| Harry Maione |
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EARLY YEARS As a young man, Maione led the Ocean Hill Hooligans, an Italian street gang in the Ocean Hill, Brooklyn section of New York. His protegee in this gang was Frank "Dasher" Abbandando . In 1931, Maione and Abbandando helped Abe "Kid Twist" Reles and Martin Goldstein move on the Shapiro Brothers (Meyer, Irving, and William). Previously that year, the Shapiros first tried to murder Reles and Goldstein, then abducted Reles' girlfriend and raped her. Reles and Goldstein wanted revenge, but the two Italians just wanted to take over some of the Shapiro operations. Irving and Meyer were soon dead and William joined them three years later. MURDER, INC. Maione, Abbandando, Reles, and Goldstein then banded together. They were soon joined by Harry "Pittsburgh Phil" Strauss , Emanuel "Mendy" Weiss , Albert "Tick Tock" Tannenbaum , Seymour "Blue Jaw" Magoon , Louis Capone , Charles "The Bug" Workman , Cooper McCue, and Vito "Socko" Gurino . The gang started picking up murder contracts from the National Crime Syndicate with the help of Syndicate Board Member Joe Adonis . The gang soon became the official murder-for-hire squad of the Syndicate, and was dubbed "Murder, Inc." by the press. Maione acted as the Italian liaison to the Jewish members of Murder Inc.; Reles was his counterpart on the Jewish side. Murder Inc was directed by the brutal Louis "Lepke" Buchalter (another member of the Syndicate board) and the nefarious Albert "Mad Hatter" Anastasia . ELIMINATING POTENTIAL WITNESSES In the mid- 1930s , New York District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey targeted Buchalter for prosecution. In response, Buchalter started eliminating all potential witnesses. Murder, Inc. rubbed out anyone that Buchalter even suspected of being an informant. Loan Shark George Rudnick was one such victim; he was killed by Maione, Abbandando, and Strauss on 11 May , 1937 . In 1940 , Reles became an informant for the State Of New York . He then implicated Maione in the horrific slaying of Rudnick. According to Reles, the men supposedly killed Rudnick and started stuffing him back in their car. Suddenly, the "corpse" started coughing. To finish him off, Strauss stabbed Rudnick with an ice pick and Maione buried a meat cleaver in his skull. Reles' testimony was enough to convict Maione on First Degree Murder . On February 19 1942 , Harry Maione was executed in the Electric Chair at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York . REFERENCES EXTERNAL LINK |
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