Biography
Early life
Alex Birns was born Sándor Birnstein in 1907, in the town of Lemes, in a section of Austria-Hungary that went to Czechoslovakia under the Treaty of Trianon. HisCriminal career
On the streets, Birns developed a reputation as a fierce fighter, proving himself quick with his fists in many fights with street thugs. It was at roughly this time that he changed his surname to Birns, to save his family from the embarrassment of his involvement with criminals. Then his major brushes with the law began. Birns was convicted of car theft in 1925, for which he served 18 months in the Mansfield Reformatory. He soon acquired an assault conviction in which Birns broke the jaw of a motorist who had taken too long to make his turn in front of Birns. With 18 arrests in a 12-year period, Birns was on his way to notoriety in northeast Ohio. During this period, he gloried in his fame and enjoyed the attention which he received from local law enforcement as well as fellow gangsters. He soon developed a knack for beating legal charges. During this period, he was successfully prosecuted only twice. At the age of 19, Birns was convicted of auto theft and served two years in prison. In 1933, he was convicted of bribery, served 60 days and paid a $500 fine. After six appearances in court, a prosecutor remarked, "It is time the court put away this man whose reputation is one of rampant criminality." Birns was only in his twenties.Association with the Maxie Diamond gang
Birns was soon recruited by Maxie Diamond, leader of the E. 55th street and Woodland Mob. Diamond was an associate of Teamster leader William Presser and was once referred to by the local newspapers as "Cleveland's Number One Racketeer". Birns became a ranking member of Diamond's gang during the battles for control of the city's dry cleaners and launderers. In 1933, shortly after he hooked up with the Maxie Diamond gang, Diamond narrowly escaped death from gunfire by rival gangsters in what was called by the police, "a continuation of the city's dry cleaning racket war". Birns was among those picked up for questioning. He was released, but only after paying $2 for two overdue traffic tickets. Later in the year, Birns was once again arrested by the police. In separate incidents in quick succession, two men were shot from the same passing car. Police called it "continuation of guerrilla warfare among policy game racketeers. They picked up Birns for interrogation along with five of his fellow henchmen." Birns and three others were charged with manslaughter but were acquitted. Four days later, Birns, along with co-defendant Yale Cohen and attorney Max Lesnick, were convicted of bribing a witness. It was, '' The Plain Dealer'' said, "one of the few cases on record in which men identified by police as 'gangsters' were convicted of anything." The judge sentenced them to 60 days in the Warrensville Workhouse."Shondor the Apprentice Hood"The Rudy Duncan hit
One of Birns's most serious arrests was for the 1934 murder of Rudy Duncan, a 36-year-old night club bouncer at Euclid Avenue's Keystone Club. Birns was sitting at Keystone with two of his fellow gang members when he rose to retrieve some cigars from his overcoat which he had checked in the coat room. Birns had misplaced his cheque and could not produce it when asked for it by the coatroom girl. The coatroom girl subsequently refused to give Birns access to his coat. Over her objections, Birns entered the coatroom, shoving her aside in the process, and retrieved some cigars from his coat. He then returned to the table, had two more drinks, and smoked one cigar. The coatroom girl ran outside and summoned Rudy Duncan, the bouncer who also happened to be her live-in boyfriend. She told him about the incident with Birns. Duncan was a former boxer with arrests in Pittsburgh, Buffalo, and Cleveland, and had experienced previous run-ins with Birns and his gang. Duncan came up behind him and in a menacing manner, demanded an explanation as to Birns's presence in the Club. Birns muttered something and the two lunged at each other. In the ensuing ruckus, two shots were fired. One hit Birns in the shoulder and the other hit one of Birns's friends in the leg. Duncan ordered Birns's crew out of the bar at gunpoint. When the police arrived, they found Birns in his car ready to pull away, while holding a bloody handkerchief to his shoulder. They searched his car and confiscated a revolver which he had placed in his glove box. He denied ownership of the gun and would not reveal who shot him. The police drove him to the hospital. After two days, Birns checked himself out of the hospital and was well on his way to a full recovery when he was arrested and charged with carrying a concealed weapon. During the trial, Birns testified that he did not see his assailant and that whoever came up behind him in the cloakroom had the gun. He refused to identify Duncan as the man who shot him. He denied even knowing Duncan at all. Likewise, Duncan's recollection of the incident was so vague that he wasn't even called to testify as a witness. Two months later, Rudy Duncan took his 11-year-old foster son, Stanley to a movie show at the Uptown theater outside E. 105th Street and Saint Clair Avenue. Afterwards, they walked to a confectionery for ice cream. When they got into their car back in the theater parking lot, two men wearing white cotton gloves walked up alongside, one on each side. With a terrified Stanley crouching in the seat, they fired five bullets into Duncan. Police immediately began a search for Birns. They found him, but they couldn't find evidence to tie him to the murder. He was released. Duncan's murder went officially unsolved.Rise to power
Birns' reputation as a brutal, ruthless enforcer made it easy for him to establish lucrative "protection" services. Legal businesses who wished to be allowed to operate undisturbed had to pay him as a labor consultant. Those who refused to pay would usually find their store windows broken or their cars blown up. In any event, those who initially refused would soon pay up. During the late 1930s, Birns became heavily involved in extorting protection money from whorehouses, or "vice resorts" as they were dubbed by the media. With the backing of the Cleveland crime family, Birns operated freely and was well liked by all the prostitutes of his whore houses. Many of Birns's clients were judges, politicians and police officers of high rank. They would serve as important contacts for him in the future and vice versa. In 1938, Birns visited Canada for a vacation. Upon his re-entry to the United States, he was questioned briefly about his criminal history and answered honestly. At the time, Birns was unaware of the Immigration Act of 1917 which required any alien convicted of a crime of moral turpitude to gain permission prior to entering or leaving the country. It would take a couple of years of paperwork to catch up. In 1942, at the height of World War II, Birns was arrested on a deportation warrant based on the auto theft andRestaurateur
During this time, Birns was building a profitable legitimate business as a restaurateur. He opened his Ten-Eleven Club at 1011 Chester Avenue inMuscling in the numbers operations and policy games
During the 1940s, Birns made a longstanding alliance and had become closely involved with the local Cleveland crime family mobsters such as Angelo Lonardo. Lonardo had already taken over the black lottery and numbers operations. Birns was determined to firmly keep this traditionally black racket under his control. One of the best known African-American organized crime figures was Don King, the future boxing promoter. According to a 1988 ''Plains Dealer'' series by Christopher Evans, "King was flamboyant — always seen with a .38 in his belt and a big cigar in his mouth". In the mid-1960s, King and his partner, a Cleveland prize-fighter named Victor Ogletree were reportedly grossing $15,000 a day on policy. King first gained a reputation prominence in 1954, after he thwarted an attempted armed robbery on one of his gambling houses, by killing one of the stick-up men. The shooting was deemed a justifiable homicide. In October 1956, Birns sent an emissary to King and his colleagues demanding that they pay $200 a week as street tax, or suffer the consequences. They initially agreed but by December deemed the price too high. King eventually began holding out on the protection money being paid on a regular basis to Birns, Lonardo and their associates. At 3:45 a.m. on the morning of May 23, 1957, an explosion ripped apart the front porch of King's house. Uninjured, he went to the police and accused Birns of ordering the bombing. King also informed police of his decision to get out of illegal gambling. Largely on King's testimony, Birns and the others were indicted. A few weeks later, Birns attempted to prevent King from testifying by sending men to kill him at his home. King was ambushed outside his house. Several pellets of shot hit him in the back of his head, but King survived. At the trial, King testified to jurors that Birns' emissary had offered him $10,000 not to testify: "He said if I didn't testify, he would guarantee there would be no more shooting at me or bombing my house and I'd have no reason to be scared no more." The prosecution even produced a surprise witness, Dollree Mapp, who was a former employee of the rackets. On the stand, the Press reported, "she burst into tears again and again and refused to answer questions as Birns and the other defendants glared at her. Her attorney told the judge she was told that she and her 12-year-old daughter would be killed if she testified." Elijah Abercrombie, a co-defendant, told the jury that police had offered to let him run an unhampered gambling game if he gave them information against Birns. Defense lawyer Fred Garmone called King "a scheming, lying, witness-fixing extortionist himself". When the trial began, King was cast as the star witness in the trial. The judge and jury had difficulty understanding King and his rapid, inarticulate speech leading the local newspapers to dub him "The Talker". The jury deliberated 11 hours and the trial resulted in Birns' and the other defendants' acquittals.Relationship with law enforcement
Throughout his lifetime, Alex Birns craved respectability and sought to obtain it through his popular Alhambra Restaurant, where many judges and politicians dined. During the early morning hours, Birns would often send food over to the nearby Fifth District police station for the police officers working the late shift. In spite of being diligently pursued by law enforcement for most of his life, Birns eventually came to respect and admire the city's police officers. Once, when he was under a 24-hour surveillance, Birns was leaving a Cleveland Indians baseball game. He happened to notice the two detectives assigned to follow him and flagged them over. The officers agreed to drive him to his next destination. When the officers were reprimanded by a superior, Birns intervened on their behalf. In 1959, Birns physically assaulted a police officer. He was convicted of assault and battery and was once again sent to the Warrensville Workhouse for nine months. He practically ran the place. The superintendent was later fired for the liberties he allowed Birns. While in prison, Alex Birns was accused of masterminding the car bombing of numbers operator, Joe Allen, in an attempt to shake him down for 25 percent of his operation. The state tried Birns twice for the crime. A workhouse guard admitted to having acted as a go-between in trying to arrange a deal with Allen. The outcome of the first trial was a hung jury. The second acquitted him. Upon his acquittal, Birns blew kisses to the jury. In a Page One editorial, a newspaper thundered, "Who runs this town — Birns or the Law?". The relentless prosecutors, however, didn't give up and accused Birns of trying to contact a juror in the second case. He said he had merely asked an Alhambra waitress to see if the juror would be fair to him. Ten of the jurors signed a statement protesting the charge that they had been unduly influenced.Assassination attempt
In 1959, Birns was shot at by an unknown assailant as he arrived home. The gunman missed, whereupon Birns cruised the neighborhood on the lookout for him. Upon investigation, Cleveland police picked up for interrogation a small-time hood named Clarence "Sonny" Coleman, who owed money to Birns. Colman was released soon after questioning. A short time afterward, Coleman was shot on a neighborhood street shortly after midnight. Three bullets hit him, but he managed to run up to the front porch of a house yelling, "Let me in, baby, let me in!" In the hospital, he told police the shooter was a man in the back seat of a car driven by Shondor Birns. Birns was arrested and brought to the booking window at Central Station.Sonny Changes His StoryMervin Gold murder
Birns had been suspected of two murders, including that of a financier named Mervin Gold. In the 1960s, Gold was being investigated for using stolen Canadian bonds for using a bank loan. On July 8, 1963, he was found murdered and stuck in the trunk of his car. He had been beaten, strangled with a clothesline and shot in the chest. A blanket was wrapped around his head. He was shot three more times in the skull. The coroner, Samuel Gerber, estimated his time of death as shortly before midnight Friday. Anticipating an untimely demise, Gold left behind an affidavit claiming that Birns had given him the bonds. His wife told police that Gold was on his way to meet with Birns the night he was murdered. Police also found a tape made by Gold of a phone call between himself and Birns. A pickup order was sent out for Birns. On Monday his car turned up outside a motel inSelf-appointed peacemaker and mediator of disputes
In the 1960s, Birns was having trouble with some black numbers operators. It was during this time that he came into contact with a brash, ambitious, young Irish-American upstart namedThe 1970s
By the 1970s, Alex Birns had mellowed significantly, playing handball daily and spending several hours on lunch and a cocktail or two. He didn't want any more trouble. He promised his parole officer, "Kid, I don't break any provisions of parole. I'll tell you why. If I go back to jail, I'll die there." More often, Birns chose to lunch at the Theatrical on the Short Vincent, where he always sat at the end of the bar. Birns once told a reporter, "If I'm the city's biggest crook, why do they all want to be my friend? I'll tell you why. Most of them are worse than I am, and they all know that I know...." After lunch, he would head out to the Silver Quill or Christie's Lounge to chat with the owner and the barmaid and sometimes buy drinks for the regulars. By this time, he was planning to retire and live out his twilight years in Florida. However, when longtime Cleveland family boss,Opposition from Black racketeers
Birns was always dealing with heavy opposition from a few black gangsters who wanted independence from him and the more powerful and politically connected Mafiosi of the Cleveland family. Several close murder attempts led Birns to buy a Doberman Pinscher to protect his home. In February, Birns and his girlfriend were walking downtown when a car with several black men drove by. Two shots were fired, but neither Birns nor his girlfriend were hit. Several months later, Birns walked into an east side bar in response to a meeting requested by several black numbers racketeers. This time, Birns brought his heavily armed black bodyguard along in anticipation of trouble. Upon arrival, Birns and his bodyguard were immediately accosted by several of the numbers men. One of the gangsters shouted, "We want you out of the business or you're dead", while pulling back his coat to reveal a pistol in his waistband. The bodyguard reacted quickly, leveling a small sub-machine gun from under his overcoat. Some customers scurried towards the exits. The group continued shouting at Birns as he and his bodyguard cautiously backed out of the bar and left.Death
Conflict with Danny Greene
The relationship between Irish mob bossAssassination
In March 1975, Holy Saturday, the eve of Easter, Birns was blown up via a bomb containing C-4, a potent military explosive, in the lot behind Christy's Lounge, the former Jack & Jill West Lounge, a go-go spot at 2516 Detroit Ave. Birns was blown several feet through the roof of the car and his torso landed near the passenger door. A man who walked Birns to his car braved flames and smoke and located him near the car. Apparently, Birns was still alive, though barely. The man only managed to drag away Birns's upper torso. His face, arms and chest were bloodied and blackened. Birns' nose was broken when his body landed on the street after being blown out the top of his car. His hair was scorched off from the heat of the blast. Birns had been blown in half. His severed legs landed fifty feet away and other smaller parts of him were scattered all over the place. Towards his death, the upper part of his body was convulsing violently. A chain link fence between Christy's and St. Malachi Church caught many of the smaller fragments of flesh and bone. At first glance, they resembled steaming pieces of meat. Though Birns's Lincoln was demolished and smoking heavily, his state-of-the-art burglar system survived. A leather gym bag and gym shoes had been blown from the trunk. Amazingly, a paper bag of clothing from inside his car survived. It read: "Diamond's of Ohio - Fashions for men which women love". Police said the blast was among the most powerful they had ever investigated. Police and bomb squad members worked an entire day examining the bombing scene. Coroners workers spent hours collecting as many pieces of skin and bones that they could find. A total of $843 in cash was found on or around Birns's body. The Internal Revenue Service promptly claimed the money to be put toward back taxes that Birns owed.Legacy
In the following weeks, homicide investigators wrongly concentrated on African-American organized crime as suspects rather thanReferences
Further reading
*Porrello, Rick. ''To Kill the Irishman: The War that Crippled the Mafia''. Novelty, Ohio: Next Hat Press, 2004.External links