Murder, Inc. (or
Murder Incorporated) was the name the
press gave to
organized crime groups in the 1930s through the 1940s that acted as the "enforcement arm" of the
American Mafia, the early organized crime groups in New York and elsewhere. The groups were composed of largely
Italian-American and
Jewish gangsters from the
Brooklyn neighborhoods of
Brownsville,
East New York, and
Ocean Hill. Originally headed by
Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, and later by
Albert "The Mad Hatter" Anastasia, Murder, Inc. was believed to be responsible for between 400 and 1,000 contract killings, until the group was exposed in the early 1940s by a former group member
Abe "Kid Twist" Reles. In the trials that followed, many members were convicted and executed, and Abe Reles himself died after falling out of a window.
Thomas E. Dewey first came to prominence as a
prosecutor of Murder, Inc. and other organized crime cases.