Outside his own neighborhood he wasn't as powerful as you might think. And he had zero pull in trade unions or with anything remotely legitimate. In my opinion, to say "most powerful ever" would imply that he could pick up a phone and shut down a million dollar construction site, or order a wildcat strike. But it's like I always say, power is a relative term. And in Ozone Park Jimmy Burke was no one to be trifled with.
I realize that, PB. I was just giving an example of somebody who is not/cannot get made and pulls a lot of weight like the OP asked... but as in the most powerful ever, not even close.
Burke was into almost every "blue collar" racket you can think of and he had quite a reputation at the time.
I'm not surprised he was using uppers all the time and like you said when his drug-fueled paranoid schizophrenia set in, that's when people would start disappearing. Two bits I remember from the Wiseguy book to fit the discussion:
-Burke would spend his nights when he was at home watching TV and smoking cigarettes (like a true paranoid schizo) and when Martin Krugman's wig commercials would come up, he'd get very pissed and that would just be one more reason to keep him up at night.
-After the Lufthansa heist, at least according to Hill, at one time they were in the car together Jimmy slipped up and said that the money was "cursed." When you think about it he was right, not in the literal sense but that it was too much money for the heat to ever go away.
