Ron Chepesiuk

Jan. 16, 2012 Special to Crime Magazine:

  This is an excerpt from the new book, Queenpins: Notorious Women Gangsters from the Modern Era, by Ron Chepesiuk. The book is published by Strategic Media Books (www.strategicmediabooks.com) and is available from the web site, Amazon.com and other publishing outlets.       

by Ron Chepesiuk              

In 1912, Pearl Adler, a 12-year old girl from the small village of Yanow, Russia, embarked on a long, perilous oceanic journey. For support, the young girl, whom her family called “Polly,” had nothing more with her than the high expectations of her large family and a potato sack that contained her belongings, some garlic, apples, four loaves of black bread and four hunks of salami that her mother Gertrude had packed for her. Joining Polly on board the good ship Naftar was a diverse mix of Poles, Italians, Danes and Swedes, all determined to make a prosperous new life for themselves in the Promised Land of America. It was a rough voyage and nearly all the passengers got sick, but not Polly. No sickness was going to impede her determination to reach America.

Unlike many of her fellow passengers, Polly did not leave a life of abject poverty. She was the eldest child in a family that included two daughters and seven sons. But her father, Morris Adler, was a tailor, a respectable occupation, and the family was well-off by Yanow standards. Still, the family’s ethnic roots were Jewish and it was a time of virulent anti Semitism in Russia. The Adler family could be a victim of a pogrom, or violent attack, at any time. It had happened frequently between 1903 and 1905. In the course of one week alone, there had been 50 anti-Jewish pogroms. In the village of Binlystok, for instance, 19 Jews were murdered and 24 injured. The Kishinew pogram left 120 dead and 500 injured, while the Odessa pogrom had 299 victims.

Until the pogroms, Morris Adler’s plan for Polly was to have her attend school in a nearby village and then complete her education under the village Rabbi’s guidance. Given the insecurities of life in Russia, the father decided that she would be the first link in a line of emigration that would bring his family to America.

July 6, 2011 Special to Crime Magazine 

This is an excerpt from the new book, Straight from the Hood: Amazing but True Gangster Tales, by Ron Chepesiuk and Scott Wilson. The book is published by Strategic Media Books (www.strategicmediabooks.com) and is available from the web site, Amazon.com and other publishing outlets.

June, 15, 2010 Special to Crime Magazine

An excerpt from Ron Chepesiuk’s new book, Sergeant Smack, The Legendary Lives and Times of Ike Atkinson., Kingpin, and his Band of Brothers. (www.ikeatkinsonkingpin.com)

by Ron Chepesiuk

April 18, 2010 Special to Crime Magazine

This is an excerpt from Ron Chepesiuk’s new book: The Trafficantes: Godfathers from Tampa, Florida: The Mafia, the CIA and the JFK Assassination. The book is available for purchase from Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and www.ronchepesiuk.com.

September 7, 2007

by Ron Chepesiuk

Editor's Note: "Policy" is a form of lottery in which a ticket is purchased and numbers selected, with the winning numbers announced at a drawing. No one knows for sure how the policy game began, but the Sixteenth century European countries were using the lottery to raise money for the state. In the United States, Virginia first introduced a lottery game in the Seventeenth century, and it spread across the country during the next century.

The policy game first appeared in the 1880s in New Orleans, and then spread to New York, Chicago and other cities with large African-American populations. Some historians believe that the name "policy" derives from the practice of blacks playing the game with money meant for insurance policies.

In the policy game, 78 numbers (1 to 78) are wrapped in special containers and dropped in a drum-shaped container or "wheel" from which numbers are drawn. The player selects a certain amount of numbers, the most common being three numbers, or a "gig," betting that the combination of numbers chosen will "fall" or win in the next drawing of winning numbers. The policy operator was known as a "banker" and the games they ran as "banks."

Once back on the streets, Sam "Mooney" Giancana wasted no time pursuing his take over plan for the Black Belt policy racket. He followed up on Ed Jones's jailhouse offer to help set him up in policy and arranged a meeting with Ed's brother, George, at the family's Ben Franklin store. The following evening, he met with Paul Ricca and Jake Guzik, two leading members of The Outfit, Chicago's powerful white mafia.

Giancana was confident that the mob bosses would see the light. "Once those guys see there's money in this. Money…big money…Well, shit. I'll be on my way," Sam told his brother Chuck.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Ricca and Guzik were part of the so called "Big Six" who ruled The Outfit. The other heavyweight godfathers included Joe Adonis, Frank Costello, Meyer Lansky and Longy Zwillman. As a young and ambitious gangster, Guzik developed a close relationship with Al Capone, who came to depend on him while organizing the Chicago underworld. Guzik was the Chicago mob's financial wizard for nearly two decades, and his role in arranging payoffs to police and politicians was so valuable that his mob colleagues nicknamed him the "Greasy Thumb."

February 20, 2007

Frank Mathews

by Ron Chepesiuk

 In May of 1969, detective Joe Kowalski, a seven-year veteran with the New York Police Department, was living at 130 Clarkson Avenue in a quiet, low-to-middle income neighborhood in Brooklyn. One day, the apartment building's parking lot began to look like a luxury car sales lot, as people began streaming into the building at all hours of the day to see a new resident who had moved into a three-bedroom apartment on the fourth floor. "I didn't like him the first time I saw him," Kowalski recalled in reference to his new neighbor. "He was loud and flashy, drove fancy cars and had no visible means of support. His friends would block the driveway with their cars and park in other people's parking spaces. Some of them carried paper bags that looked as if they might contain money. As a cop, I knew I needed to pay attention to them."

Kowalski put the new neighbor and his visitors under surveillance and began taking down license plate numbers. As a detective in the NYPD's Intelligence Division, Kowalski had no problem doing background checks. When he put the license plate numbers through Motor Vehicles, he was not surprised to learn that many of the cars were registered to known drug dealers living not just in the Big Apple but also in cities throughout the eastern U.S., including Philadelphia, Baltimore, Atlanta, and in Durham, N.C.

October 14, 2007

The prologue from Ron Chepesiuk and Anthony Gonzalez's upcoming book, Superfly: The True Untold Story of Frank Lucas, American Gangster. (A major movie about Lucas entitled American Gangster and starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe will be in theaters beginning Nov. 2, 2007.) The book investigates Lucas's life and criminal career and the claims to fame the movie makes about him. This includes Lucas's relationship with legendary Harlem gangster Bumpy Johnson, his connection to La Cosa Nostra, the money he made in the drug trade and the development of the Asian drug pipeline. Lucas's life as a government informant is also examined. Beginning Oct. 25, 2007, Superfly can be purchased from the web site franklucasamericangangster.com. A documentary is also available.

by Ron Chepesiuk and Anthony Gonzalez