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Life in the 1930s was tough for the average American. The Depression
left numerous people homeless and without jobs. This wasn't the case
for Lucky Luciano and his cohorts. Luciano knew that people were the
same regardless of social status, when it came to gambling, drinking
and prostitution—the more the merrier. This insight enabled Lucky
to reap enormous profits from these vices for himself, and others in
the Syndicate. Prostitution was Luciano’s forte, and he mastered
the art of pimping. But just like a drug dealer shouldn’t sample
his product, Luciano shouldn’t have sampled his girls.
He was a celebrity now. Everywhere he went, he enjoyed himself hugely, gambling
at the racetracks, preening in the glory of golden girls from Hollywood, and watching Joe
Dimaggio slam a baseball at Yankee Stadium.
Sexually transmitted diseases spared no one, as Luciano can testify. Seven times a
gonorrhea victim, and once a syphilitic. He was also concerned about the humiliation of
being a pimp. He expressed doubts in particular about his prostitution business. Luciano
felt that more money could be extracted out of the business if he would Syndicate every
whorehouse in New York and put all the madams on salary. "We’ll run them like
chain stores," Lucky blurted to one of his men.
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Thomas Dewey
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The madams who did not fall into line ended up in the hospital, and in the
words of one of the girls: "They worked us six days a week, the Syndicate did. They
worked us like dogs and then they kicked us out." When Special Prosecutor Thomas
Dewey and his team of twenty racket busters went after a conspiracy in the prostitution
racket, they secretly set up a massive raid on approximately eighty brothels. Forty of the
raids were successful. Almost a hundred madams and girls were brought in. |
Then Luciano
got caught, and it was an astonishing story. Lucky had worried most about his prostitution
business for good reason. Under Dewey’s pounding, it began to fall apart. The
prostitutes were talking. The madams were talking. Soon the bookers of the women were
talking. As the weeks passed, Dewey, who at first had not wanted to venture into
prostitution, a social matter, realized he had an unassailable case against Luciano in
just this one field. A warrant was issued for Luciano’s arrest, and, in Hot Springs, Arkansas, he
was taken in. Soon Lucky’s greatest fear came to pass, he was put on trial.
Dewey’s witnesses were convincing. They corroborated with ease the fact that Luciano
had, if nothing else, been running an illegal vice combine. He denied all charges and
still felt that even he was convicted, the sentence would not be very much to worry about.
Oh, how wrong he was. In Dewey’s masterfull summation to the jury, he translated his
points of evidence into a general onslaught against Luciano. The jury was convinced and
found him guilty of all charges. The judge handed the thirty-eight-year-old
Luciano a staggering sentence of thirty to fifty years imprisonment.
Within a handful of hours, his empire left to his associates, Luciano was interviewed
by Dr. L. E. Kienholz, assistant psychiatrist in the classification clinic at Sing Sing
Prison, just like all other humiliated new inmates. Kienholz found Luciano a man of
"borderline intelligence." "He should attend school and learn a trade while
here," Keinholz recommended in his diagnostic report. Keinholz later wrote, "Due
to his drug addiction, he should be transferred to Dannemora Prison." It looks like
Lucky’s luck had finally run out.
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Charles "Lucky" Luciano
(NYPD) |
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