As a leader of Brooklyn's Murder, Inc., Abe Reles was responsible for countless murders in the 1930s

Abe "Kid Twist" Reles was born to Austrian-Jewish immigrants in early 20th Century Brooklyn. He was an incorrigible thug from his earliest days and took the name "Kid Twist" from a legendary gangster from the Lower East Side. Short, squat and with powerful hands, Reles was a natural born killer. He once boasted to Assistant District Attorney Burton Turkus (Mr. Arsenic) that committing murder, just like trying a case for the first time, was something you got used to.

Eventually Reles partnered with a mixed group of Jewish and Italian gangsters based in Brownsville and neighboring Ocean Hill sections of Brooklyn. These men who included notorious killers Harry "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss, Harry "Happy" Maione, Frank "The Dasher" Abbandando, Louis Capone, Allie "Tic Toc" Tannenbaum and Martin "Buggsy" Goldstein, would eventually form the core of the group dubbed Murder, Inc.

Throughout the 1930s, Reles and his cohorts were able to eliminate local competition through assassination. These included the murders of the Shapiro brothers, who until their demise ran most of the Brooklyn bootlegging, slot and vending machine rackets. One by one, each Shapiro brother was eliminated by execution. Meyer, the eldest was found dead under the sands of Canarsie beach, in a sack in which he had been buried alive. Others who met their demise were the Amberg brothers, who were hoodlums based in Williamsburg. Soon Reles and crew dominated the Brooklyn rackets.

After attracting the attention of big time gangsters like Louis "Lepke" Buchalter and Albert "The Lord High Executioner" Anastasia, Reles and his troop became the execution arm of what was known as The Syndicate, whose membership included at various times Lucky Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, Dutch Schultz and Joe Adonis. The group would be called into action after The Syndicate would determine (often in mock trials with the gangsters acting as prosecutor, defense attorney and judge) that someone needed to be eliminated for breaking underworld laws.

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Abe Reles dead on the roof

 

Abe'Kid Twist' Reles was thirty-four years old when he died, leaving behind a six year old son.

There was a rumor going around a few years back that one of the cops guarding Reles was Charley Burns. He had been implicated in the kidnaping, murder and body disposal of New York Judge Joseph Force Crater, who vanished off the face of the earth in 1930. He became the most famous missing person in American history, at that time, earning news headlines such as ' The Missingest Man in New York.' Burns may well have guarded Abe at some time, but wasn't there the morning he went out of the window.

Burial:
New Mount Carmel Cemetery 

Glendale
Queens County
New York, USA
Plot: Section 1, Line 12, Grave 23

Maintained by: Find A Grave
Record added: Jun 11, 1999 
Find A Grave Memorial# 5676