The trial of Charles Luciano and his co-defendants opened on the morning of May 11, 1936, before Justice McCook in the County Courthouse, in Foley Square, Manhattan. A blue ribbon panel of jurors, so-called because the talesmen were specially selected for experience and intelligence, had been summoned for the occasion, and talesmen filled the courtroom as they waited for the process of selecting a jury.
The trial opened with the appearance of the three bookers, Pete Harris, Al Weiner, and Davie Miller, who stood before the court and pleaded guilty—ninety times guilty, for there were that many felony counts in the indictment. Of course they were thousands of times guilty in reality, for each time a girl was booked three crimes were committed.1
Ten defendants were left. They had eleven lawyers to represent them.
Dewey had four assistants on hand to help him in court; and over in the Woolworth Building practically all the rest of his staff was at the job of marshaling the 120 available witnesses and working up last minute angles of the case.
Before the prospective jurors were questioned, Dewey explained something about the theory of the case. He made it clear that the girls in the case had not been forced into any house; that they were prostitutes and wanted to work at their trade.
“It is not contended by the People that each of these named defendants personally placed a woman in a house,” Dewey explained. “That was left to the underlings. The actual mechanics of the business was left to the underlings.
“Beginning at the top, Charles Luciano will be proved not to have placed any women in any house, not to have directly taken any money from any women, but to have sat way up at the top in his apartment at the Waldorf as the Czar of organized crime in this city where his word, and his word alone, was sufficient to terminate all competitive enterprises of this kind.
“We will show you in the case his function not as the operator of anything, but merely as the man whose word, whose suggestion, whose statement, ‘Do this,’ was sufficient; and all the others in the case are charged as being his servants.
“David Betillo, known as Little Davie, was his chief lieutenant, the man who really ran the racket. He did not place any women in houses. He merely ordered the men who did.
“Thomas Pennochio, known as Tommy Bull, was the treasurer of the combination. We do not charge that he placed any women in houses. Of course, he received the proceeds of the bonding combination and of the money taken from the bookers of women each week for being allowed to engage in the business of prostitution.
“Abraham Wahrman, known as Little Abie, is in the same category.
“The defendant Bennie Spiller we do not charge with running houses of prostitution. His primary function was to invest capital in the corporate enterprise, by which all prostitution in New York was organized into one racket by strong-arm men and gunmen.
“James Frederico, known as Jimmy Fredericks, was what you might call the general manager of the enterprise. He gave personal orders. He stood out in front. We are now getting down to the men who actually did things other than mere giving of orders. He did not actually place many women in houses of prostitution. His primary function was to tell the bookers of women what to do, send the collectors around to the houses and collect their weekly toll, collect their toll from the bookers, to discipline the madams, to conduct the beatings when people did not behave and stay in line.
“Ralph Liguori had a separate and unique function. He was the hold-up man for the combination. If the madam did not book and did not bond with this combination and accept its protection, Liguori stuck up the house.
“Now, of the other defendants, Jesse Jacobs and Meyer Berkman ran the bonding and legal end of the business. They ran the machine by which these women when arrested by the police, were immediately bailed out, advised, coached how to testify. They provided the lawyer to try the case, and turned the women out. So that they aided and abetted in keeping the women available to work and in making it safe to engage in the business of organized prostitution on a colossal scale.”
Dewey then went on to list the three bookers who had pleaded guilty, and the remaining booker, Jack Eller, or Ellenstein, who had chosen to stand trial.
“These four bookers of women are the men who actually ran the chains of houses of prostitution, who actually received the telephone calls from day to day from the prostitutes and told them where to go,” Dewey continued.
“They actually did the business, with their assistants. None of the assistants of the bookers have been indicted.
“Now the purpose of all of this outline here is so that you will know that the principles of law upon which this case is founded are not that you get the tool, the underling who actually goes out on the street and takes a woman by the hand and puts her in a house. He is the type who usually gets caught. The principle of this case is the theory of law upon which we are getting as aiders and abettors the men who ran the bookers, and the bosses of the men who ran the bookers.”
It took two days to get a jury and then Dewey outlined in some detail the facts he intended to present, rounding out the whole story of the racket through its minor participants.
He set up a chart in the courtroom listing the names of the defendants and their various co-conspirators to make the case as little confusing as possible.
Defense counsel had made cautious openings denying the charges. George Morton Levy, trial counsel for Lucky, was less cautious than the rest. He said Lucky did not know any of his co-defendants, except Little Davie, whom he had once met when Davie tried to interest him in a gambling boat off the Jersey coast.
Doubtless that was what Lucky had told him. But it was a mistake which, long after, was to cause vain regrets.
The first girl Dewey put on the stand was an Italian girl who went by the name of Rose Cohen. She was more confident and self-possessed than most of the other girls and was a good one to start out with.
Rose related that she was brought up in Philadelphia and when she was eighteen came to New York to live with a man. Four years later they busted up and Rose went working on the streets to make a living.
After a few months she got a job one week working in Molly Leonard’s place and Molly introduced her to Pete Harris who agreed to book her regularly.
Rose took in $260 that week, of which half went to Molly. Out of Rose’s $130 the madam deducted $18 for board, $5 for doctor and $13 for Pete’s 10 per cent commission. The rest of the money was Rose’s. That was early in 1933.
Later on, Rose said, the board bill was jacked up $10 in all the houses to cover the weekly bond payment. She worked for many madams, Peggy Wild, Jennie the Factory, Little Jennie, Jean Bradley, Elsie, Cokey Flo, Nigger Ruth, and a lot of others. In July, 1935, Rose related, she was arrested by a cop, who came in and posed as a customer, at Jean Bradley’s place at Central Park West.
“I hadn’t done anything improper yet when he arrested me,” said Rose. “I was just undressed.”
She was bailed out after this arrest, Rose related. She was taken to the office of Jesse Jacobs across the street from the prison. Jimmy Fredericks told her to come back in a few days and Abe Karp would tell her what to say at her trial.
Rose was planning to say that she was a seamstress working at Twenty-sixth Street and Sixth Avenue. Karp had told her that was all wrong because that was a fur district where seamstresses didn’t work. Rose said she didn’t know any place to work in New York so they decided she should say she was a seamstress working in the tailor shop in Gimbel’s in Philadelphia, and just over in New York for a visit.
So Rose had taken the stand and told that story and the judge had dismissed her. The combination had protected another one of its girls.
Now, one after another the girls were coming to the stand. An amazing procession of women, modestly dressed, wearing no make-up, relating coldly and objectively that they had been engaged in the business of prostitution; telling about the people they met; what their business arrangements were. Madams, some young and pretty, some old and motherly-looking, some crass and blowsy, came on the stand and told all about their business; about how the bookers and Jimmy Fredericks carried on their business.
Little Marie Dubin told about how Jimmy Fredericks one night bawled out the madam for whom she was working because she had illegal pin ball machines in the place. The bonding combination’s responsibility did not cover pin balls and if the cops found them there it might be serious.
Al Wiener, a dead pan youngster, who limped on one short leg, related that he had not gone near his father, Cock-eyed Louis, when the old man was arrested as a booker, but had merely taken over the family booking business and carried it on. Joan Martin told her story and exhibited her scalp to the jury to show where Jimmy Fredericks had blackjacked her. Dave Miller told of his experiences.
It became very clear within a few days that the defendants were sunk, buried, except maybe Charlie Lucky. The prosecution had not come to him yet.
Now, thought Dewey, it was time to smash at the big shot. He would call Good-time Charlie to the stand to tell how a mere word from Lucky had been enough to chase out competition, win a monopoly for the combination; how the Italians had all stood up in awe of the boss.
Good-time Charlie was in the witness room outside the courtroom. The afternoon session was about to begin. Dewey was there, speaking a word or two to his witness before he put him on the stand.
“Mr. Dewey,” said Charlie, “I can’t tell that story.”
“What!” exclaimed Dewey.
“I can’t give that testimony,” said Good-time Charlie. “It isn’t true. I just made that story up.”
“But you swore to it before the Grand Jury!”
“Yes, I swore to it, but it isn’t true. I just made that story up. I didn’t go down and get chased out by Charlie Lucky.”
There was consternation in the Dewey camp that night. They had only four primary witnesses against the chief defendant—Good-time Charlie, Nancy Presser, Joe Bendix, and Mildred Balitzer. Mildred Curtis was still on dope, and could not be used. But Good-time Charlie had run out.
It was not a terrific surprise. Charlie was a bad character, a poor witness anyway. That sort of thing happened in prosecution of gangsters all the time. Witnesses were threatened, witnesses were scared, witnesses were bought. Sometimes, even, witnesses lied in the first place. But it was the sort of thing that was not supposed to happen in the Dewey prosecution. Everybody felt pretty low about it. Good-.time Charlie’s story had been promised in Dewey’s opening.
“Well, cheer up,” said Barent Ten Eyck, one of Dewey’s chief assistants, “my new witness is better than Good-time Charlie ever was.”
For, as Ten Eyck had left the court on the day when Joan Martin testified, he had heard that a prisoner in the House of Detention wanted to see him; and on his arrival there he had been handed a note. It read:
“Mr. Ten Eyck “DEAR SIR:
“I would like to see you on a matter of great importance in the Dewey vice case.
“Iam, and was, for three years, James Frederico’s sweetheart.
“I can help you a great deal. Some of the witnesses saw me today. I know they will tell you anyway. I might just as well tell you myself.
“Please excuse writing.
“Respectfully,
“FLo.
“P.S.—Here under name of Fay Marston, 4th B..”
James Frederico was the real name of Jimmy Fredericks, and his girl, Cokey Flo Brown, was a key figure in the vice investigation.
1 Before the case against the other defendants went to the jury, twenty-nine counts were dismissed, for there was no need of dragging the case out too long with repetition.