At the age of 18, Ruditsky enlisted in the United States Army and saw active service during the 1916 U.S. expedition into Mexico and on the Western Front during the First World War.

The young officer soon made a name for himself when, in August 1923, he subdued a much larger man using his nightstick and was praised by both Magistrate Henry M. R. Goodman and The New York Times for the arrest.

[10] In 1928, Ruditsky and fellow detective Harry Hagen disguised themselves as customers in a Turkish bathhouse on Second Street, a known underworld hangout, where they successfully captured the notorious "Poison Ivy" gang.

[6] By the end of the decade Ruditsky and other detectives had earned a sort of celebrity status as "tough-fisted cops", described by The New York Times as "slight of build, but utterly fearless, who, together or separately, battled and beat many an oversized gangster".

The exploits of the Ruditsky, Broderick and other detectives were frequently featured in crime magazines and newspapers as they took on such underworld figures as Jack "Legs" Diamond and Dutch Schultz.

Ruditsky himself personally arrested Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel and Abe "Kid Twist" Reles at various points in his career and investigated Louis Buchalter's infamous "Murder, Inc." during the 1930s.

[7][11] Years later, Ruditsky told Senator Estes Kefauver at the hearings on organized crime that he had been "threatened a thousand times ... but I got around them pretty good; nobody got back at me.

[12] In November 1935, Ruditsky was involved in the pursuit of three hold-up men who had robbed nightclub entertainer Frances Faye and her escort Joseph Eichenbaum.

While the district attorney was trying to find him to serve a subpoena, he was riding around the country with us in the band bus, the last place anybody would think to look for him.One night we played a black dance in Washington, D.C.

Malkin testified that the furriers union, which was controlled by Communists, borrowed $1.75 million from racketeer Arnold Rothstein to finance a 1926 strike, and that $110,000 of that went to members of the Industrial Squad, including Ruditsky.

[6][7] At the end of the war, Ruditsky moved out to Los Angeles, where he opened a private detective firm and a small liquor store and became co-owner of a Sunset Strip nightclub called Sherry's.

[15][19] The details of this meeting were subsequently leaked to syndicated columnist Westbrook Pegler, who exposed Ruditsky's relationship with Siegel, and his image as "a squeaky clean New York cop" was called into question.

[4][20][21][22] In the aftermath of the attack Ruditsky assisted crime reporter Florabel Muir in searching the area, where they discovered "spent shells and half-eaten sardine sandwiches" on a nearby flight of cement stairs.

[7][23][24] He specifically shared details about Mickey Cohen and Bugsy Siegel, and described the erratic behavior of Virginia Hill, calling her "psychopathic";[25] however, he distanced himself from suggestions that he had "improper ties" with the local underworld.

In 1954, baseball player Joe DiMaggio, then in the midst of divorce proceedings with film star Marilyn Monroe, hired Ruditsky to discover whether she was having an extramarital affair.

Together, the group entered the two-story apartment building, broke down the door of one of the three rooms, and rushed into the bedroom with a cameraman expecting to catch the couple in bed.

[28][29] The police were called; however, because Kotz Ross was unable to identify the intruders, the case, then thought to be an attempted burglary, remained unsolved and was finally closed by the LAPD almost a year later.

[30][31] The entire incident came out in the September 1955 issue of Confidential, which called it the "Wrong Door Raid"; it became a legendary story in Hollywood gossip and caused embarrassment for all parties involved.

Although the producers did not show the more graphic details from Angel's Corner, such as the use of ice picks and hot pokers, the events seen on each episode were generally a faithful depiction of Prohibition-era gangland violence.

The show was the first of its kind and inspired the creation of its ABC network rival, the long-running series The Untouchables, based on Eliot Ness's exploits against Al Capone and the Chicago underworld.

[6][7] Ruditsky died in Los Angeles from a heart attack on October 19, 1962, only nine days after being admitted to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital for surgery to remove a tumor from his colon.