Showing posts with label Murder Incorporated. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Murder Incorporated. Show all posts

23 October 2017

Dutch Schultz, aides, fatally shot in New Jersey

On this date in 1935, mob-affiliated assassins invaded the Newark, New Jersey, headquarters of gang boss Arthur "Dutch Schultz" Flegenheimer. They opened fire on Schultz and his aides, mortally wounding Schultz, Abe Landau, Bernard  "Lulu" Rosencrantz and Otto "Abbadabba" Berman. 

Berman and Landau were dead by the next morning. Schultz lingered through the following day before succumbing to his wounds.  Rosenkrantz died hours after his boss.

The killings reportedly were ordered by the leaders of New York City Mafia organizations, who sought to prevent Schultz's planned murder of prosecutor Thomas Dewey and to consume Schultz's lucrative underworld rackets. Murder, Inc., gunmen Charles Workman and Emanuel Weiss have been identified as the shooters.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle

New Brunswick NJ Home News

Plainfield NJ Courier-News

Quad City IA Times

Tampa FL Daily Times

New York Times

Philadelphia Inquirer

Fort Myers FL News-Press



07 January 2017

The way of all gangster flesh

The final four years of Prohibition saw over two hundred New York City gangsters shot, garrotted, or stabbed to death with ice picks. Some simply vanished never to be seen again. My new ebook: ON THE SPOT: Gangland Murders in Prohibition New York City 1930-1933 brings these murders back in full detail. In addition to all of the bootleggers, drug dealers, gamblers and other underworld sorts who were "bumped off", "taken for a ride", and "put on the spot", the reader will learn about the victims of the gang wars fought between Dutch Schultz and Vincent Coll, Waxey Gordon and the Bugsy Seigel - Meyer Lansky mob, the Mafia's Castellammarese War and the battle waged between Brooklyn's Shapiro Brothers and the boys from Murder, Inc. Over two hundred gangland executions are discussed, most for the first time since they occurred all those years ago.



12 November 2016

Murder Inc. turncoat Abe Reles falls to his death

On this date in 1941, informant Abe "Kid Twist" Reles fell to his death at the Half Moon Hotel, Coney Island. 

Reles
The thirty-five-year-old Reles, who had been cooperating with authorities in Murder, Inc., prosecutions since early in 1940, was expected to testify shortly against big shot Louis "Lepke" Buchalter. Earlier court appearances had been in murder cases against Harry "Happy" Maione, Frank "the Dasher" Abbandando, Martin "Buggsy" Goldstein and Harry "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss. Reles also aided California authorities in obtaining indictments against Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel and Frank "Pug" Carbo for the November 1939 Hollywood murder of Harry "Big Greenie" Greenberg.

While Buchalter was on trial (along with Louis Capone and Emanuel "Mendy" Weiss for the September 1936 murder of Joseph Rosen), Reles was housed on the sixth floor of the Half Moon along with government witnesses Sholom Bernstein, Max Rubin and Al Tannenbaum.

According to the official story, Reles decided at about 7 a.m. to try to escape from government custody rather than testify. Authorities said he exited his sixth-floor window and used a rope of tied-together bedsheets to lower himself to the window below. The rope was fastened to a radiator pipe using a length of electrical cord. It reportedly was not fastened very well, and detectives said it detached as Reles attempted to open the screen and window on the fifth floor.

Reles's body was later discovered on an extension roof about 42 feet below his last estimated location. Noting that the body came to rest a good distance from the hotel wall, some investigators and journalists quickly decided that Reles had been thrown out of his hotel room window. Reles became known as the underworld canary who could "sing" but could not fly.

New York Post, Nov. 12, 1941.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Nov. 12, 1941.


New York Times, Nov. 13, 1941.

New York Daily News photo, Nov. 13, 1941.


Los Angeles Times, Nov. 13, 1941.