Murder Incorporated – The Birth of Death
Title: Murder Incorporated – The Birth of Death
Original Publication Date: 6/21/2023
Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/4BUbAtAxXfe
Description: In this episode, Mustache Chris and Steve will begin to peel back the layers of the notorious mafia organization, Murder Incorporated. We will look at the very beginnings of this group of murderers for hire.
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Begin Transcript:
[00:00:00] Welcome to Organized Crime and Punishment, the best spot in town to hang out and talk about history and crime. With your hosts, Steve and Mustache, Chris.
All right guys. We have something really special on hand for you in this episode. And then for a couple of future episodes, we are going to really delve deeply into Murder Inc. And The Murder Inc. Is just an, a fascinating subject and a fascinating piece of the, the early, early modern you might say.
Iteration of the Mafia and it really stretched over the, the early [00:01:00] formation of the mafia and then into the mafia that we know today, the commission-based system. Chris, maybe you can just start us off today and tell us a little bit about Overall Murder, Inc. Yeah, just to kind of like quickly break it down, like Murder Inc.
Was the enforcement wing, the murder wing, to put it bluntly, of the, uh, national crime syndicate and ran from, uh, 19, uh, 29 to 1941. Um, It's up to a debate like how many murders the Murder Inc. Was actually responsible for. Some people put in the thousands, some people put in the hundreds. You know, one thing we do know for sure though, that like the murders spanned across the entire United States.
Um, yeah, murder Inc was like, mainly, it was like mainly kind of composed of like Italian, um, street hoods, Jewish, uh, street hoods. There were some Irish people in there, but it was mainly Italians and it was like a joint effort between like, [00:02:00] Jewish gang, like Jewish gangsters and Italian gangsters really?
And um, you know, from my research, like they called this thing like the National Crime Syndicate, which was apparently was like, the way they described it was like a loose alliance of like Irish and Italian and Jewish gangs. And even like some black gangs were part of the syndicate. And then the idea was like they would all.
Work out their differences between each other, like within the syndicate and, you know, all kind of, you know, work out their problems and try to work towards the same goal. I don't know. I personally, I think they just didn't really, at the time, they didn't really understand how the commission worked. And like the National Crime syndicate was kind of like a fill-in for, I could be wrong about this, but like the Italian, like the commission worked with other gangs too.
But the Italians were at the top. You know, there was no disputing that it's not like they were equals, um, and the commission would moderate disputes between, uh, other, other gangs too, especially [00:03:00] like if it affected their business. But, you know, for, from the research I've done, they called it the National Crime Syndicate.
So that's what we're gonna call it. I really get from, from the discussions that we've had and that the re the research that I've looked into that it definitely was that either the National Crime Syndicate was, like you said, a misunderstanding of what the commission was really about, or maybe it was a proto version of the commission and that that it would eventually, I guess you might say it's slowly turned into the commission, but I, I get the sense that this whole idea of the National Crime Syndicate is more media inspired than it was of an actual thing.
Well, even, yeah, even the name Murder Inc. Was like, that was created by the media. They didn't, uh, they didn't call it Murder Inc. I believe it was, it was called The Combination is really what it was called. Um, but yeah, I, I think it's something that like the media kind of came up with and I mean, [00:04:00] to a degree they kind of got it right, but.
I mean, Italians and like the Italians and Jews were unequal footing, like the Italians were firmly on top. Um, like we'll get into it. There was a lot of Jews that were like high ranking within the organized like crime world. Right. But the Italians came first, and Jews were kind of, were second really.
Whenever they talk about the National Crime Syndicate, it sounds like they're trying to say that this was a, uh, like a a, a mega, a supergroup or something of, of Gangland people. And I, I don't, I think that it was Luciano running the. Program with key supporters like Meyer Lansky. He was almost, it seemed like his conciliary or chief advisor, but it really was.
It was the Italian mafia gangs that were running the show, but they had these spinoffs of certain Jewish [00:05:00] gangs, certain Jewish, um, Independent contractors, you might call them, and even Italians and like you said, Irish, but it was, it was essentially. The core of what would become the commission as instituted by, uh, lucky Luciano.
Get into kind of the de like, you know, a little bit of the details or what have you, like, you know, if a Jewish guy was having a problem with a maid, Italian guy, Because, you know, people were getting made at this point, like the made Italian guy isn't, you know, unless it was like some, something really egregious.
They like the, they're gonna side with the Italian guys, uh, like a hundred percent of the time. You know, like, I, I don't know. It's not to belabor a point. I just. I just find it. I found that was a little interesting, the fact that, like you pointed out, I think it was kind of a media driven thing and they didn't really kind of understand how organized crime really functioned in New York at the time.
They were kind of just chipping away at the edges. [00:06:00] A big part of this episode is really to just set up the, the, the origin story of Murder Inc. And where did this whole idea of a group of hardcore assassins, essentially where it came out of, and one of the real hotbeds of it is this section of the Brooklyn section, A neighborhood inside of a neighborhood.
Brownsville. Can you tell us, What it was like to live in Brownsville in the 1920s and 1930s. Yeah, I'm writing the notes. I, I started realizing, I mean, you, you really can't, uh, understand the Murder Inc. Story and, um, organized crime in New York, really without kind of understanding Brownsville. It's so integral to, uh, Why these guys became the way they became.
So yeah, like the early history of Brownsville and like much of New York history, it can be traced back to the, uh, the Dutch, it was not a nice part of, uh, [00:07:00] New York. It was like swampy and was pretty far from like the central hub. The land was auctioned off and man named Charles s uh, Brown in 1866, that's where it gets its name.
Eventually Brownsville. He actually particularly advertised, uh, his new development to Jews living in lower Manhattan. And we'll get into it in a little bit. But Brownsville was, uh, Nickname was Little Jerusalem soon after this. Yeah, so like by the 1980s, like Brownsville was kind of, was used as like a dumping ground too, uh, for that, like the, like glue from the factories and it just wasn't very nice place to live.
So it was like kind of advertised as. You know, come here, it's cheaper. At this point, the unions really hadn't gotten involved. So like this was a way for a lot of like, uh, newly arrived immigrants to try to get away from like, the struggles of trying to even get into the union. And it was, uh, particularly advertised to newly arrived eastern [00:08:00] Europeans, but in particular, uh, Ashkenazi Jews coming from, uh, like the pale settlement in Russia.
And it's really interesting that it's not an A, it's built as a slightly nicer place to live than the teaming. Tenements of lower Manhattan, which are at that time fairly as close to about hell on Earth. As you can get The, the population densities are through the absolute roof. In lower Manhattan, a lot of the apartments are death traps if there's ever a fire.
So you have a chance of living in a terrible place or a slightly less terrible place. So that gives these immigrants a place to at least. Try to stretch their wings a little bit and get the, the slice of the American dream, I guess you might say, that they were really coming for. Yeah. But I mean, Brownsville wasn't, um, was still, wasn't a very nice place to love either.
[00:09:00] We'll get it to that in a little bit. Like you pointed out in like lower Manhattan, like they were living in like these like tenement housing basically. Uh, where like, You know, like a house, like a housing unit that maybe even fit for two families. There was like six families fitting, uh, living in these places.
It's, it's absolutely horrifying when you like see the pictures of these places and, um, just how people were living, you know, just honest people that were like just trying to. Struggle by, and they're having to live in these conditions. It's, it's, you know, people complain about like modern inconveniences now.
Like it's, it's crazy. Not, not that long ago what our ancestors were living in, uh, like a lot of these places didn't have indoor plumbing. Um, so, which, which would mean like, you know, you know, your excess, you know, the stuff that comes out would just get thrown out windows or thrown out on the streets and.
That leads to all different types of problems, obviously like respiratory illnesses and even [00:10:00] like a lot of this work was like kind of dangerous work, so it was pretty easy to like cut yourself and, you know, just say you happen to fall and, you know, some muds mixed in with some, uh, you know, I can't sugar coat some crap.
Like literally crap, you know, the cut could get infected and it's not like these people had easy access to doctors. Um, Very easily couldn't call gang. You might have to lose the hand, or you know, you could die from it very easily.
Steve, here again with a quick word from our sponsors. And then that's the, that's another person who can't work to feed the family. And that really leads into that these places, these ethnic enclaves in places like New York, but it was in the cities all across the US and Canada, became breeding grounds for criminality, honestly, because, I mean, It seems like it was [00:11:00] a mixture of that the police didn't really know what to do, uh, to police these neighborhoods and nobody really cared what went on in them.
No. Cause a lot of like, uh, you know, not to sound like, I don't know, like some calm me or something like that, but, It's the truth though, like a lot of these factory owners, it's like you pointed out, it's like well just get somebody new. You know? Like they didn't really care and, and you know, local officials didn't really care unless has started to kind of spilling out into like different neighborhoods.
But for the most part they were able to kind of contain it and, you know, certain enclaves and, you know, these people were just kind of, Dirt really. You know, like I came across like a crazy stats and researching a little bit of just the history of Brownsville. Like by 19 10, 60 6% of the residents were first generation immigrants and like 80% of those immigrants were from Russia.
So there was mostly as Nazi Jews, it was. Pretty much virtually a Jewish neighborhood [00:12:00] by 1910. Um, and that's what actually Brownsville got, like the nickname Little Jerusalem and. There's some pretty cool history to it too. Like the, like the dense, it's not like this anymore. From my understanding. A lot of the Jews have obviously moved out.
There's probably still some there, but most of 'em have moved out. But at the time, like they built like tons and tons of synagogues and a lot of these synagogues are still there. A lot of them converted into uh, churches, but there's still a couple of synagogues there at day back. To this, uh, early, uh, immigration.
From my understanding of the, and that's maybe why these particular Jewish immigrants got along so well with Italians, uh, immigrants in these neighborhoods. A they grew, they were living in. Pretty much in the same areas. In the same neighborhoods. And they really did have this very similar outlook that was very different from the established society in New York.
They were [00:13:00] southern Europeans and Eastern Europeans, and you see that conflict developing between Southern and eastern Europeans that were just flooding in. As immigrants in the late 18 hundreds, early 19 hundreds, as opposed to the predominantly western European society that had predominated since really the early 18 hundreds, and the mass immigration of the Irish, who really upset that whole apple cart.
Yeah. You know, like in American history, I, I don't mean you talk to people nowadays and they have like this impression that like, just like immigration is just, I don't know, it's just never stop type thing. But it's not really real reality. Like there was waves, right? Like America was founded as, it was a very Anglo country.
Yes, there was a lot of different groups, but it was like a very Anglo society. And then like that first wave of. Irish and German, but a lot of it was Irish immigration coming in. Kind of. It did change the country in a lot of ways, and then [00:14:00] this, I guess you can call it like the second great wave of immigration of like Southern Italians and Ukrainians and, uh, Ashkenazi Jews changed it fundamentally in another way.
Let's get, um, Into the, what is the origin story of Murder, Inc. Where do we start off with them outside of, we've said sort of the milieu of what was going on in their, in the neighborhoods and in the, in the streets of New York. But what gets us to the, the beginning of actual murder, Inc. Yeah, so like the origins of Murder Inc.
Can kind of, it can be traced back to the, uh, bugs and Meyer Gang and the Bugs. And Meyer Gang was like a gang that was led by, uh, Meyer Lansky. I, I'm sure the audience, uh, people listening to this probably know who Meyer Lansky is, and Bugsy Siegel, uh, they were both obviously Jewish, uh, Yeah, they met when they were teenagers.
Uh, I, I read an interesting story apparently was they were playing, I don't, Meyer Lansky was there [00:15:00] and Buzzy Siegels there and they were playing some, uh, some card game. And it was illegal at the time to be playing on the streets. And the cops were coming to break it up and. Uh, Bugsy Siegel had like a gun out and Meyer Lansky like knocked the gun out of his hand and threw it in the trash can.
Um, and obviously that was the right thing to do cause of, you know, brandishing a gun to a cop when you're a teenager's. Probably not a good idea. And, and apparently they argued for a bit and then they end up striking like a, obviously a lifelong friendship. It's, I, I read that Bugsy was commonly given, so there was more than one Bugsy, Bugsy, Moran, and there was a few other ones that Bugsy was, uh, a nickname that somebody would get for being crazy.
Yeah, yeah. On it. There's a couple bugsy in the, as we go further along in this story, um, That, that was one thing I learned too. I thought that was unique to Bugsy Siegel, but apparently it's not. It was just, you know, people who just had like a hot head [00:16:00] temper would just fly off the wall or had like a crazy look on their face.
I guess it was a saying, you know, oh, they're going bugsy. They the Bugsy and Bugsy and Meyer form up their gang and it's pretty. Typical standard gang stuff at that time. A little protection, a little numbers, a little gambling, a little of this. How do Bugsy, Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky move up in the criminal world?
Yeah, like, so they, yeah, when it was foreign, it was kind of like, uh, They'd lend themselves out to like, uh, you like a defensive organization or like a ra. Like, you know, like if these gangs are giving you a hard time us and we'll take care of it, right? You pay us and then we'll take care of those protection rack sorts of things.
Protection racket type thing, right? Like, you know, kind of how. I don't know. The gangs still run like this, really, you know, and nothing, it hasn't really changed all that much. Um, yeah, bugs and Meyer would end up, uh, Bugsy Siegel and, um, and sorry, Meyer [00:17:00] Lansky would end up, uh, doing work with, uh, lucky Luciano.
And, uh, Brian Costello, and this is kind of how they start working with the Italian mafia who were like the real power brokers in New York. Um, yeah. And they would specialize in like, uh, providing hitman, you know, stealing trucks, enforcement for gambling establishments and bars. Didn't they get involved with this guy, Joe Adonis, and he was certainly somebody who had a quite a high opinion of himself.
How does, how do they get involved with Joe Adonis and man, and tell us some background on Joe Adonis. I think he's somebody that somebody who's at least familiar with, the Mafia has probably heard his name, but he doesn't come up as one of your top tier guys. Yeah, so the Bugs and Meyer Gang was, uh, kind of hired as, uh, was, yeah.
Was frankly employed by Joe Donis. And Joe Donis was like head of a gang. It was called the Broadway Gang, which was like a, it was like a massive gang. They [00:18:00] ran liquor basically in like the high end area eras, like, uh, areas, uh, during prohibition. Um, yeah, like could you point it out? I think Joe Donis is kind of one of those people.
I don't know if he's been completely forgotten about, but it's not, You don't hear his name very often. It's not like Lucky Luciano. It's not like, uh, Bugsy Siegel or Meyer Lansky. I don't think they're gonna be making a movie about, uh, Joe Adonis anytime soon. I think they'd make a cool movie, but I just don't think it's gonna happen.
Um, Yeah. Like he was a major player in like the early history in the mob. Right. Especially in particular, uh, boot lagging. Um, his actual name was, uh, Joseph of Anthony Do Doto. That's, uh, that's, I've never heard that before. Doto. No, that's a unique name. I, i looking at, I was like, that is weird. That's a one of a kind named Doto.
Um. Yeah, and he took like the, the name Joe Donis because he was, I guess he was looking at himself in the mirror and he saw like, he thought he [00:19:00] looked like an Adonis. Like he looked like a Greek God. I mean, he's not bad looking, but I pulled up a picture of him now and I'm like, yeah, he's not a bad looking guy.
I mean, he is pretty, he'd probably lose a couple pounds, but you know what I mean, like, I don't know about a Greek God. Yeah, it's a little bit, uh, I think there's a little narcissism there, but I, how does he fit into the whole story where it's something We haven't gotten into this, this whole series, but we will definitely get into it, the whole beginning of the, the mafia with the Joe, the boss, Mazari.
And where does he fit in with this whole, with that whole situation? Oh yeah. So Joe, the boss, he, um, like, he ran New York and he, um, lucky Luciano was like working with him. And this was during the Castle Lamari war. And Joe, the boss, he, he had feelings that Lucky Luciano wasn't, uh, being loyal or was [00:20:00] gonna portray him.
So Joe, the boss, thinking, you know, uh, Joe Adonis was loyal, went to him with a, a contract. He like, Hey, you want to take out Lucky Luciano for me? You, you know, make some money. You're gonna move up. And Joe Adonis, uh, being loyal to his friend, lucky Luciano told, uh, lucky Luciano that, uh, Joe the boss was gonna do this.
And, uh, I mean, the rest is, uh, history. Uh, lucky Luciano ends up taking out, uh, Joe the boss, based off the information that, uh, Joe Adonis gave him, he strike basically Joe Donis gave him the Inform and Lucky Luciano Striked. Uh, first, do you know, did Joe Adonis live happily ever after? From my understanding, I, he was at, I believe he was at, at the Joe Mastery.
Hit. Um, apparently he was the one driving the car or something. That was when they went in and killed Joe Masseria. And this is what I read. Apparently he was like shaking the Bugsy. Siegel had to take a hand to the steering [00:21:00] wheel or something like that. I, I could begin that mixed up with another story.
Yeah. But he ended up like running the, the Broadway gang, which was like, You know, one of the most successful bootlegging gangs in American history really, uh, he would end up working with like Arnold Rothstein, who would encourage them to, you know, raise the quality of the liquor that they were bringing in.
Stop selling gut rod stuff. Uh, I'm not as familiar with these clubs, but like, um, Some of the, one of the clubs is the store club. Another uh, club is called the Silver Slipper. Another club is called The 21 Club. What he ended up doing too, and it's like Arnold Rothstein was, I guess he kind of saw. That like prohibition wasn't gonna last forever.
Like Joe Donis ended up, I believe, buying like a lot of real estate and, and, and a lot of these clubs and ended up, uh, owning a lot of the real estate. So when Prohibition was over, he was, yeah, he was fine then, uh, bugs and Meyer, what place did they have in the big cast La Marre War. [00:22:00] Oh yeah. So they, they, like, they were lo working with like, uh, lucky Luciano.
And, um, so at first they were fighting for Joel, the boss, but then they ended up killing Joel, the boss, uh, in like kind of a double cross to put uh, Marzano in power, but then they quickly turned on Marzano too. And the bugs and Meyer gang, uh, in particular, Meyer Lansky hired a bunch of, uh, Jewish hitman, um, one of them being Bugsy Siegel, another one being called Red Levine, another one, uh, Abraham Weinberg.
And they just as IRS agents and snuck into, uh, Marzano's office and. You know, killed him from, I think of Bugsy. Siegel like stabbed him a bunch of times too. And like, there was a great, um, I recently watched the Lansky movie with the Harvey Kittel, and then there's a great scene that sh depicts this, uh, hit.
Uh, Marzano and, uh, it is very [00:23:00] well done. If you audience, it's a good movie, you should watch it. Uh, kind of get an idea of how this hit went down. Uh, that movie does a very good job of, uh, depicting it, but I, I always kind of have found it was a little funny that they dressed up as Iris agents, but uh, you know, like it's funny like, oh, I'm gonna kill you with taxes and all, like, where I'm actually going to kill you.
And, uh, they hired Jewish guys cuz uh, Marin, Donald didn't. Didn't hang out with Jewish people, so he didn't know who these guys were. He didn't, he wouldn't have known any of their faces. That's two interesting things about Marzano is that he had a huge blindside there that he didn't really know much about the Italians either.
He was fairly recent immigrant to the, the mafia scene in New York, and you can see that that difference between the mustache Pete's and. The, the street gangs, the lucky Luciano had his finger on the pulse of everything. He wasn't gonna get caught by [00:24:00] a a, any, anybody trying to hit him like that. He would've known all these guys.
Marzano, who's aloof and thinks of himself as the Julius Caesar of the American mafia. He didn't have his hands really dirty like that. No, and like Mari Arizona, they kind of put it in perspective like a lot of these, what was the Castle Lamari gang was like you pointed out like newly arrived immigrants from Sicily, and this was kickstarted by, at the rise of Benito Muan fascism that me kind of made a point of cracking down and organized crime in southern Italy and Sicily.
So a lot of these guys just fled and they went to the. Place where, you know, Sicilians and Italians were living, which was in New York, you know, and they brought like the organized crime with them, um, you know, thinking, you know, they knew how to run it better than the people living in new, like j, like people like Joe the boss and like the, the American Italians.
Like, oh, they knew better. Like we're, you know, we're the OGs [00:25:00] of Osa Nostra we're coming right from Sicily. Right. The other thing that I found was really interesting, I believe it was on that hit, and I don't remember which one of the guys it was, but he, he was an Orthodox Jew who was so observant he wouldn't do hits on the Sabbath, and I think that that is so fascinating.
And Kristen Mustache. Chris and I have done an episode on Religion in the Mafia, and it just blows my mind of how many of these, of how many of these, uh, gangsters. Were very religious, yet they're killing people. They're running drugs, prostitution, shakedowns, gambling, like every vice you can possibly think of they're into.
Yet they, they don't see a problem with the fact that they're also quite religious. I believe the game, I think it was Red Levine who was the guy that wouldn't do, I could be wrong about that. So if anybody in the audience knows, just correct me. That's the one red [00:26:00] I was thinking and I didn't wanna go on the record on it.
No, I believe it was Red Levine. That was the guy that wouldn't, he wouldn't do anything on the Sabbath, which is like you pointed out, it's really, it's really kind of bizarre. But like Meyer Lansky was, uh, I wouldn't say he was like religious or what have you, but he was, he was Jewish, right? Um, he didn't.
Tried to hide his Jewishness or anything like that. Um, he, I believe, would attend synagogue from time to time. I believe he did read the, read the Torah. Um, I wouldn't say he wasn't like a devout, uh, a devout Jew or a devout orthodox, uh, Jew, but his Jewishness was really, was really important to 'em. And I'm sure there was a lot of temptation to try to.
You know, downgraded or kind of get rid of it. Considering, you know, the people that were really running organized crime in New York where he lived, um, were Italians and Catholic. I, I think it overall, maybe the [00:27:00] higher level of religiosity that it was just something that. Culturally people did. But I'm mean that guy who was an observant Orthodox Jew who kept the Sabbath and everything, from everything that I've seen and read, that he was very serious about it.
Uh, and I think that, that it's the, it's so incongruent, but it's fascinating. Let's wrap up today with a few final thoughts. Uh, just to put a final point, lucky Luciano, that we've talked about this many, many times. Lucky Luciano winds up kind of becoming the king of the hill. After Joe the boss, Mazari is dead and then Marzano's dead.
He sets up this thing that at least they called at the time the National Crime Syndicate with Meyer Lansky, and it becomes the proto Commission. But what are some of your final thoughts as we move on? Just for people to keep in their heads that there's this, this idea of. The five families, the commission of a really [00:28:00] more formalized mafia structure.
How does Murder Inc fit into this? It was actually like, it was Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky that really kind of pushed for a formation of like an enforcement wing for this, the newly formed national crime syndicate. Um, you know, just kind of like my takeaways from it to, it's, I always find it really funny when people talk about Meyer Lansky and they say, You know, he's kind of like, just like the brainiac and he is like the, you know, he's the guy that's like crunching the numbers.
He's like the human calculator reality was like Meyer Lansky was just as ruthless as all these other guys. It's something that, I don't know why it seems to kind of get left out. Um, And even Bugsy Siegel, I never, there was that movie Bugsy that kind of presents, uh, Bugsy. Siegel's, like, yeah, he's a little bit crazy, but he's kind of like a fun loving type of crazy, no, Bugsy Siegel was like a stone called psychopath, like even cops.
At the time talked about, uh, [00:29:00] you know, like some of these guys would kill and it would just kind of be work where it was like Bugsy Siegel enjoyed, like hurting people. He enjoyed torturing people. Um, I thought that was like, uh, this initial research. It's uh, it's quite remarkable how this has all kind of been kind of forgotten.
I don't know. What's your opinion? I agree with that, that movie Bugsy, maybe Lansky and Bugsy, those two movies will talk about in the future, especially if that's something that people are interested in. But that movie did portray Bugsy Siegel as sort of a fun loving little. Crazy. Yeah, sure. A gangster, but, uh, more of the romantic version of the gangster.
And I think, I don't like those movies. These guys are not romantic. There's interesting elements to it and there is a, a kind of a cool factor, but they're still criminal murderers who are into the, they're, they're hurting regular people. And I think to, we can go into a way of putting [00:30:00] them up on a pedestal that we shouldn't put them on.
Yeah, for sure. You know, and even Lucky Luciano to a degree, he kind of gets, uh, this reputation as like, oh, he was like the brains of the operation type thing. Like he was the one that was able to like organize this all together and he was like the smart guy. And I mean, he was all those things. He was really a smart guy.
But like Lucky Luciano and with Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel really pushed for what eventually would be nicknamed Murder Incorporated, which was responsible for. You know, it could be upwards to thousands of deaths. I will say though, that as me personally, I love studying organizations and how they develop.
It was genius in a way of how they set up the, the commission and putting checks and balances that the gangs, the five families wouldn't constantly be fighting it out with each other. That. To put out hits on other gang, on other members of other [00:31:00] families. You had to go through this process. They had these sit downs and everybody had buy-in in it.
It, it took a long time before people really broke the system. I mean, you could almost argue, I mean, uh, you could give us some examples, but John Gotti was the, one of the big ones to break the system. The, and the, there was a couple of others along the way, but. People really g generally respected the system and if they did buck the system, they paid for it.
Yeah. You know, like the, like the invention of something like Murder Inc. It just, it does make sense, right? Where you hired like a cadre of hitman really, that, you know, had like, we'll get into the details of how it ran, but there was like layers and layers and layers and layers of like, protection from the guys at the very top who were kind of.
You know, giving the final say of what to do and what not to do. Um, it's not like people in the national crime scene, they can go like, oh, [00:32:00] somebody robbed my casino, which was illegal, you know? Or, you know, so-and-so is gonna go talk to the cops. You can't go to the court and be like, go. You know, like this guy, this guy's gonna rat, or this guy's gonna be informant, but like, he's actually this and you know, like, this guy robbed my casino, or this guy stole my heroin.
Like you need an enforcement wing of it. And I mean that, it's kind of how, in reality, this is kind of how the police force works and the courts work in our country, right? It's not much different really without, you know, without the threat of violence that the whole thing doesn't really work. So, It makes sense for something like the national crime system to get to come up with a system.
Like Murder Inc. Where like, okay, if you're not gonna follow the rules or you're gonna break the rules, or you're gonna jeopardize everybody's, uh, livelihoods because you're gonna talk or you're gonna steal, or you're gonna do this or you're gonna do that, you're gonna have to answer to this. And it's nicknamed, [00:33:00] incorporated, you know, it kind of has like a way of making sure that people don't do those types of things.
And I mean, really at the end of the day, the. One of the big reasons why people don't commit crimes is the threat of violence, right? It's either, you know, the cops like shaking you down or beating you up or stopping you, but at the threat of violence can be take many different forms. In the case of Murder, Inc.
It's literally murdering you. Where in the case of the state, it could potentially mean 10 years in jail, you know? And everybody kind of knows what goes on in these jails, right? They're not nice places. Well, and we're gonna go there. We might as well talk about it, that the state. In the post Westphalian system that we live in has the monopoly of violence.
These people in the mafia are living in this gray zone outside of the state, and so they formed their own monopoly of violence and it worked pretty well. And it's, it tamped [00:34:00] down a lot of the chaos that could have happened, and it, I think, I would wonder what you would say to me, it seemed like it, it in.
Closed the, the chaos you had the Colombo family. That was chaos constantly, but it never really blew up outside of the Colombo family. It stayed inside. Problems that were inside of families, stayed inside of families, and it didn't cause these massive wars. Family wars, that's exactly like why the commission came about was they didn't want this stuff spilling out on the streets.
I mean, we're gonna get into it kind of like early history of like some of the, uh, key members of Murder Inc. Like Leke Bulk, uh, Epk and, uh, Jacob Shapiro and really happy my own. And, you know, a res and you kind of look at like the early history of a lot of these guys. Like the violence was spilling out on the streets quite frequently.
You know, like literally like, kind of think like gangs, New York, like that amazing opening fight scene. But [00:35:00] they're not like using knives like they're using guns and shooting each other in the middle of the street. Right? And, uh, you know, it's just not. It's just not good for business. Right. And that's why it came about, like the commission came about, like, and it also to like kind of regulate themselves, but also to like regulate other gangs too, where like if you were doing business, like that's fine, you can do business, you have to pay a tax or what have you.
But like if you start doing your business in the sense that like, you know, you and if some other opposing gang and the, the violence starts breaking it on the streets, it's like, oh no. Now that's starting to affect the commission, which is. The, you know, the superpower, I guess, of all of the organized crime.
And once you start affecting the commission, you're gonna have to answer the limb, and they have their own means of taking care of this stuff. So it would regulate even those gangs on the streets because they didn't want to have to deal with, you know, the full power of the commission coming down on them.
We're gonna put, we're gonna put a pin in it, so to speak here. There's gonna be much, much more [00:36:00] about Murder Inc. And future episodes, so definitely get tuned in. We're gonna talk about the further development of Murder Inc. And then their ultimate downfall. So if anybody wants to get in contact with us or has some comments or feedback, I know mustache Chris and I would love to hear it from you.
You can reach us at the email address crime az history page.com. Search us up on social media, find all of it in the show notes. The biggest thing you can do for us is if you're enjoying what you hear, tell a friend, tell a couple of friends about the podcast so that they can become friends of ours. Yeah.
Yeah. Just tell your friends guys, cause I mean, by the, by the time that we're done doing this Murder Inc. Uh, thing, I mean the, it's pretty crazy. We did a whole episode and haven't even really touched on Murder Inc. Yet. You know, like we touched on Joe Donis. He'll, he comes back into the story too. We touched on like, the history of Brownsville and, um, Meyer Lansky and [00:37:00] Bugsy Siegel.
They're going to, obviously they're. Involved in this story too. All right. And keep your, keep your pod catchers updated and we will talk to you next time. Forget about it.
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