Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (78 page)

Lepke thought he and Rubin were alone in Lepke’s office, but Allie Tannenbaum, fresh off  the successful murder of renegade taxi-business owner, Irv Ashkenaz, in the Catskills, was in an adjoining room, and the door to Lepke’s office was open.

Tannenbaum heard Lepke say to Rubin, “I've seen enough of this crap. That (expletive) Rosen, he's going around shooting his mouth off about seeing Dewey. He and nobody else is going any place and doing any talking. I'll take care of him.”

On Sept. 13, 1936, Joe Rosen opened his candy store at approximately 7:30 a.m. Waiting in a car across the street from the candy store were a group of Murder Inc. hitmen led by Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss and Happy Maione. As soon as Rosen walked into the candy store, Strauss and Maione busted in and emptied 17 bullets into Rosen’s body. Four of the shots were fired by Strauss after Rosen was already dead.

*****

By the late 1930s, with Lepke still on the lam, one by one Murder Inc. killers were arrested by the police. Most clammed up, but some began singing to save their own skins. Happy Maione, Dasher Abbandando, and Mendy Weiss refused to admit anything. Yet, Blue Jaw Magoon and Allie Tannenbaum were only too eager to cut deals in order to avoid the Sing Sing electric chair.

However, the key for any conviction was corroboration, and this corroboration was provided by the most unlikely of individuals: Abe “Kid Twist” Reles.

On Jan. 24, 1940, with Lepke still on the lam, Reles was picked up for the murder of a small-time crook named Red Alpert. Reles was smug about the pinch, figuring there was no independent corroboration of his involvement in Alpert’s murder which had taken place way back in 1933.

However, Reles was wrong.

Two men had come forward and implicated Reles in Alpert’s murder: small-time thug Harry Rudolph, who had witnessed the killing, and Murder Inc. flunky Dukey Maffetore. These two men also implicated Happy Maione in the Alpert hit.

Both Maione, who had been nabbed on vagrancy charge and not yet charged with the Alpert murder, and Reles were housed together in the Tombs prison.

Knowing the spit was about to hit the fan, Reles told Maione, “Don’t worry Hap. Everything’s okay.”

On March 21, after a visit from his lawyer in prison, Reles sat down and wrote a letter to his wife, Rose.

The letter said: “Dear Rose, Go and see (New York District Attorney) O’Dwyer and tell him I want to talk with him.”

The next day Rose Reles paid a visit to the District Attorney’s office. There she met Brooklyn assistant District Attorney Burton Turkus.

Rose Reles told Turkus, “I want to talk to O’Dwyer personally. I want to save my husband from the electric chair. My baby is coming in June.”

Turkus nearly broke a leg rushing to tell O’Dwyer about their good fortune. In hours, Abe Reles had signed a “Consent to Be Interviewed” form
, and the ball was rolling to put Murder Inc. out of business for good.

*****

While his world was
crumbling around him, Louie “Lepke” Buchalter was in limbo; moving from place to place in Brooklyn and in Manhattan, still hiding from the law, with a $50,000 bounty on his head. Things were so bad for Lepke, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, ignoring Adolph Hitler’s existence, called Lepke “The Most Dangerous Man on Earth.” New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia added to Lepke’s angst when he ordered his police commissioner, Lewis J. Valentine, to wage a “war on hoodlums.”

The National Crime Commission was in trouble because of Lepke
, and they knew it. Word was sent to Luciano, who was still in prison, for advice as to how to handle the Lepke situation. Luciano knew the only way for the heat to die down was for Lepke to surrender.

However, convincing Lepke to do so would take some serious conniving.

“Dimples” Wolensky was a long-time pal of Lepke’s, whom Lepke trusted without question. The Commission sent Wolensky to meet Lepke in hiding and to convince the fugitive that the fix was in. Wolensky told Lepke that if Lepke surrendered he would be tried only on the narcotics charge, netting him five years in prison, at most. Wolensky also told Lepke that if Lepke surrendered directly to Hoover, Dewey would then be completely out of the picture.

Lepke was skeptical and he said he’d think it over. Lepke conferred with
his closest pal in Murder Inc.: Albert Anastasia. Anastasia told Lepke the whole plan sounded goofy.

Big Al said, “As long as they can’t get you, they can’t hurt you.”

However, the pressure was on from the law and Lepke knew, quite correctly, that if he didn’t turn himself in, his pals on the National Crime Commission would do him in instead.

On Aug. 5, 1940, gossip columnist and radio host Walter Winchell received a phone call at his nightly headquarters: the Stork Club, at 3 East 53rd Street. Although he didn’t know it at the time, the voice on the phone was that of Albert Anastasia.

Anastasia told Winchell, “Don't ask who I am, but Lepke wants to come in. Contact Hoover and tell him Lepke wants a guarantee he will not be harmed if he surrenders to Hoover.”

             
The following day, Winchell said on his national syndicated radio show, “Your reporter is reliably informed that Lepke, the fugitive, is on the verge of surrender, possibly this week. If Lepke can find someone he can trust, I am told, he will come in. I am authorized by the G-men that Lepke is assured of safe delivery.”

             
On Aug. 24, 1940, Winchell received another phone call at the Stork Club; telling him to go immediately to a drug store on Eighth Avenue and 19
th
  Street and to sit in a phone booth in the back.

Winchell did as he was told, and at 9 p.m., a
man casually strolled up to Winchell and told him to phone Hoover and to tell Hoover to be on the corner of  Fifth Avenue and 29
th
Street at 10:20 p.m. Winchell himself was directed to drive immediately to the corner of Madison Avenue and 23
rd
Street.

Winchell followed the instructions, and at 10:15 p.m., Lepke, wearing a mustache and 20 pounds heavier than Winchell had remembered him, entered Winchell's car. Minutes later, the two men exited Winchell's car and walked over to a black limousine. Hoover was sitting alone in the back seat.

Winchell opened the back door of the limo, and said, “Mr. Hoover, this is Lepke.”

Hoover said to Lepke, “How do you do?”

Lepke said to Hoover, “Glad to meet you. Let's Go.”

             
Minutes after Lepke entered the limo, he realized he had been screwed, but there was nothing he could do.

*****

With Abe Reles and
Allie Tannenbaum doing most of the squealing in court, and with Blue Jaw Magoon thrown in for good measure, one by one Murder Inc. killers were tried and convicted.

Buggsy Goldstein and Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss were indicted for the murder of small-time hood
, Puggy Feinstein. At their trial, Magoon, who was Goldstein’s best friend in the mob, put the nails in Goldstein’s coffins.

While Magoon was babbling away in front of the jury, Goldstein jumped to his feet and screamed, “For God sake Seymour, that's some story you're telling. You're burning me!”

              Both Goldstein and Strauss were found guilty, and at sentencing, the judge asked Goldstein if he had any final words to say.

Goldstein stood tall and smiled, “Yeah Judge, I’d like to pee up your leg.”

              On the night of June 12, 1941, both Goldstein and Strauss were fried in Sing Sing’s electric chair.

             
Partners for life, Harry “Happy” Maione and Frank “The Dasher” Abbandando went on trial next for the 1937 murder of gambler George Rudnick. The main witness against them was Abe “Kid Twist” Reles, who himself was in on the Rudnick murder.

While Reles was on the stand telling intimate details of the Rudnick slaying, Maione’s face turned a deep red at the treachery of his former partner. Several times, Maione jumped to his feet, ready to attack Reles, but court officers subdued him before Maione could do any damage.

After being convicted and sentenced to the chair, Maione yelled in court, “I don’t mind going to the chair, but I wish I was holding onto Reles’s leg when they put on the juice.”

After several appeals were denied, on Feb. 19, 1942, both Maione and Abbandando were executed at Sing
Sing Prison.

In late 1940, Charlie “The Bug” Workman was arrested in Brighton Beach on a charge of “vagrancy.” By this time Murder Inc. killer Abe “Kid Twist” Reles had already turned rat, and
he had told Dewey that Workman had done the Dutch Schultz job. This was confirmed by Allie Tannenbaum, Workman's closest friend in the mob, who had also turned canary.

In 1941, Workman was tried for the Schultz murder. During the trail, when Workman realized he had no chance of an acquittal, he changed his plea to "no defense."  Judge Daniel Brennan accepted the plea and sentenced Workman to life in prison.

As Workman was being led from the courtroom, the guards let him speak with his brother Abe.

Workman told Abe, "Whatever you do, live honestly. If you make 20 cents a day, make it do for you. If you can’t make an honest living, make the government support you. Keep away from the gangs
, and don’t be a wise guy. Take care of Mama and Papa and watch ‘Itchy’ ( his younger brother). He needs watching."

Workman was immediately incarcerated
at Trenton State Prison. In 1942, Workman offered his services to the United States Navy to go on a suicide mission to hit Japan and avenge Pearl Harbor. His request was denied.

In 1952, Workman was transferred to Rahway State Prison Farm
, and he worked there at hard labor until he was paroled in 1964, after almost 23 years in prison. Upon his release, Workman went straight, getting a job as a salesman in the Garment Center, which was once ruled by his boss, Lepke.

*****

While waiting for Reles
to testify at several trials, including those of Albert Anastasia and Bugsy Siegel, the New York City Police Department had Abe “Kid Twist” Reles under 24-hour police guard at the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island. Also there in custody were songbirds Allie Tannenbaum, Sholem Bernstein, and Mikey Syckoff. All four men had separate rooms in the hotel, and all were constantly in the presence of lawmen; even when they slept.

On the evening of Nov. 11, 1941, Rose Reles visited her husband in his sixth-floor room. According to a policeman on duty, Rose and Abe had a heated argument, which the policeman characterized as “quite a fight.”

At 6:45 a.m. the following morning, the assistant manager of the hotel, Al Litzberg, heard a loud thud from the direction of an extension roof, which lay four stories below Reles’s window.

            According to the Nov. 13, 1941 edition of the
New York Times
:

“Sometime after daylight yesterday, Abe Reles, squat bulgy-jawed informer against the Brooklyn murder ring, climbed out on a window edge of the sixth floor of the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island, fully dressed, but hatless. Strong wind from the gray sea tugged at his long, crisp black hair and tore at his gray suit.

“Behind him, in his room, lights still burned. Behind him the little radio that had played all night, still blared and babbled. The informer, looking southward, could see the surf break against the jetties. He could hear the dolorous clanging of the buoy as it rocked in the tide. He could see far down the deserted boardwalk. It was shrouded in the morning mist.

“Reles let the two bed sheets down the hotel’s east
wall, two windows north of the hotel’s boardwalk front. Around one end of the upper bed sheet he had twisted a four-foot length of radio lead-in wire. He had wound the free end of the wire on a radio valve under the window.

“He let himself down on the sheets to the fifth floor. One hand desperately clung to the sheet. With the other, Reles tugged at the screen and at the window of the vacant fifth-floor room. He worked them up six inches. He tugged again with his full 160-pound weight.

“The strain was too much for the amateur wire knot on the valve. Little by little, it came undone. Reles tried to save himself. He kicked towards the fifth-floor window ledge with his left foot, but merely brushed the shoe leather from toe to heal. He plunged to the hotel’s concrete kitchen roof, a two-story extension, 42 feet below. He landed on his back, breaking his spine.”

Of course, this was total nonsense fed to the newspapers by the crooked police, who, in fact, had picked Reles up and flung him, kicking and screaming, out of the window (Reles landed 20 feet from the base of the building. If he had fallen accidentally, he would’ve dropped straight down.).

It was a $50,000 bribe, paid to the cops by Italian mobster Frank Costello to stop Reles from testifying at any more Murder Inc. trials, which had induced several officers of the law to act in such an unprofessional manner.

*****