Emanuel Weiss

Emanuel Weiss (right) and Louis Capone (left), surrounded by officers on their way to Sing Sing on December 3, 1941, one day after their sentencing to death.

Emanuel "Mendy" Weiss (born June 11, 1906 in New York City , † March 4, 1944 in Sing Sing Prison , Ossining , New York ) was a figure from the organized crime in New York of the 1930s until his arrest in 1941 and is now included in the Kosher Nostra .

According to the Kings County Prosecutor's Office, Weiss, who claims to have been nothing more than an honest hat seller in Brooklyn , was one of the members of the Louis Buchalter- led crime group Murder, Inc. The activities of this gang had ranged from extortion to systematic local infiltration Trade unions expanded. In addition, the investigation by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics suggested that Weiss, like Buchalter , was involved in the international drug trade , but could not be prosecuted and convicted because he was charged with murder at the same time as sentencing to death and execution should end the electric chair , was submerged.

biography

Criminal career

The son of Jewish immigrants was one of the trade union thugs of the Buchalter-Shapiro gang in the mid-1920s and, according to the prosecution, is said not only to have belonged to Buchalter's closest confidante, but also to act as a middleman directly to Buchalter's orders, which included extortion and crimes up to and including murder passed on hired criminals. Weiss was also actively involved in the violent infiltration of the New York textile and clothing industry . When Jacob Shapiro and Louis Buchalter wanted to evade criminal prosecution in 1937 and went into hiding, Weiss is said to have acted as deputy and took over the financial affairs. He was still under the command of Buchalter, Shapiro and Albert Anastasia .

Murder of Dutch Schultz

Dutch Schultz was also known as the "Beer Baron of the Bronx". The times of alcohol prohibition were over, however, and gangsters like Schultz were targeted by the judiciary. Schultz therefore planned to murder Thomas E. Dewey - Kings County Attorney and later Governor of New York - who was investigating him. Since the new National Crime Syndicate - especially Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky - feared the consequences of such an act, the murder of Schultz was decided instead.

On October 23, 1935, Charles Workman , Emanuel Weiss and Seymour drove “Piggy” Schechter to the Palace Chophouse in Newark, New Jersey . Schechter, the getaway driver, was waiting in the vehicle. While Weiss secured the entrance area of ​​the restaurant and asked the bartenders and waiters to lie on the floor, Workman entered the place and immediately opened fire on three men in the back of the Palace Chophouse . He inflicted serious gunshot wounds that none of the wounded should survive. Weiss supported the Workman, who was armed with two pistols, with a sawed-off shotgun and fired one more time at the men who had already been shot by Workman. When Workman and Weiss realized that Schultz was not among them, Workman searched the restrooms of the restaurant and met Dutch Schultz there. During the confrontation with Workman, Schultz was shot in the stomach and slumped. Instead of waiting for Workman, Weiss and Schechter left the scene of the crime out of fear of the arriving police and fled with the getaway car. The surprised Workman had to flee on foot and was accordingly annoyed at later meetings.

Weiss argued that Workman had started robbing the victims, but that this was not part of the actual murder assignment. Because of the incident, another meeting of the National Crime Syndicate finally took place, but at which Louis Buchalter managed to convince those present to spare his henchman Weiss.

Murder of Joseph Rosen

In the mid-1930s, prosecutor William O'Dwyer , who had made it his goal to take action against organized crime, put the focus of his investigation on Louis Buchalter. This responded in particular by driving potential witnesses out of town or having them murdered.

For example, a former freight forwarder named Joseph Rosen, who had to give up his business because of a delivery stop ordered by Buchalter, repeatedly threatened to inform the public prosecutor of Buchalter's machinations if he did not comply with Rosen's demands. On September 13, 1936, Rosen was shot dead in his Brownsville, New York City, shop on Buchalter's orders . Harry Strauss , James Ferraco , Emanuel Weiss, Philip Cohen , Sholem Bernstein and Louis Capone were supposedly commissioned with the planning and execution of the crime .

More accusations

In 1939, Weiss is also said to have been involved in the murder of the union activist Peter Panto , ordered by Albert Anastasia , after he threatened to name the mafiosi involved in the infiltration of the port union .

In the same year he was arrested on the orders of prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey. Weiss was suspected of participating in the murder of Louis Cohen and Isadore Friedman on January 28, 1939 . Joseph A. Solovei , Weiss's lawyer, however, obtained the release of his client from pre-trial detention on the basis of the habeas corpus principle , which declares deprivation of liberty to be inadmissible without a judicial decision. Due to a lack of evidence, there was no trial.

Weiss and his accomplice Philip Cohen are also said to have been heavily involved in the Murder, Inc. drug deals. In 1937, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics believed it had secured evidence of Cohen and Weiss violating the US Narcotics Act. A certain Jacob Gottlieb had been arrested with a suitcase full of heroin in Rouses Point , New York. When he was arrested, Gottlieb first informed the authorities that he had smuggled drugs from France through Canada to the USA for Cohen and Weiss and that the two were his clients. While still in custody, Gottlieb committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell for fear of retaliation by Murder, Inc. against him or his family. No charges could be brought against Cohen and Weiss due to the death of the sole witness.

In 1939 the two Murder, Inc. relatives finally succeeded in indicting violations of the US Narcotics Act. Investigators from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics discovered a chemical plant used to stretch morphine during a house search and had obtained evidence of the involvement of Weiss, Cohen and three other people. After the fugitives were arrested in 1939, the trial was scheduled for 1940. All of the defendants were accused of being involved in the opium trade and of having distended morphine in order to multiply its profits. Weiss, who was released on bail , did not appear at the court hearing in order to evade criminal prosecution, and from then on was considered a fugitive before the judiciary. In February 1941, Philip Cohen and the three remaining defendants were sentenced to three to ten years' imprisonment.

Murder charges and manhunt

When the public prosecutor finally succeeded in putting the gang around Louis Buchalter under pressure in the late 1930s, this had an effect on Murder, Inc. and disintegration could be observed. After Buchalter went into hiding for two years, he surrendered to the authorities in 1939 and was sentenced to 14 years in prison for drug smuggling. When the contract killer Abe Reles could also be charged with murder, this bookalter and other Murder, Inc. relatives - including Weiss - were incriminated so severely that the prosecution was able to bring charges against the accused in 1940, four years after the murder of Joseph Rosen.

In the following nationwide manhunt, wanted posters of the New York police prescribed the immediate arrest of Emanuel Weiss, who was wanted for murder. At the same time, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics was investigating Weiss for further violations of the US Narcotics Act. He had left New York in May 1940, shortly before the charges were brought and before the start of a court hearing that had already been scheduled. By this time he had long since moved to Kansas City, Missouri, and acted as vice president of a mining company under the name James W. Bell.

There, in April 1941, the wanted man was finally arrested by investigators from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. However, prosecution for drug smuggling was waived and Weiss was handed over to the New York authorities, who tried him, Buchalter and Louis Capone for the murder of Joseph Rosen.

Sentencing and execution

In the trial, contract killers Albert Tannenbaum and Seymour Magoon , mobster Max Rubin and getaway driver Sholem Bernstein testified against the three accused. Main witness, Abe Reles, mysteriously died before his hearing by falling from the window of his hotel room while under police protection. In order to prove his innocence, Weiss gave a personal alibi that was confirmed by several exonerating witnesses, mainly family members and an outside third party. In addition, his defense attorney, Alfred J. Talley , tried to discredit the witnesses on the basis of their connection to the criminal milieu or their previous convictions and thus to question their credibility. The defense's efforts were in vain, however, when the victim's wife took the stand and said she saw Weiss at the scene, in Joseph Rosen's shop, the day before the murder. She thus confirmed the statement of a rather unreliable witness. In December 1941 the jury sentenced Weiss, Capone and Buchalter to death .

The defense of the three convicts tried by all means to get the case back to court. The execution, which was originally scheduled for January 2, 1942, was delayed for over two years. The case ended up preoccupying the United States Supreme Court , which upheld the death sentences. This exhausted all legal remedies.

However, that did not stop the defense from continuing to demand the retrial. Weiss cited the existence of new, exculpatory evidence. Affidavits were now available from the siblings of the hit man Harry Maione , a fellow inmate and a prison guard that Maione had confessed to the murder of Joseph Rosen shortly before his execution and had committed the act together with Frank Abbandando and Martin Goldstein . However, as all three had been convicted and executed of other murders, the applications were dismissed, whereupon the defense accused the court of bias and requested a retrial. In 1944 Weiss even claimed that he had neither known nor met Louis Buchalter until the murder trial. Despite the new evidence, the Court of Appeals refused to grant the application.

Ultimately, the sentence was carried out in Sing-Sing Prison on March 4, 1944, after Thomas E. Dewey, now governor of New York, rejected the last petition for clemency. Weiss was executed a few minutes after Louis Capone. Shortly afterwards, Louis Buchalter followed.

“Can I say something? … All I want to say is I'm innocent. I'm here on a framed-up case. And Governor Dewey knows it. I want to thank Judge Lehman. He knows me because I am a Jew. Give my love to my family ... and everything. "

“Can I say something else? ... All I want to say is that I am innocent. I'm here on a constructed case. And Governor Dewey knows. I want to thank Judge Lehman. He knows me because I'm a Jew. Give my family my love and everything. "

- The last words of Emanuel Weiss, who was the only one of the three delinquents to speak before his execution.

In the movie

In the 1960 film Underworld , he is portrayed by the actor Joseph Bernard. 1975 Weiss was also seen as a character in The Gangbang boss of New York ,

literature

• Cohen, Rich: Murder Inc .: Not exactly kosher stores in Brooklyn . Fischer Verlag, 2000, ISBN 3-10-010215-0 .
• Burton B. Turkus and Sid Feder: Murder Inc. Farrar Straus and Young, 1992, ISBN 978-0-306-80475-5 (first edition: 1952).
• Burton B. Turkus and Sid Feder: Murder Inc. Da Capo Press, 2003, ISBN 0-306-81288-6 .
• Allan R. May: Gangland Gotham: New York's Notorious Mob Bosses . Greenwood, 2009, ISBN 978-0-313-33927-1 .

Web links

• Obituary and biography of Lepke Buchalter. ( Memento from April 25, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
• Emanuel Weiss on Find A Grave

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Traffic In Opium And Other Dangerous Drugs ( Memento of the original from February 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 14.9 MB) Federal Bureau of Narcotics 1942, p. 15 ff. (English) - accessed on January 25, 2012  
2. ↑ WORKMAN KILLER, WOMAN TESTIFIES; He Called at Her Apartment and Told How Schultz Met His Death, She Adds , The New York Times , June 8, 1941 p.45
3. ↑ The murder company. , Der Spiegel , June 4, 1952
4. ↑ LEPKE TRIAL OPENS; JURY-PICKING LAGS; Blue-Ribbon Talesmen Prove Reluctant to Serve in Brooklyn Murder Case The New York Times , August 5, 1941, p.40
5. ↑ Nine Hundred & Forty Thieves . In: Time . December 29, 1952 (American English, article online at Time Magazine website [accessed April 23, 2011]).
6. ↑ MARDEN TESTIFIES TO AVOID CONTEMPT; Night Club Operator Answers Questions About Gambling-- Lepke Trial Due Oct. 16 , The New York Times , September 12, 1939
7. ↑ Guilty in narcotics case; Cohen and 3 Others Convicted by Federal Court Jury. In: The New York Times . January 31, 1941 (English).
8. ^ Obituary and biography of Lepke Buchalter. ( Memento from September 5, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) on hollywoodusa.co.uk/Grave (English)
9. ↑ HIGH COURT SEALS LEPKE TRIO DEATHS; Tribunal in Washington Says Brooklyn Gang Defendants Had a Fair Trial. In: The New York Times , June 2, 1943.
10. ↑ rehearing Is Denied to Lepke; Fate Seen 'Entirely Up to Dewey'; LEPKE LOSES PLEA TO GET REHEARING In: The New York Times . February 25, 1944.
11. ↑ LEPKE IS PUT TO DEATH, DENIES GUILT TO LAST; MAKES NO REVELATION; TWO AIDES ALSO DIE , The New York Times , March 5th, 1944
12. ^ ^{A b} Allan May: The Last Days of Lepke Buchalter, et al on November 1, 1999 on americanmafia.com (English).
13. ↑ Jay Robert Nash: Bloodletters and badmen: a narrative encyclopedia of American criminals from the Pilgrims to the present. M. Evans and Co., 1995, p. 109.