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 the Italian-American Mafia, the Jewish Mob, and other criminal organizations in New York City and elsewhere. Murder, Inc. was composed of both Jewish-American and Italian-American gangsters, and members were mainly recruited from poor and working-class Jewish and Italian neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn. It was initially headed by Louis "Lepke" Buchalter and later by Albert "Mad Hatter" Anastasia. Murder, Inc. was believed to be responsible for between 400 and 1,000 contract killings, until the group was exposed in 1941 by former member Abe "Kid Twist" Reles. In the trials that followed, many members were convicted and executed, and 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 the 47th governor of New York.