I miss this kind of art work

Wonder how they cuffed him when they caught him?

Who's the boss?

On this date in 1928 Mafia boss Salvatore D’Aquila, said by his family to be a cheese importer, was at a doctor’s office in the East Village. While his family was inside, he returned to the street to inspect the engine of his car. According to a witness, D’Aquila was looking under his hood when three men approached him. The quartet conversed for a number of minutes. The conversation escalated into an argument. Suddenly, the three men drew pistols and fired a total of nine shots into the gangster killing him.

A ride ends in the Bronx

On this date back in the year that Boris Karloff first scared the pants off of movie goers in his first incarnation of the Frankenstein monster, Charles Pasquino was found in a remote part of the Bronx at the bottom of a nineteen-foot embankment. A bloody trail in the unpaved road showed that he had been dragged from a car and tossed down the hill. Like the majority of ride victims Charles had been shot behind the left ear. Two other bullets had pierced his left arm and neck. His record showed that he had been arrested twice in 1922 for grand larceny.

Checking out at the Harding Hotel

Tony Marlow was a bootlegger who lived in mid-town Manhattan next door to the Harding Hotel. On this date in 1928 he was standing in front of the hotel smoking a cigarette at 10:30pm apparently waiting for someone.

William White, a real estate salesman, who knew Marlow from the neighborhood saw him loitering and walked over. “Hello Tony!” White said offering his hand. As the two men were shaking hands, two more guys appeared from behind a parked car, one tall and slim and the other short and stout. Before anyone knew what was what they opened fire hitting Marlow five times before he had a chance to pull out his own gun.

A beat cop heard the shooting, ran to the scene and started after the gunmen. After a short chase the killers escaped. Returning to the Harding Hotel the officer loaded Marlow into a cab and took him to the hospital where the gangster was questioned about the shooting. When asked who shot him, Marlow responded in typical gangland fashion, “I’ll take care of them myself when I get well.” But his slayers needn’t of worried because Tony never got well.

Shot in the dark

Just around midnight on this date in 1920 sixty-year old John Tollard, the watchman over at the National Aniline and Chemical Works in Canarsie was standing guard in the counting room where hundreds of pay envelopes were ready for the night crew to pick up. Suddenly, the lights went out.

Assuming correctly that lights out meant trouble Tollard drew his pistol and hid behind a counter. Sure enough three gunmen entered the room and demanded the dough. Tollard answered with lead. It wasn’t a one way conversation however and the bandits responded threefold. Pieces of counter and wall plaster rained down upon the watchman and then he emptied his piece. The bandits continued to fire until some workers came up to investigate what all the fuss was about.

When members of the night shift arrived the gunmen hightailed it outta there sans the ten grand they came in for. Later cops learned that half an hour after the failed raid some cops from another precinct found a seriously wounded guy on the sidewalk and took him to the hospital. Thinking that the watchman’s bullets may have hit home they went and questioned him about the botched robbery but the wounded man denied involvement. Go figure.

Case of the murdered money collector-booze brewer-funeral parlor worker.

Angelo Lapi was an ex-con, who served sentences for both felonious assault and carrying a gun. Out of jail, forty-five year old Lapi took a job as a nightman at his brother in-laws funeral parlor. In addition to his duties at the parlor, Lapi made wine and home brew, which he in turn sold to a local speakeasy. Rumor had it he was also a money collector for the local policy racketeer.

The funeral home was connected to a tenement where Lapi lived with his wife, Maria, who also happened to be the janitress of the building. On the evening of the October 2, Maria was with her husband in the funeral parlor until midnight and then she went up to bed. The following morning as she started her daily chores she walked through the undertaking parlor and found her husband’s body on a couch in the back room. Lapi had been tied and gagged with a handkerchief. Then he was stabbed eleven times in the back.

Police were at a loss for a motive. So what was it? Did Lapi pocket some of the policy earnings? Did he fail to heed warnings not to sell his own spirits to the local speakeasy? What say you?

What is the law? No spill blood! (Without permission)

 Well, well, look who shows up after all this time. I'm not even gonna bother asking you where you've been. Have you had any dead guys in suits lately? Never mind just sit at the table there and I'll plate some up for you.

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, Amberg set out to get Kasner. The latter was snatched, killed, stuffed in a sack and dropped into a sewer. Business as usual for a Brownsviller back in the 1930's.

Amberg went about his business assuming the sack containing Kasner had washed out to sea and Hy's disappearance would be but a mystery, but unfortunately for Amberg it was found floating in an inlet 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 had been 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. Amberg supporters, Joe Adonis and Bugsy Siegel argued for Joey A's clemency.

Adonis and Siegel were overruled and a contract was put out on Monsieur Amberg. Chosen for the job were “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 (partially owned by fellow Murder Inc. gunman “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss) where Joey Amberg parked his car. The plan was to have the gunmen pretend to be armed bandits. They would ambush Amberg and tell him to raise his hands and face the wall, and then...

On this day in 1935 Amberg’s sedan, chauffeured by Morris Kessler, pulled into the garage. As driver and drivee were stepping out of the car, 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 blurted out, “It’s - -” but before he could elicit anymore words a shotgun went off. Amberg and Kessler fell where they stood. Once they 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.