Detroit Mob History: Unveiling the Purple Gang

Al Capone was the most dangerous man in America. And he was afraid of a gang from Detroit. They called them the Purple Gang. Two shopkeepers on Detroit's Lower East Side watched a group of immigrant kids terrorize their block. Stealing from pushcarts. Rolling drunks near Eastern Market. Shaking down the same merchants their parents worked alongside. "Those boys are rotten," one said. "Purple. Like the color of bad meat." The name stuck. Within a decade, those kids would become the most feared cr