Many people are aware that the Gambino Family’s base of operations was (and probably still is) New York City’s Garment Center. Few know that the Gambinos inherited the garment rackets from a Jewish gangster—Louis (Lepke) Buchalter, considered by some historians to be the wealthiest and most powerful mob boss in American organized crime history.
Lepke was born on New York’s Lower East Side in 1897. His father ran a successful hardware store, and one of his brothers became a doctor. But Lepke was drawn to the dark side. His first crime boss was Dopey Benny Fein, who ran a large, successful violence-for-hire racket in the Garment District. Buchalter and his pal, Jacob (Gurrah) Shapiro, later associated themselves with Jacob (Little Augie) Orgen, Benny’s successor. Lepke and Gurrah took over after murdering Little Augie. But they didn’t simply replace Augie as thugs-for-hire—like Jewish Kelly Girls with muscle. Instead, they saw themselves as integrating and harmonizing forces across both management and labor sides of an industry in which violence and turmoil were ceaseless. Lepke used the model of the turn of the century “Robber Barons,” as well as military tactics, to gain control:
Buchalter looked for weak links in the industry’s chain of power. His first move was against the furriers’ unions, weakened by the Depression. He seized control of the rabbit furriers’ union, which was still viable, then moved in on all the others. By the end of his first year, both unions and management were paying him $5 million annually for peace.
He then attacked the garment unions. His target was the cutters’ union, small (less than 1,000 members) but highly strategic: no cutters, no patterns; no patterns, no dresses and suits. All the other unions shortly fell under his thumb. Then, in an unprecedented move for a labor racketeer, he muscled his way into controlling positions in three of the Garment District’s biggest manufacturing companies. Now Lepke had a commanding position in both labor and management. He recognized that trucking was crucial to the industry, so he knocked over the trucking companies and their unions.
By the mid-Thirties, Lepke controlled everything that was made in, and that went in and out of, the Garment District. Sidney Hillman, head of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union and President Roosevelt’s top labor adviser (“Clear it with Sidney” was one of FDR’s most familiar phrases) allegedly paid Lepke $5,000 a week for peace. Lepke’s control was so pervasive that the first Federal charge against him, in 1936, was for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act by operating a “combination in restraint of trade”—a distinction previously awarded to the likes of U.S. Steel and Standard Oil.
Like a true Robber Baron, Lepke had a zeal for conglomeration. He knocked over the handbag industry, since handbags were accessories to the dresses he controlled in the Garment Center. Pursuing several clothing companies that had moved to Brooklyn to escape his clutches, he saw that the bakers’ union was ripe for takeover. Within weeks, every loaf of bread sold in New York City was paying a “Lepke tax.” He grabbed a big piece of the movie industry rackets without ever stepping foot in Hollywood: he forced his way into the movie projectionists’ union, another small but strategically placed group—no projectionists, no movies; no movies, dark studios.
Buchalter’s zeal for conglomeration proved to be his undoing. To provide an unlimited source of muscle needed to enforce his will, he reached into the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, the most densely populated neighborhood in America and the most concentrated source of Jewish thugs. There he (not, as myth has it, Albert Anastasia, Bugsy Siegel or Meyer Lansky) formed “Murder, Inc.,” headquartered in Midnight Rose’s candy store (where Yours Truly worked as a teenager). In another innovation, Lepke paid his killers weekly salaries, rather than commissions for various jobs, which would have encouraged them to work for the highest bidders. Ever the businessman, Lepke saw that Murder, Inc. was a cost center. So he endeavored to turn it into a profit center by hiring out his thugs to others. One of his biggest customers was Albert Anastasia, boss of the Ocean Hill section of the neighborhood. Albert A also provided Lepke with some Mafia killers.
With so much blood on their hands (as many as 1,000 killings according to some accounts), Murder, Inc. came under intense scrutiny from law enforcement. Charged with several murders, two of the group’s top lieutenants, Abraham (Kid Twist) Reles and Allie (Tick-Tock) Tanenbaum, turned state’s evidence in 1939 and provided thousands of pages of testimony, as well as details of dozens of murders, several of which implicated Lepke directly. Reles mysteriously “fell” out of a sixth-floor hotel window while in police custody, earning him the sobriquet, “the canary who could sing but couldn’t fly.” Lepke took it on the lam, hiding out in Brooklyn for more than a year while his business went to hell.
Finally, three of Lepke’s underworld pals—Albert A, Lansky and Abner (Longy) Zwillman, convinced him to surrender on Federal drugs and racketeering charges, which they assured him would result in no more than a five- or six-year sentence and protect him from New York’s special prosecutor, Thomas E. Dewey, who wanted to send him to the electric chair for his murders. Lepke met with famed radio and newspaper columnist Walter Winchell, who drove him to a car containing FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, to whom he surrendered. He was convicted on the Federal raps in 1941, and sentenced to 14 years in Leavenworth.
However, Lepke was so big that he had become a factor in Presidential politics. Dewey (who was to be the GOP Presidential candidate in 1944 and 1948) charged that FDR was being “soft” on Lepke to keep him quiet about his relationship with Sidney Hillman. The Justice Department obligingly turned Lepke over to Dewey, who prosecuted and convicted him for murder. Lepke was executed in 1944, the first and only mob boss to die in the chair. The Mangano/Anastasia Mafia family took over his labor and trucking rackets, which to this day are a Gambino stronghold.

Thank you Turnbull. An excellent bio!


Don Cardi

Thanks Turnbull! Very good biography.

But I have a question: What was the role of the Lucchese-family in the garment business? Did they controlled it together with Lepke or only after Lepke's death? I read sometimes that Lucchese gave his control over the garment-center to his son-in-law Tommy Gambino (a Gambino-family member) after his death.

Lepke had alliances with various Mafiosi, so it's not inconceivable that the Luccheses may have had some action in the Garmend Center during Lepke's lifetime. But I doubt it amounted to much, if anything. His primary ally was the Mangano/Anastasia family. The Luccheses got a big piece of the action after the Gambino/Lucchese wedding you referred to, which occurred years after Lepke went to the electric chair.

Allright TB, thank you. Now it's clear. I'm not sure but I thought the wedding was in '62. 18 years after Lepke went to the chair.

Just wanted to revive what is a fantastic Bio so that some of the new people have a chance to read it.