CRIME CRAWL · CRIME FILE 01
COLLINGWOOD
MANOR
An exact Detroit address, three murders and the testimony that helped bring prison sentences to leading Purple Gang figures.
1740 COLLINGWOOD AVENUE
HYMIE PAUL
ISADORE SUTKER
WHAT HAPPENED
A meeting became a murder scene.
Joe Lebowitz, Hymie Paul and Isadore Sutker went to Apartment 211 at 1740 Collingwood Avenue after being told they were attending a friendly meeting. The three men were killed there. The crime became known as the Collingwood Manor Massacre.
Sol Levine had accompanied the men to the apartment. He was not killed and later testified against Purple Gang members in the murder case. That testimony connected a closely guarded underworld killing to a prosecution.
WHY IT MATTERED
A turning point in Purple Gang power.
The killings grew from conflict inside Detroit's Prohibition-era underworld. Lebowitz, Paul and Sutker were associated with a liquor-smuggling group sometimes called the Little Jewish Navy. Historical accounts connect the Collingwood murders and the convictions that followed to the weakening of the Purple Gang. Prison, internal conflict and competing criminal organizations all contributed to the gang's loss of power during the early 1930s.
FOLLOW THE CONNECTIONS
Keep following Detroit.
SOURCE TRAIL
This original summary was built from multiple historical references, with names, date, address and outcome checked against the Detroit Historical Society’s separate Collingwood Manor and Purple Gang histories. The public page keeps readers inside Renna Palmer Publishing. READ OUR SOURCE NOTES →