{"id":450,"date":"2023-11-02T11:12:15","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T18:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/?p=450"},"modified":"2024-10-29T14:59:28","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T21:59:28","slug":"murder-inc-foreward-to-the-new-edition-by-peter-lance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/?p=450","title":{"rendered":"Murder, Inc. the true crime classic. Republished with a new Foreword by Peter Lance"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Murder%2C%20Inc.%20the%20true%20crime%20classic.%20Republished%20with%20a%20new%20Foreword%20by%20Peter%20Lance\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p><a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2iK2KR4\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-399 alignleft\" title=\"Murder-Inc.-graphic-for-website-lead[1]\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Murder-Inc.-graphic-for-website-lead1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"534\" height=\"474\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Murder-Inc.-graphic-for-website-lead1.png 534w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Murder-Inc.-graphic-for-website-lead1-300x266.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 534px) 100vw, 534px\" \/><\/a><strong>FOREWARD<\/strong> to the new edition <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><strong>By Peter Lance<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>I was first introduced to Murder Inc., by Nick Pileggi, the extraordinary journalist, author and screenwriter responsible for two of the most iconic works in the literature of organized crime: <em>Wiseguy<\/em>, which he adapted into the film <em>Goodfellas<\/em> and <em>Casino;\u00a0<\/em>also brought to the screen in collaboration with Martin Scorsese<em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Along with Mario Puzo\u2019s <em>The Godfather<\/em> (Parts I &amp; II) directed by Francis Ford Coppola, the Pileggi-Scorsese collaborations stand as a kind of filmic Blessed Trinity which help us to understand the underworld association that J. Edgar Hoover called La Cosa Nostra.<\/p>\n<p>But long before the New York \u201cfive families\u201d took shape in their present configurations: Gambino, Genovese, Colombo, Lucchese and Bonnano, there was an organization of Italian and Jewish gangsters which the newspapers of the 1940\u2019s branded \u201cThe Syndicate.\u201d It was criminal enterprise dominated by Charles \u201cLucky\u201d Luciano, Meyer Lansky, Albert Anastasia, Benjamin \u201cBugsy\u201d Siegel, Joe Adonis and Louis \u201cLepke&#8221; Buchalter \u2013 an informal \u201cboard of directors\u201d known as \u201cThe Big Six.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Identifying themselves as \u201cThe Combination,\u201d this axis of Jewish and Italian gangsters who associated above and apart from the traditional rules of The Mafia, reaped millions of dollars a year in the post-Prohibition decades from gambling, labor racketeering, extortion, prostitution and dope peddling, but their most lethal product was homicide.<\/p>\n<p>Operating out of Midnight Rose\u2019s, a candy story under the El tracks on the corner of Saratoga and Livonia Avenues in Brownsville, Brooklyn, \u201cMurder, Inc..\u201d as it was dubbed by World-Telegram reporter Harry Feeney, was a twenty-four-hour-a day-racket that killed more than a thousand people from coast to coast during the 1930\u2019s and early \u201840\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>Located less than two miles from Ebbets Field where the Dodgers played, the candy store was dominated by Abe \u201cKid Twist\u201d Reles \u2013 so named for his skill at strangling victims. There was a pay phone in the back of the story and when a \u201ccontract\u201d was called in, the killers, designated by Reles, would be dispatched with a doctor\u2019s bag containing the three possible weapons of choice: a gun, an ice pick and a garrote.<\/p>\n<p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright wp-image-17105\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Screen-Shot-2023-06-20-at-2.43.57-PM.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"179\" height=\"260\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Screen-Shot-2023-06-20-at-2.43.57-PM.jpg 510w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Screen-Shot-2023-06-20-at-2.43.57-PM-206x300.jpg 206w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 179px) 100vw, 179px\" \/>TAKING MOTIVE OUT OF MURDER<br \/>\n<\/strong><br \/>\nLike traveling salesmen, the killers would then hop on a train and ride to the destination, which was typically a city in the Midwest or South. On arrival they would \u201ccase\u201d the victim, do the job and be back on the train before the police had time to put a chalk mark on the ground. Naturally, the \u201ccontractor\u201d who had first placed the call, would have an ironclad alibi for the time of the extermination. With this heinous, but brilliant scheme, Reles and his \u201cBrownsville Boys\u201d took motive out of the murder equation.<\/p>\n<p>The crew of rubout specialists was as colorful a gang as ever wielded an ice pick. There was Vito Gurino, an apelike torpedo who practiced sharp-shooting by blasting the heads off chickens; Buggsy Goldstein, Dasher Abandando and Happy Maione, named for the permanent grimace that always crossed his face.<\/p>\n<p>The senior shooter was Harry \u201cPittsburgh Phil\u201d Strauss, a handsome clothes horse who killed more than thirty men in a dozen cities. But the beetle-browed Reles was the boss of the enterprise and no one outside the underworld had a clue to the bloodthirsty \u201cdeath on demand\u201d racket he ran, until he was ultimately arrested and turned by Burton B. Turkus.<\/p>\n<p>A former defense lawyer with the suave looks of Errol Flynn, the courtroom manner of William Powel and a steel-trap legal mind, Turkus agreed to go to work for Brooklyn D.A. William O\u2019Dwyer, a former judge, after a string of 200 unsolved murders piled up in Kings County. Quickly assembling a crack team of lawyers and detectives, Turkus turned up the heat and eventually \u201cflipped\u201d Kid Twist into the most famous mob \u201ccanary\u201d in history \u2013 that is until Joseph Valachi \u201csang\u201d to the McClellan committee twenty years later.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Abe-Reles-mugshot.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-456\" title=\"Abe Reles mugshot\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Abe-Reles-mugshot.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"202\" height=\"166\" \/><\/a>Turkus was astonished to learn from Reles that those 200 homicides were just the tip of the \u201cice pick,\u201d so to speak, and that under the direction of the \u201cBig Six,\u201d motivated primarily by Lepke Buchalter \u2013 another 800 bodies were scattered nationwide \u2013 all linked back to Midnight Rose\u2019s and The Brownsville Boys.<\/p>\n<p>But how Turkus ultimately nailed Lepke is a roller coaster ride of ups and downs.<\/p>\n<p>On the eve of his testimony against Buchalter for the murder of garment district owner Joseph Rosen, Reles, who had been protected in \u201cThe Squealer\u2019s Suite\u201d of the Half Moon Hotel on Coney Island, was thrown to his death. Although corrupt police officers later claimed that he slipped during an escape attempt, the evidence clearly pointed to homicide and Reles was forever known as \u201cThe Canary Who Sang But Didn\u2019t Know How to Fly.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Abe-Reles-body.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright wp-image-588\" title=\"Abe Reles body\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Abe-Reles-body.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"254\" height=\"163\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Abe-Reles-body.jpg 397w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Abe-Reles-body-300x192.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 254px) 100vw, 254px\" \/><\/a><strong>THE RUNAWAY BEST SELLER<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The page-turning story of how Turkus recovered from that setback and eventually sent Lepke to the electric chair in Sing Sing \u2013 the first and only mob boss in history to die in a government execution \u2013 was chronicled by Sid Feder, a former war correspondent who spent 17 years as a veteran reporter for the Associated Press.<\/p>\n<p>Told in Turkus\u2019s own first-person voice, <em>Murder, Inc, The Story of The Syndicate<\/em>, was first published by Farrar, Strauss &amp; Young in 1951 and quickly became a runaway best seller worldwide. It was adapted into a film in 1961 which starred Peter Falk in his debut role as Reles and by 1974 \u201cMurder, Inc.\u201d had sold more than a million copies. Meanwhile, Burton Turkus went onto become one of the most successful labor negotiators in New York history.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-18130\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Murder-Inc.-Paperback-cover-Over-1-million-copies-sold.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"175\" height=\"297\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Murder-Inc.-Paperback-cover-Over-1-million-copies-sold.jpg 348w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/Murder-Inc.-Paperback-cover-Over-1-million-copies-sold-177x300.jpg 177w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 175px) 100vw, 175px\" \/>I had done a number of organized crime-related stories in my days as an investigative correspondent for ABC News, but had never touched on Murder, Inc. Then in 1998 when Nick Pileggi began collaborating with the late Michael King (of King World) to adapt the Turkus-Feder book as an NBC mini-series I was hired to write the six hours of teleplays.<\/p>\n<p>Devouring both the book and hundreds of Murder Incorporated news clips that Nick had obtained, I ended up turning in seven hours of material. But at the time, NBC decided to get out of the mini-series business so the scripts remained un-produced.<\/p>\n<p><strong>TERRORISM AND ORGANIZED CRIME<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Flashing forward to 2001, I returned to investigative journalism right after the attacks of 9\/11 and began what turned into a twelve year investigation into the counter-terrorism record of the FBI in the years leading up to \u201cSeptember 11th\u201d and beyond.\u00a0 The work culminated in my trilogy for HarperCollins: <em>1000 Years for Revenge: International Terrorism and the FBI, Cover Up: What the Government is Still Hiding About the War on Terror <\/em>and <em>Triple Cross: How bin Laden\u2019s Master Spy Penetrated the CIA, the FBI and The Green Berets.<\/em> (www.peterlance.com).<\/p>\n<p>As could only happen in New York, in the course of my research for <em>Cover Up<\/em> I learned of an extraordinary nexus between a pair of al Qaeda terrorists and a member of organized crime. In 1996 while awaiting trial on the ninth floor tier of the Metropolitan Correctional Center (M.C.C.) the federal jail in Lower Manhattan, Gregory Scarpa Jr. a capo for the Colombo crime family, found himself in a cell between Ramzi Yousef, the al Qaeda bomb maker responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and Abdul Hakim Murad, a Kuwaiti pilot who had been trained in four U.S. flight schools.<\/p>\n<p>In <em>1000 Years for Revenge,<\/em> I proved that after fleeing New York following the WTC bombing on February 26<sup>th<\/sup>, 1993, Yousef set up a cell in the Philippines along with Murad, an Uzbeki named Wali Khan Amin Shah (beloved by Osama bin Laden) and Yousef\u2019s uncle, Khalid Shaikh Mohamed (KSM) a man who would not be forgotten by history. <img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-17106 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Screen-Shot-2023-06-20-at-2.43.43-PM.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"179\" height=\"269\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Screen-Shot-2023-06-20-at-2.43.43-PM.jpg 508w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Screen-Shot-2023-06-20-at-2.43.43-PM-200x300.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 179px) 100vw, 179px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>By the late fall of 1994 the brilliant but twisted Yousef, had conceived of three plots: first the assassination of Pope John Paul II who was to be in Manila in January, 1995 and second, the so-called \u201cBojinka\u201d plot to smuggle a series of improvised explosive devices (IED\u2019s) on board the first legs of a dozen U.S. airline flights bound from Asia to the States. This non-suicide plot called for the co-conspirators to disembark as the airliners landed in second leg Asian cities, only to have the planes explode over the Pacific hours later.<\/p>\n<p>But Yousef\u2019s most ambitious plot, to be headed by Murad as lead pilot, was to hijack a series of airliners in the U.S. and use them as missiles aimed at the WTC, the Pentagon, CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the Sears &amp; Transamerica Towers and an unnamed nuclear facility. This plot known as \u201cthe planes operation\u201d was interdicted after a fire in Yousef\u2019s bomb factory on the night of January 5<sup>th<\/sup>, 1995. Yousef and KSM then fled to Islamabad, Pakistan, but Murad was captured by the Philippines National Police (PNP).<\/p>\n<p>He was later interrogated by Col. Rodolfo B. Mendoza of the PNP who uncovered the \u201cplanes as missiles\u201d plot and communicated it back to Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York (SDNY) after Yousef was captured and rendered back for trial along with Murad and Wali Khan. The one member of the Manila cell who remained at large was KSM, whom we now know perfected Yousef\u2019s murderous plot using Mohammed Atta as a stand-in for Murad on 9.11.01.<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cTHE KILLING MACHINE\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In the course of my research I uncovered dozens of FBI 302 memos documenting a sting by Greg Scarpa Jr. that was authorized by the FBI in which the mobster intercepted a series of notes from Yousef including threats to hijack planes and plant bombs on U.S. airliners so that he could achieve a mistrial in the prosecution of the \u201cBojinka\u201d plot which the Feds decided to try first, in the summer of 1996, before the WTC bombing case. Many of those 302\u2019s can be accessed <a title=\"Greg Scarpa Ramzi Yousef FBI 302s.\" href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/PLfbi.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">HERE:<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Screen-shot-2012-06-15-at-2.05.10-PM.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-image-458 alignleft\" title=\"Screen shot 2012-06-15 at 2.05.10 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Screen-shot-2012-06-15-at-2.05.10-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"435\" height=\"168\" srcset=\"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Screen-shot-2012-06-15-at-2.05.10-PM.png 622w, https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Screen-shot-2012-06-15-at-2.05.10-PM-300x115.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 435px) 100vw, 435px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>One piece of intelligence from Scarpa Jr. was worth its weight in platinum \u2013 the location of KSM who was hiding out in Doha Qatar. But by the time the FBI sent its elite Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) to nab him, KSM had escaped only to succeed on 9\/11 in doing what his nephew had failed to do in 1993 &#8212; take down the Twin Towers.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/amzn.to\/2iK2KR4\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10074 alignright\" title=\"Screen Shot 2017-01-05 at 8.54.41 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Screen-Shot-2017-01-05-at-8.54.41-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"132\" height=\"250\" \/><\/a>Later after Federal prosecutors decided to bury what became known as \u201cThe Scarpa Materials\u201d \u2013 the intelligence contained in those 302s \u2013 I began working on my fourth HarperCollins book &#8220;Deal With The Devil,&#8221; which was initially called \u00a0SIX SIX SIX. That title derived from the Satanic digits: 6-6-6 which Greg Jr.\u2019s father Gregory Senior would punch into the beeper of his consigliere each time he committed a murder. As I began to dig deeper, I learned that Scarpa Sr. was a one-man Mafia successor to \u201cMurder Inc.\u201d In 42 years as a soldier and capo in the Colombos, Senior, who was known as \u201cThe Grim Reaper,\u201d committed more than 50 homicides.<\/p>\n<p>He ruled the streets of Brooklyn, like a bloodthirsty feudal lord, making hundreds of millions of dollars through, drug dealing, loansharking, hijacking, high-end stock fraud, stolen credit cards, gambling and sophisticated bank robberies that often netted millions a single score. After only serving 30 days in more than four decades of murder and mayhem, Scarpa Sr. earned another nickname: \u201cThe Killing Machine,\u201d which, ironically was the way Abe Reles had identified Murder Incorporated for Burton Turkus.<\/p>\n<p><strong>THE MACHIAVELLIAN STRATEGIST<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Knowing what I knew about the \u201cBrooklyn Combination\u201d and suspicious about the motives of the Feds in discrediting Scarpa Jr.\u2019s Yousef intelligence, I began to pull back the layers and found shocking evidence that the reason Scarpa Sr. was able to operate for so long with such murderous impunity, was because he was being protected by the Bureau.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Greg-Sr.-mugshot-3.11.76.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-459 alignleft\" title=\"Greg Sr. mugshot 3.11.76\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/Greg-Sr.-mugshot-3.11.76.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"279\" height=\"193\" \/><\/a>Beginning in 1960 and for the next 32 years, Senior operated as a snitch for the FBI. His debriefings on the Colombo borgata and the other four families in New York went directly to every FBI director starting with Hoover himself who designated Scarpa Sr. as a TECI: a Top Echelon Criminal Informant in 1962. After years of digging I was able to find 1,153 pages of heretofore secret files documenting the FBI\u2019s clandestine relationship with Scarpa Sr. who was designated in FBI files as: NY 3461 or \u201c34\u201d for short.<\/p>\n<p>The evidence proved that much of the FBI\u2019s view of La Cosa Nostra (LCN) was dictated by Gregory Sr. who wasn\u2019t just a wiseguy killer but a Machiavellian strategist who had succeeded over the years in knocking off (by murder or indictment) all of the competition above him in the Colombo family from Joe Colombo, the boss, to his successor Carmine \u201cThe Snake\u201d Persico to Vic Orena Sr. the acting boss in the early 1990\u2019s when Senior himself touched off a war in an effort to takeover of the borgata. It was a conflict on the streets of Brooklyn that left at least 14 dead including two innocent bystanders and six of the hits were executed by Senior himself or on his direct orders.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps more disturbing I documented 25 separate murders during the 12 year period Scarpa Sr. was being \u201ccontrolled\u201d by his last contacting agent ex-Supervisory Special Agent R. Lindley DeVecchio, a Bureau veteran who ran two O.C. squads in New York and taught informant development at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.<\/p>\n<p><strong>THE \u201cUNHOLY ALLIANCE\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I then went back and used &#8220;Deal With The Devil&#8221; to tell the extraordinary story of the Colombo family from 1950 when Scarpa Sr. first got \u201cstraightened out,\u201d up through the third war in the borgata which had experienced the most violence of any in the New York Commission. It\u2019s clear now that the body count was largely the result of the fact that Scarpa Sr. acted as an effective agent provocateur\u2013 wreaking havoc with the intel he derived from his special Top Echelon status.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Deal-Devil-Secret-Thirty-Year-Relationship\/dp\/0061455369\/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1435867742&amp;sr=1-8&amp;keywords=%22Deal+With+The+Devil%22\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7119 alignright\" title=\"Screen Shot 2015-07-02 at 1.02.06 PM\" src=\"http:\/\/peterlance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Screen-Shot-2015-07-02-at-1.02.06-PM.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"170\" height=\"259\" \/><\/a>But if Gregory Scarpa Sr., \u201cThe Killing Machine\u201d was a one-man Murder Inc. the consequences of his homicide spree had an entirely different outcome at the hands of the Brooklyn D.A. than occurred in the 1940\u2019s when Burt Turkus was prosecuting Lepke and company. In 2005 after I first published evidence of what defense lawyers described as the \u201cunholy alliance\u201d between\u00a0 Scarpa Sr. and Lin DeVecchio, Kings County D.A. Charles Hynes commenced an investigation which resulted in DeVecchio\u2019s indictment in March of 2006 on four counts of homicide relating to rubouts by \u201c34.\u201d<br \/>\nBut after a truncated two week trial in the fall of 2007 the case fell apart and the charges against DeVecchio were dismissed. From 1994-1996 the ex-Supervisory Special agent had been investigated by the FBI\u2019s Office of Professional Responsibility. This \u201cinternal affairs\u201d probe began after multiple agents under DeVecchio in the C-10 Colombo squad, disclosed that lethal intelligence had found its way to their boss\u2019s star informant Greg Scarpa Sr.<\/p>\n<p>During the course of the OPR investigation DeVecchio refused a polygraph, took the Fifth and was granted immunity by the Justice Department. In fact, after the FBI closed the investigation he got immunity a second time and answered \u201cI don\u2019t recall,\u201d or words to that effect, more than 50 times during a 1997 examination by defense lawyers who sought to get at the truth behind his secret relationship with \u201cThe Grim Reaper.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We can only wonder what DeVecchio\u2019s fate might have been, if the tenacious Burton Turkus was trying the case for the Brooklyn D.A.\u2019s office and Sid Feder had been around to chronicle the action.\u00a0In any event, in the following pages, readers of this updated new edition will find a unique and fascinating behind-the-scenes look at what it took to untangle the web of a thousand murders and bring the gangster-killers responsible to justice.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Deal Amazon\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Deal-Devil-Secret-Thirty-Year-Relationship\/dp\/0061455342\/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;sr=1-8&amp;qid=1435375643\"><strong>The paperback edition<\/strong><\/a> of &#8220;Deal With The Devil&#8221; hit bookstores in 2014. \u00a0In the meantime, sit back and enjoy the remarkable story of Burton Turkus, a prosecutor so feared by the Syndicate that they called him \u201cMr. Arsenic.\u201d It\u2019s an organized crime saga that begs to find it way, once again, to the screen.<\/p>\n<div>\n<hr align=\"left\" size=\"1\" width=\"33%\" \/>\n<div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Murder%2C%20Inc.%20the%20true%20crime%20classic.%20Republished%20with%20a%20new%20Foreword%20by%20Peter%20Lance\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p>FOREWARD to the new edition By Peter Lance I was first introduced to Murder Inc., by Nick Pileggi, the extraordinary journalist, author and screenwriter responsible for two of the most iconic works in the literature of organized crime: Wiseguy, which he adapted into the film Goodfellas and Casino;\u00a0also brought to the screen in collaboration with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3146,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,14,15],"tags":[125,330,155,467,122,134,479,1223,400,478,150,151,391,154,132,137,483,372,383,114,172,1211,139,388,153,454,387,109,380,110,136,119,401,395,382,113,386,252,152,106,485,128,108,393,470,133,481,375,390,311,472,142,377,373,392,379,249,135,402,130,111,115,381,116,374,486,462,484,131,397,399,406,118,105,141,129,167,384,385,107,376,126,140,291,1219,1220,480,468,469,138,317,473,121,461,127,471,398,396,251,250,112,1214,1222,463,389,117,394,477,371,378,120],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=450"}],"version-history":[{"count":103,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18132,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450\/revisions\/18132"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlance.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}