June 01, 2008
 |
| Albert Anastasia (l) and Abe
"Kid Twist" Reles (r) |
Doing the "Half Moon Hop"
by
Robert Walsh
It's a cold and dark
night on November 12, 1941. Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, once a senior member of
Murder Inc. and now one of the most important canaries in American history,
is preparing a makeshift ladder that will help him climb from the sixth
floor of the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island, N.Y., where he is being held
in protective custody to turn state's evidence against that most vicious and
notorious of New York's mobsters, Albert "Lord High Executioner" Anastasia.
He keeps his preparations as quiet as possible, to
avoid attracting the attention of the half dozen detectives assigned to
guard him around the clock while he gives evidence that could put Anastasia
in Sing Sing's infamous electric chair. Having narrowly avoided a date with
"Old Sparky" himself, he has no qualms about inflicting the same on his
former friends if it will save his own skin.
He slips the makeshift ladder, made of bed sheets and
radio wire, out of the window and, tying one end firmly around his waist,
cautiously begins to ease himself out onto the window ledge. Too much noise
now will only cause his guards to check up on him, so he is as quiet as
possible as he slides out onto the ledge. He begins his descent to the empty
fifth floor suite directly below his gilded cage, a cage fit for a canary of
his stature. He slowly begins to ease himself down, searching with his feet
for the ledge below, leaving scratches and marks upon it that will be found
by the FBI crime lab examiners later. (Despite exhaustive research, this
writer has been unable to find any evidence that these marks were actually
made by Reles and not by persons unknown. A simple forensic test on the
shoes Reles was wearing when he fell would have cleared this up, but
seemingly one was not performed).
Then the rope, rated by FBI experts as being too weak
to take his weight, snaps and Reles plunges six floors onto the extended
roof of the hotel, dying instantly. That night in New York and California,
grown men will dance with joy. Abe Reles, the most important canary in the
country at that time, is dead and nobody can be blamed.
Or can they?
It's unlikely, with the passing of time and the
passing of many of those who really knew, that the full story of the death
of "Kid Twist" will ever really be known. What is known, and has been
commented on a number of occasions, is that the official version (or we
should say, versions) of events don't seem to bear much scrutiny. Some say
he was murdered, some say it was an accident, some say it was suicide. But
we don't know for sure and it's likely that we shall never be able to say
with 100 percent certainty.
This writer, among others, believes that Reles was
murdered, although precisely by whom cannot be established and almost
certainly never will be. Certainly, the official versions of events, for
even official sources seem unable to agree on what exactly happened, have
all manner of flaws and, while the official versions bear little scrutiny,
the flaws seem fairly illuminating if, as this writer does, you believe that
Abe Reles's death was neither suicide nor accidental.
We start with the means. According to godfather
"Lucky" Luciano and Mafia turncoat Joe Valachi, Reles was thrown or pushed
out of the window while either asleep or having been knocked
unconscious with a police nightstick by his guards, with the boss of the
NYPD Detective Bureau, Captain Frank Bals, being in on the murder. In
The Life and Times of Lepke Buchalter by Paul Kavieff (Barricade Books,
2006), Luciano is quoted as saying, "The truth of the whole thing was that
the whole bunch of cops was on the take and Bals handled the whole thing ...
We paid him 50 grand and set aside some more money for the other guys in
case they hadda take a rap. The way I heard it was that Bals stood there in
the room and supervised the whole thing. Reles was sleepin' and one of the
cops gave him a tap with a billy and knocked him out. Then they picked him
up and heaved him out the window. For Chrissake, he landed so far from the
wall he couldn't've done that even if he jumped!"
Valachi was more general, though just as firm,
according to writers William Balsamo and George Carpozi Jr. in their book
Crime Incorporated (True Crime Library, 1988). There he is quoted as
stating categorically that Reles had been murdered by his guards and that
"the boys," meaning the Mafia, were all aware of this at the time it
happened.
Assistant D.A. Burton Turkus, famous as the man who
nailed so many of Murder Inc.'s members including boss Louis "Lepke"
Buchalter (although D.A. O'Dwyer was only too happy to take full credit
himself), was also categorical in describing the case as an unsolved murder.
In the epilogue to
Kill the Dutchman!, Paul Sann quotes Turkus
stating that "Abe Reles was thrown out of that window. I never knew who did
it, but he was thrown out. I know he wasn't risking his life on a bed sheet
and some wire."
The forensic evidence, aside from the unidentified
marks on the window ledge which may or may not have been made by Reles,
doesn't seem to match up either. The makeshift ladder was examined by FBI
experts and listed as having a breaking strain of 130 pounds, far less than
Reles's actually weighed. Yet the FBI website lists Reles's death as
suicide. So here's another discrepancy to investigate. If Reles was
attempting to escape, why does the FBI's own website list his death as
suicide? If he was trying to commit suicide, then why bother with a rope
ladder at all? Why not simply open the window and jump, as suicide cases
usually do? Come to that, why would Reles commit suicide having tried so
hard to escape the chair? He turned on his former associates to escape an
appointment with "Old Sparky," was willing to condemn untold numbers of them
to the fate that he so conspicuously managed to avoid, and then commits
suicide? That really doesn't make any sense at all. Also, a climber who is
climbing vertically will also fall vertically. Reles is said to have landed
no less than nine feet from the wall of the hotel, despite having fallen
only six floors – seemingly a remarkable drift for someone falling
vertically down a sheer wall with nothing to bounce off.
So far we've examined means and opportunity. Now let's
look at motive. The date of Reles's death is significant because it came on
the eve of his giving testimony against the Mafia's "Lord High Executioner"
(and one of the bosses of Murder Inc.) Albert "The Mad Hatter" Anastasia, in
the murder case against him for allegedly killing or ordering the death of
Morris Diamond, a partner of Louis "Lepke" Buchalter in the flour trucking
rackets. Later that same day, Reles was due to give evidence that could well
have speeded Anastasia's path to Sing Sing's infamous death chamber. Never
one to allow such a threat to escape unpunished, Anastasia's attitude to
informers was uncompromising to put it mildly. Later on in his career, he
was to watch a TV news report giving the name of an informant against Willie
Sutton (the "King of the Bank Robbers"). Despite the fact that Sutton had
nothing to do with Anastasia or the Mafia, Anastasia turned to an accomplice
and ordered the informant to be killed, according to Mob informer Joe
Valachi. The informant, one Arnold Schuster, was found dead only a month or
so later. The case against Anastasia was then dropped for lack of evidence.
Reles also had another major enemy within the
Syndicate, a certain Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel. After the Murder Inc. hit on
Harry "Big Greenie" Greenberg in California during 1940, where Siegel had
played a major part, Reles was in a position to corroborate Allie "Tick
Tock" Tannenbaum's account of the murder, putting Siegel squarely in line
for a date with the gas chamber at San Quentin. Like Anastasia and the rest
of the New York underworld, Siegel would have been only too happy to see
Reles dead as he would have walked from the murder charge. And that's
exactly what happened. For without Reles's evidence to corroborate
Tannenbaum's account, Siegel went free and the case against him was
dismissed.
There was also the fact that Reles having rolled over
could, and did, make other gangsters decide to talk their way out of various
tight spots. Sholem Bernstein, a fellow Murder Inc. associate, made up his
mind to talk as well after talking to Reles and numerous other gangsters
followed suit such as Allie "Tick Tock" Tannenbaum, Seymour "Blue Jaw"
Magoon, Myer Sycoff and others. An example would have to be made to stop the
rot spreading and protect the Syndicate bosses, and who better than the most
prominent of them all? Nowadays, in a time of Sammy Gravano, Henry Hill,
Jimmy Fratianno and others, it seems that indicted gangsters are often more
than happy to trade information for a lighter sentence. At that time it was
very different and very novel for a gangster to make such a deal, and it may
have seemed like a growing trend that the Syndicate bosses, never men to
shirk from doing the "heavy work" at the best of times, would do anything to
stop.
Reles also had personal dealing with the boss of
Murder Inc., Louis "Lepke" Buchalter. For instance, Reles acted as Lepke's
principal go-between and personal bodyguard when Lepke went on the run to
try to escape drugs and racketeering charges. Reles also handled murder
contracts and day to day business of Murder Inc. He knew some of Murder
Inc.'s many victims, the motives for their deaths and could also find those
witnesses needed under New York State law to corroborate both his own
evidence and that of his fellow informants. He knew about the murder of
Joseph Rosen in particular, being well acquainted with both Rosen's killers
(Emmanuel "Mendy" Weiss, Louis Capone and Harry "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss)
and their motive.
In short, Abe Reles knew where the bodies were buried. Literally.
Still more questions remain unanswered. In one account
of Reles's death, it is stated unequivocally that the detectives guarding
him were awake and alert on the night that Reles died, and that at least one
talked to him less than an hour before his body was found. Why would a
detail of awake and alert detectives, supposedly an elite squad and guarding
one of America's most important canaries, have left him alone long enough to
construct a rope ladder and try to scale the hotel wall? Why did they not
notice that something was amiss, seasoned detectives supposedly being highly
observant people whose business is spotting anything suspicious? And what
could they have said or done to make Reles decide he was better off taking
his chances on the run?
Which brings us to another issue worthy of
consideration. Reles had already cut a deal that he would be granted
immunity in return for his testimony. He may well have lost that immunity if
he reneged on his deal and didn't testify, which, given his acknowledged
reputation as a top-notch hit man and his admission to a number of murders,
18 to be exact, would have put him in the very position he was trying to
avoid, which was a date with "Old Sparky." His former colleagues in Murder
Inc. had also sworn to nail him one way or another so he lost out all around
if he decided to run. Maybe Reles was more scared of his guards than of his
former associates. If so, what precisely did a man with immunity from
prosecution, supposedly guarded night and day by New York's finest, have to
fear? And what would scare him so much that he would prefer to take his
chances as both a fugitive from the law and a refugee from the underworld.
There wasn't a hit man in the country who wouldn't have wanted Reles as a
notch on his gun belt at that time, both for the money and the kudos, and
barely a major gang boss (in New York or California) who didn't have
everything to gain and nothing to lose by that happening. So why did he run?
It's certainly a possibility that Reles was more
afraid of being in "protective" custody than of being loose on the street,
for Murder Inc.'s reach certainly extended into areas it was never wanted.
In 1937 Max Rubin, a high level associate of Lepke's, went before a grand
jury investigating New York's rackets and testified. He was shot in the
head, although miraculously survived the shooting, not long after
testifying. As Rubin later said: "I went into the grand jury room where
nobody knew where I was and ended up shot in the head." As a similarly
high ranking Murder Inc. member, Reles would no doubt have been well aware
of what had been done to Rubin and may have been anxious to avoid the same
fate. The weight of evidence either for or against this idea is unclear,
however, as only Reles himself could answer that question.
I'll close with one more salient point. The detectives
on duty, according to at least one account anyway, were not the first people
to notice Reles was missing. They saw nothing and, even more interestingly,
heard nothing as Reles plunged from the hotel to his death. Are we to
believe that a fully conscious man on the brink of death would simply fall,
tightlipped and silent? Especially when there is testimony from so senior a
crime boss as Luciano that states unequivocally that Reles was blackjacked
before his exit from the window? Furthermore, if the detectives didn't do it
themselves, how could they not notice the arrival in a heavily guarded hotel
suite of whoever did? This writer submits that this concurs with Luciano's
account of the mysterious case of the "Half Moon Hop."
This writer would also suggest that, not only was
Reles murdered, he was murdered by his supposed bodyguards and the matter
was, rather incompetently, covered up. There are a number of reasons for my
making this claim and they are as follows.
If Reles didn't kill himself (which he clearly did
not) or fall accidentally (which is possible but, to put it mildly under the
circumstances, doubtful) then there is only one other explanation. That
explanation is that he was either thrown or pushed out of the window.
Corruption was a major and long-standing problem in
the New York Police Department at the time. Police officers were vastly
overworked, understaffed and paid a pittance in relation to the risks that
they were required to run on a daily basis as police officers. Also, a
considerable number of NYPD officers, including some very senior officers,
had been nailed on charges of or relating to corrupt activities of various
kinds. One senior officer, Lt. Charles Becker, was even electrocuted for
ordering the successful murder of a bookmaker who had threatened to expose
Becker as being heavily involved in illegal gambling and even conducting his
illegal business while acting as chief of the NYPD Gambling Squad.
Public confidence in the NYPD, already somewhat shaky
anyway, would have been shaken to its foundations if it could have been
proved that not only was an entire witness protection detail corrupt and
willing to commit murder for money, but that the commander (a very senior
and highly respected officer) did himself personally supervise a contract
killing.
Lastly, and perhaps most important, the entire concept
of witness protection (now a mainstay in the fight against organized crime),
and the immensely valuable testimony from informers gathered as a result
would have been gravely threatened. Law enforcement, especially in the
United States, could have been dealt a devastating and crippling blow from
which it may never have fully recovered. The entire fight against organized
crime would have been placed in the utmost jeopardy.
