Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (6 page)

Crowley continued his crazed crime spree in rapid fashion. First, Crowley and his crew robbed a bank in New Rochelle. Then they staged a home invasion of the West 90
th
Street apartment of rich real estate investor Rudolph Adler. Crowley shot the feisty Adler five times, and just as he was ready to fire the final bullet into Adler's skull, Adler's dog Trixie went into attack mode and chased Crowley and his crew from the apartment.

Some tough guys.

In Crowley's first involvement in a murder, he wasn't even the shooter.

On April 27, 1931, Crowley was driving a stolen car, with his pal Fats in the back seat. Fats was busy trying to make the moves on a dance hall girl, Virginia Brannen, who had just come
along for the ride. Brannen told Fats, in no uncertain terms, to keep his chubby hands to himself. This did not please the hulking gangster too much, so Fats shot Brannen dead. Crowley and Fats discarded Brannen's body outside the St. Joseph Cemetery in Yonkers.

After finding Brannen, the New York City and the Yonkers police departments, put out an all-points bulletin for the fat and skinny psychopaths. On April 29, a passing police car spotted Crowley as was driving a green Chrysler on 138
th
Street in the Bronx. The cops sped in hot pursuit after Crowley, firing shot after shot at the speeding Chrysler. Crowley returned fire, and somehow he managed to escape. The next day, the police found Crowley's abandoned car, riddled with bullets and smeared with blood.

The manhunt for Crowley continued.

On May 6, Crowley was smooching in a car with his 16-year old girlfriend Helen Walsh, in a secluded spot on Morris Lane in North Merrick, Long Island. Patrolmen Frederick Hirsch and Peter Yodice approached the car, and they asked for Crowley's identification. Instead of drawing his wallet, Crowley pulled out a pistol, firing. He shot Hirsch to death and wounded Yodice, before he fled the scene.

Now branded a cop-killer, the daily newspapers brought Crowley instant fame. The
New York Daily News
wrote: “Francis Crowley, who glories in the nickname 'Two Gun Frank,' and is described by the police as the most dangerous criminal at-large, was hunted throughout the city last night.”

On May 7
th
, the police traced Crowley to a top-floor apartment on West 90
th
Street. Crowley was holed up there with Fats and Helen Walsh, and what transpired next will forever be known as “The Siege on West 90
th
Street”: the most fierce gun battle in New York City's history.

First, two detectives tried to enter the apartment to arrest Crowley and his crew peacefully. But Crowley would have none of that. Crowley screamed through the door, firing lead, “Come and get me coppers!”

The detectives retreated down to the street, where they were joined by an estimated 100 police officers rushed in from all parts of the city. Crowley yelled down at the assembled cops, “I'm up here! Come and get me!”

Over the course of the next several hours, and while an estimated 15,000 onlookers gawked from the streets and open tenement windows, more than 700 bullets were fired into Crowley's apartment. Crowley had an arsenal himself, and he brazenly returned fire. Safely under the bed, Helen Walsh and Fats reloaded Crowley's guns for him.

At one point, the police cut a hole in the roof, and they dropped gas canisters into Crowley's apartment. Crowley calmly picked up the smoking canisters and threw them out the window, overcoming several police officers below. Finally, a dozen cops broke down Crowley's door, and with four slugs in Crowley's body, the police were finally able to subdue him. Fats and Helen gave up without a whimper.

The newspapers had a field day with this one. Crowley was described as “A Mad Irish Gunman” (even though he was actually German), with “the face of an altar boy.” Crowley and Fats were convicted of the murder of Virginia Brannen and Crowley of the murder of patrolmen Frederick Hirsch. They were both sentenced to die in the Sing
Sing electric chair.

In jail, Crowley kept up his tough-guy act. He made a club from a wrapped-up newspaper and some wire from under his bed. Then he tried to fight his way out of prison, by cracking a guard over the head with his handmade club. His escape attempt having failed, Crowley set fire to his cell. And when that didn't work, he took off all his clothes and stuffed them into his toilet, flooding his cell. For these disturbances, Warden Lewis E.
Lawes forced Crowley to sit naked in his cell for several days until the young maniac quieted down.

During his last days on earth, Crowley mellowed a bit. A bird flew into his cell, and he nurtured it. Crowley also began drawing pictures, a skill for which he had more than a little talent.

On December 10, 1931, Fats got the juice first. After Fats and Crowley hugged a last goodbye, and Fats started his last lonely trek down the hall to the chair, Crowley told a guard, “There goes a great guy, a square-shooter, and my pal.”

Crowley was not so charitable to Helen, whom he refused to see, even though she visited the prison almost every day.

“She's out!” he told the newspapers, “She's going around with a cop! I won't even look at her!”

On January 21, 1932, Crowley followed the same path to the electric chair which his old pal Fats had traveled. After the black leather mask was pulled over his face, Crowley's last words were, “Send my love to my mother.”

The lever was thrown, and Francis “Two Gun” Crowley was executed at the tender age of 19.

D
aybreak Boys

When the Daybreak Boys formed their treacherous little gang in the late 1840's, there were said to be three dozen members, none of whom was over the age of 20. Some of the Daybreak Boys were as young as 10 years old. However, lack of age never meant a paucity of violence.

The Daybreak Boys' first leaders were Nicholas Saul and William Howlett, who were 16 and 15 years-old, respectively, when they took control of the gang. Other noted members were murderers like Slobbery Jim, Sow Madden, Cow-legged Sam McCarthy, and Patsy the Barber.

It was rumored that every member of the gang had committed at least one murder and scores of robberies before they reached the age of 16. The police said The Daybreak Boys not only murdered in the course of a robbery, but also for the sheer ecstasy of doing so, even if there was no hope of cashing in on a score. The police estimated in the three years that Saul and Howlett were their leaders, the Daybreak Boys robbed over $100,000, and killed as many as 40 people.

The Daybreak Boys' base of operations was the Slaughter House Point, owned by Pete Williams, located at the intersection of James and Water Streets. On August 25, 1852, a passing policeman looked in at the Slaughter House Point, and he saw Saul and Howlett huddled in a corner with low-level gang member Bill Johnson, who was half-sloshed. The policeman suspected the three men were up to no good, and he decided to drop by later. When he did, the three men were gone.

In the darkness, Saul, Howlett, and Johnson had taken a row boat, and navigated the East River to a ship named the
William Watson
, intent on stealing valuables they had heard were on board. The three men were met by the night watchman, Charles Baxter, and they shot Baxter dead on the spot. Thinking the gunshot would attract attention, the three men jumped ship from the
William Watson
, empty-handed, and they rowed back to shore.

The policeman, who had spotted the three men earlier, saw the rowboat dock, and he watched as Saul and Howlett dragged Johnson, who was now totally drunk, from the boat and carry him into the Slaughter House Point. Soon after, the body of the night watchman on the
William Watson
was found, and a group of 20 policemen, armed to the hilt, bum-rushed the Slaughter House Point.

After a long and bloody battle, in which a score of  Daybreak Boys tried to thwart the capture of their three cronies, Saul, Howlett, and Johnson were finally arrested. After a short trial, Johnson was sentenced to life imprisonment, but Saul and Howlett were smacked with the death sentence. On January 28, 1853, Saul and Howlett were hanged to death in the courtyard of the Tombs Prison. Saul was barely 20 years old and Howlett was one year younger.

After the deaths of Saul and Howlett, Slobbery Jim assumed the leadership of the Daybreak Boys. However, Jim soon had to take it on the lam, after he whacked his old pal Patsy the Barber.

In 1857, The Daybreak Boys continued their decline. The Slaughter House Point, which had been the base of their operations for a decade, closed its doors (with a little prompting from the New York City Police Department). In 1858, more than a dozen gang members were killed in shootouts with the police and with the newly created Harbor Patrol. Scores of other Daybreak Boys were arrested and sent to jail.

By 1859, the Daybreak Boys basically ceased to exist, when its remaining members took up with other gangs in the Bowery and in the other Five Points areas.

D
ead Rabbits – Irish Street Gang

The Dead Rabbits Irish Street gang was as vicious as any gang in the history of New York City. In the mid 1800's, the Dead Rabbits prowled the squalid area of Lower Manhattan called the Five Points. If a member of any other gang dared to set foot in the Dead Rabbits' territory, bad things happened to them fast.

There is some dispute as to how the Dead Rabbits got their name. One version is that the word "Rabbit" sounds like Irish word “ráibéad,” meaning a "man to be feared." "Dead" was an 1800's slang word that meant "very.” So a “Dead Rabbit” was a “man to be very feared.”

Another version is that the Dead Rabbits were an offshoot of an older gang called the “Roach Guards.” Two factions within the Roach Guards constantly quarreled, and during a fistfight at an especially violent gang meeting, someone threw a dead rabbit into the room. When the fighting subsided, one group took the name “Dead Rabbits,” while the other kept the name “Roach Guards.” Predating the present street gangs, the Crips and the Bloods, by more than 125 years, to mark which gang a man belonged to, a Dead Rabbit wore a blue stripe on his pants, while a Roach Guard wore a red stripe on his pants.

Besides the Roach Guards, the Dead Rabbits' archenemy was the Bowery Boys. On July 4 1857, the Dead Rabbits and the Bowery Boys squared off at the corner of Bayard and the Bowery. The incident started when an embattled policeman, being chased out of the Five Points by a group of Dead Rabbits, ran for safety into a Bowery Boys’ saloon. The Dead Rabbits followed the policeman into the dive, and they were beaten back by an angry group of Bowery Boys.

Taking offense at their turf being invaded, a large group of Bowery Boys marched into the Five Points area, looking for trouble. They were cut off by a battalion of the Dead Rabbits, and a two-day war started, with as many as a thousand combatants fighting with hatchets, knives, stones, and even guns. The police sent in reinforcements, but they were beaten back by both gangs, and told, in no uncertain terms, to mind their own business. The war swayed back and forth into both territories, with Canal Street being the boundary line.

By the end of the second day, the two gangs were near exhaustion, and the Seventh Regiment of the National Guard was called in by New York City Mayor Fernando Wood. The National Guard, joined by the New York City Police, busted into what was left of the skirmish, and they started cracking the heads of the weary warriors. When the dust settled, eight gang members were dead and hundreds more were injured.

This did not end the animosity between the Bowery Boys and Dead Rabbits. In August 1858, on the corner of Worth and Centre Street, a small group of Bowery Boys were pummeled by a larger group of Dead Rabbits. As the Bowery Boys ran off licking their wounds, two unsuspecting men exited a house at 66 Centre Street, and they walked right into the path of the angry Dead Rabbits. Thinking these two men were Bowery Boys coming back for more, the Dead Rabbits descended upon them with a vengeance. One man was able to escape, but Cornelius
Rady was not so lucky. Rady was hit in the back of the head with a rock from a slingshot, and he died soon afterwards. Dead Rabbit Patrick Gilligan was arrested for Rady's murder, but it is not clear if he was ever convicted.

The Civil War started two years later, and many of the gang members were drafted, against their wills, into the war and sent to faraway places, mostly in the South. When the war ended, the Dead Rabbits were either dead themselves, or in no physical condition to continue tormenting the streets of Lower Manhattan.

However, in New York City, the creature that it was, and in some cases still is, other street gangs soon followed to take the ignominious place of the Dead Rabbits.

D
iamond, Jack “Legs”

Jack “Legs” Diamond was shot and injured so many times he was dubbed “The Gangster Who Couldn't be Killed.”

Diamond was born on July 10
1897, of parents from Kilrush, County Clare, in Ireland. Diamond spent the early years of his life in Philadelphia. When Diamond was 13, his mother died from a viral infection. Soon, Diamond, and his younger brother Eddie, fell in with a group of toughs called “The Boiler Gang.”

Diamond was arrested more than a dozen times, for assorted robberies and mayhem, and after spending a few months in a juvenile reformatory, Diamond was drafted into the army. Army life did not suit Diamond too well. He served less than a year, then he decided to go AWOL. Diamond was soon captured and sentenced to three-to-five years in the Federal Penitentiary in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.