Marvin Elkind
Marvin Elkind, better known as "The Weasel", was a Canadian gangster, professional boxer and police informer. Elkind was involved in organized crime for decades and associated with crime figures in Toronto, Montreal and New York, and also served as the chauffeur of Teamsters union president Jimmy Hoffa. In 1983, he turned police informer and became Canada's most prolific confidential informant, working for the Ontario Provincial Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Early life
Elkind was born in Toronto, the son of poor Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. His mother, Beatrice Feldstein, was a Jewish immigrant from Romania while his father, Aaron Elkind, was a Jewish immigrant from Russia. Elkind said of his family: "My father was a bad guy. He hung around bad guys and was always getting into some trouble". Elkind described his mother as his main emotional support. Aaron Elkind abandoned his family in 1937 after a failed bank robbery attempt, and his mother remarried to her brother-in-law, Morris Elkind. The remarriage had been ordered by an Orthodox rabbi in accordance with traditional Jewish law that declared the brother had the responsibility to marry the wife of his brother if the husband was no longer around. Aaron Elkind returned to the Soviet Union where he continued his criminal activities which ended when he was executed in 1946.Morris Elkind hated his stepson, who had a marked resemblance to his father in terms of appearance and personality, and Marvin Elkind recalled his stepfather as an emotionally cruel man who never extended him any love. Marvin recalled that his uncle/stepfather loved everyone except for him and his father. Morris Elkind was a devout Orthodox Jew who was ashamed of his disreputable older brother and whenever Marvin was in trouble was heard to say in Yiddish: "I expected it. He's Aaron's son. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree". Morris Elkind founded a successful clothing store, Elk's, which allowed the Elkind family to rise up to the middle class. As a child, Marvin Elkind suffered from dyslexia and ADHD, which caused him to placed "in care" in foster homes in the Toronto area from the age of nine onward. Morris Elkind was convinced that his stepson was a "bad seed" and on 19 March 1943 Elkind was expelled from his home, never to return, as he was placed "in care" of the Children's Aid Society.
Criminal career
Elkind came to associate with the criminal elements that he met while "in care" and served as a petty crook for organized crime figures in Toronto and elsewhere. The home that Elkind was sent to was the house of a bootlegger, Lena Pasquale, who ran her bootlegging operations with the mother of future gangster Paul "The Fox" Volpe. At the time, bars and liquor stores in Ontario were required to close early, making bootlegging profitable despite the fact it had been legal to sell alcohol in Ontario since 1927. Elkind recalled that the best day for bootlegging was Sunday when it was illegal to sell alcohol. Lena Pasquale did not care for Elkind, and merely took him in for the extra money she was paid by the Children's Aid Society. All five of Mrs. Pasquale's teenage sons were criminals. John "Johnny Pops" Papalia was a frequent visitor to the Pasquale household, and he and Roy Pasquale were committing bank robberies together. His stepmother renamed Elkind Mario Pasquale and sent him to be educated at the St. Alphonsus Roman Catholic school to be brought up as a Catholic. She also engaged in sexual abuse of her charge, stripping both herself and him naked and spanking him under the grounds he was a "naughty boy" until he bled. Elkind recalled break-ins of grocery stores with the Pasquale brothers: "We would go the three of us, they'd break open a window in the back, a basement window, I was 11, I was a small kid, they would push me through and I would come upstairs and open the door and let them in. There was no such thing as safety deposit boxes in those days, the money was always in the store. If they got fifty dollars they would take most of it, and they would give me five dollars, which in those days was like a million, it was a lot of money. I used to keep the money in one dollar bills so it would look like a big roll."Elkind was first arrested by Detective Eddie "the Chinaman" Tong of the Toronto Police Service on charges of theft as Tong knew that Elkind was working for the Pasquale brothers. Tong released him after his arrest out of the hope that he would lead him back to the brothers Pasquale. Tong was a local legend in Toronto as an incorruptible policeman who had walked the beat since 1929 and who stood out on the account of his fedora and trench coat which made him seem like a character out of a Hollywood film. Tong arrested the Pasquale brothers along with Elkind and several others breaking into a grocery store. Justice Harold Waisberg convicted Elkind of theft and sentenced him to serve his sentence at the Bowmanville reform school until the age of 16. During his sentence at Bowmanville school, which began in May 1945, Elkind took up boxing as his principal hobby. Discipline was enforced at Bowmanville via fearsome floggings and Elkind was flogged 175 times. He was raped with a baton by a guard, which caused him to suffer from anal bleeding problems for the rest of his life. Upon his release in 1950, Elkind resumed his criminal career working for Roy Pasquale. In 1950, he also started to work as a professional boxer, winning his first fight at the Palace Pier via knockout. Elkind was to suffer brain damage later in life because of his career in boxing. In March 1952, he moved to New York City to continue his boxing career. He took a fierce pride in his Jewish heritage as he resented the attempt to impose an Italian Catholic identity on him, and as a boxer he always carried a towel with the Star of David on it. Elkind was an unsuccessful boxer, but he obtained a job as a busboy at the Copacabana nightclub where the most famous musical and comedy acts in America such as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Sammy Davis Jr. and Harry Belafonte played. The Copacabana nightclub was frequented by gangsters such as Frankie Carbo and Anthony "Fat Tony" Salerno. In 2008, Elkind recalled: "These guys would come in the Copacabana… Tony Salerno and Frankie Carbo, and these guys were very scary and they yelled at everybody and everybody was scared to serve them, but they were big tippers. One day, I'll never forget it, Salerno calls me over to the table and he says, 'Friday is your last day here.' I said, 'Why, what did I do?' He says, 'It’s nothing about that. As of Monday you're Jimmy Hoffa's driver,' and I said, 'But I don't want to be Jimmy Hoffa's driver,' and he says, 'Nobody is asking you.'".
Starting in 1952, Elkind worked as a chauffeur for the notoriously corrupt Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa for four years. Elkind was assigned by Salerno to work as Hoffa's chauffeur on the grounds that as a Canadian he would not drafted as Hoffa's previous chauffeur had been. Elkind stated in 2008: "Mr. Hoffa was a tremendously intimidating man. This man had no fear at all, of nothing, showed very little emotion, had completely no sense of humour, and was dedicated to the people that belonged to his union. When you drive these people you learn a lot and I’ll tell you why. They don’t know you’re there. You become a piece of the car, just like an extra gear shift or a brake, and they talk." In 1954, Elkind went to Miami to take part in a boxing match and was told by Hoffa that he would be met by someone powerful in Florida who wanted to talk to him. The powerful person turned out to be the gangster Meyer Lanksy who bribed him to lose the boxing match against his opponent as Elkind was favored to win the fight, and Lanksy stood to win a great deal of money in gambling by betting against him. Speaking to Elkind in Yiddish, Lansky asked him: "Who do you think owns this city?" After Elkind put on a great show of unable to get up after being punched in the third round, Lansky complimented Elkind after the bout by saying he would make a great actor. In 1956, Elkind was told by his employers that Hoffa no longer needed his services and he was going to Montreal to serve Vincenzo "Vic" Cotroni, whom "the Commission" had appointed to be the Montreal boss. Roy Pasquale told Elkind that being the chauffeur for Cotroni was not a demotion as Cotroni was "the best" of the three Cotroni brothers and that Cotroni was just as important to "the Commission" as Hoffa was. Montreal was the North American terminus point for the French Connection heroin smuggling pipeline that ran from the "Golden Crescent" nations of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran via Turkey and France to North America. In the 1950s, 80% of the "French Connection" heroin arrived in Montreal before going south to New York, making Cotroni as the boss of a decina of the Bonanno family of New York, into a key figure in the underworld.
Upon his return to Canada in 1956, Elkind went to Montreal where he served as the chauffeur and bodyguard to Vic Cotroni. Elkind described Cotroni as extremely well connected as he drove him to meet numerous politicians, businessmen, union leaders, and policemen. Elkind also worked as a chauffeur and bodyguard to William "Willie Obie" Obront who he sold tainted meat for Cotroni. Elkind stated that both Cotroni and Obront had absolutely no concern that people were getting sick and sometimes dying from the tainted meat that Obront sold. He later returned to Toronto where worked for Tommy Corrigan, an Irish-American gangster whom Hoffa had appointed president of the Teamsters Toronto local 847. Corrigan became a permanent resident, but never took Canadian citizenship apparently because as an Irish-American he did not want to take an oath to Queen Elizabeth II. Elkind described Corrigan as unlike other American union bosses who were usually New Deal Democrats as Corrigan was a Republican who supported Joseph McCarthy. Elkind stated that Corrigan was a much more corrupt union boss than Hoffa as Hoffa at least tried to win better wages, pensions and working conditions for American truck drivers while Corrigan took bribes from the management to keep the wages and pensions of Canadian truck drivers low. Elkind stated: "The big difference between Jimmy Hoffa and Tommy Corrigan is that money was not that important to Mr. Hoffa. He loved the power—the power of running the union—and he wanted to say he made lives better for his people. Corrigan just wanted to be rich and didn't care who he screwed doing it. He looked out for himself an awful lot". Elkind swiftly learned that angering Corrigan could be deadly. Corrigan was the silent partner in a garbage company owned by Sam Salla and Murray Wortsman. When Corrigan learned his partners were cheating him, Salla was promptly murdered via poisoning while Wortsman fled Toronto. On 19 February 1958, Elkind married 19-year old Hannah "Hennie" Geist at a lavish wedding at the Beth Sholom synagogue in Toronto. To pay for the wedding, Elkind used money stolen from the Teamsters pension fund. In 1960 and 1961, Hannah Elkind gave birth to two daughters.
In 1958, Elkind joined the Papalia family. Elkind started working as a bouncer in the Arabian Village bar on College Street alongside the boxer Howard "Baldy" Chard, which served as an illegal gambling house for Johnny Papalia. Elkind and Papalia disliked each other, but Elkind had known Papalia since 1943, which made him someone whom Papalia could more or less trust. The Arabian Village bar served as a place to entrap members of Ontario's elite. The most important persons entrapped were Smirle Lawson, the chief corner of Ontario and the MP Lionel Conacher, both of whom were friends of Justice Walter T. Robb, the chairman of the Ontario Liquor Licensing Board. Elkind recalled: "In those days, getting a liquor license was like printing money. Very few places had them. They were difficult to get and you had to get to Judge Robb. You just couldn't go to Judge Robb yourself and pay him off. You had to go through somebody. Smirle Lawson was one of his contacts. Charlie Conacher was one of his contracts. So if you wanted a liquor license in a bar or something, you would get to Judge Robb through these certain guys".
Elkind also worked as a chauffeur for the boxer Muhammad Ali when he boxed in Toronto. Elkind first met Ali in 1965 when he went to New York with George Chuvalo to watch him fight Floyd Patterson. Elkind was a long-standing friend of the Canadian boxing champion Chuvalo. On 2 February 1965, in a hard-fought boxing match at Madison Square Garden, Ali beat Chauvalo by decision of the judges. During his trip to New York, Elkind used his Teamsters connections acquired from working for Hoffa to get Ali a room in a prestigious hotel, and as thanks Ali promised that Elkind would work as his chauffeur whenever he visited Toronto. During a rematch between Chuvalo and Ali in Toronto at the Maple Leaf Gardens in 1966, Ali stayed at the Lord Simcoe Hotel and Elkind served as his chauffeur. Elkind said of Ali in 2011: "He's a great human being, great fighter, great person. I really like him". As Ali became one of the most famous and controversial men in the world in the 1960s, Elkind came to enjoy a certain power in Canada as the only Canadian capable of arranging for Ali to speak at social events.
Elkind opened a clothing store, The Coach Room, that completed with Elk's, the menswear clothing store owned by his uncle and stepfather. The Coach Room was a front for money laundering for the Atlantic Acceptance Corporation ran by C. Powell Morgan, which in turn was a Ponzi scheme. In the early 1960s, Elkind had a respectable image as the owner of The Coach Room store and a senior Teamsters official, a married man with two daughters who gave generously to charity and to Zionist groups. He was often mentioned in the Toronto Star's "Social Whirl" column, which detailed the parties of Toronto's elite. On 14 June 1965, the Atlantic Acceptance company defaulted on a cheque for $5 million, which led to the largest corporate bankruptcy in Canadian history until that point. Elkind was arrested on charges of fraud and money laundering while Morgan died. The chief accountant of Atlantic Acceptance fled to Vancouver, where he was arrested; on his return flight to Toronto, the airplane carrying him was destroyed by a bomb. Elkind said of The Coach Room: "It was one hundred percent a scam. It was a front. All of the money from sales at the store went to Morgan's company, and the sales were listed as financing, and each bill was written up in the books as a receivable that was non-collectible". In the royal commission that examined the failure of Atlantic Acceptance, Elkind appeared as a witness. The scandal along his testimony at the royal commission ruined Elkind's respectable image in Toronto, and instead gave a disreputable image as someone whose dishonesty had involved him in the biggest bankruptcy in Canadian history.
In December 1969, Elkind in a plea bargain with the Crown pledged guilty to the fraud and money laundering charges related to the failure of Atlantic Acceptance, and was sentenced to one year in prison. He started serving his sentence at the Mimico Correctional Centre on 18 December 1969. While serving his sentence, he became friends with Harold Ballard, the owner of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team who had been convicted of fraud and income tax evasion. After his release on parole on 18 April 1970, Elkind went to work for Giacomo Luppino, the Mafia boss of Hamilton. Luppino often sent Elkind to Montreal to deliver cash to his son-in-law, Paolo Violi, the underboss of the Cotroni family. Elkind described Violi as a cruel man who he saw smash up the shop of an Italian immigrant who was late in paying extortion money; even after the store owner paid the money, which he said were the last of his savings, Violi continued to smash up his shop with his baseball bat just because it amused him to watch the man cry as his business was being destroyed. In 1970, Elkind had his last boxing match in Vancouver, where he was paid $3, 000 by the mining tycoon Murray Pezim for the fight. Fearing he was getting too old for boxing, Elkind asked for advice from his friend, Jake LaMotta, about how to beat a much younger man. Elkind followed LaMotta's advice to follow the rope-a-dope trick of pretending to be on the verge of a knockout, which caused his opponent to lower his fists, and allowed Elkind to knock him out.
Besides for being a gangster, Elkind was involved with the Toronto chapter of the Jewish Defense League, and in this way he served as the chauffeur for the former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir when she visited Toronto on 17 December 1974. Through his work for the JDL, Elkind came to know David Satok, a Toronto businessman and a prominent Zionist who asked him to serve as the chauffeur for Meir. The visit of Meir to Toronto attracted protests from pro-Palestinian elements, and Elkind discovered that driving Meir around Toronto was difficult. As Prime Minister of Israel, Meir had a fierce "warrior queen" image, but Elkind described Meir as having a grandmotherly persona, saying she was not as aggressive as her image suggested.
Along with the gangster Howard Chard, Elkind worked in the 1970s as collector of underworld debts, usually for loan sharks. Elkind said of his work: "We didn't usually bother much with straight people because we didn't want to deal with people that would call the cops. We liked people who were scared to get the police involved, people who are shady to begin or have other problems besides us". In 1980, Elkind came to know a "stock hustler", Neil Proverbs, who specialized in swindling investors into his dubious "get-rich-quick" schemes. Facing charges of fraud in connection with a $80,000 swindle, Proverbs gave Elkind $5,000 to bribe the police into dropping the fraud charges. Elkind set up a meeting between Proverbs and Sergeant George Reynolds and Sergeant William Bullied of the Toronto police who were in charge of the Proverbs case. Starting on 22 October 1981, Proverbs started to secretly video tape his dinners with Reynolds and Bullied. On 5 May 1982, the Proverbs video tapes were leaked to the Toronto Star, which ran a frontpage story. Fearing he would be arrested, Elkind fled to Calgary. In November 1982, Elkind was arrested in Calgary in connection with his "tin men" scam where he overcharged homeowners for shoddy aluminum sliding. After his arrest, Elkind agreed to turn Crown's evidence as the police wanted him to testify against Proverbs, whose case had become a major scandal in Toronto. At the trial, Elkind served as a comical witness for the Crown whose one-liners constantly caused the courtroom to break into laughter. Elkind testified that he tried to bribe Bullied and Reynolds, but none of the detectives were willing to accept his bribes, which fitted in with the narrative about the Proverbs case that the Crown wanted to promote. Afterwards, Elkind told a journalist from the Toronto Star, John Kessel, that he committed perjury on the stand in exchange for having the fraud charges against him being dropped. Only the fact that Kessel had failed to tape his talk with Elkind along with a rebuttal story from the police that Elkind was a well known con-man willing to tell any lie prevented the story from being published in the Toronto Star.