The Elusive Purple Gang

The Elusive Purple Gang PDF Author: Gregory A. Fournier
Publisher: Wheatmark, Inc.
ISBN: 1627877150
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
The Elusive Purple Gang: Detroit's Kosher Nostra is a concise history of one of America's most notorious Prohibition gangs. The Burnstein brothers and their associates were the only Jewish gang in the United States to dominate the rackets of a major American city. From their meteoric rise to the top of Detroit's underworld to their ultimate demise, this is an episodic account of the Purple Gang's corrosive pursuit of power and wealth and their inevitable plunge towards self-destruction.

The Elusive Purple Gang

The Elusive Purple Gang PDF Author: Gregory A. Fournier
Publisher: Wheatmark, Inc.
ISBN: 1627877150
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
The Elusive Purple Gang: Detroit's Kosher Nostra is a concise history of one of America's most notorious Prohibition gangs. The Burnstein brothers and their associates were the only Jewish gang in the United States to dominate the rackets of a major American city. From their meteoric rise to the top of Detroit's underworld to their ultimate demise, this is an episodic account of the Purple Gang's corrosive pursuit of power and wealth and their inevitable plunge towards self-destruction.

The Purple Gang

The Purple Gang PDF Author: Paul R. Kavieff
Publisher: Barricade Books
ISBN: 9781569804940
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Purple Gang - Detroit's ruling organised crime syndicate - became one of the most notorious gangs during the Prohibition Era. The gang was comprised mostly of the offspring of recent immigrants - Eastern European Jews who were hardworking and honest. This vicious gang quickly rose to power by engaging in extortion, gambling and the illicit trade of drugs and alcohol. The book if graphically illustrated with 32 pages of photographs depicting the gangsters, from their lives on the street to their bloody demise.

Detroit's Infamous Purple Gang

Detroit's Infamous Purple Gang PDF Author: Paul R. Kavieff
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 9780738552385
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132

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Book Description
Detroit's Infamous Purple Gang is a photographic history of one of the most notorious organized crime groups of the 20th century. The photographs chronologically follow the evolution of the Purples from their days as a juvenile street gang through their rise to power and eventual self-destruction. Using rare police department mug shots and group photographs, the book transports readers through the dark side of Prohibition-era Detroit history. Detroit had a gold rush atmosphere and a thriving black market during the 1920s that attracted gangsters and unsavory characters from all over the country.

Paper Fan

Paper Fan PDF Author: Terry Gould
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307369307
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 716

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Book Description
For 14K Triad official Steven Wong, faking his own death to escape trial was easy. But evading investigative reporter Terry Gould -- impossible. For 11 years terry Gould has tracked the man known as the “paper fan” through the organized crime circles of six countries. This riveting, horrifying, yet often hilariously funny book is the story of that search, a daredevil journey through the seductions and terrors of Steve’s world. Steven Wong is the “paper fan,” a thirty-nine-year-old Hong Kong-born mobster. Raised in New York’s Chinatown, he matured into crime in Vancouver, where he founded and headed the murderous Gum Wah Gang in the late 1980s and early ’90s. In 1992, Wong “died” in a traffic accident in a remote area of the Philippines before he could be sent to jail for heroin trafficking, conveniently just after he’d taken out a million-dollar life insurance policy. His urn may still be interred in a Vancouver cemetery, but today, Interpol has a “Red Alert” arrest warrant out for Wong, and his updated file reads like a Hollywood action film -- a post-mortem panorama of organized criminal adventure that circles the Pacific Rim, from Macau to Japan, from Cambodia to the Philippines. Gould’s search takes him into a world in which politicians, police, businessmen and criminals sprint along in one big pack, sometimes nipping each other’s heels, sometimes licking each other’s faces, and sometimes inviting one another back home for all-night mah-jong parties. Forced to work according to right-side-up rules, honest cops haven’t had a chance of arresting Steve in his upside-down world. Four times, Terry Gould has traced Steven Wong through Asia’s circles of corruption and pinned him down, but the law has let him slip away. Fifth time lucky? “Gangsters are good team players who generally exhibit a locker-room familiarity with other men. Still, it surprised me when Steve answered the door on Monday wearing only his polka-dot boxers, showing off his biceps and his chest tattooed with the winged dragons and sharp-taloned eagle. He was talking on the phone and barely interrupted himself as he turned back into the house, whereupon I realized that the display was likely done on purpose. Neck to waist his back was totally covered by a stylized tableau of a dragon crawling against a background of tigers and flowers — a Triad montage no one outside his syndicate world was supposed to see.” -- from Paper Fan

Terror in Ypsilanti

Terror in Ypsilanti PDF Author: Gregory A. Fournier
Publisher: Wheatmark, Inc.
ISBN: 1627874038
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 516

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Book Description
Between the summers of 1967 through 1969, a predatory killer stalked the campuses of Eastern Michigan University and the University of Michigan seeking prey until he made the mistake of killing his last victim in the basement of his uncle's home. All-American boy John Norman Collins was arrested, tried, and convicted of the strangulation murder of Karen Sue Beineman. The other murders never went to trial, with one exception, and soon became cold cases. With the benefit of fifty years of hindsight, hundreds of vintage newspaper articles, thousand of police reports, and countless interviews, Fournier tells the stories of the other victims, recreates the infamous trial that took Collins off the streets, and details Collins's time spent in prison.

Detroit Time Capsule

Detroit Time Capsule PDF Author: Gregory A. Fournier
Publisher: Wheatmark, Inc.
ISBN: 1627879021
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Detroit Time Capsule is a collection of seventy-five articles that first appeared as Fornology.com blog posts. The original posts have been revised and re-edited for inclusion in this anthology. Topics vary from significant historical events to biographical profiles of people who left their mark on Detroit history. Although this collection can be read from beginning to end, most chapters are self-contained with no narrative thread binding them. This eclectic collection makes a great springboard for readers interested in learning more about Detroit's rich past.

Off Color

Off Color PDF Author: Daniel Waugh
Publisher: In-Depth Editions, LLC
ISBN: 9780988977228
Category : Bernstein, Abe
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Those boys are tainted, off-color!" This lament from an early 20th century Detroit pushcart merchant was said to have given the Purple Gang their nickname. Off Color is the complete story of how a group of juvenile delinquents became one of the most notorious bootlegging mobs in history. Due to Detroits close proximity to Canada, the Purple Gang was in a prime position to strike it rich in the illegal alcohol trade. Not limiting themselves to the booze business, the Purples were violent jacks-of-all crimes. Members of the gang were suspected of participating in both the St. Valentines Day Massacre and the Lindbergh kidnapping. While the Purple Gang eventually dissolved under a storm of prison terms and violent infighting, they endure in American history as a colorfully named group of hoodlums who rose to prominence in the wild era when booze was illegal, men wore spats, women were flappers, and gangsters like the Purples enforced their will with the business end of a machine gun.

The Detroit True Crime Chronicles

The Detroit True Crime Chronicles PDF Author: Scott M. Burnstein
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781933822273
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The Detroit True Crime Chronicles is a-one-of-a- kind publication. It chronicles the rich history of criminal activity in the Motor City. Using information from declassified federal documents and many firsthand accounts, the book focuses on the city's local Mafia, key mobsters, drug kingpins, serial killers and unsolved crimes. Readers will be taken inside the belly of the beast for twenty bone-chilling and dramatic tales of intrigue, betrayal, and murder.

Michigan Time Capsule

Michigan Time Capsule PDF Author: Gregory A. Fournier
Publisher: Wheatmark, Inc.
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Michigan Time Capsule (2023) is a nonfiction collection of sixty-two of my best Fornology.com blog posts written between 2012 and 2022. The original posts were revised for inclusion in this collection, which is a sequel to my last bookDetroit Time Capsule (2022). Most chapters cover Michigan people and places, some famous and others infamous. Other chapters have a broader scope but deserve to be in a "best of" collection. This anthology can be read cover to cover, or each chapter can be read independently with no narrative thread binding one to the other.

Hank Greenberg

Hank Greenberg PDF Author: John Rosengren
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0451416023
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
Baseball during the Great Depression of the 1930s galvanized communities and provided a struggling country with heroes. Jewish player Hank Greenberg gave the people of Detroit—and America—a reason to be proud. But America was facing more than economic hardship. Hitler’s agenda heightened the persecution of Jews abroad while anti-Semitism intensified political and social tensions in the U.S. The six-foot-four-inch Greenberg, the nation’s most prominent Jew, became not only an iconic ball player, but also an important and sometimes controversial symbol of Jewish identity and the American immigrant experience. Throughout his twelve-year baseball career and four years of military service, he heard cheers wherever he went along with anti-Semitic taunts. The abuse drove him to legendary feats that put him in the company of the greatest sluggers of the day, including Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx, and Lou Gehrig. Hank’s iconic status made his personal dilemmas with religion versus team and ambition versus duty national debates. Hank Greenberg is an intimate account of his life—a story of integrity and triumph over adversity and a portrait of one of the greatest baseball players and most important Jews of the twentieth century. INCLUDES PHOTOS