Minnesota history: Recent arrest brings to life a mobster

By CURT BROWN April 2, 2015

From the book “ in Beverly Hills,” by The Bermans: , with her parents, Davie and Grace. She was orphaned by age 13.

The racketeer’s daughter was killed with a mob-style shot to the back of the head, while he died far more mundanely — on the operating table during colon surgery 43 years earlier.

That’s the grisly, Minneapolis-laced irony at the crux of the ballyhooed murder case mounting against wealthy real estate heir . The 71-year-old arrested recently in , a suspect in at least three since 1982, has no direct connection to Minnesota. But one of his alleged victims sure does. Minneapolis-born writer and journalist Susan Berman, a friend of Durst’s since their days together at UCLA in the 1960s, was shot once in the head with a 9mm gun at her home on Christmas Eve 2000.

“Susie was shot gangland style, while her father was a major Minneapolis mobster in the 1930s and ’40s,” said Paul Maccabee, a Twin Cities historian and author of “John Dillinger Slept Here.”

Maccabee interviewed Susan Berman while researching Twin Cities’ history 25 years ago. He believes the way she died “has zero to do with” her family’s back story and everything to do with the rich kid she befriended in college.

But Durst’s legal troubles have rekindled the notoriety of a largely forgotten character in Depression-era Minneapolis. David “Davie” Berman, Susan’s dad, graduated from bootlegging, bank robbing and big-time gambling to become an organized crime kingpin in Minneapolis before a new mayor named Hubert Humphrey rode a mob-busting campaign pledge to victory in 1945.

For more than a decade before Humphrey’s cleanup, Berman ran gambling dens with big-buck craps tables and bookmaking operations. In a corrupt, bribe-filled period, contributed heavily to Mayor Marvin Kline — Humphrey’s predecessor.

That cozy relationship, for a time, helped Berman eclipse organized crime rival Isadore “” Blumenfeld — who bribed officials, fixed labor disputes, and juggled gambling and liquor operations from his Flame Night Club at 1523 Nicollet Avenue. Kid Cann was considered the Minneapolis version of ’s and had much in common with Berman.

Both emigrated as young children with Jewish parents fleeing army conscription and religious persecution in their shtetls in Russia and Romania.

Susan Berman’s grandfather, David, was a violin-playing rabbinical student back in Odessa. His wife, Clara, came from a rich family along the Black Sea. But with the Russian Army at the door, David fled to New York in 1904. He worked in a laundry in Manhattan before learning about a new charity fund that would relocate Jewish immigrants to North Dakota. David sent for his wife and three kids, including 4-year-old Davie, and his eventual partner, brother Chickie Berman.

His mother reportedly burst into tears debarking the train in Ashley, N.D., saying it looked like Siberia. The family failed at farming and moved to Sioux City, — a popular hideaway for Chicago mobsters.

The young Davie Berman or