Colorful Pair Team Up to Solve 1933 Mob Hit
By Jason Brudereck, Reading Eagle, Pa.
Apr. 16–What do you get when you team up a retired newspaper editor with a seafaring treasure hunter to investigate a very cold gangland murder case? Well, more evidence and a possible solution to the slaying of a notorious local Prohibition-era bootlegger, of course. It’s a strange story. But how could it not be when three of the more colorful characters in Berks County’s history find their lives intertwined?
A story retold
On April 12, 1933, Max Hassel, Reading’s best-known Prohibition-era gangster, was found shot to death at age 32 in an Elizabeth, N.J., hotel. There were no known witnesses and the case hasn’t been solved to this day.
Although a gangster, Hassel was so beloved in Reading that thousands mobbed a city funeral home hoping to get a final glimpse of him before he was buried in Kesher Zion Cemetery, Cumru Township.
Hassel’s rags-to-riches rise from immigrant newspaper street hawker to gangland czar inspired Ed Taggert, retired managing editor of the Reading Eagle and Reading Times, to write a 2003 book titled "Bootlegger."
While telling the story of Hassel’s life, Taggert also proposed a likely scenario for his death, based on years of research.
Taggert concluded that Hassel was killed by several gunmen, including a low-level Mafioso named Joe Stassi, whom Taggert interviewed in 2001 shortly before Stassi died in Kissimmee, Fla., where he last resided.
Stassi talked knowledgeably about Hassel’s murder, Taggert said. But he stopped just short of confessing.
"The thing is, he never completely admitted it," said Taggert, 83, of Wyomissing Hills. "He always beat around the bush."
But Stassi might not have been a very reliable source — he also claimed to be the mastermind behind the 1935 slaying of New York gangster Dutch Shultz in Newark, N.J. — and some people questioned Taggert’s version.
A new quest for answers
One skeptic was famed treasure hunter and Berks native Burt Webber, who read Taggert’s book.
"He (Stassi) went too far when he claimed to be behind the Dutch Schultz killing," said Webber, 64, a 1960 graduate of Conrad Weiser High School who lives in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. "In latter days, he was probably putting claims on a lot of things to deflect the image of a nickel-anddime drug runner."
Webber gained fame in 1978 when he discovered a treasure worth millions aboard the sunken 17th-century Spanish galleon Concepcion off the coast of the Dominican Republic.
Yeah, hang on. It gets even stranger.
Webber’s late father, also named Burt, and his late, great uncle, Paul, a car dealer, knew Hassel and sold him cars and trucks.
Paul Webber was even mentioned in Taggert’s book.
So the undersea explorer contacted Taggert about his suspicions that Stassi’s roundabout confession was simply a last-chance bid for notoriety.
Webber’s relatives’ connection to Hassel fueled his interest in the case.
"He’s obsessed with this case, and it is very interesting," said Lester Sargent, the chief warrant officer in the Union County, N.J., sheriff’s office.
Last summer, Sargent showed Taggert and Webber around Elizabeth and took them to the Hassel murder scene on the eighth floor of what used to be the Elizabeth Carteret Hotel, which is now an assisted-living facility called Carteret Senior Living.
"At one time, it was the most fashionable hotel in town," Sargent said. "It was a convenient home for mobsters in the 1930s. They could see their breweries from their rooms."
Taggert’s first theory
Taggert’s story of Hassel’s life portrayed him as a benevolent outlaw, who was a good businessman and popular in his community.
Although Hassel’s Reading breweries were raided several times by police, the bootlegger himself seemed untouchable to lawmen for much of his career.
He was beloved by the public because he gave clothing to the poor and donated freely to local charities.
He hated guns and refused to carry one.
And when lawmen managed to shut down his Reading operations, Hassel imported beer from his New Jersey breweries.
But although his associates warned him to stay out of Jersey and remain a big fish in Reading’s small pond, Hassel couldn’t resist.
By 1929, under the alias Jimmy Feldman, he was running his bootlegging operation from Elizabeth with his gangster partners Waxey Gordon and Big Maxie Greenberg.
Around that time, Stassi befriended and occasionally worked for Hassel. He even rented a hotel room on the floor directly below Hassel’s suite.
Mobsters Dutch Schultz and Meyer Lansky tried to muscle in on the Hassel, Gordon and Greenberg operations.
Hassel eventually began paying Schultz $8,000 a month in protection money. But Lansky and Gordon became bitter enemies.
With repeal of Prohibition expected by the of 1933, Hassel planned to become a legal brewer and started cutting his mob ties,
But get getting out of the mob alive wasn’t easy — for anyone. And that could have been a motive for Hassel’s murder.
Some news reports of the day said three bullets were pumped into Hassel and five into Greenberg.
Since the slugs were from a six-shooter, eight shots would indicate multiple gunmen.
These accounts also said there were eight half-filled whiskey glasses in the room, indicating that several men had been there.
Stassi told Taggert that Lansky had ordered the killings. And though Stassi never admitted carrying out the order, Stassi said his ready access to Hassel would have made it easy for him to arrange the murders.
With this information, Taggert concluded that Stassi was among the gunmen.
More research
changes the story
Together, Webber and Taggert began reviewing other New Jersey newspaper accounts of the murders, visited the hotel and came away with some new information and conclusions:
The only person seen entering the hotel prior to the murders was Greenberg. No one was seen leaving the hotel afterward.
While there were eight highball glasses in the room where Hassel and Greenberg were killed, only two had whiskey in them.
The main entrance to the suite had an electronic lock that could be released only by someone sitting at the desk where Greenberg was killed.
Greenberg actually was shot five times and Hassel once, a fact confirmed by internal records provided the sleuths by officials at the Henninger Funeral Home, which handled Hassel’s funeral. That means it was possible there was only one killer with one six-shooter, which was found at the scene.
Documents showed the room below Hassel’s suite where Stassi lived was rented to a "Mr. Rogers" and that Hassel was paying his phone bills.
Stassi would have known the knock or code to get Greenberg to open the door.
With these new pieces to the puzzle, Webber concluded that Stassi was the lone gunman.
"I believe the action was quick and unexpected," Webber said. "Probably Stassi hit Greenberg first, knowing that he was most certainly armed."
Unarmed, Hassel panicked and tried to flee, but Stassi shot him once in the head, Webber concluded.
Then Stassi ran into the hallway and down some stairs, dropping the murder weapon on a landing between the fifth and sixth floors before heading back up to his own room on the seventh floor.
That would make it seem as though the murderer dropped the gun while leaving the hotel.
But no witnesses saw anybody flee the hotel.
While in Elizabeth, Webber confirmed that Stassi’s aliases included "Hoboken Joe" and "Mr. Rogers."
"We know from the grand jury that followed the murders that the hotel manager testified that, ‘Yes, there’s a mysterious Mr. Rogers in room 724,’ " Webber said. "When Stassi says he had a room below Hassel’s, it all fits.
"He (Stassi) admits he killed his best friend, but he’ll never put a name to it. There’s no question Stassi is for real and Joe Stassi is Mr. Rogers. Ed and I have no doubts that Stassi, Hoboken Joe, the mysterious Mr. Rogers, did this."
To top it off, Webber says he knows a man who claims to have heard Lansky confess to ordering Hassel’s murder, which backs up Stassi’s story.
The man, Bob Baker, a former Lansky associate, lives in the Dominican Republic.
According to Webber, Baker recalled a meeting in Miami Beach in the 1950s where some gangsters were reminiscing.
He remembered Lansky say: "It’s a shame we had to take out Jimmy Feldman because he really had a good head for numbers."
Webber gave Baker a copy of Taggert’s "Bootlegger," but Baker said he had never heard of Hassel.
It wasn’t until Baker reread the book that he realized Feldman was Hassel, one of the most powerful beer bootleggers on the East Coast.
So that’s the end. Or is it ?
Taggert has requested 82 pages of records from the grand jury hearing held after the murders.
And though the Union County sheriff’s office says all records pertaining to the murders have been released, Webber is having his attorney look into it.
Taggert had been hoping a cold case file would include documents authorities took from Hassel’s hotel safe, which was said to contain details about his operations and the names of politicians and police on Hassel’s payroll.
To gain further insight into Stassi, Webber also has been trying to track down a Stassi relative who is rumored to be living in the Dominican Republic.
But even if more evidence is found, it’s possible that not much would come of it, said Sargent, the chief warrant officer in the Union County sheriff’s office.
"Their scenario of what happened is good," Sargent said of Webber and Taggert. "But I think even if a 110-year-old guy walked in here now and said he did it, they’d probably tell him to go back to his nursing home."
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Copyright (c) 2007, Reading Eagle, Pa.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
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