Pennsylvania in the Roaring Twenties (criminal, defendant, news, penalty)

[2nd trick op]

Not too many people are aware of the high incidence of payeoll robberies in the Keystone State in the years not far before the "Dillinger Days". What's even more remarkable is that most of these crimes were solved, and many, but not all of the participants paid the supreme penalty.

In 1923, the payroll fro the West End Colliery in Mocanaqua, at the southernmost tip of the Northern (Scranton/Wilkes-Barre) anthracite field, was siezed by a gang of robbers from a Lackawanna and Wyomng Valley (Lauel Line) train at Moosic, not far from the site of the former Rocky Glen Park

Over a year later, two men, Tony Burchanti and Tony Tonti, were tracked down in Ohio, brought back and convicted, and executed at Rockview Penitntary in 1925. A third defendant reportedly met the same fate via a diifferent trial, but the name has escaped me.

Then in the fall of 1924, a similar-sized group of men ambushed a Cambia and indiana train at a flag stop named Concrete Bridge, near the Cambia/Indiana county line. Again, a guard went for his gun and was killed by one of the bandits. Two men were caught with a share of the loot in Clinton, Indiana. As in the preceeding case, those two made a one-way trip to Rockview, but the other participants were never "ratted out".

Bur perhaps the most infamous of the acts of those times can be traced to the Flatheads, a gang with its origins in Lyndora and Butler, and that roamed indiscriminately between Pittsburgh and Detroit under the leadership of one Paul Jawarski, nee Paluszyinski. The story, too complicated to post here, involves an early armored car robbery, a breakout from the Allegheny County Jail in 1927, a year on the run, and a shootout and caputure on Cleveland's Fleet Street a year later. Before his execution, Jawarski refused to divulge the fate of Jack "the Dope" Vasbinder, the other condemned prisoner who escaped with him.

There are a couple of iIntenet posts on the deatils of the Flatheds' activities, including one serialized in a Pittsburgh newspaper on the twentieth anniversary of the closing of the case. But for now, I'll leave it to the next poster to add a link.

[SUPERCHIC]

are there any movies or books you can suggest to us? Sounds interesting

[sheena12]

It does sound interesting! never heard of the Flatheads. Any books on the subject? Or does one need to be written?

[2nd trick op]

I first heard of this story over forty years ago, in a largely-for-publicity book called "The Romance of Moving Money" issued by Brinks in the 1930's (well before the famous Boston robery). There is a copy of it in Penn State's Patte Library.

Jawarski has a short biography at Wikipedia, and he is also recalled complete with mugshot) in a book I found at Rutgers some years back. unfortunately, the title never found its way into my memory bank.

In addition, the serialized story put out by one of the Pittsburgh dailies (Post-Dispatch or Press, I forget which) ought to be available somewhere on the 'Net. It was developed in the winter of 1949-49, the twentieth anniversary of Jawarski's execution. (Jawarski, BTW, left no one interested in claiming his body, and is buried in a potters' field at Rockview).

Finally, there was a book on the subject of famous criminals of Polish origin --something on the order of "the Polish gangster in America", published just a year or two ago. That one is, I'm pretty sure, still in print.

The other two robberies are remembered mostly in publications for railroad buffs ... a hardcover on the Laurel Line and an issue of Trains magazine with an article on the Cambria and Indiana, published around 1970.

Pennsylvania court publications have a couple of pages devoted to the opinion denying the appeal of the two convicted Concrete Bridge robbers, Bassi and (Peschi?), in 1925.