Murder, Inc.

Murder, Inc. (or Murder Incorporated) was the name the news media gave to organized crime groups in the 1930s and 40s that acted as the enforcement arm of the Italian-American Mafia, Jewish mob, and connected organized crime groups in New York and elsewhere. The groups were largely composed of 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.

The Bugs and Meyer Mob was the predecessor to Murder, Incorporated. The gang was founded by New York Jewish American mobsters Meyer Lansky and Benjamin Siegel in the early 1920s. After the Castellammarese War and the assassination of U.S. Mafia boss Salvatore Maranzano, Italian mafioso Charles "Lucky" Luciano created the Commission. Soon after, Siegel and Lansky disbanded the Bugs and Meyer gang and formed Murder, Incorporated.