What began as a youth gang in the late teens developed into one of the most notorious of Detroit's prohibition gangs. The true origin of the gangs name has been lost in the annals of time but their rise to infamy has been well chronicled through police reports, newspaper archives and the word of mouth accounts of some of those who came in contact with it's members during the gangs hey day. The original Purple gang got it's start in the neighborhood around the Hastings Street quarter just after the end of World War I.
Sammy "Purple" Cohen was the gangs unquestioned leader. As prohibition became the law of the land Cohen's gang joined with the Oakland Sugarhouse gang under the direction of the Bernstein brothers. Abe, Ray and Joe Bernstein were three brothers who had grown up in Little Jerusalem and went on to transform the Purples from a small time youth gang whose primary activities centered around small scale extortion and shoplifting into an efficiently run organization that controlled a good portion of the liquor flowing into and out of Detroit. The Purples in additon to their bootlegging operation also provided a protection service to other local bootleggers shipment of goods at often unfair prices.
The gang distinguished itself from the other local groups by proving themselves as being more than willing to use extreme levels of violence in the course of extorting, collecting debts or protecting a shipment. At it's peak the Purples never exceeded 51 members but became a legendary outfit with it's involvement in the trafficking of narcotics, bootlegged liquor, the running of local gambling establishments and blind pigs while high jacking unprotected liquor shipments. By the mid twenties the purples had established important contacts with the Chicago outfit under the control of Al Capone and the Egans Rats Gang operating out of St.Louis. Egans Rats became a ready supplier of manpower for the Purple gang where the Capone connection would serve to further the Purples reputation as one of the toughest of the prohibition gangs when several members were sought out and arrested in connection with the St. Valentines day massacre in Chicago.
The gang was so well known for their involvement in the booming of kidnapping for ransom that they became the prime suspects in the disappearance of the Lindburgh baby. The Purples remained a underworld force throughout the twenties but collapsed under the weight of their ever expanding reputation in the thirties. The end for the Purples was caused by several factors, none more prominent than the vicious murders of Hymie Paul, Izzy Sutker and Joe Leibovitz at 1740 Collingwood Ave., on September 16,1931. Following the conviction of several Purple gang leaders for this crime the remaining members of the organization were slowly eliminated by law enforcement agencies or other crime groups operating within the city.
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