Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set

by Bruno, Joe

  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 19th 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 29th Street at 10:20 p.m. Winchell himself was directed to drive immediately to the corner of Madison Avenue and 23rd 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.

  *****

  With Murder Inc. depleted of most of its top killers, Louie “Lepke” Buchalter, Louis Capone, and Mendy Weiss went on trial in late 1940 for the 1936 murder of Joe Rosen. At this point in time, Abe Reles was still very much alive, and singing. Reles testified he knew Lepke ordered the Rosen hit. And so did Allie Tannenbaum, who testified he heard Lepke give the order to Max Rubin to have Joe Rosen killed.

  However, the final nail in Lepke’ coffin was pounded in by Max Rubin himself.

  In late 1936, after being told by Lepke, through Weiss, to get out of town, Rubin did just that; disappearing for nine months. However, in 1937 Rubin slipped back into New York City without Lepke’s permission. Soon after, Rubin met with Lepke, and he begged Lepke to let him stay in New York City with his family.

  Rub
in told Lepke, “Louis, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to see my wife and child. You know how it is, Louis.”

  Lepke looked at Rubin with doe-like eyes. “But Max, you came back without permission.”

  “Don’t get any ideas,” Rubin told Lepke. “No one knows I’m in town. I didn’t talk to anybody.”

  Lepke smiled, “By the way Max, how old are you?”

  “I’m 48, Lep,” Rubin said. “Exactly.”

  “That’s a ripe old age, isn’t it,” Lepke replied.

  In late 1937, Rubin exited the subway in the Bronx and plodded up Gun Hill Road. Suddenly, a gunman ran up to Rubin and shot him once in the back of the head.

  Miraculously, the bullet went completely through Rubin’s skull, and exited between his nose and right eye. For 38 days Rubin lay dying in the hospital, thinking every day of Lepke’s last words to him: “48 is a ripe old age, isn’t it?”

  Rubin recovered, but the nerves in his neck had been shattered and his head was left permanently crooked. Rubin wanted revenge against Lepke, and he wanted it badly.

  When Rubin appeared on the witness stand, after Reles and Tannenbaum had already testified Lepke had ordered the murder of Joe Rosen, Lepke knew his days as a free man were over.

  Rubin swore it was Lepke who ordered the murder of Joe Rosen, and that Lepke had given that order to Rubin himself. Rubin said he relayed Lepke’s message to Louis Capone, who forwarded it to Mendy Weiss. Weiss then rounded up his top killers, including Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss and Happy Maione, to clip Joe Rosen.

  At 10:15 Saturday night, Nov. 1941, the jury was sent out to decide the fates of Lepke, Capone, and Weiss.

  At 2:30 a.m., the judge was told the jury was ready with its verdicts. After the jurors were seated and the defendants returned to the courtroom, Charles E. Steven, the foreman of the jury, rose and said, “We find the defendants, and each of them, guilty of murder in the first degree, as charged.”

  The penalty, by law, was death.

  On Monday morning, Justice Taylor stood at the bench and cast a steely gaze that bore right through Lepke’s eyes.

  Judge Taylor said, “Louis Buchalter, alias Lepke, for the murder of Joseph Rosen, whereof he is convicted, is hereby sentenced to the punishment of death.”

  Judge Taylor also gave the same pronouncement to both Louis Capone and Mendy Weiss.

  *****

  For the next four years, Lepke used every trick in the book to delay his and his two men’s executions. When all appeals failed, two days before he was scheduled to die, Lepke asked for a meeting with Manhattan District Attorney Frank Hogan. Lepke claimed he had information that would:

  Implicate a prominent labor leader on a murder charge;

  A noted public official on a conspiracy charge;

  And information that a close relative of a very-high public officeholder was a “front man” for at least two of the ganglords who are credited with controlling crime in the United States.

  “If I would talk,” Lepke said, “a lot of big names would get hurt. When I say big, I mean big. These names would surprise you.”

  Hogan met with Lepke, and after they spoke Hogan immediately contacted the Governor of New York State: Thomas E. Dewey. Dewey gave the three men on death row a stay of execution for two more days, so that Dewey could contemplate the significance of what Lepke had told Hogan. At this point, Dewey was a serious candidate for the presidency of the United States.

  Burton Turkus said in his book Murder Incorporated, “Obviously, then, Lepke’s information must have had, at least in his own convictions, a powerful and significant relationship to Dewey’s aspirations. The facts and the deductions all pointed unerringly in one direction: Lepke had an offer of information on politics which he felt was so national a sensation that, if publicly disclosed during a close presidential campaign, could put Dewey in the White House!”

  The New York Mirror wrote the day after Dewey was told of Lepke’s revelations, “It is said Lepke offered material to Governor Dewey that would have made him an unbeatable presidential candidate.”

  Governor Dewey, however, could not be swayed, and he rejected Lepke’s offer.

  That same day, Lepke received a letter from his old pal, Gurrah Shapiro, which said, “I told you we should have taken Dewey out when we had the chance.”

  On March 4, 1944, Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, as befitting the boss, took the long walk down the last mile first, followed in minutes by Louis Capone and Mendy Weiss. All three were jolted in Sing Sing’s electric chair a few minutes after midnight, effectively ending Murder Incorporated’s reign of terror in the United States of America.

  Other murders would be committed by organized crime figures in the future. But never again would a group of killers be united into one mighty organization (on a steady weekly salary) for the sole purpose of killing whomever their bosses said needed to be killed.

  As of this date, Louis “Lepke” Buchalter remains the only American mob boss ever executed by the United States Government.

  Gurrah Shapiro was right. They should have whacked Dewey like Dutch Schultz had said. If they had done in Dewey before he could do them any damage, who knows how many more years Murder Incorporated would have thrived unrestrained.

  A scary thought, indeed.

  The End

  *****

  The Wrong Man: Who Ordered the Murder of Gambler Herman Rosenthal and Why.

  By Joe Bruno

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Knickerbocker Literary Services

  EDITED BY:

  Marc A. Maturo

  COVER BY:

  Nitro Covers

  Copyright 2012 -- Joseph Bruno Literary Services

  ******

  Introduction

  2012 is the 100-year anniversary of the murder of small-time gambler Herman Rosenthal - the most celebrated murder of its time. Make no mistake, there are no good guys here; no innocent victims. The fact is an offensive and offensive-looking well-known criminal framed a crooked New York City police lieutenant for the killing of an odious stool pigeon. People in the underworld cheered the death of Herman Rosenthal; he was that much disliked. But that doesn’t negate the fact that the wrong man sat in Sing Sing’s electric chair for ordering Rosenthal’s murder, while the man who framed him - and actually ordered the murder of Herman Rosenthal - walked away scot free, content in the knowledge that he was able to fool so many prominent law enforcement officials so easily.

  This is how it all happened.

  *****

  HERMAN ROSENTHAL

  He was thoroughly unlikeable; mean and snarky, and he would swindle his own mother if it would earn him a few bucks. Yet, the murder of small-time gambler Herman Rosenthal ignited a firestorm in the New York City press, which resulted in New York City Police Lieutenant, Charles Becker, being unjustly fried in Sing Sing’s electric chair.

  Herman Rosenthal was a runt of a man who was born in Russia and immigrated to the United States with his parents when he was five-years-old. They settled in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which, in the late 1800s, was a conglomeration of hard-working immigrants, infused with thieves, crooks, cheats, gamblers, and murderers.

  Rosenthal’s parents were Jewish. But there is no evidence that Rosenthal ever set foot in a Jewish temple after his tumultuous teenage years began. At the age of 14, Rosenthal eschewed school, and he began running with one of the many local street gangs. Rosenthal stole from pushcarts, and picked the pockets of drunks. He perpetrated a myriad of illegal schemes corruptible kids from that era did to amuse and enrich themselves.

  Despite his size (he was 5-foot-3-inches), Rosenthal was a competent street fighter, and he gained a reputation as someone who could handle himself in a pinch. (A friend once said of Rosenthal, “He was mighty fast on his feet, and he could hit hard.”)

  To earn a meager living, Rosenthal sold newspapers on the Manhattan side of the Brooklyn Bridge. However, the money he earned selling newspapers was peanuts compared to what
Rosenthal envisioned as proper remuneration for a man of his guile, and what he considered to be – his superior intellect. Invariably, Rosenthal gravitated to the money, and in the Lower East Side of Manhattan at the turn of the century that usually led to a poolroom. That’s where Rosenthal met Big Tim Sullivan, the Political Prince of the Lower East Side, who had as much scruples as a bald-headed eagle has hair.

  Because of his spunk and willingness to mix it up when necessary - and also because Sullivan knew that “smart Jew boys” like Rosenthal represented a huge voting block on the Lower East Side -Big Tim got Little Herman Rosenthal a job as a numbers runner for a downtown poolroom. Rosenthal soon graduated to working from a secret back room in the poolroom, where he took sporting bets, both in person and by code over the phone.

  In 1897, Rosenthal married the lovely Dora Gilbert, and they became partners in the profession of Dora’s choice: the back-bruising business of prostitution. Quite simply, Dora did her best work on her knees and on her back in their West 40th Street apartment bedroom, while Rosenthal stood guard outside the bedroom door to make sure the visitors behaved themselves and didn’t quibble over the price or the performance. In time, Dora employed two other “working girls,” and Rosenthal became their pimp, too.

  In the early 1900s, things were going quite well for Rosenthal when Dora decided to give him the gate. Dora divorced Herman, and she used the money she had saved from her sex business to open up a legitimate boardinghouse: no johns need apply. This, in effect, left Rosenthal without a job, and since unemployment insurance had not yet been devised, Rosenthal went back to Big Tim Sullivan with his hat in his hand.