Doherty Hotel: Speakeasy Murder

Doherty Hotel

Located in Clare, Michigan the Doherty opened in 1924. During prohibition, this hotel was the place to be, it offered alcohol, loose women, and gambling.

With this illegal activity came two competing gangs for the profit it offered. 

Michigan’s notorious Purple Gang ran illegal booze across the Canadian border, and Carl Jack Livingston, a business associate of this organized crime family, lived in the hotel.

His cousin, Isaiah Leebove, was the attorney for the gang. These two men owned Mammoth Oil Company together. The group used this business to launder their ill-gotten profits.

The two men got in a dispute over land Leebove owned. The cousins quarreled over whether they would drill for oil or not on this 45-acre lot.

As this disagreement escalated, Livingston became paranoid that Leebove had aligned himself with the competing New York crime syndicate, headed by Meyer Lansky. He believed his cousin was working with Lansky to put a contract out to kill him.

On the night of May 16, 1938, Livingston approached the table where Leebove and his girlfriend were eating dinner in the hotel. He shot and killed his cousin in cold blood.

A newspaper report about murder.

Livingston pled “temporary insanity” at his trial, and the jury acquitted him. Despite this, he did land in a northern Michigan institution where he died of a drug overdose in 1948.

One ghost that haunts the Doherty Hotel is Isaiah Leebove. His dark entity is seen from the hotel lobby to the upper floors, he is also seen in the Tap Room where he was murdered so heartlessly.

The owners, their guests, visitors, and hotel employees all report unusual encounters. A dark figure is seen in the hallways, and guests hear knocking on their bedroom doors. When they open it, no one is there. As well as many witnesses reporting hearing unexplained noises.