Umberto Anastasio, better known as Albert Anastasia, was an Italian-American mobster and hitman who became one of the deadliest criminals in American history and one of the founders of the modern American Mafia in New York City. For all-out savagery and ruthlessness, few other leaders of the Mafia worldwide have rivaled Anastasia, known to peers as "The Mad Hatter" and to journalists as "The Lord High Executioner." After escaping a death sentence in 1921 and multiple other arrests for murder, he later served as director of the national crime syndicate's contract murder department ("Murder, Inc.") from 1931 until informers brought it down ten years later. By 1951 he led one of New York City's Five Families, a post he held until his public barbershop assassination in October 1957. This first-ever book-length biography of Anastasia traces the mobster's life and the ripple effects his career had on the American crime world. The story also tracks his brothers and their families, while debunking certain widespread myths about their parentage, various deportations, trials, convictions, and eventual retirement from the mob, dead or alive.

The riveting true story of the rise and fall of Murder, Inc. and the executioner-turned-informant whose mysterious death became a turning point in Mob history. In the fall of 1941, a momentous trial was underway that threatened to end the careers and lives of New York’s most brutal mob kingpins. The lead witness, Abe Reles, had been a trusted executioner for Murder, Inc., the enforcement arm of a coast-to-coast mob network known as the Commission. But the man responsible for coolly silencing hundreds of informants was about to become the most talkative snitch of all. In exchange for police protection, Reles was prepared to rat out his murderous friends, from Albert Anastasia to Bugsy Siegel—but before he could testify, his shattered body was discovered on a rooftop outside his heavily-guarded hotel room. Was it a botched escape, or punishment for betraying the loyalty of the country’s most powerful mobsters? Michael Cannell's A Brotherhood Betrayed traces the history of Murder, Inc. through Reles’ rise from street punk to murder chieftain to stool pigeon, ending with his fateful death on a Coney Island rooftop. It resurrects a time when crime became organized crime: a world of money and power, depravity and corruption, street corner ambushes and elaborately choreographed hits by wise-cracking foot soldiers with names like Buggsy Goldstein and Tick Tock Tannenbaum. For a brief moment before World War II erupted, America fixated on the delicate balance of trust and betrayal on the Brooklyn streets. This is the story of the one man who tipped the balance.

“Murder, Inc.” was the moniker of the Syndicate's firing squad, a ruthless group of men guilty of professionally committing 1,000 murders. Murder, Inc. is the book that exposed the Syndicate to the eyes of the world. First published in 1951, it rose to the top of the best-seller list, but later fell out-of-print. Now, here is a new edition of the classic that tells all about the great gangsters of the late '30s and '40s: Frank Costello, Louis ”Lepke” Buchalter, Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, Buggsy Siegel, Johnny Torrio, Willie Sutton, Joey Adonis, Dutch Schultz. Here are the stories of how Pittsburgh Phil and Buggsy Goldstein literally set Puggy Feinstein on fire; how and why Kid Twist Reles sang to the D.A. for twelve straight days, confessing dozens of murders; how the killers' boss, Albert Anastasia, slipped through the arms of the law.From the highest levels of the U.S. government down to the lowest levels of street crime, the Syndicate infiltrated American life. Murder, Inc. tells how it was formally organized by the nation's ranking mob lords at the end of Prohibition to control all crime, from gambling to crooked politics to labor extortion and murder. It describes the carefully built organization with its board of governors and its kangaroo court, and shows how this massive and powerful organization was finally broken.For it was only from the murderers themselves that the truth could be learned. And no man was more qualified to tell the whole story than Burton Turkus, the Brooklyn assistant D.A. who listened to the killers' tales and who sent seven of them to the electric chair. Together with Sid Feder, a veteran journalist, they produced Murder, Inc., the definitive work on the most dangerous group of gangsters the law has ever known.

Murder Inc. by former Brooklyn D.A. Burton B. Turkus and veteran A.P. war correspondent Sid Feder is the riveting true crime classic that rips the lid off the national crime Syndicate's "killing machine" that took 1,000 lives nationwide during the 1930's and 40's. In a page-turning non-fiction account that reads like a crime thriller, Turkus and Feder take us behind the scenes with the untold story of how Sicilian gangsters Lucky Luciano, Albert Anastasia and Joe Adonis partnered with Jewish gangsters Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel and Louis "Lepke" Buchalter to create a multi-million rackets enterprise that included, gambling, prostitution, union corruption and the lucrative murder-for-hire scheme that operated out of the back of a Brooklyn Candy Store. After he was able to turn, Murder Inc.'s chief killer, Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, Turkus eventually sent Lepke and six other mobsters to the electric chair. This 1951 best seller by Turkus & Feder which has sold more than a million copies worldwide is now available in a new updated edition complete with mug shots and bios of the original gangsters who spilled so much blood from coast to coast. With a new Foreword by five-time Emmy winning former ABC News correspondent and investigative reporter Peter Lance, this edition of Murder Inc. will introduce a new generation of true-crime readers to the most lethal underworld enterprise ever exposed.

In 1940 and 1941 a group of ruthless gangsters from Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood became the focus of media frenzy when they—dubbed “Murder Inc.,” by New York World-Telegram reporter Harry Feeney—were tried for murder. It is estimated that collectively they killed hundreds of people during a reign of terror that lasted from 1931 to 1940. As the trial played out to a packed courtroom, shocked spectators gasped at the outrageous revelations made by gang leader Abe “Kid Twist” Reles and his pack of criminal accomplices. News of the trial proliferated throughout the country; at times it received more newspaper coverage than the unabated war being waged overseas. The heinous crimes attributed to Murder, Inc., included not only murder and torture but also auto theft, burglary, assaults, robberies, fencing stolen goods, distribution of illegal drugs, and just about any “illegal activity from which a revenue could be derived.” When the trial finally came to a stunning unresolved conclusion in November 1941, newspapers generated record headlines. Once the trial was over, tales of the Murder, Inc., gang became legendary, spawning countless books and memoirs and providing inspiration for the Hollywood gangster-movie genre. These men were fearsome brutes with an astonishing ability to wield power. People were fascinated by the “gangster” figure, which had become a symbol for moral evil and contempt and whose popularity showed no signs of abating. As both a study in criminal behavior and a cultural fascination that continues to permeate modern society, the reverberations of “Murder, Inc.” are profound, including references in contemporary mass media. The Murder, Inc., story is as much a tale of morality as it is a gangster history, and Murder, Inc., and the Moral Life by Robert Whalen meshes both topics clearly and meticulously, relating the gangster phenomenon to modern moral theory. Each chapter covers an aspect of the Murder, Inc., case and reflects on its ethical elements and consequences. Whalen delves into the background of the criminals involved, their motives, and the violent death that surrounded them; New York City’s immigrant gang culture and its role as “Gangster City”; fiery politicians Fiorello La Guardia and Thomas E. Dewey and the choices they made to clean up the city; and the role of the gangster in popular culture and how it relates to “real life.” Whalen puts a fresh spin on the two topics, providing a vivid narrative with both historical and moral perspective.

The bloodsoaked saga of the Murder, Inc. legend who helped create the modern American Mafia—one body at a time—featuring shocking eyewitness accounts . . . Umberto “Albert” Anastasia was born in Italy at the turn of the century. Five decades later, he would be gunned down in a barber shop in New York City. What happened in the years in between—and why every crime family had reason to want him dead—is one of the most brutal and fascinating stories in the history of American organized crime. This in-depth account of the man who became one of the most powerful and homicidal crime bosses of the twentieth century from Mafia insider and co-author Frank Dimatteo is the first full-length book to chronicle Anastasia’s bloody rise from fresh-off-the-boat immigrant to founder of the notorious killer’s club Murder, Inc.—featuring never-before-told accounts from those who feared him most . . . They called him “The One Man Army.” “Mad Hatter.” “Lord High Executioner.” Albert Anastasia came to America mean and became a prolific killer. His merciless assassination of Mafia godfather Vincent Mangano is recounted here in chilling first-hand detail. He set the record: the first man in the history of American justice to be charged with four separate murders—and walk free after each one. But in the end, he was the last obstacle in rival Mafia hoodlum Vito Genovese’s dream of becoming the boss of bosses—and paid the ultimate price . . .

Murder Inc. is the latest blockbuster by Ireland's most respected crime writer and journalist, Paul Williams. Murder Inc. is the definitive account of how organized crime exploded in Limerick from the 1990s and in the noughties. It describes the depravity and decadence of the gangs, their deadly rivaliries, and their reigns of terror over the community in which they lived. Finally, Williams traces the faultlines that eventually led to the implosion of the gangs and their defeat. Drawing on his vast inside knowledge of the criminal underworld, an unparalleled range of contacts and eye witness interviews, Paul Williams provides a chilling insight into the mobsters and events that corroded entire neighbourhoods and devastated countless lives.