A Touch of the Underworld

By Dr. David Trucker

A Touch of the Underworld describes the development of the Cleveland syndicate, which eventually became the prototype of the Mafia in America.
Dr. Trucker (TM), Dr. Florence, relates the involvement of his father in the process, and eventually himself by osmosis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jan 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781496962294

Dr. David Trucker

Dr. Trucker is the pen name for David W. Florence, MD, a practicing orthopedic specialist in the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota for the last fifty-two years. Dr. Florence overcame the excitement and disasters of growing up in the underworld to become a successful physician and surgeon in both military and civilian life and yet continued to serve as an agent for his friends and associates in the underworld. The history of Dr. Florence and his relatives is fascinating beyond description and is now available in the book "A Touch of the Underworld."

Book preview

Chapter One

So how did the Mafia in America start and develop? Initially the Cleveland Syndicate was formed primarily by four guys: Moe Dalitz, Louis Rothkopf, Morris Kleinman, and Sam Tucker, all of whom were geniuses. Waves of immigrants came to Cleveland with the people of Jewish origin being first, then the Italians, followed by the Irish and a few from other nations. A guy named Mark Hanna was considered the boss of the Cleveland outfit initially, and he welcomed and nurtured the immigrants. I remember my relatives talking about Mark Hanna and his great achievements such as developing and funding the Cleveland Opera House, which gave him a like of respectability in the community. He was also a master of combining business with political growth and he did so by any means within the framework of the law in contradiction to the parameter followed by the Syndicate. Hanna had a knack for turning politics into money and my uncle Ray Lamb was in the middle of many of the ventures as both a politician and Finance Director of the City of Cleveland. In retrospect, the political and financial efforts of Hanna put President McKinley in the White House, then subsequently the Ohio Gang put Harding in the White House (not a bad arrangement).

Prohibition was the fuel that fired the Cleveland Syndicate, and alcohol could be obtained by various means and was supposed to be used (in accordance with the law) in the manufacture of everything from antifreeze to hair tonic (laugh on dotted line). The base front business of all alcohol was molasses from the Caribbean. The warehouses in Cleveland held literally hundreds of thousands of gallons of whiskey and alcohol (otherwise known as holy water). The Ohio Gang hopped on to the opportunity, and let’s just call it the gravy train.

The Ohio Gang had a religious mission, namely dealing with the protection and bootlegging rackets, along with illegal concessions, establishing immunity from prosecution for others, pardons of convicted criminals and paroles, as well as just about any general graft. Allegedly, Cincinnati was the hub of the distilling industry of Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. Illinois did its own thing, but Cincinnati took the lion’s share of the distillation. The trick was for organized wholesale drug companies to get B permits, which would allow one to obtain a certain amount of alcohol from warehouses under the Volstead law. In order to get any amount of the stuff in bulk, one had to cough-up 50 to 300,000 bucks, and I’ve often wondered if any of these expenditures were tax deductible. Immunity from prosecution could be readily purchased, not necessarily in the confessional.

Corruption in the Cincinnati-Newport-Covington Triangle was so prevalent that even the general public came to know it as a natural and normal way of functioning. I’m not sure that it was either sanctifying grace or just plain actual grace that kept the citizens going under the guise that they were living in normal parameters (Catholics will understand the differentiation). My personal hero was Abraham Auerbach, who developed Million Dollar Hair Tonic and Love Me, Dearie toilet water, both of which could be consumed either straight or on the rocks.

Crooks permeated the Justice System. One trick was to condemn the contents of the warehouses to be unfit for human consumption, confiscate the same and subsequently sell the stuff as residue to welcoming buyers for the manufacture and consumption of the resulting product (now you figure that one out). The national and state control by the Ohio Gang was unbelievable. Cleveland obtained a reputation as being a safe city for gangsters and, might I add, a place for prayer and contemplation.

My father loved vaudeville and in the process he became acquainted with a famous comedy star, Fanny Brice, whose husband Nicky moved to Cleveland, and thereby the link to my dad via the warehouse business, and you can imagine what was in the warehouses constructed by my father.

Executive Order Number 73 in Cleveland required that the city’s safety director be advised in advance by the police vice squad of any raids planned within the city limits. The city’s safety director did not have an angelic appointment, and somehow word leaked out prior to any raid so that the accosting parties found only empty warehouses and facilities. Eliot Ness eventually became the safety director, and we will discuss this issue subsequently in this book.

There was no abatement of the Syndicate’s activities during the mayoral administrations of either Fred Koehler or Ray T. Miller, and it just so happened that while Ray Miller was mayor of Cleveland my uncle Ray Lamb was the finance director of the City of Cleveland, and it just so happened that they also ran the democratic machine in the City of Cleveland, and soon found out the advantages of working with the Syndicate, a very beneficial, mutual relationship. You might call it a spiritual union as my uncle Ray was supposedly a very spiritual Catholic individual and, of course, that major democratic link extended to the unions which became subsequently a very important connection for both my family and myself.

Now Ray Miller’s brother was Don Miller, one of the famous Four Horsemen of Notre Dame fame under Coach Knute Rockne, the founder of the forward pass in football and also the Hail Mary Pass. It’s great to have God on your side, whether you’re playing football or politics.

Ray Miller, Ray Lamb and Don Miller were the powerhouses of the Democratic Party during the golden years of the Syndicate expansion. The next prominent mayor of Cleveland was Harold Burton, who brought in Eliot Ness as safety commissioner to clean up the city. Ness had been an alcohol tax treasury agent in Chicago (a story in itself). Ness worked hard but hit a brick wall and, unlike Chicago, the Cleveland Syndicate had roots so deep that even a high wind hurricane could not topple the trees.

In Chicago the leaders were well known, like Scarface Al Capone, a neat target for the Feds, and even his opponent did dumb stuff which put them into a position of being arrested and ultimately convicted. However, the leadership in Cleveland remained obscure, and it was not unusual to find The Boys in the first row of the nearby Catholic Church.

Ness targeted the Mayfield Road mob with his efforts, not realizing that the real bosses were hiding behind legitimate businesses, a trick that even works today.

Five years later I was born in 1930, and at that time the real battle for control of corn liquor in Cleveland was in full swing. Those individuals who came from out East to either participate or compete met with most unfortunate demises (God their rest their souls).

A fellow named Remus in Cincinnati was the kingpin there until the ex-circulation manager of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Thomas