Ashes From a Burning Corpse by Hynd Noel

Author:Hynd, Noel [Hynd, Noel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B076D9Z12R
Goodreads: 36408505
Publisher: Red Cat Tales Publishing LLC, Los Angeles, California
Published: 2017-10-29T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 18

Thomas Dewey had graduated from Columbia University Law School two decades earlier and had been admitted to the New York Bar thereafter. Dewey was a credible Republican when there weren’t many around—to my mind too many had been windbag isolationists and Nazi apologists. He served as chief assistant to the U.S. Attorney for the southern district of New York from 1930 to 1933. When he became the U.S. Attorney, he also served as special assistant to U.S. Attorney General Homer Stille Cummings, Ray Schindler’s friend. It was a tight little world of legal eagles where, for better or worse, everyone knew everyone.

In 1935, Dewey was appointed the special prosecutor for a grand jury investigation into vice and racketeering in New York City. Dewey gained national attention by going after the hoodlums who controlled organized crime in New York. As a writer of true crime, I came to know him. I worked frequently with his office.

Dewey’s crusade began with an attack on prostitution, gambling and loan sharks. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover labeled mobster “Dutch” Schultz, my old acquaintance from Evening Graphic days, Public Enemy No. 1. Schultz was a dangerous sorehead by this time and didn’t much care for the compliment. With Dewey leading the investigation, Schultz set out to convince his mob associates that assassinating Dewey would be a great idea.

Word of the proposal traveled fast to the top shelf hoods: Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lanksy. Dutch’s response backfired like a cheap twenty-two. Even with a $10,000 reward on Dewey’s head, the mob’s goon squad, Murder Inc., opted to get rid of Schultz instead. The syndicate’s national board did not want the trouble that would come from snuffing a prominent prosecutor. It would be bad for business.

Schultz and three associates were whacked in at 10:15 p.m. on October 23, 1935 at the Palace Chophouse at 12 East Park Street in Newark, New Jersey, which he used as his new headquarters. Two bodyguards and Schultz’s accountant were the other three unfortunate souls.

With Lucky Luciano now exposed to the public eye, Dewey brought him to trial for running prostitution rings all over New York City. Luciano kept clean records, so it was not easy to convict him—like his counterpart, Alfonse Capone of Chicago. Nevertheless, Dewey succeeded in convicting him on ninety counts of prostitution, and in 1936, Luciano was sent to prison for thirty to fifty years. Dewey obtained seventy-two convictions out of seventy-three prosecutions, a better batting average than the lordly Joe DiMaggio.

Following that mighty blow to the national crime syndicate, Dewey’s was elected the New York District Attorney in 1937. He received credit for the convictions of numerous mobsters. Continuing his quest to put an end to organized crime, Dewey ran for governor of New York in 1938, but lost the election.

In 1940, Dewey made an unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination. The party instead turned to an insurance salesman from Ohio named Wendel Wilkie. Wilkie lost to Franklin Roosevelt’s third term candidacy. But Dewey ran again for governor of New York in 1942 and won.

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