For many years, the quiet little city of Reading, Pennsylvania played host to a vibrant criminal underworld. Although Reading was considered small potatoes compared to larger cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and may have played second-fiddle in the larger scheme of things regarding organized crime, for many years, the city was a cash cow for its local criminal underworld — and by extension, its Cosa Nostra allies in Pittsburgh and New York City.
Located in the southeastern portion of Pennsylvania — and boasting a population of nearly 100,000 residents — despite its “small town” feel, Reading still ranked as the 4th largest city in the state after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Allentown.
Its proximity to other key cities and towns made Reading a vibrant and thriving metropolis. And a valuable commodity to the mob.
The distance between Reading and the city of Philadelphia is only 57 miles. It’s only 54 miles from Hazleton and a mere 38 miles from Allentown. And it’s only 103 mile from Scranton, less than a two-hour drive.
The Embryo of Organized Crime
Reading’s criminal networks date all the way back to “The Roaring Twenties” prohibition era. At the time, several criminal gangs began to develop to capitalize on the bootlegging racket after all beverages containing alcohol had officially been outlawed throughout the country in 1920.
In the coming years, ambitious young criminally-bent “entrepreneurs” banded together to take advantage of this universally unpopular law, earning incalculable millions in the process.
But Reading’s gangsters also battled amongst themselves for supremacy. It was during this time that a local hoodlum named Abe Minker, his brothers, and their allies fought their way to underworld prominence.
A good example of their struggles occurred back in July 1922 when Abe and his brothers, Alex and Isadore, were arrested along with five of their men on charges of aggravated assault and battery, carrying concealed weapons, and highway robbery after local police accused them of a series of vicious beatings administered to competing bootleggers in order to steal their profits.
Although they were later acquitted on all counts, it displays a bit of the strong-arm tactics and violence the Minker Gang used to take control of the city’s underworld.
By the late 1920s, Reading was described as a city where Prohibition largely didn’t even exist. With an estimated 350 beer halls, nightclubs, and speakeasies, and a local government that reportedly refused to enforce Prohibition liquor laws, city residents smiled in their beer glasses while the gangsters counted their profits.
For the next thirteen years — until the Volstead Act was finally repealed in 1933 — the people of Reading were kept awash in beer, wine, and hard spirits by their hometown bad boys.
And just like their contemporaries in other towns and cities all throughout the United States during that period, Reading’s local hoodlum’s fought over the spoils, the results of which were a number of gangland-style killings that police attributed to the bootlegging wars.
By the time Prohibition ended, Reading’s criminal underworld had organized themselves into several potent criminal factions, none of which would become more successful or powerful than the gang headed by a smart and aggressive Jewish hoodlum named Abraham (Abe the Baron) Minker.
