Turf Wars and Cold Blood: The Rise of Murder Incorporated
Original Publication Date: 7/5/2023
Transcript URL: https://share.descript.com/view/0Mqs6rsMMYv
Description: In today's episode, Mustache Chris and Steve delve into the formation of one of the most notorious criminal organizations in American history, Murder Inc. We explore the key players involved, including Albert Anastasia, Abe Reles, and their deadly conflict with the Shapiro Gang. We discuss how Albert Anastasia and Abe Reles, along with other notorious gangsters of the era, came together to establish a criminal enterprise that specialized in contract killings, extortion, and other illicit activities. One of the most significant conflicts Murder Inc faced was the war with the Shapiro Gang, a rival criminal outfit. We explore the escalating violence between the two groups, the motivations behind the conflict, and the high-profile assassinations that characterized this bloody turf war.
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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.
Hey guys. Welcome back to Organized Crime and Punishment on today's episode, mustache, Chris and I are going to be diving even deeper into Murder, Inc. By exploring some of the key characters who are really the street level guys. The muscle you might say of the organization. In the previous episode, we explored Jacob Shapiro Le and Le Leke Holter, who made up sort of a higher under the management of Murder Inc.
And their rise to [00:01:00] power and the labor, Slugger, wars, Abe Reiss, Harry Strauss, and many more are going to get explored in this episode, and we're going to see how basically three separate gangs. Came together as a marriage of convenience informed what was the most ruthless killing machine that organized crime ever produced in North America.
Each of these stories on Murder Inc. Are really interesting on their own, and they're even more awesome when you put 'em all together. So I highly suggest if people like what they hear today. Go back and listen to episode one and two and then keep out. Uh, keep your eyes out because we'll have a couple of more episodes on Murder Inc.
And also check out all of our other episodes as well too, because I think you'll see that a lot of the things that we're talking about with Murder Inc. You'll get a lot more out of it if you listen to uh, uh, some of our earlier episodes on the five families, et cetera. [00:02:00] So where do you think we should start off today?
Uh, Chris, how about Abe Reis, one of, uh, Brownsville's Finest. Uh, can you tell us about Abe and then maybe how he fits in with some of the other pieces of the Murder Inc. Puzzle. Yeah, a Ellis is, uh, I'm not sure if he's like really, uh, at the average person would know who a Ellis is. I'm sure people who've studied a bit of mob history would probably know who Abelli is.
Um, he's, I mean, I'm not giving anything away. He ends up becoming a. Uh, probably one of the greatest informants in, in history, but at this point, uh, he's not, uh, yeah. A res was born to, uh, Austrian Jewish immigrants in Brownsville on May 10th, 1906. Uh, his father, like, he worked in the, uh, garment industry, but, uh, when the depression hits, um, it, when the depression hit, he lost his job, obviously, and I, right.
Apparently he was selling like, [00:03:00] uh, On the streets. What, what is kisha? Exactly? Again, it's like a potato kind of ball. Uh, what I'm thinking is that it's probably, it shows you that working in the garment, uh, factory wasn't the greatest job, but there was definitely worse jobs out there. Yeah. Uh, um, yeah, he was like selling Kisha on the street to like, you know, make, basically make eggs, meat.
Like, you know, like, am I going to eat today? Type thing. Right. How many, how many of these things did I sell? Um, Yeah, and he would end up, he would go to school until about the eighth grade and, but he dropped out. Obviously it wasn't for him. Um, pretty typical kind of upbringing for somebody during somebody living in Brownsville at the time.
We explored it on their previous episodes, just how, I mean, Brownsville probably was one of the worst. Places in the world from everything that I've read. And, uh, it was like a breeding ground for these, uh, type of characters that I were gonna be getting more [00:04:00] into. When he dropped outta school, it was like kind of, uh, this is when he met up with his friend, uh, um, uh, Martin Goldstein.
Um, He had a nickname, Bugsy Goldstein, with, um, we talked about it on the previous episode two, where Bugsy was just kind of a term I thought. I initially thought it was just for Bugsy Siegel, but apparently there was quite a few mobs that had the term bugsy. Apparently. He, apparently, the way you spelled it, uh, you spell it for him.
It's with like two Gs instead of one. I guess that was for him. Make him stand out. I don't know. Um, Yeah, Bugsy. Goldstein's pretty interesting. Apparently a lot of like the early mob movies, like the old kind of black and white ones with the Steve, was it Cagney? And um, apparently they, a lot of the actors, uh, kind of used Martin, uh, Goldstein as like a template, uh, for their characters or how they would.
Perform being an actor, uh, perform being a gangster in their performances. I thought that was pretty interesting when I was [00:05:00] reading it, but I learned that and um, I believe it was, what's the book that I read? Uh, tough Jews by Robert, uh, Rob Cohen. It's a very good book, actually explores all about, uh, murder Inc.
And the Jewish Mafia. And then around this time, um, Yeah, and then it abe's like first jail sentence, actually, believe it or not, was like stealing $2 worth of gum. He got sent to jail for that at quite a young age. So now we move on to the Shapiro Brothers and how, uh, they play into the game of the formation of Murder, Inc.
Yeah, I don't think, uh, I, I almost guarantee that nobody's probably ever heard of the Shapiro Brothers. I know I hadn't heard about them until, uh, I started researching Murder Inc. And didn't quite realize they play like a really important, uh, part in this entire thing. In a lot of ways they kind of.
Helped create Murder Inc. I mean, they obviously didn't mean to do that, but they They did. Yeah. The Shapiro [00:06:00] brothers were Meyer, uh, Irv Na Irving, and, uh, Willie, they ran much of the, the Brownsville neighborhood. Like they, uh, they did like prostitution, uh, a lot of booze, a lot of, um, um, typical lone shark, like all the typical like mafia.
Um, Mainstays that you would think, uh, prostitution was actually, was quite big actually. Apparently, like if, um, husbands would like lend, like, borrow money from the Shapiro brothers and couldn't pay it back, they would like get their wives to start prostituting, stuff like that. Like these are not, yeah, and that's how they, that's how basically they, you know, the.
Couple would pay back their debt. Like it's just really, really horrible type of stuff that was going on in Brownsville at the time. Um, yeah. And the Shapiro brothers, you know, they saw like the talent in somebody like a res and uh, uh, uh, Goldstein. So they started working for them, like Kuan Young age, uh, basically doing kind of like the grunt work, you know, [00:07:00] collecting the money, doing petty crimes, maybe, you know, small.
Small time, b Andes, um, things of that nature. You know, like typical, like if you were working at a factory, you start, you know, stocking the shelves and then you kind of slowly move your way up, uh, in the factory. But you know, this is organized crime. So there's a different types of hazards, uh, as you're moving up, uh, your way up the company.
Uh, yeah, A would end up getting caught. Um, With the crime. And he got ended up getting sentenced to, uh, two years in, uh, juvie, uh, like juvenile, uh, prison. And the sh Shapiro brothers failed to, uh, help him out all. Typically, how this would work with these types of gangs at this time is, You would do the crimes and then you, you'd get paid, but then like a certain amount of money would go in a pot that was used to like say, pay cops off or pay off lawyers or payoff judges.
So if you did get caught, maybe the, the sentence wouldn't be, uh, so long or you probably [00:08:00] could get right. Get off, uh, Scott free. Right. But the Shapiro brothers didn't do any of this for Abe and. Basically, Abe came to the conclusion that he was gonna get revenge against the Shapiro brothers for treating him so poorly.
And he also thought that he could do what the Shapiro brothers were doing in Brownsville, but better. It's really interesting that, um, these Shapiro brothers, I think of it all the people we've talked about. I mean, really in this whole episode, there's gonna be a lot of characters who I think most people would, it would not be their.
A name brand Mafiosi. There're, uh, there's a couple who might be more familiar, but man, these guys sound like they should, everybody should know this story. I was blown away when I read it. I was like, like, how have they not made a movie about this or something, you know, like it seems. Taylor, like this whole conflict.
You don't even have to include Murder Inc. We're gonna get into it a little bit more. I'm like, this is Mafia movie heaven. Like, I don't, why hasn't this been done yet? I guess I, I can't give you a [00:09:00] good explanation. Why not? I, I don't know. People are just, People don't want to put money into type of projects like this nowadays.
I don't know. Yeah, or maybe it just never, I mean, it is such the, really, the scummier part, like the, it's really hard to put a shine on some of these people. And I think as the more we learn about Murder Inc, it's very difficult to find anything redeeming in a lot of these characters. Uh, and. Speaking of Reli and Shapiro, I think that in a way it's maybe Reis was expecting too much honor among thieves, but anyways, clearly there is an honor among thieves.
So how does this conflict between Relic and Shapiro, the Shapiro brothers, develop and, you know, what kind of, what does the conflict lead to? They, they both into the conclusion, uh, Goldstein and, uh, a Morales that, um, If they wanted [00:10:00] revenge. The Shapiro brothers, they also knew that they like them alone, weren't gonna be able to do it.
Like the Shapiro brothers were really no joke. Right? Like these guys were the top dogs in that neighborhood. Um, yeah, initially, like they were first they like started like opening up, um, Slot machines in, uh, the Shapiro's neighborhood with the backing of, uh, believe it or not, I guess Meyer Lansky took a liking to Abe and Goldstein and, uh, Meyer was looking into, he wanted to like expand his, uh, his like gambling business into some of the poor neighborhoods in New York.
Um, and the connection, like be between like a bres and I guess this name, it's, I don't know, it's not really important to the story, but George. Uh, de he was like the Italian guy and he was like, the connection between, um, he was like the go go between guy. We're gonna run into a lot of the, these go between guys as we go through this episode between, uh, Meyer, [00:11:00] Lansky and Abe and, uh, Goldstein.
Uh, yeah. As soon as they set up these, uh, slot machines, they, they actually, initially they were thriving. They were rivaling the Shapiro brothers, and then the Shapiro brothers said like, well, we gotta put none to this right now. Right? Because this, this was their biggest money maker for a lot of these mob guys.
These slot machines were really, Their biggest money maker cuz it was just consistent work. It was just consistent money coming in. Right? Uh, like all the Bottega and everything, everybody had slot machines and their, it's crazy to think cuz they, they were illegal, um, to have, but every store had these slot machines.
You know, you'd think that the cops would just go in there and start. Taking them out. There was a mayor in New York at one time that like apparently collected hundreds of these slot machines and just tossed them in the middle of the ocean or something in the middle of the lake or something like that.
Um, thinking like, yeah, we'll, we'll just collect them all and just get rid of 'em. I think we touched on that and uh, when we talked about Frank Castello and when the Fly family episodes were a bit, [00:12:00] uh, I think we should do down in the road maybe we'll talk about that mirror cuz it's a pretty funny story.
Um, So, yeah. And, um, one night, apparently a Bras and Goldstein and dfa, they got some inside information that the, the Shapiro brothers were leaving somewhere. Uh, but it turned out the, uh, turned out the inside information wasn't, uh, Uh, was like, uh, fool's gold basically. And, um, the Shapiro brothers, uh, ambushed them and didn't end up killing any of them, but they, I believe he, they, they all got wounded.
Um, but while this was going on, Um, Meyer Shapiro actually kidnapped, uh, Abe's, uh, girlfriend and, um, you know, would keep this family friendly. So, um, you know, did some things to her that he, uh, shouldn't have done. Uh, and which furthered, angered a res, obviously, right. And now the [00:13:00] conflict went from like, oh, you didn't visit to me in jail to like, you're doing this.
Um, so it just ratcheted up even more. Now at, at this point we've introduced the Shapiro Brothers. We've introduced a res and we're going to introduce a couple other key players. And I know it can be tough to keep track of all these names in an audio format, but really just sit back and enjoy the Enjoy the Ride.
Uh, it will really help to at least be introduced to all of these guys, even if you don't remember every detail about them. They all play their own interesting role in the development and the legacy of Murder Inc. And even some of these guys have two. Names that are distinctly different for one guy. So don't get, uh, don't worry about keeping track of all these names, but our next name of one person who had two names, Harry Strauss or he, he was also known as Pittsburgh.
Phil, what's his story? Yeah, like I had mentioned earlier, [00:14:00] uh, they, the, uh, a brass and Goldstein knew they kind of couldn't take on the Shapiro brothers themselves, and they, they kind of did by just like opening up the slot machines. But after we had just talked about earlier, I mean, it became really crystal clear, like, you know, they were almost killed.
They, they started to have to recruit people. Harry Strauss was a guy, uh, he was born in 1905 in Brooklyn, New York. Um, he like, Kind of, he hung out with like Goldstein and Reis, but he was, I, I, I guess would consider kind of like a wild car in the sense of like, he didn't really work for anybody. He wasn't really attached to anybody.
Um, yeah, like he had this weird nickname, Pittsburgh, Phil, and. Even the people who have like studied this for a living don't really understand where the nickname Pittsburgh Phil came from. Cause from everything that they've read, he never actually visited Pittsburgh. So I, I'm, I don't know, you guys can just make up, but there has to have been like some reason for it.
It [00:15:00] is just been lost. Through time. Right? Like, it just seems like an odd thing, like your friend, it must have been like an inside joke with friends or something. Yeah. And then we just don't, we don't know what the joke is, right. Um, yeah, so like, uh, Harry Straus was, was apparently, he was quite a tall man and he was kind of built like a football player.
He was like a, he was an like an attractive looking dude. I mean, you can look up pictures of this guy and you know, he's, I don't know. He's not a bad looking guy, really. Um, I can see why the way he liked him. Um, yeah, and he's, uh, Pittsburgh, Phils like famous for potentially maybe being one of the most ruthless hitman in the history of the mob, depending on who you talk to from.
Everything that I've read, like I've read, people say he's probably killed up towards a hundred people and I've seen some people put it up to 500 people and his kills weren't like just in New York, like he traveled all around the states. So all the different like [00:16:00] families or different criminal organizations, like I said, he was kind of a freelance hitman.
Um, Would hire him to do jobs, they, oh, I need somebody to get taken out in Florida, or I need somebody to get taken out in, you know, Cleveland or Detroit or wherever. Right. And he would do it. Um, as reading about, uh, Harry Straus though, I just, I kind of made this observation, or I'm sure people are much more familiar with the.
The Iceman Richard Linsky. And if you read Richard Linsey's story, it sounds kind of similar to Harry Strauss's story where Harry St. Strauss is hired from, hired by all the different families, go around all the country to to take care of special jobs. This is exactly what Richard Kolinsky claims. It almost seems like, well, if Richard's making it all up, he kind of ride a boat.
Pittsburgh Phil, and used his story as kind of a template for his toll tales. I just thought that was a an interesting observation. What do you think, [00:17:00] Steve? Here we are a member of the Parthenon Podcast Network, featuring great shows like James Earley's, key Battles of American History Podcast, and many other great shows.
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Yeah, that would be a really cool thing if he did do that. Like the, the real deal. Harry Straus did the things that he, that Richard, the Iceman Kalinsky claimed to do. And, uh, one of the things that I always come back to when I think about people like this who killed a hundred, maybe up to 500 people, which is absolutely staggering and mind blowing, but you, you gotta think, are these people?
Is it. Purely work for them? Or is there always a serial killer element [00:18:00] to them? Because like you think about, um, if you wanna take it like, like to its extreme, like the, um, some of the famous snipers in the wars. Yeah, they're doing it for God and Country, and Harry Reis is doing it for money and for the the organization.
But what is going on in somebody's mind who can personally kill so many human beings? There's gotta be something else going on there, and I'd love to see studies about it. That's probably almost something that's so borderline on Taboo that you really almost can't study it. Yeah. If I had to pick where some of these guys are, like, kind of straddle the line between, like is he just a really effective soldier or is he your serial killer?
I would say everything that I read about Harry Struse, he's just a straight up serial killer that was, that, that enjoyed, really enjoyed what he did. Uh, you know, he was famous sort of tying people up. Uh, I'm not sure how to describe [00:19:00] it. It was basically that he would tie 'em up like with their. From their ankles and I would like go around their neck and then basically when they would move, they would slowly kind of strangle, um, themselves.
Apparently he quite enjoyed watching that. I mean, that's not, you know what I mean? That's not like we're gonna psycho own the desert, you know what I mean? Like, we're gonna take a guy out in the desert cuz he. You know, he hasn't paid his Vic payment or something, or you know, he's gonna, you know, he's gonna rot to the cops.
Let's just, we gotta get him out outta the picture, you know, or this, that type of, you know, we'll, we'll get into it with some of the stuff with Murder Inc. Where a lot of these guys are. I do surely believe they weren't criminals. They, they, a lot, some of these guys probably would've just been serial killers.
Now moving on, we can enter a, uh, Italian into the mix. Frank Abbado, uh, uh, what was Frank's pedigree and how does he start to fit in with this? At, at least at this point, predominantly Jewish gangsters. [00:20:00] Frank, he didn't waste any time. Like he, he was pretty much born to become a criminal, you know, in his, in, uh, like even in his teens, he was making money, like extorting businesses and threatening to torch them down.
I think he actually did burn down a couple of businesses just to show he wasn't joking around. He was a teenager Reviewing this, you know, you read about like, what's going on in Brownsville and in and around this area at this time. It still blows my mind. It reads something. You mentioned Mogadishu. It reads.
Kind of like that where, you know, they're just firefights in the streets. People are just burning downstairs. Uh, um, like stuff you're freedom about happen, happen to get like third world countries really. Right. Um, Yeah, he would end up joining, uh, a gang, like I pointed out, that predominantly worked in the, the Ocean Hills section of New York.
Uh, and quickly became a lieutenant of a gentleman named, uh, Harry May, who we're gonna get into in a little bit. Yeah. And like he helped, like working, he helped like organize like [00:21:00] gambling and rocket rack, like racketeering schemes, lone sharking. And, you know, he became a pretty proficient hitman himself.
Um, that's why he was a lieutenant. Right. He kind of ran like the day to day operations of this gang. I mean, Harry wasn't, he wasn't like a hands off boss or anything. He was like right in there too. He ended up getting arrested for, uh, beating up a police officer. Well, he ended up beating up like a police officer and he was quite, quite young and, um, He ended up having to go to like reform school and while he was at this uh, reform school, he got the nickname The Dasher cuz apparently, uh, because of his skill at sports, in particular baseball, and I was reading apparently like if he had lived a different life or had gone down a different road, uh, uh, the people around him were fairly convinced that he could have played in the major leagues.
Um, but obviously that didn't happen, right? Uh, he still stayed a criminal until the very end. Um, yeah. And [00:22:00] Frank, he had a reputation for, I mean, this is kind of weird mentioned earlier about the more unsavory elements of organized crime. And in particular, murder, Inc. There's really nothing glamorous about any of these guys, really.
It's, they're all disgusting animals. Um, apparently Frank had a reputation of just crawling around the neighborhood and picking up, you know, there's no way to sugarcoat a leg like sh. Teenage girls and you know, doing stuff that he shouldn't have been doing. And yeah, he is a sexual predator. Yeah. Really that's, at the end of the day, it was a sexual predator.
You know, you guys can fill in the blanks yourselves, right? I'm not gonna get into all the details or what have you. Like I, I read about it, so, I mean, you guys don't, you can read about it if you want. I just don't think it's necessary. Basically, Frank would take this informa, well, at least this olive branch that Abe and, uh, Goldstein and his Straus came up with like, oh, let's join gangs.
If we join our gangs together, we can take on the Shapiro Brothers and [00:23:00] we'll, uh, Split it down the middle, which is what Frank does. He does take it to uh uh, Harry, happy My Own, which is a funny nickname that we'll get into in a little bit. You know what I think is really interesting hearing about stories about like people like Frank Abbado who beat up a police officer as a kid, and you hear these stories like, I mean, now that would be virtually unheard of.
For somebody, you know, even in the roughest neighborhoods for a teenager to beat up a, a cop. But I just thought of a story of a, um, old timer who lived in our neighborhood and he grew up in the, I, I'm, I don't think as early as the twenties, but definitely in the thirties. And in his high school, he was in a vocational program.
One of the teachers stole his tools and like that be something that's pretty unusual in this day and age that a teacher is gonna go and steal a teenager's [00:24:00] tools. And this, this neighbor of mine who was old when I knew him, but back in his teenage, he beat up the teacher and took his tools back. And I mean, I think you hear a lot of stories about there that I think things back then were just so much looser on stuff like that.
I think, yeah, I think so too. I think part of it was, I mean, cops literally walked the beat too at that time. Right? Where. There was no, like, there was cop cars and they obviously had cars, but a lot of it was cops just literally walking up and down the streets and taking re like you mentioned, like reactive policing.
Like, oh, someone's getting robbed. We gotta do something about this. You know? Where nowadays most people hardly ever see a, I don't know, maybe it's different than the states, but up here, like you hardly ever, you never see cops walking to be like, I never see a cop, not. In their car. Mm-hmm. And the only time I see them is because, I don't know, well, not me personally, but if you're like speeding [00:25:00] or you know, you didn't stop at a stop sign or, I don't know, stuff like that really.
Um, where back then, you know, getting into like, arguments with cops, it was probably, I don't know, probably a regular occurrence cuz you'd probably be the same cop in that neighborhood for, you know, months on end or even years. Um, so like the end, the, um, I don't know, like the, the Byzantine nature of the way the police force works now, where you got through like walls and walls and walls to like interact with the cop, like just didn't exist then.
It's like you interacted with these guys every day. They were kind of like just part of the neighborhood. That's my guess. I betcha too, like actually have being ready to fight and. Knock somebody, uh, with your Billy club, like that was probably your training. If you couldn't do that or if you got beat up too many times, that's probably how you learn that policing wasn't for you.
You know what I mean? Like you were, well, I mean nothing to fight not too long ago. Like not too long ago, they used to have a, he [00:26:00] heightened weight requirement to be a police officer. I believe it was. You had to be like over six foot and like I know at least a buck 80 or a buck 85 or something like that.
Um, they've obviously dropped those requirements now, but yeah, they're for, I assume for that exact reason you had to have been able to, You know, whack somebody with a Billy bat and hold your own in streetlight, which is so, it sounds so crazy now, but I mean, it does make sense to a degree. Um, you know, we talk about policing and stuff now and how, you know, cops are too quick to use their guns and what have you in certain situations or.
It would be nice to, you know, maybe having a guy that killed hold this own industry fight and has been in several street fights and doesn't panic under those type of circumstances. I mean, maybe sometimes it's, that's not a bad thing to have a police officer. Well, and like you said back then, you're walking the beat.
And I think that in not all police [00:27:00] departments did they necessarily carry guns, but they were carrying six shooters at the at the absolute most, and. There's no calling for backup because you don't have a radio. You're gonna, if you're, if a thug or a street tough, like somebody like Frank Abado gets in your face, you better be ready to fight because it could be a fight for your life.
It's, I mean, it's so mind bogglingly different today. I mean, as much as you know, police in certain circumstances, if they're on the highway or something like that, they may. Be in situations that are in, uh, at that grave, but it's not a regular course of their duty. Like it would be somebody who was walking the beat in one of those neighborhoods like Brownsville.
So then we get into this next guy that you kind of teased to us. Harry Happy, my own, and he's another really important part of the story. Yeah, Harry happy, my own, he [00:28:00] actually got the nickname with the, the happy was the fact that he was never happy. Apparently. He just had a permanent scowl on his face and he was like a, he was a mean, uh, so-and-so, so people used to call him happy as like, like a joke.
Um, Harry happy, my own like if, uh, Pittsburgh, Phil was, um, say like the most ruthless or the, I mean, my own wasn't that far off really. He was, he was quite a character, which we'll get into, um, little bit more in the, the next episode, but Yeah. Yeah. He was born in 1908 and like the actual gang was called the Ocean Hills, uh, hooligans.
That was the name of the gang that we had been talking about earlier. Um, Like I pointed out, Frank Abu became his, uh, understudy and yeah, we've talked about, um, how he got that nickname and yeah. But, uh, Harry, um, had a close relationship with this guy named, uh, [00:29:00] Lewis Capone, who actually wasn't, uh, he's not related to, uh, related to Al Capone and all, uh, loose Capone was, uh, Um, I guess he was kind of, I guess you could describe him as like the go between guy, between say, people like, uh, Harry, my own Harry STRs and a Reis.
Um, the go between to say the higher ups, like the people like Albert Anastasia. Who were, you know, high up in the Italian, uh, mafia at the time? Um, yeah, Lewis was born in, uh, 1906. He was actually born in Naples, so he, he wasn't actually born in the States. Unlike, uh, some of these other guys, uh, Uh, and he moved with his family to New York at a quite a young age.
Uh, Lewis ran like a, he ran like a cafe that served like coffees and sweets, but it was like a friend, like this cafe was almost kind of like used as a recruiting station to basically like recruit, like potential hoodlums that they could use to commit [00:30:00] various crimes or, you know, guys like, you know, I don't know, checking out prospects basically.
Um, I guess, uh, I, some of these mafioso would be like, oh, have you seen any, uh, you know, young kids come through the, any potential talent coming through? And yeah, Lewis would kind of take 'em under their wing and then introduce 'em to like different people. Um, yeah, Lewis also had like a pretty strong connections to, I think we'll end up doing a series on this.
The, the Purple Gang in New York. I mean, sorry, in Detroit, it. Uh, which was like a very powerful gang. The more, like, I kind of went down a little rabbit hole and was doing the research with this, um, for this episode, and I, I was, I was really shocked just how powerful these guys were. Um, and Lewis also, like I said in the first episode, like Joe o Donis would be coming back into the picture.
Uh, Lewis Capone had strong ties to Joe Donis, right. And Joe Donis will end up becoming, you'll have actually a fair amount to do with, uh, Murder Inc. In a [00:31:00] lot of ways in terms of coming up with contracts for, uh, for the hitman. Um, and in, in a lot of ways, uh, Louis Capone was the guy that kind of. Kept the whole thing together, really.
Right. He was like, the guy, like I said, he was the go-between guy. So like the guys on the streets would have their complaints and they'd go to Lewis, and Lewis would, uh, you know, uh, give the information to the higher up. And um, he's the one that kind of kept everybody, you know. Cool. You know? Cause for the most part we're dealing with stone called lunatics.
Right. Lewis is the one that kind of, um, Made sure it all worked together. Now you've, now that we've talked about this cast of main characters and we, we see the organization that they're setting up that relies and his gang, they want to start forming this organization where they'll be able to take on the Shapiro Brothers and they build up something by getting these Italians involved, they [00:32:00] is.
Something again, that's something pretty serious to take on. Let's go and find out how does this now become a war between the Shapiro Brothers and then this new, what did you call it? The combination and with Harry Strauss and my own and Ado. Yeah, that's what, yeah, that's what they called. It was the combination.
I mean, um, before they could get like official word, uh, to take out this gang, Lewis had to take this information up to Albert Anastasia, uh, who's, I'm pretty sure if people know kind of a passing history of the mob. They've probably heard of Albert Anastasia. So Albert Anastasia had to give his approval.
To take out the Shapiro brothers. And, um, he wasn't very happy with the Shapiro brothers for a lot of different reasons. And he said, yeah, go ahead, you know, do it. Um, and even within this gang, they, they, they came to the agreement that they would split things evenly once they, uh, They took out the Shapiro Brothers.
[00:33:00] So as you can see, there was, it wasn't just as simple as like, oh, we're just gonna take out the Shapiro Brothers, cuz they had done that. Then they, they would've pissed off Albert Anastasia, which would've pissed off the guys who had really a lot of power, like the Lucky Lucianos and the Meyer Lanskys and the, uh, the National Crime Syndicate.
Right. So you had to go through channels basically. In a lot of ways, kind of like how a corporation works, you can't just go yell at the c e o, you gotta go to the middle manager and there's a re, it seems frustrating at the time when you're dealing with stuff like that, but there's a reason why it, it works the way it does.
So you don't have like drastic changes quickly and the people at the top know exactly what's going on, which is, I mean, they have to, it's really important. Um, Yeah, so between like the Shapiros and the, the New gang, the combination, you know, they, um, had multiple hits on each other. Like a lot of 'em failed.
A lot of the stuff was like taking, uh, place right in the streets, right, right in the over open, which is I [00:34:00] always thought was a little crazy. But, um, after failing to kidnap, uh, Irving Shapiro a couple of times, or a res was able to, uh, catch him one day on the streets and. Apparently just beat the living crap out of him on the streets and then shot him right in the head, uh, just right on the open.
Um, so he got, you know, he's slowly getting his revenge against the Shapiro brothers. Um, and the other brother Meyers Shapiro, him, he would, uh, Abras would end up sneaking up on him on the streets. I guess he saw him, uh, and, uh, yeah, just shot him in the face, uh, multiple times. Uh, Right out in the open witnesses, the whole nine yards.
Um, and the one brother William Shapiro, uh, who I guess was fairly smart cuz he was able to run away from these guys for three years, but eventually they did, uh, catch up to him and, um, they did kidnap him. They dragged him, dragged him to [00:35:00] one of his gang, one of their gang hide oats, I guess when the heat was getting too rough.
This is a place where they would hide out, um, Yeah. And, uh, they would basically, yeah, they'd beat the crop out of him, like to both the inch on to a boat when he was about to die. Really? I, I think they thought he did die. Um, and they stuffed him in a brown. Bag and threw 'em in the back of their trunk and they were going out to go bury 'em to get rid of the body.
And apparently a ba uh, you know, like a pedestrian or some, uh, somebody saw them and they only kind of got the job halfway done and they ended up finding, uh, um, William Shapiro, and immediately when they, they, the, the coroner and everything, like did the autopsy, they realized pretty quickly that just, you know, William hadn't passed by the time that they were burying him.
The, they buried a guy alive, which is, I mean, out of all the, uh, Kind of stories that we're gonna get to in this podcast. Like that's [00:36:00] one of the more that one sticks with me the most. It's the fact that they literally buried a guy alive. I don't know if they meant to do it. I don't think they did. I think they thought that he was done for, but I mean, that's what they did.
Steve, here again with a quick word from our sponsors. We get through this just fascinating story of throughout these past several episodes of labor slugging and all these different things really come together. The Shapiro Brothers who they set up an organization, but then the really, the, a more brutal organization comes in and takes what they've built and they're gonna take it even a step further.
Uh, it's pretty amazing how all these threads are starting to come together. And you see what I mean guys? When I like, how has this not been made into a movie? Like we just went through this, I'm like, this is the stuff that like mafia, like this would make like the perfect [00:37:00] mafia movie. You know, like, uh, and it's crazy that, that this story's not more well known cuz it really is like an insane war with like legitimately just insane people.
And I just, it's crazy to me that this is not more well known. I mean, maybe. I've never heard anybody talk about the, the Shapiro brothers and you know, like the origins of a res and happy my own and all these, like even Pittsburgh, Phil, like Harry Strauss. I'm sure if you went on the street, like nobody knows who this guy is and he could have potentially been responsible over over 500 hits.
It's, it's nuts. I wonder, part of it is the, the, the history is so complicated, and I think that this should be a case study almost for people who are studying organized crime and honestly how organizations develop this organic nature. And, uh, it's top down, it's bottom up. The Harry Reis has a plan and he finds [00:38:00] the right people who get him tied into a bigger organization.
It's a. Fascinating story, and I wonder if it maybe doesn't get as much coverage as other stories because there is a pretty complicated nature to it. I think that's partially what it is, where some of these, a lot of these, I don't wanna say a lot, but some of these mob stories you can kind of follow and it's, it's got a relatively easy, um, narrative to follow.
Like John Gotti's rise and fall. Right. It's pretty, I mean, anyone can kind of pick it up and they, they get. Or something like Murder Inc. To like really kind of get what, what is going on here? It's, it's really complicated cuz you need to know kind of the history of Bronzeville and Word that they got concept of like a, a, you know, a professional hit squad from the mob come about and.
You know, how did even the gang form itself? It's like, oh, you know, there was like this Jewish faction, there was this Italian faction, and then there's these in between guys [00:39:00] and then like, there's Albert Anastasia who's over here, but he's like at the very top. And Leke was actually one of the biggest racketeers in the history of the United States.
But he's also running this, and his buddy Jacob Shapiro is, uh, you know, like it's, there's so many names and there's so many moving parts. We're. Quite literally, like I said, it's almost like three gangs coming together out of a marriage in convenience really. And the really higher ups recognizing that, hey, we got something here with all these guys.
Like they're all stone cold psychopaths, and we could really use a cadre stone cold psychopath to hope is take care of business. Or if you look at something like Al Capone's rise in Chicago, he. You can, there's a lot of really messy details of how Capone gets established, but really after the Valenti uh, Valentine's Day massacre, it all falls into place and it, it's a great, almost like John Wick story, whereas [00:40:00] certain people get killed and, you know, it, it flows along well where this you're really, uh, You have to make a a case study of how organizations work and how different factions come together that are very dissimilar in a lot of ways, but then also have these certain connection points.
And I think that in a way you have to examine it sort of in a way that we're doing it here. We're gonna leave the narrative of Murder Inc. Right here for the day. But, uh, Chris, you had some things, what we might call fun facts about Abe, uh, Abe Reis and a few of the other people that really didn't fit into the narrative, but are worth, uh, at least sharing here.
When the commission kind of got started, when like the Castle Ma war was over and then like, um, um, Lucky Luciano was left in charge, um, after he killed Marzano. They had this big meeting in Chicago and Al [00:41:00] Capone was there and it was all the heads of the five families. And you know, like all the major heads of all the organized crime families across the states really.
Um, and like Al Capone was hosting it, apparently Rellis. Was at this meeting, he made such a name for himself after he took out the Shapiro Brothers. And I just got this image of this guy, you know, coming up from the a h l and like, this is my first game at the n Hhl. I mean, cause you know, at the time, like I'm sure most people even at the time, like within organized crime, maybe they might have heard of brass, but they probably.
Most of 'em probably go, who's this guy? I have no idea who he is. I just got this image of him like, you know, just like staring at Al Capone or something like that. Or Lucky Luciano with like awe as I score, I'm meeting Wayne Gretzky type thing. As you can tell, I'm Canadian cause I'm using all these hockey references.
It really does show you though that how. How he did something really special. And to have a seat at that table is very impressive. [00:42:00] And then you have a little something about Harry Strauss and his, some of his, uh, uh, psychopathic killing technique. Yeah. He, he had this, uh, apparently had this, he was so good with an ice pick.
And I, I read this and I don't know how true it is, but I read it. Apparently he was able to ice pick somebody like. Was like right about like a behind the ear and is the way it was described and he could do it so well that like, like very little blood would like come out and like even the person would die instantly and like apparently, like when doctors and stuff would show up to the crime scene and stuff like that, like until they actually got the body back to the hospital, they initially thought like, oh, this person died of natural causes.
Um, And it was like quick and quiet and apparently it was his, it was his go-to to get a job done quick. Which I mean brings up another kind of parallel to Richard Kalinsky in a lot of ways, cuz Richard talked about using arsenic where he could just spray arsenic on like food or you know, in somebody's face and he could just walk [00:43:00] away and then like the doctors would show up and be like, oh, they died of a heart attack.
Which is, you know, did you get that impression when I, or was cyanide, was it? Yeah, it was, sorry. It was cyanide. One thing that we probably, we won't get into a lot of the guts and the blood and the guts and the really. Gross son, for a lack of a better word, details, but I think there is something to say about some of the, the methods that they came up with.
Now, finally, as one last little point we can bring up, it's really interesting to talk about the relationship between the Jewish and the Italian gangsters and. Would you call this moment in this partnership, kind of a progressive moment of interethnic relations, even though we're talking about crime, does crime bring, uh, everybody together basically?
I like, I don't know, like I've read this a lot where they're like, I dunno, ethnic relations were like way better within the mob than they were in like the rest of the [00:44:00] country. And I mean in some, I guess you could argue in some ways yes, that was true. Or you know, in particular you look at like Lucky Luciano Meyer Lansky's relationship, but.
I mean, you guys just listened to the entire episode, like these ethnic relationships kind of ran, and maybe they were better than the rest of the country in some ways, but they kind of ran along kind of typical lines, really, like the Jewish guys kind of stuck with the Jewish guys and the Italian guys kind of stuck with the Italian guys and Yeah, sure.
They worked together, but they've, like the Italian guys would have their intermediaries and then like, The Jewish guys would've their grow between guys too. I mean, it was like a kind of like a meme that like the early mob was like, was like a progressive force and ethnic relationships in the States, and that's just not the impression I really get.
I mean, you can't look at Lucky Luciano Meyer Lansky's relationship and say like, oh yeah, that was the norm. It's like, no, that was the exception. They worked together, but they did stay [00:45:00] separate in a lot of ways. I think too that it was just really, as far as the Italian and the Jewish connection went in, particularly in New York City and those neighborhoods.
It was just something that was very unusual in American history where these two, these two groups kind of did in a lot of ways meld together because they had, they were living in a very similar circumstances. They, uh, Were working similar jobs, and I think that that's something that carried through history and not just with crime, but the, there was a lot of crossover.
But I think to kind of, I don't even know what kind of lesson you wanna pull from with the organized crime that m Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano built this up. Like I, I, I don't even understand like what the meme of his progressive relationships. They were criminals working together. So really that we're gonna leave it [00:46:00] there today and we're gonna get into a lot of exciting stuff where we're really gonna get into the meat of Murder Inc.
Mustache, Chris and I wanna thank everybody for listening. The best thing you can do to help us out is to tell a friend about the show, tell a couple of friends so that your friends can become friends of ours, and we'll talk to you next time. Forget about it.
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