Events
- James J. Hines, the leader of Tammany Hall, the New York City Democratic organization, goes to prison for arranging political protection for Dutch Schultz's policy and numbers rackets in Harlem, New York.
- Brooklyn mobster Seymour "Blue Jaw" Magoon agrees to become a government informant and provides information on the Murder, Inc. organization.
- After a failed attempt on his life, New Jersey racketeer Max Rubin agrees to cooperate with law enforcement.
- Brooklyn racketeer James "Dizzy" Feraco is murdered by rival gunmen.
- February 2 - Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, a member of Murder, Inc., is arrested. District Attorney William O'Dwyer charges Reles with robbery, assault, possession of narcotics, burglary, disorderly conduct, and eight charges of murder. In exchange for a reduced sentence, Reles would agree to testify against the members of Murder, Inc., and provides information on the National Crime Syndicate. Phil and Martin Goldstein, Emmanuel Weiss, and Murder Inc. leader Louis "Lepke" Buchalter are some of the mobsters who would be convicted by Reles' testimony.
- April - George Scalise, New York labor racketeer and president of the Building Service and Employee's International Union of New York, is indicted for extortion.
- May 23 - Murder, Inc. members Harry Maione and Frank Abbandando, based on the testimony of Abe Reles, are convicted of the 1937 murder of Brooklyn loan shark George "Whitey" Rudnick. While the decision would be overturned on appeal, a second trial would find them guilty and result in death sentences for both men.
- July 31 - Whitey Krakower, a government informant, is murdered by New York mobster Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel.
Read more about this topic: 1940 In Organized Crime
Famous quotes containing the word events:
“The prime lesson the social sciences can learn from the natural sciences is just this: that it is necessary to press on to find the positive conditions under which desired events take place, and that these can be just as scientifically investigated as can instances of negative correlation. This problem is beyond relativity.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
“Whatever events in progress shall disgust men with cities, and infuse into them the passion for country life, and country pleasures, will render a service to the whole face of this continent, and will further the most poetic of all the occupations of real life, the bringing out by art the native but hidden graces of the landscape.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)