Know Your Mobs: Color Me Purple

We talk a lot about the Outfit and the Five Families, but there were more than two criminal organizations in America. In Detroit, the Purple Gang (also known as the Sugar House Gang) was a mob of mostly Jewish bootleggers operating out of Detroit, led by Abe Bernstein. Though lost in the mist of mob history, the Purple Gang was an important organization during the 1920s. The proximity to Canada and its illegal-in-America Canadian Crown whiskey and other forms of alcohol made Detroit a key point of entry.

The Purple Gang had a key alliance with one particular American bootlegger, Joe Kennedy. And when Kennedy double-crossed the Purple (like he double-crossed every person he ever met), it took the Chicago Outfit's intercession to quash a murder contract on Kennedy. If you think it taught that little weasel a lesson, you'd be wrong.

By the late 1920s, The Purple Gang owned the Detroit underworld and controlled local vice, gambling, liquor, and drugs (American gangs found drugs too filthy to handle). The Purple Gang also ran the local wire service, providing horse racing information to local horse betting parlors and handbook operators (bookies). Bersnstein made friends with infamous mobsters in other cities including Meyer Lansky and Joe Adonis.

The Purple Gang was also suspected of taking part in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929. Allegedly, Abe Bernstein had called Bugs Moran and told him that a hijacked load of booze was on its way to a garage in Chicago. It was a helpful tip for Moran. His arch-enemy in a turf war, Al Capone, was making things difficult for Moran's Northside gang.

The next day, instead of delivering a load of liquor, five men dressed as policemen went to S.M.C. Cartage on North Clark Street (Moran's North Side hangout) and opened fire with machine guns, killing seven men in what has become known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

The Purple Gang rose to dominance as a criminal gang, but in-fighting and excessive violence let them to self-destruct by the 1930s.

Joe Bernstein and Abe Bernstein earned eventually hefty prison sentences after previously escaping jail time through old-fashioned intimidation and corruption. Waves of bloody infighting ensued, with key members being killed, including  Abe Axler, Eddie Fletcher, and Henry Shorr. The gang continued in a diminished capacity, but the predecessors of Detroit’s modern-day Mafia stepped in and filled the void as The Purple Gang, ultimately, self-destructed.

Fun fact: ​They are referenced in the 1957 film Jailhouse Rock in the song of the same name: "The whole rhythm section was the Purple Gang."