In the August 15, 1930, issue of the Berkshire Eagle, swimmer Harry Pincus was indicted in connection with the murder of a Bennington, Vermont, taxi driver. Pincus, who was suspected of driving the getaway car, had been on the run for ten years.
Editor’s Note: This is the first of a two-part series. Part 2 will be published later this month.
I am always amazed at the stories you discover when researching “normal” houses for clients.
For example, a closer look at an apartment building in the area revealed that not only had Barry Manilow’s ancestors lived there, but that their residence was also closely linked to a bizarre saga involving former boxers, a strength athlete, a mysterious flapper actress, and two brutal murders.
Bear with me, there’s a lot to unpack here.
Harry Pincus (1898-1959) came to Pittsfield in the early 1920s with his wife Anna and young son Harold. He lived first on Burbank Street, then in a duplex on Grove Street with his brothers, who operated the old Berkshire Glass Co. While working for them as a traveling salesman, he also became known as a swimmer in Western Massachusetts and Eastern New York.
Billed as a “human towboat,” Harry towed boats with passengers across lakes like Pontoosuc, often with the rope between his teeth or with one hand behind his back.
This photograph of Harry Pincus and his wife Anna holding their infant son Harold appeared in the August 15, 1930, edition of the Berkshire Eagle.
In 1922, local and Boston newspapers reported that Pincus swam across the Pontoosuc while pulling a rowboat with eight passengers weighing a total of 1,100 pounds. In 1927, he went one better and became the first person to pull a boat while bound hand and foot. Later that summer, he set another record by pulling five boats carrying 25 people across the lake.
The 1928 Pittsfield directory notes that Harry and Anna had recently left town for New York, about the time when other records say their marriage was falling apart. Harry returned to Pittsfield in the summer to perform in Pontoosuc, where he could be seen swimming almost daily during the sweltering summer of 1930.
He went swimming there for the last time on about 23 or 24 July. When his next scheduled appearance was due, Harry had disappeared without a trace.
At the same time, a little further north, another type of strongman was partying hard over the weekend at a local boxing match in North Adams. The striking Michael Kane, a former boxer, was well known in Northern Berkshire’s booming boxing culture.
He had now opened a taxi and luxury limousine service in the Bennington, Vermont, area, but was still a real hit man. A few weeks earlier, in July 1930, Kane made headlines when a passerby knocked down a violent criminal who was fleeing from the police after escaping from the municipal court.
At the game on July 25, he was seen, as was his custom, waving diamond rings on his fingers and large wads of cash.
The next morning, he picked up a passenger for a long ride at his cab stand on the corner of South and Main streets in Bennington. A man in a blue suit and Panama hat got in and negotiated a ride to Troy, so Kane headed west in his 1927 Buick cab.
A 1926 Chevrolet coach followed at a discreet distance.
The taxi was traveling along Route 7 through the Shingle Hollow section of Hoosick Falls. As they passed the old stone schoolhouse near Tibbits State Forest, the backseat passenger suddenly stood up and shot Michael Kane in the head with a .38-caliber pistol, then struck him with a powerful blow with a blunt object, fracturing his skull.
A 1930 poster from the New York State Police, Troop G in Troy, identifies Harry Pincus as a suspect in the murder of well-known former boxer Michael Kane, who ran a taxi business in Bennington, Vermont.
He reached forward and managed to safely maneuver the vehicle into some trees on the side of the road. The Chevrolet pulled over to the side of the road, hiding him from view as a man and woman got out and pretended they had a car breakdown. The unknown assailant from the car got in after taking cash and jewelry from Kane and the car sped away.
After his body was discovered, several witnesses came forward with a description of the second car. One man, who found it odd when the group rudely refused mechanical assistance, wrote down the license plate number.
The car was quickly traced back to Harry Pincus. Witnesses showed photos of the famous swimmer, which served as his driver of the getaway car. On July 27, police staked out Pontoosuc Lake, but Pincus was lost. He was not caught until ten years later.
The next part of this column will look at how a mysterious woman who cried in a bar years later solved the Michael Kane murder case.
Meanwhile, Harry’s ex-wife moved on. Census records for 1930 show that Anna (Sheehan) was divorced and living again in Brooklyn with 10-year-old Harold Pincus. In 1942, according to genealogist Megan Smolenyak, the same Harold married a woman named Edna, and the following year, Barry Alan Pincus was born.
As many music biographers have since noted, Harold left the family when Barry was two years old, and the boy eventually changed his last name to his mother’s maiden name, Manilow.
