Sholem Bernstein

Apologies for the slowing down of posts since the beginning of the new year but as I have mentioned earlier I've been busy with other projects. As most people who freelance surely know, work schedules can be far from concrete and routine.

In that time though I have managed to finish up another portrait to add to the series. This time around is the lesser known Sholem Bernstein, a low level operative of the Brooklyn / Brownsville troop of Murder Inc. soldiers.

Bernstein was a talented car thief whose services were instrumental in procuring getaway cars that would later trace to a dead end in an investigation. Nothing of much importance was ever given to Bernstein further than placing his hands on the ten o'clock and two o'clock behind numerous stolen steering wheels, and pushing down on the gas. Sholem, who some called Sol, drove the getaway car at the fateful murder of candy store owner Joseph Rosen in 1936. Rosen was a former garment industry worker whose trucking business had been forced into retirement by Louis 'Lepke' Buchalter's powerful influence over labor racketeering in New York. Rosen was set up with a small candy store in Brooklyn by Lepke in order to try to help the man support his family. This was after a few missteps Rosen had working for a couple of other trucking companies under Buchalter's control. The candy shop faltered and Rosen, understandably embittered towards Buchalter, demanded financial reprimand and rumors flew that the candy man was looking to blow the whistle on Lepke's empire with one quick visit to Thomas Dewey's office.
Emanuel 'Mendy' Weiss was one of Bernstien's passengers on the Sunday morning of September 13 when Rosen was face down on the floor of the candy store, his body host to seventeen bullet holes. Joe Rosen's murder seemed perhaps inconsequential at the time to Lepke, who had overseen and ordered numerous syndicate hits, all calculated carefully, but this one would later prove to be the foundation of his downfall, and lead to his trip to the electric chair in 1944.

Inevitably Bernstien's minor stature in the underworld of Kings County manifested him into an easy pushover for the borough's District Attorney William O'Dwyer and prosecutor Burton Turkus. Looking at an extended trip to Sing Sing, Bernstein folded like an old accordion and was holed up in room 622 of The Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island soon after; his neighbor in room 623 was Abe Reles. He was one of the four important turncoats under police protection, along with Allie 'Tick Tock' Tannenbaum and Mickey Sycoff, who were across the hall in room 626.

Tannenbaum and Bernstein were key figures in Buchlater's trial for the prosecution. Tannenbaum's corroboration of the Rosen murder, and the eye witness account from Bernstein, sealed Lepke's fate along with Mendy Weiss.
Amazingly enough, court transcripts from the trial detailed that Bernstein's attempted an extortion racket while passing the sometimes agonizingly long hours under lock down at the Half Moon (he, along with the others were there for over a year). This was done through threatening letters sent out to potential victims who shady past he was acquainted with in the old neighborhood. These paper threats passed through the hands of the policemen on duty who were unaware of their content, onto their intended mark. The scam however proved unsuccessful.

Like Allie Tannenbaum and Abe 'Pretty' Levine, Sholem Bernstein disappeared from sight and was never heard from again following the fall out of the trials and subsequent string of executions.
He and Tannenbaum did make court appearances in 1950, when Abe Reles' case and a probe into police corruption was reopened by the serving District Attorney Miles McDonald (O'Dwyer had gone on to be New York's 100th Mayor in 1945). Appearing like hoodlum ghosts out of the past, Bernstein and Tannenbaum made their statements and answered questions then quickly faded away once again, their post-Murder Inc. days still remaining a mystery to this day.

Getta outta here!

A brief overview of the life of Jacob 'Gurrah' Shapiro. The final book text will go into more details. Hey, I can't giveaway everything here!

Jacob 'Gurrah' Shapiro
1899 - 1947

In much of the annals of Jewish criminal history put to paper, much has been made of Jacob Shapiro’s sobriquet. The nickname of ‘Gurrah’ conjures up images of a rough and tumble fellow, and the word closely resembles ‘gorilla’ as well if spoken quickly. That would have been appropriate as well, as Shapiro filled out the gangster mold rather well with his thick frame, long arms, hunched composure and mandatory broken nose that sat between two, almost gentle pale blue eyes. Sidewalk stories and street legend has it that more than likely, he earned it from his incomprehensible mumbling in his attempt at saying "getta outta here" through a thick tongue that first spoke Russian upon his family’s arrival from Minsk in the early 1900s.

He began his criminal career as a teen like most, robbing pushcarts, which were an easy target before growing to being one of the most feared labor racketeers not only on the Lower East Side, but also throughout most of New York. His partner was Louis 'Lepke' Buchalter, whom Shapiro first encountered during their teenage years when they both tried to rob the same pushcart. With a little nudge and wink from Mr. Arnold Rothstein, the two came up through the ranks and learned the slippery ropes working for number one labor boss Jacob ‘Little Augie’ Orgen. Orgen, a former member of Benjamin ‘Dopey Benny’ Fein’s gang, had won the longstanding labor slugging wars with his ‘Little Augies’ against Nathan Kaplan aka Kid Dropper and Johnny Spanish. Kaplan met his end in front of the Essex Market Court House in 1923 by a friendly little torpedo that went by the name Little Louis Cohen, despite the numerous detectives and policemen in the vicinity. Little Augie kept his guard up from that point on, with one inquisitive eye especially on the salient Lepke Buchalter, by hiring the notorious Jack ‘Legs’ Diamond as his personal bodyguard.

Buchalter was the dangerous and scary type of hoodlum, whose clear eyed, methodical forward thinking was combined and laced with cold-blooded cunning and greed. Shapiro was the brawn to Lepke's brains, and the two made quite the duo. It wasn’t long before Buchalter was convinced he and Shapiro could run Little Augie’s business better than he ever would.
On the 16th of October, 1927, Shapiro and Buchalter went into business for themselves after leaving on the corner of Norfolk and Delancey the bullet riddled body that once belonged to 26 year old Jacob Orgen. Legs Diamond earned his nickname due to his quick long legged running stride, which failed him that day and left him severely wounded but alive.

The old days were gone. Shapiro and Buchalter’s new order put fresh standards and practices to work, expanding their racketeering empire to bakery trucking, the clothing trade, narcotics and much more. The results shot Lepke to the top of the New York City crime world, aligning himself with the Bug and Meyer mob, Brooklyn chief Albert Anastasia, Lucky Luciano, and brought forth the birth of ‘the Combination’ which the press colorfully termed ‘Murder Inc.’ They acquired the dubious tag of ‘The Gold Dust Twins’, pulling in millions, but ‘Gurrah Jake’ Shapiro's aspirations stayed at street level and he remained out of the office chair while Buchlater ran his operations like a Wall Street CEO.

Special Prosecutor Thomas Dewey had been a thorn in the side of much of New York’s underworld ever since he chased after Dutch Schultz in the mid 1930s. With sights set on the Governor’s chair, and eventually the White House, he had Mayor LaGuardia’s blessing to take on the rackets. New York’s round table of knights of disorder had decided against assassinating Dewey when the Dutchman had first put the idea on the table. Shapiro and Buchalter had been the minority in voting yes, and that loss of vote and the crime boss committee’s decision against hitting Dewey would soon haunt most of them.

Dewey focused on the duo’s labor practices, and soon had them busted and convicted of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and they suddenly faced two years behind bars. Even with this sedentary period for the two while they were off the streets, Dewey worked up more evidence up his sleeve on a variety of different charges to have them sent right back into the clink after serving their present term. Word reached Shapiro and he immediately went into hiding, while Lepke, well, his was another long story altogether of almost two years of incognito and games of hide and seek.

Wanted posters had appeared by the thousands across the country with a $5000 reward for information on his whereabouts. ‘Gurrah’ Shapiro first went to Newark, perhaps hidden under the wide umbrella of New Jersey boss Abner ‘Longy’ Zwillman, before heading to the Midwest. The isolation of underground life proved to be too much for him after a couple of months and he started showing up in nightclubs, bars, and making phone calls. He wanted his old life back, and to see his old friends. His health was deteriorating as well. The good life capped by two years of sitting in jail had rounded out Shapiro’s features considerably, and he suffered from chest pains and shortness of breath. Finally, on April 14, 1938, tired of running and too sick to go on, he turned himself in to the FBI.
Charges against Jacob Shapiro included extortion and conspiracy, and he was handed 15 years to life to be spent at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York. He only served nine of those years, during which he’d witness life long partner Louis ‘Lepke’ Buchalter take a seat in the electric chair, before a heart attack took his life in 1947.

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