December 18, 1931
Jack Moran, better known as “Legs” Diamond, was quite the hotshot in the Jazz Age. A Prohibition celebrity, Diamond was always in the papers or on the newsreels and that’s just the way he liked it.
Jack Diamond embarked upon his criminal career in a small New York street gang, but in 1917 he was caught in the draft and did a short stint for Uncle Sam. Finding army life not to his liking, Diamond went AWOL—a little excursion that sent him to Leavenworth prison in Kansas for several years.
Once he was released, Diamond spent some time with Arnold Rothstein’s mob before joining Little Augie Orgen’s operation. But Diamond was less than successful in his role as Orgen’s bodyguard. He was not able to save Orgen when the mobster’s lieutenant, Louis Buchalter, came gunning for him in the fall of 1927. Orgen dropped like a stone that day, but Diamond was merely wounded. It would be only one of many attempts on Diamond’s life—five in total—all of which earned Diamond the nickname of the Clay Pigeon.
Whether or not Diamond had anything to do with Orgen’s demise is unknown. He certainly profited from the gangster’s downfall, though, when Buchalter gave him a slice of Orgen’s old operations.
Diamond now cut out on his own, running bootlegging and drug rackets. He opened a night spot, the Hotsy Totsy Club, and it was at this time that he became known as a flamboyant man about town. His new girlfriend, Kiki Roberts, was a Ziegfeld girl, no less. But Diamond was soon in competition with rival mobster Dutch Schultz and the two became bitter enemies. After yet another failed attempt had been made on Diamond’s life, it was Dutch who moaned “Ain’t there nobody who can shoot this guy so he don’t bounce back?” Apparently, not yet.
After a trip to Europe, ostensibly to recover from the latest attempt on his life but also to scout out alcohol and drug suppliers, Diamond endured several more attempted assassinations while he struggled to renew his operations. But time was running out for Legs Diamond.
The end came while he was temporarily residing in Albany, New York. Diamond was in town successfully defending himself against a kidnapping rap and had flopped at a boarding house. Just before dawn on the morning of December 18, 1931, Diamond, who had been celebrating his acquittal, returned to his room tipsy and exhausted and threw himself onto the bed. A short while later two men broke into the room and as one of them held Diamond down, the other shot him three times in the head. He wasn’t able to get up from this one.
The killers of Legs Diamond have never been identified. Suspicion has fallen on Dutch Schultz, who certainly gets points for trying, but it has also been speculated that Diamond’s murderers were actually members of the Albany police force. The police in Albany had crime in that town all sewn up. Fearing that Diamond would move in on their rackets, the cops may well have shown up that morning in December to take Diamond out of the competition.