He started as a simple dock worker, moved to a bootlegger to a large extent, and the “King of the Roma Runners” was also known. Big Bill Dwyer made so much money, he was a partner of famous gangsters in several posh nightclubs in New York. Dwyer also owned two professional hockey teams, including the Americans of New York, and was the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers football team. However, in the end, when Bill Bill Dwyer passed away, he died out of control, and the apartment broke down.
William Vincent Dwyer was born in 1883 in the Hells Kitchen area in the western part of New York. Two brigades, Hudson Dusts and Gophers, ruled the kitchen at the time, but Dwyer avoided joining both gangs and instead got a job at the docks as a stevedore for the International Union of Longhair (ILU).
While working on the docks, Dwyer began his own bookmaker activity. After the Volstead Act was passed in 1919, banning the distribution of alcohol, for the money he made from the bookmaker, Dwyer forked in the bootlegging business. Dwyer acquired a fleet of steel boats, each with an established machine gun, in case the scammers tried to seize the cargo. Dwyer also bought several large rum-ships that were needed to unload illegal hootch from any boat that supplied it.
Dwyer went to Canada, England and the Caribbean to establish connections with those who sold him the liquor he needed to carry to the United States. Dwyer then installed a system where his ships would meet with the ships that supplied him liquor, many miles at sea. There the drink was transferred to the Dwyer ships, and then quickly delivered to the Dwyer speedboats, which were close to the coast of New York.
The boats were unloaded at the docks, which were protected by the local 791 of ILU, of which Dwair was a member of the charter. From the docks, liquor was transferred to several warehouses in the New York area. When the time was right, trucks lodged with illegal alcohol, and guarded by convoy team members, carried the drinks all over the country: heavy loads were sent to Florida, St. Louis. Louis, Kansas City, Cincinnati and as far as New Orleans.
Dwyer was able to pull a large amount of booze to New York because he knew one simple fact: you had to bribe the police and the coast guard if you wanted to succeed in the bootlegging business. And Dwyer did this by transferring thousands of dollars to someone who needed to grow.
Breaking away from the cops in New York was easy. The policemen who did not have hands for transplantation had a lot and a lot. However, Dwyer was particularly adept at recruiting members of the Coast Guard to look the other way when his speed boats entered the waters of New York.
Dwyer’s first contact was Coast Guard officer Petty Olsen. Through Olsen, Dwyer met many of the coast guards, the “Guards”, whom he called them, who might want to take bribes. Dwyer will bring these vaults to the bright lights of New York, where he will feed them with luxurious dishes, take them to Broadway shows and even get them a chic hotel room occupied by the lady of their choice, which Dwyer will pay for too. As soon as Guardie took a bribe from Dwyer, he was informed that he could earn hundreds, and sometimes thousands of dollars, if he could secure other Guardians to help protect Dwyer's supplies.
Soon, Duyer made so much money through bootlegging, he was considered the largest distributor of illegal alcohol in all of the United States of America. However, Dwyer had one huge problem in which he needed help in solving. Whenever one of his trucks left New York to distribute drinks in other parts of the country, they were vulnerable to being surrounded by hundreds of hijackers who were operating throughout the country. Dwyer knew that this did not happen, he had to accept partners - members of Italian mobs and Jewish mobs. Since he raked millions in profits, Dwyer did not mind and, of course, could afford to share wealth. The problem was that Dwyer considered himself nothing more than a businessman and was not a gangster himself. Dwyer needed someone in the underworld who could make Dwyer's contacts necessary to continue to act without fear of being captured.
Almost by chance, this man fell right into Dwyer’s lap. In 1924, two Dwyer ships were stolen in the state of New York. Dwyer relied on cops for a salary to find out who is responsible for the hijackings. The word soon returned to Dwyer that the criminal who was arrested for the hijacking was none other than Madden himself, an Irishman who grew up in Liverpool, England, before he emigrated to New York as a teenager. Madden was the evil nickname for "The Killer" and once ruled the murderous Goofer gang in the Scarlet Kitchen.
Dwyer paid anyone to pay to drop the charges against Madden, with the order: “Get me Owney Madden.
Madden got the word who his benefactor was, and that he was expected to meet with Dwyer. The two men met at the Dwyer office in Loew # State Building in Times Square. There is no recording or decoding of this meeting, but TJ English, in his masterpiece on the Irish gangsters, called Paddy Wakad, said that the conversation between Madden and Dwyer could go something like this:
“You have problems,” Madden would say to Duyer. “Gangsters collected your trucks like sitting ducks, and what are you going to do about it?”
"That's why I called you."
"You have to organize shooters and cherry pickers, not to mention the bulls (police) and policies (politicians)."
"You're right. I need the hijackings to stop. I need a place to make my own brew right here in the city.
“You need a lot, my friend.
"Are you with me?"
"Give me one reason."
"I can make you rich."
"Pal, you and I are two peas in a pod."
And this was the beginning of the Irish Mobs of New York, which would then be combined with Italian and Jewish mobs to control the bootlegging business across the United States of America. The grouping of three ethnic mobs was known as the "Unification".
With millions of Dwyer, Madden oversaw the creation of the Phoenix Cereal Beverage Company, located on 26th Street and 10th Avenue, right in the heart of Hell's kitchen, where both Madden and Dwyer grew up. This red brick building, which served the entire block, was originally a Clausen & Flanagan brewery, which was created to produce and sell almost beer, which no real brew will ever pass by its lips. Beer made in Phoenix, was named Madden number 1.
With Dwyer, mostly a man of money behind the scenes, Madden became the architect who created and raised his empire. Madden welcomed the former owner of the taxi, named Larry Fay, as the frontman for several high-profile establishments that were needed to sell Madden No. 1, plus all scotch, rum, vodka, brandy and champagne, which the Factory had smuggled into the city. One of these places was El Fay on 107th Street 54th Street.
El Fay's main attraction was Texas Hinan, a cabaret singer / comedian who was later copied by the May West. To encourage Ginan to work in El Fay, Madden and Dwyer made Guinan a partner. Guinan was famous for her superstitions, which she belted between her fists from slamming or whistling from a piercing whistle while she sat on a high stool in the main room. Guinan's signature “Hello Sucker” is how she greeted all of El Fay’s healed clients.
When the singer or dancer finished their performance in El Fay, Ginan admonished the crowd: “Give the little lady a big hand!”
Once a forbidden agent, who could not be bought by Madden or Dwyer, attacked El Fay. He walked over to Ginan, put his hand on her shoulder and said to his comrade: "Give the little lady big big handcuffs."
Dwyer did everything he did best, Ginan was released from prison, and El Fay soon jumped in again, forcing everyone to participate very rich.
Madden and Dwyer also collaborated with former bootlegger Sherman Billingsley in the most fashionable club "Stork" on East 53rd Street. Two Irish gangsters spread their wings to the north of Manhattan when they bought the Club De Luxe from former heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson. They introduced Big Frenchy De Mange as their operational partner and changed their name to Cotton Club. At the Cotton Club, De Mangue established the “Only White” admission policy, despite the fact that waiters, dancers and main artists such as Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and Nicholas Brothers, all were black.
However, the Cotton Club was insanely successful with a lot of waste from the city center, putting tons of cash into the pockets of Dwyer and Madden.
In 1925, Dwyer was arrested for attempting to bribe members of the coast guard during a bite operation led by the Prohibition Bureau. Dwyer was sent to prison for two years, but after 13 months he was released for good behavior. With Dwyer in the bank, Frank Costello took over Dwyer’s bootlegging control.
While he was in prison, one of his cellmates told Dwyer. “I wish I had ever seen a whiskey case. I have suffered from my life for many years, always waiting for my arrest, always dealing with fraudsters and double crossings, and now look at me worse than broke. ”
As we shall see, it was not entirely true.
When Dwyer again hit the streets, he freed himself from the bootlegging business, leaving the operation for the rum Costello and Madden. To pass his time, Dwyer began to invest in a legitimate business, especially sports teams.
In 1926, boxing promoter Tex Ricard called Dwyer to purchase the Hamilton Tigers of the National Hockey League. Duyer did this, and he transferred his team to Madison Square Garden, New York, and renamed them New York Americans. As clever as Dwyer was in the bootlegging business, he was just as insane on the hockey team. His pockets, torn by money with a bootlegger, Dwyer's strategy for victory was to basically overpay everyone in his team. When the average hockey player earns between $ 1,500 and $ 2,000 a year, Dwyer is a brave Billie Burch 3-year contract worth $ 25,000. Shorty Green also received a huge raise when Dwyer awarded him $ 5,000 a year.
Being an old crook at heart, Dwyer took an active part in managing his team, even thinking to try and build games. Dwyer paid for the referee to rule his team scoring a goal if the puck simply touched the goal line, instead of completely passing the goal line, which was the rule.
In a game in Madison Square Garden in 1927, the judge-judge that Dwyer had in his pocket, for an unknown reason, began to mock Ottawa's goalkeeper Alex Connell. Connell replied that his hockey stick had fallen into the judge's nose. Dwair was outraged by the actions of the goalkeeper of Ottawa (you do not manage one of the employees of Dwyer), and Connel was asked to leave the city shortly after the game. A police detail led Connell to the railway station and defended it until the train left the city safely. After the train left the station, the man asked Connell if he was Ottawa's goalkeeper Alex Connell. Connell fears for his life, said the stranger no. And, as a result, he lived to the goalkeeper of other hockey games.
Bypassing the league rules that a person cannot own two hockey teams, in 1929 Dwyer, using former light boxing champion Benny Leonard as his frontman, bought the pirates of the NHL in Pittsburgh. In 1930, Dwyer put his dirty fingers into the newly formed National Football League by purchasing Dayton Triangles for $ 2,500. Dwyer moved the team to Ebbets in Brooklyn and renamed them Brooklyn Dodgers.
Three years later, Dwyer, having overpayed all his players again, began to lose so much money, he sold Brooklyn Dodgers to two former players of New York: Chris Keglu and John Sims for $ 25,000. Despite the fact that he sold the team 10 times more than he paid, Duyer estimated that he still lost $ 30,000 in the three years he owned the team.
In 1934, having filled American sports teams (it still belonged to Americans from New York, but they had bleeding money), Dwyer bought the famous tropical park Horse Racing Track in Miami, Florida.
However, the roof fell on Dwyer when in 1935 he was listed on a game of chance. Dwyer beat the case, but then the government did him what they did to Al Capone: they charged him with tax evasion. These charges were stuck, and Dwyer was stripped of all his assets, except for the Americans of New York, and at home in Belle Harbor, Queens. Almost penniless, Dwyer no longer had the money to keep the Americans of New York afloat.
In 1937, the National Hockey League temporarily took control of the New York Americans. To show the NHL that he was financially solvent, Duyer borrowed $ 20,000 from Red Dutton. However, instead of paying the salary to his team, Dwyer decided to try to multiply his money in the craps game. It didn't turn up too well when Dwyer failed and lost all twenty. Having failed to pay its team and was unable to attract more capital, the NHL pulled out Dwyer for permanent residence and finally controlled the Americans from New York. Frustrated and deprived, Dwyer retired to his home in Belle Harbor.
December 10, 1943 Bill Bill Dwyer, "Runner King Roma", died at the age of 63. Dwyer was reportedly penniless at the time of his death, his only advantage being a roof over his head.
