L.A. Noir: The Struggle for the Soul of America's Most Seductive City

Girlfriend Sandra Hagen put on a rather more dramatic show. Sobbing, her hands thrown up “in an attitude of prayer,” she told the scribbling newsmen, “It’s too long, but I’ll wait for him!” The following month the government denied Cohen and Hagen’s request to be married while Cohen was in federal custody as “contrary to established policies.” With good behavior, Mickey would be eligible for parole in five years.

From Washington, D.C., the new attorney general called assistant U.S. attorneys Thomas Sheridan and, in Washington, Charles McNeil to congratulate them for their work on the case. He also issued a statement praising the jury.

“This was a major case and a very significant verdict,” proclaimed Robert Kennedy.

Cohen’s attorneys (who now included Jack Dahlstrum in addition to Sam Dash, as well as longtime Parker foe A. L. Wirin) petitioned for a new trial and asked that Mickey be freed on bond during his appeal. Judge Boldt declined both requests. Cohen’s last hope for escape came in the form of a message relayed to Dahlstrum from Tom Sheridan, a special assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

“Lookit, now, don’t get hot,” Dahlstrum told Mickey, when he came to him with the offer. “I know you’re not going to like this, but it’s my duty as your attorney to relay this to you.

“The government’s got three names—George Bieber, the attorney in Chicago, Tony Accardo, and Paul ‘the Waiter’ Ricca. If you want to cooperate with any of these three names, you can gain your freedom.”

Mickey responded by instructing Dahlstrum to tell Sheridan and Kennedy that they could go fuck themselves.

At daybreak on the morning of Friday, July 28, deputy U.S. marshals removed Cohen from the L.A. County Jail and flew him to his new home: Alcatraz. It was an unusual destination for an income tax evader. Cohen had little doubt the choice was Bobby Kennedy’s doing.

      ALCATRAZ was like no prison Cohen had ever been in before. “It was a crumbling dungeon,” Cohen would later write. The prison blocks were always bathed in the cold ocean clamminess. There was no hot water to shave with, no newspapers, no radio, no television, no magazines. “You never seen a bar of candy there, only on Christmas,” lamented the man who had once wooed Candy Barr. The yard was a mere fifty feet long. Inmates got only forty-five minutes a day outside. Life inside was dank and dangerous. Mickey did have a few good friends in the joint, such as onetime Siegel associate Frank Carbo, Harlem crime boss “Bumpy” Johnson, and Alvin Karpis, the head of the notorious Ma Barker-Alvin Karpis bank-robbing gang in the 1930s. But even the prestige of the Syndicate afforded little protection against his stir-crazy, ultraviolent fellow prisoners.

“The atmosphere was such that you lived in fear,” Cohen would later recall. “Like if you’re walking around a corner, you’re liable to get a shiv in your back.”

After three months on “the Rock,” Cohen was abruptly summoned to the warden’s office.

“Well, I guess you got the good news,” the warden began, reluctantly.

“What good news?” Cohen replied.

Cohen had been released on bail—freed on a writ signed by U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Douglas, who had decided that he could return to Los Angeles to await a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on his income tax conviction appeal. It was the first time an inmate from Alcatraz had ever been released on bail.

Mickey was exultant. After stepping off the boat in San Francisco, he promptly made his way to the luxurious Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill for a night of pampering. How Cohen paid for the evening—or managed to purchase a luxury class ticket to Los Angeles the next day—is unclear. But despite these splurges, this time Cohen appeared to have learned a lesson. When Cohen (looking natty in a black monogrammed Alpaca sweater, open white-on-black sport shirt, and black-and-white checkered pants) presented himself at his bondsman’s to sign the note required for his $100,000 bail, he announced to the amused press corps that he had turned down an offer to borrow a Caddy for the duration of the appeals process and would be driving a Volkswagen instead.

Reporters noted that he “killed the engine twice, had trouble adjusting the seat and then tried to take off with the brake on” on the way out.

Then, two weeks later, something shocking happened. Cohen and four others were indicted for murder in connection with the December 2, 1959, death of Jack Whalen. LoCigno had started to talk behind bars. In the process, he’d given authorities an important new lead, which prosecutors argued led straight to Mickey Cohen.

^* As is often the case with Cohen, the truth is difficult to ascertain. Early FBI reports portray Mickey as an active participant in the prostitution racket—if not as an outright pimp. See, for instance, FBI file #92-HQ-3156, Subject: “Meyer Harris Cohen,” memo dated October 8, 1960.

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