“TOMMY GUN WINTER”
Jewish gangsters, a preacher’s daughter and the trial in Dedham that shocked 1930s Boston!
Sunday, April 19 @ 2:00pm
DEDHAM HISTORICAL SOCIETY & MUSEUM
Veteran journalist, Nathan Gornestein tracks down a family secret and rediscovers the story of Jewish gangsters run amok in 1930s Boston.
This is the true tale of 2 brothers, sons of a successful Jewish contractor, who along with an MIT graduate and a minister’s daughter once competed for headlines with John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd and Bonnie and Clyde.
The gang was led by the angry, violent, yet often charismatic Murton Millen, a small-time hoodlum and aspiring race-car driver. With his younger brother, Irv, and neighborhood buddy/MIT graduate Abe Faber, Murt launched a career of increasingly ambitious robberies. After his sudden marriage to the beautiful 18-year-old Norma Brighton the gang escalated to murder. Their crime wave climaxed at a Needham bank on February 2, 1934, when Murt cut down two local police officers with a Thompson submachine gun stolen from state police.
The killings, the investigation, and the record-setting trial in Dedham with 17 psychiatrists were national news. Gorenstein is a former investigative reporter with the Philadelphia Inquirer and a two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee.
A limited number of copies of the book are available for purchase at the Dedham Historical Society & Museum. For more information call the Society @ 781-326-1385.