ABE RELES

'Abe "Kid Twist" Reles' (1906 – 12 November, 1941) was an American mobster who was probably the most feared hitman in the stable of Murder, Inc., the enforcement arm of the National Crime Syndicate.

Contents

Early years

Prohibition & Murder Inc.

Government informant

In popular culture

Further reading

References

External links

Early years

Abraham Reles, the son of Jewish-Austrian immigrants, was born in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York. Growing up in poverty, it was not long before he embraced a life of crime. Stories of successful Jewish gangsters inspired him on his violent path toward wealth, fame, and ultimately destruction.
Physically, Reles was short, but had long arms that ended in hands with short, stubby fingers. His small size, however, did not at all detract from his ruthless violence. When carrying out hits, his weapon of choice was an ice pick (which he would spear through his victim's ear right into the brain). Reles became so adept at using the ice pick that many of his murder victims were thought to have died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
Reles reportedly got the nickname "Kid Twist" after an earlier vicious New York killer Max "Kid Twist" Zwerbach. Another theory behind the moniker is that it was the name of his favorite candy.

Prohibition & Murder Inc.

During the Prohibition days of the 1920s, while still teenagers, Reles and friend Martin "Buggsy" Goldstein went to work for the Shapiro brothers, who ran the Brooklyn rackets. Soon, Reles and Seigel were committing petty crimes for the brothers. On one such occasion, Reles was caught and sentenced to two years in an upstate New York juvenile institution. The Shapiro brothers failed to help Reles out of this jam and Reles would pay them back later.
Reles became known as a particularly cold-blooded and psychopathic murderer. One one occasion, in broad daylight, he killed a worker at a car wash for failing to clean a smudge from the fender of his car. Another time, Reles killed a parking lot attendant for failing to fetch his car fast enough.
After his release, Reles, Seigel, and George Defeo entered the slot-machine business, the province of the Shapiro Brothers. Through Defeo's connections with Meyer Lansky, Reles and Seigel were able to make a deal with the influential crime lord. Lansky needed access to the poorer neighborhoods of Brooklyn and thus agreed to the deal. Both parties prospered: Lansky was able to get sizeable footholds in Brownsville, East New York, and Ocean Hill, while Reles gained the backing he needed to keep both his business and himself alive.
The slot-machine business thrived and soon Reles and Goldstein were on the Shapiros' hit list. One night, the two men received a phone call from a "friend" saying that the Shapiros had left their East New York headquarters. Hopping into a car with Defeo, they headed to East New York. However, when they reached the Shapiro's building, the three men were ambushed. Reles and Goldstein were wounded, but all three managed to escape. In another bold move, Meyer Shapiro abducted Reles' girlfriend off the street, dragged her to an open field, beat her, and raped her in the mouth.
To avenge the ambush and his girlfriend's rape, Reles enlisted the help of fellow Murder, Inc. killers Frank "Dasher" Abbandando and Harry "Happy" Maione. The two killers were glad to help; they hoped to kill the Shapiro brothers and take over some of their operations. After several futile attempts by each side to eradicate the other, the Murder, Inc. group finally caught up with Irving Shapiro. On that occasion, Reles dragged Irving from the hallway of his home out into the street. Reles then beat, kicked, and then shot Irving numerous times, killing him. Two months later, Reles met Meyer Shapiro on the street and shot him dead in the face. Another three years would elapse before Reles finally got the last Shapiro brother, William. William was abducted off the street and taken to a gang hideout. Once there, William was beaten nearly to death, stuffed into a sack, and driven out to the Canarsie section of Brooklyn and buried. Before the gang could finish burying William, a passerby spotted them and they had to flee the scene. William Shapiro's body was exhumed shortly therafter, and after being autopsied, it was determined that he had been buried alive.

Government informant

In 1940, Reles was arrested on the orders of Kings County District Attorney William O'Dwyer and implicated in a number of killings. Realizing that he faced execution in the electric chair at Sing Sing, Reles decided to become an informant. The information Reles disclosed to the D.A. on 16 May of that year about the murder of Brooklyn candy store owner Joseph Rosen was enough to send his boss, Louis Buchalter, to his fate in the Sing Sing death house. Slowly but surely, Murder, Inc. began to unravel as O'Dwyer, using Reles' testimony, prosecuted Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Harry "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss, Mendy Weiss, Harry "Happy" Maione, Frank "Dasher" Abbandando, and even Reles' childhood friend Buggsy Goldstein, and sent them all to sit upon "Old Sparky", the electric chair at Sing-Sing Prison.
During one of his discussions with prosecutors, Reles described a typical murder:
:''"Pep has an ice pick. Happer has meat cleaver. It is the kind you chop with, you know, butcher cleaver. Abby grabs Rudnick by the feet and drags him over to the car. Pep and Happy grab it by the head. They put it in the car. Somebody says "It don't fit." Just as they push the body in it gives a little cough or something. With that, Pep starts with the ice pick and starts punching away at Whitey. Maione says "Let me hit the bastard one for luck." And he hits him with the cleaver some place on the head."''
Following these convictions, O'Dwyer planned a trial for Albert Anastasia, who had been co-chief of operations of Murder, Inc., in order to help his campaign to become mayor of New York City. The trial, based solely on Reles' testimony, was set for 12 November, 1941. Reles was to implicate Anastasia on the murder of union longshoreman Pete Panto. However, in the early hours of that morning, Reles, guarded by six police detectives, mysteriously plummeted to his death from the window of Room 623 of the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island. It is not known whether he was thrown or pushed out the window, or if he was trying to escape. The angle of trajectory suggests that he was in fact pushed. It is believed that Frank Costello paid the detectives guarding Reles to ensure that he would never testify.
Because of his mob status as a "stool pigeon" and the circumstances surrounding his death, Reles gained another moniker after his passing. In addition to "Kid Twist," Reles became known as "the canary who sang, but couldn't fly."
Reles is buried in Old Mount Carmel Cemetery in the Glendale section of Queens, New York.

In popular culture

★ "Kid Twist" is the name of a member of the "big con" in "The Sting"

★ He was later portrayed by Peter Falk in the short lived 1960 television series ''The Witness'' as well as the film ''Murder Inc.'' that same year. He was also portrayed in later films including ''Lepke'' (1975) by Zitto Kazann, ''Mad Dog Coll'' (1992) by Thomas McHugh and the 1959 television series ''The Lawless Years'' by John Apone.

Further reading

★ Davis, John H. ''Mafia Dynasty: The Rise and Fall of the Gambino Crime Family''. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. ISBN 0-06-016357-7

★ Messick, Hank. ''Lansky''. London: Robert Hale & Company, 1973. ISBN 0-7091-3966-7

References

★ Rockaway, Robert A. (2000). ''BUT HE WAS GOOD TO HIS MOTHER: The Lives and Crimes of Jewish Gangsters''. Gefen Publishing House. ISBN 965-229-249-4

External links

★ The American "Mafia": Who Was Who ? - Abe Reles

★ Federal Bureau of Investigation - Freedom of Information Privacy Act - Abe Reles

★ Brooklyn, Inc. at the Crime Library

★ Abe Reles at Encyclopædia Britannica

★ Abe "Kid Twist" Reles at Rotten.com

★ Mr. Murder: Tales of true Crime and Murder - Abraham "Kid Twist" Reles

★ Abe "Kid Twist" Reles at Find A Grave

★ New York Times: 'Kid Twist' Took the Fall, But He Left His Bag Behind