Frank Abbandando - Rise of Murder, Inc.

Rise of Murder, Inc.

In the early 1930s, the Cosa Nostra crime families in New York, known as the Five Families, began using street gangs to commit their murders. Having recently settled the vicious Castellammarese War and reorganized into a new structure, the families desperately wanted to keep themselves out of public attention. By using Jewish contract killers, the families were better protected from public and law enforcement scrutiny. The gang leader that the mafiosi used the most was Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, the young Jewish leader of the "Gorilla Boys" gang. As the Cosa Nostra business increased, Buchalter's small informal network of killers turned into a group of 250 criminals who were involved in narcotics smuggling, labor racketeering, and other rackets. Buchalter called his group "The Combination", but the press labeled it "Murder, Inc." Unlike the Five Families, which required Sicilian or Southern Italian ancestry for membership, Murder Inc. included Jews, Italians, and members of other ethnic groups.

At some early point, Abbandando joined Murder Inc. During the 1920s and 30s, Abbandando was reputed to have killed thirty people, mostly in Brooklyn. He usually received about $500 for a murder. In September 1931, Abbandando reportedly helped Buchalter and gang member Abe Reles eliminate The Shapiro Gang, rivals from the Lower East Side of Manhattan who were trying to take over some of the men's rackets. In 1937, Abbandando assisted in the murder of George Rudnick, a loan shark in Brooklyn. Reles had ordered Rudnick's murder because he had received information that Rudnick was a police informant. Using an ice pick and a meat cleaver, Abbandando and several other gang members strangled Rudnick, stabbed him 63 times, and crushed his head inside a garage. No one was arrested for the crime. In February 1939, Abbandando and others killed mobster Felice Esposito in a contract killing. The Cosa Nostra wanted Esposito dead because he testified for the prosecution in a mob murder trial 17 years earlier.