Methods
Most of the killers were Jewish gangsters from the gangs of the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Brownsville, East New York, and Ocean Hill. In addition to carrying out crime in New York City and acting as enforcers for New York mobster Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, they accepted murder contracts from mob bosses all around the United States. In his biography The Valachi Papers, Mafia turncoat Joe Valachi insisted Murder, Inc. did not commit crimes for the Mafia, but this is contradicted by other sources, and Albert Anastasia was also head of a Mafia crime family.
Based in part out of Midnight Rose candy store in Brooklyn, Murder Inc. hit men used a wide variety of weapons, including ice picks, to murder their victims. Though the group had a number of members, Harry "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss was the most prolific killer, committing over 100 murders (some historians put the number as high as 500).
The killers were paid a regular salary as retainer as well as an average fee of $1,000 to $5,000 per killing. Their families also received monetary benefits. If the killers were caught, the mob would hire the best lawyers for their defense.
Read more about this topic: Murder, Inc.
Famous quotes containing the word methods:
“A woman might claim to retain some of the child’s faculties, although very limited and defused, simply because she has not been encouraged to learn methods of thought and develop a disciplined mind. As long as education remains largely induction ignorance will retain these advantages over learning and it is time that women impudently put them to work.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“A writer who writes, “I am alone” ... can be considered rather comical. It is comical for a man to recognize his solitude by addressing a reader and by using methods that prevent the individual from being alone. The word alone is just as general as the word bread. To pronounce it is to summon to oneself the presence of everything the word excludes.”
—Maurice Blanchot (b. 1907)
“There are souls that are incurable and lost to the rest of society. Deprive them of one means of folly, they will invent ten thousand others. They will create subtler, wilder methods, methods that are absolutely DESPERATE. Nature herself is fundamentally antisocial, it is only by a usurpation of powers that the organized body of society opposes the natural inclination of humanity.”
—Antonin Artaud (1896–1948)