Murder, Inc.
[2] Murder, Inc. was believed to be responsible for between 400 and 1,000 contract killings,[3] until the group was exposed in 1941 by former member Abe "Kid Twist" Reles.
Sicilian mafioso Charles "Lucky" Luciano created The Commission and began to closely cooperate with his friend Lansky and the Jewish Mob in general, establishing a multi-ethnic alliance that eventually was deemed the "National Crime Syndicate".
It was largely headed by mob boss Louis "Lepke" Buchalter and Mangano Family underboss Albert Anastasia,[2] but also had members from Buchalter's labor-slugging gang (in partnership with Tommy "Three-Fingered Brown" Lucchese) as well as from another group of enforcers from Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York led by Martin "Buggsy" Goldstein and Abe "Kid Twist" Reles.
Albert "The Mad Hatter" Anastasia was the troupe's operating head, or "Lord High Executioner", assisted by Lepke's longtime associate Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro.
[4] In one case on May 25, 1937, four killers garroted George Rudnick with a sash cord and stabbed him multiple times with an ice pick on the mere suspicion he was an informant.
On October 24, 1935, they tracked down Schultz and his associates Otto Berman, Abe Landau, and Lulu Rosenkrantz and shot them at the Palace Chop House in Newark, New Jersey.
[8] In January 1940, professional criminal and police informer Harry Rudolph was held as a material witness in the murder of 19-year-old minor gangster Alex Alpert.
With Rudolph's testimony, O'Dwyer secured first-degree murder indictments against Abe Reles, Martin Goldstein and Anthony Maffetore.
[9][10] After the three were indicted, O'Dwyer learned from Special Prosecutor John Harlan Amen[11] that Rudolph was reportedly offered a $5,000 bribe by another prisoner, on behalf of the syndicate, to "put Reles and Goldstein on the street".
[14] After Reles agreed to cooperate, numerous first-degree murder indictments were issued in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and in upstate Sullivan County (Catskills).
[15] Additional members of the "Combination" then were added to the list of cooperating witnesses, including Albert Tannenbaum, Seymour Magoon, and Sholem Bernstein.
[16] Abe Reles fell to his death from a room at the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island on November 12, 1941, even though he was under police guard.
After Rudnick was believed to have been murdered, Abbandando called for Reles and summoned Angelo "Julie" Catalano to the garage to assist with moving the body.
[40][41][42][43][44] Abe Reles, the chief prosecution witness, testified that Feinstein was murdered on orders of Albert Anastasia, since he supposedly "crossed" Vincent Mangano.
Strauss was briefly allowed on the witness stand but refused to take his oath and was "babbling incoherently" as he was led back to the defense table.
[53] The trial, which opened in June 1941, featured testimony from Abe Reles and Albert Tannenbaum as the primary underworld witnesses against Workman.
The woman, who used a pseudonym on the witness stand, testified that Workman openly talked about the Schultz killing and how he was left behind in the restaurant.
Reles testified that Shuman was killed since he cooperated with the authorities who were conducting an inquiry of Lepke's involvement in labor racketeering.
[89] Vito "Socko" Gurino was sought for questioning in the Brooklyn murder investigation as the member assigned to eliminate witnesses against the "Combination".
[91] Police picked up Angelo "Julie" Catalano on the streets of Brooklyn shortly after he was bailed out by the syndicate, as Gurino tried to convince him to "hide out" on Long Island.
[90] Cassele then forced Joseph "Joe the Baker" Liberto, who was being held as a material witness in the George Rudnick murder, to meet with Gurino.
[90] Gurino, who was hiding out in New Jersey for much of 1940, was arrested on September 12, 1940, at the Church of the Guardian Angel in Manhattan, screaming hysterically in fear for his life.
[99][100] He was identified two years later by the chief prosecution witness, Abraham Levine, who spotted Cohen in one of the ringside crowd scenes in the 1939 film Golden Boy.
During the assault and struggle, Drucker stabbed Cohen once in the arm as Sage had grabbed the steering wheel and wrecked the car.
Cohen stated that he was assaulted by Levine and another man on Drucker's orders since he refused to pay 25% profit on a game of chance that he operated.
[108] Jack "the Dandy" Parisi was acquitted of two murders, Teamsters official Morris Diamond in Brooklyn and music-publishing executive Irving Penn in the Bronx.
Penn was killed by mistaken identity, as the intended target, Philip Orlofsky, a Cutters Union official, left his home early to get a shave the day his killers waited for him.
[112][113] Each of Parisi's murder trials ended with an acquittal, as the judges directed a verdict of not-guilty due to the lack of corroborating evidence, since the chief witnesses for the prosecution were accomplices.
[117] Max "the Jerk" Golob was indicted with Frank Abbandando for first-degree murder in the slaying of gangster John "Spider" Murtha on March 3, 1935.
[118] With little evidence other than the eyewitness testimony of Murtha's female companion, Golob was permitted to plead guilty to second-degree assault and received a maximum term of five years.
