Born in 1878 Joseph Jughashvili had... well he was almost above a peasant. His father Besarion was a shoemaker and his mother Ekaterine "Keke" took on whatever menial job she could. Besarion was a violent and ill tempered man. Keke cheated on her husband. In 1882 Tsar Alexander III had set off a pogrom against Jews in Russia. It was around this time that Keke most likely had an affair with a Jewish man whose house she cleaned. Besarion furious at this got drunk and went over to do some damage. He lobbed stones, and even a horseshoe he kept around in case of fights.
Besarion ended up destroying the local government officials windows. Witnesses saw a man shouting "Jews! Jews! Jews!" and it took off from there. The Georgian Jewish Uprising as it was called at the time would be viewed by later historians as the Gori massace with over 5,000 Jewish, Georgian, and Armenians killed. While some will disagree as to Besarion being the cause it is the only thing which fits into the pattern.
Berasion was killed in the Massacre leaving Keke and her son Joseph who was barely 4 at the time, to fend for themselves. A family friend in the Russian Orthodox Church helped Keke with money to afford passage to America.
The first real wave of Russians were arriving in New York by this time. Joseph Jughashvili became Joseph Jughahash (the immigration official miswriting the family name). While Russians moved all over the Russian Jews tended to be in New York more often then not. Keke planned to save some money and move out to Los Angeles were at least a partial Russian Orthodox population was springing up.
Joesph Jughahash from 1884 to 1892 was part of the New York East Harlem community. A melting pot of Italian, Irish, Jewish, Native born, and more. He went to school and got rather good grades before going home for the day. He collected scrap for a man, worked at an Italian grocery, and more. Yet Jughahash was in an odd place in New York. He was deemed Jewish for being Russian, and deemed a gentile for not being Jewish. "The Jews would beat me for eating bacon. The Italians and Irish beat me for being a Jew. And Americans? They beat me for not being American."
In 1895 at the age of 15 Jughahash became linked to the Black Hand. While often confused with the mafia the Black Hand was the name of extortion in Italian communities. Simply a letter would arrive with some picture of a noose, or a gun, or a black hand, with a demand for money less a kidnaping, arson or worse occured. Jughahash was setting down crates for food when a man approached and gave him the letter. Not being able to read Italian Jughahash handed it over quickly. The owner read the letter and quickly got the money together to pay it off. This was the first taste of crime the young man ever had.
Keeping the letter Jughahash copied it. He did not understand it, but some boys at school helped him out with translating it. Jughahash claimed, "they helped me thinking it was fun to see something a real life gangster touched. What no one knew was I was copying the letters. Almost exact. I used to do poems and what not but this was my new thing." Jugahash got odd jobs. As many as he could. He would wait until he was just friendly enough with the shop owner and then hand over a black hand letter. Jughahash would tell them to drop the money in a trash heap or somewhere. The young man would wait and collect the money.
His mother Keke has no real record of how she reacted to this. But in 1896, when Jughahash was 18 she had gathered herself a husband, a small shop, an apartment and a little garden. The husband owned the shop but Keke owned the apartment. With no proven income it can only be guessed that Jughahash as funneling his money to his mother.
This scam ended when the Eastman Gang, run by Monk Eastman, a predominantly Jewish-American gang put an end to his actions. He pulled the scam once too often and targeted one of the businesses protected by the Eastman Gang. Jughahash was dragged out of his mother's home by Monk, Christopher Wallace, and John "Fitzy Fitz" Wiessman. The three men beat Jughahash and demanded $300. Five times the amount he was seeking to extort. Jugahahash shocked the Eastman Gang when he got the money in under two weeks. Three separate scams at the same time, mixed in with a few robberies. In truth Jughahash took credit for some community gossip while robbing his stepfather and his own mother.
Monk Eastman found Jughahash entertaining and a solid earner. He gave him the task of $35 a week. By this time Jughahash was part of the Jewish Eastmans and part of the emerging New York Mafia. Joseph was given the reputation as a burglar and a thug. A NYPD file from 1900 listed him as Joseph "Steel" Jughahash. Amongst the Eastman gang he was known as Limpy. Namely as once Monk Eastman asked him what he was called and he replied "Steel" to which Eastman, to the delight of all around him, replied, "Nah... you need a more fitting name. How about Limp Dick?" Thus Joseph "Limpy" Jugahash was born.
In New York the gangs of any note in the late 19th century was the Yakey Yakes, the Five Points Gang and the Eastman Gang. In 1899 to 1902 a gang war broke out between the three, alongside the Cherry Hilly Gang, Batavia, and the Whyos. The Whyos were the most dominant gang in New York City history up to that point being an Irish gang. The war was over turf and also obtaining the status as "fixers" for Tammany Hall.
The first year of the war saw the Eastman's dominate seemingly everything as the charismatic Monk Eastman won over many gangs and hoodlums. The Five Points Gang, which was made up of soon to be infamous men like Paul Kelly, Johnny Torrio, Al Capone, and Lucky Luciano, were just as brutal but were losing territory. Jughahash earned his "bones" from Monk Eastman when he acquired a handgun, and with four other men entered a Five Point Gang brothel and stole $1,297.46. A receipt for this amount was written out by Jughahash to Eastman and is on display in the Smithsonian today. In 1901 Eastman was shot in the stomach, but he survived. Jughahash, 23 at the time, took over operations for almost six months. He was guided by Eastman at various points and it is here the Jughahash learned how to run a criminal empire.
By 1903 the feud escalated, and the two gangs openly engaged in warfare. In one incident Kelly, Torrio and 50 Five Pointers were in a gun battle with a similarly sized force of Eastman's gang. City Police called to the scene had to retreat from the battle, which lasted several hours. Three men were killed, and many were wounded in the battle. When the police finally gained control of the situation, they arrested Eastman, but he spent only a few hours in jail. A Tammany-controlled judge released him after Eastman swore that he was innocent.
The general public was angered about warfare in the streets. A Tammany Hall deputy named Tom Foley brought Kelly and Eastman together and told them that neither would receive any political protection if they did not resolve the border dispute. They restored peace for a short time, but within two months, violence had risen again. Officials brought together the two leaders but asked them to take on each other in a boxing match, with the winner's gang to take the disputed territory.
On the appointed day August 19, 1903, hundreds of men from both sides met at an abandoned house in the Bronx. Eastman and Kelly fought each other for two hours. Kelly had been a boxer in his younger days, and was said to make a better showing in the earlier rounds, but Eastman was a larger man and fought ferociously. At the end of the match, neither man had been knocked out, and the match was declared a draw. The gang leaders told their men that they were still at war.
Around this time the Five Points Gang saw defections. The most important was Richie Fitzpatrick and Max "Kid Twist" Zwerbach. Both were violent and proven men in Five Points. Eastman won them over with larger territory and bribes. Jughahash by this time had a small section of New York he controlled in East Harlem. The man got along with Kid Twist and Fitzpatrick. They became Eastman's preferred hitman against the Five Points Gang.
At this point, the Tammany Hall bosses decided to back the Five Points crew, and to withdraw any legal or political help to Eastman and his gang. This quickly saw all the control which Eastman secured vanish. The ultimate downfall of the Eastman Gang was when in 1904 a police officer brutally beat Monk Eastman and arrested him. With Eastman gone the gang looked ready to fall apart into warring factions. Once friends, and now rivals Kid Twist, Fitzpatrick and Limpy split the gang between them.
Now the war with the Five Pointers was still on at this point. So Kid Twist, showing he was rather good at running the gang, called for a truce and a sit down. In a saloon at the Sheriff-Chrystie Street on November 1, 1904 Limpy arrived alongside Fitzpatrick. Now history of the streets explains that Kid Twist was preparing to assassinate both men at the saloon and while Fitzpatrick was killed unaware of the betrayal Jughahash fought off his attackers and wounded sought out Kid Twist to get his revenge. In truth Kid Twist was planning to assassinate the other two, and Limpy was planning the same. The only person arriving in good faith was Fitzpatrick. Jughahash would use this chance to try and rename himself "Steel Shotgun" but "Limpy" stuck.
In a single night Jughahash eliminated his rivals and gained total control of the Eastman Gang. In 1905 Limpy attempted a sit down with Paul Kelly to gain a truce with the Five Points Gang but it ended in just fighting. Limpy somewhat paranoid at this time engaged in a general purge of his gang. Any lieutenant from Kid Twist or Fitzpatrick was removed. Vach "Cyclone Louie" Lewis died in his girlfriends home. Donald "Don The Donny" Molchiess was stabbed in a stairwell. Louis "Louie the Lump" Pioggi was poisoned.
By 1906 Limpy had near unquestioned control of the Eastman Gang. Likewise the war with the Five Points Gang was toning down. People were still attacked but it tended to be if one trespassed. Limpy made a power play by 1907 with the Hudson River Robbery. A single train was transporting four car loads of whisky into New York. Limpy, alongside future lieutenants "Big" Jack Zelig, Jack "Red" Goldman, and Herbert "Copperhead" Cole paid off a railway engineer to move a single engine in as they unhooked and redirected the cars. The total was well over $10,000 in whisky which was sold to local saloons.
In this one move Jughahash gained support of saloonkeepers, and running smaller gangs, Jack Sirocco and Neil Loefeld. This gave The Eastman Gang a more legitimate cover for their day to day operations as well as a much more steady stream of income. This shipment lead to whisky being only really available in Eastman territory for close to three months. During this time Limpy made repeated moves to win over Tammany Hall. In 1908 the Eastman Gang had the backing of Tammany Hall and "assisted" in the 1908 to 1912 elections seeing solid democratic returns for New York City.
By 1915 the Eastman Gang was known was the Jughahash Gang, most newspapers however called it the Limpy Gang. Jughahash was a Russian in control of a Jewish gang, which was expanding into other areas. He decided to make a major play once again by waging war upon the Five Points Gang. The only real rivals Jugahahash intended to wipe them out and then just absorb the smaller gangs. The fight was not as intense as in the 1900s. Jugahahash set up a meeting with the heads of the Five Point Gang but having seen what occured last time Limpy asked for a sit down it was just Al Capone and ten others firing rifles into a small grocery store. This saw the death of Jack Sirocco and "Big" Jack Zelig. Jugahahash escaped, namely as he was on the second floor with four other men armed with shotguns ready to ambush the Five Pointers.
Tammany Hall broke ties with the Jugahahash Gang following this rise in violence on the street. Limpy was unpopular with the public, and the government. While he was able to push many of the Five Pointers out of New York. John Torrio and Al Capone went to Chicago. Lucky Luciano went to New Orleans. Paul Kelly held onto his corner of Hells Kitchen.
From 1917 to the ratification of the Volstead Act in January 1919 the Jugahahash Gang ran New York almost with a free hand. Limpy was not like Paul Kelly who promoted night clubs and hiding vice. Limpy set up Harlem as the place for hookers in the city. Gambling was divided up amongst his sub-bosses. While the Italians ran organized crime in a fashion to keep it hidden from view, with hefty payoffs to government officials, Jugahahash did things in the open and only dealt with government when it was needed.
Prohibition was a big time for organized crime in the USA. Chicago formed under Al Capone, as John Torrio ran about making an intricate system of alliances and deals to include into a wide reaching Italian Criminal Syndicate. Kansas City, Houston, Los Angeles, Toledo, and of course Chicago all were being run by the Italian Mafia. Lucky Luciano was being called the "Wandering Jew" for much of the 1920s was the New Orleans gangs were Italian, and thus distrusted the Jewish Luciano, and the Irish, who distrusted the Italian Luciano. Luciano however carved out a very fine position for himself in the French Ward. With the right bribes, actions, and more Luciano was able to make New Orleans the "Atlantic City of the South" by 1925. A city unofficially full of liquor, gambling, and more.
In 1919 Arnold Rothstein linked up with Luciano and tried to rig the World Series. The Black Sox Scandal ended in no convictions thanks to Luciano hiding Rothstein inside of his personal fiefdom of New Orleans. In 1927 he left his hiding and took position as the Treasurer of the City of New Orleans.
New York in the 1920s was a wild party. Newly rich , blue collar, white or black, Christian or Jewish, all was partying and enjoying life like never before. Jugahahash Gang was making a lot of booze in bathtub and using Canadian pipelines to keep it flowing freely into the city. While Chicago, New Orleans, and even Kansas City Missouri had a mystic of nightclubs, singers, and more New York overall seemed to have a saloon on every corner. Harlem had its Renaissance but it was lacking liquor to fuel it to it's true potential. Most of this had to do with the strangle hold that Limpy had on the city.
Limpy had control of Mayor Jimmy "Beau James" Walker, Police Commissioner Wilfred Montgomery, and at the very least lip service from Tammany Hall. Paul Kelly was edged out. Judges were owned. Cops played ball. Yet the streets were not all that safe. Saloons on every corner say petty crimes increase and the unspoken deal was that Jugahahash would avoid public violence which for the most part he did. Bodies still ended up in Yonkers and Albany had a few more shootouts then anyone found acceptable.
The Great Depression hit New York hard. Limpy was violent in maintaining his empire from upstarts and folks claiming "poverty" as an excuse not to pay up. As such inside of six months New York City had over fifty separate day light murders and possibly a hundred more.
While Chicago saw the St. Valetines Day Massacre in February of 1929, or even the lesser known New Orleans Mississippi Beer Butcher in 1928 the focus to the US government, and in particular President Herbert Hoover was New York. State Governor FDR ran on a platform of dealing with "crime most insidious" in the Big Apple.
The answer was to send in members of the Treasury Department to combat the illegal bootleg liquor enterprise and of course combat the Jugahahash Gang. With 500 agents of the Bureau of Prohibition inside of New York City this seemed like quite the challenge. Albert Ottiner, Attorney General of the State of New York, worked with the Governor of New York Franklin Delano Roosevelt to pressure Herbert Hoover into sending more men into the City of New York. Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith were the top ranking New York City agents of the Prohibition Unit. They made over 4,000 arrests in New York State. They spoke multiple languages, used disguises, and had numerous links to the underworld. Of course they were technically retired. The two large men were nicknamed "Hardy and Hardy" given their considerable girth. Einstein and Smith were reinstated.
Jugahahash met this challenge in the simple fashion of killing six Bureau of Prohibition agents in the Spring of 1930. The Hampstand Murders were national sensations and seemed to cement the image of Jugahahash as the so-called "King of New York. Governor Roosevelt considered for almost a week declaring a state of emergency and sending the New York National Guard out to clean up the streets. This was quickly worked out by President Hoover. The two men, which would go on to become rivals in 1932 for a few months had a very cordial relationship with the shared goal of ending the Jugahahash Gang in New York City.
President Hoover set up a new enforcement agency in June of 1930 with congressional approval to merge the Bureau of Prohibition, the Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Justice's Criminal Division (itself former in 1919) into the Department of National Police. J. Edgar Hoover who was the director of the Bureau of Investigation, became the Secretary of the National Police. The man in effect was given a blanket mandate to combat "any and all interstate crimes, criminals, and criminal organizations."
The biggest challenge to the National Police would not be Jugahahash, Al Capone, or even Luciano. It was Governor Huey Long of Louisiana, Governor John Pollard of Virginia, and Governor C.C. Young of California who challenged the new law under 10th Amendment grounds. "America shall not become the land of tyrants under Herbert Hoover!" Long v. US was decided under the Hughes Court in September of 1930. Some would call into question if Charles Hughes, former Governor of New York, and Harlan Stone, New York prosecutor, could be impartial given issues inside of New York City but the papers at the time focused on the 9-0 verdict in which it was determined the US government not only could have a National Police but that said police had wide ranging authority so long as it combated criminal activity linked to interstate activities.
Secretary J. Edgar Hoover joined the Herbert Hoover cabinet and got to work mapping out a general plan to strike back at the organized criminal syndicates of the USA. Governor FDR ad the New York State Police work closely with the National Police. While Hoover had a wide ranging focus to most the biggest target was Joseph "Limpy" Jugahahash. While Hardy and Hardly had almost 1,000 men to work with it was difficult inside of New York given how deeply the police and government were tied to the Jugahahash Gang.
From July to December of 1930 the National Police had over 10,000 agents (which will sounding large often meant under 500 officers for most major American states) of which there was 147 deaths. The mafia in Chicago, New Orleans, and more often took things in an honorable fashion with avoiding women and children as targets and focusing only on police. Limpy was different. He sent bombs to officers homes. He shot up church picnics. He was a monster. Yet for all his violence no one could link Jugahahash to anything. Even tax evasion charges failed due to Limpy having had surprisingly indepth accounting of his lawful real estate all over New York City.
The Christmas Eve Murders would be the first sign of the government getting serious. A tip off was made that Jugahahash was making large convoys move up to Connecticut. Local law enforcement was told to watch them and a few men decided to stop these New York Jews. This was a mistake. Four local sheriff deputies and three Connecticut State Troopers stopped two trucks. Each car had two men inside. Yet they were all carrying Auto-Ordnance Corporation crates. For those unaware the Auto-Ordnance Corporation built the Thompson submachine gun. Four men easily killed the police.
Backtracking the National Police determined that the Jugahahash Gang had spent anywhere from $30-70,000 on Thompson firearms. That was enough weapons to outfit a battalion of men. Or given what the Hardy and Hardy investigation had determined almost a third of the Jugahahash Gang would have such weapons.
This was it for Hoover. The President had the information in hand and was ready to unleash the full might of the US government. Governor FDR, who by this time had clear Presidential aspirations, found the perfect excuse to send in the New York National Guard. February 15, 1931 saw the "Battle of New York."
While the Jugahahash Gang put up resistance it was confined to small scale sieges. A building here or there would be surrounded and the submachine guns of the gangsters kept soldiers and law enforcement at bay, while the rifles of the National Guard keep the gangsters stuck inside. All in all the entire action lasted four days of sporadic fighting, with the National Guard being in place for another three weeks.
Jugahahash was arrested in his mid-town Manhattan apartment. The issue became a little murky in a legal sense as technically the Federal Government arrested him without a warrant. Add to it that technically there was no evidence he had in fact committed any criminal actions. Limpy Jugahahash was taken to Leavenworth Prison which was turned into a National Police holding area for all linked to organized crime inside of New York City.
Secretary Hoover used the precedent, and more over the public popularity, of the action to copy it in Chicago, New Orleans, and even Los Angeles. President Hoover was trying to deal with a depression and open warfare on American streets. Governor FDR was basking in praise and proud to announce he was running for President in 1932.
In April of 1931 the Mafia Commission formed. It heard testimony from J. Edgar Hoover, Einstein and Smith, and over two dozen other men in law enforcement. They laid out a map of organized crime inside of the USA. Later on it would be clear they played up a notion of unified criminal organizations and not the real fracture between the groups. Perhaps worse was that the Commission deemed it important to stress how Jewish mobsters and Italian mobsters, in their words, "had infected the United States with a poison all too common amongst their people but unknown to these hallowed shores."
All of this really was a play to hold a trial against men held in custody following National Police and National Guard raids on Chicago, New York, and other cities.
President Hoover was fine with such a trial but the US Supreme Court, thanks to appeals by Lucky Luciano, and Albert Rothstein's attorneys, stepped in. In Luciano and Rothstein vs. US the court reaffirmed the right of an accused to be indicted only after a Grand Jury hearing, and it placed specific limits on the governments ability for blanket operations in specific states without a clear showing of a state of emergency. This was a big hit to the Hoover Administration but it allowed the actions by Governor FDR to be deemed proper. The major difference was that in New York the National Police could easily show that known criminals had obtained large volumes of weapons which were used to kill police. In Chicago, New Orleans, and Los Angeles the government just acted.
So in effect Al Capone, John Torrie, Lucky Luciano, and Albert Rothstein were detailed illegally. Now Capone would find himself in a major tax issue. John Torrie had almost half of his assets confiscated. Yet the New Orleans Mafia under Luciano and Rothstein would continue become the "Atlantic City of the South."
In 1933, after a Presidential election, after the Bonus Army was beaten back by National Police officers, after Al Capone beat his tax trial following a few million dollars in Chicago schools and hospitals, the trial of Joseph "Limpy" Jugahahash began. It was a six week long trial. Jugahahash had nearly all evidence provided against him gained due to the Battle of New York. Jugahahash, and one hundred and twenty six members of his gang were tried for murder, with another four hundred tried for conspiracy to commit murder. The federal jury took nine days to return a verdict of guilty for everyone.
What followed was appeals and appeals of appeals. In the end in the first year of FDR's administration the US saw the largest execution of criminals in its history. Five hundred and twenty seven people, only sixty of whom were not Jewish, were executed. The State of New York passed a special law to permit a firing squad due to the sheer volume of executions. Adolf Hitler in 1934 would use the "American acceptance of Jewish inherent criminality" to justify segregation policies of German-Jews. Soviet Premiere Leon Trotsky would denounce the US for "cultivating conditions in which such criminals can take root and oppress the people."
Yet the sheer scope and volume of the National Police actions lead to American organized crime to become impotent until the late 1970s following the rise in heroin and cocaine trafficking. New Orleans would in the post-war era go on to become that city of neon and crawdads allowing the people of the South to gamble and celebrate whenever and with whomever they wish. Al Capone would pass in the Alphonse Capone Heart Clinic in Spring of 1955. While a criminal with a deeply violent history there is little of Chicago which does not have signs of his philanthropy. While his criminal Empire went into a decline as Chicago lost relevance in illegal alcohol production it remains the primary source of illegal alcohol in the Mid-West. J. Edgar Hoover would continue to be the Secretary of National Police until Harry S. Truman removed him from the position in 1948.
Besarion ended up destroying the local government officials windows. Witnesses saw a man shouting "Jews! Jews! Jews!" and it took off from there. The Georgian Jewish Uprising as it was called at the time would be viewed by later historians as the Gori massace with over 5,000 Jewish, Georgian, and Armenians killed. While some will disagree as to Besarion being the cause it is the only thing which fits into the pattern.
Berasion was killed in the Massacre leaving Keke and her son Joseph who was barely 4 at the time, to fend for themselves. A family friend in the Russian Orthodox Church helped Keke with money to afford passage to America.
The first real wave of Russians were arriving in New York by this time. Joseph Jughashvili became Joseph Jughahash (the immigration official miswriting the family name). While Russians moved all over the Russian Jews tended to be in New York more often then not. Keke planned to save some money and move out to Los Angeles were at least a partial Russian Orthodox population was springing up.
Joesph Jughahash from 1884 to 1892 was part of the New York East Harlem community. A melting pot of Italian, Irish, Jewish, Native born, and more. He went to school and got rather good grades before going home for the day. He collected scrap for a man, worked at an Italian grocery, and more. Yet Jughahash was in an odd place in New York. He was deemed Jewish for being Russian, and deemed a gentile for not being Jewish. "The Jews would beat me for eating bacon. The Italians and Irish beat me for being a Jew. And Americans? They beat me for not being American."
In 1895 at the age of 15 Jughahash became linked to the Black Hand. While often confused with the mafia the Black Hand was the name of extortion in Italian communities. Simply a letter would arrive with some picture of a noose, or a gun, or a black hand, with a demand for money less a kidnaping, arson or worse occured. Jughahash was setting down crates for food when a man approached and gave him the letter. Not being able to read Italian Jughahash handed it over quickly. The owner read the letter and quickly got the money together to pay it off. This was the first taste of crime the young man ever had.
Keeping the letter Jughahash copied it. He did not understand it, but some boys at school helped him out with translating it. Jughahash claimed, "they helped me thinking it was fun to see something a real life gangster touched. What no one knew was I was copying the letters. Almost exact. I used to do poems and what not but this was my new thing." Jugahash got odd jobs. As many as he could. He would wait until he was just friendly enough with the shop owner and then hand over a black hand letter. Jughahash would tell them to drop the money in a trash heap or somewhere. The young man would wait and collect the money.
His mother Keke has no real record of how she reacted to this. But in 1896, when Jughahash was 18 she had gathered herself a husband, a small shop, an apartment and a little garden. The husband owned the shop but Keke owned the apartment. With no proven income it can only be guessed that Jughahash as funneling his money to his mother.
This scam ended when the Eastman Gang, run by Monk Eastman, a predominantly Jewish-American gang put an end to his actions. He pulled the scam once too often and targeted one of the businesses protected by the Eastman Gang. Jughahash was dragged out of his mother's home by Monk, Christopher Wallace, and John "Fitzy Fitz" Wiessman. The three men beat Jughahash and demanded $300. Five times the amount he was seeking to extort. Jugahahash shocked the Eastman Gang when he got the money in under two weeks. Three separate scams at the same time, mixed in with a few robberies. In truth Jughahash took credit for some community gossip while robbing his stepfather and his own mother.
Monk Eastman found Jughahash entertaining and a solid earner. He gave him the task of $35 a week. By this time Jughahash was part of the Jewish Eastmans and part of the emerging New York Mafia. Joseph was given the reputation as a burglar and a thug. A NYPD file from 1900 listed him as Joseph "Steel" Jughahash. Amongst the Eastman gang he was known as Limpy. Namely as once Monk Eastman asked him what he was called and he replied "Steel" to which Eastman, to the delight of all around him, replied, "Nah... you need a more fitting name. How about Limp Dick?" Thus Joseph "Limpy" Jugahash was born.
In New York the gangs of any note in the late 19th century was the Yakey Yakes, the Five Points Gang and the Eastman Gang. In 1899 to 1902 a gang war broke out between the three, alongside the Cherry Hilly Gang, Batavia, and the Whyos. The Whyos were the most dominant gang in New York City history up to that point being an Irish gang. The war was over turf and also obtaining the status as "fixers" for Tammany Hall.
The first year of the war saw the Eastman's dominate seemingly everything as the charismatic Monk Eastman won over many gangs and hoodlums. The Five Points Gang, which was made up of soon to be infamous men like Paul Kelly, Johnny Torrio, Al Capone, and Lucky Luciano, were just as brutal but were losing territory. Jughahash earned his "bones" from Monk Eastman when he acquired a handgun, and with four other men entered a Five Point Gang brothel and stole $1,297.46. A receipt for this amount was written out by Jughahash to Eastman and is on display in the Smithsonian today. In 1901 Eastman was shot in the stomach, but he survived. Jughahash, 23 at the time, took over operations for almost six months. He was guided by Eastman at various points and it is here the Jughahash learned how to run a criminal empire.
By 1903 the feud escalated, and the two gangs openly engaged in warfare. In one incident Kelly, Torrio and 50 Five Pointers were in a gun battle with a similarly sized force of Eastman's gang. City Police called to the scene had to retreat from the battle, which lasted several hours. Three men were killed, and many were wounded in the battle. When the police finally gained control of the situation, they arrested Eastman, but he spent only a few hours in jail. A Tammany-controlled judge released him after Eastman swore that he was innocent.
The general public was angered about warfare in the streets. A Tammany Hall deputy named Tom Foley brought Kelly and Eastman together and told them that neither would receive any political protection if they did not resolve the border dispute. They restored peace for a short time, but within two months, violence had risen again. Officials brought together the two leaders but asked them to take on each other in a boxing match, with the winner's gang to take the disputed territory.
On the appointed day August 19, 1903, hundreds of men from both sides met at an abandoned house in the Bronx. Eastman and Kelly fought each other for two hours. Kelly had been a boxer in his younger days, and was said to make a better showing in the earlier rounds, but Eastman was a larger man and fought ferociously. At the end of the match, neither man had been knocked out, and the match was declared a draw. The gang leaders told their men that they were still at war.
Around this time the Five Points Gang saw defections. The most important was Richie Fitzpatrick and Max "Kid Twist" Zwerbach. Both were violent and proven men in Five Points. Eastman won them over with larger territory and bribes. Jughahash by this time had a small section of New York he controlled in East Harlem. The man got along with Kid Twist and Fitzpatrick. They became Eastman's preferred hitman against the Five Points Gang.
At this point, the Tammany Hall bosses decided to back the Five Points crew, and to withdraw any legal or political help to Eastman and his gang. This quickly saw all the control which Eastman secured vanish. The ultimate downfall of the Eastman Gang was when in 1904 a police officer brutally beat Monk Eastman and arrested him. With Eastman gone the gang looked ready to fall apart into warring factions. Once friends, and now rivals Kid Twist, Fitzpatrick and Limpy split the gang between them.
Now the war with the Five Pointers was still on at this point. So Kid Twist, showing he was rather good at running the gang, called for a truce and a sit down. In a saloon at the Sheriff-Chrystie Street on November 1, 1904 Limpy arrived alongside Fitzpatrick. Now history of the streets explains that Kid Twist was preparing to assassinate both men at the saloon and while Fitzpatrick was killed unaware of the betrayal Jughahash fought off his attackers and wounded sought out Kid Twist to get his revenge. In truth Kid Twist was planning to assassinate the other two, and Limpy was planning the same. The only person arriving in good faith was Fitzpatrick. Jughahash would use this chance to try and rename himself "Steel Shotgun" but "Limpy" stuck.
In a single night Jughahash eliminated his rivals and gained total control of the Eastman Gang. In 1905 Limpy attempted a sit down with Paul Kelly to gain a truce with the Five Points Gang but it ended in just fighting. Limpy somewhat paranoid at this time engaged in a general purge of his gang. Any lieutenant from Kid Twist or Fitzpatrick was removed. Vach "Cyclone Louie" Lewis died in his girlfriends home. Donald "Don The Donny" Molchiess was stabbed in a stairwell. Louis "Louie the Lump" Pioggi was poisoned.
By 1906 Limpy had near unquestioned control of the Eastman Gang. Likewise the war with the Five Points Gang was toning down. People were still attacked but it tended to be if one trespassed. Limpy made a power play by 1907 with the Hudson River Robbery. A single train was transporting four car loads of whisky into New York. Limpy, alongside future lieutenants "Big" Jack Zelig, Jack "Red" Goldman, and Herbert "Copperhead" Cole paid off a railway engineer to move a single engine in as they unhooked and redirected the cars. The total was well over $10,000 in whisky which was sold to local saloons.
In this one move Jughahash gained support of saloonkeepers, and running smaller gangs, Jack Sirocco and Neil Loefeld. This gave The Eastman Gang a more legitimate cover for their day to day operations as well as a much more steady stream of income. This shipment lead to whisky being only really available in Eastman territory for close to three months. During this time Limpy made repeated moves to win over Tammany Hall. In 1908 the Eastman Gang had the backing of Tammany Hall and "assisted" in the 1908 to 1912 elections seeing solid democratic returns for New York City.
By 1915 the Eastman Gang was known was the Jughahash Gang, most newspapers however called it the Limpy Gang. Jughahash was a Russian in control of a Jewish gang, which was expanding into other areas. He decided to make a major play once again by waging war upon the Five Points Gang. The only real rivals Jugahahash intended to wipe them out and then just absorb the smaller gangs. The fight was not as intense as in the 1900s. Jugahahash set up a meeting with the heads of the Five Point Gang but having seen what occured last time Limpy asked for a sit down it was just Al Capone and ten others firing rifles into a small grocery store. This saw the death of Jack Sirocco and "Big" Jack Zelig. Jugahahash escaped, namely as he was on the second floor with four other men armed with shotguns ready to ambush the Five Pointers.
Tammany Hall broke ties with the Jugahahash Gang following this rise in violence on the street. Limpy was unpopular with the public, and the government. While he was able to push many of the Five Pointers out of New York. John Torrio and Al Capone went to Chicago. Lucky Luciano went to New Orleans. Paul Kelly held onto his corner of Hells Kitchen.
From 1917 to the ratification of the Volstead Act in January 1919 the Jugahahash Gang ran New York almost with a free hand. Limpy was not like Paul Kelly who promoted night clubs and hiding vice. Limpy set up Harlem as the place for hookers in the city. Gambling was divided up amongst his sub-bosses. While the Italians ran organized crime in a fashion to keep it hidden from view, with hefty payoffs to government officials, Jugahahash did things in the open and only dealt with government when it was needed.
Prohibition was a big time for organized crime in the USA. Chicago formed under Al Capone, as John Torrio ran about making an intricate system of alliances and deals to include into a wide reaching Italian Criminal Syndicate. Kansas City, Houston, Los Angeles, Toledo, and of course Chicago all were being run by the Italian Mafia. Lucky Luciano was being called the "Wandering Jew" for much of the 1920s was the New Orleans gangs were Italian, and thus distrusted the Jewish Luciano, and the Irish, who distrusted the Italian Luciano. Luciano however carved out a very fine position for himself in the French Ward. With the right bribes, actions, and more Luciano was able to make New Orleans the "Atlantic City of the South" by 1925. A city unofficially full of liquor, gambling, and more.
In 1919 Arnold Rothstein linked up with Luciano and tried to rig the World Series. The Black Sox Scandal ended in no convictions thanks to Luciano hiding Rothstein inside of his personal fiefdom of New Orleans. In 1927 he left his hiding and took position as the Treasurer of the City of New Orleans.
New York in the 1920s was a wild party. Newly rich , blue collar, white or black, Christian or Jewish, all was partying and enjoying life like never before. Jugahahash Gang was making a lot of booze in bathtub and using Canadian pipelines to keep it flowing freely into the city. While Chicago, New Orleans, and even Kansas City Missouri had a mystic of nightclubs, singers, and more New York overall seemed to have a saloon on every corner. Harlem had its Renaissance but it was lacking liquor to fuel it to it's true potential. Most of this had to do with the strangle hold that Limpy had on the city.
Limpy had control of Mayor Jimmy "Beau James" Walker, Police Commissioner Wilfred Montgomery, and at the very least lip service from Tammany Hall. Paul Kelly was edged out. Judges were owned. Cops played ball. Yet the streets were not all that safe. Saloons on every corner say petty crimes increase and the unspoken deal was that Jugahahash would avoid public violence which for the most part he did. Bodies still ended up in Yonkers and Albany had a few more shootouts then anyone found acceptable.
The Great Depression hit New York hard. Limpy was violent in maintaining his empire from upstarts and folks claiming "poverty" as an excuse not to pay up. As such inside of six months New York City had over fifty separate day light murders and possibly a hundred more.
While Chicago saw the St. Valetines Day Massacre in February of 1929, or even the lesser known New Orleans Mississippi Beer Butcher in 1928 the focus to the US government, and in particular President Herbert Hoover was New York. State Governor FDR ran on a platform of dealing with "crime most insidious" in the Big Apple.
The answer was to send in members of the Treasury Department to combat the illegal bootleg liquor enterprise and of course combat the Jugahahash Gang. With 500 agents of the Bureau of Prohibition inside of New York City this seemed like quite the challenge. Albert Ottiner, Attorney General of the State of New York, worked with the Governor of New York Franklin Delano Roosevelt to pressure Herbert Hoover into sending more men into the City of New York. Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith were the top ranking New York City agents of the Prohibition Unit. They made over 4,000 arrests in New York State. They spoke multiple languages, used disguises, and had numerous links to the underworld. Of course they were technically retired. The two large men were nicknamed "Hardy and Hardy" given their considerable girth. Einstein and Smith were reinstated.
Jugahahash met this challenge in the simple fashion of killing six Bureau of Prohibition agents in the Spring of 1930. The Hampstand Murders were national sensations and seemed to cement the image of Jugahahash as the so-called "King of New York. Governor Roosevelt considered for almost a week declaring a state of emergency and sending the New York National Guard out to clean up the streets. This was quickly worked out by President Hoover. The two men, which would go on to become rivals in 1932 for a few months had a very cordial relationship with the shared goal of ending the Jugahahash Gang in New York City.
President Hoover set up a new enforcement agency in June of 1930 with congressional approval to merge the Bureau of Prohibition, the Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Justice's Criminal Division (itself former in 1919) into the Department of National Police. J. Edgar Hoover who was the director of the Bureau of Investigation, became the Secretary of the National Police. The man in effect was given a blanket mandate to combat "any and all interstate crimes, criminals, and criminal organizations."
The biggest challenge to the National Police would not be Jugahahash, Al Capone, or even Luciano. It was Governor Huey Long of Louisiana, Governor John Pollard of Virginia, and Governor C.C. Young of California who challenged the new law under 10th Amendment grounds. "America shall not become the land of tyrants under Herbert Hoover!" Long v. US was decided under the Hughes Court in September of 1930. Some would call into question if Charles Hughes, former Governor of New York, and Harlan Stone, New York prosecutor, could be impartial given issues inside of New York City but the papers at the time focused on the 9-0 verdict in which it was determined the US government not only could have a National Police but that said police had wide ranging authority so long as it combated criminal activity linked to interstate activities.
Secretary J. Edgar Hoover joined the Herbert Hoover cabinet and got to work mapping out a general plan to strike back at the organized criminal syndicates of the USA. Governor FDR ad the New York State Police work closely with the National Police. While Hoover had a wide ranging focus to most the biggest target was Joseph "Limpy" Jugahahash. While Hardy and Hardly had almost 1,000 men to work with it was difficult inside of New York given how deeply the police and government were tied to the Jugahahash Gang.
From July to December of 1930 the National Police had over 10,000 agents (which will sounding large often meant under 500 officers for most major American states) of which there was 147 deaths. The mafia in Chicago, New Orleans, and more often took things in an honorable fashion with avoiding women and children as targets and focusing only on police. Limpy was different. He sent bombs to officers homes. He shot up church picnics. He was a monster. Yet for all his violence no one could link Jugahahash to anything. Even tax evasion charges failed due to Limpy having had surprisingly indepth accounting of his lawful real estate all over New York City.
The Christmas Eve Murders would be the first sign of the government getting serious. A tip off was made that Jugahahash was making large convoys move up to Connecticut. Local law enforcement was told to watch them and a few men decided to stop these New York Jews. This was a mistake. Four local sheriff deputies and three Connecticut State Troopers stopped two trucks. Each car had two men inside. Yet they were all carrying Auto-Ordnance Corporation crates. For those unaware the Auto-Ordnance Corporation built the Thompson submachine gun. Four men easily killed the police.
Backtracking the National Police determined that the Jugahahash Gang had spent anywhere from $30-70,000 on Thompson firearms. That was enough weapons to outfit a battalion of men. Or given what the Hardy and Hardy investigation had determined almost a third of the Jugahahash Gang would have such weapons.
This was it for Hoover. The President had the information in hand and was ready to unleash the full might of the US government. Governor FDR, who by this time had clear Presidential aspirations, found the perfect excuse to send in the New York National Guard. February 15, 1931 saw the "Battle of New York."
While the Jugahahash Gang put up resistance it was confined to small scale sieges. A building here or there would be surrounded and the submachine guns of the gangsters kept soldiers and law enforcement at bay, while the rifles of the National Guard keep the gangsters stuck inside. All in all the entire action lasted four days of sporadic fighting, with the National Guard being in place for another three weeks.
Jugahahash was arrested in his mid-town Manhattan apartment. The issue became a little murky in a legal sense as technically the Federal Government arrested him without a warrant. Add to it that technically there was no evidence he had in fact committed any criminal actions. Limpy Jugahahash was taken to Leavenworth Prison which was turned into a National Police holding area for all linked to organized crime inside of New York City.
Secretary Hoover used the precedent, and more over the public popularity, of the action to copy it in Chicago, New Orleans, and even Los Angeles. President Hoover was trying to deal with a depression and open warfare on American streets. Governor FDR was basking in praise and proud to announce he was running for President in 1932.
In April of 1931 the Mafia Commission formed. It heard testimony from J. Edgar Hoover, Einstein and Smith, and over two dozen other men in law enforcement. They laid out a map of organized crime inside of the USA. Later on it would be clear they played up a notion of unified criminal organizations and not the real fracture between the groups. Perhaps worse was that the Commission deemed it important to stress how Jewish mobsters and Italian mobsters, in their words, "had infected the United States with a poison all too common amongst their people but unknown to these hallowed shores."
All of this really was a play to hold a trial against men held in custody following National Police and National Guard raids on Chicago, New York, and other cities.
President Hoover was fine with such a trial but the US Supreme Court, thanks to appeals by Lucky Luciano, and Albert Rothstein's attorneys, stepped in. In Luciano and Rothstein vs. US the court reaffirmed the right of an accused to be indicted only after a Grand Jury hearing, and it placed specific limits on the governments ability for blanket operations in specific states without a clear showing of a state of emergency. This was a big hit to the Hoover Administration but it allowed the actions by Governor FDR to be deemed proper. The major difference was that in New York the National Police could easily show that known criminals had obtained large volumes of weapons which were used to kill police. In Chicago, New Orleans, and Los Angeles the government just acted.
So in effect Al Capone, John Torrie, Lucky Luciano, and Albert Rothstein were detailed illegally. Now Capone would find himself in a major tax issue. John Torrie had almost half of his assets confiscated. Yet the New Orleans Mafia under Luciano and Rothstein would continue become the "Atlantic City of the South."
In 1933, after a Presidential election, after the Bonus Army was beaten back by National Police officers, after Al Capone beat his tax trial following a few million dollars in Chicago schools and hospitals, the trial of Joseph "Limpy" Jugahahash began. It was a six week long trial. Jugahahash had nearly all evidence provided against him gained due to the Battle of New York. Jugahahash, and one hundred and twenty six members of his gang were tried for murder, with another four hundred tried for conspiracy to commit murder. The federal jury took nine days to return a verdict of guilty for everyone.
What followed was appeals and appeals of appeals. In the end in the first year of FDR's administration the US saw the largest execution of criminals in its history. Five hundred and twenty seven people, only sixty of whom were not Jewish, were executed. The State of New York passed a special law to permit a firing squad due to the sheer volume of executions. Adolf Hitler in 1934 would use the "American acceptance of Jewish inherent criminality" to justify segregation policies of German-Jews. Soviet Premiere Leon Trotsky would denounce the US for "cultivating conditions in which such criminals can take root and oppress the people."
Yet the sheer scope and volume of the National Police actions lead to American organized crime to become impotent until the late 1970s following the rise in heroin and cocaine trafficking. New Orleans would in the post-war era go on to become that city of neon and crawdads allowing the people of the South to gamble and celebrate whenever and with whomever they wish. Al Capone would pass in the Alphonse Capone Heart Clinic in Spring of 1955. While a criminal with a deeply violent history there is little of Chicago which does not have signs of his philanthropy. While his criminal Empire went into a decline as Chicago lost relevance in illegal alcohol production it remains the primary source of illegal alcohol in the Mid-West. J. Edgar Hoover would continue to be the Secretary of National Police until Harry S. Truman removed him from the position in 1948.
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