Red Dye Murders: Hafia extortion hoax
The Mafia did not originate red dye murders. The trusty confidence swindle actually went back many decades. But several crime groups, including the Genovese family and the Gallo brothers, often used the gimmick in their extortion plots. It works as follows.
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A victim is picked out, often a bookmaker or some other money man, and pressure is put on him and another
supposed
victim at the same time. There is a general sitdown meeting involving the mobsters, the victim and the phony victim. The mobsters become upset when both their victims are reluctant to pay the protection money demanded. Suddenly things turn violent, and the mobsters pull guns and force the two victims into a car. There the phony victim keeps arguing with the mobsters and suddenly some shots are fired. They are really blanks. The phony victim, however, has been fitted with small explosive caps that discharge bloodreally, red dye. The phony victim is pronounced dead before the startled eyes of the real victim. The car is pulled off the road and the "body" dumped in some bushes. Then the mobsters turn to the real victim to determine if he now sees the wisdom of purchasing protection. He generally does. (In one case, the Genoveses got a sucker to agree to pay protection of $100 a week, plus a new Cadillac every Christmas for one of the mafiosi.)
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The red dye hoax seems to be rather sparingly used. Perhaps this is because it requires the utmost faith by the phony victim in his confederates. In the twisty world of Mafia contract plots, all that is necessary to rub out a mobster is to sell him on acting the ruse in a red dye murder. In such a case, the murder is real.
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Reina, Tom (18891930): Early New York crime family leader
Few killings illustrate the sinister twists that are possible in Mafia intrigues as well as the case of Tom Reina, whose murder on February 26, 1930, is considered by most crime historians to be the start of the bloody Castellammarese War.
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It is a simplification to call the Castellammarese War a two-sided affair. True, the battle was primarily between the New York Mafia factions of Joe the Boss Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano. But a third, and ultimately decisive force was Lucky Luciano and the Young Turks (aided by the important Jewish mobsters under Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel), who conspired to defeat both sides. They danced back and forth in cunning maneuvers to weaken both foes.
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Reina was an important Masseria partner, albeit not an enthusiastic one. He was casting friendly eyes toward Maranzanoespecially after Masseria began pressuring him for a cut of his rackets. Through allies serving under Reina, especially Tom Gagliano and Tommy Lucchese, Luciano, himself also allied with Masseria, learned of the Masseria plans to assassinate Maranzano supporters Joe Profaci and young Joe Bonanno. Since Luciano was counting on Profaci and Bonanno in his future national crime syndicate, he wanted to prevent their deaths, and equally he did not want Reina to defect to Maranzano since that might tilt the contest too much in the latter's favor. Therefore the Luciano forces decided Reina had to be killed.
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In his so-called
Last Testament
Luciano claims, "I really hated to knock off Tom Reina, and none of my guys really wanted to either. Reina was a man of his word, he had culture, and he was a very honorable Italian.'' This need not be taken as pure gospel. Luciano gained the allegiance of Gagliano and Lucchese by promising them the Reina empire.
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On the Wednesday night of his murder, Reina, as he did once every week, had dinner at his aunt's home on Sheridan Avenue in the Bronx. When Reina left the house, Vito Genovese, a Luciano underling, was waiting. Reina was surprised to see him but started to wave his hand at Genovese. As he did, Vito blew his head off with a shotgun.
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Joe Valachi would later marry the dead Reina's daughter, but his information on the Reina assassination, as on a number of other matters, was of only limited value.
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Reles, Abe "Kid Twist" (19071941): Murder, Inc., killer and informer
When Abe Reles, a Brooklyn gangster, was picked up by police in 1940, he sported a rap sheet with 42 arrests accumulated over a 16-year period. Hauled in on charges of assault, robbery, burglary, possession of narcotics, disorderly conduct and six charges involving murder, he nevertheless had done only six minor stretches, with never a single major conviction.
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Reles might well have eluded conviction again. The law didn't know the
real
Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, a man who had personally taken part in at least 30 murders. The law also did not know there was such a thing as an organization later to be dubbed Murder, Incorporated, the enforcement arm of the new national crime syndicate. Some cops knew about something called "the combination," which linked up a great many Jewish and Italian mobsters, but that such an organization had a special troop to handle assassinations was something they had not even guessed. Murder, Inc., did exist and had by then handled something like 400 to 500 murders in the 1930s.
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But once Reles started singing in what was called the most remarkable "canary act in underworld history," goggle-eyed investigators cleared up 49 murders in the
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