The Mafia Encyclopedia_ by The Mafia Encyclopedia

Author:The Mafia Encyclopedia
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
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The manhunt For Louis Lepke was the most intensive of the 1930s, ending only when other crime leaders tricked him into surrendering.

LEPKE, Louis

later be dubbed by the press, "Murder, Inc.," which ultimately carried out hundreds of hits. As his top aides, Lepke chose the brutal Shapiro and the even more kill-crazy Albert Anastasia.

With the money rolling in through his 250-man army of sluggers and gunmen, Lepke rose to multimillionaire class and lived life accordingly. He resided in a plush apartment in mid-Manhattan and maintained chauffeur-driven cars for trips to racetracks and nightclubs. He wintered often in Florida and California or sojourned in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where Owney Madden controlled the town as a safe haven for important gangsters. Once Lepke traveled there with Luciano, Lansky, Adonis and Tammany Hall leader Jimmy Hines.

Courting the spotlight was not wise, but the arrogant Lepke was sure he had the power to square his legal problems. Real trouble developed when Thomas E. Dewey, then an ambitious special prosecutor, took after him. While Dewey concentrated on bakery extortion, the federal government stalked Lepke for restraint of trade. Then the Federal Bureau of Narcotics picked up on hints that Lepke headed a massive narcotics smuggling operation that included extensive bribing of U.S. customs agents. Arrested and put out on bail, Lepke decided to go into hiding. While he was hunted nationwide, he was secreted away in various Brooklyn hideouts by Anastasia, and he continued active control of his union rackets.

The manhunt put extreme pressure on the entire syndicate and hamstrung their rackets. The heat was really on. In New York, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia supplied still more heat, ordering police commissioner Lewis J. Valentine to start a war on hoodlums. Soon all the crime families were being badly hurt. Word was sent to Luciano, convicted by Dewey and confined in Dannemora Prison, but still the number one voice in the mob.

Luciano readily decided that Lepke had to surrender for the good of all. However, he knew as well as Lepke that the authorities had enough to put him away for life. Luciano decided Lepke had to be conned into coming in. Through Longy Zwillman, the New Jersey crime boss, it was arranged for a hoodlum Lepke trusted, Moe "Dimples" Wolensky, to carry a message that a deal had been worked out with J. Edgar Hoover. If Lepke surrendered directly to the FBI chief, he would be tried on federal narcotics charges and let off with five years. State charges would be dropped.

Lepke believed the fairy tale and surrendered on a Manhattan street on August 24, 1939, to gossip columnist Walter Winchell and Hoover. Almost from the second he entered Hoover's car, Lepke knew he had been doublecrossed. Hoover had not consented to any kind of deal. Lepke got 14 years on the narcotics charge but was also turned over to Dewey, who pinned a 39-years-to-life sentence on him.

That did not end Lepke's problems, although he maintained enough power from behind bars to have Dimples Wolensky murdered for his part in the treachery.

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