red's Dead

Ninety-years ago today Charles "Red" Donnelly's name was added to the list of former White Hand gang leaders. Red's record dated back to the teens when he was arrested with Wild Bill Lovett for homicide back in 1919. Over the course of the decade, as the gang leaders fell, Red's stock rose in the gang. Sometime around mid 1928, we are told, Red took over the reigns of the White Hands water front rackets.

Like those before him, his days were numbered and he got what, assuredly, he knew as coming at some point. As he watched his men load a ship word came to Red that somebody wanted to see him in the "shack", the shack being the shanty that doubled as an office. He walked into the shack. Inside some words were exchanged, possibly in a loud manner. Next two shots were heard. One went into Red's left temple the other his ear.

Though nobody saw anything leadership was passed to one Mathew "Matty" Martin, who, like Red,...well, that's another post.

Red Donnelly

Wild Bill is Tamed

Brooklyn, New York -

In the early hours of this day back in 1923, Brooklyn waterfront tough Wild Bill Lovett former leader of the White Hand gang, was murdered while sleeping off a drunk in a riverfront shanty. Having killed both Irish and Italian gangsters, there was no shortage of people who wanted him dead. For a time it looked as though Lovett may have dodged a gangland execution. That summer he had married Anna Lonergan, sister of his right hand man, Richard Pegleg Lonergan, and they moved from Brooklyn out to the New Jersey suburbs in an attempt to make a normal life for themselves. Lovett longed for the old ways however and returned to his old haunts and went on a bender. Word spread that the former gangster was back in the neighborhood and somebody(ies) with an ax to grind, trailed him to the stevedore shack he decided to spend the night in and after he had passed out they entered that shanty and bludgeoned and shot him to death. His killers were never found.

Wild Bill Lovett

The Dead Baron

On March 14, 1930 twenty-nine year old William "Baron" Simpson was added to the list of murder victims in Brooklyn's White Hand* territory when his body was found in an alleyway leading from Furman Street to pier 16 on the East River. Someone had come up behind him and placed a .38 to the back of his head and pulled the trigger. Although the murder took place at around noon next to a tin can factory with two hundred employees that were on lunch break there were no witnesses.
"Baron" was the boss of a small group of dock workers and had a reputation as a fierce street fighter. According to his brother, "Whitie" Simpson, "Baron" had gotten into an argument with three men at a near by pier about an hour before the murder. The argument turned into a fistfight and "Baron" proceeded to savagely beat all three men until they ran away. Simpson was last seen, alone, turning into the alleyway in which he was found a short time later.
Even with the story about the fight with the three men, police stated that they believed that Simpson was another in the long line of Irish thugs murdered in the unending battle for leadership of the dock rackets.