Joe Bruno's Mobsters - Six Volume Set (75 page)

Reles and Buggsy made it to safety, and with the help of a mobbed-up doctor, they slowly licked their wounds and began figuring out how to take out Silvers for his betrayal, along with the Shapiros.

However, Reles had underestimated the depravity of Meyer Shapiro.

One cool autumn night, Meyer Shapiro jumped into his jalopy
, and he scanned the streets of Brownsville looking to hurt Reles where it hurt most: below the belt. He spotted the pretty young thing while she was window shopping at a local clothing store.

She was the 18-year-old girlfriend of Abe “Kid Twist” Reles.

Shapiro swerved his car to the curb, and before the girl knew what was happening, she was in Shapiro’s car, kicking and screaming, but no match for a hardened thug like Shapiro.

Shapiro drove with one hand, and with his free hand he slapped and punched the girl into submission.

Then Shapiro sped to a secluded area on the outskirts of Brownsvile, and he raped Abe Reles’s girlfriend. And if that wasn’t enough, as an added message, Shapiro pummeled the young girl’s face with both fists, as if she were a man.

After the young girl’s face was a grotesque mask of blood, bumps, and bruises, Shapiro opened the passenger door and kicked her to curb. She lay there for a while, and then
she dragged herself to her feet and staggered back to Brownsville.

She told Reles what had happened,
and her swollen face told everything.

Reles was incensed; women were off limits.

Reles slowly plotted his revenge.

Reles’s
first order of business was to recruit another strong-arm for his crew. He picked a dilly in Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss, destined to be the most deranged killer in the history of Brownsville, if not in the entire United States of America.

Strauss, who had never been to Pittsburgh (he just liked the name), was called “Pep” by his friends. It was later said Strauss liked committing murder so much (it was reported he killed anywhere from 100 to 500 people), he often volunteered for murder contracts because, as District Attorney William O'Dwyer once said, “Just for the lust to kill.”

Strauss was a connoisseur in the art of killing. He used whatever weapon available, but his favorites were the ice pick (like his compatriot Dasher), and a length of rope, which Strauss used to truss up his victims backwards from ankles to throat, and then let them linger there as he watched them strangle themselves to death.

Reles later said, “When we got Pep it was like we put on a whole new troupe.”

Reles also recruited a nasty Irish killer named Seymour “Blue Jaw” Magoon, who got his moniker from the fact that he had a five o’clock shadow all day long.

Healed from his wounds, Reles called for a meeting with Happy and both crews.

              “Now what happens?” Happy said.

“Well, the Shapiros have to be hit,” Reles said. “We can’t just muscle them out; they got to go. And remember, the first one is Meyer. I got something to square him for.”

The Shapiros knew they were hunted men, but they were lucky Reles and his crew couldn’t hit the side of a barn with a scatter-gun at five paces.

For the next year, Reles and his boys stalked the streets of
Brownsvile looking for the Shapiros; especially Meyer Shapiro. They spotted Meyer 18 times and 18 times their bullets missed the mark. On the 19
th
  try, Reles finally wounded Shapiro and two innocent bystanders, but the wound was superficial and Meyer Shapiro escaped, still very much alive.

In early July of 1931, Irving Shapiro convinced Meyer that maybe they should relax and take a ride for the day to Monticello in the Catskill Mountains to visit old pal Jack
Siegal, who was on trial for running illegal slot machines.

“You look a little jumpy, Meyer,” Irv said. “We can run up and see if we can do anything for Jack. The ride will do you good.”

Since he was tired of being a clay pigeon for Reles’s inept shooting gallery, Meyer agreed to take the day off and breathe in some of that clean, fresh, upstate country air.

By this time, Abe Reles had his long tentacles throughout
Brownsvile and his ears firmly to the ground. Minutes after Irv and Meyer Shapiro left town, Reles knew about their little country excursion. Reles quickly assembled his crew and presented his plan.

“There’s a card game at the Democratic Club on Sheffield Avenue tonight,” Reles said. “Those rats are sure to be back for it. They figure to leave Monticello around four-five o’clock. That would get them down here about eight. They’ll eat and be at the club say, 10-11 o’clock. We’ll be there when they come out.”

Reles was almost exact in his calculations.

Around 1 a.m., with Reles and his crew loaded for bear, Irv and Meyer Shapiro exited the Democratic Club and headed for their cars. The only problem was - about a dozen other card players exited at the same time, forming a shield around the Shapiro brothers. Before Reles and his crew could get off a clean shot, the Shapiro brother were safely in their car and gone.

Reles was steaming mad, but he would not be deterred.

“Quick, over to their house!
” Reles told his crew. “They’ll head there!”

Reles and his men sped over to 691 Blake Avenue; the apartment building where the Shapiros lived. The Shapiros’ car was nowhere in sight.

“Good, we beat them here,” Reles said. “Now we go in the hall and wait. Remember, Meyer goes first.”

They snuck into the hallway of the apartment building, removed the overhead light bulb, and waited in the dark. Luckily, no other residents entered the apartment building, and luckily for Meyer Shapiro, he had decided he needed a nice rubdown at a nearby
bathhouse.

“I don’t think I’ll go home,” Meyer had told Irv in the car. “I’m still jumpy. Drop me off at the Cleveland Baths. I’ll stay there overnight. Maybe it will loosen me up.”

Irv Shapiro did as his brother requested, and after he parked his car near the entrance to his apartment building, Irv entered the darkened vestibule.

Reles hesitated, realizing it was Irv and not Meyer Shapiro, whom he wanted badly. However, before he could say anything, the rest of his crew commenced firing.

When the smoke cleared, Irving Shapiro, hit 18 times, was splattered dead on the tiled floor.

Scratch Shapiro brother No. 1.

Nine days later, on July 19, 1931, Meyer Shapiro was strolling down Church Avenue and East 58
th
Street in the East New York section of Brooklyn, when a dark sedan pulled up next to him, and three gunmen started firing.

Shapiro jumped into his car and tried to escape, with the sedan speeding after him.

Policeman Harold Schreck was driving nearby when he heard the gunfire. He rushed to where the shots had come from, and he spotted the dark sedan careening straight toward him.

Not seeing Shapiro speeding away for his life, Policeman Schreck ordered the driver of the sedan to pull over, but the sedan whizzed past him.

Policeman Schreck made a U-turn and gave chase; his right hand driving and his left hand firing a gun at the speeding sedan.

Soon, Schreck was joined by another police car manned by policemen Joe Fleming, with his partner Harry Phelps riding shotgun. The two police cars chased the sedan onto the streetcar tracks.

The sedan skidded all over the road, almost tipping over several times, but it always regained its balance. At one point, Policeman Schreck spotted a pistol being flung from the car into an empty lot on Sutter Avenue.

The chase ended at Livonia and Howard Avenues, where the three gangsters sprung from the car and tried to flee on foot. The cops jumped out of their two cars and caught all three men before they could get very far.

The three men turned out to be Abe Reles, Harry Strauss, and Dasher Abbandando, who had obviously lost his skills at “dashing.” The cops also found a sawed-off shotgun near the sedan (which had been stolen six days earlier at the corner of Pitkin and Stone). It was obvious; the hot shotgun had recently been discharged.

The three thugs were arrested, but they refused to talk.

The police had information that Reles and his boys were “out to get” Meyer Shapiro, but Shapiro, only slightly wounded, went into hiding. With no dead body and no one to issue a complaint, Brooklyn District Attorney Geoghan was forced to let Reles and his men go.

That made it 20 times that Meyer Shapiro had survived a Reles-led pistol attack.

As a consolation prize, a few days later, Reles and Happy Maione cornered Joey Silvers on a Brownsvile Street corner, and up close, they blew his head almost completely off his shoulders.

However, Meyer Shapiro was still on the loose, with Reles and his boys in fiery pursuit.

Meyer Shapiro decided Brooklyn was too hot for him, so he holed up in Manhattan where he thought he was safe; and he was – for a while.

While in Manhattan, Shapiro, his gang shrinking quickly, figured maybe he could establish himself in Manhattan; a little loansharking, a few slot machines, and maybe even a speakeasy
to call his own. While attempting to set up shop in Manhattan, Shapiro exposed himself to the underworld element; not a smart thing to do for a man with a bullseye on his back.

On Sept. 17, Shapiro stopped in a Manhattan speakeasy for a drink. It’s not clear who spotted him first, but soon Kid Twist, Happy, and Buggsy abducted Shapiro and took him to a Lower East Side cellar located at 7 Manhattan Avenue.

The next morning a newsboy found Shapiro’s body in that cellar. He had been shot once behind the left ear at extremely close range, which was verified by deep powder burns where the bullet had entered Shapiro’s skull. As was his plan, Reles fired the fatal shot himself, and even Reles couldn’t miss with his gun pressed up against Shapiro’s noggin.

Scratch Shapiro brother No. 2.

Now all that was left of the Shapiro gang was Willie Shapiro, who had been making noise that he was out to get Reles and his crew, despite the fact that Willie had disappeared from the streets of Brownsville.

Willie Shapiro was considered the weakest of the Shapiro brothers and not a top priority on the Boys from Brownsville’s list of things to do. Reles and Happy Maione were too busy strengthening their organizations to put much effort in locating Willie, who by this time had embarked on a career as a prizefighter. Unfortunately for Willie Shapiro, he spent most of his ring time on his back staring at the overhead lights.

By 1934, Willie Shapiro knew he was dead in the water if he insisted on going after the men who had killed his two brothers.

He told his sister Rose, “What’s the use? I can’t make it alone. I’m out of the rackets. I’m going to forget about those bums.”

It turned out that Willie had waited too long to announce his retirement from a life of crime.

Although Reles and his boys were not actively seeking Willie, he was still unfinished business, and Reles hated unfinished business.

On July 18, 1934, the day after Willie Shapiro had spoken to his sister Rose, Vito Gurino met Reles and Strauss on a Brownsville street corner.

He told them, “I just spotted Willie going into a place near Herkimer. You know, we’ve got nothing to do now (meaning killing
s). Why don’t we take him tonight and be done with it?”

Reles and Strauss agreed with Gurino’s assessment, and a few hours later they abducted Willie Shapiro from a Brownsville bar and brought him to the basement of a bar-and-grill on Rockaway Avenue, which Gurino owned with Happy Maione and Happy’s brother-in-law, Joe
Daddonna.

In the basement,
working over Willie pretty good were the hulking Gurino, Happy, Strauss, and the Dasher. The beating was most brutal, and when Willie was finally rendered unconscious, Happy put a stop to the festivities; at least for a while.

“This bum’s done for,” Happy said.

That was the cue for Strauss to perform his neat rope trick.

“Pittsburgh Phil” trussed up Willie Shapiro like a Thanksgiving turkey; then the killers watched Willie’s dance of death. When Willie stopped struggling and fell limp, the killers stuffed Willie into a laundry bag to make it easier to transport his body. They flung the laundry bag into the trunk of their car and drove to the sand dunes in a secluded area of Canarsie Flats. There they dumped the laundry bag containing Willie onto a sand dune and commenced digging.

Shortly after, a Canarsie resident, who was having trouble sleeping, decided to go for a stroll near the sand dunes. Suddenly, he was startled when he thought he detected movement on top of one of the dunes. He crept closer, and he spotted four men digging in the sand.

Suddenly, one of the men lifted his head and spotted the witness. It was Happy
, and he yelled, “Somebody made us.”

The four killers sprinted to their car, jumped in, and sped back to Brownsville

The witness ran over to where the men had been digging, and he noticed the laundry bag in the half-dug hole. He bent down, pulled open the top of the bag, and there was Willie, all trussed up and not looking too chipper.

The witness ran to the local police station, and when the police arrived soon after, Willie Shapiro was definitely dead. His body was brought to the Medical Examiner, who discovered sand in Willie’s lungs; meaning Willie had been buried alive.

Scratch Shapiro brother No. 3.

*****

With Louis Capone serving
as the intermediary to keep peace between Kid Twist and Happy, the Boys from Brownsville thrived. When Albert Anastasia needed someone murdered, he relayed this information to Capone, who gave the contract to Reles and Maione, who then used their stable of killers, including themselves, to do the dirty deeds.

However, the Boys from Brownsville’s main source of income was shylocking (loaning money out at usurious rates), bookmaking (taking illegal bets on sporting events), and floating craps (dice) games. The “floating” craps games took place on street corners and in vacant lots. The more expensive games were run in car garages, or in any building that was vacant for the night.

The shylocking and bookmaking businesses were run from the backroom of a Brownsville candy store called “Midnight Rose’s.” The store was owned by a cranky old lady named Rose, who was the mother of one of the minor members of the crew known only as “The Dapper.” Rose was hassled several times by the law over the types of people who frequented her establishment.

“Why do you let hoodlums hang out in your store?” detectives once asked her.

“Why don’t the police keep them out?” she said. “Can I help it who comes into my store?”

Another time she was asked by the police if she knew anyone named “Pittsburgh Phil.”

“Pittsburgh, Chicago, San Francisco… what do I know about them?” she said. “I was never out of Brooklyn in my life. All I know is I got ‘syracuse’ veins. I’m a sick woman.”

It was stated in a 1942 corruption report to New York Governor Herbert Lehman - written by Special Assistant Attorney John Harlan - that in 1938 alone, more than $400,000 in loans were handled by Midnight Rose herself.

There was also a Boys from Brownsville “stolen-car department,” run by the younger members of the crew, who were basically gofers for Reles, Happy Maione, Pittsburgh Phil, and the rest of the higher-ups. Teenagers like Dukey Maffetore and Pretty Levine stole cars on a regular basis, as did “Blue Jaw” Magoon and stolen-car-specialist Sholem Bernstein. Some cars were broken down and sold for their parts, but most were used as transportation in murder contracts.

It was around the time of the Willie Shapiro murder that the Boys from Brownsville moved up in stature in the National Crime Commission. Through intermediary Louis Capone, the Boys from Brownsville were given numerous murder contracts by the Commission, which culminated in the Boys from Brownsville being given more territories in Brooklyn in which to run their rackets.

There is no doubt that the Boys from Brownsville’s elimination of the Shapiro brothers spurred their transition from strictly small-timers into the major leagues of organized crime.

This brings us to…

M
urder
I
nc.

After the Castellammarese War
ended in 1931, with both opposing bosses, Joe “The Boss” Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano, ending up quite dead due to the treachery of Lucky Luciano, amongst others, Luciano along with Jewish mobster Meyer Lansky formed a nine-member National Crime Commission which cut across ethnic lines.

There was no single boss of this commission, but instead the leadership was divided equally amongst Luciano, Lansky, Lansky’s sidekick Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, Frank Costello, Joe Bonanno, Vincent Mangano, Joe “Adonis” Doto, Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, and his right-hand man Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro. (Loose cannon Dutch Schultz - real name Arthur Flegenheimer - was not a member of the Commission for exactly that reason: he was a loose cannon and could not be trusted with making
commonsense decisions.)

Of course, all corporations need a separation of powers within that corporation, whereas certain members are given duties that do not
tread upon the powers of other members (make no mistake, the National Crime Commission ran like a well-oiled machine and indeed operated like an unregistered corporation).                                                                     

This is where Murder Inc. came into play.

It was decided, that for the good of the National Crime Commission, sometimes unpleasant things needed to be done to keep the Commission nice and profitable. This included killing people who endangered the continued cash flow into the Commission’s coffers. The Commission decided that they needed to establish a separate branch of their organization, which was responsible for one thing and one thing only: the murder of people the bosses said needed to be killed.

Louie “Lepke” Buchalter was put in charge of what the press called Murder Inc., and to assist Lepke in his duties, the Commission appointed Albert Anastasia, nicknamed “The Lord High Executioner,” to be Lepke’s second-in-command.

Lepke never gave a direct order to any of his killers to do a job. Instead, Lepke used trusted men like Mendy Weiss and Louis Capone to issue the final order and decree to the hit men chosen. By keeping a level or two of insulation between himself and the actual killers Lepke figured nothing could ever be directly pinned on him.

Lepke was right, u
ntil he made one fatal mistake. But we’ll get to that later.

The first order of business for Lepke and Anastasia was to assemble a crack hit-team to do the dirty work. Through Louis Capone, who was close to Anastasia, Lepke had been nurturing a group of homicidal maniacs, some of whom would rather kill than eat. These killers were the aforementioned “The Boys from Brownsville.”

The Boys from Brownsville were hardly the only killers employed by Murder Inc., but they were the foundation which led to as many as 100 freelance assassins being put on a steady weekly salary (of $125 and up), to be ready to kill whenever they were given the order. These men were sometimes paid extra for a job especially well-done, and they were allowed to operate in designated territories in the gambling and loansharking businesses, or in any illegal operation; like hijackings and even kidnappings.

However, one thing is for sure: even if a member of Murder Inc. didn’t kill anyone for a month, or two, or three, his killing salary came in steadily every week.

Now, let me introduce Murder Incorporated’s cast of characters.

The first and foremost member of Murder Inc. turned out to be the biggest headache for Lepke: Abe “Kid Twist” Reles.

As we discussed earlier, by eliminating the three Shapiro brothers - Meyer, Irving, and Willie - Reles, along with his childhood pal Martin “Buggsy” Goldstein, took over all the illegal rackets in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. To do so, Reles enlisted the help of Harry “Happy” Maione and Frank “Dasher” Abbandando of the neighboring “Ocean Hill Hooligans.” Soon, such cutthroat killers like Harry “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss, Vito Gurino, and “Blue Jaw” Magoon were taken into the fold, and the Boys from Brownsville were a formidable group of killers indeed. The key for their transition from Brownsville to the big-time was Louis Capone, ostensibly a Brooklyn restaurateur, who was very close to Albert Anastasia.

When Anastasia, along with Lepke, was entrusted by the Commission to form Murder Inc., Anastasia approached Capone and said, “What about Reles and his boys from Brownsville? Are these guys capable of doing what needs to be done? No questions asked.”

Capone assured Anastasia that Reles and his boys were stone-cold killers and efficient ones at that. The only problem Capone had was that Reles and Maione, considered to be the No. 1 and No. 2 leaders of the group, hated each other’s guts, and they didn’t trust each other.

Despite their differences, Reles and Maione worked like a well-oiled killing machine. Under the direction of Anastasia and Capone, the Murder Inc. killers operated in a manner that was almost foolproof.

The key to their method was the concepts of corroboration and separation of powers. The bosses brought in several men to do different aspects of each job, with one man knowing nothing about the other men and their involvement. Still, each man was so intimately involved in the operation, he would be considered an accomplice, and his possible corroborating testimony was useless in a court of law, in case he ever decided to turn rat.

For instance, let’s say Joe
Schmoe from Illinois was next on Murder Inc.’s hit list.

Murder Inc. would hire one man to steal an automobile for the getaway. Then another man would be directed to get as many guns as were needed for the job. Then there would be a third man, who would be the “finger-man”: the one who would point out Joe
Schmoe to the actual shooters. Then of course, they needed a getaway driver and a driver of a “crash car”: a legitimately registered car, which would crash into a pursuing police car, or the car of a nosy citizen after the deed was done. The reason for the legit car for the crash car was that the driver of the crash car could claim it was just an accident, while the shooters escaped in the stolen car. (For obvious reasons, it was not a smart idea to crash into a police car with a stolen car.)

The beauty of this routine was that each man involved in the murder would have limited knowledge of the other men involved in the hit. The man who stole the car would not know who purchased the guns, or who did the actual shooting, etc…etc…

Of course, Lepke and Anastasia did not rely entirely on the Boys from Brownsville to do all their dirty work. Other killers were needed to do a variety of jobs in a myriad of locals. One such killer was enlisted from an unlikely place: the Loch Sheldrake Country Club in the Catskills in upstate New York. 

*****

The Loch Sheldrake Country
Club, owned by Sam Tannenbaum - a former grocery store proprietor from Orchard Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan - was a ritzy resort where affluent Jewish families journeyed for their summer vacations.

Of course, Lepke and his crew were also well-represented at the Loch Sheldrake. On any given day, the gangsters who could be seen rucking around the pool included Lepke’s partner Jacob “Gurrah” Shapiro, Shimmy
Salles - a bagman for Lepke's rackets, Curly Holtz - a labor racketeer, and “Big Harry” Greenburg, who was Lepke and Shapiro’s partner in various Garment Center swindles.

Gurrah Shapiro, a thick-chested gorilla-of-a-man, was a cartoon-type-character who was quite capable, as was Lepke, of pulling the trigger whenever the situation called for such actions. Whenever Shapiro got  angry, and that was often, his favorite saying was “Get out of here!” Yet, with his gravelly voice and Eastern European accent, the phrase sounded like “
Gurra dahere.”              Hence, his pals gave Shapiro the nickname - “Gurrah.”

Sam Tannenbaum had a teenage son named Allie, whom Sam was grooming as his replacement when Sam decided to retire. Sam Tannenbaum employed Allie at his hotel; either waiting tables, or setting up beach chairs by the lake. Sam also did not pay Allie a dime for his work until after the summer season was over, to ensure Allie didn’t disappear to his old haunts on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

As the owner's son, the Jewish gangsters invited Allie Tannenbaum to all their parties, where Allie got a fresh taste of what it was like to be around people who had coins constantly jingling in their pockets. This made Tannenbaum a likely suspect to be drawn into their world of murder and mayhem.

One day, after the summer season of 1931 was over at Loch Sheldrake, Tannenbaum was strolling down Broadway in Manh
attan when he bumped into “Big Harry” Greenberg.

Greenberg asked Tannenbaum, “Do you want a job?”

“I could use one, if it pays,” Tannenbaum said.

Greenberg smiled. “This one is for Lepke. You know what kind of a job it will be.”

Tannenbaum shrugged, and he said he would do whatever it took to earn some fancy cash, so he could spread it around like his Jewish gangster idols.

Greenberg didn’t realize he was hiring one of his eventual killers.

Tannenbaum started working for Lepke; initially for $35 a week. His job included general assignments like slugging, strikebreaking, and throwing stink bombs where they were needed to be thrown. Tannenbaum later graduated to more important duties, like “schlammin’s,” which meant he “schlammed” or cracked the heads of union workers who were not towing Lepke's line.

As his work production increased, so did Tannenbaum's salary. In short order, Tannenbaum was intimately involved in six murders
, and he helped dispose of the body of a seventh murder victim. As a result of “making his bones” in the murder department, Tannenbaum started raking in an impressive $125 a week - more than he made in an entire summer season at his father’s resort.

Because of Tannenbaum's summer location in the Catskills, Tannenbaum’s job consisted mostly of murders and extortions in upstate New York. Tannenbaum was a valuable asset to Lepke in Sullivan County,
since Tannenbaum was familiar with the back roads and lakes where bodies could be made to disappear. During the winter, Tannenbaum and his family vacationed in Florida, where Tannenbaum worked as a strong-arm-man in several of Lepke's gambling joints.