Dead Men Write No Tales

After two of his brothers had met a gangster's fate, Francis Fabrizzio, the oldest and probably the first of the brothers to venture into the New York underworld, decided that if he couldn't lick them, he would expose them.

The first brother to go was Louis, who was gunned down on a lower East Side street in February of 1928. Next, brother Andrew was found in a sack in New Jersey. The murder was committed at the behest of Louis "Pretty' Amberg, but the last place Andrew was seen was the garage used by the Bug & Meyer (Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lanksy) Mob. Francis supposedly sought retribution by bombing the garage. Though Siegel was wounded, nobody was seriously hurt and little damage was done.

Unable to kill those whom Francis held responsible for Andrew's death, he decided to blow the whistle on the entire works. To that end, Francis wrote a book naming the gangsters who ran things and spilling the beans on who murdered who. Not wanting such publicity, the underworld went about eliminating Francis.  Gunmen caught up with the would be author on this date in 1932, while a lawyer was helping him put the finishing touches on the manuscript. As the two men worked at Francis' parents apartment, there was knock at the door. Some "detectives" flashed their badges and demanded to see Francis. The hoodlum author stepped into the hallway to see what it was all about and never made it back inside.

During the ensuing investigation, real detectives confiscated the manuscript and it disappeared.

For those itching for something new to read...

I have a new ebook out:

The final four years of Prohibition saw over two hundred New York City gangsters shot, garrotted, or stabbed to death with ice picks. Some simply vanished never to be seen again. ON THE SPOT: Gangland Murders in Prohibition New York City 1930-1933 brings these murders back in full detail. In addition to all of the bootleggers, drug dealers, gamblers and other underworld sorts who were "bumped off", "taken for a ride", and "put on the spot", the reader will learn about the victims of the gang wars fought between Dutch Schultz and Vincent Coll, Waxey Gordon and the Bugsy Seigel - Meyer Lansky mob, the Mafia's Castellammarese War and the battle waged between Brooklyn's Shapiro Brothers and the boys from Murder, Inc. Over two hundred gangland executions are discussed, most for the first time since they occurred all those years ago.

What is the law? No spill blood.

In the summer of 1935 Joey Amberg, a semi-big racketeering feller in Brooklyn, decided that a hoodlum named Hy Kasner had to be killed, so together with two henchmen named Jack Elliot and Frankie Teitlebaum they set out to get Kasner. The latter was snatched, killed, stuffed in a sack and dropped into a sewer. Business as usual in Brownsville back in the 1930's.

Amberg was hoping that the sack would be washed out to sea and Hy's disappearance would be but a mystery, but unfortunately for Amberg it popped up near shore and what was left of Hy was fished out. Soon the names of Kasner’s killers traveled the underworld grapevine. Problematic for Amberg was that Kasner was an associate of both Albert Anastasia and Louis Capone the director and assistant director of Murder Inc and, to paraphrase Bumpy Johnson from the film Cotton Club, "If you have Murder Inc. on your ass, you truly have somebody on your ass."*

A Syndicate hearing was called. Anastasia and Capone argued that Amberg and his murdering cohorts should themselves be put on the spot for taking syndicate law into their own hands by killing Kasner without mob approval while Joe Adonis and Bugsy Siegel argued for Amberg’s clemency.

Adonis and Siegel were overruled and a contract was put out on Joey A. Chosen for the job was “Happy” Maione, Phil Mangano,(brother of Vincent Mangano the patriarch of the Mangano crime family) and another man known as “Red” Pulvino. The location chosen for the hit was the Brownsville garage, which was partially owned by “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss, where Joey Amberg parked his car.

On this day in 1935 Amberg’s sedan, chauffeured by Morris Kessler, pulled into the garage and as the men were stepping out, the killers, two dressed in khaki overalls and the third dressed in blue overalls, ran up with guns drawn and forced them to line up against the wall. As Amberg turned to face the wall he saw Maione’s face and began to say, “It’s - -” but before he could get anything else out he and Kessler were cut down by a blast from a shotgun. Once Amberg and Kessler were on the ground one of the killers ran up and shot each man in the head with a pistol. Justice, Murder Inc. style, had been served

*Johnson was actually referring to Owney Madden in the film. But you already knew that.