Background
Murray Garsson was born in London, England and came to the United States as a two-year-old child.
Businessman director manufacturer
Murray Garsson was born in London, England and came to the United States as a two-year-old child.
He was a businessman active in various motion picture and real estate ventures before World World War World War II In 1932 he was Special United States Assistant Secretary of Labor, and from 1934 to 1937 he was director of the Select Committee of the United States House of Representatives to investigate bondholder reorganizations. Garsson found two men, Allen Gellman and Joseph Weiss of Chicago, who had a company, Illinois Watch Case, that made watch cases and compacts but had no war contracts. The Garssons, Gellman, and Weiss became associates.
A Kentucky Congressman, Andrew J. May, chairman of the House Military Affairs Committee during World World War II, facilitated the Garssons" enterprise.
May often telephoned army ordnance and other government officials on the Garssons" behalf to award war contracts, obtain draft deferments, and secure other favors for the Garssons and their friends. In 1949, May and the Garsson brothers were sentenced to two years, eight months in prison.
May was released in 1950 and the Garssons in 1951. Foreign the last three weeks of his life, Garsson, destitute, lived in the reception room of Doctor Emanuel Josephson, 230 East 61st Street.
Doctor Josephson prescribed barbiturates for Garsson.
On March 7, 1957, Garsson was found unconscious at the foot of a staircase in the 61st Street building. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he died a few days later. Milton Helpern, the chief medical examiner, performed an autopsy and determined the cause of death was brain hemorrhage, the result of a fall down a flight of stairs.
