The Underworld Podcast - Murder Inc: The Jewish & Italian Hit Squad that Terrorized the US

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

In the 1920's, high level gangsters like Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky had a plan to bring some semblance of order to the underworld. Together with a few other kingpins, they formed the Syndicate: a collection of the most powerful organized crime figures across the country that operated like a corporation with a board of directors that voted on everything related to gangsters. To make sure their judgments were respected, they needed an enforcement arm. Enter Murder Incorporated. Emerging from the Happy Maione's Ocean Hill Hooligans and Abe "Kid Twist" Reles Brownsville Troop, this collection of Jewish and Italian hit men would bring new meaning to the term "contract killer," dropping upwards of a thousand bodies across the country in a 10 year span as they carried out the Syndicate's bidding. Men like Harry "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss, otherwise known as Pep, who had a confirmed 30 hits and might have had as many as 100, became some of the most prolific killers the world of organized crime has ever seen. Based on the books "Tough Jews" by Rich Cohen and "Murder, Inc" by Burton Turkus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals, because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. October 23, 1935. A black sedan is rolling out of New York City, headed to the palace chop house restaurant in Newark, and the men inside are on a mission handed down from the kind of people you can't say no to. Driving the car is a man who will only ever be known as Piggy.

known as Piggy. But with him are Charlie Bug Workman and Mendi Weiss and their hitmen, like Real Deal done this a dozen times before, contract killers. Bug is said to have killed at least 20 people. See, Bug and Mendi are a part of what will later become known as Murder Incorporated, otherwise known as the enforcement arm of the syndicate. The syndicate is a collection of the top Jewish and Italian ganglords in America at the time, and they run everything illegal in the country. Guys like Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, Lepkeb Bill Coulter, Bugsy Siegel, and Albert Anastasia. These are the men who made organized crime what it is today.

They'd formed up this group a few years earlier, and they operate like a corporation. When a gangster has a beef anywhere in the country and needs it resolved, they come to the syndicate. And when the syndicate issues a ruling, it's done. Maybe it's a threat, maybe it's money divvied up, maybe it's a death sentence. When that death sentence needs to be carried out, they turn to Murder Incorporated, men like Bug Workman and Mendi Weiss, usually split into two factions, the Italian Ocean Hill hooligans, or the Jews of Brownsville known as the troop. The Jewish gangsters killed the Jews, the Italian gangsters killed the Italians.

To this day, there's never been anything like Murder Incorporated, who left upwards of a thousand bodies all over the United States over a decade or so. When the syndicate issues a verdict, it has to be obeyed, no matter who is on the other side. Mandy and Bug aren't on their way to take out some civilian or some cop or some low-level gangster. The palace chop house is the hangout of Arthur Flegenheimer, otherwise known as Dutch Schultz, who was one of the most feared gangsters in the country. Schultz is a fiercely independent bootleggar, a numbers runner, an extortionist, and all-around violent psycho with dozens, if not hundreds of shooters behind him,

before he ran into some legal trouble and became public enemy number one in New York and had to relocate to New Jersey. Dutch had wanted to deal with his new legal trouble is the simple way, by killing assistant district attorney Thomas Dewey, who was on the war path against organized crime. The syndicate weighed out their options

and ruled against killing Dewey. Schultz said he was going to do it anyway. The syndicate then decided Schultz was going to be the one to die. Bug and Mendi are the ones who picked up the assignment. They roll up to the restaurant Schultz's headquarters and stroll in. Bug checks the bathroom.

There's a guy washing his hands in there, but he figures he's a bodyguard, so he quickly shoots him in the back, and then makes his way to the back room, where he runs into Schultz's lieutenants, men with names like Abadababurman and Misfit Lando, and manages to kill all of them in a shootout. But where Schultz?

All of a sudden, he realizes Schultz was the guy in the bathroom. So Bug never wanted to miss out on an opportunity and familiar with the large amounts of cash Schultz used to carry on him, heads back there to pick his pocket. When he comes back out, Mendi, who is watching the door, is gone. So is piggy in the car. Bug is furious. He literally has to walk all the way back to Brooklyn a dozen or so miles.

And Mendy, he's a staff member of Murder Rink. He's not supposed to abandon his post. The punishment of bailing on an assignment is death. The syndicate now has to issue a ruling because Bug is out for blood. So they bring Mendy in, and he makes a very simple, case. I stayed for the mob duty for the assignment, which was killing Schultz. But after Bug doubled back to heist him, that's not mob duty, so I left. The syndicate rules in Mendi's favor. Shultz actually survives another 24 hours or so, talking all sorts of gibberish

in the hospital, but he doesn't name names. This is the Underworld podcast. Another episode of the Underworld podcast where we teach you that even if a guy has a first name like Shalom, he won't hesitate to put an ice pig. in your neck if the price is right. I'm your host Danny Gold. I'm here as always with Sean Williams. We are two journalists who have reported all over the world and now we bring you stories of organized crime every week in a somewhat defeated tone. Sean, are you hanging in there? That wasn't that cough wasn't timed. Yeah, physically I'm just about alive. I joined the COVID club this week, which is obviously great fun, but I'm chugging along. I think it's you who's actually

going to do the cool stories this time, right? I mean, we'll talk about that at a later date. But as always, you can support us on our Patreon at patreon.com slash the Underworld Podcast for as low as $3 a month. We have ad-free episodes, bonus content, interviews, all sorts of fun stuff. But honestly, does it even matter? We're just trying to eat. Help us out.

You know, I was actually on a big road trip recently, and I listened to a lot of podcasts or parts of a lot of podcasts. And we're frankly just like better than all of them. It makes no sense. We should be millionaires. I shouldn't have been driving around in a 2011. 11 Hyundai Genesis. I should have been chauffeered around in like a G6.

That's how valuable this podcast should be. Wait, I don't even know what a G6 is, but a 2011 Hyundai, I mean, that's pretty decent, right? You're taking it to bank. Any highlights? Lines of bacon off a rodeo queen's lower back or eating fried butter with bluegrass bands? I mean, I kind of want tails. If this is going to be the quality of jokes we can expect from this episode, I'm going to... I thought, yikes.

Anyway, we got to crack some new audiences. So, Sean, maybe you could go on, like, call her daddy and talk about your late-night Berlin escapades or something like that. Yeah, I mean, if coughing into my arm and writing about neo-Nazis at 1am is kind of Berlin's story they're into, then, yeah, be my guest. I don't know. I'll make something up. Anyway, this is a fun one, man, a throwback we're going to get to.

I just feel like it's one of the first mob stories I really ever knew. Sean, is this like a known thing? Do people know about murder ink and kid twist and all that? I mean, I know the names, but I don't really, for someone that does organize crime podcasts, I don't really know a lot about these great American mafia stories, really. like I mean my knowledge of about as about solid as Michael Tracy tweeting about Russia from a Polish motel room so I don't know but I prefer to hear this stuff from you anyway man and I'm really I'm really stoked for this one yeah generally I think we try to stay away from the classic mob tales but this one is just too good and I used to love reading these mafia books when I was a kid I think like much younger and I stumbled on tough Jews by Rich Cohen which is pretty much the basis for this that and the murder ink book by burden turkis who was one of the guys who prosecuted them and wrote a wrote this book up in the 50s from all the court stuff that came out, which is a lot. Tough Jews traces all the Jewish organized crime elements in the U.S. from like the 1900s on

up until like the 1950s. And there's a lot of it. You know, it's interesting too when you're young and you read this stuff, right? Like these were really, really bad people. But like you kind of take pride in it too, you know, when it's like your group or your ethnic group. I mean, even now if you go on our YouTube, it's always men too, right? but there's people in the comments for every episode

who love their various ethnicities or countries organized crime. Yeah, I mean, can we just have a quick shout because I forgot that Abadaba Berman is one of the best names I've ever heard? Is he going to come back? Because that is fantastic. No, no, he's not.

I just love the nickname. But yeah, dude, it's, you know, you go on there and it's always like Albania number one or Cuban guy talking about how the Cubans were the toughest or the Sikh thing in Canada. There's weirdly almost like a celebratory. feel for that of the outlaw that represents you, which I think is kind of normal, too. It's funny, too.

Like, Italians get so mad if you say another group was like fighting the mafia. Like, I put on YouTube a title about how the Albanians and the Bronx took on the Gambinos. And every week, there's mad Italians in the comments, like, wrong, wrong. Nobody takes on the Italians. Like, it's very funny. Yeah, I mean. But anyway. Just do not be mugging off the Albanians ever, right?

Don't front. Don't do it. It's never work. I mean, we probably sell way more don't mug off the Albanians t-shirts, to be honest. Like the amount of those guys in the comments, that's got to be the one that gets the most stuff, right, online, the Albanians. Oh, for sure, for sure. But yeah, sorry, we digressed a lot in the opening here.

Let's get to it. So Prohibition, which is the banning of alcohol, was really the jumping off point in America for a lot of organized crime and gangsters in general. Think of the cocaine market and what it does to crime and money too. and now think of how many more people drink alcohol regularly, way more than do cocaine, and you can kind of see what was up for grabs. That's when all this talk of the syndicate started

because there was just an insane level of money and an insane level of violence that all the gangsters were perpetuating on each other. And the smartest ones in the room, people like Arnold Rothstein, they wanted to find a better way. So the syndicate, I'm going to move through this kind of quick because it's really not our focus.

But Prohibition, like I said, is a huge boon for crime guys and gangs. the money's flowing through the roof. Everyone's getting rich, but everyone's getting bloody too. Then prohibition ends. And these guys aren't about to clock in on nine to five, right? So they've been looking out to where this whole time, like Mexican cartels deal with avocados,

labor rackets, gambling, extortion, prostitution, even narcotics. And what happens is Arnold Ralstein, who many claim helped invent organized crime, he had taken out a bunch of the young street kids, the gangsters from downtown. Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel, Frank Koppel, Frank Costello, Lucky Luciano, and later Lepke. And he basically culture them,

taught them how to think, how to do business. He gets killed, I think, in 1928. And those guys are working together and kind of decide they want to follow Rothstein's lead and do things a new way. At the time, you had what's called the Mustach Peets, which are these old-school Sicilian mobsters who were the most powerful,

off-the-boat guys, stuck to the old ways, wouldn't do business with anyone besides Sicilians, all that. But that's not going to fly for Lucky and Meyer, right? First of all, because Meyer's Jewish, so he can't do business with them. So first, they take out Joe Massaria, who is one of the two main bosses. He's fighting a war against the other Sicilian boss, Salvatore and Maranzano. And they strike a deal with Maranzano, and then they take out Maseria. And actually, there's a movie that kind of fictionalizes this called mobsters,

which never gets the respect that deserves. Definitely watch that if you're interested in the rise of Meyer, Luciano, Bugsy, and Frank Costello. I will do. And I genuinely had a mate in London called Mustache Pete. Anyway, carry on. It's a good, it's a good nickname. It's good.

Now, technically Maranzano is the main boss at the time, and Luciano was second to him. But then Maranzano goes and does something stupid. He picks a fight with Lewis, Leipke Bukalter. Leipke is a nickname. It comes from Leppkelet, which is like a Yiddishism. It means Little Lewis. So I'm not going to go deep into the bios of Lanski and Luciano or anything,

because there's so much out there. But Leipke eventually becomes the boss of murder rank. So he's important to understand. He was called, quote, the most dangerous criminal in the United States, according to Jay Edgar Hoover in 1939. And Thomas Dewey, we talked about in the intro, called him the worst industrial racketeer in America. Leppke was a family man, a devoted husband.

He didn't really drink or gamble, and he lived in a nice doorman building on the Upper West Side, and had a Fifth Avenue office. But he was said to have ordered up to 70 killings, made 5 through 10 million a year in extortion, and controlled nearly all the labor rackets. He was said to have never lost his temper or even got over-excited, but he scared even the hitman.

Quote, I don't ask questions, I just obey. It would be more healthier, said Shalom Bernstein, a hitman with murder rink, when questioned about working for Lepke. This might be a dumb question, but like, why are all these guys Jewish? Are they fresh off the boat from, like, Europe, Soviet Union or whatever, Nazi Germany even, or are they long-timers in the country?

like where do these guys come from well this is before this is before the um the the the the nazi germany took over and this is a so it wasn't that they were all jewish right there was this was a mix of jewish and italians the irish had their own thing as well and the chinese had their own thing too but murder ink was jewish and italian because there was a huge wave of immigration from eastern europe in the 1900s from from jews and i think at one point like it's an absurd figure i think New York City was like almost a quarter Jewish at one point because there was such a wave of immigration and you had the Italians as well. So the guys that were really coming up during this time, the guys in the slums, right? Lowery side, Brownsville, all that, were all Jews and Italians.

And they sort of got organized in their own way. And because so many Jewish and Italian immigrants were coming in, right? That was where organized crime came from and those were the people that they prayed on. So that's why you sort of have this situation. And we're going to talk a little bit more about those dynamics later on. So Lepke is born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 1897, to hardworking Russian Jewish parents. His dad owned a hardware store so he wasn't poor like the rest of the Brownsville troop

we're going to talk about. One of his brothers ended up becoming a rabbi, another was a dentist, another was a pharmacist, and his sister became a teacher. But for Lepke, his dad dies when he's 13, and his mother runs off to Colorado, so his sister's kind of left to raise him. But he's mostly on his own,

and he quickly picks up the race of this street. streets, you know, just doing scams. Rolling drunks was a big thing. Just the usual. I mean, he should have gone to Colorado. Imagine how good the snow would have been in 1910. Not a tech bro in sight. No one.

You're right. I mean, it was beautiful. And the rents in Boulder were probably in Denver a lot cheaper than they were in here. But in 1915, he's arrested twice for burglary, but he beats both charges. And he ends up being sent to an uncle's house in Connecticut. But at 19, he's back in New York on the streets. He starts with some low-grade extortion of push-car peddlers and some robberies. He's caught again in 1917.

There's a year in Sing Sing. Caught again when he gets out. Does two years. So now it's 1922. And he's realizing, you know, this independent shit, it's not the way to go. And also, neither is this Penny Annie Street stuff. Like, it's time to mob up and get organized. That's when he links up with a guy named Jacob Gurra Shapiro, who's just a monster.

He gets his nickname because he speaks like a thug, right? So when he said, get out of here, it sounded like Gurra. and Shapiro was from the city of Odessa, which is just a famous, famous city for its gangsters and organized crime, Jewish gangsters too, and especially back then. Now, together they team up

and they're extorting merchants, shop owners, all that, right? They're moving up steps. They had a thing for bakeries, which were huge money machines back then. Arnold Ralstein, he eventually hears of Lepka and he takes him on his lieutenant of sorts. He has him help out with bootlegging and all that. And Lepka also moves into the,

garment industry, which was huge in New York City back then. I mean, do you know about the Garmentos, man? Is this like those weird fashion stores around like the Empire State building and stuff? I wonder what those things are. Or is it that? I don't know. Not really. It was more manufacturing, right? Because in the 1900s, New York City was a huge clothing industry place, all these sweatshops and all that. And they were just some characters. I mean, at least the ones that I had met. And there's very few left, because that industry is mostly gone from New York. But they were like some wild, wild dudes and just the most New York City characters you could ever imagine. Like every stereotype.

Terrible jewelry, mansions in Long Island, gruff as hell, chewing on cigars, like eating at Peter Lugar's for lunch, just real characters, all of them. So, Burton Turcas, who I mentioned, and I'm probably mispronouncing his name, he wrote a book called Murder Incorporated, like I said, and he helped prosecute these guys. He has an interesting theory in the book that the mob did. really only spring from prohibition, but from the labor wars prior to World War I, when unions didn't have a ton of power and were on their own versus the management. So management would hire gangs of hooligans like these guys to strike break. And then the workers wised up and realized they too could hire the skullbashes. So then you had gangsters on both sides of the labor battles and they would go to war,

or maybe a gangster would try to take over a racket from another gangster. So there were these wars, you know, people are, they're fucking up merchandise and warehouses and management, four workers, depending on who called for it. Unions would put the mobsters on the payroll. I mean, you guys have seen the soprano. Like, you know what's going on. Sometimes the mobsters had to go to war against the other mobsters. And one of these, the biggest rackets in New York at the time is the clothing industry.

Tons of factories. And that's where Lepke moves into. Anyway, in those days, too, a lot of these sweatshops, they were where the recent immigrants worked. And a lot of these recent immigrants, like I said, were Eastern European Jews. some of them were the guys who would eventually help launch

the American Union movement and the Garmentos, the owners, they would hire the gangsters to beat these guys up and the unions, actually it started through Arnold Rothstein, they hire their own gangsters

and they fuck with the bosses and protected the strikers. And it's a really interesting dynamic because, and this gets to what you were saying, Sean, a lot of the owners of these sweatshops they were these aristocratic

German Jews who had come over a generation or two or three before. And they were more high society when they came over. You know, they were educated and all that. And the immigrants coming in in the 1900s, you had a lot of, you know, the guys who were living in the slums in Lower East Side and Brooklyn, in Brooklyn, my kinfolk. They were poor immigrants from Poland, from Russia. And they weren't like this previous wave of German Jews, right?

They were seen as like peasants, animals, dirty, violent and impulsive, crowding into the Lower East Side in Brooklyn, criminally minded, vicious, uncivilized and all that. Yeah, I mean, before the Second World War, anti-Slav, like anti-Eastern European, like hatred was pretty much the done thing in Germany. And like the German-speaking world, central Europe and Austria-Hungary and all of that. And it's still anti-Slav bias and racism is still kind of a thing. So, yeah, well done, Germany, as always. Yeah, it wasn't even just that they were Slavs, it was that they were Jews, you know, and immigrants. So it's kind of like all the stereotypes that I think people apply now to immigrants, like coming over. from Central America or Mexico or even black Americans,

those were the stereotypes that these immigrants face at the same time. You know, they were really looked down upon. And the murder and crew, these guys, they were usually Eastern European. So that's kind of where Lepkeh comes in. Lepka and Gura, they're known as the guerrilla boys then. They took out the other gangsters in the labor game, like a guy named Dopey Benny Fine, and then their boss at the time Little Augie.

And by the late 1920s, Lepka and Gura, they run the unions, a lot of them. Like truckers unions, bakeries. everything they could get their hands on. By 1932 and 1933, he was kind of like this mob boss of New York City when it came to the unions. And he had an army of something like 200 shooters on his side. They're bringing in millions by then. And people took to calling them the gold dust twins because of how profitable everything was. But let's bring it back for a sec, right?

So 1920s, Maranzano still running things with Lucky Luciano beneath him, the Sicilian gangster universe. And unlike the mustache Peets from Sicily, Lucky's a new breed. he didn't mind doing business with Jews. Guy was progressive. Yeah, woke. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I feel like I make that joke every single episode we do where there's like multi-ethnic groups teaming up.

But it's a good joke and I'm going to keep making it. Yeah, yeah. So Maranzano's in the union game too. And he promises Lucky that he won't start anything with Leppke. Because he knew Leapke and Lucky were tight. But of course he does. And violence breaks out. And Leapke and Gurra, they're not having it, right?

Because they're powerful too. So they go and talk to Lucky and come. and come up with a plan. Lansky gets involved as well. And together, they decide they're going to kill Maranzano and purge all the other mustache beats and sort of start like this new ecosystem for crime. Lansky actually recruits a team of Jewish hitmen

from all of the country, fearsome killers like Red Levine, and he needed them to be Jews from out of town because of their plan, they needed to make sure that Maranzano's soldiers wouldn't recognize them. Because they dress up, they pretend to be feds, and they get into Maranzano's headquarters,

and then just massacre him and all his soldiers. All over the country, attacks like this take place against the Sicilian mustache pits. Together they kill 30 to 40 old school mafia bosses in two to three days. So, you know, there's a new boss in town and it's not the same as the old boss.

I bet the paper's reported in that weird, like, vaudevillian way they used to do too, like two dozen there-do-wells barreled down by New York Rowdies or something, exactly like that, because this is a history lesson after all. I get to see articles from those errors, And you can look them up. They're there.

And they're amazing, man. They really are. Incredible, incredible stuff. So, yeah, there's a new boss in town. Not the same as the old boss. It's this new breed Italians and Jews United. And this is 1931. But by some accounts, the syndicate and murder ink were already a thing in 1929.

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but he was out. And now the gangsters form the syndicate. Sometimes it's called the commission. And it's run like a corporation with a board that votes on all the decisions. And some of the heads were Lanski, Luciano, Lepke, Albert Anastasia, who will get to in a minute, Bugsy Siegel, Frank Costello, Longy's Wilman, and Jersey, and eventually some other bosses in places like Kansas City, Miami, and Detroit. Remember, like, in Goodfellas, there's that speech about how, fuck, what's his name?

Servino, Paul Servino's character. He's the boss because he's like the police or like the judge for wise, the court for wise guys. This is what that is, but it's for everyone in the country with a board of directors. Wright's Turk is, quote, each boss remains czar in his own territory, his rackets unmolested, his local authority uncontested. In a murder, no one, local or imported, could be killed in his territory without his approval. All the leaders equal power, equal say. So first, those guys organize the East Coast, and then they bring in the Midwest, Kansas City, Chicago, Minnesota, all of it.

I mean, this was real organized crime. Like I said, each mob has their own rackets, but they cooperate. They go together on big scores. And they have a formal code of ethics, bylaws, which were overseen by this board of directors, the syndicate. They made the calls. Kidlings had to be approved. Wars had to be approved.

Oh, kind of sounds like the fat cats are big, farmer, am I right? I mean, look, I'm just saying that if Chris Rock had had a word with me a couple of weeks ago, he wouldn't have had all this shit, okay? Like, I just want to say at the beginning, at the beginning of the episode, like I did warn that I was expecting a lot of terrible jokes from Sean. So the audience has no one to blame with themselves if they listened this far. You know, so, you know, of course, do not. When you're doling out judgments, right? You need to make sure your judgments are enforced. They needed, like, a strong arm enforcement team. Enter, these kids from Brooklyn who would become known as Murder Incorporated.

But first, besides Lepke, the other so-called manager of sorts from Murder Inc. is Leapke's co-lead, Albert the Madhatter, Lord High Executioner, Anastasia. He's from Calabria, and he gets to the U.S. in 1917. He's actually brought in illegal. I think he was smuggled in. And he gets work on the docks in Brooklyn right away and quickly goes to work taking over the waterfront. By 1920, he's already convicted of killing a longshoreman.

He does 18 months on death row. But he gets a new trial on technicality, and wouldn't you know it, he's found not guilty because four of the witnesses from the first trial are murdered before the start of the second trial. He also has three brothers that work with him controlling the docs, which he eventually does for 20 years. And he was said to have participated in or ordered dozens of murders. Actually was arrested for five of them, which is kind of how he gets the nickname Lord High Executioner, which is, you know, kind of one of those nicknames where you're like, I'm going to do with this guy says.

And when I say he controlled the docks, I mean all of it. The peers in Brooklyn, there's some of the busiest in the world at this time, and they're five miles long. And anything within five blocks deep of those five miles, that's controlled by Anastasia, whether it's a shoe shine boy, a candy store, a bar, everything, well, I guess not a bar during Prohibition, but you know what I'm saying. Everything was paying kickbacks. In the 1920s, he links up with this guy Louis Capone, who's a mid-level gangster, who basically

kind of acts like a mentor of sorts to the Brooklyn gangsters who are going to turn into murder incorporated. That's Happy Myonis. I don't even know if I'm, this guy's name is really hard to say. M-A-I-O-I-N-E. Anyway, Hap-Moy-N-E is Ocean Hill Huligans and the Brownsville troop. Capone runs a restaurant and these kids come in, he feeds them, he advises them, he teaches them all that and they do some errands for him. So the Brooklyn kids. Again, I'm jumping all over the place, but you guys, you guys can follow, right? You get it. So yeah, finally, let's get to the Brooklyn Kids, which is again another, another rewrite. I know I'm jumping all over the place here, but I think you guys can follow.

Abe Kid Twist Rails comes of age in Brownsville, Brooklyn, after his parents, Fleepa Groms in Austria. Brownsville never ran, never will. For those of you who don't know, Brownsville is and always has been kind of the toughest neighborhood in New York City. It's where Mike Tyson is from. It's where MOP and Sean Price and all the hardest rappers come from. It's always had like the highest murder rate for any area in New York City. and it's where Mortar Incorporated comes from. It's all the way east in Brooklyn.

It's not the kind of place that tourists usually go to, though, of course, it's improved a lot over the past 30 years or so. And it's where you're taking a ride down next week for our story together, right? Yeah, I mean, look, I've been doing some little sniffing around. I've had a good time. I've spent a lot of time in Brownsville, actually, for stories and things like that. It's a good time. But even then, you know, it was a tough, uninviting poverty-stricken place.

And growing up in Brownsville at that point, I mean, think of the opening scene in Goodfellas again, where it's just the guys on the corner and everyone's sort of bowing to them, but it's Jewish, it's even poorer, and the gangsters aren't as organized yet, but they're going to be. At school, Wells meets this guy, Harry Strauss,

who's otherwise known as Pepp or Pittsburgh Field, who is going to be one of the three leaders of their murdering Brownsville crew. He'll end up being one of the most prolific hitmen of all time. I mean, I think they had at least 30 bodies on him, but some people put the number as high up as 80 or 100. Rells is all of like 5-2. He's ugly, he's funny looking, but he's got strong hands.

But Pep, Pittsburghville, he's a big dude, maybe a foot taller, handsome. They say he's a dandy like he dressed nice, and he was said to be irresistible to woman. He's also strong, reckless, and crazy. And then there's Martin Bugsy Goldstein, who had this kind of tough guy swagger in style. Was Rell's co-defendant from the start, and the two of them at 12, they leave school together and get jobs. But they also start doing petty crimes. and they hang on the corners with the other young delinquents. Rells first gets arrested at 13 and was sent away for juvenile delinquency,

and he's already an extortion pro at 15. By 16, he's robbing warehouses. In the 1920s, Brownsville is run by these guys, the Shapiro brothers, and therefore, like, you know, they run a big chunk of Jewish Brooklyn, Meyer, Irvin, William. They've got 15 brothels, and they also do the usual extorting shopkeepers, loan sharking, and just terrorizing everyone. And they also start getting big money from vending machines and slot machines.

And they control everything in these neighborhoods, right? And nickel bag is sold in the park. They're in on it. Rails and bugs, they start picking up work for them at 15. You know, there's stink bombing restaurants that won't pay. They're beating up strikers. They're finding people who haven't paid their loans and just being the crap out of them, all that sort of stuff.

Yeah, stink bombing, whoopee cushioning guys, like, I don't know, water ballooning, some drug pusher rivals. I know that game. Yeah, I know. I know that word. I mean, it sounds, it sounds quaint, right? Like pizza tycoon in that game, but it definitely does not. I guess there's a guy that's just dropped like 30 people in the last paragraph. Yeah.

You got to start somewhere, and somewhere it's throwing stink bombs in restaurants. So, Rells and the boys, you know, they start to soon feel underappreciated that they weren't being paid enough. He takes a bullet on one of their jobs. He gets caught on another end of his two years in the juvenile facility, and they don't even get them lawyers. and you can kind of see where this is going. Rells gets out from another charge on April 1st, 1930. Bugsy by then, he's got a pool hall where they all hang out, and they make friends with an Italian kid named Defeo,

whose brother runs with Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Sego, who are, you know, they're big time guys in Manhattan. Why did the nickname Bugsie go out of style, by the way? It kind of, there's like 15 guys during this time, nickname Bugsie, and it's just kind of solid, you know? Bugsig alone, probably killed it, right? Yeah. Ugh.

Maybe. Rels and Bugsy. they talk to Defeo and they decide they're going to make a move and form their own thing and go after the Shapiro's. But they need the backing of the bigger guys, which is where Defeo comes in, right? He talks to his brother, and they kind of secure the backing and start moving in on the Shapiro territory, bringing their own slots and vending machines into Brooklyn. So that backing thing is kind of weird.

I think it's just like, you know, Meyer and Bugsy, they're not really bothered by anything going on there, but they're like, yeah, if we can get some territory in Brooklyn, go for it. So that's kind of what happens. and by this point they have their own gang. And there's a kid that used to hang out with back in the day named Joey Silver. Joey still does work for the Shapiro brothers. What happens is he's going to let them know when the Shapiro brothers are out on town and looking kind of vulnerable

so they can show up and deal with them. So he calls them one night and tells them the Shapiro brothers are going to be at this location. They show up and it's an ambush, right? Joey double-crossed them. So one of their buddies with them gets killed. They both get shot. And that night, Meyer Shapiro, he goes out on a mission. He finds Rell's his girl,

kidnaps her, beats her, rapes her, and tosses her out of his car and tells her to tell Kid Twist what he did. Ouch, fuck me. That got really dark really quickly. Yeah, man. The names throw people off, right? A guy named Maya Shapiro sounds like a nice accountant,

but he's not. Definitely, definitely not. So this is war in the streets of Brooklyn, right? Beef, no less than 30 deep, all that. First, Kid Twist and Bugsy. They're out of commission for a few weeks, right? they're recovering from the gunshot wounds. But when they heal up, they go find

Papp Harry Starrows. Harry's kind of independent at this time. He doesn't get involved in these wars, but he thinks the rape crosses the line, which, yeah, I mean, yeah. So he throws in, yeah, he throws in with his two friends. And then they go see Louis Capone, the Brooklyn gangster who was connected with Meyer

and Albert N. Station. He connects them with Happy Myon's Ocean Hill hooligans. Ocean Hill is like another neighborhood near Brownsville, and they're the young shooters who represent the Italian faction of murder ink. and they decide they're going to team up and get the Shapiro's out of Brooklyn. Keep in mind, like, this is still kind of street stuff. You know, it's really low compared to the guys like Lucky and Lansky and all them.

And this is the early 30s. But the war is on. And for months, there's shootings all over the borough, people in hiding, like, you know, all sorts of chaos. There's plans, there's hunts, there's raids. They keep trying to kill the top Shapiro brother, like 10 times they shoot at him, and they miss every time. But eventually, they catch up with him and they wipe out the other Shapiro. And this is actually their first kind of kills.

Like this is, they're killers now. And they run East Brooklyn. And they're making enough waves to really attract the attention of the bigger players. So they set up shop, their headquarters at a place called Rose's Candy Store. It's on Saratoga and Livonia Ave. And the corner of front becomes the corner. You know, there was no internet, no personal phones. The corner was actually everything.

And if you've never lived in a city, to this day, right, the corner is still where the action happens. News, rumors, all that. Like if there's something crazy that happens in my neighborhood, shooting or like there's some screen, something like that, I know I can go to the corner and just get the story. And the gangsters, every generation would recruit the next generation off the corners.

Get him started doing errands, maybe driving, maybe delivering a package, maybe stealing a car, and that's kind of how the cycle goes. Basically, though, like any block shouted out by MOP in a song or a duck down record track from the 90s,

that's where the murdering crew was and that's where they hung out. Mostly, though, they stayed at Rose's Candy Shrine. because it was 24 hours and the owner kind of let them do what they want. And it kind of sounds comical, right? A bunch of guys named like Murray Weisberg and Mendi and Abe hanging out in front of a candy shop just like, you know, kind of quaint. But I mean, these guys end up having more real life bodies on them than like any rap album

from the 90s. And they did dozens of them with their bare hands. Have you ever considered doing organized crime tours around Brooklyn? Because I would sign up to that in an army. I think there are stuff like that. And I think like, I mean, even on YouTube, I saw some, someone had pointed out the address where Rose's candy shop was and it's a bodega now. But I think, I mean, I'm not super familiar.

I think there's guys in Brownsville now like that know the history of the neighborhood. You know, I'm not sure. Honestly, I'd take the Danny Gold MOP tour, to be honest, alone. That'll do it for me. Maybe, maybe I should put that on the Patreon. If you really come through. Oh, shit. I'll take you on a tour of all these, all these haunts.

But to get an idea of who Rails was, there's this infamous conversation he has with a prosecuting attorney who asked him how he could commit murder so easily if his conscience ever bothered him. This is a quote. He asked the attorney, how did you feel when you tried your first law case? The attorney says I was rather nervous. How about your second case? It wasn't so bad, but I was still a little nervous.

And after that, oh, after that, I was all right. I was used to it. And Rell says, you answered your own question. It's the same with murder. I got used to it. Malcolm Gladwell really should have done a murder chapter at that book he did. Yeah, 10,000 hours But I mean, it's kind of like anything else

You know, you're always nervous in the beginning And then it just becomes a routine I'm sure it applies to a lot of other things So one time too he kills this guy he had a beef with And he runs a few blocks Pretends to be drunk Breaks a window Make sure he gets picked up by the cops

And when the reports come in that they find this body in alley With bullet holes He just like, I'm at the station I have the perfect alibi So that's the kind of guy These guys were Anyway, in the early 30s we've got the syndicate expanding all over the country

and controlling all sorts of rackets in New York City, slot machines in Louisiana and Florida, smuggling in narcotics from China, morphine and heroin, gambling, dope, loan sharking, labor rackets, extortion, just controlling whole injuries. And they all have their own thing, right? Costello has slot machines in Florida and Louisiana, Lucky runs numbers and narcotics.

Lepka has the labor rackets in the garment industry. And toward the late 30s, they're even looking for expansion into out west, so they send Bugsie out there to get that done. Yeah, I mean, this is my complete ignorance talking, but where, like, aren't Chicago and Boston really, really major cities at this point? Are they just controlled by completely different gangs, or are they kind of involved in all of this as well? No, I mean, they get into the syndicate, like Chicago's got their own, their own gangs. Kansas City was huge too, Minneapolis, all that, but all these gangs are under the syndicate.

Boston, I'm a little unsure of because I feel like Boston had a lot of Irish gangs at the time. I know they had Italians too, but like the syndicate ran the country. And it was the most powerful mobsters involved in making these decisions. And no one, no one crossed them. But now we're back to the syndicate needing their enforcement arms, so no one would cross them. And they know about the Ocean Hill Hooligans. They know about the Brownsville troop. So they start calling them for jobs.

Lepgan and Stasia, they're usually the ones who handle the contracts, but they're calling up Louis Capone. And he's the one reaching out to the kids. You know, if they had a job, they throw them a job. A few weeks later, it's another job. And these are killings, you know, or, you're, you know, or, you're, you're, beating stuff like that. But in 1933, Lepka and Rails finally meet.

And this is when it becomes official, official with the syndicate. And now they're basically a hit squad on call. They would only work for the syndicate, or only kill for the syndicate. And they're on retainer for $250 a week. And I've seen some other sources say they get paid an additional $1,000 to $5,000 per murder.

But that actually seems high when you calculated it in today's cash, so who knows. And they were free to control East Brooklyn and all that. So they had their own rackets too. But the Italians, they answer to Anastasia. and the Jews, they answered a lepka. Yeah, I mean, I guess one of us has to be the intellectual and do the inflation,

and I worked out, that's like, I mean, five grand would be 110 grand a day. That seems a little excessive, right? So it's probably on the lower end of that scale. I mean, not that I know what an average hitman goes for on the dark web or wherever you want to choose your hitman these days. Yeah, anyway, moving on. So how it worked, you know, if, gangsters were mad at each other or someone else or they had a grievance, they would

approach the syndicate and the heads of the syndicate acted as judge jury and then they would send out their executioners. Murdering carried out the sentence. It had to be respected and you had to do the job if you worked for them. Killers were chosen. So was the methodology, actually. And they'd be flown out sometimes or drive or take the train all across the country. Right?

It wasn't just New York mobsters that went to them. It was Los Angeles, Kansas City, Detroit, all that. So you get there, you steal a car, a underling steal a car. car for you, you stake out the target. There's usually like a local gangster who's your guide or your fixer to make sure you get the right guy. And all the local goons, too, when the murder went down, they would make sure

they had an alibi for when it was happening. Then you do the killing and you fly home. Remember, this is 1930s, right? No one really knows what these guys look like. Police departments, they're not really connected like that, right? And there's barely a national police force going. So if you did the deed and took off, it's pretty hard to solve that crime,

especially if you knew what you were doing and how to cover your tracks. So you basically just like, you leave the crime, the cops like, oh, where do you go? Okay, I guess we'll just close this case then. Well, you know, people end up turning states evidence and all that.

You'll see. You'll see what happens. So the Brooklyn crew, I mean, they proved to be so good and so efficient at what they're doing, killing and covering it up, that Turka says, quote, so adept with a Brownsville thugs

that before very long, they were being used almost invariably from the Atlantic to the Pacific from Florida to the Canadian border and they took on some big jobs they killed the detective lieutenant in Chicago for getting a little two in their business they would obviously they took out Schultz

and you know they used guns ice picks strangulation they would burn bodies or use quick line pits to dissolve them Pittsburgh Field like I said had at least 30 bodies on him RELS ended up confessing to at least 12 murders so you know Pep he would fly in on a commission from a mob boss somewhere like Jack

Jacksonville, kill some lone shark who crossed the wrong boss, and then just leave. And when the cases first started being put together on Murder Inc in New York City, the cops, they eventually end up getting calls from around the country on unsolved killings that looked like the work of Murder Inc. And by 1940 alone, there were 200 unsolved murderers in Brooklyn. The name Murder Inc. It actually came from a guy named Harry Feeney of the New York World Telegram who covered their eventual trials.

But these guys, they eventually invented the modern version of contract. killing. And they would do things like, you know, they would go upstate to New York, Newburgh, New York, where an associate had a farm and they would have target practice. Step by step, they're getting taught the ways of the syndicate, given more responsibilities, and they're constantly proving their worth. They even, like, end up vacationing together, right? They'd go to Miami to relax, or the Catskills, shout out to Coutchers. Catskills is upstate New York, like two hours from New York City, and it's kind of where we're Jews. And I think the Irish, too, would go on a vacation back in the day to escape the city. And some of these gangsters, they would go to

these resorts in the summer. If you ever watched marvelous Miss Basil, you've kind of seen the 1950s version of them. And they ended up even recruiting one of the resort owner's sons to join them, a kid named Albert Tannenbaum. But if things really got too hot, they would really disappear. They'd go on the lamb, even further upstate New York, Hot Springs, Arkansas. Before things really went haywire, it was just a ruthlessly efficient system that worked like a charm. Yeah, shout out to the bonus episode we did with David Hill about Hot Springs. Like, I really want to do a full show about that place too. There's tons and tons of crazy stuff that went down before the whole place kind of died in the shadow of Vegas as well. It's really interesting place. Yeah, that's kind of what happened to

the Catskills too, not just Vegas, but just people, you know, flights being cheap, but, and Rockaway Beach too in New York, but now they're kind of having this resurgence. And it's, I mean, I go up there a lot. It's gorgeous up there. Anyway, 1935, actually another local war pops off in Brooklyn. This time, it's the Brownsville Boys versus the Anberg family, who were Russian Jews who had Ron Williamsburg for decades, and they were widely hated. They kind of moved in on the troops territory, right? And this sounds like a foolish thing to do, but they had powerful friends, too. They were boys with Red Levine and this guy, Joey Adonis, who were kind of the equivalent

of made men. So around that time, they kill a loan shark that owed them money, but he happened to be an associate of the Brownsville crew. And once they kind of sussed out that their boy got killed, they end up going to Lepke for approval and the syndicate to sort of make sure that it was okay. and of course, you know, they go through the trial and they get it. And there's nothing Joey A or Red Levine could do for the Ambergs because that's how the syndicate worked.

They had to die. And so they did. But that's just like a little example of kind of, you know, the rulings that happen and how this worked. And of course, every now and then, these guys, they actually are getting arrested here and there, but they always end up back out on the street. Literally each of them is arrested like dozens of time.

But they're just like beating out murder charges on the daily. That's crazy. Yeah, murder charge. I mean, also it's a charge. try to get them on anything they can, right? This is when tax evasion two became a thing. Yeah. In the mid-30s, though, things are kind of changing, and people are fed up with the gangsters in New York.

So the law decides they're going to actually really start coming after these guys. And Dutch Schultz from the opener, he's one of the first primary targets. You know, he's a difficult guy, stuck to his own thing, he was independent. He wasn't an official member of the syndicate. He had come up in the Bronx committing all sorts of crimes. He did a sin for burglary at 17. But, you know, he ends up having his own gang. He runs slots and numbers in Harlem.

He extorts all the fancy restaurants in Manhattan. And he just has a team of shooters. You know, he actually has to go on the run in 1933, fleeing a sure thing tax evasion case. But when he's on the run, Lepke moves in on his extortion business. Lucky Luciano has numbers racket. And then Dutch somehow like miraculously beats the case.

Now there's a problem, right? He'd been hiding out for 18 months. The trial got moved upstate, and he spent time living in the small town where it was, kind of just wooing everyone. and he just wins this case everyone thinks he's going to be convicted of. But he comes back and he knows he can't challenge the syndicate. And also the mayor of New York City, Fiora LaGuardia,

he calls him public enemy number one. So Schultz kind of relocates to Newark for a bit and starts doing his own thing. He still has his numbers running. And the feds, they start looking into what he's doing right now. And this is 1935. And Dutch, who was a major player, had all these donations and bribes to politicians and police, but he can't stop Thomas Dewey,

who at that point is this, hard-headed assistant district attorney who would become infamous for taking on these gangsters. He can't stop him from taking on a new case against him. So Dutch decides he wants to kill Dewey like he's had enough. The Dewey Decimate System, I guess you could call it. Save now at Whole Foods Market. It's the summer splash event with great everyday prices on 365 brand ground beef for the grill and ice cream for dessert.

They have yellow sales signs on ready to cook beef or chicken. kebabs too. Level up with savory marinate, spices, and rubs, and complete your cookout with a crowd-pleasing cherry pie and their balsamic chicken salad. Available at the prepared foods counter. Get Summer Splash Savings now at Whole Foods Market. The jurors sat in a dark room, hands resting on a Ouija board. They weren't guessing. They were asking the victim who killed them. Sounds unbelievable, right? But it happened. And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you on Morning Cup of murder. Hi, I'm Karina B. B. B. Mr. Dher. And every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I bring you a real chilling true crime story connected to that exact day in history. From Killer Cannibal Brothers to the

Boy Scout who was obsessed with the occult and the strange story of the bloody hammer in the frozen cabin. These aren't the cases you've heard a hundred times. They're the ones that make you stop and think, how have I never heard this before? With over 2,500 episodes and a brand new story each and every single day, morning cup of murder becomes part of your routine fast. If you like your coffee hot but your bones chilled, then sit back and start your day with a morning cup of murder. Go listen to Morning Cup of Murder wherever you get your podcasts.

And remember, stay safe. That cost just awful. Come on. Anyway, a couple of the utter syndicate guys, they kind of like the idea, so they put it to a vote. They can't reach a decision. And at one point, you know, Albert and Aesthesia, even cases do we just,

be ready. But the discussion is held again, and it's decided they just, they're not going to do it. It's too much heat. Dutch doesn't like it. He's pissed. And he says he's going to do it anyway, and he's like very vocal and adamant about it. But the syndicate, they've ruled already, and you can't cross the syndicate. So Dutch has to get dealt with. And that's when they bring in Charlie Bug Workman and Mandy Weiss for the job. And that's where we kind of leave off for the cold open where the syndicate contracts out the hit of one of the top mobsters around. This actually happens to Bugsy Siegel, I think, like a decade or so later, but, you know, sometimes members did get off. Like, there's this story of Shalom Bernstein. He's out in LA on a vacation, and he gets

contracted out by Bugsy Siegel to do a hit. And he doesn't want to do it. I mean, he's on vacation, but he goes ahead anyway. He steals a car for the job, and he shows up. Bugsie kind of loses it, gets mad at him, tells him it's the wrong car, needs to go back and do another one. So Shalom, he just kind of walks out the door, high-tails it back to New York City. He doesn't finish the job. And Bugsie, of course, wants him dead. So they go on trial to try to at the syndicate where Reels decides he's going to act at his defense and he gives this speech and reveals the real reason Bernstein left. He had gotten word that his mom was going to die in Brooklyn. And you know, ganglords, like, they, they, they're moms, man. It's special. So by the end of it,

all the guys are tearing up. And Bernstein actually gets found not guilty. I mean, one thing that's always guaranteed about these guys, right? They bloody love their old moms. And they're, this, I like really want to make the Netflix show Shalem, you know, Impact font. I'm going to say, Adam driver in the lead role. Like a message to all Hollywood producers, by the way, Danny and me can make your gangster movie dreams come true. So, yeah, email us. I'm sure we'll have them flooded in.

We actually, we need them to make our dreams come true. But yeah, there's actually, I think there's another book called, But He Was Good to His Mother about these guys. That's the title, which is great, great title. That's good. But anyway, the police led by Dewey, they're trying to make cases on these guys in the 30s because they're just getting away with murder extortion.

Raceteering is a big thing over and over and over. Leipke actually ends up getting locked up for a year or two on antitrust violations. Some guys like Rellas get arrested for crimes here and there. He gets arrested for, I think, beating up a parking attendant who meld off to him. But the charges and sentences, they barely ever stick or they're not for a long time. Between them, Rells and Bugsie got arrested 76 times and only ever served 50 months total. Then in 1936, Dewey becomes the special prosecutor of organized crime, which is a new position. and he's going to go after Lucky and Leipka and the others even harder than before, and they know it.

So this sets off chaos in the streets, and things just start turning sour. Everyone that knows anything, civilian or gangster, starts getting targeted. Bodies are turning up everywhere, friends killing friends, like really psychotic shit. LePka ends up going on the lamb for years, becoming the most wanted man in American history at the time. According to Cohen, 100,000 wanted posters are printed up and sent out. He's moving all around. He actually mostly stays in New York and New Jersey, though. There are sightings, which aren't true, probably in Poland, in California and England.

I think he was in Arkansas for a while as well. But it's the first time ever the NYP has set up a squad to go after one fugitive. And there's $50,000 on his capture, dead or alive. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's probably easier to take him in dead. Yeah. But Gurra is actually on the run too, right? But he just can't take the fugitive life. And he actually turns himself in in 1938.

and he gets sentenced to life, which is, I don't know, why would you, just go to, go to fucking go overseas, man, come on. Yeah, go potent. Leipke even actually ends up hiding out in Brooklyn for a bit, which is like, these guys just can't stay away. By 1939 when the walls are closing in, Leipke, he's just going a little crazy, right?

He's paranoid, ordering all sorts of murders. Bodies are turning up all over Brooklyn, vacant lots, swamps, parks, alleys, just really, I mean, really insane stuff. You know, anyone, anyone who could potentially rat gets dealt with. And by 1940, Brooklyn streets, they're just a wasteland. Between the cops going after everyone and Lepke going after everyone, nobody sticks their heads out.

Everyone's left town. Leipke is still being hunted. Jayager, Hoover wants him, Dui wants him, and he's getting ready to turn himself in to try to negotiate a deal. Walter Winchell, who's a famous newspaper columnist back then, he's chosen by the syndicate to orchestrate the deal. And there's all sorts of negotiations because Lepke is scared he's going to get killed when he shows up.

But on August 24, 1940, after all sorts of intrigue and maneuvers and meets and random phone calls for mysterious voices and blindfold the car eyes, Leapke turns himself into Huger with Winchell by his side. He actually thought he had a deal that he would be protected from Dewey by Hoover. But it's all bullshit. He gets the federal charge of 14 years for narcotics, and then Dewey's going to get a crack at him. Meanwhile, the Brownsville boys, they have their own problem. What finally sinks the killers of murder ink is the murder of a guy named Red Alp, He's a Brooklyn thug with an independent streak.

Alpert's a tough kid. He comes up in Brownsville in the 1930s. He's a career criminal at 16. Yeah, I mean, who isn't in this story? Yeah, these guys, they all are. Back in that neighborhood, as Turk has, they said toddlers teed on pistols. That's how dangerous it was.

Alpert hates the police so much. They say he never wears a blue suit. Anyway, he's still small time, right? Yeah, I mean, also, how can you teet the toddler on pistols? That doesn't even make sense as a metaphor. So anyway, sorry. I've got a grammatical issue with that. Anyway, he's a small time code.

But he stumbles onto this hall of gems one day during a robbery. The problem is he doesn't really know how to move it. So he goes looking for someone who might know how to do it. And this is the summer of 1933. And he goes to Pittsburgh Phil, Harry Strauss, otherwise known as Pep. And he shows up and meets Phil, this punk kid. He shows him the jewels. And he says he wants three grand.

So Pep offers him $700. And Albert tells him he's the most fearsome killer in Brooklyn. He tells him to go to hell. So Pep isn't having it and he actually tries to kill this guy once or twice and fails. And Rails and Bugssey sit down with him and they're like, dude, come on. This kid's 19 years old. There's no reason to kill him. So they go see Red to try to talk some sense into him.

And they end up offering him $700 for the gems too. Somehow it comes up. And he tells them to go fuck themselves. And of course, that's not going to stand. And soon he winds up dead. So Red's best friend at the time is a criminal too, this guy, Harry Rural. A few years later, he gets locked up and he decides he wants to cut a deal. So he sends a letter to the DA from Rikers, and he says he can finger Rels and Bugsy for the murder of Red Levine.

Meanwhile, you know, all this other cleanup stuff is going on in the neighborhood. All these gangsters are getting a full court press from the cops, and the cops decide they're going to go after Rels and Bugsy. So they go looking for them. They actually turn themselves in because they kind of figure this is, you know, not a big deal. They're going to be out of no time. Remember, Rels gets picked up something like every 80 days or so. So it's no big deal. but the cops eventually end up flipping someone out

who has more info. And then these two actually never see daylight again. Then a couple other things happen. There's a fake story about Pittsburghville talking to police that hits the papers. And then Rels' wife visits him and she kind of breaks down and says that she doesn't know what she's going to do.

So Rels decides to talk. He's promised immunity. And that, listeners, is how we know all these stories today or a lot of them. Because that just, I mean, this is a monumental story. This is the revelation of a national crime syndicate as organized as organized crime can get

of mafias and a hitman murder for a higher agency and the newspapers explode. When Reels talks, others begin to talk, this whole thing gets exposed. Not all of them, some still keep their mouth shut as we'll see. Rels gives up info on 85 murders in Brooklyn. And of course, this sets off alarms in every mafioso across the country.

Apparently he has this amazing memory. He feels like 25 notebooks with confessions. He's implicating every. even his best friends, Pep and Bugsy. I mean, I'm a tiny bit skeptical about 25 notebooks.

I can't remember what I saw on telly last night, but maybe, I don't know, maybe the trauma of just slaughtering dozens of people sharpens your mind, maybe.

He didn't drink and he didn't stay out in Berlin until 6 o'clock in the morning every weekend. So I think his, yeah, he was probably a bit sharper than the rest of us.

And, you know, these guys were kind of meticulous in the way they did things. Salvia sharpened your mind, though, right? benefit of the doubt so everyone's panicking bugsy seagull even comes back from california with the detroit purple mob he sets up shop in the park hotel for crisis management

murders more murders are ordered all over from prison as well happy's in there he did take some of them from jail to his brother and of course what happens when you give off the order to kill anyone who might have any idea of what happened even other gangsters well some of them they're going to say fuck loyalty and they're going to turn state's evidence as well yeah i mean like The phrase snitches get greatly reduced prison sentences doesn't have quite the ring to it, but it makes like a thousand percent more sense.

I mean, honestly, if they're going to try to kill you for the idea that you might talk, it kind of makes sense to just talk either way. You know? And this is 1940, and Rich Cohen has this comparison to Rels as Josephus, who was this Jewish general who, you know, in the wars when Rome was fighting against Jews, he actually switched sides, goes to Rome, becomes a Roman, and then writes the history of the Jewish war,

which is, I think, a pretty solid comparison. The trial starts in 1940, and Rails is the most, like, wanted to be killed man on the planet. Everyone wants him dead, all the dangerous people. Workman ends up getting convicted of killing Dutch Schultz. He's sent to a life of hard labor, though eventually he gets paroled in 1964. Strauss and Bugsie go on trial,

their best friend from school days testifying against them. Strauss actually stops showering and grows a beard. He's going to go with the crazy defense. But they both end up getting the death penalty. And when the judge asked Bugsy if he had anything to say, he adds, quote, before I die, there is one thing I would like to do. I would like to pee up your leg, Judge. Oh, hold on there, potty mouth.

Why don't you just call him a nincompoot while you're at it? I mean, that's kind of, got to respect it. So they're executed in June of 1941. And in November of 1941, Rells, who has been in the most intensive protected custody like ever, hold up in a hotel with cops everywhere. He somehow ends up splayed on the pavement

after falling from a five-story window. Oh, that is unlucky. And of course, yeah, unlucky. Of course, this sets up all kinds of theories. Some say he committed suicide. There's another theory that he was playing a prank on the cops, which he'd like to do. He was going to bounce into one of the other windows

on a different floor and surprise them because there's like a bed sheet tied. And everyone's like he's a kid sneaking out. Like he's some kids sneaking out past curfew. And others say he was trying to escape. But of course, the likelihood is he was killed. Some people say it's like powerful politicians connected to the gangsters. But I think it's likely it was the syndicate that were bribing cops, which, come on.

I mean, that makes the most sense. In old Jewish gangster years later, he tells the journalist in Israel it was Frank Costello, whose job it had been to bribe cops and politicians who came up with the plan, which, you know, sounds the most likely to me. But either way, either way, Rells is dead. Lepka's dead soon, too. he gets turned over to the DA and he gets found guilty of murder. And there's tons of rumors that he was going to talk and implicate all sorts of high-level officials and prominent people.

But he never does. And he becomes the first mob boss to get the death penalty. Louis Capone and Mandy Weiss, they get executed as well. I mean, who's the real murdering, okay? Only a little old guy called Uncle Sam, am I right? And what's up about airline peanuts, hey? What's up with those tiny packers they give you? Like, am I a Hobbit or something?

Can we put the baseline over that? Oh, man. We really need to hire you like a ghostwriter for jokes. Anyway, Anastasia, he somehow gets out of this kind of almost scot-free. He doesn't get murdered until years later, 1957, infamously, in a barbershop in the chair when his back has turned to the door. Luciano dies of a heart attack after being deported to Italy.

Meyer Lansky dies of old age of Miami. Siegel, of course, he gets taken out in the late 40s, many saved by the remnants of the syndicate for certain improprieties. But the syndicate itself, murder rink, they're mostly done by the late 40s. This is just like a massive sort of, it just unravels the whole thing. And it's just chaos.

And that is the story of murder incorporated. And what about airline peanuts anyway? What about them? What about them? Yeah, so thank you guys for tuning in. And we're going to get some good stuff actually up on the Patreon. So thank you guys again, especially the supporters, man. And we really, like we need this.

And it keeps us going. The packets are really small. Patreon.com slash the Underworld Podcast. And until later, you can always email us. Underworld, oh, wait, the Underworld Podcast at gmail.com for ideas, for complaints and all that. And until next week. See you guys. When the job gets tough, you need equipment that's built to handle it.

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