FILM RIGHTS AVAILABLE
FILM RIGHTS AVAILABLE
Clyde Nottingham
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Feinberg, Stanley Knox
Stanley Knox Feinberg, age 90, prominent Chicago attorney , beloved husband for 63 years of the late Lois, nee Simon; devoted son of the late Anne and Judge Michael Feinberg; loving brother of Eileen (Bernard) Burdman and the late Betty (late George) Epstein; adored uncle of Michael (LaDina) Epstein, Barbara (Richard) MacArthur, Nancy Katz and the late Alan (Bebe) Epstein; proud great-uncle of Mark (Karen), Jay (Julie), Craig (Joy), Ryan and Julie Epstein, Jessica and Aaron Katz, Jeffery Gill, Timothy and Adam MacArthur; and greatgreat-uncle of five. Private Cryptside service Wednesday. Contributions may be made to Friedman Place, 5527 N. Maplewood, Chicago, IL 60625. Info, The Goldman Funeral Group, 847-478-1600.
Charlotte’s Crime of the Century
When gangsters hit a mail truck on the Queen City’s peaceful
streets, they had no idea whose territory they had invaded.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened.
Only days earlier, a tip came into the police department that something big was
about to go down in Charlotte.
As Frank Littlejohn surveyed the scene and listened to
eyewitnesses, the chief of detectives knew this was the something big.
The mail truck was heading away from the railroad depot on
Third Street when a car darted out of an alley and slammed on brakes in front
of it. In swift, sure movements, four men, at least one brandishing a machine
gun, jumped out of the car and swarmed the truck.
The gunman shoved the tommy gun into the truck’s cab and
disarmed the driver. At the same time, two men walked to the back, cleanly
clipped the lock on the rear doors with a pair of wire cutters, forced the mail
clerk out of the truck, and grabbed several sacks.
In less than two minutes, the thieves, loot in hand,
retreated to their car, and, in a cloud of dust, they — and more than $100,000
in cash and bank notes — were gone.
Mob hit
Littlejohn had no doubt that this crime, well executed and
committed in broad daylight on a clear morning, was a mob hit. He was right.
The year was 1933. The day, November 15. In Chicago,
Illinois, Al Capone was battling Roger “The Terrible” Touhy for control of
illegal beer and liquor sales in that city’s northwest suburbs. Five months
earlier, Capone’s agents framed Touhy for the kidnapping of Jake Factor, a
known gangster (and brother of the famed makeup artist Max Factor). Touhy was
awaiting trial when four of his henchmen headed south to “raise” money for his
defense.
Charlotte in the 1930s had few if any connections to
organized crime. Cotton fields surrounded it, and textile mills filled it. As
in many towns at the height of Prohibition, staunching the flow of bootleg
liquor was one of law enforcement’s primary occupations. But Charlotte, already
with a population of roughly 80,000, was on its way to becoming a financial
center.
“There were multiple skyscrapers and fancy department stores
and the new offices of the Federal Reserve, which opened in 1927,” says Dr. Tom
Hanchett, staff historian at the Levine Museum of the New South. “Money flowed
in and out of Charlotte.”
Touhy’s men probably thought targeting deposits on their way
to the Federal Reserve in the so-called sleepy South seemed like an easy mark.
They were wrong.
‘Finest detective in America’
What Touhy didn’t know was that he had sent his men to
commit a headline crime in a city patrolled by a man who J. Edgar Hoover would
describe as “the finest detective in America.” The ruthless gangster soon
learned why.
According to It Happened in North Carolina, Scotti Kent’s
2000 book detailing several little-known episodes in the state’s history,
Littlejohn came to Charlotte from South Carolina in 1917 to run a shoe store.
Sometime in the 1920s, he went to work as an undercover federal agent
investigating Ku Klux Klan activities. In 1927, the Charlotte City Council
hired him to rid uptown Charlotte of prostitution. That position, originally
temporary, was the start of a 30-year career with the Charlotte Police
Department.
By the time of the mail truck robbery, Littlejohn had risen
through the ranks to become chief of detectives. He was a tall, lanky man. He
smoked cigars, and even today, people who knew him talk about his big nose.
Some say his ego was bigger.
“He was not very humble,” says Ryan Sumner, the historian
who curated “Beneath the Badge,” the exhibit on policing in Mecklenburg County
at the Charlotte Museum of History. “He had a reputation for being good, and he
knew it.”
He was good.
“He was no fool,” says Johnnie Helms, 79, a retired officer
who went to work for the department in the 1950s when Littlejohn was chief of
police. “He was thinking next week while I was thinking today.”
Helms remembers Littlejohn as a tough but fair man who knew
his city and who had strong ideas of how its police department should be run.
He didn’t like to be told what to do; he had more than one clash with the City
Council throughout the years and ultimately was fired 15 days before his
scheduled retirement for publicly criticizing a council action.
And as a story in the book Charlotte Police Department
1866-1991 shows, he wasn’t one to let convention get in the way of closing a
case. Evidence told Littlejohn that a murder in the Myers Park neighborhood was
likely the result of a homeowner walking in on a burglar. Experience with
Charlotte’s more unsavory characters told him who his likely suspects were.
Rather than interrogating the suspects, Littlejohn called
their wives and girlfriends into his office. With the lights down low, he
peered into a crystal ball and began chanting a voodoo spell he remembered from
childhood. According to Charlotte Police Department, “One of the women began
swooning and screamed that the killer was her husband.”
Hot on the trail
When Touhy’s men hit the mail truck, all Littlejohn and his
men needed was a single clue to get the investigation rolling. They got it when
the car used in the robbery was discovered within hours of the crime just
outside the city limits. It was a brand new black Plymouth sedan that was
stolen from a home on East Morehead Street two weeks earlier. Maintenance
records indicated that since its last service, the car had been driven only
nine miles — almost the exact distance between the robbery and where the car
was abandoned.
“If it hadn’t any more than nine miles on it, it had to have
been hidden somewhere all that time,” Littlejohn explained in a Charlotte
Observer article published toward the end of his career. So he put a detective
in a car and told him to drive along every route leading to the holdup scene.
At the same time, he had postal carriers asking residents on those same routes
if anyone had rented a garage. “This was a mail robbery, you see, and the postal
inspectors were on it. … We rang every doorbell,” he said.
They found a woman on 10th Street who had rented a room to
two men. At first, they didn’t want to take it, she said, because it didn’t
come with a garage. She arranged for them to use her neighbor’s. But, she
added, every time the two men left the house, they headed west, on foot.
That information, combined with the fact that there were
still two robbers unaccounted for, sparked a search for a second hideout.
Case closed
A tip about an unfamiliar Packard spotted near where the
Plymouth was stolen sent Littlejohn to the second location. “I went tearing
out,” he said. “I came up to the door and heard my own police calls blaring
out.”
Whoever had been in the room left in a hurry. They didn’t
bother turning off the radio they had tuned to the police channel. Detectives
found a suitcase full of clothes, three steaks in the refrigerator, and, on the
table, a newspaper with the story of how Littlejohn found the car used in the
robbery. Littlejohn ordered his men to take every item, including the garbage,
to headquarters. There, he sorted out 27 bits of torn-up paper that, when
pieced together, formed a Chicago rent receipt.
“For 60 hours there, I didn’t have my shoes off,” Littlejohn
said. “I left here at 6 p.m. that evening and was in Chicago the next morning.”
The landlady at the rental property gave Littlejohn
descriptions that matched eyewitness accounts in Charlotte.
“The landlady said one of the men carried a violin all the
time,” Littlejohn said in the 1957 interview. “That was no violin. That was a
machine gun case!”
Between the descriptions and fingerprints lifted from beer
bottles found in the second hideout, investigators nailed the robbers’
identities. The ringleader was Basil “The Owl” Banghart, a notorious thief in
the Chicago area and Touhy’s right-hand man. His suspected partners in the
heist were Ludwig “Dutch” Schmidt, Isaac A. Costner, and Charles “Ice” Connors.
All four had long histories on the wrong side of the law.
Within two weeks of the robbery, three of the suspects were
behind bars; one was dead. Investigators tracked down Banghart in Baltimore. He
was arrested and, six months after the holdup, stood trial in federal court in
Asheville. He was sentenced to 36 years for his role in the robbery. Costner
testified against his cronies but still got 30 years. And Schmidt pulled almost
30 years.
Ice Connors never made it to trial. According to The
Charlotte Observer article, he “was found dead in a Chicago suburb, his body
riddled with machine gun bullets and trussed with barbed wire, his dead fist
clenched around a penny.”
Littlejohn explained in the 1957 article: “That’s the
underworld sign for betrayal. Maybe Ice was just dumb, but he put the police on
the mob’s trail and that was enough to kill him.”
No-nonsense character
For his role in solving the crime and helping to put Touhy’s
top associates behind bars, Littlejohn received a letter from J. Edgar Hoover
in which the legendary FBI director praised him “as the finest detective in
America.” The framed letter adorned Littlejohn’s office throughout his career
with the Charlotte Police Department, which included 12 years as chief of
police.
Say the name Littlejohn to anyone who knew him or is
familiar with his history, and you get the same reaction: He was a no-nonsense
character, a poster boy for hard-line law enforcement. Helms, who walked an uptown
beat in his early days on the force, remembers the chief as a man who spent
little time at his desk and who knew everything about his city.
As the voodoo story demonstrates, Littlejohn wasn’t above
using questionable measures to solve a crime. Yet, Charlotte Police Department
1866-1991 credits him with setting the police department on a course toward
more professional law enforcement. He established Charlotte’s first police
academy; before that, new recruits were handed a gun and a badge and put on the
streets. He sent commanding officers to the FBI National Academy and the
Southern Police Institute. He set up the first youth bureau in the state to
address juvenile delinquency, and the police department established its first
firing range under his reign.
Littlejohn had high expectations for his officers, Helms
says, but he had the respect of his men and of the townspeople.
Persistence and perception
Even with those accomplishments, Charlotte’s “crime of the
century” and his role in solving it remained a highlight of Littlejohn’s
career. It shows up in most references to the chief.
Littlejohn enjoyed the recognition and recounting the drama,
no doubt. But apparently, the way he saw it, putting together the pieces of the
puzzle was just a part of the job.
“People have an exaggerated idea of the acumen and brains a
case like this takes,” he said in 1957. “Mostly, it’s persistence … persistence
and perception, which is different from observation.”
271 F.2d 261: Isaac Allen Costner, Appellant, v. United States of America, Appellee
United States Court of Appeals Sixth Circuit. - 271 F.2d
261
Oct. 22, 1959
Robert I.
Doggett, Cincinnati, Ohio, for appellant.
Russell E. Ake,
U.S. Atty., argued by James Sennett, Jr., Asst. U.S. Atty., Cleveland, Ohio,
for appellee.
Appellant and
one Barney Majjesie were charged in the District Court in a three-count
indictment with (1) possession of a 300-gallon still which had not been
registered according to law, (2) engaging in the business of a distillery
without having given the required bond and (3) fermenting 275 gallons of mash
fit for distillation in violation of Title 26, 5174(a), 5606 and 5216,
respectively, of United States Code.
Majjesie
entered a plea of guilty.
Appellant
waived a jury and was tried by the Court. He was convicted on all three counts
of the indictment. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment on the first and
second counts, to be served concurrently, and one year and five months on the
third count, to be served consecutively after the sentences on counts one and
two had been served.
Appellant was
represented by counsel of his own choosing in the District Court and in this
Court by counsel assigned by the Court. He filed his own brief in this Court
Twelve
questions were presented here by the appellant, many of which have no bearing
on the issues in this case.
The principal
error relied on in argument was that the judgment of conviction was not
sustained by sufficient evidence.
A motion for
judgment of acquittal was made by appellant at the close of the Government's
evidence. It was not renewed at the close of all the evidence.
Under the
circumstances this Court was not required to review the evidence. Picciurro v.
United States, 8 Cir., 250 F.2d 585. While not obliged to do so, we
have, nevertheless, examined the record and find no merit in appellant's
contention as there was ample evidence to support each and every element of the
several offenses.
The District Court
had before it eyewitnesses who saw appellant purchase quantities of sugar and
grain at different stores. He also purchased a pressure tank, still parts and
half-gallon jars which he transported to the site where he constructed and
operated the still. His own partner in the venture, Barney Majjesie, testified
against him. A Government chemist determined that the mash had an alcoholic
content of 3.4% by volume.
Appellant also
testified as a witness in his own behalf and denied the material charges in the
indictment.
He did not
recall buying as much sugar as was claimed, but did admit purchasing some
supplies for Majjesie, including sugar sweepings. He was arrested on the scene
by Government agents who had a search warrant.
It was for the
trial judge to determine who to believe under the circumstances and we cannot
say from this record that he was wrong.
Appellant next
contends that only one offense was committed and that the sentence on the third
count should have been made to run concurrently with the sentences on counts
one and two. In our judgment, different evidence was required to establish
count three. It was, therefore, a separate offense. Bozza v. United States, 330 U.S.
160, 67 S.Ct. 645, 91 L.Ed. 818; Newman v. United States, 6 Cir., 212 F.2d 450; United States v. White, D.C., 156
F.Supp. 37.
14
Appellant
further contends that his sentences were excessive. This was a matter solely
within the province of the District Judge and with which we have no right to
interfere so long as they were within the statutory limit. Hunter v. United
States, 6 Cir., 149 F.2d 710 certiorari denied 326 U.S.
787, 66 S.Ct. 472, 90 L.Ed. 478. The Court had the right to take
into account appellant's past criminal record which included two violations of
the National Prohibiton Act and one robbery of the mails for which he received
a sentence of 25 years in 1934. He has admitted violating his conditional
release.
15
We have
considered the other errors charged and find them to be without substance.
16
The judgment of
the District Court is affirmed.
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