Newark has certainly had its share of sensational crimes over the years, perhaps none more notable than the mob hit of gangster Dutch Schultz at the long-demolished Palace Chop House on East Park Street in October of 1935.
But nine years earlier, there was a fatal armed robbery in the city that also seized the public’s attention and had residents in Newark–and from throughout New Jersey, really–scrambling for their newspapers each day to follow developments in the case, including a subsequent trial.
“How a Bragging Bandit Gave the Vital Clue,” teased one headline from the extensive news coverage.
The Prohibition-era case was known as the “Reid Ice Cream Murder,” so called because the shooting took place right outside the old Reid Ice Cream Co. plant on lower Mount Pleasant Avenue, just before its intersection with Clay Street and a block in from McCarter Highway.
Part of the building, if not all of it, remains standing.
What distinguished the slaying from so many others in a decade marked by bootlegging, speakeasies and gangland strife was not just that it was cold-blooded or carried out in broad daylight in front of witnesses, but ultimately that the four men convicted in the case died in the electric chair one right after another.
“In a few minutes, they will file through a little green door to meet their God,” then-Gov. A. Harry Moore told a church dinner in Bayonne moments before the executions at Trenton State Prison. “Jersey justice demands they pay in full for their crimes.”
In only one other instance in New Jersey history were as many as four individuals put to death at the same time or in connection with the same offense.
In the Reid case, it was for a single homicide during a holdup gone wrong that netted around $14,000 and after guilty verdicts based solely on witness testimony that was conflicting.
Sunday marks the 100th anniversary of that crime.
The robbery and shooting outside the ice cream plant at 316 Mount Pleasant Ave. occurred just before 10:30 a.m. on July 19, 1926, a Monday.
The victim was the company’s paymaster, George M. Condit, 68, of East Orange, who was shot in the chest and back and died on the sidewalk within minutes of the attack. He was buried in Irvington’s Clinton Cemetery.
Wounded in the ambush was Condit’s assistant, Joseph Duff, 21, of Orange.
According to press accounts of the day, Condit and Duff were set upon right after they’d stuffed Reid’s weekend receipts into two satchels and were headed by car to deposit the cash and checks at the North Ward National Bank a few blocks away on Broad Street.
It was a drive the pair made on a regular basis.
But that day, unbeknownst to the victims, five holdup men were waiting for them to exit the Reid building–two standing outside the plant and three more keeping watch from inside a green Pierce-Arrow parked close by on Clay Street.
One of the robbers removing a handkerchief from a pocket to mop his brow of sweat in the morning heat was the signal for the Pierce-Arrow to get underway and approach Condit and Duff as they were getting into their car, police said.
Duff was at the wheel and Condit was just entering the vehicle when the Pierce-Arrow pulled alongside them. When it did, the two thieves who’d been waiting in the street rushed over to Duff and Condit’s car and pulled their guns.
Condit was shot twice by one of the bandits when he was slow obeying a command to “put up your hands,” the impact of the blasts causing him to stumble and fall backward onto the pavement. Another robber snatched the bags of ice cream money.
“They didn’t give me a chance to say a word,” Condit reportedly uttered before dying.
Duff was shot in the thigh as he attempted to come to Condit’s aid and protect the satchels.
Several of Reid’s female office workers observed the shooting from upstairs windows or ran to help their fallen comrades, as the Pierce-Arrow made a speedy escape with all five men aboard.
“Pull your head in or I’ll blow it off,” one of the robbers yelled to a woman who’d scurried over to an open window in the factory to see what was causing the commotion.
Reid’s sales manager, who’d also heard the shots while inside the plant, grabbed a handgun from the cashier’s cage and rushed outside. He sent a volley of bullets in the direction of the getaway car, but to no avail.
Meanwhile, the company’s chief cashier got involved as well, jumping into his own car to chase the fleeing Pierce-Arrow. Along the way, he was joined in the pursuit by a retired Newark fireman and then a city motorcycle cop.
But the Pierce-Arrow, a car renowned for its power and craftsmanship, made a clean getaway with the help of heavy traffic, and the trail of the bandits quickly turned cold as they headed toward Belleville.
It turned out later that both the Pierce-Arrow and its license plates had been stolen.
Authorities believed some or all of the Reid gang struck again in East Orange that September, robbing a bank messenger of a baking company’s payroll and seriously wounding his police escort in the holdup.
But it wasn’t until mid-October that detectives got what they considered their first significant break in the ice cream case.
It came around the same time as a brazen robbery of a mail truck in downtown Elizabeth that resulted in a death and the loss of more than $150,000 headed to the local Singer Manufacturing Co. from the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.
There were several versions of the tip that led to arrests in the Reid Ice Cream job.
One was that a man picked up in the roundup of suspicious persons in the Elizabeth incident told police he’d heard someone he was drinking with in a Newark speakeasy several nights before boast that he was the getaway driver in the Reid heist.
A second version was that two women in the same establishment, maybe bar maids, tipped off police. Or could it have been an alleged acquaintance of the braggart, as one newspaper reported?
A final story surfaced years later. It held that a pregnant woman under care at Newark’s City Hospital for anxiety let it slip to a nurse who was dating a Newark policeman that she was worried her husband was in danger because he’d been involved in a shooting and was part of a robbery crew. The officer took the information from there.
Regardless of what prompted it, Robert Boudreau, 26, of Newark, was brought in for questioning by detectives and, after an exhaustive grilling, coughed up names in the deadly Reid stickup.
In the process, he gave up Joseph “Big Joe” Juliano, 36, and his cousin, Joseph Nicholas “Little Joe” Juliano, 30, both of Newark, along with Louis “Kid Ruff” Capozzi, 27, also of Newark by way of Jersey City, and Christopher Barone, 21, of Nutley.
By October 16, all four suspects had been apprehended and, after a series of positive identifications by witnesses during police lineups, were indicted and jailed pending trial. Capozzi scoffed at Duff’s identification of him as an armed robber, saying: “That ain’t my racket. I can make softer money than that.”
The men went to trial less than a month later, Boudreau testifying for the prosecution.
Three of the defendants were represented by one lawyer, John W. McGeehan Jr., the son of a Newark police lieutenant and for years a prominent criminal defense attorney with his office in Newark.
He complained bitterly he wasn’t given enough time to prepare his case and that there should be one trial for his clients and another trial for the other defendant, “Little Joe” Juliano, whom McGeehan had hoped to question as a witness for the defense.
He was also convinced the men he was representing were innocent. (Brendan Byrne spent his early years as a lawyer in McGeehan’s firm before becoming Essex County prosecutor, a judge and then governor.)
Selection of the all-male jury whose names, addresses and occupations were printed in the newspaper took two days, long for the time. The trial lasted three weeks, the longest of any Essex County murder case up until then.
Citizens in Newark and elsewhere were riveted to every twist and turn in the proceedings.
The Essex County Courthouse in Newark was placed under heavy guard during the trial, as were the jurors, after police disclosed that the judge, prosecutor and at least one witness had their lives threatened.
“Police have created an atmosphere of martial law at the trial,” The Newark Sunday Call reported.
Everyone entering the courthouse had to give a good reason for being there and questionable characters were turned away, while those entering the courtroom for the Reid case were also frisked, the paper added.
Fears running rampant throughout Newark that the suspects had their lawyers paid for by the mob and would be broken out of confinement before they could be brought to justice also served to boost the level of security.
Fumes that circulated in the courthouse from a tear gas demonstration by sheriff’s officers near the end of the trial sparked rumors the jailbreak was imminent.
“Each day the prison van carrying the four defendants between the courthouse and the New Street jail was escorted by a flying squad armed with riot guns and tear gas throwers,” a Newark police officer later recalled.
Awaiting the van to arrive in the morning and to depart the courthouse in the afternoon was a throng of spectators eager to catch a glimpse of the defendants.
As the prosecution’s chief witness, Boudreau confessed to his part in the robbery on the witness stand and also conceded he did, in fact, have a criminal history that included holdups.
He said he wore a chauffeur’s hat on the day of the Reid robbery to give the impression his mission at the wheel of a fancy car was anything but sinister.
In a hushed courtroom, Boudreau identified his alleged accomplices for the jury by placing a “trembling hand,” as one newspaper put it, on each of their shoulders when requested to do so by prosecutor John O. Bigelow.
“He appeared frightened and spoke in such low tones that he was frequently admonished to raise his voice,” the Newark Evening News wrote of Boudreau’s testimony, adding that the witness looked “pale and anemic.”
Boudreau further testified that Capozzi and Barone were the two men waiting in the street outside the ice cream plant but said he didn’t know which one fired the fatal shots.
Under cross-examination, Boudreau admitted he did not know or have dealings with any of the defendants before the morning of the crime except for “Little Joe” Juliano.
He acknowledged “Boudreau” was not his real last name and did not dispute a defense assertion that he was known to hang out around the ice cream plant. But Boudreau denied he was friends with the company’s assistant paymaster.
He also answered “yes” when asked if he’d do anything to avoid the electric chair.
McGeehan pointed out to Boudreau that there were serious discrepancies in the two signed statements he gave police as well as in his trial testimony.
He also tried to get Boudreau to admit he was part of a robbery ring whose members did not include any of his clients, even going so far as to name the others who were allegedly part of that outfit. But McGeehan was cut off from pursuing that line of questioning by Judge Edwin C. Caffrey.
Prosecutors bolstered Boudreau’s credibility with a surprise witness–a Kearny High School teenager who said he’d seen Boudreau driving the getaway car on the fateful day.
Another key prosecution witness was Philip Seigle, a local pharmacist who claimed he was in a car parked outside the Reid Ice Cream building the day of the shootings and watched the entire robbery and murder unfold before his eyes. He fingered Capozzi as Condit’s killer.
Two of the Reid clerks and a local garage owner also offered eyewitness testimony for the prosecution.
All four defendants took the stand to testify in their own defense, saying they were nowhere near the Reid plant when Condit and Duff were waylaid.
Their alibis were supported by other witnesses, including one who testified he had no familiarity with any of the accused and had surveiled the holdup and shooting across the street from the ice cream factory.
The defense lawyers maintained Boudreau implicated the defendants in the crime to protect underworld associates of his and that the four men on trial were victims not only of police manipulation of evidence but also an anti-Italian bias.
A measure of retribution could have been at play, too, since “Big Joe” Juliano had been needling Newark cops for failing to make an arrest in the Reid case in the weeks after the incident, a Newark policeman disclosed years later.
Their defenses deemed unconvincing, the four men were all found guilty of murder in the first degree on December 2. Under tight security, jury deliberations were held off-site at the Hotel Riviera down the street from the courthouse to avoid any outside distractions.
The verdict was reached in fewer than four hours and did not include a jury recommendation for a sentence of life imprisonment. The decision left the courtroom in an uproar.
“When the death verdict, with no recommendation for clemency, automatically sealed the fate of the four accused men, wildest (sic) disorder and hysteria swept the mass of spectators,” a Newark law enforcement official told a newspaper years afterward.
“The cavalcade that sped the doomed men through the crowd toward Trenton prison looked like a detachment of mechanized cavalry.”
In the aftermath of the trial, the Trenton Evening Times argued that the four now-convicted felons couldn’t be sent to their deaths quickly enough.
“There is nothing that will do as much to end the crime wave as the prompt electrocution of the gangsters when they have been captured, tried, convicted and sentenced,” the paper declared in an editorial.
“Fire must be fought with fire. There has been too much clemency shown to the burglars, murderers and highwaymen, and it is time to treat them roughly. That is the only deterrent the underworld knows and fears.
“At heart the ordinary gunman is a coward. Let the higher courts promptly dispose of the appeal that is to be made in behalf of the Newark gangsters. In the meantime they should be closely watched.”
After unsuccessful appeals that included a last-ditch request for a review of new evidence, the four prisoners were executed before an overflow and sometimes unruly crowd of 150 witnesses on the night of November 18, 1927, a Friday. It was front-page news in The New York Times.
The executioner was the same man who’d pulled the switch on Italian immigrants and accused killers Sacco and Vanzetti in a Massachusetts electric chair earlier in the year, a case still shrouded in controversy amid claims of ethnic prejudice.
The New Jersey executions were carried out within a half-hour of each other, the fastest on record for multiple executions at the time, the Newark Evening News said, with all four inmates proclaiming their innocence right up until their final breaths.
“I was framed up and not only by the police,” “Big Joe” Juliano protested in his last words.”I’m as innocent as God Almighty. I swear it on my Holy Mother’s honor. They are murdering me like a dog.”
“My mother–I’m as innocent as her,” offered Barone.
“I want to ask the men who committed the crime for which I am about to die to come forward and confess,” “Little Joe” Juliano cried out. “Clear my name.”
The last to be executed, Capozzi took out a crucifix, kissed it and asked that it be given to one of his sisters. “I’m a victim of the police,” he said before being strapped into the electric chair, “and I die with a smile on my face.”
Before his final meal, Capozzi had written two letters to relatives saying he was a “martyr” and insisting he had nothing to do with Condit’s murder. “Don’t stop investigating this case,” he wrote.” The truth one day must come out.”
Public interest in the case was so great that in the minutes leading up to and after the executions the Newark Evening News said its switchboard was swamped with inquiries from callers wondering if there had been a last-minute reprieve or if the death penalty had been carried out.
In the months after the verdicts, Seigle suffered serious health problems and recanted his trial testimony, saying it had been coerced by police.
He was later charged with embezzlement and died of a heart attack at the age of 32 in 1929 while serving his sentence in the Essex County Jail. His remains were buried in the Grove Street cemetery in Newark.
In exchange for his cooperation, Boudreau was allowed to enter a plea of no contest to second-degree murder and was sentenced to prison for 18 years, a term he began serving the same night the men he had accused of participating in the Reid robbery and murder went to their deaths.
Police Sgt. Luke Conlon, described as a quiet and unassuming detective, was one of the Newark lawmen credited in his obituary when he died in 1950 with cracking the Reid case.
Fifteen years earlier, in the fall of 1935, Conlon had questioned a mortally wounded and delirious Dutch Schultz in the presence of a stenographer inside City Hospital, an interrogation that produced Schultz’s famous deathbed rant.
Conlon was buried in the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in East Orange just over the Newark line, as was “Little Joe” Juliano, whose grave is unmarked. “Big Joe” Juliano was buried in the New Jersey State Prison cemetery in Hamilton, NJ.
Wakes at the homes of the Julianos in Newark brought out upwards of two thousand mourners, the newspapers estimated, with more than one of the bereaved expressing outrage over the guilty verdicts and executions.
Barone was buried quietly in the Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, Queens, NY, while hundreds turned out for Capozzi’s funeral and burial at the Holy Name Cemetery in Jersey City.
Capozzi was laid to rest after a funeral mass in Jersey City, even though a state law at the time restricted services for executed murderers to the sites of their executions. His two brothers and four sisters got around the ban by having the mass said as the dead man was lying in a nearby funeral parlor.
Next to his casket was a four-foot-tall bleeding heart floral arrangement sent by his longtime girlfriend that was draped with a sash reading “To My Innocent
Sweetheart.” The two were seen dancing at a cabaret in Long Branch the night before the robbery.
Some two-and-a-half years after the Reid executions–on July 22, 1930–the State of New Jersey, for the second and final time in its history, put four men to death back to back again. Ironically, it was for another botched armed robbery in Newark that left one man dead.
Among those executed in that case was a hardened criminal with so many aliases he was known simply as “The Jersey Kid,” who, when his death sentence and its timing were announced, asked the judge: “Can’t you make it any sooner?”
Most of the early executions in New Jersey were carried out by the counties in which the crimes occurred, and most were by hanging until authorities switched to the electric chair when the state took control of executions in 1907.
The final inmate executed from more than several hundred by the counties and state throughout the years was convicted wife-killer Ralph Hudson in 1963.
In 2007, New Jersey abolished the death penalty, the final blow to a long and particularly harsh era of “Jersey justice.”
Guy Sterling is a retired Star-Ledger reporter who has written about Newark’s history for years. On September 19, he will be giving a presentation on the history of Newark’s George Washington statue at the site of the monument in the former Washington Park as part of a free program sponsored by the Newark History Society. The other half of the program will focus on Newark Academy’s history in Newark and its Revolutionary War connection. The rain date is September 26.