Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Murder Incorporated

Starting point is 00:00:00 During the 1930s, a group of killers operated in the shadows of America's growing organized crime networks. They carried out assassinations, silence witnesses, punish rivals, and helped powerful mob bosses maintain control while remaining several steps removed from the violence. Their existence blurred the line between street gangs and a professional criminal bureaucracy, and their downfall exposed just how organized murder had become. Learn more about Murder Incorporated. On this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by What Could Go Right.

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Starting point is 00:01:45 Listen to what could go right on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Recently, our company's softball team lost the big game by one run. Then Dale tried to console us with the quote, Winning isn't everything. Well, Dale and I are very different. I get early payout from Bed 365. If my team goes up big, I get paid out instantly, even if they blow the

Starting point is 00:02:14 lead later. Sound familiar, Dale? Thanks, Beth 365. Must be 19 or older Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please go to connectsontario.cate and C-Supply. Following the passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919, alcohol was banned from being sold, manufactured, or transported in the United States. This was a horrible development for the alcohol industry and a windfall for organized crime. Prohibition allowed criminal organizations to profit from the sale of illegal liquor, resulting in massive profits and the formation of highly organized criminal enterprises. The prohibition period lasted only about a decade, but the criminal organizations it created persisted long after it ended. As these criminal

Starting point is 00:03:03 organizations operated outside the law, they often had to use violence or the threat of violence to enforce behavior, and occasionally they would have to remove someone completely. Contrary to what you might see on movies and television, killings didn't happen all the time in organized crime, but they did happen. When someone, especially a member of a mob family, had to be taken out, it was often best if the task was handled by someone else

Starting point is 00:03:31 so it couldn't be traced back to the person who ordered the hit. In an effort to meet the demand for these killings, the organization known as Murder Incorporated was formed. Murder Inc. first became active in 1929, with its origins and the cooperation between the Italian Mafia and the Jewish Mob. The group acted as the Execution Squad for the National Crime Syndicate. It's believed that the predecessor to Murder Inc. was a gang known as the Bugs and Meyer Mob, a Manhattan-based Jewish-American street gang run by mobsters Bugsie Siegel and Meyer Lansky. The early versions of the Bugs and Meyer mob were formed to serve as protection against the

Starting point is 00:04:11 Italian and Irish gangs in the area. However, once formed, they quickly became involved with bootlegging and other criminal activities. They also became heavily involved with Charles Lucky Luciano and Frank Costello, who were involved with the Italian Five Points Gang. The National Crime Syndicate is believed to have been formed in 1929 at a meeting between top-ranking underworld figures in Atlantic City, New Jersey. During the meeting, informal agreements were made amongst various crime families, which helped eliminate violent turf wars, delineated territories for each group, and aided in the consolidation of each family's power. As a result of the meeting, a commission was formed to govern organized crime under an agreed-upon set of rules and resolve any

Starting point is 00:04:54 disputes between members. While major crime families were a part of the syndicate, the individual groups still acted independently, just under the guidelines that they had established. The plan was especially important due to the impending repeal of prohibition. If prohibition were repealed, which it was in 1933, organized crime was going to lose a large source of income. The National Crime Syndicate served as the foundation of Murder Incorporated. After the gang alliance, Lansky and Siegel pushed the syndicate to create a special group that would handle enforcement issues. There were two heads of Murder Inc. Louis Lepke-Bookhalter and Albert Madhatter Anastasia.

Starting point is 00:05:38 Bookhalter was born in 1897 in the Lower East Side of New York. The origin of his nickname can be traced back to his mother, who called her son Lepkelae, which meant Little Lewis in Yiddish. As his friends and family heard the term over the years, they shortened the nickname into Lepke. Bookalter had a difficult life from a young age. His father died when he was 12, and his mother decided to move to Arizona,

Starting point is 00:06:00 leaving him in New York City to live with his sister. Bookalter was in and out of reform schools in prison for several years. After being released from prison in 1922, Bookalter connected with his childhood friend, Jacob Shapiro, who was a mobster. The duo joined forces, and they began to take control of the garment industry unions. Bookalter and Shapiro would use their control over the unions to threaten strikes and demand that the factory owners pay them weekly. The connection to the unions also allowed them to draw on the union's bank accounts.

Starting point is 00:06:34 The other head of murder rink was Albert Mad Header Anastasia. Anastasia was born in 1902 in Italy. He lived with his eight siblings until the end of the First World War. His father was a railroad worker during the war and died when Albert was young. In 1919, Anastasia and three of his brothers decided to enter the United States illegally. They did this by abandoning the freighter ship where they were supposed to be working. Once in the United States, he and his brothers took up work in New York City where they served as longshoremen on the Brooklyn waterfront.

Starting point is 00:07:06 It didn't take long for Anastasia to get in trouble. By 1921, he was convicted of murdering a fellow dock worker and was sentenced to death. However, he got out of his conviction due to a retrial the following year, which he won, after four of the initial witnesses that were brought forth by the prosecution, had vanished. Later in 1928, he was charged with murder and Brooklyn. However, nothing ever came of this as the witnesses who were set to testify against him in court either refused or again disappeared. By the late 1920s, Anastasia had become a leader of the International Longshoremen's Association, a labor union in Brooklyn. There he allied with the Sicilian crime boss by the name of Giuseppe, Joe the boss, Masseria.

Starting point is 00:07:52 Anastasia later became involved in the Castella Maurice War, which was a gang war between Masseria and Salvador Marizano. During the conflict, Anastasia was involved in a plan to trick and murder Masseria that was hatched by Masseria's lieutenant, Lucky Luciano. He went through with his part of the plan, and for his loyalty, he was placed as one of the leading members of the enforcement branch of the National Crime Syndicate, Murder, Inc. The nickname Mad Hatter came from his insane ambition, psychotic tendencies, and unpredictable behavior. Anastasia was known as being ruthless, and the media and his fellow mobsters portrayed him as someone who was more than willing to use violence to solve literally any problem. And this instability gave him the moniker

Starting point is 00:08:38 Mad Hatter. The services of Murder, Inc., were available to any member of the National Crime Syndicate anywhere in the country. Those victims of Murder, Inc, were members of the syndicate themselves or people associated with criminal activities who were murdered for the sake of business. The members of Murder Inc. were paid a basic salary as well as a freelancing fee for any hit they carried out, and this could be anywhere from $1,000 to $5,000. The headquarters of Murder Inc was in a candy shop known as the Rosie Gold Candy Store in Brooklyn. Inside there were several pay phones along the back wall. While waiting for their marks, the members of Murder Inc would enjoy the product until the phone rang, giving them the details of the hit they needed to be part of. According to testimony given after the organization's collapse, murder orders were usually transmitted through several layers. A senior boss might communicate with Bookalter, Anastasia, or another trusted figure.

Starting point is 00:09:37 An intermediary would select a crew, provide information about the target, and arrange weapons, transportation, surveillance, and payment. The killers frequently worked in teams. One man might identify the target, another steal a car, another serve as driver, and one or two other perform the killing. Using several participants spread responsibility but also created a serious weakness. Every additional participant was also a potential witness. Weapons and methods varied. Victims were shot, stabbed, strangled, beaten, drowned, or killed with ice picks. Bodies were sometimes left in cars or streets, but attempts were also made to conceal them in remote locations, vacant lots or buildings. Murder Inc.'s best-known murder is considered

Starting point is 00:10:23 to be the killing of Dutch Schultz. In 1935, Schultz had openly defied the organization after they had refused to take the contract that would kill Thomas Dewey. The United States Attorney General for the Southern District of New York, who would later go on to become governor of New York, and the Republican nominee for president in 1948. Dewey was outspoken on his desire to put the mob out of business. While a hit might have made some sense, members of the syndicate feared that assassinating Dewey would spur public outrage, thereby leading to more effort devoted to dismantling their criminal enterprise. Choosing to disregard the syndicates ruling, Schultz ordered a hit on Thomas Dewey through Murder Incorporated.

Starting point is 00:11:08 Ultimately, the contract resulted in the assassination of Schultz himself by the very same organization. Murder, Inc. first came to the attention of law enforcement in the early 1930s, by a mobster named Abe Wagner. He is tempted to escape the mob fearing repercussions of revealing this information, but they eventually found and killed him. Dewey's showdown with the mob happened a bit later. Despite first being made aware of the organization in the 1930s, the puzzle pieces didn't begin to fall together until the late 1930s.

Starting point is 00:11:41 This is largely because law enforcement was just slow to connect the dots. Many of the high-ranking members of the syndicate were being put away by Thomas Dewey. And with these new arrests, the police began to learn more about Murder Inc. One of these arrests was of Abe Kid Twist Relis in 1941. As a founding member of Murder Inc, Relis was eventually arrested for murder. He chose to cooperate with authorities as a witness, which led to numerous first-degree murder indictments against his former associates. Despite being under heavy police protection after providing his confession and assistance,

Starting point is 00:12:18 Relis died under highly suspicious circumstances when he plummeted from his hotel room window. The official investigation, however, concluded that his death was merely an accident. Following Relis's confession, the head of the operation himself, Leppke-Bookalter, was tied to numerous killings and stood trial alongside many murder-ink associates who faced charges like racketeering, burglary, as well as murder. Faced with the threat of the death penalty from prosecutors, many members chose to confess, while the state built a compelling case specifically against Bookalter. Bookalter was ultimately convicted and executed in 1944, making him the only major American

Starting point is 00:13:01 mafia boss to have ever received the death penalty. As for Anastasia, Rellis's death caused the case against him to collapse. Because Rellis was the main witness to his crimes, he was never able to be convicted. Anastasia took over the remains of murdering, but was ultimately killed by rival mobsters in 1957. No one was ever arrested for his murder. The moniker Murder, Inc., by which the organization is known today, was originally coined by the reporters, Aisa Bortages, and Harry Feeney. As mob bosses were successfully being brought down,

Starting point is 00:13:37 the nickname was adopted by newspapers and rapidly caught on with the public. Murder Incorporated is frequently said to have been responsible for somewhere between 400 and 1,000 murders. However, none of those figures can be verified. Murder, Inc. was never quite the formal nationwide corporation that popular culture made it out to be. Movies that depict assassination organizations like those in John Wick are in some ways inspired by Murder Inc, even if the reality was never quite like that. Nonetheless, it was a real and deadly network that showed how organized crime,

Starting point is 00:14:16 had transformed murder into a business tool. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. Research and writing for this episode was provided by Olivia Ash. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. This is where everything happens that's outside of the show.

Starting point is 00:14:46 As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you two can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Murder Incorporated

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