28. When Murder Went Corporate
Not all who impacted American history impacted it for the better. Two who definitely had a negative historic impact were Lepke Buchalter, founder of what came to be known as “Murder Incorporated”, and Albert Anastasia, a key leader of that sinister organization.
From the early 1930s to the early 1940s, the Italian-American mafia had an oversight board known as The Commission. To enforce its will, The Commission kept a coalition of Italian and Jewish gangsters as retained contract killers. Dubbed “Murder Incorporated” or “Murder Inc.”, the hitmen were the mob leadership’s on-call execution squad. During its existence, Murder Inc. enforced The Commission’s will and regulated the underworld by taking out the troublesome, making the hitmen, literally, the mob’s troubleshooters.