Julian Kaufman: 1898-1940

Julian Kaufman, whose nickname stemmed from regular dealing in potato futures, was the son of Edmund Kaufman, millionaire commission broker. Although his upbringing had been a privileged one, he, like O'Banion, knew tragedy early in life: in 1911, when Kaufman was thirteen, his mother Hattie died during a holdup that turned deadly. His grandson, Richard Kaufman, has stated that the youthful killers did not get much jail time. "The family has always felt that Julian developed a disrespect for the law because of how this whole incident turned out," he says.

The young man joined his father in the brokerage business, but found his true calling as a gambler who catered to Chicago's wealthy. 'Potatoes' had been a friend of Nails Morton and now did business with the Miller brothers (a Jewish gang operating out of the West Side) and the North Siders.

Kaufman and O'Banion were questioned extensively in connection with the February 1924 murder of gangster John Duffy and his ex-prostitute wife Maybelle. A witness, Bill Engelke, claimed that Duffy had killed his wife in a drunken rage and gone to O'Banion and Kaufman for the money necessary to get out of town. Duffy, an ex-Philadelphian suspected of murder in his home town, was as stupid as he was desperate: in January he'd gone to see Hirschie Miller (one of the Miller brothers) and offered to kill O'Banion for $10,000 in retaliation for the North Sider's shooting of Davy Miller in the La Salle Theatre. Duffy must have been hoping that his friendship with O'Banion aide Yankee Schwartz would have counted for something in his hour of need. Bill Engelke told detectives that he saw Duffy get into a car with O'Banion the night before the Philadelphia gangster was found dead in a snowbank, and that Kaufman had arranged the fatal meeting. Both O'Banion and Kaufman were arrested, but all charges were dropped when a frightened Engelke recanted.

By 1928 Kaufman was partners with Bugs Moran in the ritzy Sheridan Wave Tournament Club, where admission was by invitation only and patrons did their gambling while enjoying refreshments served by uniformed waiters. After the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in February 1929, the club was raided and padlocked. Moran and Kaufman waited for a year, and then moved to reopen with financial backing from West Side gangster and vicemonger Jack Zuta. Jake Lingle, a Tribune reporter and friend of Police Commissioner Russell who functioned as a go-between for gangsters and city officials, demanded 50% of the club's take in exchange for clearing the re-opening with the legal authorities. When Moran and Kaufman refused, Lingle told them, "If this joint is opened, you'll see more squad cars in front, ready to raid it than you've ever seen before in your life." When Lingle was murdered in June 1930, Kaufman, worried about being connected with the case, fled to New York.

He operated briefly in the Big Apple under the paid protection of Vincent "Jimmy Blue Eyes" Alo. In the mid-Thirties Instead, he headed south and found a new business venture in Hallendale, Florida. Kaufman struck up a partnership with bookie Claude Litteral, who had the outlet for the local wire service. The two men ran a bookmaking operation out of a tomato packing shed, and as the money rolled in, added gambling equipment such as a craps table and roulette wheel. They called their new haven The Plantation. When Jimmy Alo and Meyer Lansky joined Kaufman and Litteral as partners, The Plantation became a well-protected gambler's paradise.

Julian Kaufman died of a heart attack in 1940, at the age of forty-two. Although he died young, his ending was not that of the typical gangster.

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