![]() On Monday, May 29, 1944, Joe went to jail, and Hazel Mae filed for divorce.Īccording to The New Orleans States newspaper, that week, Deputies from the United States Marshall’s Office arrested Joe Gleason and nineteen other taxi drivers for operating cabs on illegal gasoline rations. In September 1943, Joe took ownership of The Old Opera House Cocktail Lounge at 601 Bourbon Street from a Marcello associate named Richard Conaway. Delivering “racehorse machines in the Eighth Police District” earned Joe the money to rent Hazel Mae a three-bedroom house at 2513 Melpomene Street. In 1942, Joe took on odd jobs for the Algiers Music Company and a young man named Carlos Marcello. As the baby grew, Hazel Mae complained their family had outgrown their one-bedroom apartment, and she insisted they could not raise a child on a cab driver’s pay. In April 1941, Joe Gleason married Hazel Mae Brooks, and eight months later, she gave birth to Joe Junior at Charity Hospital. As the thunder and static made listening to the broadcast impossible, Joe shook his head, wondering if his luck would ever change. Joe owned the dark nightclub across the street, but inside the now locked bar, he had no customers and no radio. Minutes before midnight, Wednesday, July 5, 1944, Joseph Gleason, a taxicab driver with a suspended license, sat alone in his car, a 1939 Mercury Eight, outside 600 Bourbon Street, watching it rain.Ī truck passed, splashing water, prompting Gleason to turn up the radio as WWL newsman Don Lewis recounted the hundreds of American soldiers killed fighting German forces on Independence Day. Dirty Phenix expands upon the investigative work of Alabama’s top investigative journalists in the 1940s and 1950s and includes over forty photographs from the period.Īs you will find in the following excerpt from Dirty Phenix, the book also examines Louisiana’s connections to the national crime syndicates and the mob in Phenix City, Alabama, in the 1940s. ![]() That interview project became the Carnal Knowledge book series, and this week, we released the first in that series, Dirty Phenix: Birth of the Dixie Mafia. Over time, I found those most willing to share were retired burlesque dancers and bartenders from mob-connected clubs. In the 1980s, I began interviewing retired police officers and service workers who worked at businesses linked to reputed organized crime families. However, this week, we released another kind of true-crime book. Last month, Bogart Books released Bayou Justice Book 3, reviewing and updating readers on South Louisiana cold cases previously examined in this newspaper column. Through social media and email, readers are asking for book updates.
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