"He must have done something. They don't kill you for nothing." - Chicago Gangster Ted Newberry. Rubbed out January 7, 1933

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Kitty gets scratched

In 1931 Irving "Kitty" Yager was a beer runner on Manhattan's lower east side. On this date both his twenty-year old wife and mother had a date to meet him at a speakeasy and when they arrived the place was empty except for Irving who was laying dead on the floor with four bullet wounds.
The proprietor returned to the speakeasy and was questioned along with Yager's wife and mother and said that he had left the twenty-six-year old gangster in charge of the bar so he could go get something to eat. Other than that he could offer no information about the murder. Yager's wife, and the mother of his two-month old child, then became hysterical and was taken away.
The police had two theories behind the murder, that Irving was a victim in the war between the Wagner Brothers and the Italians or that he was a squealer. The second theory was based on the fact that the day before his murder, agents arrested eight men on an eastside pier with a truckload of beer. The police felt that the agents might have been tipped off by Yager.

For more on the Wagners check out Gangster City

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