On Christmas night in 1926, Johnny Reid, a 36-year-old liquor distributor for the notorious Purple Gang, was murdered in Detroit, Michigan. He was reportedly shot in the head with a sawed-off shotgun in the yard behind his residence at 3025 East Grand Boulevard. Reid, who had moved to Detroit from St. Louis, was a former member of the Egan's Rats gang and had brought with him a reputation and connections from that city's underworld.
The killing of Johnny Reid is believed to have been
part of an ongoing underworld feud. The man suspected of his murder was Frank Wright, a jewel thief and hoodlum from Chicago who had recently relocated to Detroit. It is thought that Wright may have been hired by local Italian mobsters to carry out the hit on Reid. This act of violence was not an isolated incident and set off a chain of retaliatory events that would escalate the tensions within Detroit's criminal landscape.
In the weeks that followed Reid's death, the conflict intensified. Frank Wright and his associates were implicated in the subsequent murder of a Purple Gang drug peddler named Jake Weinberg in February 1927. This second killing prompted the Purple Gang to seek revenge for the deaths of both Reid and Weinberg. The gang is believed to have orchestrated an ambush at the Milaflores Apartments on March 28, 1927. Frank Wright and two of his associates, Joseph Bloom and George Cohen, were lured to the apartment building and met with a hail of gunfire. This event, which became known as the Milaflores Massacre, was reportedly the first time a Thompson submachine gun was used in Detroit's gang warfare and solidified the Purple Gang's fearsome reputation. While members of the Purple Gang were arrested in connection with the massacre, no one was ever charged, and the murders of Frank Wright and his associates, much like the murder of Johnny Reid, officially remain unsolved.
