Extortionists Targeting Abortion Doctors Arrested

In 1954, sixteen years before abortion was decriminalized in New York, four extortionists made it their business to blackmail doctors believed to be performing the then illegal procedure. Two of them posed as cops. They were Bruno Makan, 35, of 185 Marine Avenue in Brooklyn; Robert Murphy, 30, of 61 Pierrepont Street in Brooklyn; Doris Aviron, 24, of 311 W. 178th Street in Manhattan; and Robert Maloney, 32, of 132 Grand Street in Newark, New Jersey. The two Brooklynites, Makan and Murphy, pretended to be cops, with one carrying a lieutenant's badge and the other a detective's shield. All four were picked up in a raid on a Bronx apartment, where a 21-year-old woman was receiving an abortion from a Harlem Hospital doctor who was being followed by detectives from the Manahattan District Attorney's office.

Before being busted, the extortionists approached doctors - some of whom weren't abortionists - after being led to them by Aviron. Flashing police badges to give their operation an air of legitimacy, Makan and Murphy told the doctors that they would be arrested for performing abortions unless they paid them off. Threatened with arrest, and wider exposure that would ruin reputations and careers, the doctors gave the extortionists money. Makan, Murphy, Aviron, and Maloney made more than $50,000 from their racket before the bust. Upon the four's arrest, on September 27, 1954, Maloney said he "was a bookmaker." The four can be seen covering their faces in this Photo of the Week, published in the September 28, 1954, edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. From left to right: Robert Maloney, Bruno Makan, Doris Aviron, and Robert Murphy. 

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