Louis Buchalter

Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, 1939

Louis "Lepke" Buchalter (born February 6, 1897 in New York City , † March 4, 1944 in Sing Sing Prison in Ossining , New York ) was an American mobster . Along with Albert Anastasia, he was part of the management of the criminal organization Murder, Inc. and is now part of the Kosher Nostra .

In the early 1930s, Louis Buchalter and Jacob Shapiro gained almost complete control of the textiles and clothing industries in the New York City area through the violent infiltration of local unions and the takeover of various transportation and manufacturing companies . As a result, Buchalter is considered one of the most powerful and ruthless union criminals in American history and is the only high-ranking member of organized crime to be sentenced to death and executed in the United States.

biography

Early years

Louis Buchalter was the child of Jewish emigrants from Russia in the Lower East Side of Manhattan (New York). Hence his nickname Lepke , a corruption of the Yiddish "Lepkeleh" (English Little Louis ). After the death of his father and the illness of his mother, who then left New York and went to a health resort, the young bookalter was left on his own. While his siblings were already completing their training or pursuing honest jobs, he was the only one of the children to drop out of school and began to earn a living with petty criminal activities.

He later became a member of a street gang in Brownsville (New York) , a district in which the most important " Kosher Nostra " arrived in 1911 : Meyer Lansky . On the streets of Brooklyn , Buchalter made friends with Meyer Lansky and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel . Shortly after his mother moved to Denver in 1912 , Buchalter probably met Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro, and together they specialized in extorting protection money from shopkeepers in the Lower East Side . In 1915, Lepke was charged with various break-ins and shoplifting for the first time, but was acquitted. At the end of February 1916, Buchalter and an accomplice were arrested after a break-in in Bridgeport and sentenced to a reformatory in Cheshire in May of the same year . After his release in July 1917 probation returned Buchalter back to New York and continue earning with theft for a living. In September 1917 he was arrested again and charged with serious theft. In January 1918 Buchalter was sentenced to 18 months in prison in Sing Sing . After the interval through Auburn in the state prison Auburn Correctional Facility had been moved, he was released after just one year.

In 1920 he was again served a prison sentence to which he had been sentenced for burglary. He spent this prison sentence again in Sing Sing, on March 6, 1922 he was released on parole. Immediately after his release, he joined Jacob Shapiro in 1922 in the “labor racketeering” and, like Shapiro, became a member of Jacob “Little Augie” Orgen's gang . The mobsters ' ticket , particularly in the Garment District of Manhattan , was the support of scabs . The district was given this name because a focus of settled " sweatshops " of the clothing industry (en: garment) had formed there.

Infiltration of the unions and establishment of Murder Inc.

In the so-called fourth “labor slugger war” , Buchalter and Shapiro probably murdered the leader of their gang Jacob Orgen and jointly took over his position. Immediately after the drive-by shoot , the two were arrested for the murder of Orgen and the attempted murder of his business partner and bodyguard Legs Diamond , but charges were dropped due to lack of evidence.

From then on, Shapiro and Buchalter concentrated together on infiltration of the local unions by their followers. The mafia-like structures that formed within the unions enabled them to exert influence on a wide variety of industrial sectors. Buchalter hired numerous men who were supposed to carry out blackmail and murder assignments in order to secure and massively expand the criminal activities. With that he created one of the foundations of " Murder, Inc. " Ultimately, Buchalter and Shapiro were able to de facto establish a cartel with which they dominated the respective market.

As the public gradually became aware of the extent of the conglomerate of criminal gangs in New York and the prosecution began to scrutinize the structures behind the mafia entities, the pressure on Buchalter and other criminal leaders grew. Gang leader Dutch Schultz , who faced a conviction, was of the opinion that the only way to avoid conviction was to kill prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey , and asked the National Crime Syndicate for permission to kill Dewey.

While Albert Anastasia and Jacob Shapiro agreed, the request met with rejection from the remaining executives such as Lucky Luciano and Buchalter, as they feared that it would only come more into the focus of the public. Schultz wanted to carry out the murder of prosecutor Dewey, which is why the "National Crime Syndicate" decided to murder Schultz, and he and three of his followers were shot on October 23, 1935 by two members of Murder Inc.

After the death of Schultz, Dewey put the focus of his investigation on Shapiro and Buchalter. When Dewey believed he had secured enough evidence against the gang leaders to obtain a conviction, the New York Police Department launched a nationwide manhunt and distributed the wanted information on a large scale . Buchalter, who was facing charges of drug smuggling , preferred to go into hiding. He now lived in small apartments in New York and began to have Murder Inc. assassinate potential witnesses for his involvement in crimes.

In 1939, Buchalter lost the support of other high-ranking figures in organized crime. They demanded that Buchalter face the authorities in order to calm down the investigative authorities, and they threatened otherwise to bring about the end of his group and his power himself. Buchalter accepted the request, on the one hand to prevent a gang war, and on the other hand because he was pretended to be an alleged deal with FBI director Edgar Hoover regarding a maximum sentence.

Louis “Lepke” Buchalter (center) and J. Edgar Hoover (left); 1939

Louis Buchalter surrendered to the authorities after he had previously met with Hoover to get the FBI director a high-profile arrest. That there was no agreement on a maximum sentence was made clear to Buchalter during his arrest when Hoover asked him personally:

"Where are all your high and mighty and influential friends now, Mr. Buchalter?"

"Where are your almighty and influential friends now, Mr. Buchalter?"

- According to Walter Winchell , a witness to the arrest and media representative, it is a quote from Edgar Hoover

Buchalter was sentenced in the subsequent criminal proceedings to a prison term of 14 years for drug smuggling. The term of imprisonment was then extended to 30 years in a further process because of the involvement in the infiltration of the trade unions.

Abe Reles and Joseph Rosen

When in 1940 Kings County Attorney William O'Dwyer charged gang member Abe Reles with involvement in a murder, he provided the prosecutor with detailed information about the machinations of his organization and unsolved murder cases in order to obtain mitigation himself.

So he revealed u. a. the murder of the confectionary dealer Joseph Rosen, which had been considered an unsolved police case for four years. Rosen was on 12./13. He was shot dead in his Brownsville, New York City, shop on September 9, 1936 . According to Reles, Louis Buchalter ordered the murder of Rosen, which Harry Strauss , James Ferraco , Emanuel Weiss , Sholem Bernstein , Philip Cohen and Louis Capone had been involved in planning and carrying out . Joseph Rosen had previously owned a freight company that transported clothing from Pennsylvania that had been made in union-free sewing shops. When Buchalter wanted to blackmail dealers who had previously refused to pay contributions to Buchalter's union empire by stopping their suppliers in the 1930s, Joseph Rosen was also forced to stop delivering goods to these dealers or to accept their goods. The lack of orders meant that Rosen had to close his shipping company. From this point onwards, Rosen demanded both new work and reparation payments from Buchalter, who initially tried to fulfill the wishes of the former haulage owner. But Rosen could not be satisfied and turned to his friend, the mobster Max Rubin, who negotiated with Buchalter. Finally, it was agreed to let Rosen a candy store (am .: "Candy Store"), but he ruined it. Because of his new demands and threats that he would inform the prosecutor about Buchalter's machinations, he had become a danger to Buchalter.

The end

Louis "Lepke" Buchalter in court; December 2, 1941

When the hit men Seymour Magoon and Albert Tannenbaum became informants of the judiciary and testified against Buchalter and his henchmen, his fate was sealed. Buchalter apparently underestimated the possible burden of Tannenbaum, since he was not involved in the murder of Rosen and had never received direct murder orders from Buchalter. However, Tannenbaum carried out the murder of Irv Ashkenaz, who had reported to the police about Buchalter's influence on taxi companies, on the very day that Buchalter was very upset about Rosen. Tannenbaum, who wanted to report to Buchalter, found an angry boss who testified to Rubin that Rosen would never be able to testify to the prosecutor Dewey. In this way, the testimony of Tannenbaum confirmed that Buchalter was commissioned to murder Rosen, since Rosen was murdered two days later. Max Rubin, who through his earlier conversation with Buchalter had become a potential witness in the murder of Joseph Rosen, should also be murdered at Buchalter's insistence. After an initial assassination attempt failed and Rubin survived a headshot, Seymour Magoon was hired by Emanuel Weiss to finish the job. Before that could happen, Magoon was arrested by police officers protecting Rubin. In addition to Albert Tannenbaum, Max Rubin and Seymour Magoon were later to testify against Buchalter, Emanuel Weiss and Louis Capone in the Joseph Rosen murder case.

In December 1941 the trial ended and a jury found the three defendants guilty. Buchalter and his two henchmen Weiss and Capone were sentenced to death for the murder of Joseph Rosen . Harry Strauss (executed in 1941) and James Ferraco, who were also involved in the murder of Joseph Rosen, were no longer alive before the proceedings began. Only the getaway car driver Sholem Bernstein received mitigation because he testified as a witness against his accomplices. Philip Cohen, who was initially also prosecuted, was struck off the list of defendants for reasons unknown, but sentenced to prison for drug smuggling and shot in New York after his release in 1949.

The defense of the three convicted tried by all means to enforce the reopening of the proceedings and to take action against the judgments. The execution , which was originally scheduled for January 2, 1942, was delayed for over two years. The case ended up preoccupying the United States Supreme Court , which upheld the death sentences. This exhausted all legal remedies.

However, this did not prevent the defendants' defense from continuing to demand the retrial. In doing so, Capone and Weiss relied in particular on the existence of new, exculpatory evidence. Affidavits were now available from the siblings of the hit man Harry Maione , a fellow inmate and a prison guard that Maione had confessed to the murder of Joseph Rosen shortly before his execution and had committed the act together with Frank Abbandando and Martin Goldstein . Since all three had already been convicted and executed of other murders, the motions were dismissed, whereupon the defense accused the court of bias and demanded a retrial. Despite the new evidence, the Court of Appeals refused to grant the application. For a retrial, Buchalter also offered to disclose information about the involvement of high-ranking trade unionists and politicians in crimes, including murder. After realizing that Governor Dewey would only commute the death sentences to life imprisonment, Buchalter declined to make any disclosures.

As a result of the investigation by former prosecutor Dewey, Jacob Shapiro had also long been imprisoned. He wrote a letter to his friend and former colleague Buchalter with the words "I told you so". What was meant by this was Buchalter's negative attitude towards the request from Dutch Schultz from 1935, which Shapiro had also supported, to be allowed to kill the investigating prosecutor. Louis Buchalter was executed on the electric chair in Sing Sing on Saturday, March 4, 1944, after the last pardon was denied by Dewey, the district attorney whose murder Buchalter had prevented and now governor of New York . On the same day, a few minutes before Buchalter's execution, his henchmen Emanuel Weiss and Louis Capone were also executed.

Louis Buchalter was buried in Mount Hebron Cemetery in Queens, New York.

Others

Buchalter was the owner of the Riobamba nightclub in Manhattan, which opened in 1942. Since he was already in prison at the time, his wife Betty Buchalter ran the business. Linton D. Weil and Arthur Jawitz, later known as Arthur Jarwood, acted as managers. Frank Sinatra made his solo debut in the club in 1943. The establishment was one of the most popular nightclubs in town at the time. Other well-known artists who were temporarily hired were Dean Martin , Hannah Williams and Jane Froman .

When Buchalter was executed in the spring of 1944, the riobamba was about to end. The company was eventually shut down for tax evasion. After the death of her husband, Betty Buchalter married the former manager of the club Arthur Jarwood.

In film and television

• In 1960 he was portrayed in the film Underworld by David J. Stewart.
• The American feature film The Gangster Boss of New York ( Lepke ) with Tony Curtis in the title role , produced in 1975, is based on Buchalter's life.
• Louis Buchalter is mentioned in the series The Sopranos (season 1, episode 10).

literature

• Paul R. Kavieff: The Life and Times of Lepke Buchalter: America's Most Ruthless Labor Racketeer . Barricade Books Inc, February 2006, ISBN 978-1-56980-291-5 .
• Cohen, Rich: Murder Inc .: Not exactly kosher stores in Brooklyn . Fischer Verlag, 2000, ISBN 3-10-010215-0 .
• Burton B. Turkus and Sid Feder: Murder Inc. . Farrar Straus and Young, 1952, 1992, ISBN 978-0-306-80475-5 .
• Burton B. Turkus and Sid Feder: Murder Inc. . Da Capo Press, 2003, ISBN 0-306-81288-6 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ [1] Paul R. Kavieff, The life and times of Lepke Buchalter: America's most ruthless labor racketeer (English)
2. ↑ Louis-Buchalter in Encyclopedia Britannica (English)
3. ↑ The American Mafia: Chronology - Section III 1920-1931 ( Memento of the original from March 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at www.onewal.com (English) 
4. ↑ SCHULTZ'S MURDER LAID TO LEPKE AIDE; Workman, Witness in Brooklyn Syndicate Slayings, Indicted in Essex County EXTRADITION TO BE SOUGHT O'Dwyer to Cooperate in Action by Jersey Prosecutor, Who Reopened the Case , The New York Times , March 28, 1941 p.46
5. ↑ WORKMAN KILLER, WOMAN TESTIFIES; He Called at Her Apartment and Told How Schultz Met His Death, She Adds , The New York Times , June 8, 1941 p.45
6. ^ Pitching Horseshoes , Nashua Telegraph , June 12, 1947, p.20
7. ↑ LEPKE TRIAL OPENS; JURY-PICKING LAGS; Blue-Ribbon Talesmen Prove Reluctant to Serve in Brooklyn Murder Case , The New York Times , Aug 5, 1941, p.40
8. ↑ Murder Inc .: Lepkes Mistake by Mark Gribben on trutv.com (English)
9. ↑ RUBY RECOVERING; EAGER TO AID DEWEY; Rackets Witness Who Was Shot Critically Is Again Able to Give Information The New York Times , October 17, 1937
10. ↑ RACKET SHOOTING CHALLENGES CITY, DEWEY DECLARES; Accepts Wounding of Rubin as Threat of an Underworld About to Break Up The New York Times , October 4, 1937
11. ↑ AIDE LINKS LEPKE TO ROSEN SLAYING; Rubin Says He Pleaded With Ex-'Boss' to Spare Life of Garment Trucker The New York Times , November 1, 1941
12. ↑ HIGH COURT SEALS LEPKE TRIO DEATHS; Tribunal in Washington Says Brooklyn Gang Defendants Had a Fair Trial The New York Times , June 2, 1943
13. ↑ rehearing Is Denied to Lepke; Fate Seen 'Entirely Up to Dewey'; LEPKE LOSES PLEA TO GET REHEARING The New York Times , February 25, 1944
14. ↑ ^{a b} LEPKE IS PUT TO DEATH, DENIES GUILT TO LAST; MAKES NO REVELATION; TWO AIDES ALSO DIE , The New York Times , March 5th, 1944
15. ^ Louis Buchalter in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved January 8, 2015.
16. ↑ LEPKES WIDOW BRANDED LOVE THIEF IN WOMANS ACTION FOR SEPERATION , The Brooklyn Daily Eagle , August 23, 1945, p. 3