Last Summer Fling

The Dead Guys in Suits office staff is off for their final summer fling.

We will be back to the grindstone Tuesday September 2.

Todd Browning's nightmare

We here at the DGIS studio would like to remember another DGIC (dead guy in cape) that left us in August. On this date in 1930 Lon Chaney Sr. the man of a thousand faces, like the man of a thousand voices, kept perfectly still. Old timers will tell you that it was his make-up that killed him. His autopsy report however will say it was throat cancer.
Chaney was a big proponent of prison reform, feeling that the institutions of his day did not rehabilitate criminals they only made them harder.

Bill O

There was an upper west side feud on between the “Midway Mob” and the “White Roses” the latter being an uptown faction of the Gophers and ninety-five years ago tonight the boys of the “Midway Mob” were holding a dance at the Midway clubhouse with about one hundred couples in attendance. After a while a bouncer noticed that two members of the “White Roses” were in attendance and he and some “Midway Mob” boys threw them out of the club house in a less than polite manner. The “White Roses” pledged vengeance as they walked away.
A few hours later the two gangsters returned with five friends in a large touring sedan. The driver dropped them off and then drove away as the seven gangsters pushed the doorman aside and entered the clubhouse. When they reached the dance floor they whipped out their shooting irons and blasted away. A “Midway Mobster” quickly doused the lights and everyone scattered whilst a gunfight erupted. When the lights came back on William O’Shaughnessy was lying on the dance floor and while the rest of the “White Roses” covered the crowd two of them grabbed him by the collar and dragged him outside just as another car was pulling up. They tossed the dead or dying gangster into the car, which then took off leaving two of the gang members stranded. The car proceeded to Roosevelt Hospital where the gansters propped O’Shaughnessy’s body up in sitting position against the door and beeped the horn until a doctor came out and stumbled over the corpse.

pics & books

This is the last full week to submit a picture for the first annual Dead Guys in Suits art "contest". We currently have four entries so if you've been hemming or hawing now is the time to draw, paint, scribble a dead guy in a hat and send it off to dgis1931@yahoo.com winner gets a free copy of my new book Bad Seeds in the Big Apple: Bandits, Killers & Chaos in New York City 1920-1940. Celebrity judges will be introduced in September. Though hosting the extravaganza I will not be a member of the judging panel.

In other news the paperback version of Gangster City will be available in March of 2009. That is only seven months away so you may want to put in your order now to beat the multitudes who will no doubt dress up like their favorite character and campout in front of the local bookstore so they can snatch up the first copies.

Diamonds weren't Harry's best friend

10:00 p.m. tonight will mark the 78th anniversary that Greene County, NY inn-keeper Harry Western received a phone call from Legs Diamond. The celestial gods have worked it out that the calendar for 1930 is the same as that of this year. So it was also a Friday. I love when things work out like that. Anyhoo, Legs was in the process of trying to monopolize the Catskills beer and alky racket and Western just wasn't playing ball. Western was at his inn, called the Chateau, near Lake Katrine when the call came saying get on over to Acra (Legs's house) pronto. Harry got in his car and headed over. Nobody ever saw Harry again. They saw his car with some blood in it, but nobody ever saw Harry again. One of Diamond's associates went to jail because he was caught with the car, but nobody ever saw Harry again. Authorities and the public both knew that Harry was killed by Diamond, but nobody ever saw Harry again. Nobody ever paid for what was done to Harry because no body no case. But some of the old timers say, especially after a few Ballantines, that some nights, especially August 22nd's that land on Friday, some people have seen a spectral figure wandering the cat roads of Greene County looking for his car. But the way I figures it, it can't be Harry cause nobody ever saw Harry again.

Freddy's dead

On this morning back in 1920 Staten Island motorist passed a car with what appeared to be guy sleeping in the front passenger seat. Car after car passed assuming that the figure was tired driver who had pulled over to get some rest. One more observant passerby noticed some blood on sleepy Pete's face and called the cops. Turns out the exhausted driver was Frederick Eckert. The leader of a New Jersey car theft ring who had become booze hijacker extraordinaire. On his last ride someone in the back seat (this was the early days of Prohibition when you could still have someone sit behind you without worry) placed a gun to the base of Fred's head and pulled the trigger. The gun was then placed in his left ear and the trigger again pulled. The job complete the car pulled over, but what the hell, lets give him another. Bang a third and final pill to the forehead. Mr. Eckert's demise was quite a story at the time as it involved dirty cops and political intrigue. If you would like to learn more about Eckert I wrote an article about him that can be obtain ed at the On The Spot quarterly journal's past issues.

Mustache Petes

I seem to be getting some mobofiles stopping by lately so will chat about that. Contrary to popular belief the mafia wasn't a 20th century invention. One need only to look at a sensational Mafia trial from back in the summer of '96, 1896 that is. One Salvator Serio was shot and killed in Brooklyn by a guy named Antonino Cincotta and a few other guys. During the trial terms like omerta and mafia were tossed around. Cincotta was even asked if he was a "captain" of a group of men. Of course he denied it. Like the mafia trials to follow in the 2oth Century Cincotta & co. walked on Nov. 23, 1896, the headline reading Mafia Suspects Acquitted, but it wasn't the last NYC heard of him. The following June 1, Cincotta was again involved in a shooting -Talk of Mafia Conspiracy- the media reported.

Cincotta would have a long reign in Brooklyn, his crime of note was trying to shake down opera star Enrico Caruso for thousands of dollars and ending up in jail. Like any good mafia boss (technically he was called a black-hander) Ol' Cincotta got his comeuppance on February, 16, 1915, at the ripe old age of 47, when he was shot down while exiting a theatre. In the article disucssing his murder the New York Times described him as having, "a wide influence among the Italian residents of that borough (Brooklyn) and his power was almost absolute." Sounds like a mob boss to me. 1915-1916 were big years for mob hits there was a couple of LoMontes, a Terranova, the Gallucci's. Perhaps Cincotta was the first of the series. Lets have a seance and ask Ciro Terranova.

Anyways this is a long winded way to say that if you are into early mafia than you will want to know Tom Hunt he is the premier mob historian and in addition to his newsletter be sure to check out his site on the Morello-Terranova clan.