Category: EVIL MF
Jack “Legs” Diamond was an old-school thug.
He came from the factory broken. Photo: Public Domain
Just what is “stopping power” anyway? One dude strolled nonchalantly into the ER when I was on duty, having taken a 9mm ball round to the pelvis. He was only minimally inconvenienced. Another guy sped away from a drug deal gone bad with the unlicensed pharmacist throwing 9mm rounds his way with vigorous dispatch.
Then he got home and noticed blood. A 115-grain FMJ round had punched through the trunk, back seat and then front seat before embedding in his back fat. This gentleman legitimately did not know he was shot. And then there was the sweet little old lady who caught a .25 ACP round to the neck during a robbery and will spend the rest of her days in a motorized wheelchair. How well bullets perform in the real world is bizarrely unpredictable. And then there was this guy.
The 1921 Colt Thompson got all the press. However, then,
as now, it was the humble handgun that spilled the most blood.
Origin Story
Nobody is really sure what Jack “Legs” Diamond’s real name was. He went by John Thomas Diamond, as well as John Nolan, John Moran and Gentleman Jack. He was born in the summer of 1897 to Sara and John Moran. It was obvious from the outset this little kid just wasn’t right.
Part of that was likely his sordid environment. Jack’s mom, Sara, was frail by nature and died of an illness when Jack was 16. Jack joined a Manhattan criminal gang called the Hudson Dusters soon thereafter. He was first arrested for burglary a year after his mom’s death.
Diamond enlisted in the Army intending to fight in Europe during World War I but lost his enthusiasm in short order. He deserted, was caught and served several years in Leavenworth.
Prison is grad school for criminals. When Diamond was finally released, he was free to pursue his true calling. In 1921, he entered the employ of a professional criminal named Arnold Rothstein. Diamond’s job description included bodyguard and general thuggery.
Jack Diamond’s nickname “Legs” spawned from one of two possible sources. He was purported to be a fairly competent dancer. He also established a well-earned reputation for being able to expeditiously get out of trouble. Somewhere along the way, his associates began calling him “Legs,” and the moniker stuck.
Being a mob enforcer doesn’t have the greatest retirement plan. Additionally, Jack Diamond was a hyperactive lad and a serial womanizer. Despite being married, he carried on a protracted illicit relationship with a prominent New York showgirl named Marion “Kiki” Roberts.
These suboptimal personal habits and the curiously violent nature of his profession synergistically combined to keep Jack Diamond’s physicians gainfully employed. By 1931, Diamond was known as the “Clay Pigeon of the Underworld.”
Normal people don’t have a nemesis. Jack Diamond, however, was not a normal person. His criminal counterpart was the infamous mobster Dutch Schultz. When describing Diamond, Schultz once remarked to his merry mob of misfits, “Ain’t there nobody that can shoot this guy so he don’t bounce back?”
Gangsters used a variety of handguns during the liquor wars of the 1920s. From left to right, we have the Colt Model 1903 .38 revolver, the .45 ACP Colt M1911 pistol, the 9mm P08 Parabellum
and the .32 ACP Colt Model 1903.
A Curiously Hazardous Profession
Prohibition ran from 1920 until 1933. The stock market crash that accompanied the Great Depression kicked off in 1929. The toxic combination of these two events meant there was a great deal of money to be made for those willing to ignore the law.
Diamond saw this as an opportunity and traveled to Europe in search of alcohol and drugs. He returned with barrels of liquor that he had dumped into New York Harbor. Partially filled, these barrels floated low in the water. By studying the tides, Diamond could predict where they might make landfall. He paid local children a nickel apiece to retrieve these containers.
Diamond was the partial owner of the Hotsy Totsy Club on Broadway. With a name like Hotsy Totsy Club, they weren’t hosting Sunday School brunches or teaching underprivileged blind kids to read.
Diamond used his club as a home base for all manner of illicit activities. In July of 1929, Diamond and an associate named Charles Entratta broke up a fight in the club by shooting three of the participants.
Two of the inebriated thugs, Simon Walker and William Cassidy, died as a result. William’s brother, Peter, was badly wounded. In response, the three men’s criminal associates kidnapped the Hotsy Totsy’s bartender, three members of the waitstaff and the cute hatcheck girl. One of the five was later found murdered in neighboring New Jersey. The other four were never heard from again.
There followed arrests for kidnapping, assault and sundry other crimes. Diamond attempted to flee to Europe but was unwelcome in the UK, Belgium and France. Eventually, German police deported him back to Philadelphia.
The first time Jack Diamond was shot, it was with a 12-bore shotgun. This vintage Remington Model 11 is typical of the genre.
A Notoriously Hard Man to Kill
Jack Diamond was the target of at least five assassination attempts. The first occurred in 1924 while he was attempting to hijack a truck full of liquor belonging to a rival criminal gang. Diamond caught a charge of 12-gauge shot to the face and head but recovered.
Three years later, Diamond was pulling bodyguard duty for a proper villain named Jacob “Little Augie” Orgen. While the two men were walking in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, they were confronted by a trio of assailants.
These three shooters opened fire at close range, killing Orgen outright and hitting Diamond twice in the chest. Both rounds passed beneath the gangster’s heart, and he recovered after a protracted hospital stay. Though he undoubtedly knew the men who shot him and killed his boss, Diamond refused to reveal their identities to police. Jack Diamond was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a snitch.
In October of 1930, Diamond was a guest at the Hotel Monticello on Manhattan’s West Side. Three assassins forced their way into his room and shot him five times. The shooters then fled. Diamond, for his part, stopped long enough to drink two shots of whiskey before staggering into the hallway in his pajamas where he collapsed. After two and a half months in the hospital, Legs Diamond was released to sow yet more chaos.
In 1930, Diamond and a pair of thugs kidnapped and beat a truck driver named Grover Parks, who was carrying a load of hard cider for a rival gang. Even if the victim is a thug himself, it was still against the law to beat people within an inch of their lives. In April of 1931, Diamond was arrested for Parks’ assault. Two days after his arrest, Diamond was released on a $25,000 bond.
Five days after that, Diamond was a guest at the Aratoga Inn, a roadhouse near Cairo, NY. After taking a meal with three associates in the roadhouse restaurant, Diamond stepped outside to get some air. Gunmen masquerading as duck hunters opened fire from a parked car and shot him three times at close range. Bystanders drove the bleeding Diamond to the hospital, where he recovered yet again after a protracted stay. By now, he was likely growing weary of hospital food.
Jack Diamond’s weapon of choice was a 4″ P08 Parabellum pistol equipped with the 32-round snail-drum magazine from an Artillery Luger.
Nobody is Immortal
If you’re counting, by then, Legs Diamond had been shot with 10 handgun rounds and an unknown number of shotgun pellets. The rock-hard mobster seemed unkillable. However, on December 18, 1931, Jack Diamond’s luck ran out.
By now, Diamond was staying at a rooming house in Albany, NY. He took dinner out with friends at a local restaurant before partying the night away with his mistress, Kiki Roberts. Come the dawn, Diamond staggered back to his boarding house and passed out on his bed.
Two attackers entered his room soon thereafter with a key. One man held him in place while the other pumped three rounds into the back of his head. The two gunmen fled, but one had second thoughts, ran back to the room and shot him several more times.
Mrs. Laura Woods, Diamond’s landlady, later testified that she heard one of the shooters say, “Oh, hell, that’s enough. Come on.” His killers were never caught.
There was ample conjecture. Some suspected local mafia hit men. Others postulated that the shooters had been crooked members of the Albany police force. Regardless, Legs Diamond was finally well and truly dead.
Legs Diamond was buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Maspeth, Queens, NY. Though there was no formal service, there were around 200 people who attended just to gawk.
Two years later, the body of Legs Diamond’s widow, Alice Kenny Diamond, was discovered shot to death in her apartment. Mob watchers suspected she was murdered to keep her from telling what she knew about her husband’s nefarious dealings.
This is the SS Belgenland. In 1930, Jack Diamond took this ship to Europe in search of illicit booze and drugs during Prohibition. Photo: Public Domain
The 9mm P08 Parabellum and the Colt M1911 .45 were both powerful and concealable gangster weapons used during the Roaring ’20s.
Ruminations
Legs Diamond was a killer. His weapon of choice was a German P-08 Parabellum pistol with a 4″ barrel and a 32-round snail-drum magazine. In the years following the First World War, such martial firearms would have been relatively commonplace, having been brought back from Doughboys serving overseas.
The 9mm round was appealing then for the same reasons it is appealing now. A drum-equipped Luger pistol was sort of concealable and offered unparalleled firepower.
So, what are the tactical lessons to be learned from the sordid life and gory death of Jack Diamond? For starters, handguns can be pretty substandard manstoppers, particularly firing ball ammo.
They will certainly do the job, but shot placement and ammunition selection are critical. In a social exchange of gunfire, most any rifle is more effective than most any pistol. At appropriate ranges, most any shotgun is more effective than most any rifle. It finally took 16 pistol rounds and Lord only knows how many shotgun pellets to put Jack Diamond down.
Jack Diamond shuffled off this mortal coil in 1931 at age 34. By the time he finally expired in a pool of his own blood, Legs had seen and done an awful lot of bad things. However, even nearly a century later, he can still teach us a great deal about the art of armed combat.
From samurai roots to the gallows, this is Hideki Tojo’s fanatic rise, failed suicide with an 8mm Nambu, and the wild “Remember Pearl Harbor” denture secret that rode with him to trial.
World War 2’s Scale: A Global Fire That Scarred Everyone
The Second World War was the bloodiest, most expansive conflict in human history. Even today, nobody is quite sure how many people perished in this massive global conflagration. Estimates range somewhere between 70 and 85 million souls. That’s tough to get your head around.
American culture is admittedly Eurocentric. It just is. Ask anybody the origins of industrialized America, and they will parrot back stories of Pilgrims, the War for Independence, and George Washington. That same Eurocentrism flavors the way we digest World War 2 history even today.
Two Brutal Fronts: Europe and the Pacific
World War 2 was fairly cleanly divided between Europe and the Pacific. North Africa falls under the European umbrella as Operation Torch, Der Afrika Korps, and El Alamein were all part of an overarching continuum that eventually led to Stalingrad, D-Day, and the Battle for Berlin. By contrast, our war in the Pacific started with Pearl Harbor and ended with the two atomic bombs.
Adolf Hitler was history’s alpha villain. He was such an easy guy to hate. Hitler murdered people by the tens of millions simply because of where and to whom they were born. Particularly when viewed through a modern woke lens, such racism and homicidal bigotry is literally as bad as it gets. When folks think of World War II 2-vintage bad guys, Hitler’s name is always at the top of the list.
Fanatic Faith: Hirohito, Worship, and War
On the other side of the world, the villainy was just as vile but not quite so clear-cut. Japanese Emperor Michinomiya Hirohito was viewed as a god by rank and file Nipponese soldiers. Two million of them gave their lives in his service. However, at war’s end, General MacArthur kind of gave him a pass.
Part of that was simply pragmatism. It was easier to pacify the fanatical Japanese population if MacArthur kept the god-man intact as a figurehead. Had he tried Hirohito and then had him shot on the grounds of the Imperial palace, we’d still likely be fighting those lunatics. As it was, the Japanese have gone on to become some of our most stalwart allies. Humanity is weird like that. However, 111,606 Americans lost their lives fighting in the Pacific. We are a generous people who are slow to anger, but somebody was going to have to pay for that. That somebody was Hideki Tojo.
From Samurai Roots to Ruthless Ambition
Hideki Tojo was born in Tokyo in 1884. He was the third son of Hidenori Tojo, a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army. The Tojo family was of the traditional samurai caste. Under the bakufu, Japanese society was divided up into artisans, merchants, peasants, and samurai. Though the caste system was officially abolished in 1871, these traditions were slow to die. Soldiering was in Tojo’s blood.
As a child, adults characterized young Hideki as stubborn, opinionated, and combative. He was said to have no sense of humor…like, at all. His teachers also said he was not terribly bright. Tojo fought constantly with the other boys and had zero tolerance for weakness. Of himself, he once said, “I am just an ordinary man possessing no shining talents. Anything I have achieved I owe to my capacity for hard work and never giving up.”
In short, he was perfect raw material to helm the fanatical Japanese hive mind through a global world war.
Forged in War: Training, Cruelty, and Influence
Hideki enrolled in the Army Cadet School in 1899 and thrived. He ranked 10th out of 363 cadets in his class at the Japanese Military Academy. Commissioned as a second lieutenant in the infantry, Tojo fought against the Russians in Siberia and later served as military attaché to Germany following World War 1. The German influence was strong in the organization of the Japanese military, leading up to World War 2. Tojo played a big role in all of that.
Tojo was both stern and cruel. He regularly slapped subordinates and played no role in raising his own three children, claiming that they were a distraction and that rearing them was women’s work. Tojo felt that physical punishment was a critical aspect of training men for whom bushido was not part of their organic DNA.
In 1924, the US Congress passed the Immigration Control Act. America was fairly overtly racist back then, and this piece of legislation limited the entry of Asians into the country based solely on their nationality. Nowadays, immigration controls are necessary to prevent the entire planet from emptying its dregs onto our shores. Back then, the problem was that Japanese immigrants worked so much harder than natural-born Americans. Japanese people were therefore viewed as a threat. This legislative act left Tojo absolutely livid. He harbored a festering hatred of America for the rest of his days.
From Army Hawk to Prime Minister
Tojo was promoted to major general in 1934 and began advocating for Japan to transform itself into a “national defense state.” He penned a book titled Essays in Time of National Emergency, which said, “The modern war of national defense extends over a great many areas requiring a state that can monolithically control all aspects of the nation in the political, social and economic spheres.” He went on to state that Japan must “Spread its own moral principles to the world…a cultural and ideological war of the ‘imperial way’ is about to begin.”
Tojo sided with the emperor during a 1936 coup attempt and supervised the trial and execution of the insurrectionists. He served in staff and command roles fighting both the Russians and the Chinese and actually protected Jewish refugees over the protests of his German allies.
In July of 1940, Hideki Tojo was appointed army minister. Throughout it all, he retained a fanatical devotion to Emperor Hirohito. He was known as an ultra-nationalist hawk. In 1941, a grateful emperor appointed Tojo as Japanese Prime Minister. He held this position until 1944.
Face of Atrocity: Conquest, Abandonment, and Starvation
Tojo was a proper monster on the same level as Hitler. He supervised the ravaging of China, the abuse of POWs, and even the abandonment of far-flung Japanese garrisons no longer deemed critical to the war effort. This policy led to widespread starvation and cannibalism among marooned Japanese troops deprived of support.
As the war went more and more badly for the Japanese, Tojo held fast. Though he was forced to resign in July of 1944 after some particularly egregious battlefield reverses, Tojo remained steadfastly loyal to Hirohito and he to him.
After the unconditional surrender of the Japanese in 1945, General MacArthur identified Tojo among some 43 Japanese officers suspected of committing war crimes. As American troops closed in on his house to arrest him on 11 September 1945, Tojo shot himself in the chest with his service pistol.
The Botched Suicide and the 8mm Nambu
The standard Japanese handgun cartridge at the time was the 8mm Nambu. This relatively anemic round rates right alongside the .380ACP for downrange thump. Firing hardball ammo, this just wasn’t enough gun to do the deed on Tojo despite the optimal shot placement. While he was doing his dead level best to bleed out, Tojo said, “I am very sorry it is taking me so long to die. The Greater East Asia War was justified and righteous. I am very sorry for the nation and all the races of the Greater Asiatic powers. I wait for the righteous judgment of history. I wished to commit suicide but sometimes that fails.”
We Americans are a weird lot. We took Tojo to a military hospital and gave him the finest medical care available at the time. He even received blood transfusions provided by American military donors. While recovering from this grievous injury, he was also tried for crimes against humanity.
Curiously, I have a dear friend who did a stint as a health care professional taking care of incarcerated Islamic terrorists at Gitmo. It seems we’re still doing the same thing today. We keep those monsters just crazy healthy.
Dentists, Morse Code, and “Remember Pearl Harbor”
Part of Tojo’s health care regimen involved some proper dentistry. Tojo had ghastly teeth. While incarcerated at Sugamo Prison outside Tokyo, two American Navy dentists named George Clark Foster and Jack Mallory made General Tojo a set of dentures to replace his own rotten chompers.
These guys were apparently pretty underwhelmed by Tojo up close. Mallory described him as, “Very humble and just a meek, little guy.” Tojo knew that he would invariably be executed, so he only requested an upper bridge to allow him to speak clearly at his trial.
Military dentists typically engraved the owner’s name, rank, and service number into a set of dentures. As they were preparing Tojo’s new dentures, Mallory took a dental drill and engraved, “Remember Pearl Harbor” into the individual teeth in Morse code.
General Tojo was not aware of the subterfuge. Mallory later said, “You could see it clearly when it was dried, but 99 percent of the time you couldn’t tell.” Word did eventually get out, and the two sophomoric dentists borrowed Tojo’s teeth under some pretense and ground the message off before they could be caught. Tojo nonetheless carried the hidden message around in his mouth for about three months.
The Tokyo Trials: Conviction and the Rope
The wheels of justice turn slowly, but they do turn. Tojo was eventually convicted of, among other things, “waging wars of aggression; war in violation of international law; unprovoked or aggressive war against various nations; and ordering, authorizing, and permitting inhumane treatment of prisoners of war.” For these crimes, he was sentenced to death by hanging.
After the trial was completed, Tojo had the opportunity to talk. He acknowledged and apologized for the many atrocities committed by the Japanese military against its enemies. He also urged American military personnel to treat the vanquished Japanese people with compassion. Considering the state in which American B-29 Superfortresses had left Japanese cities, this was not an unreasonable request. We very nearly burned that entire island to cinders.
41 days later, on December 23, 1948, Hideki Tojo, now healthy and rehabilitated with a fresh set of teeth, was led to the gallows. As his inanimate corpse was removed and taken away for cremation, he had American blood in his veins and teeth that read, “Remember Pearl Harbor.” God bless America…
Key Facts About Hideki Tojo
| Name | Hideki Tojo |
|---|---|
| Born | 1884, Tokyo |
| Role | Imperial Japanese Army General, Prime Minister 1941 to 1944 |
| Signature Events | Pearl Harbor era leadership, Pacific War policy, Tokyo Trials |
| Suicide Attempt | 11 September 1945, self-inflicted gunshot with service pistol |
| Caliber Noted | 8mm Nambu |
| Execution | December 23, 1948, by hanging |
Oh fuck no,Tell it to the Big Red One & 2nd AD!! Grumpy
Street in El Paso, Texas, 1888
The El Paso Gunfight, sometimes referred to as the “Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight” or the “Battle of Keating’s Saloon,” occurred on April 14, 1881. The whole affair began when the Manning Brothers had stolen a herd of about 30 head of cattle in Mexico and drove them into Texas to sell. When Texas Ranger Ed Fitch and two Mexican farmhands named Sanchez and Juarique investigated, the two Mexican men were killed. This led to a Mexican posse of more than 75 men crossing into Texas seeking an investigation.
At the request of the Mexican posse, Gus Krempkau, an El Paso constable, accompanied the posse to the ranch of Johnny Hale, a local ranch owner, and known cattle rustler. There, they found the bodies of the two Mexican farmhands. The El Paso Court soon held an inquest into the deaths of the two men, with Krempkau acting as an interpreter.
Dallas Stoudemire
Afterward, Constable Krempkau went next door to Keating’s Saloon, one of the worst pestholes in El Paso, Texas. A confrontation erupted between Krempkau and ex-City Marshal George Campbell, a friend of John Hale’s. Also in the saloon was Hale himself, who was unarmed, heavily intoxicated, and also upset with Krempkau due to his involvement in the investigation. Suddenly, the drunken Hale pulled one of Campbell’s two pistols, shouting, “George, I’ve got you covered!” Hale then shot Krempkau, who fell wounded against the saloon door. Realizing what he had done, Hale ran behind a post in front of the saloon just as Marshal Dallas Stoudenmire appeared with his pistols raised. Stoudenmire then shot once, but the bullet went wild, hitting an innocent Mexican bystander. When Hale peeked out from behind the post, Stoudenmire fired again, hitting Hale between his eyes and killing him instantly.
In the meantime, when Campbell saw Hale go down, he exited the saloon, waving his gun and yelling, “Gentlemen, this is not my fight!” However, the wounded Krempkau disagreed and though down, fired at Campbell, striking him in the wrist and toe. At the same time, Stoudenmire whirled and fired on Campbell, pumping three bullets into his stomach. As Campbell crashed to the dusty street, he shouted, “You s.o.b., you have murdered me!” When the dust cleared, both George Campbell and Constable Kremkau lay dead.
Saloon Gunfight
In less than five seconds in a near comic opera gun battle, four men lay dead. The killers of the two Mexican farmhands were never caught.