Welcome back to Line of Blood. I'm Jana Marcus. I'm recounting the sordid clues of two cold cases from the golden age of the New York gangster, that I was determined to try and solve.

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This is episode two, Trail of Blood. So let's continue our story.

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It's 2007. I was on my way to New York City to hunt for clues about the mysterious murder of my great uncle Abe "Jew Murphy" Babchick. I had found my first clue almost 20 years earlier, but until the internet was happening and my old pal, Mark-the-Cop, was willing to help me investigate, there just had been no information to find. The family elders, they refused to talk about the past, and I only had newspaper articles to piece it all together.

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When I landed in New York, Mark-the-Cop picked me up at the airport and we got straight to work. We spread all those old newspaper articles I had on the floor, trying to piece together this jagged tapestry of reports about what had actually happened the night of Uncle Abe's murder.

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Each new day of reporting led to different angles about the murder. Even the simplest details, such as his last name and age, they were fumbled across news descriptions. Some thought his name was Schwartz or Heckler or even Babcock. They had his age anywhere from 34 to 38 years old. With all these different accounts, it was confusing to try and piece together the order of things.

So Mark and I, we made a chart, and we tracked the different newspapers and what each one reported every day for weeks following the murder. As a cohesive picture started to come together, it was like a trail of blood, weaving through the convoluted mystery of Abe's demise.

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The information that was similar in all the articles was that Abe had won over $60,000 at a Chinatown crap game. Then, hours later, he was found on the passenger seat of his sedan with two bullets to the back of his head. Abe's pockets had been turned inside out. A 20 and a 10 dollar bill, along with a nickel, were on the seat next to him. Now I found out, that is the underworld sign of a squealer.

The articles also gave an account of his several arrests, along with the dates and charges. But, Mark was never able to locate any of those records.

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What was more interesting than the fact that no one knew his real name was that three groups stepped forward in a drama that would unfold in the press for the next few weeks. Mark and I traced these three groups, each of which had a very different theory about the murder.

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Okay, so I'm going to lay out the three different groups and their theories. So stick with me because this gets juicy.

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Group 1 was the Brooklyn District Attorney. His theory was that Abe's murder was a robbery gone wrong.

Group 2 was the Brooklyn Police. They felt Abe had been snuffed out by a rival gang.

Group 3 was the Special Prosecutor for the Attorney General. He believed Abe had been purposely silenced.

 

Well, you may be wondering, what's so interesting about these three theories? Well, first of all, why is there three theories?

The Brooklyn District Attorney, William O'Dwyer, made a public statement that Abe was a nobody. He called him a cheap punk, a small time gambler who had won big the night he was killed. He was sure it was a robbery gone wrong. That was theory number one.

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The Brooklyn Police and Homicide Chief John J. McGowan, well, they stated Uncle Abe had just started a new policy racket in Brooklyn, and they believed he had been rubbed out by a rival gang. That was theory number two.

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But then, there was Special Prosecutor for the State Attorney General, John Harlan Amen. He countered both the police and the DA's statements, firing back in a press conference that Uncle Abe had not been murdered for his gambling winnings or by rivals, but possibly to halt the corruption investigation that his office was conducting.

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Why? Because Abe would have been his star witness. Now, the special prosecutor's theory threw the district attorney and police theories into complete turmoil.

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But let's take a minute to find out who John Harlan Amen was. Amen was an all-American guy. He went to Harvard Law School. He married President Grover Cleveland's daughter, he was a chain smoker, and he wore a white carnation every day in his lapel as a lucky charm.

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I see Amen as the white knight of our story. Now, as a Special Prosecutor for the State Attorney General, John Harlan Amen had started this far reaching investigation into corruption by officials in Brooklyn. He had been appointed a few years earlier and his investigation was to become one of the most far reaching of its kind in the city's history to date. He was probing into the court system, police, and more.

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Amen had discovered that Abe was the largest of the well-known policy bankers in Brooklyn. He called him a “millionaire policy king.” Abe was bringing in an estimated $10,000 a day. Well, I looked that up on the U. S. inflation calculator, and that would be over $250,000 in today's money. And don't forget, this was the 1930s, during the Depression!

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Amen also had details about Abe's operation. He discovered that Abe had almost 700 employees, from policy bank lieutenants, comptrollers, pickup men, and even runners. Abe's racket was also greater than just confined to Brooklyn. He had actually expanded his territory into parts of Manhattan, New Jersey, and even West Philadelphia.

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I mean, damn, Uncle Abe was a policy rock star! Because of all this, Amen was suspicious that Abe's murder was a cover up, killed to silence him from testifying against those officials who were taking bribes to keep illegal gambling alive.

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All of this was the third theory about the murder, and it was now blowing the lid off everything in the police department.

Just days following the murder, over 50 police officers disappeared from the scene. Some immediately retired. Simultaneously, a stampede of officers and other officials charged into Amen's office in an effort to trade information for protection against prosecution.

This was incredible. I mean, there was obviously some kind of cover up happening that the district attorney and the police were scrambling. But Amen, he knew what was going on.

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Now, if all of that isn't enough at this point, here's where things start to get even stickier.

Three months before Abe's death, in June of 1941, Special Prosecutor Amen had been contacted by a lawyer who represented Abe and was negotiating on his behalf to come in and testify before Amen's grand jury. He was going to testify about all those police on his payroll that were keeping gambling alive in Brooklyn. Well, supposedly the conditions asked by Abe's attorney were too extreme to actually finalize a deal. So, Amen was given four detectives for his staff, and their sole mission was to bring Abe in for questioning.

I wonder what Abe could have asked for that was too extreme. But I really wondered, who supplied the four detectives for Amen?  

Well, those detectives, they had been looking for Abe all summer, but they were now being called on the carpet for failing to bring him in before the murder. News reporters questioned why the detectives hadn't picked him up. They stated that Abe wasn't in hiding. He could have easily been found on his daily routine from Brownsville to Manhattan and back.

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Meanwhile, the police and the DA's office were trying to skirt this idea that the murder was a cover up. When they learned Abe had extended his policy racket operations into West Philadelphia, while Homicide Chief John J. McGowan stated that Abe might have incurred the enmity of a rival mob there. Soon, the Brooklyn police were off to Philly to confer with officials and politicians there.

Well, okay, wow. I mean, that sounds a bit out of bounds, right? I mean, why are they going all the way to Philly? Seems to me they got enough problems in Brooklyn!

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Although Special Prosecutor Amen was responsible for pursuing official corruption at the state level, he could not solely investigate Abe's murder. He had to give all his supporting information to District Attorney O'Dwyer. This is one of the very unfortunate parts of this story. If Amen had been in charge of the murder investigation, I bet it would have been solved.

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But, regardless of his restrictions, he continued to vigorously pursue what he alleged was a Babchick-Police-tie-up. You see, Amen had been confident that Abe was the key to nabbing the authorities who were protecting the policy rings. He felt it was mandatory to follow every angle in clearing up the circumstances around Abe's murder.

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The more Amen made public his investigation into Brooklyn corruption, well the police and the DA, they were forced to either slightly change their stories or come up with a culprit fast for Abe's murder.

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A few days after that, Special Prosecutor Amen said he now had evidence that would expose a police corruption case totaling over $500,000 a year in payoffs. Okay, that's over 10.5 million dollars in today's money. I mean, we're talking about huge, insane amounts of cash here.

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These new details had shaken the police department as never before. Amen stated in a press conference, “If Babchick was killed to stall my investigation of the police department, well, that murder was in vain.”

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You may be wondering if Special Prosecutor Amen had any vital witnesses that came forward about the murder. Well, he did. He received hundreds of anonymous letters from the public, stating they knew something about Abe's murder. Amen urged the tipsters to come forward, and he promised them police protection from spotters and mob men.

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But, hey, I mean, would you feel safe with a police guard if maybe you knew the police were behind this?

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Well, there was a witness, though. There was a man who the press called Zoo. Z-O-O. Zoo said he was Abe's chauffeur and bodyguard and was with Abe the night he died. Zoo called Abe "The Boss," and I'm going to read you his eyewitness account.

"From 12:45 to 1:30 a.m., we were in a restaurant on Eastern Parkway having a bite to eat. When we left, the boss told me, 'you can go home. I won't need you anymore tonight.' This was a surprise to me. I looked him over. He seemed okay. Just then, at that time, I noticed two young guys loitering in the darkness near the restaurant.

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I didn't get much of a chance to see what they looked like. But they suddenly flanked the boss, one on either side, as he stood there, and then all three of them got into the boss's convertible. They drove off. I went on home, not thinking much more of it. But that was the last time I saw the boss alive."

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Okay, hold on a minute. Who is this guy? It doesn't make sense that Zoo would leave Abe on a street corner, flanked by two men who came out of the shadows. I mean, what kind of a bodyguard is this?

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Well, these two unknown men are now being sought as the killers by the police. It fits their theory that the murder was a robbery. All I could say was, wow…I mean Abe's death was actually a huge and complicated story.

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I spent the next few days doing more research. I actually found three different crime scene photos that were printed in the papers. And it was fascinating to me that such graphic images were actually printed back then. I even found parts of Special Prosecutor Amen's grand jury report that had a full description of Abe's operation.

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Many of those newspapers were now available on microfilm that hadn't been years ago. I had another mind blowing, “a-ha” moment, this time about Uncle Frankie the Vanishing Cowboy.

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Well, it turns out he was arrested after Abe's murder for running a numbers lottery. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle and the New York Herald Tribune both ran stories on October 8th, just two weeks after Abe's murder.

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They stated that Uncle Frankie and four other men–which included cousin Leo and Carol's father, Mudsy–they were all taken into custody after a raid by detectives. They reported that Uncle Frankie and Mudsy were counting over 35,000 lottery slips. That's a lot of pieces of paper to be counting. Well, they got locked up and arraigned in felony court the next day.

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The article also stated that Uncle Frankie had been arrested several times, including running a lottery, and as far back as 1924, for violation of the Sullivan Law.

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“Do you know what the Sullivan Law is?” I asked Mark.

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“Oh yeah,” he said. “The Sullivan Law means you're in possession of a gun.”

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“Well, what the hell was Frankie doing with a gun in 1924?” I just shook my head in amazement.

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But Mark chuckled. And he said, “Well, Jana, cowboys, they have guns too. It makes sense that he may have worked with his brother Abe. Seems to me he was probably always in the business. It was a family business.”

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Yes, a family business that included Abe's brother Frankie and his brother-in-law Mudsy. Well, Mark, he was going to see if he could find an old arrest sheet for Frankie.

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I was super excited. This was the first real information ever found about Uncle Frankie. Cousin Carol had told me years ago that he had disappeared in the mid 1940s after calling the family from a candy store. Well, you know what? It was time for me to go pay Carol another visit.

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It had been almost 15 years since I'd seen Cousin Carol. Her jovial demeanor and dry sense of humor, they were alive as ever at the age of 77. Carol's daughter, and several grandchildren, were at her home when I arrived. She served us lunch around a large oak table where we had lox and bagels, cream herring, and almost every salad concoction imaginable that you could make with mayonnaise.

When I finally had Cousin Carol alone, helping her clean up the dishes, I pushed her for more information.

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“I'm gonna charge you a dollar a question.” She said it very matter-of-factly, but then a sly smile just spread across her lips.

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“Tell me the truth, Carol. Uncle Frankie wasn't really a cowboy, was he?”

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Carol threw her head back in a cackle of laughter. “Ha! Did you really believe that baloney? We made it up!”  She was laughing so hard her eyes just became wet with tears.

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When she finally caught her breath, she put her arm around me and leaned in to whisper. “Listen, it was like this: Frankie was in the rackets with Abie!”

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She went on to tell me how Abe rented her parents an apartment in Brooklyn. The deal was that no one was allowed into the house between 3 and 5:00 PM. That's when Abe, Frankie, and Carol's father, Mudsy, would clean the money and count the day's take.

Abe, well, he may have been a sharp dresser, financially took care of the family and put his younger brother through law school, but he was quiet and serious around the children, usually attending to business and asking them to leave the room.

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Uncle Frankie, well he was just the opposite. Gregarious, carefree, and always laughing, he would bring them presents and tell animated stories about his supposed cross country adventures. Uncle Frankie, he would often show up late at night, and Carol's mother, she would fuss over feeding him a big meal. Frankie would then slip his car keys to young Leo with a wink, allowing him a midnight joyride around the neighborhood in his fancy automobile.

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Well, I learned that as good natured as Frankie was, he also had a temper. The short, square man with the shining blue eyes, was also known as the enforcer behind Abe's well-conceived plans.

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Carol had finally broken her silence and confirmed what I had learned. Frankie didn't ride those horses–he played the horses, helping to run Abe's pari-mutuel racing policy.

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Again, Carol mentioned that around 1945, Uncle Frankie had called her father from a candy store payphone and told him to meet up at a deli where they all used to hang out somewhere off Pitkin Avenue. After that, no one ever saw or heard from Frankie again.

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Carol concluded her story by saying, “They must have killed Frankie too. That was the finish. The end!” She was very serious as her hands slapped together loudly in dismay.

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“Who's they?” I asked. “You said ‘they killed Frankie.’ Who's they?”

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Carol studied me over the rim of her glasses and finally replied, “Next time you want more information, go ask somebody younger.” Then she erupted into a squawk of laughter again and pulled me toward the other room to rejoin the family.

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Well, it seemed I now did have a double murder mystery on my hands.

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Further research that week in New York revealed that five months after Frankie's arrest in early 1942, that 38-year-old cowboy finally had his felony court date for violating lottery laws. The papers all reported that he swore before the court that he was out of the numbers game, and he had only been lured back in to find his brother's killers.

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Well, the judge, he didn't believe him, and he felt the rich receipts of Abe's racket was Frankie's real motive. He demanded that Frankie receive the maximum 36-month sentence. With that, Frankie rode off to jail.

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This research trip had been incredible. It shed light on questions that had been unanswered for years. I now knew the truth about Uncle Frankie. And that three-year jail term? Well, it would have ended around the same time he supposedly went missing.

As for Uncle Abe, now I could see just how complicated the aftermath of his murder had been. The District Attorney, William O'Dwyer, and Homicide Chief, John J. McGowan, were trying to make it seem like Abe had just been street scum, a victim of yet another gangland slaying or robbery.

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That assumption was obviously only to counter the accusations by Special Prosecutor Amen. Amen knew that Abe was the biggest boss of the policy racket, not only in Brooklyn, but other parts of the East Coast as well. This was a big story, and it reeked of a cover up. And, like Mark-the-Cop said to me, “When something smells fishy, it usually is.”

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I was so excited about all this new information that I couldn't wait to tell my father. We now had real facts about both Abe and Frankie. But when I got back to California to tell Dad all the news, he had even more earth shattering news for me.

Now that I was finding out all this information, Dad wanted to share a theory with me about why he thought he may have been sent away to those schools as a young child.

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It seems that Cousin Leo had revealed that after Abe's murder, the family received a phone call that has haunted them ever since. A male voice on the other end of the line said, “If anyone tries to find out what happened to Abe, we'll kill the whole family, starting with the children.”

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Thank you for listening. Join me, Jana Marcus, next time as we continue the baffling cold cases in Line of Blood.

If you've enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, tell your friends.

 

You can join me in this investigation, episode by episode, by checking out the historical files on our website at lineofblood-podcast.com.

And if you want even more of a deep dive, check out the book version of Line of Blood, which is available at all online booksellers.

 

Special thanks go out to Suki Wessling, Eric Sassaman, Valerie Marcus Ramsher, Amy Scott, and Andrew Ceglio. Music by Blue Dot Sessions.