Kid Cann
Isadore Blumenfeld, commonly known as Kid Cann, was a Romanian-born Jewish-American organized crime enforcer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for over four decades. He remains the most notorious mobster in the history of Minnesota. He was associated with several high-profile crimes in the city's history. He was tried and acquitted for the 1924 murder of cab driver Charles Goldberg. Blumenfeld was also present at the scene of the attempted murder by Verne Miller of Minneapolis Police Department officer James H. Trepanier. Blumenfeld was also tried and acquitted for personally firing the murder weapon, a Thompson submachine gun, in the globally infamous December 1935 contract killing of Twin Cities investigative journalist Walter Liggett. He was also unsuccessfully prosecuted in Federal Court for both conspiracy and racketeering in the mobbed up hostile takeover and dismantling of the Twin City Rapid Transit streetcar system during the early 1950s.
Blumenfeld was convicted of violating the Federal Mann Act in 1959 and of attempted jury tampering in 1961. After a short prison term, Blumenfeld retired to Miami Beach, Florida, where he and Meyer Lansky operated a real estate empire. He remained involved in organized crime until his death and left behind an estimated $10 million fortune.
Life
Early life
Blumenfeld was born in 1900 in the Romanian shtetl of Râmnicu Sărat, Buzău County, to an Orthodox Jewish family. According to U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service documents, his parents emigrated to America in 1902 via the port of Duluth, Minnesota. His father, a Romanian Jewish furrier named Phillip Blumenfeld, settled his wife Eva Blumenfeld at 824 S. Seventh Street Minneapolis. During childhood, Isadore had to leave school and support his family by selling newspapers on Minneapolis' "Newspaper Row." At the time, the best selling locations had to be held by force against gangs of other boys. Blumenfeld would also tell stories of how he had made extra money picking up bus tokens and reselling them. Enraged by the poverty of his family, he turned to running errands for the pimps and madams of Minneapolis's red light district.Two tales are told of the origins of his famous nickname. According to one legend, he picked up the name during a brief attempt at boxing. Another story told by his fellow North Side Jews alleges that young Isadore Blumenfeld would always lock himself in the outhouse to avoid gang fights in the neighborhood. Kid Cann indignantly denied both versions. Journalist Neal Karlen confirms that both stories were false, "Kid enjoyed not only fighting, but killing."
Prohibition
With the onset of Prohibition, Kid Cann and his brothers Harry Bloom and Jacob Blumenfeld, were transformed from small-time hoods into major organized crime figures in association with the American Mafia.By his 20s, Blumenfeld and his brothers held considerable power over criminal activities in Minneapolis and oversaw bootlegging, illegal gambling, prostitution, extortion, and labor racketeering. Neil Karlen has described their organization as, "led by the Kid on machine gun and Harry and Yiddy Bloom on brains."
Their ties to the Chicago Outfit and New York City's Genovese crime family date back to the Prohibition period.
According to a later trial, they would legally import industrial grade alcohol from Samuel Bronfmans distillery in Montreal, which was shipped across the Great Lakes to Duluth, and then driven on souped up Ford automobiles to the La Pompoudor "perfume factory" in the Twin Cities. The brothers also ran illegal distilleries in the forests near Fort Snelling.
According to historian Elaine Davis, Kid Cann and his brothers, like many other organized crime figures from the Twin Cities, Chicago, and Kansas City, made frequent trips to Stearns and Morrison Counties to purchase Minnesota 13; a very high quality moonshine distilled locally by Polish- and German-American farmers with the collusion of local politicians and law enforcement. Davis writes that the main go-between connecting local moonshiners with organized crime was Melrose resident "Chick" Molitor, who lived with his family on a dairy farm near Big Birch Lake. The Blumenfelds, with whom Molitor had a very close business relationship, visited the area so often that they allegedly owned property south of the Rock Tavern in Melrose.
According to Twin Cities crime reporter Paul Maccabee, Kid Cann's rivalry with Minneapolis's Irish Mob ended after he and Irish Mob bosses Big Ed Morgan and Tommy Banks divided the city with a handshake.
A number of deaths are attributed to Blumenfeld and his gang, including journalists who were killed after writing articles exposing the inner workings of his organization as well as his ties to corrupt politicians from several parties. A Jewish restaurant owner who recalls this era once said that the Blumenfelds were worshipped by several generations of neighborhood boys.
There was a high degree of political and civil corruption in the region in the 1920s and 1930s. The mainstream newspapers hardly mentioned what was going on, as any outlet that published articles critical of the status quo was threatened. Some small tabloid newspapers attempted to report what was going on, but reporters and editors quickly became targets. Howard Guilford of the Twin City Reporter was shot and killed on September 6, 1934.
Sports journalist Sid Hartman, who grew up in a poor Russian Jewish family in North Minneapolis, was an eleven year old newspaper peddler when he was brought by Minneapolis Tribune street circulation manager Joseph Katzman into the upper room at Jack Doyle's restaurant on Hennepin Avenue between Fourth and Fifth Streets. At the time, the restaurant was downstairs and upstairs was one of the largest sports betting operations in Minneapolis. Kid Cann, Tommy Banks, and the Berman Brothers were regular visitors and Hartman's decades long friendship with them began during those years.
From their headquarters at The Flame jazz club in Minneapolis' Washington Avenue Gateway District, the AZ Syndicate also committed many other crimes.
According to Hartman, "Kid Cann would bring in Sophie Tucker, Cab Calloway - entertainers like that - to appear at his club. Then, after hours, they would close the doors and the real show would begin. One time, the cops came barging in at 4am, took us all out, and put everyone in the Paddy wagon. If they had booked me with the rest of the people, I probably would have made the newspaper and lost my job at the Tribune. I did some begging and the cops let me go."
On August 23, 1933, a Federal grand jury in Oklahoma City indicted Blumenfeld for money laundering.
The $200,000 ransom Machine Gun Kelly had received following the kidnapping of oil man Charles F. Urschel had been traced to Hennepin State Bank in Minneapolis. Blumenfeld was arrested and transported to Oklahoma City to await his trial. Minneapolis Police Chief Joseph Lehmeyer traveled down to Oklahoma City to testify in favor of Kid Cann and the charges were dropped.
In December 1933, the AZ Syndicate's accountant, Conrad Althen, who had become a secret informant for the Internal Revenue Service and whom according to Paul Maccabee "knew where every penny and body was buried", was thrown out of a car into a Dakota County cornfield and shot to death with a Thompson submachine gun.
After Prohibition
Following the end of Prohibition, Blumenfeld and his family continued to maintain control over the now legal liquor industry and owned, "all the big liquor stores; East Hennepin, Loring Liquors, and Lake Street. They monopolized the liquor business, and that's why they had so many enemies."According to an internal FBI memo, "It is impossible to operate any place in Minneapolis without first getting permission from the Syndicate, and if a place is operated without obtaining such permission, the Syndicate sees to it that the new place is immediately closed."
The Liggett murder
The most notorious murder was that of Walter Liggett, one of the founders of the Farmer-Labor Party and the editor of a weekly newspaper called The Midwest American.As part of what was termed the "Ligget-Townley Revolt" against Farmer Labor Party leader and Minnesota Governor Floyd Olson, Ligget began reporting on links he found between Twin Cities Irish and Jewish organized crime and senior politicians from the Farmer-Labor Party. Beginning on June 29, 1935, every issue of The Midwest American printed ten reasons for impeaching Governor Olson, including political corruption and collusion with organized crime.
Throughout September 1935, Liggett reported on "a wet-councilmanic ring" which allowed "The Syndicate", led by the Blumenfeld brothers, to dominate the newly legalized liquor trade in Minneapolis. During the same month, The Midwest American also published articles about Kid Cann's criminal history and how associate Meyer Schuldberg employed him as a "salesman" for La Pompadour perfume factory during Prohibition, which had switched since repeal to producing Chesapeake Brands Liquors. Liggett also alleged that the Blumenfelds had been so certain that the city council would grant them a license for Lake Street liquors, that they had begun buying advertisements ten days before the council's vote.
After announcing in print that he had refused offers of both bribes and paid advertisements by AZ Syndicate-controlled businesses, Liggett reported on October 2, 1935, that Minneapolis aldermen Henry Banks and Romeo Riley had both attended the prizefight between Joe Louis and Max Baer as personal guests of Kid Cann. Liggett also reported that State Liquor Commissioner David Arundel had also attended the fight as a guest of Farmer-Labor fixer and Syndicate liquor lobbyist Fred Ossanna.
According to Neal Karlen, Kid Cann allegedly claimed to fellow members of Minneapolis' criminal underworld that Liggett was using The Midwest American to try and extort money from him. Blumenfeld allegedly also believed that no journalist would ever dare to report Governor Olson's ties to the AZ Syndicate and was outraged when Liggett did so.
Liggett was beaten up, prosecuted for a non-existent rape incident, and finally died after being machine gunned in the alley behind his home on December 9, 1935. His wife and daughter witnessed the assassination as did several neighbors. All identified Kid Cann as the shooter. Kid Cann was indicted by a grand jury and, on January 29, 1936, his trial began, where he was prosecuted jointly by the Hennepin County Attorney and the State's Attorney's Office.
Meanwhile, Kid Cann's younger half-brother Jacob Blumenfeld, alias "Yiddy Bloom", whom many sources allege to have been the acting boss of the organization, resurfaced in Paris. In an interview with the Washington Times, Jacob Blumenfeld called Liggett's murder, "a terrible extreme, but what the hell. Liggett persecuted the AZ Syndicate, which only wanted to live in peace with him. He was fiercely honest and became ridiculously inconvenient."
Poor investigative work and a careless trial, however, meant that Kid Cann was acquitted. Edith Liggett always believed that Minnesota Governor Floyd Olson and Farmer-Labor Party fixer Charles Ward were responsible for setting up her husband's murder. Liggett had repeatedly accused the Governor in print of having links to organized crime.