Meyer Lansky letter to be auctioned
Looks like mobsters could be as sentimental and sappy as the next guy.
(We feel almost safe saying this as Miami Beach gangster Meyer Lansky has been dead for more than 36 years.)
A one-page, handwritten in cursive — is that still a thing? — letter written by Meyer Lansky to his daughter Sandra Lansky and her husband Vincent Lombardo is being auctioned by Boston-based RR Auction.
The letter, dated Dec. 31, 1970, is signed, “Love, Dad,” and asks, “How is Santa coming along I hope he is well by now.”
At the time, his daughter Sandra was 32 and, apparently, still aglow with the holiday spirit.
“I have a beautiful picture of you and Santa which is about 2 yrs old,” Lansky wrote. “No one believed your age on that picture I’m trying to have enlarged or have a painting made from it.”
Lansky didn’t expect a quick response. He had fled to Israel in 1970 to avoid federal income tax charges. But no worries, he knew his daughter — who bragged in a memoir about her father that she slept with Dean Martin six times in one night — was attentive.
“This is my last letter to for 1970. You need not apologize for not answering promptly I think you are very prompt. ... You take care of the Christmas presents and enjoy it (tell me what you got for every one),” Lansky wrote.
Elsewhere, Lansky asks his daughter and son-in-law to take care of some checks and business transactions and expresses appreciation for an Italian cookbook he received as a gift.
‘THE MOB’S ACCOUNTANT’
Lansky, known as “the Mob’s accountant,” a description he’d eschew, would come back to Miami Beach to take care of business himself.
The Russian-born Maier Suchowljansky was considered by law enforcement “to be a genius of finance with the proceeds of bootlegging and gambling with notorious associates including Lucky Luciano and Bugsy Siegel,” the Miami Herald once said.
Lansky said “there’s no such thing as organized crime” in 1978.
A police officer once described Lansky as “the Andrew Carnegie of the Mob,” the Herald reported in 1983. His first arrest came in 1918, when he was about 16, for felonious assault in New York.
He reputedly joined forces with Benjamin (Bugsy) Siegel to form the Bugs and Meyer Mob in 1921, the Herald reported in his obituary. “The gang specialized in hijacking cars and guarding bootleg liquor shipments for other hoodlums during the Prohibition era.”
In the 1930s and 1940s, Lansky was linked to illegal gambling casinos in South Florida, New Orleans, Havana and Saratoga, New York.
In 1972, Israeli authorities deported him back to South Florida, where the government brought Lansky to trial with the testimony of loan shark Vincent “Fat Vinnie” Teresa. Lansky was acquitted in 1974.
He’d cop to one thing: “I admit quite frankly that I made a fortune from bootlegging,” he said in “Lansky, Mogul of the Mob,” a book written by three Israeli journalists to whom he granted limited cooperation, the Herald reported.
LIVING IN MIAMI BEACH
Lansky spent the rest of his life in Miami Beach living with his second wife, Thelma, at the Imperial House in the 5200 block of Collins Avenue. He had three children from his first wife, Anna, whom he divorced in 1948 to marry Thelma. He reportedly doted on his children — Bernard, Paul and Sandra.
The Miami Herald once described Lanksy as “a small, mild-mannered and grandfatherly man who looked like anyone else his age, playing out life’s closing years in Miami Beach.”
People recall seeing Lansky shopping at the men’s clothing stores at
Bal Harbour Shops and getting hair cuts at Carousel Barber Shop in Surfside.
The mobster also hung out at the Singapore on Collins Avenue and was often seen dining at the two Wolfie Sandwich Shop delis that were on Lincoln Road and Collins Avenue. They were famed for their overstuffed pastrami sandwiches and supersized slabs of their “world famous cheesecake.”
Lansky died from lung cancer at Mount Sinai
Medical Center in Miami Beach on Jan. 15, 1983. He was 80.
“Lansky outlived all the big hoodlums of his era: Capone, Costello, Luciano, Giancana, Anastasia, Lepke, Joe Adonis, Longie Zwillman. His name is part of our history and our legend. But when the obits ran the other day, there was a sense that the true story was now gone forever,” the Herald wrote a week after his death.
LANSKY ON AUCTION
The Fine Autographs and Artifacts auction from RR Auction concludes Jan. 8.
Auction spokesman Mike Graff expects the letter to attract interest.
“Gangster memorabilia is one of RR’s most popular specialty categories,” Graff said. “They are best known for selling the Bonnie and Clyde’s guns for more than $500,000, in 2012.”
On Saturday, the Lansky letter had attracted a bid of $220 so far.
In 2018, a 14-karat gold tie clip said to belong to Lansky went for $526 after it was auctioned by Aaron Lombardo, Vincent Lombardo’s grandson.
For information, visit www.rrauction.com.