ATLANTIC CITY 1929 CRIME CONVENTION
Meyer Lansky, Al Capone and Nucky Johnson strolling on the Atlantic City Boardwalk.
Meyer Lansky, Al Capone and Nucky Johnson strolling on the Atlantic City Boardwalk.
Actually a composite photo created by the Hurst Newspaper Syndicate to discredit Johnson
The
1929 Atlantic City Convention of Organized Crime – Bill Kelly
Atlantic
City has been known as a convention town for a long time, but the most
significant convention the city has ever hosted didn’t meet at Convention Hall
or even conventionally, and certainly didn’t abide by Roberts Rules of Order.
The May,
1929 meeting of organized crime bosses in Atlantic City was probably the most
significant ever held, not only because of its effect on the future development
of the town, but because of the national impact the decisions made there had on
society, not only then, but over time, up to and including today.
At the
time Atlantic City was considered “wide open,” a place where
gangsters could go to make private, if sometimes illegal investments and for
sit-down mob meetings, as were a few other cities – Miami, Las Vegas and
Old Havana. Atlantic City was run however, by one man – Enoch
“Nuckey” Johnson , the local political boss who ran the town as his private
domain. Like “Commodore” Lou Kinley had before him. Nuckey got a percentage of
practically every business in Atlantic City, especially illegal
businesses, and as it was during Prohibition, the most lucrative business at
the time was the importation of smuggled liquor.
Lonnie
Zwillman of North Jersey controlled most of the bootleg market once
the cases of booze from the Caribbean and Canada were
transferred at sea from mother ship transports to small Chirs Craft speedboats.
Once brought ashore the booze was put on waiting trucks to be transported the
goods throughout the rest of the country. It was later estimated, by the
Kefauver Committee that Zwillman’s outfit had a 65% market share of all illegal
booze in North America.
But
there were also illegal casinos in Atlantic City at the time, all
operating openly and open to the public. And Big Time confidence men like Charlie
Gondorff (of The Sting fame) were allowed to run Big Store Con games, as long
as long as they only hit on transients and didn’t take any local citizens for
Marks.
Booze,
casino gambling, the boardwalk and beach, it didn’t even seem like there was a
Depression going on. Things appeared quite normal onMay 12th, 1929 when
newlyweds Meyer and Anna Citron Lansky checked into one of the city’s finer
boardwalk hotels. They were assigned the Honeymoon Penthouse with its panoramic
view of the ocean and boardwalk.
Which
hotel they checked into is not recorded for history, but you can be sure it was
one owned by Jewish businessmen, as all the first class hotels at the time were
owned by Jews or Quakers, and each served a different clientele. That’s a fact that
came into play the very next day when Alphonese “Scarface” Capone stepped off a
train and took a cab to one of the city’s classier hotels. Although he entered
town unnoticed, and he signed into the hotel under an assumed name, his cover
would soon be blown, the city of Atlantic City would be shaken upside
down and the nation would rattle with the aftereffects for decades.
Snickering
to his lieutenants as he signed the fictitious name to the register, Capone got
a smile from Frank Nitti, Murry Humphries, Jake Guzik and Frank Rioi, but the
joke quickly turned sour when the somewhat naive and strictly formal desk clerk
looked at the name and politely informed Capone that, “I’m sorry sir, but this
hotel does not serve those of your persuasion. My I suggest you try the hotel
just down the street.”
This
was Atlantic City, New Jersey, probably the only place
in Americawhere “Scarface” Al Capone could mingle with the masses and go
unrecognized. He did however, have a friend in his old pal Nuckey Johnson. Capone
had been Johnson’s gracious host two years earlier when Nuckey went
to Chicago and was supplied with ringside seats to the Jack
Dempsy-Gene Tunney heavyweight fight – the famous battle of the “long count’
bout.
Now
Capone was in Atlantic City to meet with Meyer Lansky and other mob
bosses. They came to Atlantic City because Nuckey Johnson controlled
the town and they were assured they wouldn’t be subjected to the police hassles
the Sicilian Mafia guys were subjected to in Cleveland a few weeks
earlier.
Although
Nuckey Johnson couldn’t protect Capone from some ethnic embarrassment, he did
have such tight control over all facets of the city’s operations that, unless
they robbed a bank or made a scene, known gangsters from out of town didn’t
have to worry about being picked up for questioning by the police. Capone made
a scene.
Told by
a hotel clerk that he couldn’t check in because he signed his name under a
wrong ethnic persuasion, Capone’s famous temper flared, and after a burst of
obscenities and the trashing of some lobby furniture, Nuckey Johnson quickly
learned that Al Capone was in town. Moving quickly to meet him, Capone and his
entourage were heading south on Pacific Avenue when they were intercepted by
Johnson’s convoy of dull, black limos heading the other way. They met in the
middle of the street, blocked traffic for a few minutes as Capone emerged from
his cab, cigar in hand, and gave Nuckey an obscenity laced public verbal
lashing, letting off steam from the hotel desk incident.
Once
appeased by Johnson, always the gracious host, they hugged and patted each
other on the back and adjourned to the back of Nuckey’s limo. After seeing that
Capone and his people had proper accommodations at the right hotel, Johnson and
Capone were later seen taking in the tourists sights together and strolling
down the world famous boardwalk.
Johnson
and Capone then had dinner in the Italian “Ducktown” neighborhood, not far from
the recently completed Convention Hall – the new auditorium which was then the
largest of its kind in the world, with the biggest stage and the largest pipe
organ as well. While it established Atlantic City as a major
convention town on the East Coast, it’s facilities were not to be used by the
guys who started checking in behind Lansky and Capone.
From Cleveland came
Al “the Owl” Polizzi, one of the Sicilians hassled by cops at the earlier
regional sit-down a few weeks earlier. Also from Cleveland was Moe
Dalitz of the Mayfield Road Gang and his bootleg companions, Morris Kleinman,
Sam Tucker and Louis Rothkopft. Other gangsters who have been identified as
having attended the Atlantic City meeting include Charles “King” Solomon from
Boston, Joe Bernstein from Detroit, and Joe Lanza from Kansas City, all of whom
came with their henchmen in tow.
From North
Jersey there was Abner “Longie” Zwillman, who controlled most of
the New Jersey bootleg shipments. Philadelphia was well
represented by Harry “Nig Rosen” Stromberg, Max “Boo Boo” Huff, Sam Lezar and
Charles Schwarts. By far, the biggest delegation came down from New York,
and consisted of Frank Costello, Author “Dutch Schultz” Flegenheimer, Louis
“Lepke” Buchalter, Joe Adonis, Salvadore “Lucky” Luciano and Meyer Lansky.
Anne
Citron Lansky got angry the next morning when she read in the morning newspaper
that Al Capone was in town, and knew that it had to more than just a
coincidence. Her new husband couldn’t even go on his honeymoon without having
business to take care of.
Born
Maier Suchowljansky in Grodno, Poland in 1902, young Meyer came
to the United States in 1911 with his mother, sister and younger, but
bigger brother Jake. Like so many other arrivals, his birthdate was noted by
immigration officials as July 4th, and he took quickly to the American dream.
Later
telling Israeli journalists Uri Dan that he took to gambling early, relating an
incident that occurred when he was a young boy walking down Delancy Street in
Manhatten on an errand for his mother. Coming across a sidewalk craps game he
quickly lost his mother’s nickel, an event that had a profound affect on his
life. “What troubled me more than anything else,” Lansky said, “was that I had
been a loser, and that night….I swore to myself that one day I would be a
winner.”
Going
back to the sidewalk craps game young Lansky watched and studied the gamblers
intently, and learned when to place his bet with a sure winner. “Then I began
to notice,” he said, “that the men who actually ran the dice games were only
pawns…of other well dressed and prosperous men,” who he also noticed seemed to
be all Italians who in turn were “servant” who were “collecting the money for
somebody bigger. So it must be a very big business, gambling with nickels and
dimes on the sidewalks of the Lower East Side.”
After
graduating from Public School #34 in 1917, Lansky worked as an auto mechanic,
and first came to the attention of the police when he was arrested for fighting
with Charles Luciana and Benjamen Siegel. That was the first time he was known
to have officially used the name Lansky, and after the judge listened to their
story, he decided that the boys had “bugs in their heads,” which temporarily
gave Lansky the nickname “Meyer the Bug,” but Siegel could never shake the name
“Bugsy.”
The
three boys became fast friends and developed business associations, while
Luciana rose in the ranks of the Italian Mafia allied under Joe “the Boss”
Masseria. They were perennially at war with another New York gang run
by Salvatore Maranzano, whose henchmen picked up Luciano and took him for a
ride to Statin Island where they shot him a number of times and
left for dead. Luciano miraculously survived, earning him the nickname “Lucky”
Luciano.
Lansky,
Siegel and Luciano formed a life-long alliance with each other and established
themselves on the Lower East Side as a competent and efficient
guns-for-hire entrepreneurs that became known as “The Bugs and Meyer Mob,”
which also included Joseph “Doc” Stacher, Joe Adonis, Abner “Longie” Zwillmen
and Arthur “Dutch Schultz” Flegenheimer. They either escorted Zwillmen’s
bootleg liquor or they hijacked any competitors who tried to muscle in on their
rackets in their territory.
Philadelphia gangster
“Waxy” Gordon was especially upset at the Bug and Meyer Mob for hijacking some
of his truck shipments and, as with the Capone-Moran feud in Chicago,
there was tension between gangs. Since Capone actually controlled only certain
sections of Chicago, other Chicago gangsters also came in to
the Atlantic City meeting, including Joe “Polock” Saltis and Frank
“Machine Gun” McEarlane, complete with violin cases under their arms.
Other
than Capone, these were mostly new names and faces in the underworld of 1929,
but before long they would make their mark and become household names. The
old-guard “Mustache Petes” who ran the big city rackets for the previous few
decades, referred to these new, young gangsters as “The Young Turks,” but they
in turn, were considered too old fashioned, narrow-minded and set in their ways
to mingle with the gangsters of other nationalities and neighborhoods. The
“Petes” were not even invited to this meeting.
To some,
Luciano was thought to represent the New York capo de capi Guseppi
“Joe the Boss” Masseria, but in retrospect, Luciano had Masseria murdered and
replaced him after the protracted war that was wagged between Masseria and the
other New York rackets boss Salvadore Maranzano. Masseria and
Maranzano were from the Old Order and were on the way out, and The Young Turks
knew it.
One
member of the old school who was invited and did attend the Atlantic
City conclave was John Torrio, who was born in Naples and was
one of the first immigrants to leave the notorious “Five Points” section
of Brooklyn to go to Chicago, where he ran his uncle’s
whorehouse. After killing his uncle and setting up his own numbers racket,
Torrio brought in Al Capone from the old neighborhood to be his enforcer.
Torrio,
who didn’t drink or smoke, was Capone’s mentor and one of the oldest and wisest
of the delegates at the Atlantic City convention. He would play a
significant role by making key policy decisions concerning the promotion of
other vices, most notably gambling.
While
there would be other, more notorious meetings of mobsters – Havana, 1946, the
1957 Apalachin, New York meeting that was broken up by local police, a New York
restaurant sit down that was also busted by the cops, the 1929 meeting in
Atlantic City was most significant because it established a new policy of
inter-city-gang cooperation on a nationwide basis.
It was
not a question of who was at Atlantic City, but who was not there. Besides
the Mustache Petes from the Old Order of things, Bugs Moran was the most
notable big name absentee. He was left back in Chicago to lick his
wounds and regroup his forces after the disastrous St. Valentine’s Day
Massacre.
As the
most blatant gangland mass murder in history, the massacre called attention to
the mobsters and put pressure on them from the public, the press, politicians
and the police. It became the most influential factor in persuading the
factional mob leaders of the necessity for a meeting to hash things out. Rather
than let the situation get completely out of hand and reach a level of violence
that would force the authorities to take action, the gangsters decided to sit
down at the same table for the first time, discuss their mutual problems and
arrange for an agreeable solution like normal businessmen.
Although
most of the published sources place the main gathering of gangsters at the
President Hotel on the Boardwalk, the large number of delegates made it
necessary for them to meet in smaller caucus to discuss the topics on the
agenda. Pushed along the boardwalk in wicker-rolling chairs, they didn’t talk
in front of the push cart operators, but at the end of the boardwalk, like
other tourists in from the big city, they took off their shoes and socks,
rolled up the cuffs of their pants and waded in the shallow surf like any
normal day-tripper. With their conversations muffled by the sounds of the surf
breaking, the mobsters plotted strategy and began the long term planning that
would control organized crime activities for the next fifty years.
Since
minutes of the meetings were not transcribed for posterity, legend has it that
the order of business was basically two fold. For one, they had to agree on an
amiable solution to the conflicts that erupted into mob warfare, primarily
geographic turf battles. Secondly, since by then it was obvious that
Prohibition would not last forever, they had to get involved in legitimate
businesses as well as devise an alternative source of illegal income once
Prohibition ended.
As for
mob warfare, since such violence hurt everyone’s business, they decided to end
such conflicts by adhering strictly to the territorial spheres of influence,
with each gang controlling particular rackets in each area. They also agreed to
work together in setting prices, sharing warehouse space and coordinating the
wholesale distribution of liquor.
The Atlantic
City accords were a radical departure from previous mob practices because
they also agreed to form an executive committee to oversee and arbitrate all
disputes, denote the degree of punishment to all violators and to set policy
for the governing of all future illegal operations.
The
creation of the Board of Directors of the National Syndicate of Organized Crime
was as big as the founding of the United Nations. Although it’s very existence
would be kept hidden from the public for decades, and spy novelist Ian Fleming
would ridicule them with his fictional Special Executive for
Counter-Intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion – SPECTRE, it would
become generally known as “The Commission.”
As for
the second item on the agenda, they decided to explore gambling as a
replacement for the lucrative illegal liquor profits after prohibition. With
the repeal of the Volstead Act in 1933, gambling became the main preoccupation
of the local mobs until 1946, when, after the Havana meeting, the French
Connection became the primary source of the drugs and narcotics that would
become the Syndicate’s primary source of revenue other than gambling.
The
Federal Bureau of Narcotics concluded, from information provided from
undercover informants that the Atlantic City convention established
the basis for the Syndicate that carved the nation into specific territories,
developed a system of kangaroo courts that provided the gangsters with their
own quasi-judicial system, and protected the hierarchy of the local mafia
families.
Arrangements
were also made to invest in a multi-million dollar slush fund to bribe law
enforcement officials, ensure the election of certain politicians, hire the
best attorneys and pay for the educational development of promising young men
who could serve their interests in the future.
The
hallmark of the meeting in Atlantic City was the centralizing of particular
powers with an executive committee, like the board of directors of a blue chip
industry, an exceptional and extraordinary concept that was not immediately
acceptable to many of the ethnic oriented gangsters like Massaria and
Marrassano, who were dinosaurs that had to go the way of the buffalo.
The
dissentions of the still primarily ethnically Italian gangsters was overcome in
a power-play move when Lansky nominated the Mafia’s own Johnny Torrio as
Chairman of the Board, a motion that quickly won the endorsement of most of the
mobsters present. Torrio was also the only one who could take care of Capone,
whose violent ways were causing problems for all of them.
With the
Commission in charge, Torrio at the helm and business completed, the final item
on the agenda was Capone, and what to do with him. While
the Chicago rackets were combined, and Capone was the nominal boss,
he had to take a vacation, or he was going to be thrown to the wolves. He was
given the option of dieing right then, or taking a sabbatical from the business
for a while. The newspapers had all reported that Capone was in town and one of
the William Randolph Hurst newspapers even ran a faked composite photograph of
Capone, Knucky Johnson and Meyer Lansky walking down the boardwalk, all of
which had the pubic clamoring for Capone to be busted for something.
Although
they put an APB – All Points Bulletin out for the man who was seen all over
town – throwing chairs in a hotel lobby, screaming obscenities on Pacific
Avenue, having dinner in Ducktown, riding in a wicker-walker and strolling down
the boardwalk with Johnson, suddenly, Capone couldn’t be found anywhere.
According
to local legend, when the heat was turned on, Capone slipped out
of Atlantic City and retreated to a local private country club,
either the Atlantic City Country Club in Northfield or Seaview in
Absecon, where he played bad golf and good cards until the heat was off a few
days later.
On May
16, 1929, a week after Lansky’s wedding, Capone showed up at the train station
but missed the train by minutes. With a police motorcycle escort to the edge of
town, Capone’s entourage drove to Philadelphia, where he again just missed
a train to Chicago. Going to a movie on Market Street with his
bodyguard Frank Rio, Capone emerged from the theater to be confronted by
Philadelphia Police Detective James “Shooey” Malone.
Malone
flashed his badge, they talked quietly for a moment and Capone calmly
volunteered his .38 caliber revolver and was promptly arrested by
Malone. Rio momentarily balked, but Capone smiled and urged him to
surrender his weapon too.
Philadelphia’s
Director of Public Safety Major Lemel B. Schoefield accepted praise for the
arrest of the nation’s number one crime czar, though it later became apparent
that Det. Malone had met Capone the year before at Hialeah racetrack in
Florida, and Capone had arranged for his own arrest. Besides taking the heat
off the rest of the Syndicate, in the secure hands of the law he also acquired
sanctuary from a vengeful Bugs Moran.
In the
custody of the Philadelphia authorities, Capone was forthcoming about
the Atlantic City Sit Down, emphasizing the decision to end mob warfare. “I
told them,” Capone said, reciting a line from one of Lansky’s lectures, “there
is enough business to make us all rich, and it’s time to stop the killing and
look on our own business as other men look on theirs.”
When
asked about the purpose of the meeting, Capone said, “It is with the idea of
making peace among the gangsters that I spent the week in Atlantic
City and got the word of each leader that there will be no more shooting.”
But
Capone also told them he, “…had to hide from the rest of the racketeers,” who
weren’t at the meeting. They had a vendetta against him. It seems that there
comes a point in every gangster’s career when, despite all the power and money
they have accumulated, life is suddenly vulnerable to one professional contract
killer. John Torrio thought that prison was the safest place, Sam Giancana, who
would later take over the Chicago mob, fled to Mexico and South
America, Joe Bonnano had himself kidnapped. Capone chose jail.
Philadelphia
Criminal Court Judge John E. Wash sentenced Capone harshly for such a petty
crime of being a suspicious person and carrying a concealed deadly weapon, the
maximum of one year at Holmesburg Penitentiary. After a short stint there
however, Capone was transferred to the more relaxed confines of Eastern Pen,
where he served out the duration of his sentence under the lenient warden
Herbert B. Smith, who furnished Capone’s cell with lamps, a library, radio
console and lounge chair and gave him access to his private office telephone.
With
Capone in jail, the Syndicate began the process of getting rid of the old
Mustache Petes and preparing to engage in Big Time gambling activities on a
very large scale.
In Hoboken, New
Jersey, Lansky’s new father-in-law permitted him to use his Molaska Inc. as a
front for a number of his illegal businesses, one of which was the largest
distillery in the state. Molaska took its name from molasses chips, a necessary
ingredient for the making of rum, which became more profitable than smuggling
it.
Molaska
rum business took Lansky to Cuba, where he met with Sgt. Fugencio Batista,
the strong-arm coup leader who twice took over the reins of Cuba. The
first time he was in power Lansky made a deal with Batista to allow him to open
a legal casino in Cuba, much like the illegal casinos he operated
in Florida, New York and New Jersey. In order for the
Syndicate to control casinos in Havana, it was arranged for casinos to
operate in hotels with 500 rooms or more, and since the Syndicate controlled
Hotel National was the only hotel in Havana with 500 rooms, the
Lansky mob owned the only casino in Cuba.
The
second Havana hotel to qualify for a casino was owned by Santo
Traficante, who hired Atlantic City native John Martino to run his
electronics and security operations.
Two
weeks before Castro came to power Lansky and the Syndicate sold the National
Hotel-Casino to Mike McLaney and Carroll Rosenbloom, both of whom would loose their
shirts in the deal. While Mike McLaney’s brother William owned the land
near New Orleans where anti-Castro Cuban commandos trained – and
reportedly the Magazine Street house where Lee Harvey Oswald lived,
Lyndon Baines Johnson would be Rossenbloom’s houseguest in Atlantic
City during the 1964 Democratic National Convention.
In 1976
New Jersey law allowed for legal casinos in Atlantic City hotels that had 500
rooms or more, – the Havana model, with only one hotel in the entire city that
qualified – Resorts International, a Lansky-Syndicate controlled company. The
second and third Atlantic Citycasinos – Bally and Caesars, were also
Syndicate controlled companies, following the policies, delineating the
strategies and continuing the traditions laid out at the 1929 Convention.
The
federal government did not officially recognize the existence of the syndicate
until May 1, 1951 when Estes Kefauver, Chairman of the Senate Crim
Investigating Committee, visited Atlantic City, New Orleans, Chicago and New
York before determining and reporting that, “a nationwide crime syndicate does
exist in the United States,…and behind the local mobs which make up the
national crime syndicate is a shadowy, international criminal organization
known as the Mafia.”
Even
after that, the FBI refused to place a priority on the Mafia or organized crime
until years later, when local police broke up a major mob meeting in
upstate New York.
The
records of Kefauver’s investigation were then promptly and routinely locked
away for 50 years as “Congressional Records,” which are exempt from Freedom of
Information Act requests.
In 1998,
the Assassination Records Review Board refused to release the records of the
Kefauver Committee investigation by declaring them “assassination records”
because they claimed they were not related to or considered relevant to the
assassination of President Kennedy, even though the second chief counsel to the
House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) believes that the President may
have been the victim of a mob hit.
The
Kefauver Committee records were scheduled for release in 2001, but are being
systematically released after being reviewed by request.
More recently the HBO TV production of “Boardwalk Empire” has called attention to Nucky Johnson and his control of the rackets in Atlantic City and how he helped fuel the nation during prohibition.
More recently the HBO TV production of “Boardwalk Empire” has called attention to Nucky Johnson and his control of the rackets in Atlantic City and how he helped fuel the nation during prohibition.
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