Ep. 23 - The Notorious Purple Gang

During Detroit's bootleg wars, a ruthless gang of Jewish immigrants rose up. They killed nearly 500 people during their reign of running the city of Detroit. The Purple Gang accomplished more in their five years of dominance than anything Al Capone and his gang achieved. In their wake, they left behind spirits in various locations that have been connected to their crime spree.

The Purple Gang was a Jewish gang that ran the city of Detroit. The story behind the gang's name is that two Detroit market owners were having a conversation and one said of the group, "They’re rotten, purple like the color of bad meat." They were led by Abe Bernstein. Bernstein was born in New York in 1892. His family moved to Detroit when he was young and he joined a teenage street gang that hung out in the Hasting Street neighborhood called Paradise Valley in Detroit's Lower East Side. He was joined by his brothers Raymond, Isadore and Joseph and they specialized in pick-pocketing. This gang would evolve into the Purple Gang at the beginning of prohibition and their crimes grew in intensity as simple thievery became armed robbery, extortion and eventually murder. During Prohibition, Detroit became a key port for running and distributing alcohol out of Canada.

The Purple Gang was known for instigating the “Cleaners and Dyers War.” This was a dispute between the cleaning industry and its union. Bernstein had organized The Wholesale Cleaners and Dyers Association and the gang coerced membership by using violent means of persuasion. The Purple Gang's reputation grew and Al Capone so feared the gang that he befriended them and ran some of his operations through them. The gang also became his chief supplier of Canadian whiskey and gave Capone the liquor he used to set up Bugs Moran's North Side Gang for the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Capone wasn't the only one to align with the gang. Longtime mobsters Charles Leiter and Henry Shorr hired the gang as enforcers. Part of that business entailed taking out a Detroit policeman named Vivian Welsh who had been extorting independent bootleggers and speakeasy operators. The Purple Gang would eventually be thought to be responsible for as many as 500 unsolved murders. That was accomplished in only five years, topping anything Al Capone might have done.

The Purple Gang made millions of dollars and ran the Detroit underworld from 1927 to 1932. Nobody would testify against the gang because they feared retribution. The gang would unravel shortly after Prohibition was repealed due to fighting within the gang because of egos and jealousies. They joined a national crime syndicate and tried running gambling rings in Detroit, many of which were run by a one-legged black man named Julius Horowitz who was the son of a sugar supplier to breweries. He was also wanted for murder in the South. This partnership came apart when gamblers found out that the Purple Gang had been using loaded dice and other tricks. A small riot ensued. Several gang members would eventually be arrested and given life sentences after they murdered several former members that left to start their own gang. By 1935, the gang was pretty much done and Abe Bernstein had moved on. He started working with New York mobsters Joe Adonis and Meyer Lansky. He would eventually relocate to Miami, Florida where he became a partner in several syndicate gambling casinos. He died on March 7, 1968.  

Kenyon's Lakeside Resort

The Purple Gang had a few hangouts in the Mid-Michigan area. One of these places was Kenyon's Lakeside Resort, located on five acres along the west banks of Sage Lake. The resort has been here for 130 years and featured hidden tunnels for the gang to run their nefarious activities through. There were more than just tunnels though. There were secret passages, secret stairways, hidden walls and hidden compartments. Today, Kenyon's offers seven beautiful rooms for overnight stays and 12 boat slips for overnight guests to rent. Many people who have stayed here claim to have had some unexplained experiences. Skeptics leave believers after hearing disembodied voices - particularly whispers - strange noises, objects moving on their own and the mysterious apparition of a woman in white.

Tommy's Detroit Bar

Little Harry's was a speakeasy where the Purple Gang hung out. Today, it is Tommy's Detroit Bar & Grill at 624 3rd Avenue. The original bar was built in 1840 and has a tunnel entrance that was used for liquor running from the Detroit River. Tommy had been told by some old-timers that somebody involved with the gang activity was whacked in the basement and buried there. Right before opening, he had recruited some friends to help clean up the place and a woman cleaned the showcases behind the bar and removed a clove of garlic attached to a string and threw it away. Apparently, the former owner had been Albanian and had it in there to ward off evil spirits. The woman added some things to the showcases and closed them and then everybody left for the night. The next day, the group came in to find the showcases wide open and everything the woman had added to them was stacked on the back bar. Tommy also once felt an intense rush of cold air come flying out of a room in the basement after he had to force open the door. A florescent light in the basement also came on by itself and after investigating they found it had no source for power. People have captured pictures of anomalies and spirits. Staff and patrons have watched items go flying off shelves. Tommy has seen a full-bodied apparition in a white suit and white fedora with dark glasses. He claims that this spirit nearly locked him in the walk-in cooler on two occasions.

Doherty Hotel

The most well-known haunting connected to the Purple Gang is related to the murder of one of their lawyers, Isaiah Leebove. Isaiah Leebove was a mysterious man. A man that wore many hats. He had not only served as a lawyer for the Purple Gang, but he had been an oil man for many years. Leebove got involved with the Purple Gang through their lieutenant Sam "Uncle Sammy" Garfield who was considered the unofficial godfather of Clare. Leebove aspired to become a banker and bought the Clare County Bank building. And he was good friends with a man named Jack Livingston. Or at least, they had been good friends. They met as young men in the oil business in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Livingston, Leebove and a third man formed the Mammoth Petroleum Company in the 1920s. They got lucky and struck oil. When it came time to cash in, Livingston and the other man found out that Leebove had fraudulently removed their names from the oil lease they had on the land. The two men sued Leebove, but they lost. The friendship soured from there for good reason. Livingston got lost in alcoholism, but eventually the men would find themselves in court once again in 1937.

Livingston was attempting to sue Leebove once again, but because Leebove was such a good lawyer and happened to have ties with the Purple Gang, he managed to get the court case delayed several times. Things were coming to a head for these two men and as Livingston turned to alcohol again, he completely lost control of his rage. It was May in 1938 when he ran into Leebove on the street outside of everyone’s favorite watering hole in Clare, Michigan: The Doherty Hotel. Unlike many hotel entrepreneurs of the time, Senator Alfred James Doherty built his hotel in 1924 at the center of Clare, rather than near the railroad tracks. He was a friend of Henry Ford and believed the automobile would make travel by railroad a thing of the past. His gamble proved lucrative. Clare became the “Crossroads of Michigan” and the Doherty was always full.

The original Doherty Hotel had sixty rooms, with hot and cold running water. Thirty-six rooms had their own private bath. The main floor of the hotel housed the Clare Public Library, a soda fountain shop, a barbershop, a coffee shop, a large dining room named The Wedgewood Room, a large kitchen and pantry and Senator Doherty's office. The Leprechaun Lounge on the main floor features a unique series of paintings. In the 1930s, a man of little means who had no place to stay, traded his talent with art for a place to stay. He painted the story of a leprechaun village and their production of ale. Each picture features a step in the process and at the end, the villagers celebrate their completion. Today, the Doherty offers 157 rooms and is continuing to update the hotel to make it better than ever. But let's wind back to 1938 and the infamous crime that took place in The Tap Room here.

Back on the street in front of the Doherty Hotel, Leebove and Livingston exchanged curt words with one another. Livingston demanded that Leebove pay him back the money he was owed. Leebove responded by telling Livingston that he was a lousy drunk and that he needed to get out of the way. He also commented that Livingston would just drink the money away anyway. Livingston grabbed Leebove by the arm and Leebove wrenched away, yelling that Livingston needed to get away from him. Livingston pushed away and headed into the Doherty Hotel, which was also his current residence.

Livingston sat in the bar with some friends for a few minutes. He cried and rambled and then went to the bar for a drink. He was refused. Leebove then entered the bar with Purple Gang Enforcer Sam Braunstein and the two men joined Leebove's lawyer, Byron Geller, and Geller's wife who already had a table. Leebove ordered a soft drink. Livingston sat down three tables away. After a few minutes, Livingston left the bar and went to his room. He should have just gone to bed, but he had decided he needed to kill Isaiah Leebove. In a trunk at the foot of his bed, he pulled out a .38 and loaded it. He then slipped it in his coat pocket and went back downstairs. Livingston re-entered the lounge and sat down exactly where he had been sitting before, with the Barrs. His entrance went unnoticed by Leebove, who had his back to the entrance from the lobby. Livingston sat with the Barrs for another three or four minutes, thinking over what he was going to do. Then he rose to his feet, a man delusional and paranoid and he focused on Leebove. He thought that he saw Leebove glancing up at him three times while talking with Geller and his other friends and Livingston believed that this meant Leebove was going to get the jump on him. Livingston nervously jerked the .38 from his pocket as he stepped towards Leebove's table. He fired several times, hitting Byron Geller in the thigh twice and killing Leebove when a bullet went through Leebove’s left arm, through his chest, pierced his heart and exited his body. He fell over dead.

The police arrested Livingston at his room in the Doherty. Livingston was calm and claimed to not regret what he had done and he was taken to the Clare County Jail. The coroner put together a coroner's jury and eight witnesses were summoned. Only two of the witnesses would testify. The jury was out for an hour and came back with an acquittal via a plea of temporary insanity. Livingston was sent to a Northern Michigan institute for a few years and then he moved to new jersey where he died of a drug overdose at the age of 55.

Staff members at the Doherty claim that they hear noises that are not part of the normal operation and there are rumors that at least two ghosts haunt the Doherty. One of them is thought to be Grandma Doherty whose distinctive perfume is smelled on the third floor. Of course, the haunt we are interested in is that of the spirit of Isaiah Leebove.  Leebove's apparition is seen from the hotel lobby to the upper floors and definitely in the Tap Room where he was murdered so heartlessly. This ghost is always described as a dark figure. Guests hear knocking on their bedroom doors. When they open their doors, no one is there. Sometimes those doors are opened in the middle of the night by something unseen. Knocks are heard in the walls. One paranormal group caught an EVP of what seems to be a residual recording of a woman yelling for space for a gunshot victim to have room to breathe. G.H.O.S.T. Paranormal Investigations caught an EVP during an investigation that featured a haunting gun shot. 

Did the violent lives of the Purple Gang leave these locations haunted? Does Isaiah Leebove haunt the Doherty Hotel? That is for you to decide!