A member of the Purple Gang popped up, improbably, as a murder suspect in a recent episode of the "Detroit 1-8-7" TV series. Not that the Purples weren't involved in murder, but their heyday was during Prohibition, 1919-33, so even a young gangster back then would have to be in his 90s now, and the "1-8-7" bad guy clearly wasn't.
Former Purples also are a prominent part of "To Account for Murder," a new novel by Michigan Appeals Judge William Whitbeck that's set amid the rampant corruption that infected Michigan government and politics in the late 1940s. Gang members supposedly were let out of a Jackson prison to assassinate a state senator, the true crime around which Whitbeck spins his fictional tale.
In short, the Purples -- also suspected by Chicago police of being involved in the 1929 St. Valentine's Day massacre -- are nothing for Michigan to be proud of.
But the City of Albion isn't shy about claiming the gang as its own. Its Downtown Development Authority's Web site, www.albiondda.org, even offers a map for a walking tour of the Purples' haunts in the historic city, where remnants of the gang set up a post-Prohibition headquarters after their leaders were imprisoned. Tour sites range from an alley where gang members used to rough up their enemies to the site of the junkyard that was a front business for illegal activity and the police station where several Purples were locked up....
"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives." Winter is Coming Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
