I read Turkus book last year. I really liked it. I would love to see your review. Just remember, he was dealing with the info he was getting at the time. Its easy, in retrospect, to play Monday morning quarterback.

Is it true that the infos/transcriprts that Abe Reles had given to the government disappeared?

Yeah the police threw him out the window his body was found 50 feet from the window

Was any of the Italian members of Murder Inc a made member of Cosa Nostra? I was told Louis Capone was probably made.

Frankie Carbo, perhaps.

Jack Parisi made in to the Anastasia Family then transferred to Scranton.

Yes he had the cars at the Ford Plant down in Edgewater, NJ. Ford's man Harry Bennett needed Adonis to keep guys from unionizing. What racket wasn't Adonis in...the guy was into everything. Thnx HK.

I agree.

He was also a convicted rapist.

There is plenty of gangsters with that on their record though.

There never was a MURDER INC. This has been one of the most
persistent, hard to quash mob myths to come down the pike. The myth
arose and was perpetuated for several reasons, including the almost
complete ignorance that existed half a century ago about the inner
workings of Cosa Nostra, the political ambitions of law enforcement
officials, and good old-fashioned media sensationalism.

There were a number of murders committed by a motley group of mainly
Jewish gangsters based in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. Most of
the killings had to do with battles over rackets of the garment
industry in Manhattan and had nothing to do with Cosa Nostra. When
gang leader Lepke Buchalter (right) came under great legal pressure,
like many mob bosses of the 1980's and 1990's, he lost his cool and
began rubbing out anyone who he thought might testify against him.
There never was a group of hired killers waiting for contracts from
the Bosses of Cosa Nostra. The main focus of all the convicted killers
was making money from the rackets.

The Cosa Nostra connection to some of these so-called MURDER INC. men
came from the fact that they were very loosely connected to Albert
Anastasia. If the Jewish guys were going to whack someone they would
check with Anastasia to make sure the murder wouldn't interfere with
any of his schemes. It was a political move and a smart one
considering the power that Cosa Nostra had. From this has come the
legend that Anastasia (left) headed MURDER INC.

The book MURDER INC. was written by Burton Turkus and Sid Feder. First
published in the early 1950's, it has been re-released by DaCapo
Press. Turkus was an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn who
prosecuted many of the killers. No one understood Cosa Nostra back
then and Turkus simply got some things wrong. He knew there was some
kind of national structure to organized crime but he overestimated its
organizational structure. Like many, Turkus was thinking along the
lines of a legitimate national company that had clearly defined roles
and job descriptions.

There is an excellent explanation of MURDER INC. in the book, "East
Side West Side," by Professor Alan Block.

Some of the colorful names of the many killers mentioned in the
Turkus/Feder book include:

Abe (Kid Twist) Reles
(Blue Moon) Magoon
Harry (Pittsburgh Phil) Strauss
Harry (Happy) Maione
Albert (Tick Tock) Tannenbaum
Frank (The Dasher) Abbandando
Motel (Bugsy) Goldstein

I think it was Allan May in his ridiculously expensive book, Gangland Gotham, said he did researched Adonis background and police record and found nothing about this. He traced it to a single author and later authors simply repeated it.

Yes, the 7 men sent to the electrical chair ( including Lepke) were all a figment of the imagination, and Abe Reles accidently fell out of his window with 24/7 police protection.

Yea, if you had a reading comprehension ability above about a 2nd grade level- you wouldnt have come away with this retarded, semi-illiterate impression.

Jesus our public schools suck.

Article from Gangland News in 1998:

There never was a MURDER INC. This has been one of the most
persistent, hard to quash mob myths to come down the pike. The myth
arose and was perpetuated for several reasons, including the almost
complete ignorance that existed half a century ago about the inner
workings of Cosa Nostra, the political ambitions of law enforcement
officials, and good old-fashioned media sensationalism.

There were a number of murders committed by a motley group of mainly
Jewish gangsters based in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. Most of
the killings had to do with battles over rackets of the garment
industry in Manhattan and had nothing to do with Cosa Nostra. When
gang leader Lepke Buchalter (right) came under great legal pressure,
like many mob bosses of the 1980's and 1990's, he lost his cool and
began rubbing out anyone who he thought might testify against him.
There never was a group of hired killers waiting for contracts from
the Bosses of Cosa Nostra. The main focus of all the convicted killers
was making money from the rackets.

The Cosa Nostra connection to some of these so-called MURDER INC. men
came from the fact that they were very loosely connected to Albert
Anastasia. If the Jewish guys were going to whack someone they would
check with Anastasia to make sure the murder wouldn't interfere with
any of his schemes. It was a political move and a smart one
considering the power that Cosa Nostra had. From this has come the
legend that Anastasia (left) headed MURDER INC.

The book MURDER INC. was written by Burton Turkus and Sid Feder. First
published in the early 1950's, it has been re-released by DaCapo
Press. Turkus was an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn who
prosecuted many of the killers. No one understood Cosa Nostra back
then and Turkus simply got some things wrong. He knew there was some
kind of national structure to organized crime but he overestimated its
organizational structure. Like many, Turkus was thinking along the
lines of a legitimate national company that had clearly defined roles
and job descriptions.

There is an excellent explanation of MURDER INC. in the book, "East
Side West Side," by Professor Alan Block.

Some of the colorful names of the many killers mentioned in the
Turkus/Feder book include:

Abe (Kid Twist) Reles
(Blue Moon) Magoon
Harry (Pittsburgh Phil) Strauss
Harry (Happy) Maione
Albert (Tick Tock) Tannenbaum
Frank (The Dasher) Abbandando
Motel (Bugsy) Goldstein

Yet there was a reason that the Cosa Nostra used Lepke's hitmen and not their own for the Dutch Schultz hit. Doesn't this show at least some links between them?

Exactly.. also, a couple of members were sent out west to assist Bugsy. The label "Murder Inc" has a Madison Avenue appeal to it, but saying it didn't exist or a myth is absurd. The number of murders and the extent of their activity were most likely exaggerated but it certainly did exist.

It took an incredible amount of clout to get to Abe Reles. What power, aside from gravity, was behind his death and why so eager to silence him?

As he is stating in his article
There never was a group of hired killers waiting for contracts from
the Bosses of Cosa Nostra. The main focus of all the convicted killers
was making money from the rackets.

Now that may be true but that doesn't mean that there weren't men being clipped left and right. These were stone cold killers.

Do not let Capeci or whoever wrote that article fool you into thinking these men wouldn't whack you as soon as look at you for getting in the way of their business of making $$$$ money.

It was a separate entity from Cosa Nostra. I'll take the word of Reles and other corroborating informants over what it was, than authors writing revisionist articles with no good evidence to back anything.



This restaurant was adjacent to Duke's Bar and Grill. Willie Moretti and Adonis would be at Duke's frequently. Carl Sifakis gives the wrong address in his books. I don't know why the Detroit Purple Gang would be located next door, maybe gambling wire related?

I think you and I may be talking about two different places. This was not next to Duke's.

There was a place called the 85 club or something like that. According to the FBI Vault, the address was adjacent to Dukes. Maybe they had interests in more than one establishment.

That does sound like the right club.

I think there was a Murder Inc, but they never called themselves that...only the media did.

Someone here said that "Murder Inc" was probably just the Lepke crew. Well of course that's what it was. The only thing here that is unlikely is the idea that a group of killers was just sitting around in Brownsville waiting for murder contracts to come through and didn't have any other rackets going on.

If "the Lepke crew" was Murder Inc, then maybe everyone under Lepke was part of it. That's not just the Brownsville "boys", that's also the Garment District in Manhattan also.

One more thing. Capeci's article mentions Blue Moon Magoon. That might be correct, but the appellation I always read was Blue Jaw Magoon.

I don't think the number of killings is exaggerated as much as the number of killers may have been underestimated. I don't believe for one minute that everyone from Murder Inc was prosecuted and or apprehended.

I doubt anyone ever believed that.

problem with this is that there's testimony that there actually were contracts and those guys were yellow of greed if another hitter "stole" their contract and killed the specific guy first.



sure. but most of those guys only had killing and narcotics.



that sounds reasonable.

Nice catch. He was called Blue Jaw Magoon because of his 5 o'clock shadow. If someone can't get that information right, why should I believe anything else?

I don't see how any author today can have "inside information" to what occured 80 years ago. Unless they have 100 year old informants in nursing homes feeding information, it's all biased opinion we're entitled to disagree with. The information provided by Reles and others is the best available IMO. As far mafia informants, Joe Valachi acknowledged its existence but said mafia and murder inc did not collaborate, which was true generally though there may have been exceptions.