Irving Wexler was born on the Lower East Side of Manhatten sometime around the year 1889, (his exact birthdate is not known). When he was a kid, he began a life of crime by committing petty crimes. He became an expert pickpocket thus giving him the name "Waxey" because he would pick a persons pocket so well that it was as almost as if there was wax on the wallet.

As his reputation began to grow, and Waxey began to grow, he began to get noticed. Another gangster named Arnold Rothstein, who had a keen eye for talent, saw that Waxey Gordon could be an asset to his organization. So he hired Gordon to work for him.

Gordon worked his way up the ladder in Rothstein's organization and he eventually ran all of Rothstein's bootlegging operations along the East Coast. As Gordons finances began to mount, he soon aquired enough money to purchase numerous breweries and distillaries along with owning several speakeasies. He began livng the luxurious life by living in various New York Hotel suites along with owning a mansion in New York and one in Philadelphia.

But in 1928 Gordon's successful life would peak and gradually begin to decline. This was due to the fact that his mentor and rabbi, Arnold Rothstein had been murdered. So Waxey Gordon had to form new alliances with other powerful mobsters. He hooked up with Charlie " Lucky" Luciano and Meyer Lansky. But Gordon and Lansky did not see eye to eye over how the bootlegging operations and the gambling perations were run. Eventually their fued grew so big that a gang war ignited between the two and lives were lost on both sides of the war. Lansky, being the business minded man that he was, realized that the war was becoming a costly war. So with Luciano's consent, Lansky provided then New York Distict Attorney Thomas E. Dewey with information that eventually lead to a conviction of tax evasion for Waxey Gordon. He was sentenced to ten years in prison.


Upon his release from prison, and with too many years passing him by, Waxey Gordon realized that many of the connections that he had made before going into prison were mostly gone. So he started on a new journey as a salesman using the name Irving Wexler.

However resisting a life of crime was too difficult for Gordon, so he set up shop in New Jersey getting involved in illegal gambling. Bootlegging was no longer an option, so instead Waxey Gordon began dealing narcotics.

In 1951 Waxey Gordon made another costly mistake in his life. Only this time he did not make that mistake with one of his fellow mobsters. Instead he approached a gentleman hoping to make a deal where he would provide Heroin to this gentleman. The man turned out to be an undecover policeman. When Waxey Gordon realized that he was screwed, he offered all his money to the undercover policeman in exchange for letting him off the hook. Gordon had only dug the hole that he was now in, that much deeper. The policeman refused and instead arrested Gordon.

Waxey Gordon was tried and eventually convicted on the drug dealing charges, and was sentenced to serve 25 years at Alcatraz prison. However Gordon would not serve anything even close to the 25 year sentence because on June 24th, 1952, he died of a heart attack while serving out his sentence at Alcatraz prison.




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