Murder, Inc.

Murder, Inc. (Murder, Incorporated) was an organized crime group active from 1929 to 1941 that acted as the enforcement arm of the National Crime Syndicate – a closely connected criminal organization that included and was started by the Irish Mob, and included Italian-American Mafia, the Jewish Mob, and other criminal organizations in New York City and elsewhere.^[1] Murder, Inc. was composed of Irish, Jewish, and Italian-American gangsters, and members were mainly recruited from poor and working-class Irish, Jewish, and Italian neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn. It was initially headed by Louis "Lepke" Buchalter and later by Albert "Mad Hatter" Anastasia.^[2]

Murder, Inc. was believed to be responsible for between 400 and 1,000 contract killings,^[3] until the group was exposed in 1941 by former member Abe "Kid Twist" Reles.^[2] In the trials that followed, many members were convicted and executed, and Abe Reles himself died after suspiciously falling from a window. Thomas E. Dewey first came to prominence as a prosecutor of Murder, Inc. and other organized crime cases, before being elected to become the 47th governor of New York.^[4]