Izzy dead? Yes.

Izzy Presser was a career criminal who cut his teeth on Manhattan's lower east side. He was involved in at least one gangland killing in 1915 as well as robberies, drug dealing and bootlegging.

Over the years his name appeared in the papers numerous times. One reason was for successfully escaping from prison. In 1914 he was arrested as a vagrant and sent to the workhouse, from which he escaped. He was recaptured and finished his sentence. The following year he was sent away for twelve-years on a manslaughter charge following the 1915 murder. In 1921 he escaped from a road work gang and headed to New Jersey. He was arrested a number of times and ended up doing a stint in prison. Upon his release he was sent back to New York to finish his original sentence plus nine-hundred days for the escape. He told the Superintendent of prisons that he he didn't actually escape but was kidnapped. The Super bought it, and the extra three years were scratched and he was released after the original sentence.*

In the afternoon of this date in 1932, Presser borrowed his lawyer's car and, with $1400, in his pocket said he was going to dice game. At approximately 7:10pm a man left his place of business in Newark and saw Presser behind the wheel of a sedan, apparently sleeping. A few hours later he was still there, so he tried to wake him. 

When the sleeping man was found to be dead, the police were called and they identified him immediately. It was their belief that Presser was bumped off for double crossing some bootleggers. He had been shot in the heart and the head.

Izzy Presser

*After a newspaper expose the Superintendent of Prisons was fired. 

Mean to Joe Green

After a failed attempt in 1928, Albany gangsters put thirty-two year old bootlegger Joey Green out of business for good on February 19, 1933.

It was said that Green, also an Albany bad man,  hi-jacked liquor that was traveling along the "rum trail" that lead from Canada to any number of towns in northern New York. In March of 1928, he was taken for a ride and his bullet riddled body dumped on the outskirts of the state capitol. With fourteen wounds, he managed to drag himself to a farm house and rescue.

The end came just after he was released from serving ten days on a traffic violation. Green was at a soft drink parlor in the town of Glens Falls, New York. when somebody pumped two bullets into his chest.

Joey Green