When he realized that he was not likely to die at a ripe old age in bed, surrounded by his loved ones, Frankie Yale of Brooklyn began talking about his funeral.
He wanted to go out, he said, like a big shot.
And on July 5, 1928, he did.
In the presence of two women, each insisting she was Mrs. Frankie Yale, he was delivered to his final resting place in a hearse, followed by 250 automobiles, 38 of them loaded with floral tributes, along a 5-mile route guarded by 100 policemen. More than 15,000 people surrounded the Church of St. Rosalie during a Requiem Mass celebrated by three priests, and flags in the neighborhood were flown at half-mast in final salute. It was the grandest funeral in the history of Brooklyn.
At the time of his death, 35-year-old Frankie Yale — born Frank Ioele and also known as Frankie Uale — had a long rap sheet, an enduring working friendship with Brooklynite-turned-Chicagoan Al Capone and a fearsome reputation in the shakedown and bootlegging rackets. He also owned several legitimate businesses, including a funeral parlor and a cigar company that peddled 5-cent Frankie Yale stogies with his photo on the box, and in Bay Ridge he was known as a philanthropist, a guy who gave generously to the needy and to his parish church. As for himself, he wore 75 diamonds on his belt buckle.
He had been arrested more than a dozen times, including twice on suspicion of murder, and in Chicago cops had picked him up as a suspect in the 1924 shooting murder of Capone’s crime rival Dion O’Banion. In fact, it was O’Banion’s lavish funeral attended by 20 judges and featuring music by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra that got Frankie thinking about his own going-away arrangements. That was some send-off O’Banion had enjoyed, and Frankie wanted one even flashier.
There had been couple of close calls for him. Somebody potted him one night in 1925 as he drove home from a Coney Island speakeasy. Somebody threw another slug at him outside a cafe July 1, 1927. Exactly one year to the day later, attackers hit Frankie again, and this time they got him good.
It happened about 4 p.m., along 44th St. in the Homewood section of Brooklyn. Witnesses said a black sedan carrying four men had pulled up alongside Frankie’s shiny new Lincoln. Two shooters opened up with a shotgun and machine gun, and the Lincoln careened up on the sidewalk, knocked down several bushes and crashed into the front porch of a two-story house. By the time detectives arrived, Frankie was slumped over dead, his diamond-studded belt buckle drenched in blood.
Frankie’s murder was merely the latest in a series of gangland rubouts, but it made big headlines and led the Bronx district attorney to demand that police do something to end what appeared to be an underworld war. “I have no evidence that there are any gangsters here,” said Police Commissioner Joseph Warren, quite straight of face.
var article_id = document.location.href.match( /1\\.\\d+/g, ”);
if ( article_id !== null ) article_id = article_id[0];
i = document.getElementById(‘footer-include’);
i.setAttribute(“src”, “http://interactive.nydailynews.com/project/archive/amazing-history-nyc/sidebar/?r=”+article_id);
Everyone figured that Frank’s one-time protege Capone was somehow involved. Although the two men had remained pals of a sort, with a working arrangement in the shipping of booze from New York to the Midwest, there was considerable suspicion on Capone’s part that his buddy had mistreated him in several transactions. Moreover, Capone suspected that Yale was involved in the 1927 murder of James (Filesy) De Amato, an important agent in New York who apparently was the man who had informed Al that Frankie was hijacking some of the booze he was supposed to protect.
Two of the men in the second car, which bore Tennessee plates, were later fingered as Capone torpedoes John Scalisi and Albert Anselmi, who subsequently participated in Chicago’s St. Valentine’s Day Massacre of February 1929. One of the machine guns used in that event, indeed, eventually was identified as the one employed on Frankie Yale.
Frankie Lay dressed in evening clothes in his silver coffin, gray buckskin gloves folded on his hands, a rosary wrapped around his fingers. Everybody agreed he looked swell.
Mourners included Mrs. Maria Uale, who had received police permission to bury the deceased after producing a marriage certificate, and Mrs. Luceida Uale, who insisted that she had married him a year earlier.
It turned out that Frankie had divorced Maria without her knowledge to take up with Luceida, widow of a gent who had been blown away in Little Italy. Maria, it was finally decided, was entitled to the estate, which everyone assumed was considerable.
A month later, she learned that actually he had left the grand sum of $7,962, including $2,800 that her lawyer said she couldn’t collect because it was in IOUs signed by people who had vanished.
She didn’t have to worry about the $165,000 funeral, anyway. Frankie’s pals paid for that. Otherwise seeking to make ends meet, she sold Frankie’s fabulous belt buckle for $500.
First published on May 1, 1998 as part of the “Big Town” series on old New York. Find more stories about the city’s epic history here.
