The Mobster Who Owned Every Taxi on the Streets of Manhattan – HT

 

 

 

Brooklyn, New York, November 25th, 1933, 11:42 p.m. Alex “Red” Alpert walked through the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. He was 19 years old. He carried stolen jewelry in his coat pocket. He had approached Harry Strauss earlier that day about selling it. Strauss told him to come back later. Alpert turned the corner at Saratoga Avenue and Livonia Street.

 A 1932 Ford sedan sat at the curb with its engine running. Three men stepped out. Harry Strauss was the first. Martin Goldstein was the second. Abe Reles was the third. Strauss pulled a .38 caliber revolver from his waistband. Alpert started to run. Strauss fired twice. The first bullet entered Alpert’s back between the fourth and fifth ribs.

The second hit him in the neck. Alpert collapsed face-down on the sidewalk. Blood pooled around his head. Strauss walked over and fired once more into the back of Alpert’s skull. The three men got back into the Ford. The car drove east on Livonia Street and disappeared. The entire event lasted 38 seconds. A woman in a third-floor apartment heard the shots and looked out her window.

She saw the Ford’s tail lights. She did not call the police. In Brownsville, people did not call the police. Patrolman Daniel McCarthy found the body at 12:17 a.m. The victim had no identification. His pockets were turned out. The jewelry was gone. McCarthy called the 73rd Precinct.

 Detective Lieutenant William Doherty arrived at 12:44 a.m. He examined the body. He noted three gunshot wounds. He found no shell casings. He found no witnesses. He wrote in his report, “Victim unknown. Motive unknown. Suspects unknown.” The case file went into a cabinet at the 73rd Precinct. It stayed there for 6 years and 5 months. The three men in the Ford drove to a candy store at 779 Saratoga Avenue.

The store was called Midnight Roses. It was owned by Rose Gold. Rose was 62 years old. She wore thick glasses and kept her hair in a tight bun. The store sold newspapers, cigarettes, egg creams, and chocolate malts. It also served as the headquarters for what would later be called Murder Incorporated. The store had a pay telephone on the wall.

The telephone number was Glenmore 2-29647. That number connected to every major crime operation from Detroit to Miami, from Chicago to Los Angeles. Harry Strauss sat at a table in the back. He was 24 years old. He stood 5 feet 7 inches tall. He weighed 148 lb. He wore custom-tailored suits that cost $65 each. He owned 12 pairs of shoes.

 His hair was always perfectly combed. His fingernails were always clean. He killed Alex Alpert because Alpert tried to sell him stolen jewelry that Strauss believed belonged to someone else. That was the entire reason. Strauss would kill 32 more men over the next 7 years. He would do it in Brooklyn and Boston and Detroit and Miami and Philadelphia and Chicago.

 He would use guns and ropes and ice picks and knives. He preferred an ice pick. An ice pick left almost no blood. An ice pick could be pushed through a man’s ear into his brain. An ice pick could puncture a heart without tearing clothes. Strauss called it clean work. Abe Reles sat next to Strauss. Reles was 26 years old.

 He stood 5 feet 2 inches tall. He weighed 160 lb. His face was round and his jaw was wide. People called him Kid Twist. He had been arrested 14 times. He had never been convicted. Reles controlled the loan sharking operation in Brownsville. He charged 3,000% interest. If a man borrowed $100, he paid back $3 every week forever.

 If he missed a payment, Reles sent men to break his hands with a lead pipe. If he missed two payments, they broke his knees. If he missed three payments, they killed him. Reles killed at least 11 men himself. He would eventually confess to six. Martin Goldstein sat across from them. Goldstein was 23 years old. He stood 5 feet 9 inches tall.

He weighed 165 lb. He had a thin face and cold eyes. People called him Bugsy because his eyes bugged out when he got angry. Goldstein had been arrested seven times for assault. He once beat a man unconscious with a baseball bat for looking at him wrong. The man lost his left eye and had permanent brain damage.

 Goldstein was never charged. The victim refused to testify. These three men were part of a larger organization. The organization had no official name in 1933. It would not be called Murder Inc. until 1940 when the newspapers gave it that name. But the structure was already in place. It had been in place since 1931. That was the year Charles “Lucky” Luciano and Meyer Lansky created what they called the National Crime Syndicate.

The syndicate was a confederation of crime families from every major city in America. Each family operated independently. Each family controlled its own territory. But they all agreed to work together on matters of mutual interest. They agreed to stop fighting each other. They agreed to share profits from national operations like narcotics and gambling.

They agreed to use the same enforcement arm for murder contracts. That enforcement arm was based in Brooklyn. It consisted of approximately 40 men. Most were Jewish. Some were Italian. All were killers. Albert Anastasia oversaw the operation. Anastasia was 31 years old. He was born Umberto Anastasio in Tropea, Italy on September 26th, 1902.

He came to America in 1917 as a stowaway on a cargo ship. He jumped ship in New York Harbor and disappeared into the Italian neighborhoods of Brooklyn. He worked on the waterfront. He controlled the dockworker unions through the International Longshoremen’s Association. He controlled which ships unloaded and which did not.

He controlled who worked and who did not. He killed his first man in 1921. The man was a longshoreman who refused to pay tribute. Anastasia strangled him with a rope and threw his body into the East River. The body was never found. Anastasia was arrested but never charged. By 1933, he had killed or ordered the killing of at least 18 men.

 He would kill or order dozens more before his own death in 1957. Louis Lepke Buchalter was Anastasia’s partner. Buchalter was 36 years old. He was born on February 12th, 1897 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He controlled the garment district unions. He controlled the trucking companies. He controlled the bakery unions. He made millions of dollars through extortion.

 A factory owner who refused to pay was shut down by strikes. His trucks were bombed. His merchandise was destroyed with acid. If he still refused, he was killed. Buchalter kept detailed records. He kept lists of who paid and who did not. He kept lists of who needed to be warned and who needed to be eliminated. Those lists were maintained at his office in Manhattan.

The men who carried out the eliminations worked out of Midnight Roses candy store in Brooklyn. The structure operated with precision. When a member of the National Crime Syndicate needed someone killed, the request went through proper channels. A mob boss in Detroit or Chicago or Philadelphia would contact the syndicate’s board.

 The board consisted of Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, Lepke Buchalter, Albert Anastasia, Joe Adonis, and representatives from other major families. They met regularly in New York. They met in restaurants and hotel rooms and private clubs. They discussed business. They discussed territory. They discussed problems.

 If a problem required murder, they approved the contract. The contract went to Anastasia or Buchalter. Anastasia or Buchalter called the telephone at Midnight Roses candy store. The telephone would ring. Rose Gold would answer. She would call to the back room. One of the killers would come to the phone. He would listen. He would hang up.

 He would select his crew. They would prepare. Preparation was critical. Harry Strauss insisted on it. Every murder was planned like a military operation. The killers studied the target. They learned his routine. They learned where he lived, where he worked, where he ate, where he drank, where he slept. They learned what time he left his house in the morning.

They learned what route he drove. They learned who he met and when he met them. They followed him for days, sometimes weeks. They took notes. They drew diagrams. They identified the best location for the killing. They identified escape routes. They obtained stolen cars for the approach and different stolen cars for the getaway.

 They recruited local associates to serve as lookouts. They established alibis. Every detail was considered. Every possibility was accounted for. Nothing was left to chance. The weapons varied depending on the method chosen. For shootings, they used revolvers. Revolvers did not eject shell casings. Shell casings could be traced. The most common caliber was .38.

The guns were obtained through burglaries or bought from corrupt police officers or purchased from dealers in other cities. After a killing, the gun was immediately destroyed. It was broken into pieces and the pieces were scattered in different locations. Some pieces went into the East River.

 Some pieces went into trash incinerators. Some pieces were buried in vacant lots. For strangulation, they used rope. The rope was ordinary clothesline rope purchased at hardware stores. It was 1/4 inch in diameter. It was 6 ft long. The killer would loop it around the victim’s neck from behind. He would cross the ends and pull. The victim would lose consciousness in 8 to 12 seconds.

Death occurred in 90 seconds to 2 minutes. The killer would keep pulling for an additional minute to ensure completion. The body would then be disposed of. Some bodies were left where they fell to send a message. Other bodies were hidden to delay discovery and complicate investigation. The ice pick method was Abe Reles’ innovation.

Reles preferred ice picks because they were common household items that aroused no suspicion. He carried one in his coat pocket at all times. The ice pick he used had a wooden handle 4 inches long and a steel shaft 6 inches long. The shaft tapered to a sharp point. Reles would strike suddenly. He preferred to attack from behind.

He would drive the ice pick through the victim’s ear into the brain. Death was instantaneous. There was minimal blood. The wound was small and easily missed during a cursory examination. Several victims were initially thought to have died from natural causes. The truth was only discovered during autopsy when the puncture wound was found.

 The Brooklyn crew worked constantly. Between 1933 and 1940, they killed between 80 and 100 people in New York alone. They killed at least 200 more in other cities. The exact number will never be known because many bodies were never found. Some victims were taken to isolated locations and buried. Others were weighted with chains and dumped into rivers or the ocean.

Still others were burned or dissolved in lime pits. The killers kept no records. They committed everything to memory. They never discussed their work outside the crew. They never wrote anything down. They never left evidence. Harry Maione led the Ocean Hill faction. Maione was 30 years old in 1933. People called him Happy because he never smiled.

His face was set in a permanent scowl. He was born on October 7th, 1908 in the Ocean Hill section of Brooklyn. He was 5 ft 10 inches tall and weighed 190 lb. He had worked as an enforcer since age 16. He controlled gambling operations in Ocean Hill, East New York, and Williamsburg. He worked closely with Abe Reles’ Brownsville crew.

The two groups shared resources and divided contracts. Maione personally killed at least nine men. His weapon of choice was a gun. He carried a .45 caliber Colt automatic. He was an excellent shot. He could hit a moving target from 50 ft. Frank Abbandando worked with Maione. People called him the Dasher because he moved quickly.

 Abbandando was born on July 15th, 1910 in Brooklyn. He was 5 ft 8 inches tall and weighed 175 lb. He had been arrested for assault four times before age 20. He was a brutal fighter who enjoyed violence. During one murder, he stabbed the victim 63 times. He later explained to Reles that he kept stabbing because he liked the way it felt.

Abbandando would eventually be convicted of murder and executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison on February 19th, 1942. Louis Capone supervised operations. Capone was not related to Al Capone of Chicago. He was born in Italy in 1896. He came to New York in 1904. He operated a pastry shop in Brooklyn that served as a front.

 The shop sold excellent cannoli and espresso. It also laundered money and served as a meeting place for the organization. Capone was calm and methodical. He never participated in killings himself. He planned them. He reviewed the details with the crew. He ensured everything was ready. He gave final approval.

 After the killing, he debriefed the crew. He identified problems. He made corrections. He maintained discipline. He reported results to Anastasia and Buchalter. The national reach expanded steadily. In 1935, the Brooklyn crew sent killers to Detroit to murder Harry Millman. Millman was a local gangster who refused to follow syndicate rules.

He operated independently. He hijacked syndicate shipments. He refused to pay tribute. He was warned twice. He ignored both warnings. The Detroit family requested assistance. Anastasia approved. Pittsburgh Phil Strauss and Happy Maione flew to Detroit on November 23rd, 1937. They entered a crowded restaurant where Millman was having dinner.

They shot him 12 times at his table. They also shot five other diners who were in the way. None of the other five died. Strauss and Maione walked out. They drove to the airport. They flew back to New York. They were back at Midnight Roses by midnight. The Detroit police investigated for 3 months. They found no suspects.

The case was closed. Brooklyn, New York, February 2nd, 1940. 9:15 a.m. Abe Reles sat in an interrogation room at the 73rd Precinct. He had been arrested on February 1st for the murder of Red Alpert. Two witnesses had finally agreed to testify. Reles knew what that meant. He would be convicted. He would be sentenced to death.

 He had watched seven of his associates go to trial in the past year. All seven were convicted. Five were already in the death house at Sing Sing Prison waiting for execution. Reles understood his options. He could stay silent and die or he could talk and live. He chose to talk. Assistant District Attorney Burton Turkus entered the room at 9:42 a.m.

Turkus was 37 years old. He had been with the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office for 6 years. He was 5 ft 8 inches tall with dark hair and intense eyes. He wore wire-rimmed glasses. He carried a leather briefcase filled with file folders. He sat down across from Reles. He opened his briefcase. He took out a yellow legal pad and a fountain pen.

He looked at Reles. He said, “I’m listening.” Reles talked for 12 hours straight. He described the structure of Murder Inc. He named names. He provided dates. He gave locations. He explained methods. He described weapons. He detailed at least 85 murders. He implicated members of the syndicate in every major city.

He identified Albert Anastasia as the boss. He identified Lepke Buchalter as Anastasia’s partner. He named Louis Capone as the supervisor. He named Pittsburgh Phil Strauss as the most prolific killer. He named Happy Maione and Frank Abbandando and Martin Goldstein. He described murders in Brooklyn, Detroit, Chicago, Miami, Boston, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.

He drew diagrams. He recreated conversations. He provided details that only someone present could know. Turkus took notes without stopping. He filled 47 pages in his legal pad. When Reles finished, Turkus looked up. He said, “Can you prove any of this?” Reles said, “I can prove all of it. Get me the other boys and I’ll make them talk, too.

” Turkus left the room. He walked down the hall to District Attorney William O’Dwyer’s office. O’Dwyer was 49 years old. He had been elected District Attorney in November 1939. He ran on a promise to clean up Brooklyn. O’Dwyer was a former policeman who had worked his way through law school at night. He was tough and ambitious.

 He wanted to be mayor of New York. Breaking Murder Inc. would give him that opportunity. Turkus told O’Dwyer what Reles had said. O’Dwyer authorized immediate action. Within 48 hours, police arrested Anthony Maffetore. Maffetore was called Duke. He was a low-level associate who had participated in several murders.

He was 24 years old. He was terrified of dying. When Turkus told him that Reles had already talked, Maffetore broke immediately. He corroborated everything Reles said. He added details Reles had missed. He named additional killers. He described murders Reles did not know about. Two days later, police arrested Albert Tannenbaum.

 Tannenbaum was called Tick Tock because he always wore an expensive watch. He was 32 years old. He had killed at least eight men. When he learned that both Reles and Maffetore had talked, he agreed to cooperate. The walls were collapsing. On February 9th, 1940, police arrested Harry Strauss. Strauss was at Midnight Roses candy store.

 Six detectives entered. Strauss tried to run out the back. Detective John Osnato tackled him. Strauss fought. He punched Osnato in the face. Osnato hit him with a blackjack. Strauss went down. They handcuffed him and dragged him to a police car. At the precinct, Turkus showed him the statements from Reles, Maffetore, and Tannenbaum. Strauss said nothing.

He refused to talk. He refused a lawyer. He sat in the interrogation room for 6 hours without speaking. Finally, he said, “I want to see my mother.” They brought his mother. She was 68 years old. She cried. She begged him to cooperate. Strauss looked at her and said, “I got nothing to say.

” He never spoke about his crimes again. He was tried, convicted, and executed on June 12th, 1941. Martin Goldstein was arrested on February 11th. Frank Abbandando was arrested on February 12th. Happy Maione was arrested on February 14th. Louis Capone was arrested on February 21st. Each arrest followed the same pattern.

 Police surrounded the suspect’s location. They moved in quickly. The suspects were not given time to escape or dispose of evidence. Most were caught off guard. Some tried to fight. All were subdued. They were brought to the 73rd Precinct and placed in separate cells. They were not allowed to communicate with each other. Turkus interrogated each one individually. Some talked, most did not.

It did not matter. Reles and the other informants provided enough evidence to prosecute. The trials began in May 1940. Burton Turkus prosecuted. He put Reles on the witness stand. Reles testified for 18 days. He was calm and detailed. He answered every question without hesitation. Defense attorneys attacked his credibility.

They called him a liar and a murderer. They accused him of fabricating testimony to save himself. Turkus had prepared for this. He presented corroborating evidence for every major claim. He produced records of stolen cars used in murders. He found witnesses who saw the He matched ballistics evidence to weapons recovered during searches.

He built an overwhelming case. On May 23rd, 1940, Harry Strauss and Martin Goldstein were convicted of murdering Irving Feinstein. Feinstein was a small-time hood who made the mistake of testifying against another mobster in 1939. The Syndicate ordered his elimination. Strauss and Goldstein carried out the contract.

 They stabbed Feinstein 63 times and left his body in a vacant lot. The jury deliberated for 4 hours. They returned a verdict of guilty on all counts. Judge Franklin Taylor sentenced both men to death. Strauss showed no emotion. Goldstein stared at the floor. On September 13th, 1940, Happy Maione and Frank Abbandando were convicted of murdering George Rudnick.

Rudnick was a loan shark associate who tried to work independently. Maione and Abbandando killed him in 1937. They strangled him with a rope in the back of a car and dumped his body in Sheepshead Bay. The jury deliberated for 6 hours. The verdict was guilty. Judge Taylor sentenced both men to death. Maione cursed the judge.

Abbandando wept. On December 2nd, 1941, Louis Capone was convicted of murdering Joseph Rosen. Rosen was a Brooklyn candy store owner who had once worked in Lepke Buchalter’s organization. He threatened to go to the authorities. Buchalter ordered his death. Capone arranged it. On September 13th, 1936, two gunmen entered Rosen’s store and shot him seven times.

 Capone was tried along with Buchalter and Mendy Weiss, Buchalter’s top lieutenant. All three were convicted. All three were sentenced to death. They were executed together on March 4th, 1944. Between 1940 and 1944, seven members of Murder Inc. were executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York. Harry Strauss died on June 12th, 1941 at 11:03 p.m.

 Martin Goldstein died 8 minutes later. Harry Maione died on February 19th, 1942 at 11:07 p.m. Frank Abbandando died 9 minutes after that. Louis Capone died on March 4th, 1944 at 11:02 p.m. Mendy Weiss died at 11:08 p.m. Lepke Buchalter died at 11:13 p.m. Each man walked from the death house to the execution chamber without resistance.

Each man was strapped into the electric chair. Each man received three jolts of electricity. 2,000 V for 3 seconds, 500 V for 60 seconds, 2,000 V for 3 seconds. The prison doctor checked for a heartbeat. Each man was pronounced dead within 6 minutes of entering the chamber. Their bodies were removed immediately.

They were taken to the prison morgue. Some families claimed the bodies for burial. Others did not. Those bodies were buried in the prison cemetery in unmarked graves. Albert Anastasia was never prosecuted. He was indicted for murder in 1940 based on Abe Reles’s testimony. The trial was scheduled for November 15th, 1941.

Reles was the key witness. Without Reles, the prosecution had no case. On November 12th, 1941, Reles fell from the sixth-floor window of the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island. He was under 24-hour police guard. Six police officers were assigned to protect him. The officers claimed Reles tried to escape by climbing out the window on a makeshift rope made of bedsheets.

The rope broke. Reles fell six stories and landed on the roof of a kitchen extension. His body was found at 7:10 a.m. He died instantly. The official ruling was accidental death. Nobody believed it. Most people believed the police threw him out the window. Some believed Anastasia paid them to do it. Others believed Anastasia’s men climbed up from the outside and pushed him.

The truth was never determined. Without Reles, the case against Anastasia collapsed. The charges were dropped. Anastasia remained free until October 25th, 1957 when he was shot to death in a barber chair at the Park Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan. He was 55 years old. His killers were never identified. The organization itself did not die.

It adapted. The National Crime Syndicate continued to operate after 1944. The structure remained intact. The Board of Directors still met. Territory was still controlled. Rackets still generated millions of dollars. Gambling operations expanded into Las Vegas and Miami and Havana. Narcotics trafficking increased dramatically after World War II.

Labor racketeering continued in the garment district, on the waterfront, in construction, and in trucking. The only difference was the method of enforcement. After the convictions and executions of 1940 to 1944, the Syndicate became more careful. They stopped using the same group of killers for every contract.

They stopped maintaining a dedicated murder squad. Instead, each family handled its own enforcement. When a killing was necessary, local members carried it out. The killers were not specialists. They were soldiers who killed when ordered and then returned to their regular activities.

 This made investigation much more difficult. There was no longer a central hub connecting murders across different cities. Burton Turkus left the District Attorney’s Office in 1945. He returned to private practice. He defended 17 men accused of murder. None were executed. He wrote a book about the Murder Inc. cases with Sid Feder. The book was published in 1951.

It was titled Murder Inc.: The Story of the Syndicate. It became a best-seller. The book provided details about organized crime that shocked the American public. It described the scale of operations, the structure of the organization, and the methods used to avoid prosecution. It explained how corruption allowed the Syndicate to operate openly for years.

It named politicians, judges, and police officials who accepted bribes. Several of those named were investigated. Some were prosecuted. Few were convicted. William O’Dwyer became mayor of New York in 1945. He won the election largely because of his success in prosecuting Murder Inc. He served as mayor until 1950.

In 1950, he resigned under pressure from corruption investigations. The investigations revealed that as District Attorney, O’Dwyer had failed to prosecute Albert Anastasia despite having substantial evidence. They revealed that O’Dwyer had close ties to several organized crime figures. They suggested that O’Dwyer may have deliberately allowed Anastasia to escape justice.

O’Dwyer denied all allegations. He accepted an appointment as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico. He served in that position until 1952. He died in 1964 at age 73. The Kefauver Committee hearings of 1950 and 1951 brought national attention to organized crime. The committee investigated crime operations in 14 cities. They interviewed over 600 witnesses.

They documented connections between organized crime and legitimate business. They exposed corruption in law enforcement and politics. They confirmed that the National Crime Syndicate continued to operate much as it had in the 1930s. The hearings were televised. Millions of Americans watched mob bosses invoke the Fifth Amendment.

Frank Costello appeared and refused to answer questions. His hands shook during the testimony. His lawyer repeatedly objected. Joe Adonis refused to appear. He fled to Italy to avoid prosecution. Meyer Lansky appeared briefly and said nothing useful. The committee issued its final report in 1951. The report concluded that organized crime was a national problem requiring federal intervention.

 It led to increased federal prosecution of mob activities. It led to new laws targeting organized crime. It changed public perception. Americans realized that organized crime was not a local problem isolated to certain neighborhoods. It was a massive business operation affecting every aspect of national life. Murder Inc.

 killed between 400 and 1,000 people during its operation from 1929 to 1941. The exact number will never be known. Many victims disappeared without a trace. Many murders were never reported. Many cases remain unsolved. What is certain is that for 12 years, a group of approximately 40 men based in Brooklyn operated the most efficient murder operation in American history.

They killed on demand. They killed for business reasons. They killed without emotion or hesitation. They developed techniques that remained effective for decades. They created a template that organized crime followed long after they were gone. By the time the investigation ended, the men were dead, but the system survived.