Demolition of the Hotel Alpine begins in November, 1977. Workers of Dumoulin Excavating erected a traffic barrier while a former employee carries one of the lounge signs to keep as a memento. The building to the right was the Arlington Hotel, known locally by the owner’s name the Potter Block. The location was the intersection of Broadway and Bloomingdale Avenue. To the right stood the impressive Hotel St. Regis which burned down in 1964. Patrolman Neil Rogers directs traffic. (Enterprise photo — Jim Odato)

There have been many stories over the years about the visits to Saranac Lake of John Moran aka Legs Diamond, one of the leading men of the gangster world. My colleague at the Enterprise, Bill McLaughlin, could capture the nuance of those secret visits better than anyone.

His brother Eddie, who was Legs’ partner as an underworld racketeer, contracted tuberculosis and came to Saranac Lake to take the cure.

Here is my thin thread to the big-time gangster world. We used to hear stories about Bert LaFountain’s speakeasy in Gabriels which I visited a number of times years later.

Bert spent a short stint in Clinton Prison in Dannemora for bootlegging and got to be friends with gangster Charles “Lucky” Luciano. The FBI said Luciano was the man who “organized” organized crime in the United States and may have been the model for Don Corleone, in the movie “The Godfather.”

On a certain Sunday afternoon I stopped at Bert’s with my friend Dean Lynch. We were in the Veteran’s Club Drum & Bugle Corps returning from a parade that morning in Cadyville or someplace on the River Run.

Hank Stern, a good friend, was at Bert’s when we arrived with “Stubby” Martin (maybe from Massena) a huge guy who was a bobsledder; and I believe married to Peggy Baker [no, not those Bakers] of Saranac Lake.

Now Hank made sure that Bert wasn’t in sight when they came in so he could surprise him with this huge guy standing in one of the rooms. He seemed nearly to fill the room; the speakeasy was an ordinary house; kitchen, living room, etc., no bar, no dining room, and remember, no liquor license; and the yard would be jammed with cars on any given weekend.

Well, Bert was speechless when he looked up at “Stubby.” Hank got a big laugh and a good time was had by all.

I brought customers to Bert’s often, after the bars closed, when I drove taxi here in 1948. Bert’s was not really open, but there would be a low light burning in the kitchen and Bert would be sitting in a chair tilted back just inside the door, which one entered from a porch. It was pretty much a beer run at those early morning hours; so Bert would place however many bottles you ordered in a big brown paper bag. Remember, no cans back then and no six-packs; and a lot of beer came in quart bottles.

Legs was born John Moran on July 10th, 1897 in Philadelphia to Sara and John Moran who had immigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1891. His brother Eddie was born in 1899.

Oh, yes — Mclaughlin & Legs

“In the dear dead days of the Clay Pigeon in Saranac Lake it was a bragging point around the village to tell the passing nomad that the infamous Legs Diamond was in town occasionally to visit his sick brother who was dying up here of galloping consumption.

“Legs Diamond earned the nickname “The Clay Pigeon” through his habit of absorbing near-lethal doses of lead in job oriented pursuits of pleasure and profit. [Clay Pigeon- Skeet shooters practiced firing shotguns at clay disks capitulated into the air rather than at live Pigeon’s.]

“Legs was considered a short odds favorite to beat his brother to the graveyard especially should he fail to observe proper caution in coming and going in even such a peaceful province as Saranac Lake.

“Legs managed this by keeping to a vague timetable in his visits to the curing cottage on Shepard Avenue where Eddie was ensconced on the west porch off room 5 with a roommate who shared that part of the apartment closest to the door.

“This was Eddie’s bodyguard and while he resembled a Chicago Bears tackle he was ostensibly as sick as Eddie who needed help even walking to the bathroom.

“Legs, if you believe the stories, came to the village quite often as Eddie neared the end of the line. Sometimes Legs was disguised as a priest and at other times he assumed the modest trappings of a professor or a relative from the West.

“Doc Terry who used to drive cab always knew when Legs was in town because he was hand-picked by the legendary gangster to meet the train at Lake Clear and chauffeur him around the village and back and forth to the cure cottage.

“Doc was very nervous about this, of course, since he saw as many gangster movies as the next guy and could picture himself getting in the line of fire almost anytime the handsome hoodlum was in the car.

“Legs usually put up at the Riverside Inn [this was in the 1920’s] and made rare appearances in the pool room [not a swimming pool, you understand?] or on the wide veranda at night when the chances of getting gunned down were slim.

“Pete Trombley, who delivered for a drug store after school and made stops at all the cure cottages claimed it was a real challenge to get into the room occupied by Eddie Diamond since there was an unwritten law that all deliveries had to go through the house chain-of-command and especially those items going to room 5.

“Pete made the mistake of opening the door and barging in with a paper bag under his arm one day and the bodyguard appeared like a magie from under the bed covers with a snub-nosed automatic in his meaty fist.

“Eddie eventually died at that cure cottage and his body was shipped to New York City for burial. Legs made a brief appearance here to handle the details with the local undertaker but a mystery of sorts still remains.

“There is no record in the Saranac Lake village clerk’s office of Eddie Diamond in this community. There was speculation that Legs had picked up the certificate of death and all records pertaining to his brother by a persuasive maneuver common among gangsters.”

[Diamond stepped into the big time when he did a few jobs for Luciano, who introduced him to Arnold Rothstein, a gambler and financial wizard and considered to be the most powerful gangster in New York City at that time. Diamond became Rothstein’s bodyguard.

Diamond’s enemies finally caught up with him when he returned from Europe. Apparently Rothstein and others had given Legs $200,000 to buy drugs in France or Germany, but when he came home he had neither the drugs or the money. He was killed in his bed at a hideout on Dove Street in Albany in December, 1931 at age 34.]