Kid Cann

After allegedly returning home to die, Kid Cann died in Minneapolis' Mount Sinai Hospital of heart disease on June 21, 1981. Blumenfeld's death was news from coast to coast.

In 1978, however, Blumenfeld and his brothers were allegedly responsible for manipulating Magic Marker stock prices.

Kid Cann frequently visited his family and friends in Minnesota. During an interview with a Minneapolis reporter in 1976, Blumenfeld denounced the Federal Agents and Prosecutors who had put him away as his "persecutors", and called his conviction under the Mann Act, a "trumped up charge", that involved, "a two-dollar whore." Blumenfeld added that he had recently turned down an offer to write his memoirs, saying "I have nothing to say, really."

After his release from prison, Kid Cann moved to Miami Beach, Florida with his brothers. They continued to make money through criminal activities, though they changed tack and focused instead on questionable real estate dealings. In 1967, Miami newspapers alleged that Kid Cann, Meyer Lansky, and their relatives either owned or had financial stakes in ten of Miami's best hotels. Blumenfeld and Lansky were also alleged to have set up a labyrinth of businesses, deeds, mortgages, leases, and subleases to conceal their involvement and evade Federal income taxes.

Kid Cann served four years at USP Leavenworth and was released in 1964, after his wife Lillian paid his $12,500 fine for violating the Mann Act.

In 1961, after being accused during sentencing of ordering rigged dice for use in his Twin Cities illegal gambling operations, of blowing up a business rival's house in Miami Beach, and of receiving a cut of the money skimmed from Las Vegas' Sands Hotel and Casino through a "strawman" named Mr. Isaacs, Kid Cann was sentenced by Federal Judge Edward Devitt to a second two-year sentence for attempted jury tampering.

In another Federal trial in 1960, the IRS used ownership forms to prove that Blumenfeld, his relatives, and other members of the "AZ Syndicate" continued to control the Minneapolis liquor industry. Blumenfeld offered a $10,000 bribe to one of the jurors, but was caught within hours. When charged with attempted jury tampering, Blumenfeld plead guilty.

Blumenfeld was convicted of violating the federal Mann Act in 1959 and, after a short prison term, retired to Miami Beach, Florida, where he and Meyer Lansky operated a real estate empire. He was involved in organized crime in Miami Beach and Havana, Cuba, until his death.

In 1959, Kid Cann was indicted on Federal charges for violating the Mann Act by transporting a Chicago prostitute named Marilyn Tollefson across State lines to work for his prostitution ring in the Twin Cities. Although Blumenfeld's defense counsel read "smoky passages" from Tollefson's love letters to Kid Cann to suggest that, "it was not just money that lured her across State lines", in 1960 a Federal court found Blumenfeld guilty and sentenced him to two years imprisonment.

In 1954, the Chicago Crime Commission named Kid Cann as involved with the Chicago Outfit in the jukebox racket.

As the electric streetcar system, operated by Twin City Rapid Transit, was being dismantled in the early 1950s and replaced with diesel buses, Blumenfeld owned a 16% stake in the company. He was later accused of allying himself with an Italian-American Farmer-Labor Party fixer turned corporate raider named Fred Ossanna, and using force to intimidate stockholders to selling. Then, following the success of their hostile takeover and the company's transfer from streetcars to diesel busses, both Kid Cann and Ossanna received significant kickbacks while disposing of the scrap metal from the streetcars. What remained of Twin City Rapid Transit was taken over at the behest of Governor Orville Freeman by noted Minneapolitan Carl Pohlad in 1960.

As public interest in organized crime grew over the course of the 1950s, Twin Cities Federal Agents and Prosecutors became increasingly determined to put Blumenfeld and his associates in prison.

During the late 1950s, the Immigration and Naturalization Service added Blumenfeld to the "Denaturalization and Deportation Program". In the hope of deporting Blumenfeld back to the Socialist Republic of Romania for moral turpitude, both the INS and the FBI launched an investigation between 1959 and 1960 of Kid Cann's sexual activities.

In later years, he was alleged to have installed bulletproof windows on his suburban house and to have been able to fix any problem with a single phone call. During his lifetime, Kid Cann bore a love–hate relationship with his legend, on one hand glorying in the attention and also feeling infuriated by the increased F.B.I. surveillance that it brought him beginning in the early 1950s. In a 1976 interview, he snapped, "Ninety percent of what was written about me is bullshit!"

According to journalists Neal Karlen and Bob Patrin, Blumenfeld and his brothers made three verbal requests to Frank Fietek, the owner of the Swing City jazz club at 1682 Rice Street in St. Paul, to either pay protection money to them or hand over control of his club. When Fietek allegedly refused the third time, he was abducted and was dumped with two broken legs on County Road D. When a permanently crippled Fietek still refused to pay, his club was the target of an arson attack in November 1945. In response to Fietek's continued refusal to sell, Kid Cann was allegedly responsible for Fietek's murder by strangulation on March 4, 1946. No one, however, was ever indicted or prosecuted.

The December 1944 issue of the Public Press, edited by Walter Liggett-style anti-corruption crusader Arthur Kasherman, featured the headline Kline Administration Most Corrupt Regime in the History of the City. A month later, on the night of Jan. 22, 1945, Kasherman was ambushed after eating dinner with a friend and shot dead on a sidewalk at 15th and Chicago avenues in Minneapolis. His murder made the front pages of newspapers across the Twin Cities, but few in Minneapolis were surprised when the police investigation was quickly shut down.

In 1942, FBI documents described Kid Cann as the, "recognized leader of graft and racketeering in Minneapolis". They added that Blumenfeld was, "known to have corrupted City and County officials... and has been known to harbor criminals of various types." The files also report that Kid Cann often boasted that he had the Minneapolis City Council, "in the palm of his hand."

According to Twin Cities crime historian Paul Maccabee, FBI files reveal that rival Minneapolis Jewish mob boss David Berman contributed very heavily to Marvin L. Kline's mayoral campaign under the understanding that Berman would receive a monopoly over illegal gambling in Minneapolis. Therefore, during Kline's 1941–1945 term as Mayor, Berman briefly eclipsed the Blumenfelds and became the leader of the Minneapolis criminal underworld.

After several years of living together, Blumenfeld and Lillian Lee were married on August 25, 1936. They had no children and, following her death, Lillian Blumenfeld was buried next to her husband at Adath Yeshurun Cemetery in Edina.

As part of what was termed the "Ligget-Townley Revolt" against Farmer Labor Party leader and Minnesota Governor Floyd Olson, Ligget began reporting on links he found between Twin Cities Irish and Jewish organized crime and senior politicians from the Farmer-Labor Party. Beginning on June 29, 1935, every issue of The Midwest American printed ten reasons for impeaching Governor Olson, including political corruption and collusion with organized crime.

Throughout September 1935, Liggett reported on "a wet-councilmanic ring" which allowed "The Syndicate", led by the Blumenfeld brothers, to dominate the newly legalized liquor trade in Minneapolis. During the same month, The Midwest American also published articles about Kid Cann's criminal history and how associate Meyer Schuldberg employed him as a "salesman" for La Pompadour perfume factory during Prohibition, which had switched since repeal to producing Chesapeake Brands Liquors. Liggett also alleged that the Blumenfelds had been so certain that the city council would grant them a license for Lake Street liquors, that they had begun buying advertisements ten days before the council's vote.

After announcing in print that he had refused offers of both bribes and paid advertisements by AZ Syndicate-controlled businesses, Liggett reported on October 2, 1935, that Minneapolis aldermen Henry Banks and Romeo Riley had both attended the prizefight between Joe Louis and Max Baer as personal guests of Kid Cann. Liggett also reported that State Liquor Commissioner David Arundel had also attended the fight as a guest of Farmer-Labor fixer and Syndicate liquor lobbyist Fred Ossanna.

Liggett was beaten up, prosecuted for a non-existent rape incident, and finally died after being machine gunned in the alley behind his home on December 9, 1935. His wife and daughter witnessed the assassination as did several neighbors. All identified Kid Cann as the shooter. Kid Cann was indicted by a grand jury and, on January 29, 1936, his trial began, where he was prosecuted jointly by the Hennepin County Attorney and the State's Attorney's Office.

There was a high degree of political and civil corruption in the region in the 1920s and 1930s. The mainstream newspapers hardly mentioned what was going on, as any outlet that published articles critical of the status quo was threatened. Some small tabloid newspapers attempted to report what was going on, but reporters and editors quickly became targets. Howard Guilford of the Twin City Reporter was shot and killed on September 6, 1934.

On August 23, 1933, a Federal grand jury in Oklahoma City indicted Blumenfeld for money laundering. The $200,000 ransom Machine Gun Kelly had received following the kidnapping of oil man Charles F. Urschel had been traced to Hennepin State Bank in Minneapolis. Blumenfeld was arrested and transported to Oklahoma City to await his trial. Minneapolis Police Chief Joseph Lehmeyer traveled down to Oklahoma City to testify in favor of Kid Cann and the charges were dropped.

In December 1933, the AZ Syndicate's accountant, Conrad Althen, who had become a secret informant for the Internal Revenue Service and whom according to Paul Maccabee "knew where every penny and body was buried", was thrown out of a car into a Dakota County cornfield and shot to death with a Thompson submachine gun.

According to Paul Maccabee, after the death of legendary Twin Cities madam Nina Clifford in July 1929, the AZ Syndicate assigned Blumenfeld's girlfriend, Lillian Lee, to run Clifford's brothel at 147 and 145 South Washington Street in St. Paul. City Directories confirm that Lillian Lee, described as a "saleswoman", ran the brothel between 1931 and 1934.

Rabbi Max Shapiro of Temple Israel, "the leading rabbi at the largest congregation in the city", and "the city's most sought after eulogist", recited the graveside services and the Kaddish in a driving rain before Blumenfeld's burial at the Adath Yeshurun Cemetery in Edina, Minnesota. Taxi driver Charles Goldberg, whom Blumenfeld shot dead in an allegedly accidental shooting during, "an argument over a girl", in front of Minneapolis' Café Vienna in 1924, lies buried only a few yards away.

Isadore Blumenfeld (September 8, 1900 – June 21, 1981), commonly known as Kid Cann, was a Romanian Jewish-American organized crime enforcer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for over four decades. He remains the most notorious mobster in the history of Minnesota. He was associated with several high-profile crimes in the city's history, including the 1924 murder of cab driver Charles Goldberg, the attempted murder of police officer James H. Trepanier, and the December 1935 assassination of investigative journalist Walter Liggett. He is also thought to have participated in the fraudulent dismantling of the Twin City Rapid Transit street railway during the early 1950s.

Blumenfeld was born in 1900 in the Romanian shtetl of Râmnicu Sărat, Buzău County, to an Orthodox Jewish family. According to U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service documents, his parents emigrated to America in 1902 via the port of Duluth, Minnesota. His father, a Romanian Jewish furrier named Phillip Blumenfeld, settled his wife Eva Blumenfeld (née Abromowitz) at 824 S. Seventh Street Minneapolis. During childhood, Isadore had to leave school and support his family by selling newspapers on Minneapolis' "Newspaper Row." At the time, the best selling locations had to be held by force against gangs of other boys. Blumenfeld would also tell stories of how he had made extra money picking up bus tokens and reselling them. Enraged by the poverty of his family, he turned to running errands for the pimps and madams of Minneapolis's red light district.