In 1930 there was a wee bit of a gang warfare going on in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn between the established hoodlumarchy of the Shapiro brothers, Meyer and Irving, and the upstarts Abe Reles, Buggsy Goldstein,
Harry "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss and the rest of their click which
included their counterparts of neighboring Ocean Hill (the two gangs united under
the moniker of the Combination)
Eighty-five years ago on this date Reles, Goldstein and two other guys named George DeFeo and Joe Ambrosia stopped into a candy store to pick up the profits of a slot machine.
While
the quartet was in the store a Shapiro man crept up to their car and
slit the rear driver's side tire. When the gangsters reappeared Reles
began to change the tire while his associates loitered about. Moments
later a car drove by and a Thompson machine-gun spat fiery
death as the pulps might say. All four gangsters took a dose of lead but
it was DeFeo who got the worst of it with bullets in the heart and head. Reles, Goldstein and Ambrosia lived to fight another day but DeFeo was done.
The full story on the Shapiro/Combination's battle for Brownsville can be found in Gangster City.
"He must have done something. They don't kill you for nothing." - Chicago Gangster Ted Newberry. Rubbed out January 7, 1933
2 comments:
"It's not the fall that kills you, it's that sudden stop at the end."
-Abe Reles
Abe was the Yogi Berra of the New York underworld.
His Relesisms are still quoted in the underworld to this day.
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