Early Life & Prohibition
Higgins was born in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn, New York. Learning pickpocketing and petty theft as a child, by 1916, he had been arrested for assault twice but was put on probation. At the beginning of Prohibition he had formed a small-time gang which started to operate outside of Bay Ridge after taking control of "Big Bill" Bill Dwyer's bootlegging operations with partner Frank Costello in 1927, importing high quality Canadian liquor for Dwyer's high-society clientele.
By the mid-1920s, Higgins' rum-running operations included a fleet of taxis and loading trucks, as well as several planes and numerous speedboats which were used in smuggling alcohol into the United States from Canada (one of which, the Cigarette, was described as "the fastest rum-runner in New York waters"). Higgins, himself a flying enthusiast and licensed pilot, often used his planes for personal use. During a business trip in Baltimore, Higgins was a witness to a gang fight between rival bootleggers while visiting a local speakeasy and, while deciding to leave the premises, he was mistaken for one of the fighting bootleggers and shot in the leg by a local police officer.
Read more about this topic: Vannie Higgins
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