The Violent Years (14 page)

During the course of the trial, the defendants’ attorney, Edward Kennedy Jr., asked Laman if he had not lied throughout his entire courtroom testimony in the Cass extortion trial. Laman admitted that he had. Kennedy then asked Laman why he suddenly decided to tell the truth. “They came in,” Laman shouted, leaning over the very edge of the witness chair, “and they threw a statement at me. I became so disgusted I talked.”

“Whose statement was it?” inquired Kennedy.

“Henry Andrews’s statement,” replied Laman. “He turned rat the same as I am doing!”

“Do you consider yourself a rat?” asked Kennedy.

“Yes sir, I’m a rat,” replied Laman without hesitancy.

“What do you mean by the word rat?” Judge John A. Boyne of Recorders Court inquired.

“It’s an underworld term,” Laman explained. “It means anyone who squawks and I’m squawking.”

During the Cohen trial, DeLong realized the hopelessness of his predicament, pleaded guilty in the Cohen case and joined Laman and Andrews as a witness for the state.

DeLong testified that Joseph “Red” O’Riordan was the leader of the group that kidnapped Reubin Cohen. He claimed that O’Riordan was the first person he talked to about the kidnapping, a week before Cohen had been abducted. DeLong told the court that he had been introduced to O’Riordan and Rubenstein by Harry Hallisey and that Jerry Mullane and Jimmy Kane were also present. The names of O’Riordan and Roy Cornelius had been originally stricken from the warrant by Judge John A. Boyne on a motion from Wayne County Prosecutor James Chenot due to lack of evidence.

During the Cohen kidnapping trial, Rubenstein admitted to having once been partners in the bootlegging business with Cohen; he also claimed that he knew Purple Gangster George Cordell. According to Rubenstein, DeLong and Cordell were regularly shaking him down for money. When asked by the court how he had gotten the long, deep scar that ran along the cheekbone on the right side of his face, Rubenstein claimed that a Purple Gangster had slashed him. He overheard George Cordell telling someone that he planned to rob a friend of Rubenstein’s. Rubenstein warned his friend who then tipped off the police. As a result, one of the holdup men was shot and the other arrested. Rubenstein claimed that about a month later, Cordell returned with several other Purple Gangsters and one of them cut his face. Rubenstein’s defense in the Cohen trial was that he had been forced by DeLong to act as the Right O Guy in the Cohen kidnapping. Hallisey swore that he had been in Kenosha, Wisconsin, visiting his parents during the time Cohen was kidnapped.

DeLong had positively connected both Hallisey and Rubenstein to the Cohen kidnapping. During trial testimony, he identified Rubenstein as the fingerman and ransom collector and Hallisey as one of the men who guarded Cohen. On August 24, 1930, after deliberating more than 24 hours, the jury found Rubenstein guilty in the Cohen kidnapping case. Harry Hallisey was acquitted. Hallisey had little time to celebrate his good fortune. He was immediately arrested again and held for trial in the September 7, 1929, kidnapping of Charles Mattler, a Detroit produce merchant. Louis Ross, another Laman gangster, was also held in the Mattler case. At his arraignment on the Mattler kidnapping charge before Recorders Court Judge John V. Brennan, Hallisey stood mute, and a plea of not guilty was entered on his behalf. Jerry Mullane, Benny Rubenstein, Stanley DeLong, Jerry Riley, and Roy Cornelius were also named, along with Hallisey and Ross, in the Mattler kidnapping warrant.

When Mattler was kidnapped, he was asked by the gangsters to name somebody who could be used as the Right O Guy in the ransom negotiations. A minor underworld character named Martin Feldman was used to negotiate Mattler’s ransom and the time and place of his release. Feldman, a regular associate of the Laman Gang, was later taken for a ride and burned to death, presumably because he knew too much.

On October 16, 1930, Harry Hallisey, Jerry Mullane, Roy Cornelius, and Lou Ross were all found guilty in the Mattler kidnapping. The guilty verdict had been the culmination of a 10-day-long trial before Judge John A. Boyne in Recorders Court. The jury was out three hours and 45 minutes. The defendants were convicted primarily on the testimony of Laman and Andrews. Hallisey was sentenced to 30 to 40 years in prison with 35 years recommended, Cornelius 20 to 30 years, Ross 35 to 50 years, and Jerry Mullane 30 to 40 years.

Early in August 1931, Edward Wiles, a convicted member of the Laman Gang who was suffering from heart and kidney ailments, threatened Marquette Prison doctor Lowell L. Youngquist. Wiles told Youngquist, “If anything happens to me, my buddies will get you and the rest of your staff.” Wiles died in the prison hospital of natural causes on August 6, 1931. On the morning of August 27, 1931, three convicts got into line with other prisoners to see the doctor at 8 a.m. sick call at Marquette Prison. There was only one thing that was unique about these three men. They were all carrying loaded pistols. The group included Andrew Germano, Leo Duver, and Charles Rosbury. Germano, a former member of the Laman Gang, was serving a long sentence for his conviction in the shooting of a Birmingham, Michigan, police officer. Duver was serving life for a Detroit grocery store holdup, and Rosbury 20 to 40 years for an armed-robbery conviction. Frank Hohfer, another convicted Laman Gangster, who was also part of the team, was not allowed to go to sick call with Germano, as the two were close friends. Hohfer remained locked in his E Block cell and secretly armed.

Dr. A.W. Hornbogen, a local Marquette physician, was acting as the prison doctor while Dr. Youngquist was away on vacation. Germano entered the examining room complaining about a pain in his stomach. When Hornbogen told him to take off his shirt to be examined, Germano hesitated, as he had a .32 caliber automatic tucked inside his belt. When the doctor ordered him a second time to take off his shirt, he drew the pistol and shot Hornbogen in the chest at point-blank range. The doctor was killed instantly. The bullet hit him directly in the heart. Frank Oligschlager, a convicted murderer serving a life term who had been working as an attendant at the Marquette Prison Hospital for more than 15 years, grabbed Germano and attempted to wrestle the pistol away from him. At this point, Rosbury and Duver, who had been waiting outside the examining room, rushed in. Duver pulled his pistol and shot Oligschlager in the abdomen. Leo Bulzer, another trustee, was also shot in the leg during the free-for-all.

The hospital, at that time, was located in the center tower of the prison on the third floor, not far from the main gate. At first, it was thought that the convicts were going to try and attempt a breakout from the hospital due to its close proximity to the prison’s main gate. After fleeing the hospital, the three convicts then raced down the tower stairs. When they reached the ground floor, they spotted Warden Corgan and Deputy Warden William Newcombe standing at the foot of the stairs talking. As they rushed by, they fired at the startled prison officials. Joe Cowling, an assistant deputy warden who was nearby, was hit in the thigh. The three convicts then forced prison guards Fred Hewlett and George Hurley to unlock doors and accompany them into the prison yard. When they got to the yard, Hurley broke and ran. The convicts started to run after the terrified officer, but the guards on the walls opened fire on the three men, and they raced to the prison industrial building. When the prisoners got to the industrial building, they ran to the second floor of the complex, which was used as a dormitory. Here they grabbed another prison guard named Charles Arenz. In the meantime, a statewide alarm had gone out. All of the State Police at the Marquette barracks and the entire City of Marquette police force were mobilized and rushed to the prison. Extra guards were armed and deputized. One group of officers entered the prison yard, while another formed a cordon around the walls of the prison and watched the roads. A rumor circulated that a group of Detroit gangsters was en route in an armored car to rescue the men if they were able to shoot their way out.

The three convicts exchanged shots with more than 100 officers for almost an hour and a half. Even some of the Marquette Prison trustees were armed as several hundred rounds of ammunition were fired at the convicts’ barricade. Near the end of the standoff, Charles Arenz, the prison guard who had been seized by Germano, was forced to write a note to the warden. The note was thrown out a window of the industrial building and read: “The men [Germano and others] have officer and inmates in dormitory under gun and also a quantity of explosives. They are ready to shoot the minute the door is opened. They want big gate opened and have automobile come inside and take them out. They want warden to come in and let them out.”

The note was thrown out about 9 a.m. Warden Corgan answered with tear gas shells. When the second tear gas bomb exploded, Rosbury stood up, said, “It’s all over, boys,” put the gun to his head, and fired. Germano crawled over to Rosbury’s body, fired a round into it, and then turned the gun on himself. Duver repeated the actions of the other two men. Shortly after these events had occurred, Hohfer, who was still locked in his E Block cell, pulled out his pistol and fired at a passing wall guard. He then shot himself in the head. Marquette Prison Hospital trustee Frank Oligschlager died of his wounds at midnight August 27, 1931, bringing the total dead to five convicts and Dr. Hornbegen.

As soon as peace was restored in the prison, Warden Corgan and other prison officials immediately began an investigation in order to find out how the guns had been smuggled into the prison. The men had been armed with a .38 caliber Ivers Johnson pistol, a .32 caliber Colt, and two old Spanish revolvers. Marquette Prison officials surmised that the convicts had been hiding the guns for some time in preparation for the prison break. The attempted prison break ended the lives of Germano and Hohfer, two of the Laman Gang’s most notorious members.

On Friday, October 6, 1933, Joseph “Red” O’Riordan, last of the fugitive leaders of the Legs Laman Gang, began the long train trip back to Detroit from the West Coast. O’Riordan was in the custody of Detroit Police Department officials. He was being brought back to Detroit to stand trial for the August 1927 kidnapping of Abe Fein, a Detroit blind pig operator. O’Riordan had lost his legal battle against extradition after he had been picked up in Los Angeles during a public-enemy roundup. He was soon identified as a notorious gangster who was wanted by the Detroit police. If for any reason O’Riordan was not convicted in the Fein kidnapping, he would immediately be arrested and held for trial in the Mattler or Cohen kidnapping cases.

During the initial roundup of the Laman Gang in June of 1930, O’Riordan’s wife Doris had been picked up by Detroit police and questioned. At the time, she told police officials that she did not know the whereabouts of her husband or anything about his business. By this time Red O’Riordan was already in California. O’Riordan’s wife was released and quietly left to join Red in Los Angeles, where they would live under assumed names for the next three years.

O’Riordan was escorted back from the coast chained to two other prisoners. Fred Frahm, Chief of Detectives in the Detroit Police Department, two of his men, and Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Herbert E. Munro had gone to Los Angeles to take O’Riordan into custody and bring him back to Detroit. Within an hour of his arrival, O’Riordan was identified at Detroit police headquarters by Abe Fein as one of his abductors. Fein picked O’Riordan out of a lineup of eight men. Fein, who was still working as a blind pig operator at that time, was running an establishment known as the Vernor Inn. O’Riordan by this time was being credited by Detroit police with perfecting the mechanics of the kidnapping racket in Detroit during the late ‘20s. It was the direct result of Legs Laman’s confession three years earlier that would link O’Riordan positively with the kidnapping gang.

O’Riordan had even been suspected of complicity in a plot to kidnap the children of Edsel Ford. According to a confession made by Henry Andrews after he became a state’s witness, the gang had planned to use a machine gun to kill the armed guards that constantly protected the Ford children and kidnap the youngsters. Andrews had also claimed that while Hohfer and Wiles were in Marquette Prison, they had sent out instructions to the gang to kidnap the daughters of Fred W. Green, then the Governor of Michigan, and James Corgan, the Marquette Prison warden. According to Andrews, Hohfer and Wiles had written the letter with alum and then written over it with pencil. The letter written in pencil would get past the prison censors. The letter written with alum could not be read until it was pressed out with a flat iron.

On January 22, 1934, O’Riordan’s trial began in front of Judge Thomas M. Cotter and a jury in Detroit Recorders Court, nearly seven years after Abe Fein had been kidnapped. O’Riordan was represented by William J. Donovan and Frank Mclain. According to Fein, he had been abducted on July 31, 1927, by Fred “Killer” Burke, Milford Jones, and Red O’Riordan.

By the time of the Fein kidnapping trial, Burke was in Marquette Prison serving a life sentence for murder, and Jones had been dead almost two years, shot to death in a Detroit blind pig by some of his many enemies. According to Fein’s testimony, he had walked out of a restaurant after eating breakfast that Sunday morning in 1927. He was getting into a friend’s auto when two men jumped on the running board. “Move over, Abe, we got you,” said Milford Jones, according to Fein. Fein was shoved from behind the wheel, and his friend was thrown out of the car. Fein claimed that he sat between Jones and O’Riordan. He was blindfolded and driven to a garage. At first, he thought the gangsters were going to take him for a ride. Fein’s worried look prompted Jones to say, “Don’t worry, Abe, we’re only holding you for five grand.” Fein stated that he was taken to an apartment later that day, where he was guarded by Burke and Jones. Jones wrote a note to Fein’s wife, which Fein was ordered to copy in his own hand. Fein testified that the note read, “Give them anything they want.” After Fein copied the note, Jones left with the ransom letter. That was the last he saw Jones. O’Riordan and Burke continued to guard Fein, transferring him to another apartment the following day.