Frank Abbandando
Another member of Murder Incorporated, which was called The Combination by its leader, Louis Buchalter, Frank Abbandando was a contract killer who came to the organization from street gangs in the Ocean Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn. In 1928, at the age of 17, Abbandando delivered a beating to a police officer and was sent to a workhouse in Elmira. He acquired the nickname “Dasher” while in custody. Upon his release, he returned to the street gang, where he was involved in extortion rackets, illegal gambling, and loansharking. He also worked as a collector, and when asked, as an executioner.
In the early 1930s, he joined Murder Inc. and worked with Abe Reles, who would later turn state’s witness. Abbandando and Reles, besides working as contract killers for the Five Families, took steps to eliminate the members of the rival Shapiro gang, a group of mostly Jewish gangsters who encroached on some of their own rackets in Brownsville. Abbandando worked as the chief enforcer for Harry Maione, and under his orders murdered the three Shapiro brothers. Working for Maione was lucrative, but Abbandando developed such a feared reputation that he was in high demand for his services by Murder Inc.
Abbandando received more than three dozen murder assignments while under contract from Murder Inc. from which he drew a regular salary and received bonuses after successfully closing a contract. Usually, his bonus was $500. From his earnings he purchased an extensive and flashy wardrobe, preferring dark suits and expensive silk ties, shoes with spats, and costly watches and other jewelry. He also preferred expensive convertibles in which he drove around the Brooklyn neighborhoods, where he developed another reputation, that of being a sexual predator. Abbandando was accused of several rapes, but was never convicted of one.
Throughout the 1930s Abbandando committed at least 40 murders for Murder Inc. and possibly up to sixty more on other business, using an icepick on occasions, knives, cleavers, piano wire, firearms, and on at least one occasion a cinder block to kill his victims. In 1940 Abe Reles was picked up on suspicion of murder and decided to cooperate by describing the activities and organization of Murder Inc. Abbandando was arrested for the murder of George Rudnick, who had been killed in a Brooklyn garage in 1937. Reles testimony was corroborated by other gangsters cooperating with the authorities in the hope of leniency, but Abbandando denied everything.
Abbandando continued to profess his complete innocence throughout a trial in which his long career of extortion, loan sharking, rape, intimidation, and murder was revealed to the jury, which convicted him of murder. Abbandando had been led to believe that the jury would be fixed, which may have contributed to his casual dismissal of the prosecution and even the judge, to whom he allegedly whispered a threat while he was on the stand. His conviction was overturned on appeal but he was re-tried and convicted a second time, and finally executed in the electric chair at Sing-Sing in February 1942.