The Mafia Encyclopedia (106 page)

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Authors: Carl Sifakis

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BOOK: The Mafia Encyclopedia
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Page 309
Murder, Inc., "canary" Abe Reles flew out a window of a Coney Island hotel while in police custody.
Was it a jump, fall or heave?
borough of Brooklyn alone, many of which they hadn't even known had happened. Reles knew; he had been in on the ground floor when Murder, Inc., was created. He qualified as a second-rung leader in Murder, Inc., standing just below such top leaders of the extermination "troop" as Louis Lepke and Albert Anastasia. As an underworld stool pigeon, he was much more highly placed than Joe Valachi, for instance, and his information was much more accurate.
When Reles was picked up in 1940 along with other major and minor members of Murder, Inc., on suspicion of homicide, Kid Twist started worrying that someone else of importance might start talking. He opted to save his own skin by talking first. His deal with prosecutors: He would not be prosecuted for any murder he participated in provided he revealed it, divulged all the details and named all his accomplices.
Then Reles started talking. He said that such troop members as Pittsburgh Phil, Happy Maione, Dasher Abbandando, Charlie Workman, Mendy Weiss, Louis Capone, Chicken Head Gurino and Buggsy Goldstein, to name some, were sent on murder assignments not just in New York but all around the nation, at times to knock off characters whose identities they didn't even know. Reles (like Pittsburgh Phil} was proud of his handiwork and often trekked down to Times Square after a job to pick up an out-of-town paper to find out just who some of his victims were.
One murder Reles "read about in the Times" was that of a loan shark named Whitey Rudnick. Working as a team Pittsburgh Phil, Dasher Abbandando and Happy Maione had stabbed him more than 60 times, smashed open his skull and, just to be on the safe side, strangled him. Reles was not exactly contrite about the Rudnick killing, announcing that Rudnick deserved what he got since "he was a stool pigeon."
Abbandando and Maione were to go to the chair for that one. Pittsburgh Phil was not prosecuted for the crime, but only because the prosecution had so many others to choose from. (Phil committed somewhere in excess of 100 Murder, Inc., rubouts.) Reles doomed Phil and Buggsy Goldstein for the vicious garroting of a gambler named Puggy Feinstein. Reles provided so much information on the rubout of crime kingpin Dutch Schultz that one of the hit men, Charlie Workman, after reviewing the mounting evidence against him, switched to a plea of guilty to settle for a life sentence instead of the electric chair.
Kid Twist's grand jury testimony helped build a successful case against the great crime boss Louis Lepke as
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well as two important Lepke aides, Louis Capone and Mendy Weiss. They were convicted for the assassination of a garment industry foe named Joseph Rosen, but Reles was not around to testify at the trial.
He had taken part in several trials for more than a year, during which time he was kept under close protective custody on the sixth floor of a wing of the Half Moon Hotel in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn. Sometime during the early morning hours of November 12, 1941, Reles jumped, fell or was picked up and heaved out a window to his deaththis despite the fact that he was always guarded by six officers and was never supposed to be left alone in a room, even while he slept. In Reles's room, police found several sheets tied together and proceeded to develop a variety of theories, some rather amusing. They said he was trying to escape, or climb down one floor so that he could then romp back upstairs and scare the daylights out of his guards in a malicious prank, or commit suicide. If it were a suicide attempt Reles apparently wanted to climb down the sheets part way so that he wouldn't have to fall too far. The hitch in all the police theories was that the Kid's body had landed a good 20 feet away from the wall of the building, which would have made him a gymnast of near-Olympic abilities.
Twenty years later, an ailing Lucky Luciano, one of the chief founders of the national crime syndicate in the early 1930s, insisted that Frank Costello had set up Reles' demise and that $50,000 had been distributed within the police department to have Reles flipped out the window. Years after that, interviews in Israel with Meyer Lansky and Doc Stacher confirmed Luciano's story, but the fee was $100,000 in allevidently the wealth was not enjoyed only by members of the police department.
The syndicate at the time had not been averse to sacrificing all those who were electric chair-bound but wanted Reles's evidence halted before he doomed more, including Albert Anastasia and Bugsy Siegel. In later inquiries, William O'Dwyer, then the Brooklyn district attorney and later mayor of New York, was subjected to intense criticism for failing to prosecute Anastasia in what was described as a "perfect case" based on Kid Twist's testimony. O'Dwyer insisted the case "went out the window" along with Reles.
In the 1945 prosecution of Anastasia, O'Dwyer's performance was denounced by a grand jury as one of "negligence, incompetence and flagrant irresponsibility.'' In the words of the grand jury O'Dwyer was
...
in possession of competent legal evidence that Anastasia was guilty of first degree murder and otber vicious crimes. the proof admittedly was sufficient to warrant Anastasia's indictment and conviction, but Anastasia was neitber prosecuted, indicted nor convicted.... the consistent and complete failure to prosecute tbe overlord of organized crime ... is so revolting tbat we cannot permit tbese disclosures to be filed away in tbe same manner tbe evidence against Anastasia was beretofore "put in tbe files
."
There were worse innuendoes swirling around Reles's death. Ed Reid, the prize-winning reporter for the
Brooklyn Eagle
, charged that "Reles served several purposes besides being a fount of information about gang activities. Some of the information he gave out was used by unscrupulous persons connected with law enforcement in Brooklynto shake down gangsters."
Had Reles remained alive, other important members of the syndicate, beyond even Anastasia and Siegel, might have been nailed, and a far more lethal blow would have been dealt the crime syndicate. As it was, Murder, Inc., was smashedas it existed in Brooklynbut the syndicate continued to grow.
As for Abe Reles's epitaph, he was "the canary who could sing but couldn't fly."
See also:
Murder, Incorporated
.
"Respect" in the Mafia
There has probably been more nonsense written about
rispetto
, or "respect," among mafiosi than about any aspect of the organization. For example, important dons are shown "respect" when assassinated; it is required that they be shot from in front, that they have the right to know they are being killed with the proper decorum.
Actually Mafia hits, regardless of the target, are made as quickly and efficiently as possible. Often the rubout occurs while victims are dining. Since they are usually sitting with their back to a wall, a shot in the face is more practical than polite. And a shot from the front also eliminates errors of victim identification and, ultimately, is more likely fatal.
Possibly one of the few truly respectful Mafia killings was that of mobster chieftain Willie Moretti. Very popular with most of the Mafia, he was erased in a "mercy killing" because he was "going off his rocker" and babbling too much. He was shot in front. In 1985 Gambino crime family boss Paul Castellano was shot from in front as he got out of his limousine, but then few people get out of automobiles backwards.
In major Mafia rubouts, such dons as Salvatore Maranzano, Albert Anastasia and Sam Giancana got absolutely no respect in the way they were killed. A longtime boss, Vince Mangano, ended up permanently missing and thus allowed not even a funeral, hardly a sign of respect. When the would-be assassin of Frank Costello called out to him, "This is for you, Frank," before firing, he probably was not trying to make
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Costello turn and take the bullet in the face. He was more likely trying to freeze a moving target.
Regardless of assassination modus operandi, Mafia bosses axe treated with deference. They demand it and they get it, not out of respect but out of plain fear. In Sicily the
gabelloti
(loosely, tax-men), mafiosi who kept order on great estates and then came to own them, earned respect for their capacity for violence. A corporation executive earns "respect" from his underlings because he can sever them. A Mafia boss severs his inferiors; only the method varies slightly.
It is hardly surprising that mobsters scrape and bow before their boss, speak in hushed tones, hold doors, offer seats and speak only when spoken to. According to one son of a New York family boss: "My father would light a cigarette and five people would jump to push the ashtray close to him. At dinner, people would wait to speak until he spoke to them. If he put down his fork, you stopped eating, even if you weren't finished. My father was god to everybody."
Respect has come to have an entirely different meaning in the modern American Mafia. It is a quality dominated by the dollar sign. Top mafiosi demand their underlings show respect by turning over a portion of their illegal earnings. A mobster who bows and scrapes but gives no money is a candidate for a car trunk. Similarly, when members of a crime family move on to the turf of another don, he takes offense because this is not showing respectand appropriate revenues that should be his. As informer Vinnie Teresa has pointed out, New England Mafia boss Raymond Patriarca demanded respect by getting a piece of the action on everything that went on in his domain. He always took a piece of the profits but never a piece of any losses. Once Patriarca joined a conspiracy to handle a load of stolen cigarettes. He put up $22,000 but after the loot was obtained, the FBI seized it. Patriarca wanted to know from nothing. He was only a partner in profits, not losses, and the other conspirators had to scrape up $22,000 to pay him back.
Still Patriarca could himself exhibit respect toward older dons, even though they were retired and played no more role in crime and could do no more than sit around on chairs on the sidewalk. Patriarca saw that they got their cut and an envelope out of some kind of mob racket. If there was a serious mob problem, he also called them in for consultation. He knew they were familiar with the members of organized crime all around the country and their characteristics. Teresa said that Patriarca felt gratitude toward them: "They got the town [Boston] in the bag, and it's been in the bag ever since. They were the ones who made the connections with the police departments. They'd had connections in the district attorney's office for thirty or forty years. They made the mob."
One Mafia boss who always demanded the trappings of respect was Carlo Gambino. In that sense his mob presence was far different than his public image of a mild, turn-the-other-cheek, vulnerable little man. But he was transformed in mob contracts. He followed all the demands of honor his position commanded and exercised the little-known points of honor among mafiosi. If he shook hands with a person he did not accept, he turned his palm under the other's, making it clear he was merely going through the motions. If he accepted the man, he shook hands by putting his own palm on top.
Again, though, Gambino's main interest in honor lay in the requirement of payment as a sign of respect. He granted a subordinate, Joe Paterno, supervisory rights for the crime family's affairs in much of New Jersey. Paterno was expected to hand over a certain percentage of the take. If the amount stipulated was 25 percent, Paterno turned over that amount religiously. Similarly, criminals operating under Paterno had to do the same. One criminal engaged in long-term looting of a manufacturer's warehouse had to get Paterno's approval to operate. He also had to show respect by paying Paterno 10 percent of what he stole each week. Paterno was rather easygoing about it. As the criminal later related, when he gave Paterno $200 at the end of the week it meant he had taken in $2,000 in total. Paterno never questioned the mobster's word. Actually, he was cheating Paterno and Paterno probably knew it. But on the other hand Paterno was getting 10 percent of something for doing zero percent. That was respect.
Restaurants and the Mafia
The day after Paul Castellano was rubbed out along with a top aide outside the Sparks Steak House in December 1985, the crowds were out in force. Some of the people had come to eat at the East 46th Street, Manhattan, restaurant, others merely to gawk, take pictures, and try to find bloodstains amid the drippings of oil and anti-freeze at the spot where Castellano had fallen.
In the crowd was a somber-faced restaurateur. He told reporters he would have "dragged the body around the corner to my place" if he had realized how much publicity the killing would generate. Inside Sparks, regular patrons of the restaurant bewailed the fact that the establishment would now be so popular that they would have a hard time getting a table thereafter. Only in New York, ran the consensus of opinion both inside and outside the steak house, would people step over bodies lying in the street to get into a popular eatery.
Mafia watchers over the years have had to become restaurant watchers. One Sparks street groupie suggested that New York restaurants guidebooks add a

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