# FBI Vault file on the Purple Gang (aka Sugar House Gang)

Canonical: https://mobfiles.org/items/fbi-vault-purple-gang/

The FBI Vault's four-part release of Bureau file 62-HQ-29632 on the Detroit Purple Gang: 1932 to 1959 letters and memoranda from the Detroit, New York and Miami offices, mixed with newspaper clippings the Bureau pasted into the file.

The Vault lists four parts under the title "Purple Gang (aka Sugar House Gang)": Part 01 (59 scanned pages), Part 02 (97 pages, its cover headed "Purple Gang Cross-References"), Part 03 (98 pages) and Part 04 (Final, 96 pages). The Part 01 cover prints Bureau file number 62-HQ-29632. This archive read all four parts through the viewer's OCR text layer and read the cited pages as images. The date range on this page is that of the documents read, not a catalog date.

Five documents from the file have their own pages here: the Detroit Bureau of Investigation letter of 25 March 1932 sending Detroit police photographs to New York during the Lindbergh inquiry, the New York office's letter of 1 June 1932 on the same pictures, the Detroit letter of 28 November 1933 on the deaths of Abe Axler and Eddie Fletcher, the Detroit Special Agent in Charge's survey of 17 June 1939 (the page shown above), and a Miami memorandum of April 1948.

Much of the file is newspaper clippings the Bureau collected, including a Washington Post item of February 1934, a New York Times item of April 1935 and a Detroit News retrospective of 28 November 1937. Those clippings are third-party newspaper content. They are not cleared and are not quoted here. Part 04 was surveyed only through OCR; its mid-1940s and 1950s memoranda and clippings were not checked against the images, and nothing on this site rests on them. Many later pages carry FBI redaction stamps.

## Sources

- FBI Records: The Vault: https://vault.fbi.gov/Purple%20Gang%20%28aka%20Sugar%20House%20Gang%29/Purple%20Gang%20%28aka%20Sugar%20House%20Gang%29%20Part%2001/view
- Purple Gang Part 02 (cross-references), viewer: https://vault.fbi.gov/Purple%20Gang%20%28aka%20Sugar%20House%20Gang%29/Purple%20Gang%20%28aka%20Sugar%20House%20Gang%29%20Part%2002/view
- Purple Gang Part 03, viewer: https://vault.fbi.gov/Purple%20Gang%20%28aka%20Sugar%20House%20Gang%29/Purple%20Gang%20%28aka%20Sugar%20House%20Gang%29%20Part%2003/view
- Purple Gang Part 04 (Final), viewer: https://vault.fbi.gov/Purple%20Gang%20%28aka%20Sugar%20House%20Gang%29/Purple%20Gang%20%28aka%20Sugar%20House%20Gang%29%20Part%2004%20%28Final%29/view