Mobsters' Women

The age of the flapper--1920s

Once World War I ended and the doughboys returned from Europe, young men and women were ready to shed the Victorian inhibitions of the past for the freedom of modernity. While the soldiers were off fighting the Germans, women won their voting rights and Temperance groups made national Prohibition the law of the land. 

The alchemy of these new political realities dramatically impacted society setting the stage for the Roaring Twenties and the age of the flapper. Young women shed their corsets, raised their hemlines, lowered their waistlines, bobbed their hair, and put on shoes with heels. They smoked, they swore, they drank, and they danced to the latest syncopated rhythms at speakeasies while rubbing elbows with underworld figures and wealthy local businessmen. 

Many young women were attracted to the lavish lifestyle of underworld figures who dressed in fine clothes and drove flashy automobiles. As long as the money and perks rolled in, most gangster wives and girlfriends knew better than to question the source of their good fortune--they were smart enough to play dumb.

But being involved with a gangster was a risky proposition for women. Gangsters of the Roaring Twenties tended to die young leaving their wives and girlfriends bereaved and destitute. Some young women hooked up with other gangsters, some returned home to their families, some returned to the chorus line from whence they came, and some went to work in a variety of low-paying jobs.

 

Al and Mae Coughlin Capone

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Planning for the future was not a priority for people living in the moment. Life insurance and pension plans were not part of the gangster's long-term prospectus. When Al Capone died, his wife Mae was forced to vacate their Palm Island estate in Miami Beach, Florida. She went to work helping her son run a Miami restaurant called The Grotto, but when the venture failed, Mae lived modestly in Hollywood, Florida on the generosity of her brother-in-law Ralph Capone and the Chicago organization who paid her a small stipend understood to be hush money.

In Detroit, Michigan, Purple Gang enforcers Abe Axler and Eddie Fletcher died as they lived--at the wrong end of a gun. Both men when released from federal prison had to pay $5,000 in fines. After Axler and Fletcher were released, they were broke. Shortly after that, they were found murdered in the back seat of car. Abe had $18.60 in his pockets and Eddie had $0.60. The Axler family in New York paid to ship Abe's body home for burial. Eddie Fletcher's body was also returned to New York, but his family had long-since turned their back on Eddie. His burial expenses were paid by First Brodyer Benevolent Association because of his indigence.

Neither of their widows had a financial safety net, so they played the marriage sweepstakes. Evelyn Axler remarried twice--both times to alcoholics. She died at the age of thirty-eight from second and third degree burns over her entire body. The cause of death was entered as accidental by the Wayne County Coroner though the details of her death are lost to history. Anna Fletcher fared much better. She remarried a man not in the rackets and drifted into obscurity leaving the mob life behind.

Fred "Killer" Burke after pleading guilty to murder.

 

As a rule, most mobster wives and girlfriends were left unprovided for, but there were exceptions. Fred "Killer" Burke--gunman responsible for three of the most notorious gangland killings of the Prohibition period--had as many wives and girlfriends as he had aliases. His final marriage was to twenty-year-old Bonnie Gwendoline Porter when Burke was thirty-seven.

Bonnie Burke

Less than a year after their marriage in 1930, Burke was arrested for the murder of a St. Joseph, Michigan patrolman who was trying to apprehend him for a minor traffic accident. When Bonnie Burke was brought in for questioning, she said she knew nothing about her husband's criminal past and believed he sold oil well leases. "My husband spent a lot of time on the road," she told police. In reality, Burke held up banks and committed other crimes in surrounding counties and states.

Charged with second-degree murder, Fred Burke pleaded guilty knowing there was a contract put out on him for double-crossing the Purple Gang. He was sentenced to life at Marquette Prison in Michigan's Upper Peninsula where he died of heart failure in 1940. Despite not visiting Burke in the nine years he spent behind bars, Bonnie was left with a fortune in negotiable United States Treasury 
Bonds leaving her a very rich woman.

 

Chester and Anna LaMare

Another exception to the plight of most mob wives was Anna LaMare, the wife of Cesare "Big Chet" LaMare--Hamtramck, Michigan mob boss and Wyandotte, Michigan Mafia don. In a move to become capo regime ("boss of bosses"), LaMare attempted to gather Detroit's Mafia leaders together in one place to assassinate them in one fell swoop. The plan unravelled and two low-ranking Eastside Mafia members were shot to death igniting a year-long Mafia gang war between Eastside and Westside Mafia factions--only one would survive. LaMare knew his days were numbered. A month before he was assassinated by turncoat members of his own gang, LaMare discussed his estate and other holdings with Anna.

While Anna was out of the house on February 6, 1931, from 9:00 pm until near midnight, two gunmen--Joe Amico and Elmer Macklin--shot Big Chet. Anna returned home and found her husband in a bleeding heap on the kitchen floor. She called the Wyandotte Police screaming into the phone at them. After they arrived, Anna calmed down and was questioned claiming she was out of the house for only an hour or so. When she left the house, Chet was by himself she told investigators. Because of the coagulation of LaMare's blood and the level of rigor mortis in his body, the coroner knew Anna was lying. LaMare had been dead for over two hours.

Chester LaMare's silver-clad casket being carried out of his Wyandotte home.

 

Though Anna was suspected by police investigators as being complicit in some way, she was never charged and held only briefly before being released to arrange for her husband's funeral. Two of LaMare's foot soldiers were charged with Big Chet's murder while Anna walked away scott-free with an estate valued at $500,000--including money in the bank, extensive real estate holdings, and a Ford Motor Company dealership.

Most women involved with underworld figures were married to woe, and few profited from their association with a gangster. But all of them carried the weight of memory and the stigma of being a gangster's woman to their graves.

Purple Gangster Marries Shiksa 

The Elusive Purple Gang--Now Available From Amazon

The Elusive Purple Gang: Detroit’s Kosher Nostra is a concise history of one of America’s most notorious and violent Prohibition gangs. The four Burnstein brothers and their associates were the only Jewish gang in the United States to dominate the rackets of a major American city.

From their meteoric rise to the top of Detroit’s underworld to their ultimate demise, The Elusive Purple Gang is an episodic account of the Purple Gang’s corrosive pursuit of power and wealth and their inevitable plunge towards self-destruction. 

A quality Wheatmark Inc. paperback edition is now available from Amazon with ebook formats avaliable at the end of November. A digital audiobook is in production and should be available in late December.

2020 marks the one-hundredth anniversary of Prohibition. I hope readers young and old will find The Elusive Purple Gang informative and interesting. As always, Amazon reviews are kindly encouraged. Thank you.

AVAILABLE NOW 

John Norman Collins's Murder Alibi

John Norman Collins on Triumph motorcycle he used to pick up Karen Sue Beineman.

Part three of the Detroit Free Press retrospective article on killer John Norman Collins and the Washtenaw County Murders details two prison letters he wrote to his Canadian cousin John Philip Chapman in 2013. In them, Collins states he is innocent of the Karen Sue Beineman and Alice Kalom murders, and he names the killer.

A footnote to this three-part feature story is that Collins broke his long-standing rule of not responding to media requests and wrote the Free Press last Tuesday asking that they not publish the articles. Then, he proceded to slander me writing I was using him to snare women into my web. Just for the record, I don't have a web.

John Norman Collins Mugshot August 2, 1969.

Collins throws Eastern Michigan University Roommate Under Prison bus 

The Washtenaw County Murders--1967-1969

Photo credit: The Detroit Free Press

Over a period of three summers, the bodies of seven Michigan young women and a high school student from Oregon visiting in California were found discarded in the countryside. The prime suspect was a handsome, high school sports star from Center Line, Michigan, who began his killing spree at Eastern Michigan University in 1967. Part two of this three part feature recounts the murders.

The Victims 

Detroit Free Press Delves Into the John Norman Collins Case

Michigan Department of Corrections mugshot--2014.

Detroit Free Press investigative reporter Frank Witsil took up the John Norman Collins murder cases and discovered that I have a collection of over twenty prison letters Collins wrote over the years to four different people--all who voluntarily decided to share them with me.

Two of those prison letters were sent to Collins's Canadian cousin John Philip Chapman. What makes those letters different from the others is for the first time Collins puts forth an alibi for the murders of Alice Kalom and Karen Sue Beineman. His motive for doing so will be made quite clear.

Witsil's three-part survey of the Collins case concludes with an exclusive report detailing his alibi which throws his former Eastern Michigan University roommate under the prison bus fifty years after the fact. People who follow this case will be more interested in the state of Collins's mind than any serious criminal revelations. Parts two and three of the Detroit Free Press feature will run in the coming days.

Collins Feature--Part One

Gaslighting--A Sociopath's Favorite Tool

The psychological phenomenon known as gaslighting has become a colloquial term to describe a form of mental abuse where a dominant individual manipulates a weaker person's sense of psychological well-being to undermine the victim's mental stability. It is the manipulation of external reality to make someone doubt their sanity.

The term derives from the popular 1944 American film entitled Gaslight--based on a 1938 British stage play. Frenchman Charles Boyer plays the sociopathic husband of the psychologically frail Ingrid Bergman. This memorable film portrays a husband's attempt to destroy his wife's sanity by manipulating her perception of reality, so he can steal her jewels.

Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman

Sociopaths instill a high level of anxiety and confusion to disorient their victims. Information is twisted and spun by them so victims begin to doubt themselves. Targets lose faith in their ability to make judgments and become insecure about their decision-making abilities.

Gaslighting describes an antisocial personality disorder that relies on deception, denial, mind games, sabotage, isolation, and destabilization. It is a form of narcissistic abuse that occurs in all types of relationships and every walk of life. This syndrome is often associated with marital relationships, but anyone can be a victim. Gaslighting can be seen in abusive parent-child relationships and in the workplace with an aggressive boss brow-beating his employees. It is mental bullying that can escalate into physical violence. These narcissists are puppet masters who often manipulate people for their own personal gain or to play twisted power and control games.

Gaslighting is a deliberate and progressive method of covert control that imposes a form of psychosis on its victims. Brainwashing, interrogation, isolation, and torture are all forms of psychological warfare used by the military, intelligence agencies, law enforcement, and terrorist organizations. On any level, it is a human and civil rights violation. 

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For more detailed information on gaslighting and a link to The National Domestic Violence Hotline, view the following link: http://www.thehotline.org/2014/05/what-is-gaslighting/

Detroit Police Pioneer Radio Dispatching During Prohibition

During the lawless period of Prohibition, law enforcement and the underworld took full advantage of the automobile as their mode of transportation. The four-cylinder Ford Model T was inexpensive enough to be widely available to the masses and law enforcement. But other automobile manufacturers were making more expensive sleeker and faster cars giving gangsters the edge. The underworld had a ready source of money where the police had to go through official channels to secure government funding. Car manufacterers like Cadillac, Chrysler, Packard, Chevy, and Dodge outclassed and out-maneuvered the policeman's Tin Lizzy.

It wasn't until December 2, 1932, that Ford Motor Company introduced its V-8 engine making the Model A the car to beat. It left the in-line six-cylinder engines of its competitors in the dust. The Detroit Police were quick to buy thirty Ford Phaetons equipped with a new weapon in their fight against organized crime.

Ford Phaeton, V-8, radio-equipped Detroit police car.
Notice the bullet deflector protecting the radiator.

Detroit Police began experimenting with radio-equipped patrol cars in 1921. At first, it was one-way communication that could dispatch cars but not receive signals from patrol cars. Patrolmen had to find a phone booth to report to the station. In those days, the Detroit Police shared a frequency with a commercial radio station and cut into its programming to dispatch patrols.

Seven years later on April 7, 1928, Detroit Police radio operators broadcast throughout the city for the first time on a dedicated frequency from the Belle Isle police precinct. The new radio system reduced police response times and increased arrest rates. It was an instant success, quickly making radio-dispatching standard police practice nationwide.

In 1987, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers honored the technical achievement of the Detroit Police Department with a plaque on the front of the now deserted Belle Isle precinct station, commemorating the electrical engineering milestone of dedicated police radio communications.