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.
1 comment:
Izzy Presser was a case. I have been researching him recently. I don't have time or space here to go into all the details of his career, but suffice to say that he touched all the bases in crime. He was also buddies with several much better known gangsters who had major careers in the Prohibition era. He first got into the clutches of the law as a juvenile in 1905. By 1914 or so he had hooked up with Dopey Benny Fein's gang, where he got close to Waxey Gordon and Louis Shomberg, AKA Henry Goldberg, AKA Dutch Goldberg, a major hood who has almost slipped under the historical radar. If memory serves, Waxey summoned both Presser and Goldberg to testify on his (Waxey's ) behalf in the Strauss murder case. Goldberg was indicted and tried with Presser in the same 1915 Morris Rubenstein murder case. Dutch also drew 12 years for manslaughter, but somehow got out well before his full term (parole or pardon, sources don't agree). The release of Izzy before his full term led to a huge scandal which hit the papers nationwide and led to major changes in the New York prison and parole system.
Post a Comment