Criminal. He was one of the most prominent members of the Purple Gang, Detroit's most notorious organized crime gang in the 1920s and 1930s. Born into a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, he along with the future gang members, Abe Axler, Irving Milberg, and Abe Kaminski, were the Sugar House Boys before changing their name to the Purple Gang. Originally a featherweight boxer, he was a candidate for alderman in Brooklyn, before turning to crime. Fletcher first arrived in Detroit in the fall of 1923 to participate as "muscle" in the Oakland Sugar House War. The gang's criminal enterprises included loan sharking, extortion of protection money from local businesses, bootlegging, hijackings in Canada of trucks transporting liquor shipments, gambling operations, narcotics, kidnappings and murder. In 1927 he was charged with conspiring to extort money from businesses but acquitted of all charges. Despite his small size, he became known as one of the most dangerous in the Purple Gang, allegedly committing several murders, yet never charged with the crime. His life-long best friend, Abe Axler, always accompanied him, hence they were nicknamed the "Siamese Twins." Fletcher was questioned by Chicago Police about the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929 along with Phil Keywell. At one point, the two men were listed by the Detroit police as Public Enemies Number One. Later that year, he and Axler were sentenced to Leavenworth Prison for two years after being convicted for bootlegging. In the early 1930's after being release from prison, Fletcher and Axler attempted to overtake the control of the declining Purple Gang as well as Detroit's narcotics rackets. For this reason, the Siamese Twins were both shot to death in an execution by members of their own gang. No one was charged much less convicted for their murders. By 1935, the Purple Gang no longer reigned over Detroit's underworld, with at least 18 members dead, including several executed by their own gang, and others in prison, including a least five for murder.