The American Mafia - Enoch Johnson

Enoch Johnson
c.1883 to Dec. 9, 1968.
"Nucky"

Johnson was lord of Atlantic City, New Jersey, during Prohibition. He was involved in rum-running, numbers rackets and other illicit enterprises and was an important figure in the organization of a national crime Syndicate.

Johnson was a bigshot in southern Jersey Republican politics, serving several terms as the local sheriff and as Atlantic County treasurer, in addition to his criminal career. He had Atlantic City so under control that it was deemed safe for a national bootleggers convention in spring 1929. (A convention of the Unione Siciliana in Cleveland a year earlier was broken up by the police.)

The convention, held from May 13-16 at the President Hotel (one source says it was the Breakers Hotel) and involving representatives from New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, New England, Detroit, Cleveland and Kansas City, helped establish peaceful relations between liquor racketeers, set in motion the planning for post-Prohibition rackets and served as a forum to criticize the Al Capone-sponsored bloodletting in Chicago. Frank Costello is believed to have moderated the discussions. Considering Johnson's reputation as a world-class partier, the event was probably also a heck of a good time.

Under Nucky Johnson, Atlantic City was one of the leading import centers for illegal booze. Johnson, along with gin merchants up and down the East Coast and in Cleveland, formed the Seven Group in 1927. That organization was a sort of bootlegging cooperative, incorporating Italian Mafiosi as well as non-Italian elements. It is seen by many as a forerunner of the Syndicate.

In the early 1940s, federal agents brought tax evasion charges against Johnson. He was convicted of non-payment of taxes owed on $124,000 of numbers racket income in the 1936 and 1937. In Camden, NJ, on Aug. 1, 1941, District Court Judge Albert B. Maris sentenced him to 10 years in prison and a $20,000 fine.

Nucky was denied release on bail during his unsuccessful appeals to the Circuit Court in Philadelphia and the U.S. Supreme Court. On the eve of his sentencing, July 31, playboy Johnson got married to former showgirl Florence Osbeck in Atlantic City. The two reportedly had dated for seven years.

Johnson did his time in Lewisburg, Pa., and returned to his Atlantic City home. He died of natural causes on Monday, Dec. 9, 1968. He was 85 years old.