Listener discretion is advised.

True crime can be strangely fascinating.

This true crime is odd, macaw, and haunted.

I'm Diane, your guide into the shadows.

Welcome to Pantasma Crime.

During Detroit's bootleg wars, a ruthless gang of Jewish immigrants rose up.

They killed nearly 500 people during their reign of running the city of Detroit.

The purple gang accomplished more in their five years of dominance than anything Al Capone and his gang achieved.

In their wake, they left behind spirits in various locations that have been connected to their crime sprees.

The purple gang was a Jewish gang that ran the city of Detroit.

The story behind the gang's name is that two Detroit market owners were having a conversation,

and one set of the group, they're rotten, purple like the color of bad meat.

They were led by a Bernstein.

Bernstein was born in New York in 1892.

His family moved to Detroit when he was young, and he joined a teenage street gang that hung out in the Hastings Street neighborhood, called Paradise Valley, in Detroit's Lower East Side.

He was joined by his brothers Raymond, Isador, and Joseph, and they specialized in pickpocketing.

This gang would evolve into the purple gang at the beginning of prohibition, and their crimes grew in intensity, as simple thievery became armed robbery, extortion, and eventually murder.

During prohibition, Detroit became a key port for running and distributing alcohol out of Canada.

The purple gang was known for instigating the Cleaners and Dyer's War.

This was a dispute between the cleaning industry and its union.

Bernstein had organized the Wholesale Cleaners and Dyer's Association, and the gang coerced membership by using violent means of persuasion.

The purple gang's reputation grew, and Al Capone so feared the group that he befriended them, and ran some of his operations through them.

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