Posted by Michele Shipp on October 19, 1998 at 20:22:55:
The way I remember it is: Johnny and his brother Sandy and Ralph from Bella Pizza all hung
out together. I'm sure there were more, but memory fails me. Johnny and his crew
were the true hitter-faces of the neighborhood. They would just walk down the street and decide to beat someone up. Ask Jeffrey Rubin, he was a victim. If he didn't know you, you got beat up. If he didn't like you, you got beat up. If Johnny was dealing pot, no one else could deal pot until he didn't have anymore. If Johnny had pills, no one else could deal pills.
If you didn't show up for one of their battle of the bands, or a fight when they needed back-up, you got beat up. It was as if he had roll call in his head and knew who was absent. Every summer there would be a big fight between ENY and usually the Puerto Rican gangs. Johnny would call the neighborhood together to fight. The police always broke it up before anything serious would happen. He always left a guy or 2 in the park with the girls..just in case. When I hung out in 306 park, it was a nasty place and I told my mother never to come inside the park to get me..she should stay outside and yell. Well, my folks came home one Saturday night and parked the car outside the park. On Sunday it was gone.
My mom remembered seeing Johnny Reb in the park when they left the car there,
so she went down to the park the next day and had a little chat with Johnny Reb.
My little, fat, Jewish mother confronting Johnny Reb!
She comes upstairs and says to me," You know that red-headed boy Johnny Reb? well, I just asked him about seeing the car. And he was so nice. You should go out with him". I almost died. Johnny Reb did have a way about him.
OK..so now about the murder....The way I have heard it and it comes from a very very reliable source is that Johnny and Sandy and Ralph and some other guys went to a party and somehow they got caught up with a transvestite. and that's who was killed. It didn't happen in our neighborhood. Sandy and Ralph got picked up right away, but Johnny had friends that hid him in a basement apartment someplace. Jill Sklar and I went there a couple of times. We were take blindfolded by a guy who was a good friend to most of us..but that's another story. Anyway, this apt was disgusting! So Jill and I cleaned the walls and refrigerator, yuk.
After Johnny was arrested, I went to one of the court hearings. He did do time for about 4 years. Ralph got out of doing prison time by joining the service.
Sandy also did time, I think but I'm not sure.
I truely believe that if Johnny Reb had not gone to prison,
heroin would not have come into the neighborhood the way it did. I have no rational reason for this, just a feeling. When he got out of prison and came back to the neighborhood, everything had changed so much. When he left, we were all beating each other up and when he got out, we were sitting in the grass playing with the flowers. I can't say that I was Johnny Reb's friend,
I don't even know if he ever had a girlfriend, but he was a big part of the neighborhood.
Now..who wants to hear about Jimmy Larkin?