A notorious gangster eluded capture at his mother’s house on this week in Philly history
A few weeks after breaking out of jail, on the night of Oct. 14, 1934, gangster Bobby Mais and his lieutenant Walter Legenza eluded police in Southwest Philadelphia.
Elizabeth Mais sealed pistols inside cans of baked chicken, wrapped them up in a neat package, and dropped it off for her son at a jail in Richmond, Va.
A few days later, gangster Bobby Mais and his lieutenant Walter Legenza proceeded to shoot their way out of their incarceration on Sept. 29, 1934.
And then the duo, later nicknamed the “Dillingers of the East,” headed toward Philadelphia.
Running and gunning
Philadelphia native Robert H. Mais was a mama’s boy. He had a red-and-blue tattoo on his left forearm of a pierced heart with the word “Mother.”
He was also an outlaw and a bandit and a murderer. And he was a key cog in the infamous “Tri-State Gang,” highway heathens who terrorized the Northeastern seaboard throughout the roar of Prohibition and the rumble of the Great Depression.
His right-hand man was Polish-born Legenza, a blue-eyed killer who was raised among the strip mines of Carbon County, Pennsylvania.
And by the autumn of 1934, their days were numbered.
They were awaiting execution by electric chair for the murder of a Federal Reserve truck driver, who was killed during a robbery earlier that year in Richmond.
So without many options, Mais sent a note to his mother.
On the run
A few weeks after the jailbreak, on the night of Oct. 14, 1934, two patrolmen drove by the unoccupied house of Mais’ mother in Southwest Philadelphia, and noticed a light on.
Peering into a window, the officers saw Mais in the dining room. He saw them, too, and fell to the floor, and Legenza took cover in the kitchen.
The cops called it in, and split up: One posted up at the front door, and the other at the rear door.
Whining police vehicles carrying about 50 officers descended upon the house on the 7700 block of Brewster Avenue near what today is the airport.
The two patrolmen heard a door slam, but saw no one leave.
The rampaging reinforcements barged into the home, but the two fugitives had vanished, most likely through a side window.
In January 1935, on the eve of a planned crime spree that included a few more Philadelphia kidnappings, the two fugitives were caught and arrested in New York.
The 29-year-old Mais and the 41-year-old Legenza died in Virginia’s electric chair on Feb. 2, 1935, but their story lives on in film, television, and comic books.
And Mother Mais served time in jail for the gift package to her son.