Abe Reles: A Brotherhood Betrayed
Gary interviews Michael Cannell, the author of four non-fiction books and former sportswriter and editor for the New York Times. His most recent book, A Brotherhood betrayed: The man Behind the Rise and Fall of Murder Inc. tells the story of Murderer Incorporated’s most prolific killer, Abe Reles. The feared Albert Anastasia had turned to a group of young ambitious Jewish gangsters to carry out murders for the Mafia. They were so feared by other gangsters and they committed so many murders that the press dubbed the group Murder Inc.
The Making of a Killer
Abe Reles grew up on Manhatten’s lower east side and like most of his peers, he gravitated to a life of crime. Like most young men, he followed the older gangsters. He even adopted the nickname of “Kid Twist” after hearing about an older Jewish gangster named Max “Kid Twist” Zweiback. The most prominent Jewish gangster of the day was Lepke Buchalter. During the 1930s, chaos among organized crime members ran rampant. the boss of bosses, Lucky Luciano, and the other bosses formed the Commission. In one of their early moves, they created a hit team to handle rebellious young gangsters and bring them in line with the established Mafia Commission. They noticed Abe “Kid Twist” Reles as a man they could trust and picked him to be the anchor of this new hit team that became known as Murder Inc.
Abe Reles: The Canary Who Sang But Couldn’t Fly
Law enforcement and the press noticed the rise in unexplained and unprosecuted murders of gangsters. Thomas Dewey was the crime-busting politically ambitious prosecutor. He chose an aggressive Irishman named William O’Dwyer as his assistant and gave him the job to eliminate this professional criminal culture that had dominated New York City since prohibition. O’Dwyer found a good informant named Harry Rudolph who ratted on Abe Reles. It was not long before Kid Twist realized this only chance to avoid the Electric Chair was to become a cooperating witness against Lepke Buchalter and other mafia bosses. The Mafia Commission put out the word that anyone who killed Abe Reles would be paid $100,000. By 1941 a momentous trial was underway that threatened New York’s most brutal mob bosses, specifically the Lord high Executioner, Albert Anastasia. O’Dwyer based his case on a star witness, Abe Reles. The police stashed Kid Twist in a hotel room at the Coney Island Half Moon hotel and maintained 24 hours a day guard on the door. But before he could testify, the guards found his shattered body on the rooftop of an adjoining building. The first question was whether or not it was a botched escape or murder. They did find several sheets tied together and hanging out the window. The Grand Jury ruled he had tied these sheets to a radiator and when he tried to slide down them, he lost his grip and fell to his death.
Michael Cannell’s A Brotherhood Betrayed documents the rise and all of Murder, Inc. through Reles’ life span from punk gangsters, to a top hitman to stool pigeon, and ending with his death. on a Coney Island rooftop. He colorfully depicts a time when crime became “organized” crime. The time of wise-cracking mobsters with names like Kid Twist, The Mad Hatter, The Prime Minister of the Underworld, and Tick Tock Tannenbaum.
Show Notes by Gary Jenkins
Support the Podcast
Hit me up on Venmo for a cup of coffee or a shot and a beer @ganglandwire
To go to the store or make a donation Click Here.
To rent Brothers against Brothers, the documentary, click here.
To rent Gangland Wire, the documentary, click here
To subscribe on iTunes click here, please give me a review and help others find the podcast
Transcript
Hello, welcome while you are tappers out there back here in the studio gangland wire. I have a really interesting story today an interview a guest with
00:09
Arthur from New York, the writer writes a story about the canary who could fly but couldn’t sing now, if you’re any kind of a Mob aficionado, and all you know who I’m talking about, and Abe Reles, so it’s Michael Cannell. Well, Michael, welcome. Thank you, Gary. It’s really nice to be here with you. So I don’t remember how I found you. Twitter maybe or something. I don’t know. You know, you just got to keep throwing stuff out there. When you got a book yourself, or a podcast you’re promoting. You just got to keep throwing stuff out there. And notice that I don’t remember how I even got in contact with you. I thought, Well, this sounds interesting here. I’ve never really done a story just about a relative. I’ve done stuff all around even during that time and murder Incorporated. I just did an interview with Alan guy who whose uncle was Charlie workman and the name of his book is Uncle Charlie killed that Schultz. Yeah.
01:10
This period of time, and the 30s and 40s. Up to the 50s is is really an interesting time in New York City for mob activity. I mean, they they ruled New York, it seemed that neighborhoods they ruled the neighborhood, it seemed to me like yeah, they certainly did. Abe Reles is the gentleman in question here came from the neighborhood of Brownsville, Brooklyn, which was in a way a spin off from the Lower East Side. The Lower East Side was, of course, where all the immigrants settled when they came came in to New York. And it was crowded with crowded really to the rafters with with Jews and Italians in this period in the 1920s and 30s. And so, Brownsville was a way to get out of the Lower East Side. And it was really countryside until the city extended the subway out there and also began to build bridges that made it made it accessible and so Abe Reles’ family, a Jewish family from what we would now call Austria
02:23
came to New York and ended up in in Brownsville. A hard working family his father sold clothes out of a street pushcart. But from a very young age he relishes
02:40
was headed to crime. I mean even even as a teenager he was a kind of apprentice mobster running running errands for the local mob. So Brownsville would have been really the toughest neighborhood in, in America, I think we can I think we can say that and maybe the toughest neighborhood of all time, and he was maybe the toughest young man in that in that neighborhood.
03:13
That that’s an interesting
03:16
time when Jewish immigrants their fathers were, were had stores and push carts and a tie in young man, their fathers had stores and push carts. And then they started coming of age during that time during the 30s and and they started kind of taken over from the old guard and for people who are kept out of kind of mainstream jobs government jobs, the Irish already had all the government jobs sewed up and and the Germans had been here for a long time. So these guys and so many of these bright young tough guys turned to crime and in turn they are smart enough to know that organized crime is a way to make money at crime I always find that that fascinating and and he’s he is one of those guys it sounds to me like on and I forgot to mention the name of the book here it is a brotherhood betrayed the man behind the rise and fall or murder Incorporated. And it’s on Amazon and I’ll have links to it in the show notes and in my YouTube Michael I will have a picture of the cover of it right now.
04:23
So let’s
04:25
let’s talk a little more about how you know how did he get involved with murder court incorporated and most of us I think know that was you know, an arm if you will of the SE and like Cosa Nostra mafia and and Albert Anastasia was thinking to be like, it’d be kind of like the, the guy that that used them or worked with them from the tie in crime families and, and so kind of how did he get into that? Yeah, I mean, sort of the background to that Gary is as as you know that
05:00
At previous generation of, of gangsters, mostly men who had come over from Sicily and Naples, were known as the moustache Pete’s they came to America, not particularly because they wanted to be Americans. They didn’t really care about the American dream. They came to America for the most part because they were fleeing prosecution in Italy and there were no extradition
05:32
treaties or laws then. So coming to America living on the in the Lower East Side, living in Little Italy in lower Manhattan was a safe refuge for them. But while they were here,
05:46
they never they were never American eyes. They really
05:51
they really lived almost as if they were still in Italy, and pursued and pursued their kind of their grievances and vendettas, just as they would have in in Italy. The next generation had a slightly different sensibility. You know, the Bugsy Siegel’s? The Lucky Luciano was the Myers seagulls they had a they had a different notion. They were for the most part born in America, and thought of themselves as American. And they wanted they wanted organized crime. They wanted to Americanize organized crime. And they wanted it to be about profit, that great American pursuit of profit. So they were not concerned with these tribal grievances they really wanted to run. They really wanted to run organized crime as an American corporation, almost. And so Lucky Luciano in particular,
06:58
kind of spearheaded this. And he invited his his boss, Joe Masuria, to a Trattoria in a Back Street in Coney Island one day, they had a very big lunch, they played cards. And then at a at a very specific time, Lucky Luciano excused himself and went to the men’s restroom. And when he went to the men’s room, a couple of guys came in and shot Joe Masuria. And that was the beginning of the of this sort of a coup. And so they got rid of the old guys. And now Lucky Luciano. And his friends were in charge. And they they set up a what they call the commission of basically a board of directors that would run organized crime nationally. And they set it up almost like McDonald’s, you know, with franchises the different the different gangs in Chicago or Los Angeles or St. Louis.
07:59
You know, they ran,
