Harry Strauss And Murder, Inc.
Wikimedia CommonsHarry Strauss after being booked by the New York Police Department, 1940.
As a Mafia hitman, Harry Strauss was just as established as Abe Reles and spearheaded the murderous operations of Murder, Inc., alongside him. He was born on July 28, 1909, in Brooklyn, New York, and had been arrested 17 times by the time he was in his mid-20s. He wouldn’t live to see 32.
Christened “Pittsburgh Phil,” some mob historians believe Strauss murdered up to 500 people. He was one of the most trusted hitmen in organized crime and was routinely sent on contract killings across the country. He preferred to use an icepick, but once even employed an ax to hack a man to death in a movie theater.
Most unnerving was how much pride Strauss took in his vocation. He dressed in fine clothes and often accepted jobs merely for the pleasure of a kill. He would often stay in town for an extra day just to see his work chronicled in the local newspapers. His targets were largely informers or gangsters who had disrespected Murder, Inc.
Bettmann/Getty ImagesThe body of Harry Millman after Strauss killed him for money.
Strauss was in high demand as he would arrive from out of town and a faceless mystery to local police. It was hard for authorities to pin killings on him, with the 1937 murder of Purple Gang mobster Harry Millman no different. Entering a Detroit diner with guns blazing, Strauss killed Millman and wounded five patrons.
While New York assistant district attorney Burton Turkus was irate that Strauss “had never been convicted of so much as smoking on a subway platform,” things changed when the killer’s former colleague Abe Reles testified against Murder, Inc. in 1940. With Reles fingering Strauss as a killer, he was made to stand trial.
Despite feigning insanity during his trial, there was enough evidence that he had murdered Irving Feinstein alongside Reles that he was sentenced to death via the electric chair. He lived out his last months in Sing Sing Prison and never stopped pretending to be mentally ill until his execution in June 1941.
