Max Kurschner aka "Joey Black"

[Ed]

Max Kurschner, aka Joey Black, was allegedly a “contract killer” for the Mob. His autobiography called “Killer” was a bestseller in the 1970s and so was another one of his books, Hit #29. For some of us, his books were our first introduction to the Mafia. They were reissued not too long ago. Despite their popularity, I think the consensus was that Kurschner was a low-level associate on the fringes of the mob who’s stories were mostly hogwash.

I came across some FBI documents about Kurschner. He puts himself in the middle of some pretty historic geopolitical events. I don’t believe a word of it, mind you, but here it is anyway.

According to Kurschner, he was hired by Sam Giancana and Johnny Roselli to work with the CIA to kill Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1961. (He doesn’t say how he met them.) To help his cover and to avoid suspicion since he couldn’t speak Spanish, Kurschner pretended to be a “mute”. (Trujillo was in fact murdered in 1961 and the CIA later admitted it played a role in the assassination but I don’t think there was ever any credible evidence that Kurschner was involved.) Kurschner said he was paid $30,000.00 for the hit.

Giancana later tried to get Kurschner involved in a murder conspiracy against Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. According to Kurschner, the hit was called off after Giancana had a run-in with attorney general Robert Kennedy and decided not to help him.

Kurschner told the FBI he met with Johnny Roselli in 1975 to discuss upcoming Senate investigation into the CIA plots to kill Castro. Roselli told Kurschner that he (Roselli) wasn’t going to talk but that Giancana had agreed to cooperate with lawmakers. After Giancana was murdered, Roselli told Kurschner the CIA did it to silence him. Roselli was worried the CIA would ended up doing the same to him. After Roselli was murdered, Kurschner told the FBI that he thought the CIA killed him.

The FBI doesn’t indicate if there is any truth to Kurschner’s assertions but it does report that he had been a reliable informant (in a limited way) in the past.

Kurschner’s autobiography was published in the early 1970’s. If I’m not mistaken, it makes no mention of his involvement in any of these events. The Mafia/CIA murder plots didn’t break publicly until the mid 1970s after the autobiography was published. This tends to suggest Kurschner fabricated his alleged role in the murder conspiracies and just inserted himself into these events after the fact.


Kurschner lived in Seattle by the mid 1970s and was also an informant for the Seattle police department.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... SE_2434%22

Kurschner blabbed the same info to the IRS when he was arrested by them in 1977. His revelations were apparently leaked to the Seattle press.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... SE_2434%22


Kurschner’s life spiralled out of control after his arrest by the IRS and he tried to kill himself with a drug and alcohol overdose.

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.htm ... SE_2434%22


He was found murdered in 1982.

[Villain]

Thanks again man and a lot of these statements are good for my theory on Giancana wanting to talk about his affairs with the CIA which was probably the main reason for his murder.

[DPG]

More like Max Kirchner aka Ice Man Sr

[B.]

I've never read his books, only an excerpt of one that was included in a book that compiled random mob stories. But... my ex-girlfriend's mom actually worked with him at a casino for a number of years and she had his book. She gave it to my girlfriend to lend to me but I "forgot" to borrow it. This would have been in the Seattle area but I can't remember the casino she worked at or what his job was. I vaguely remember her saying security, which would make sense.

The conversation came up just a couple years ago and it was awkward because I knew enough to know that "Joey" was a bullshitter but just nodded along because I didn't want to be a know-it-all asshole when they were indulging one of my weirdo f'n interests.

[Ed]

Six degrees of separation and all that. In the pre-internet world, it was so much easier to bs people, or move away and reinvent yourself. People just had no way of checking things out.

[TwoPiece]

I had a copy of his book when I was younger. It's not a bad intro to mob related reading since he lays out a lot of basic info about the rackets that were common in his days. Would be interesting to see a pic of him.