Lee Gordon: Dreams and Realities Chapter 5 - 'The Ghost over Detroit'

We dive into the history of the city that would shape Lee Gordon's early years and the remarkable discovery of the real leader of Detroit's notorious Purple Gang

Lee Gordon inherited a city that always seemed like it could lose control of the steering wheel at any moment. A 5-minute stroll to the east would bring him to the gargantuan entrance of the Ford Motor Company where the world’s first ever mass-produced car had just received a somewhat crucial upgrade, comprising an electric starter and powered lighting. If he were able to get out of his cot and wonder in the opposite direction a short while, there was a fair chance he’d witness a violent dispute between rival gangs. At this point in history, if we are at liberty to suggest beneath all this sort of fuss we create for ourselves that there is a delicate living organism spinning endlessly around a bright sun, we have licence to describe Detroit in those times as living machine. A noisy, bold and irrepressible creation, it was also a dangerous place to exist within if you got to close to its engine and tangled yourself in the cogs that turned it. As it filled rapidly with millions of ethnic factory workers with just as many dreams, its Jewish population in particular swelled even faster, fuelled by the additional need to escape Russian persecution following a tired script written a thousand years before this latest incarnation.

The question I took time to answer prior to beginning this chapter was how far back in history should I go to explain Lee Gordon? At what point did the journey of Lee Gordon begin? It would at first seem obvious to begin on the day of his birth and a silly question to bother myself with. But as a child of an ethnic father, it became quickly apparent that to explain the turmoil of my circumstance comprehensively, I had to reach into times before I walked the earth and look at the hardship of my predecessors.

As such I decided to do the same when my curiosity around him developed. Especially since some of the world viewed him like a B grade monster of the mid-century, rising from the swamp you were told to stay away from as a child.

I am not going to excuse Lee’s exceptionally poor form at times, but I suspect you’ll look at him in a more nuanced way after this chapter.

I’d like to get one formality out of the road before we take a dive. And that is that if the persisting rumours are true that his real identity is actually ‘Leon Gevorshner born in 1917, they are certainly not the result of his own self-proclaimed cunning. Lee also told everyone he grew up in Coral Gables, Florida. Yet his census records somewhat support the contrary. There is some proof of him living there. But that was after leaving University and first entertaining the devil with his soul, chumming Lansky in Cuba for a leg in the door.

The potential identity cover-up, if anything, was the whim of Lee’s grandfather, Lazar Gordon, who is also registered in the moth bothered annals as a Gordon. When he signed the New York disembarkation roll under the same moniker after crossing the Atlantic and reaching his new homeland of the United States from Russia in 1886, it was already an old and trusted magic trick performed during and after Jewish migration in gaining employment, or just simply to be an accepted member of a new society. Occasionally though, it was a honed skill utilized for immoral intentions, a technique to avoid detection and punishment.

As for Lee’s real age, until recent research I’d have put all my chips on 1923. But the weight of recent small offerings of evidence have eroded my confidence.

From his high-school year book photo, his brother Delmar Gordon impresses like a veritable giant over his classmates, while Lee already looks a thousand cigars in front of his peers in his freshman group photo at Miami University. Both Delmar and Lee also held testing managerial positions and pastimes in high-school, which I will touch on in latter chapters. There is also the unusual non-existence of birth certificates for either of them, which has justifiably propelled the rumours.

The aforementioned, though, have been known for some time. So it was only a recent unearthing of a few closet box skeletons that takes the 1917 guess from a possible to a probable.

Prior to Lee’s birth, a small article placed in the first world drama section of New York’s ‘The Sun’ newspaper on November 24, 1912, remarked on a situation that had arisen at the home of Louis and Jenny Gordon’s residence the previous morning. Louis had remained asleep in bed after Jenny had woken to prepare breakfast. She remarked that before doing so she’d opened the window to air the room of superfluous gas smells that regularly build up over the course of the night. Reflecting the period, the heater was designed to fire on ‘coal gas’, a far more lethal gas to humans than the modern variety because of its high carbon monoxide levels. If it were allowed to leak without a flame into a room, it performed the deadly act of a quiet, odourless killer, that would slowly caress the inhabitant into an exponentially confused and sleepy state on a journey to the other side of life’s brick wall.

When his suspiciously young-looking wife, Jennie Gordon, nay Lopate’, walked in the room to wake him and find in horror that her partner was following that script with the grim reaper standing over the bed, a little seed germinated in her mind that it might not be the last time he paid them a visit after this near fatal rescue.

Newspapers of the day were littered with these domestic tragedies, a period when so many of the burgeoning inventions could end your life as quickly as making it easier. But domestic technology in this case wasn’t threatening to be the perpetrator. For Louis Gordon on that seemingly unthreatening morning, it was his perception of reality that fell into dis-repair.

Although we will probably never know the whole story, a lethal build-up of gas while the window aired the room was never going to stop the gossip mill from turning. Nor was the rationale for being so thoughtful as to allow a windy 5-degree morning to bring your loved one out of their slumber. Above all the contingency plans when the whisperings got going, they would become impossible to curtail after latter life events indicated that this near tragedy was likely a result of darker ambitions, not carelessness

The Sun Newspaper reported on the vigilance and quick thinking of Louis’ young wife to quickly drag him outside for cleaner air. The only issue with this candid display was that it wasn’t Louis’ wife dragging him onto the street, not even his fiancé’. Their nuptials weren’t due for another 18 months.

The motive to keep the birth dates and location of both Lee and his older brother Delmar hidden is certainly believable if there was a birth out of wedlock. It would also explain why they chose to engage in the risky business of living together prior to marriage. By proxy, Lee’s birth year would have needed to be pushed forward a few years to hide this hypothesised ‘illegitimate’ birth of Delmar from the bored finger pointers in the Jewish upper class.

Delmar is noted as being close to 7 years older than Lee on census data, born in 1916. Which seems odd for an early 1900s conservative upper-class family with traditional values. Usually children came in quicker succession, not in gaps of 7 years. If Delmar was an unexpected arrival, it’s understandable that they would delay having Lee until around 1917 after a marriage in 1914.

Supporting the aforementioned is that Lee did let it slip to an Australian Jewish Newspaper reporter late in his career that he’d grown up in Brooklyn. It was the only time he ever did so and only at a stage in his career when all had seemed lost. Until now we’ve all presumed Lee liked to peddle a mystery persona for the fun of it and perhaps keep a few pesky debtors at bay in the process. But there was a very good reason for it; because he was on the run from his past a lot earlier than we’d assumed. His true identity, in fact, was the greatest threat to his downfall. While many of Lee’s lies were experienced in his office and in his bedroom, they hung over him like a bomb over Detroit.

Lee’s uncle, Harry Lopate had grown up in Detroit and was almost a town brand name by the close of his life. By all accounts Harry liked to live with the wolves and get home just in time for a cuddle and late supper. His claim to fame was the pioneering role he undertook as the so called ‘demon’ scoreboard operator at Navin Field, the home of the American baseball league’s Detroit Tigers. It was built by Frank Navin in the early 1900s, whose main problem in life was that he liked to work on both sides of the fence. That, and a permanent sideways glance enough to get the dogs barking as he made a short cut through the park on the way home from a Tigers win.

When not in his office or barracking for his local team, he’d invariably be doing the local wager rounds, meeting Harry Lopate in the process, who shared the similar passions with equal measure. Local lore had it that Harry liked to partake in the odd bit of game tampering, relaying the catchers’ secret signals privileged by his advantageous position high up in the bleachers. For Navin, a one-eyed waging Tigers tragic, Lopate could turn up 15 minutes into the game and he’d still be his favourite employee.

On the evening of the 23^rd of February 1907, Harry Lopate sat around a card table with a similar grouping of dreamers located in one of the many Detroit illegal gambling venues at the back of Albert Golden’s Saloon on Hasting St. Rather forlorn and clinging to hope in the next round dealt to them, their friend Hyman calmy reached over and scooped up their son’s savings for summer vacation, their great aunt’s auxiliary takings that they were supposed to deposit in the bank the day before and the cash for the pawn loan made on their wives engagement ring. The only solace they had as their stomachs sunk below their waist line was that their grinning friend outstretched over the velvet card table was without question one of the most successful ‘fleecers’ the world had ever seen. So much so that it took over one hundred years to get any idea of the sort of dark tapestries he crafted from the moment his sons began the rudimentary tasks of skinning their knuckles and throwing cumbersome personalities into deep quarries.

His full name was Hyman Baron Bernstein. Along with his brother Philip ‘Perez’ Bernstein and father Moses, they became the most significant progenitors of international organized crime in the modern context and anonymous leaders of Detroit’s infamous ‘Purple Gang’.

The Bernstein names above are not necessarily those ascribed at birth. But they are at least the most common names they identified themselves with. There is still a real sense the semantics around their original names haven’t been solved. But we now know the persons that used those potential decoys now, even though the official birth certificates might read ‘Tiny Teena and the TV Diners’, for all we know.

Under the glare of such a big revelation, I’ll need to digress from Lee Gordon’s life specifically. But it will give you a good idea of the soil he grew in just the same, revealing the considerable impact of the Bernstein’s on the day to day lives of the people of Detroit, New York and Chicago.

This ‘uncut’ version occurs many years after the fact. It only arrives now because in addition to my un-intentioned attained skill that contributed to such a discovery, there is no world for them to bribe or blackmail anymore either. No reason to hide the truth for themselves or the immediate descendants they loved. Rather, many passionately indulge in the written history of Capone and claim proud connections to it even though he’s been a bugs’ gangster paradise for nearly 80 years. I’m sure many of those connected to the life of the Bernstein’s will appreciate hearing the true story anyway. One would have to admit their exploits would have required an intriguing level of grit and skill.

To begin, I must start the summary on a slightly sour note for USA crime history buffs, as we may need a sequel called ‘Once Upon a Time in Australia’ to legitimize one of their favourite movie titles of the genre. While it seems the Bernstein’s did spend their childhood more so in the UK and flirted with some journeys to the USA as adults, Australia was the boot-camp for the Purple Gang originators

Moses Bernstein and his offspring are noted in ship journals as travelling to various parts of the British Commonwealth and at least one of the Bernstein’s visited New Zealand. It was a staggering obsession for ripping off Australian miners and jewellery buyers that got passed down from father to son very neatly. This also included a grandson in Hyman’s lineage, Friedman Bernstein, a USA vaudeville agent and partner of Mae West who was always bobbing up in the theatre set with a grating manor and the charm to clean it up. His claim to fame was bouncing a hefty check on the Fuhrer just prior to World-War Two breaking out. Walter Shapiro, Freemans’ great nephew, writes about his great grandfather Hymans’ journey in his book entitled Hustling Hitler: The Jewish Vaudevillian Who Fooled the Fuhrer.

Many from the Bernstein family travelled to Australia for a mixture of sight sightseeing and a flutter at the world’s best paying casino by the time this pastime ran out of puff in the 1940s, when Freeman appears to have hung up his silk gloves.

A very interesting avenue to explore here is the very young infants accompanying their parents. There’s a Joseph Bernstein in there and I’m sure we will find some high-ranking Purple Gang members having visited Australia before migrating from the UK to the USA, with a bit more research.

There’s a log entry I’ve included in the members section which has a +1 hitching a free ride on his Mumma’s lap. It is the composer of West Side Story, Leonard Bernstein. He’s the son of the man just about to become the undisputed Godfather of Detroit and head of the Purple Gang, Hyman Bernstein Snr. This entry had a familiar smell as soon as I laid eyes on it. Phyllis was told to use ‘Burns’. The Bernstein’s would often replace the first e with a u to cover their tracks. Hyman Bernstein Jnr who is the son of Hyman Bernstein sits next to them. He was interested in theatre and the arts like his son. It appears he based himself in LA and was quite an anonymous figure like his father.

A close associate mentioned in the trial that Hyman Snr had stayed in Australia for 10 years. Some say he died in Australia in 1928. Which is quite plausible, since by 1928 things were beginning to get a bit rough around the edges in Detroit. We might even discover that Hyman had a short successful stint as the leader and the reason their infighting became insurmountable was that their captain who steered the ship had gone.

Hyman’s earlier career stint in Australia supposedly moved into the counterfeit experimentation more and more as time passed. The huckstering initially focused on fake jewellery and the standard now you see it-now you don’t routine. It was only the introduction to a crack counterfeiter in Johan Schmidt that Hyman decided to give the USA a serious tilt. Schmidt supposedly had such profound skill he offered to assist the UK Mint in creating a note impossible to forge. But he understandably heard crickets.

By around 1900 American Secret Service agents had already spotted some counterfeit spot-fires in Europe and a few more concerning in the States. But it would be the Bernstein led plot that began in the late 1800s that brought international press coverage and concern. In so doing it is arguably the first documented transatlantic organized crime dynasty in the modern context.

In October 1902, London and New York detectives uncovered a sophisticated counterfeit ring producing forged Bank of England £5 and £10 notes. The ringleaders, arrested were three immigrant brothers: Morris Bernstein, jeweller Hyman Bernstein and his brother also a jeweller, Philip Bernstein. They conspired alongside William and Solomon Barmash, carpenter Joe Zubesky, Matthew Rome, tailor presser Symon Obolnick, leather dealer Adolph Zickel, bootmaker Israel Salisbury and Morris Strong.

Testimony from informant Schmidt was critical: he revealed meeting locations at public houses and detailed handling and distribution of forged notes to accomplices across Britain and Europe. Sentences were harsh; Hyman 15 years, Philip 10 years, Solomon Barmash 10 years and William Barmash 8 years.

I encourage you to read the feature articles and court transcript of this trial which are provided in the member’s section. It’s a classic tale of transatlantic high jinks that captured world-wide imagination.

For Solomon Barmash, however, all he could imagine in front of him for the next 10 years were iron bars and the dim groans of inmates as they lived out the rest of days. Soon after the trial he ended that narrative using a small pistol handed to him by his teenage daughter while visiting his cell.

Morris Bernstein was acquitted. Holding the line throughout that he had nothing to do with the whole charade, nor was he related to the namesakes on trial. It succeeded because the Bernstein sons knew full well their father couldn’t bribe or scare anyone nearly as well if he were behind bars. As such they distanced Morris from any significant connection to the whole affair.

If only Solomon Barmash could have looked into his tarot readings with the knowledge that public outcry and burdening cost caused by the severity of sentences was building to the point that by 1910 Home Secretary Winston Churchill granted clemency for many put away by the Old Blighty. Under this prison reform program, both Hyman and Philip were released. Their release mug shots confirm their most commonly associated names ‘Philip Bernstein’ who was released on June 21, 1910, aged around 40 years, and ‘Hyman Bernstein’, released on November 10, 1910, at an age of around 45. These photographs are the axis of this whole article, providing unequivocal visual continuity from convict to free man and serving as baseline portraits to connect them to the Purple Gang

After a stint behind bars the Bernstein’s were in a transition phase toward the USA. We can track this through census data from the late 1800s onward. It’s here you’ll also get a glimpse into how they’ve evaded crime researchers all these years. First names, ages, locations and household positions constantly changed or repeated fraudulently. By the time I was finished with this tedium, I’d realized you spotted their work with your nose, not your eyes. A very hazy lineage threading its way through their census entries spanning 80 years. 80 years of consistently being inconsistent. And its reflected elsewhere too; in courts, newspapers, journals and so forth.

We begin in Whitechapel London, in 1871. A time and place where many of the next century’s best swindlers, pickpockets, fraudsters and illusionists discovered their life’s calling. While for some it was a calling cast upon them unfairly to survive, it also attracted the property flippers who never knew how to accept enough is enough and ultimately let the courts handle that task for them.

With things looking about as suspicious as the Wiggles at this stage, Solomon Bernstein heads the family’s Whitechapel 1871 census aged 38, Sarah his wife is aged 30 and 4 children entered at predictable ages, with Abraham 9, Hyman 7, Ester 5 and Hannah at 2 years.

By the time this census came around, Solomon had already been on an excursion or two Down Under, traced docking in at Port Melbourne under the guise of ‘H. Bernstein’ on the traveller log dated 1861. His flock, particularly Hyman, were eager to tag along on the next trip, as his father was seemingly bringing back more than just lipstick on his collar and tacky gifts from these joyous journeys abroad.

The 1881 census at the same address reveals Solomon holding steady with that name. But it appears he’s rented the Tardis, declaring he’s only 43 by that stage. Sarah, Esther (now with an ‘h’) and Hyman appear correctly entered, but Abraham and Hannah have disappeared for the time being. Perhaps he decided their identity needed a swap, since the young trainees were already building a frightfully good reputation at fleecing your pocket and ruining your day in the blink of an eye. A new boy of 10 called Joseph and a boy Asher of 8 years rounds up the 1881 transformation.

The next census in 1891 came with sweeping changes. The Bernstein’s had moved from the slums of their Gower’s Walk Whitechapel home to cleaner air of the sanitary district further east at 4 Varden St Mile End, where some of the first commission housing projects to combat the ‘Old Grey’s’ increasingly abhorrent living conditions sprung up. It would not appear the Bernstein’s are minted by then. Indeed, Hyman was supposedly becoming frustrated with the toil of his international career even though he would soon have enough sugar to whip up the most audacious counterfeit outfit the world had seen.

The swelling of Hyman’s wallet pocket allowed a cast of 9 to fill the lines of the 1891 census. There was safety in numbers here, and more flexibility as they carefully co-ordinated the USA launch. All the while the skill of the cubs was beginning to shine as bright as the gems in their pockets. Moses and co. were excellent teachers in the task of training children to do all the worst things exceptionally well.

A male of 48 years called Mark now heads the family in this census. Sarah is now a daughter of 19, Ellen, a new wife appears, aged 46. Hyman is now 46 years in the space of 10, Philip ‘Perez’ Bernstein appears for the first time, well below his correct age, listed at 16. Hannah is back at age 14 and a new girl arrives, Sophia aged 19.

In the 1901 UK Census there is the usual addition and subtraction of names and figures and the family has moved to 120 High St in Whitechapel. Solomon has vanished leaving only 2 potential male heads to lead the family. As mentioned earlier, Solomon (who portrayed himself as a Morris in the trial) proclaimed no attachment to his own family throughout the trial. It was imperative he move out so that just the sons were implicated. His non-appearance in this 1901 March Census is damning evidence. He’s appearance on a separate census entry, with just Hannah and himself, even more so.

1910 brought wholesale upheaval. All the lineage except Solomon head for the USA once their eldest jail birds are released by Churchills grace. Their 1910 Census forms from the USA are telling. They set up camp strategically in Chicago, Detroit, New York and Philadelphia.

There is a house of 7 in Philadelphia of Morris Dora David Hannah, Ida, Sarah, Abraham, Philip and May. In New York we have the Bernstein’s in Morris, Sarah and Dora living with a Hyman ‘Goodman’, Hyman ‘Price’ & Isidor ‘Willer’. Notably, they begin to live in large homes and as a result they fill the census sheets with all the likely suspects. There are only 2 homes on their New York sheet with a Hyman present in each.

Detroit is a concentrated grouping of 10 in a smaller home - George, Sarah, Eva, Abraham, Jennie, Ida, Joseph, Raymond, Isidor and Harry. Most addresses on this sheet appear to look honest, apart from a few names which look a little suspect.

The Chicago sheet is teeming with a bull-ant’s nest of mobsters. 3 Hyman’s appear in only 2 homes which take up most of the lines available on this record. Names listed specifically under Bernstein are Hyman, Fannie, Jacob, Louis, Rose, Bessie and Abraham. Plenty of surnames appear invented.

1920 Census records reveal 2 big homes on the New York entry with the Bernstein name represented by Hyman, Fany, Rose, Isick, Samual, Lottia and Harry. There’s a Hyman 'Applefield' Dora, Bella, Louis, Ellisa in the other home along with many familiar faces.

The New York entry for 1930 is much the same. Telling evidence here is that Hyman has decided he wants his child Louis to be his father. The family reads Louis, Betsie, Bella, Dora, Meyer, Hyman and Lily. There’s another census sheet in New York with just 2 homes with the same methods being utilized. Notably here’ is that Hyman’s daughter, Dora, is now recorded as his wife. There are 3 Dora’s and 2 homes take up nearly all the space.

The 1930 Detroit entry is smaller as usual. Things seem to be getting a bit panicky and unsafe in Detroit, as it’s an all male household, comprising the Bernstein’s in William, Morris, Sam, David and Harry

From all these stats one thing becomes patently clear. The Godfather of Detroit, Hyman Bernstein, wasn’t satisfied with just Census manipulation. When they arrived in New York in the early 1900s Hyman and Co took to the doctoring of public data on a mass scale as well. Arguably the earliest example of public data ‘hacking’ the USA had seen.

With a pack of dedicated and/or petrified lackies, he altered the proliferation of his surname name on a city-wide level to create a kind of city-wide ‘room of mirrors’. To the point that a Supreme Court judge or Secret Service agent were oft left perplexed with inextinguishable doubt if they ever have the real version of him.

A recent comparison of surname matches, using the most prevalent Jewish surname ‘Cohen’, compared to the surname ‘Bernstein’ via a JewishGen USA nation-wide data pool returned 46,358 Cohens search matches v 7928 Bernstein’s I.e.: 5.84 Cohens to every Bernstein. In New York that ratio slides considerably to 4.12:1.

Looking at the statistics, if we compare the current number of Bernstein’s in California to those in New York State, we arrive at these figures.

California 2,159 Bernstein matches from 1,259,315 Jewish Residents or .17%

New York 5391 Bernstein matches from 1,672,025 Jewish Residents or .32

I’m sure Hyman would be happy to hear you are almost twice as lucky to bump into a Bernstein in New York compared to LA. The Bell Curve anomaly does not stack up and that rests largely on his shoulders.

If you live in New York maybe you need to interrogate the database. Are you really a Bernstein?

It wasn’t only Hyman benefitting from the confusion it created in the court room and on the desk of Secret Service agents. It also tells us very clearly that this was an exerted effort of manipulating the information systems in place at the turn of the century to protect its brains trust. It tells us who masterminded the Purple Gang and ultimately who controlled it in high places. Not even the most ‘successful’ of the 20th century gang lords can claim they remained anonymous for 100 years after their crimes.

At all costs, the Bernstein’s and what must have been a significant proportion of his latter gene pool, kept one of the biggest secrets of criminal history to themselves. At all costs they protected Al Presidente’s identity.

In the rare situations the spotlight caught the fox hiding in dense undergrowth, he removed himself very quickly from the scene. One example from the late 1930s that I discovered reveals his priority to remain Mr Nobody most glaringly.

A shifty Chicago wheeler and dealer by the name of William Skidmore, along with Hyman Bernstein, found themselves in the glare of the press when Skidmore was dragged into the courts over tax fraud and illegal gambling links they suspected he was laundering through the steel scrapping business they co-owned . There is little doubt it was an ideal way to embezzle their gambling and liquor venue takings via honky tonk metal yard on the outskirts of town.

Accepting that he was rather an unattractive human example for those visiting from other planets to bodysnatch and take home as a souvenir, I’ll go easy on him.

Skidmore acted like a person who was never special in the eyes of anyone when the sugar began to pile up in his barn. His desire to parade his wealth around with race-horses and fancy homes while sharing a business of modest profit had attracted the attention of Inland Revenue. ‘Bernstein & Skidmore: Scrap for Metals’ located at 2840 South Kedzie Ave in Chicago, was messier looking than its account books and the cops weren’t buying it. Or were they?

As the press and related officials turned up the blowtorch on Skidmore, as per the norm, Bernstein’s’ phone was suspiciously quieter than a church mouse with fluffy night shoes. Nonetheless, his name was on the sign and it began to harm one of Hyman’s greatest assets; anonymity. By then the name Hyman Bernstein had become too attached to his person, recognized in numerous administerial roles, associations, religious gatherings and general business operation.

In one of the most laughable cases of judicial corruption, Hyman strolled into a Chicago court room one day in 1938 when the heat on his business was starting to warm up, possessing 3 officially known aliases under his belt already, only to convince Judge Mc Cooey to allow him to deed pole his name to ‘Jerry Loucas’. Perhaps McCooey could have at least offered law abiding citizens of Chicago the consolation of meeting Hyman half way, telling him “I’ll go as far as ‘Jerry Lewis’ and that’s it”.

It was widely rumoured that some members of the mayoral office and local courts were on the take from Bernstein and Skidmore. That conspiracy theory was almost a surety by the time the Skidmore tax evasion fiasco, which by its latter stages was a liable equivalent to a staggering 18 million US dollars had come to an end.

On the day before the trial began in February 1941, Hyman Bernstein AKA Jerry Loucas, required as a key witness, supposedly dropped off the perch from a bad case of strep throat. Again, no inquiry was made into such trivial matters

William Skidmore asked for a day of delayed proceedings so that he could pay homage to his dear friend with a burst of crocodile tears and a group of mourners surrounding what may well have been a casket full of sand bags at the Waldheim cemetery.

More twists occur later. We see an obituary noticed in the Chicago Tribune paying homage to Hyman B’u’rnstein. I’m not sure why the deed poll was needed if he instructed them to use his prior name. But it does seem this is the former Godfather of Detroit’s obituary, be it a fake or a real notice. He wasn’t educated to be high in office within the government or corporate realm and a steel yard with plenty of cash changing hands seems his ideal element. Moreover, the obituary begins with Abe and we know these 2 are most definitely father and son.

A year later, Hyman Bernstein Jnr Shoots his son in the stomach in LA.

But the real clincher, above all the suspicious work of a very powerful person and the star of ‘Weekend at Bernie’s’, actor Jerry Loucas just kept on living. Right up until 2005 in fact.

And when Hyman Bernstein, one of the most significant gangsters in American history finally gives the salute in 1954, at the age of 92, having seen all the modern gangsters crash and burn after him, he wasn’t officially dead yet.

As for my doubts that this was the Hyman Bernstein who is about to become the least anonymous gangster that ever lived, they dissolved about 2 hours ago after I came across a small obituary sending him off on the seas for a second and final time and in so doing Abe’s obituary to his father were validated.

I do hope Skidmore’s descendants intend to sue for a refund on the crocodile tears and the cut lunch, to attend the first funeral in honour of a bunch of well-loved sand bags.

To all the other people who ended on the short end of the crooked Bernstein stick, my condolences. Take solace that it was the work of a rare breed of thief, who combined a high level of brutality with an IQ of equal measure and a lateral capacity to think beyond conventional norms of organized crime, and way beyond, his country's borders.

Over to you USA.

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