Well, well, look who shows up after all this time. I'm not even gonna bother asking you where you've been. Have you had any dead guys in suits lately? Never mind just sit at the table there and I'll plate some up for you.
Joey Amberg,
a semi-big racketeering feller in Brooklyn decided that a hoodlum named
Hy Kasner had to be killed, so, together with two henchmen named Jack
Elliot and Frankie Teitlebaum, Amberg set out to get Kasner. The latter was snatched, killed, stuffed in
a sack and dropped into a sewer. Business as usual for a Brownsviller back in the 1930's.
Amberg went about his business assuming the sack containing Kasner had washed out to sea and Hy's disappearance would be but a mystery, but unfortunately for Amberg
it was found floating in an inlet and what was left of Hy was fished out. Soon
the names of Kasner’s killers traveled the underworld grapevine.
Problematic for Amberg
was that Kasner had been an associate of both Albert Anastasia and Louis
Capone the director and assistant director of Murder Inc. and, to
paraphrase Bumpy Johnson from the film Cotton Club, "If you have Murder
Inc. on your ass, you truly have somebody on your ass."*
A Syndicate hearing was called. Anastasia and Capone argued that Amberg
and his murdering cohorts should themselves be put on the spot for
taking syndicate law into their own hands by killing Kasner without mob
approval. Amberg supporters, Joe Adonis and Bugsy Siegel argued for Joey A's clemency.
Adonis and Siegel were overruled and a contract was put out on Monsieur Amberg. Chosen for the job were “Happy” Maione, Phil Mangano,(brother of Vincent Mangano the patriarch of the Mangano crime family) and another man known as “Red” Pulvino.
The location chosen for the hit was the Brownsville garage (partially owned by fellow Murder Inc. gunman “Pittsburgh Phil” Strauss) where Joey Amberg parked his car. The plan was to have the gunmen pretend to be armed bandits. They would ambush Amberg and tell him to raise his hands and face the wall, and then...
On this day in 1935 Amberg’s sedan, chauffeured by Morris Kessler,
pulled into the garage. As driver and drivee were stepping out of the car, the killers,
two dressed in khaki overalls and the third dressed in blue overalls,
ran up with guns drawn and forced them to line up against the wall. As Amberg turned to face the wall he saw Maione’s face and blurted out, “It’s - -” but before he could elicit anymore words a shotgun went off. Amberg and Kessler fell where they stood. Once they
were on the ground one of the killers ran up and shot each man in the
head with a pistol. Justice, Murder Inc. style, had been served
*Johnson was actually referring to Owney Madden in the film. But you already knew that.
"He must have done something. They don't kill you for nothing." - Chicago Gangster Ted Newberry. Rubbed out January 7, 1933
