This Mafia Hitman Thought He Was Safe In Police Custody – But Mysteriously Fell To His Death

Published May 8, 2018
Updated February 29, 2024

After being arrested, Abe Reles agreed to trade information on his fellow Murder Inc. hitmen. Then, he was found dead outside his jail cell – but did he really kill himself like the police said?

Abe Reles

Wikimedia CommonsAbe Reles, Murder Inc. hitman and ill-fated FBI informant.

Today Manhattan’s Lower East Side is a favorite haunt of revelers in search of eclectic dive bars or low-key clubs, but less than a century ago it was one of the city’s most notoriously dangerous neighborhoods.

During the 1930s and 40s, Murder Inc. did the dirtiest work the New York mob had to offer, providing hit men for the most famous criminals of the day, while ensuring the big bosses were never linked to the actual crimes. Consisting of Italian and Jewish gangsters, the organization founded by Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky is estimated to have been responsible for 1000 murders during their reign of terror; which would eventually come to an end thanks to one of their own.

Abe Reles was one of Murder Inc.’s most feared killers; he had already been arrested 42 times by the time he was thirty-four.

He’d somehow manage to skirt a murder conviction (despite six arrests for murders), but after yet another arrest in 1940 he found himself in hot water. Seeing that the noose had finally started to tighten around his neck, Abe Reles decided to save himself by giving up some of his former associates.

An Investigator’s Dream

Abe Reles Testimony

Wikimedia CommonsAbe Reles’s testimony sent Louis “Lepke” Buchalter to the electric chair; to this day the only American mobster to be sentenced to death

Abe Reles was an interrogator’s dream: not only was he willing to sing, but he also had a photographic memory that provided thousands of pages of evidence. He was extremely valuable because he was a high-ranking member of Murder Inc. and had a lot of information that could bring down other big names. With Reles’s help, the police were able to locate dozens of bodies and gather enough evidence to lock up some of his former buddies and send several of his old friends straight to the electric chair.

The biggest fish Abe Reles had to offer the police was Albert Anastasia, one of New York’s most prominent gangsters and the head of Murder Inc. The authorities had never been able to pin anything directly on him until Reles came along.

Anastasia had become involved with the murder of a local teamster, Morris Diamond, himself. Although he had dozens of hitmen (who Reles could have provided) to take care of the killing for him and ensure he could never be directly implicated, for reasons that are still unknown Anastasia planned out Diamond’s death himself; unfortunately for him, Reles had overheard the details.

Abe Reles’ Mysterious Death

Abe Reles Ropes

Bettmann/Getty ImagesA detective examines the improvised rope of wire and bed sheets which Abe Reles allegedly used in an attempt to escape from the sixth floor of the Half Moon Hotel at Coney Island.

Due to his value as a witness and the possibility that some of his old friends were likely trying to silence him, as he was getting set to testify against Anastasia, Abe Reles was placed under constant guard by the NYPD at the Half-Moon Hotel on Coney Island. Despite the fact that a whopping 18 men were assigned to guard the single prisoner in 24-hour shifts, on the morning of November 12th, 1941, Reles’s crumpled body was found on the sidewalk six stories below.

The former gangster was found with “two sheets partially entwined around him” as well as a length of wire. Up in his room, investigators found more wire tied to his radiator and leading out the window, where it had snapped. The officers assigned to watch him all claimed that they had been asleep when their prisoner evidently decided to make a desperate bid for freedom.

The newspapers delighted in reporting the suspicious circumstances surrounding Abe Reles’ death, with one reporting “the only law that got him was Newton’s law of gravity.” After an official inquiry was made in 1951, a grand jury ruled that the stool pigeon died during an escape attempt.

However, there were a few problems with this theory; namely that Abe Reles’ body was found quite some distance from the wall he had supposedly been trying to scale.  Lucky Luciano later stated that the policemen had been paid a whopping $50,000 to ensure they “picked [Reles] up and heaved him out the window.”

After Reles’s death, the case against Anastasia was dropped, with the DA bemoaning that his “perfect case… went out the window with Reles.” The mob boss would walk free this time, but would eventually be brutally murdered himself in 1957.


Next, read about the time that the FBI hired hitman Gregory Scarpa to threaten the KKK. Then, check out these photos that capture life in the 1980s mafia.

author
Gina Dimuro
author
A graduate of New York University, Gina Dimuro is a New York-based writer and translator.
editor
John Kuroski
editor
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.