Rumrunning and Hijacked Hooch - The Purple Way

In Brooklyn, it was the Five Points Gang. In Chicago, they bragged about the Northside Gang. Philadelphians claimed the Boiler Gang. But the City of Detroit was home to the baddest boys of all, The Purple Gang.

Purple supremacy over the Motor City's underworld began in 1918 when the State Prohibition Referendum (a forerunner of national Prohibition) banned alcohol in Michigan. Detroit held the dubious honor of being the first major American city to test the dry waters. That's when The Purple Gang heard opportunity knocking. For the next seventeen years, they ruthlessly controlled the east side of the state, even managing to keep out the likes of Al Capone.

Raised by hardworking immigrant parents in a poor section on Detroit's east side, the Bernstein brothers, Abe, Ray, Joe and Izzy, craved the good life without the honest work. Along with neighborhood pals, they formed a street gang who terrorized local merchants by stealing goods and vandalizing buildings. Legend has it that these very same shopkeepers gave the young thugs their colorful name.

"These boys are not like other children of their age, they're tainted, off color," one merchant was said to complain to another.

"Yes," the second supposedly agreed. "They're rotten, purple like the color of bad meat, they're a purple gang."

With the state's banning of alcohol, the young Purples resorted to more serious enterprises-hijacking, extortion, armed robbery and rum-running. Driving cars with false floorboards and second gas tanks, they headed south of the Michigan border to Toledo, Ohio, where booze was not only plentiful, but legit. For The Purples, smuggling alcohol back to the Motor City was no more than a practice run. The real deal began in 1920 when Prohibition went national. With the Volstead Act's passage, all states went dry putting The Purples in an enviable spot.

American laws were meaningless in Canada, and with only the Detroit River separating Windsor from the Motor City, rum-running came naturally. Estimates say that 75% of all liquor smuggled throughout the United States, during Prohibition, first passed through Detroit. The Purple Gang cashed in on the goods, but not in the conventional way. They were smarter than that. They let the more experienced rumrunners do the dirty work. The Purples would then hijack the liquid loot, never hesitating to kill a protesting smuggler. Their ruthless reputation flourished as the Bernstein brothers and their bad boys hit the big time. Not only did they control liquor prices in Detroit, they became the major supplier of illegal booze to the New York and Chicago underworlds.

For the next five years, The Purples ruled the roost with a strong arm and deadly bullets. Known for their violent methods, even Chicago boss, Al Capone, didn't dare cross them. As much as he wanted to expand his territory to include Michigan and cash in on the lucrative bootlegging business, he held back. Capone knew it was better to buy Canadian whiskey from The Purple Gang than risk their rage.

The powerful Bernstein brothers hobnobbed with the underworld elite, listing among their acquaintance such pillars of society as Meyer Lansky, Bugs Moran and Joey Adonis. As leaders of the Detroit syndicate, they were invited to the first meeting of the nation's major gang bosses in Atlantic City. Attempting to curb further deadly incidents like the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, the mob leaders formed a national federation of underworld gangs. The result? Organized crime. The bosses agreed that they would peacefully settle disputes between their respective gangs while individual mobs could run their own territory any way they wanted. Ultimately, each syndicate was after the same prize-a monopoly of the national liquor trade.

The Purples wasted no time taking over most of Detroit's blind pigs and cabarets. They never thought twice about 'shooting up a joint' if a proprietor refused to cooperate. They perfected the system of cutting liquor making a 150% profit on their hijacked hootch. For every bottle of whiskey, the cutting process produced two and half bottles of diluted brew. After mixing water and artificial flavoring with the hard stuff, the booze was bottled and packaged to look like the real thing. By 1928, there were approximately 150 cutting plants doing business in Detroit. Some worked around the clock to meet the ever-increasing demand. Second only to the city's auto industry, the illegal liquor business turned a profit of more than $215,000,000.00 and The Purples cashed in. Then everything changed. Stressed by the huge demand of their customers and the government's crackdown on the city's illegal liquor trade, The Purple Gang slowly came undone. Fighting among their own ranks marked the beginning of the end of Purple power. Three Chicago gunmen, Isadore Sutker, Joseph Lebovitz and Herman Paul, came to Detroit in 1926 at the strong urgings of Al Capone whom they had unwisely double-crossed. Joining The Purples, the three men were assigned a territory, but soon got greedy and literally crossed the lines by stealing from friends and two-timing partners.

The final straw came when the foolish trio ventured into bookmaking. When the East Side Mafia hit big-it was money the boys couldn't cover. Knowing that they had to somehow come up with the cash, they bought whiskey on credit from The Purples. They then watered it down and undersold it in order to make a quick buck. If that wasn't bad enough, they took a second bet they couldn't cover. More credit, more watered down booze and more shady selling. What were they thinking?! Even Al Capone knew better than to agitate The Purples. Something had to be done.

Ray Bernstein hatched a plan. He contacted Solly Levine, a long time acquaintance of The Purples, and the man who originally brought Sutker, Lebovitz and Paul into the gang. Bernstein offered Levine, and his three pals, jobs as Purple liquor agents, but first he suggested they clear the air. Bernstein had Levine bring his three friends to the Collingwood Manor Apartments on September 16, 1931 at 3:00 p.m.

Relieved that The Purples were so forgiving and feeling that it wasn't right to carry weapons to a 'peace meeting', the men arrived unarmed. Bernstein was waiting for them, but he wasn't alone. He brought along some friends-Harry Fleisher, a suspect in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, Harry Keywell, a wanted killer, and Irving Milberg, a crack shot. The men shook hands, exchanged pleasantries and even smoked cigars.

Making an excuse that he needed to place a call, Bernstein left the apartment, went down to his car and raced the engine until it backfired. Then he blew the horn. That was the signal. Fleisher, Keywell and Milberg began shooting. When it was over, Paul, Lebovitz, and Sutker, lay dead. Only the stunned Levine was spared thanks to Bernstein who specifically ordered the gunmen not to harm his old friend. Badly frightened, Levine gave in to police pressure and provided an eyewitness account of what is now known, as the Collingwood Manor Massacre, one of Detroit's worst gangland murders.

Acting quickly, police picked up Bernstein and Keywell in their pajamas that very same day. Milberg was arrested the following night as he prepared to skip town while Fleisher quietly slipped away. On October 2, 1931, the three men stood mute as they were formally charged with first-degree murder and a plea of not guilty entered for them. In the meantime, the star witness, Levine, was held under $500,000.00 bond at police headquarters with eight detectives guarding him.

When the trial began in November, a terrified Levine took the witness stand with four officers surrounding him. Avoiding the threatening stares from his fellow Purples, he gave a detailed testimony lasting over half the day. Although there were a total of 52 witnesses, the entire case hinged on Levine and whether or not, he was credible. The jury believed him and after only one hour and 37 minutes of deliberating, they found all three defendants guilty as charged. Given life sentences without parole, Bernstein, Keywell, and Milberg were sent packing to Marquette prison in Michigan's upper peninsula.

Harry Fleisher, the last suspect, came out of nowhere and turned himself in to the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office on June 9, 1932. He claimed he had nothing to do with the Collingwood murders because he spent that day in a Pennsylvania jail. Never mind the fact that Levine specifically named Fleisher as one of the killers. The problem? Levine had mysteriously disappeared. The prosecutor's office suggested using a copy of his testimony from the first trial, but under the Constitution, the defendant is entitled to the right of confronting and cross-examining the witness. Oddly enough, Levine never surfaced so the murder charges against Fleisher were dropped. He was never tried for the crime.

The Collingwood Manor Massacre set in motion The Purples' inevitable decline. Lengthy prison terms, and internal fighting that killed eighteen of their own, weakened the gang considerably. Although they remained a relatively strong force in the Detroit underworld until 1935, the national crime syndicate eventually absorbed the remnants of what was once the powerful Purples.

Today, little is remembered about the violent Purple Gang, but rest assured that in their Prohibition heyday, they were the baddest of the bad. The Five Points Gang, The Northside Gang and The Boiler Gang had nothing on The Purples. Lucky enough to be living on the Canadian border during a time when booze was banned, they took advantage of their position and climbed to the top of the underworld heap.