Part 37

Winchell said, “Mr. Hoover, this is Lepke.”

“How do you do,” Lepke replied. “Let’s go.”

And so ended one of the greatest manhunts in American criminal history.

Four months later, Lepke went on trial in the Federal district court in New York City. He sat in silence, his brown eyes expressionless, as his former henchmen paraded to the stand to tell the details of their narcotics smuggling.

Among the government witnesses, many of them pale from sunless days in prison, were Jack Katzenberg, Ben Schisoff and John McAdams, the Customs employee. No longer were they afraid of the little man who sat there staring at them.

The trial dragged through fifteen days, but in the end Lepke was convicted. He was sentenced to serve fourteen years in prison and was fined $2,500 on ten narcotics charges. Two weeks later in General Sessions Court, Lepke was convicted on thirty-six counts of extortion and sentenced to an additional thirty years in prison.

Among the others involved in the smuggling ring, Lvovsky received seven years in prison and was fined $15,000. Sam Gross was sentenced to six years and fined $15,000, while Katzenberg was given ten years and a $10,000 fine. Both the Customs employees, McAdams and Hoffman, also received prison sentences.

But the final ordeal for Lepke was yet to come. In October, 1941, Lepke was taken from prison and returned to New York to stand trial for his role as mastermind in the operations of Murder, Inc. Specifically, he was charged with ordering the murder of a former garment industry truck driver, Joseph Rosen, who had ignored his warnings to get out of town and out of reach of questioning by District Attorney Dewey at the time Dewey was investigating the rackets in New York.

Manuel “Mendy” Weiss was named by the state as the actual triggerman in the slaying, and a small-time hood named Louis Capone (no kin to Al Capone) was accused of being the man who assisted Weiss in his getaway. Rosen had been found shot to death on the morning of September 13, 1936, lying on the floor of his small candy shop in Brooklyn.

One of the witnesses against Lepke was Max Ruben, whose death Lepke had ordered when Ruben refused to stay out of New York. One of Lepke’s henchmen had shot Ruben through the neck and left him lying near death. But he had recovered to tell his story to Prosecutor Burton Turkus.

Ruben testified that Lepke--two days before Rosen was killed--told him: “That bastard Rosen is going around Brownsville shooting his mouth off that he’s going downtown. He and nobody else are going down anyplace or do any more talking ... or any talking at all.”

Allie Tannenbaum, another of Lepke’s triggermen, supported Ruben’s testimony. He said he had heard Lepke say of Rosen: “There’s one son-of-a-bitch who’ll never go downtown.” By downtown, Lepke meant the office of the district attorney.

Tannenbaum also told of hearing Mendy Weiss describe how he had shot Rosen--after which his pal, “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss, had pumped bullets into the body just for kicks.

When Lepke was advised that Rosen was dead, Tannenbaum said his boss replied, “What’s the difference as long as everyone is clean and got away all right.”

A battery of nine attorneys defended Lepke. But this time the king of the underworld couldn’t squeeze out of the trap. Too many of his old gang had decided to talk. They had lived too long in fear that Lepke would order their own deaths in his effort to remove anyone who might be dangerous to him. Now they wanted Lepke out of the way.

Lepke, Weiss and Capone were convicted of murder and sentenced to die in the electric chair. They went to their deaths on December 2, 1941.

* * * * *

Control of the narcotics traffic in the United States is primarily the responsibility of the Narcotics Bureau. But Customs agents also have a direct responsibility in the government’s efforts to throttle the illicit trade. For this reason Customs agents frequently are teamed with Narcotics agents in investigations which often are international in scope.

It is not unusual for Customs agents to work for as much as two years in tracking down a single narcotics smuggler and removing him from circulation. These cases require endless hours of surveillance and hunting for the one bit of information which will trap the quarry.

Such a case was dropped in the laps of Customs agents in San Francisco and Seattle on August 2, 1954, when an informant tipped Customs agents at Seattle that $30,000 worth of heroin was to be smuggled into the United States aboard the SS M. N. Patrick by a Negro seaman named Robert King. He described King as tall, jug-eared and middle-aged, with a taste for conservative clothes and gaudy night spots. The tipster said King planned to take the heroin ashore in San Francisco when the Patrick completed her run from Hong Kong.

Seattle forwarded a teletype message to San Francisco saying: “Information considered to be very reliable received today that ship M. N. Patrick arriving San Francisco between August 4 and August 8 from India via Hong Kong has heroin valued at about $30,000 on board. Vessel supposed to be in Seattle today but not verified. The suspect, Robert King, in steward’s department, is owner and will try to bring ashore at San Francisco.”

Alerted by this message, San Francisco agents began checking on the probable arrival time of the Patrick only to discover that the ship had changed its sailing schedule and would not touch San Francisco on that trip. A message was forwarded to Seattle saying: “We have just checked here and find that Patrick is not coming to San Francisco this trip. She is due in Seattle today (August 6) and will make two trips from Seattle to Alaska and then back to Far East. Under circumstances consider probable that King will try to unload at Seattle....”

The Patrick had already docked in Seattle when this message was received. Agents rushed to the waterfront. But as the agents were walking aboard the ship, King was walking off undetected, apparently carrying the heroin with him.

A few hours later it was learned that King had contacted a known narcotics peddler in Los Angeles and had arranged for a $30,000 “loan.” It was suspected by agents that King had made his contact successfully and disposed of the narcotics before agents could get on his trail.

Agents began checking on King’s background and on his movements as far as possible in previous years. They discovered that while he had no known source of income, he owned an apartment building in San Francisco valued at $135,000. He maintained a bank account which showed heavy deposits and withdrawals. It was discovered also that in past years he had made frequent trips to Hong Kong and Japan. On occasions he had shipped as a seaman, and at other times he had gone abroad as a tourist.

Treasury agents in Japan found that King often frequented the Port Hole Bar in Yokohama, which was a known meeting place of narcotics peddlers when they were trying to contact seamen to use as carriers.

For more than a year and a half agents kept a periodic check on King’s movements in an effort to trap him in an act of smuggling or trafficking in narcotics. They had no success until a seemingly unrelated incident occurred in Japan.

On February 9, 1956, Japanese postal inspectors at Yokohama seized a shipment of narcotics which proved to be of special interest to Customs agents in San Francisco and Seattle. While making a routine examination of a package mailed by international air mail, they found 167 grams of heroin and 217 capsules of cocaine hidden in the folds of a pair of woman’s pajamas and slippers. The package was addressed to a Mrs. Hazel Scott in Seattle, Washington. The Customs declaration tag gave the name of the sender as W. M. Scott and listed an address in Yokohama. The addresses were written by typewriter. The narcotics were in a manila envelope bearing the words “For Walker.” The Japanese turned this information over to the U.S. Embassy.