Philip "The Stick" Kovolick
'Kovalick''(September 2, 1908 – April 1971?), also known as Joseph Farvel, was a New York mobster and a longtime associate of labor racketeer
Louis Buchalter. He was one of the closest associates of Meyer Lansky, and assisted Meyer and his brother Jake Lansky in operating the Mob's Hallandale Florida casinos, including the plush "rug joint" the Colonial Inn.
Capture and arrest
He was arrested at a restaurant in
Little Italy, Manhattan
Little Italy () is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City, once known for its Italian American population. It is bounded on the west by Tribeca and Soho, on the south by Chinatown, on the east by the Bowery and Lower East Side, a ...
, and charged with "consorting with known criminals for unlawful purposes" in 1965.
Kovolick fled New York to avoid an indictment to appear before a Manhattan grand jury investigating illegal gambling, bribery and corruption. Authorities were attempting to extradite him back to New York before his disappearance, as assistant district attorney Samuel S. Yasgur filed an
affidavit
An ( ; Medieval Latin for "he has declared under oath") is a written statement voluntarily made by an ''affiant'' or ''deposition (law), deponent'' under an oath or affirmation which is administered by a person who is authorized to do so by la ...
in Miami in February 1971.
The body of Philip Kovolick was found sealed in a steel drum at the bottom of a rock pit in
Hallandale, Florida
Hallandale Beach (formerly known simply as Hallandale) is a city in southern Broward County, Florida, United States. The city is named after Luther Halland, the son of a Swedish people, Swedish worker for Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Railr ...
on April 28, 1971, after disappearing on April 7, 1971. Police charged 36-year-old John Alvin Baxter with first degree murder, and he was sentenced to death. Eventually the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
Further reading
*Cohen, Rich. ''Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams''. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.
*Fried, Albert. ''The Rise and Fall of the Jewish Gangster in America''. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980.
*Turkus, Burton B. and Sid Feder. ''Murder, Inc: The Story of "the Syndicate"''. New York: Da Capo Press, 2003.
See also
*
List of solved missing person cases
Lists of solved missing person cases include:
* List of solved missing person cases: pre-1950
* List of solved missing person cases: 1950–1999
* List of solved missing person cases: post-2000
See also
* List of kidnappings
* List of murder ...
References
External links
Mug shots of Phillip Kovolick (high-resolution)from
Lloyd Sealy Library Digital Collections
Prisoner's Criminal Record [rap sheet/nowiki> of Phillip Kovolick">ap sheet
">Prisoner's Criminal Record [rap sheet
/nowiki> of Phillip Kovolickfrom Lloyd Sealy Library Digital Collections
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kovolick, Philip
1908 births
1970s missing person cases
1971 deaths
People murdered in 1971
Formerly missing American people
Murdered Jewish American gangsters
[ ategory:Murdered American gangsters
Jewish American gangsters
Missing gangsters
Missing person cases in Florida
People from Hallandale Beach, Florida
People murdered in Florida
20th-century American Jews