How did a gang of killers become ‘incorporated’?
The background, uses and likely misuses of the term ‘Murder, Inc.’
For decades, the name “Murder, Inc.” or “Murder Incorporated” has been used to refer to a historic network of underworld assassins headquartered in Brooklyn and responsible for killings across the country. Murder, Inc. is often presented as the official enforcement arm of a national crime syndicate. This may not be an accurate interpretation of the term’s earliest organized crime-related use. But that definition has so saturated organized crime literature since 1940, that any change now seems impossible.
Other adaptations of the term, mostly for purposes outside of organized crime history, have turned up from time to time. Still, “Murder, Inc.” remains linked in the public consciousness to the group of killers discovered in 1940.
The term and the gangland execution group have been so closely linked for so long that some may mistakenly assume “Murder, Inc.” was an official name adopted by its members or assigned by the leaders of American organized crime.
There may be exceptions, but organized racketeers are not usually interested in generating trademark names by which others, including law enforcement, can define their criminal organizations. When circumstances require that some reference be made to an organization, racketeers generally take a vague, common-noun approach and speak of “outfit,” “organization,” “combination,” “office,” “partnership,” “our thing.” Outsiders hear these terms – these attempts to refer to a group without naming it – and decide that the common words are in fact proper nouns and so give birth to the capitalized forms: “Outfit,” “Combination,” “Cosa Nostra” (“Our Thing”).
In the case of “Murder, Inc.” or “Murder Incorporated,” the name is not known to have been used by any of its members or associated outlaws before it appeared in the press. It is said to have originated with a journalist working on Brooklyn police stories early in 1940, when the public first became aware of the network of assassins.1
That is a reasonable claim, but I believe it would be more accurate to state that the term, “Murder, Inc.” – already well known and in common use by 1940 – was initially and lastingly applied to criminal endeavors in that year by a journalist. You may have heard otherwise, but it really was not created, invented or coined by a journalist in that year.
Merchants of death
The term was already in use in the United States in the 1930s, during the busy but often overlooked period between the world wars, when some Americans reflected on powerful and uncaring corporate interests that brought about World War I and compelled U.S. entry into that conflict. In particular, it seemed that munitions manufacturers were highly motivated to bring about massive and bloody international contests in order to dramatically increase their profits.
A similar point had been made much earlier by American anarchists and socialists opposed to the First World War. They warned of increasing U.S. business entanglements with England and France. Upon U.S. entry into the war, anti-war speeches and writings of the leftist radicals were labeled “traitorous” by the establishment, the publications of the Left were suppressed and the staff of The Masses socialist periodical were twice tried in federal court under the Espionage Act. (Both juries deadlocked.)
While the specific term “Murder Incorporated” is not known to have been used in leftist communication of the time, a common theme involved financial investments of the wealthy elite that resulted in the deaths of the common citizens among the soldiery. At least two well-known John Reed articles from The Masses emphasized a link between commercial investment and war: “The Traders’ War” (unsigned) of September 1914 and “Whose War?” of April 1917.2
Possibly, the federal crackdown on the early radicals and the postwar Red Scare, which included a series of anarchist terror bombings culminating in the deadly September 1920 Wall Street bombing, kept such ideas from being openly discussed until the 1930s, when a new war was on the horizon.3
An editorial in the April 25, 1934, issue of the progressive periodical The New Republic was entitled, “Murder, Incorporated.” The article described the task of the recently authorized Senate Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry and the political power of rich industrialists that ultimately cost the lives of more than 53,000 Americans.
The editorial suggested that there was ample evidence that industry leaders pushed the U.S. into war, and it warned that the committee led by Senator Gerald Prentice Nye (R-ND) would get little cooperation from business interests:
The track is there, the blood-dripping profits are there, a vast, worldwide network of incorporated murder is there... Companies like Bethlehem, du Pont, Anaconda, Atlas and Hercules Powder, General Motors (whose combined profits in four years of war equaled more than 400 percent of their profits in four years of peace) are not going to give more than lip service to the proposal to “take the profits out of war” or reveal more than they must about “the methods used in promoting the sale of arms,” two objectives of the committee.4
Nye’s committee helped bring to public attention the unscrupulous greed of manipulative industrial leaders who reaped enormous profits from war while protected from its harms. The panel failed to establish a direct conspiracy among the “merchants of death,” however, and no action was taken on such measures as nationalizing the defense industries or removing profit from the sale of weapons and ammunition.5
The same subject, abbreviated to “Murder, Inc.,” was the focus of a May 1934 student discussion at the University of Richmond.6
Radio villains
Soon after the Second World War began in Europe, the “Murder Incorporated” term was used in a very different way. It became the title of a December 17, 1939, episode of the popular New York City-produced radio drama, The Shadow.
The Shadow’s haunting voice first hit the airwaves in 1930 as the narrator for a collection of detective stories and as a promotional tool for a detective magazine. The Shadow was fleshed out as a hypnosis-powered hero of a mystery series after 1932. The program’s opening (”Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? ...The Shadow knows!”) and closing (”The weed of crime bears bitter fruit! Crime does not pay.”) lines became very widely known.
While young Orson Welles is best remembered as the voice actor portraying character Lamont “The Shadow” Cranston, Welles reportedly only did so during the year 1937. Shadow-related magazines, novels, comics and a series of movie shorts were also created to capitalize on the character’s popularity. The program went off the air in 1954. A pilot program was reportedly created in television’s early days but got nowhere. A feature film, The Shadow, was released in 1994.7
In the episode, aired late on a Sunday afternoon on the WOR station in New York, a criminal group devised a scheme to profit from women who wish to be free of their husbands. The organization would not directly kill off the husbands but planned to sell special matches that would fatally poison the targeted husbands at the end of the workday, when they struck the matches to light their pipes:
The Shadow has earned quite a reputation in and out of radio. In December, 1939, for example, he cleaned up a combine called Murder, Inc... The Shadow’s Murder Inc. was cleaned up well before District Attorney O’Dwyer even got a bead on Brooklyn’s.8
The Shadow’s victory over Murder Incorporated wasn’t actually “well before” Kings County (Brooklyn) District Attorney William O’Dwyer tangled with the assassins network of Brooklyn. It was actually just several months before.
Underworld assassins
Very early in 1940, the activities of the Brooklyn organized assassins, who took murderous assignments from gangland chiefs, and the relationships of the assassins to a wider criminal syndicate started to become public knowledge. O’Dwyer’s office, benefiting from informants from within the group, began to catalog its crimes and follow links to other gangs and to important underworld figures. Burton Turkus, an assistant district attorney under O’Dwyer, took a leading role in the investigation and prosecution of a number of defendants.9
The biggest headlines to come out of the cases related to the 1941 fatal plummet out a hotel window by turncoat Abe Reles and the electric chair executions of Louis “Lepke” Buchalter, Louis Capone and Emanuel “Mendy” Weiss in March 1944. (See: “After years of delays, ‘Lepke’ takes a seat in the death chair.”)
The New York press, obviously recalling at least the radio program of a few months earlier (and possibly the six-year-old statements against American industrialists) employed the term “Murder, Inc.” when reporting on the investigation, court cases and related matters.
By the way, it is often said that this group of killers was historically unique, as it specialized in professional murder. (In fact, group members were also engaged in other criminal endeavors.) I’m not convinced that made it unique, even within Brooklyn. Recall that, back before Prohibition, there was a group of Camorra-affiliated killers headquartered at Brooklyn’s Navy Street, whose services could be purchased. In the same period, a similar function may have been served in various U.S. cities (though this is by no means certain) by a Brooklyn-based Sicilian Mafia organization known as the Good Killers.
Two different New York newsmen were credited with creating the name, though actually they merely recycled it for use in organized crime reports.
Some thought Harry Feeney, ace police reporter for the New York World-Telegram, deserved all the credit. The proponents may have included (I’ll explain my cautious phrasing a little later) prosecutor Burton Turkus and writer Sid Feder. Some reports suggested that Feeney worked closely with Turkus and Feder as they began work on their book project, entitled, Murder, Inc.10
Feeney passed away in September 1950 at the age of fifty. In an obituary, the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper noted that Feeney “was credited with coining the term ‘Murder Inc.’”11 When the book by Turkus and Feder was released the following year, it was dedicated “to Harry Feeney, a great reporter.”12
Years later, journalist Mel Heimer in a 1967 column wrote that Feeney “invented the name, Murder, Inc.” Heimer indicated that he had previously worked alongside Feeney.13
An equally solid case - perhaps a better one - could be made for crediting Asa Bordages, a rewrite man at the same newspaper where Feeney worked. The job of a rewriter was to obtain the data gathered by a street reporter and fashion newspaper-appropriate material from it. While Harry Feeney was apparently expert in gathering the data, Bordages was the wordsmith who produced the copy that appeared in print.
Very soon after the “Murder, Inc.,” term came into wide use, Bordages was given credit for it by well-known columnist Walter Winchell:
“Murder Inc.” was created by Asa Bordages, World-Telly re-writer, who writes detective fiction after hours. Ironically, he can’t use that now famous phrase for his latest mag article because some bloke registered it the day of publication...14
It is uncertain if Bordages ever wrote a magazine article on the Brooklyn assassins. But we know that he and John Bright collaborated on the writing of a play on the topic. Winchell’s suggestion that the title “Murder, Inc.” was unavailable appears to have some merit, as the play was titled, “Brooklyn U.S.A.” It’s first performance was at Manhattan’s Forrest Theatre, 230 West 49th Street, just west of Broadway (now the site of the Eugene O’Neill Theatre).15
Another Broadway columnist supported Bordages’ claim. Jack O’Brian in July 1975 recalled both Harry Feeney and Asa Bordages from his early reporting days on the Murder, Inc., case. According to O’Brian, Feeney was the “finest police reporter in N.Y. history,” but his articles were written by Bordages. Like Winchell, O’Brian recalled that Bordages was prevented from using the title he coined, but O’Brian related that to a movie project:
Asa coined the ‘Murder Inc.’ title to describe kill-for-hire gangsters Lepke, Gurrah, Bugsy Siegel, etc.... Two days later someone told Asa to register it as the title for a H’wood film (all H’wood film titles are registered in the name of the first claimant) but ‘Murder Inc.’ had been snapped up about the moment Asa’s story first hit the newsstands...16
Bordages lived to be eighty and passed away on Monday, December 8, 1986. The New York Daily News ran his obituary and noted his contribution to organized crime lore. The News ran a quote from Bordages’ widow that indicated the allowable letter-length of a tight, single-column newspaper headline caused him to employ “Murder, Inc.” as a nickname for the mob:
Bordages’ wife, Josephine, said her husband, at the time a rewrite man for the New York World-Telegram, created the Murder Inc. name to fit the editorial needs of the newspaper. “He was writing about this mob,” she said, “and the editor told him they needed a headline to fit one column. He thought up ‘Murder Inc.’ and it fit.”17
What about the book?
One well-known organized crime-related use of “Murder, Inc.” seemed not to refer specifically to the Brooklyn organization of professional killers. Surprisingly, that was the use of the term within the Turkus and Feder book, Murder, Inc.
Turkus, former prosecutor, had been involved in the Murder, Inc., cases sparked by revelations of the Brooklyn assassins organization. His 1951 book with Feder apparently grew out of that experience. But the book repeatedly suggested that a larger sinister syndicate – a businesslike underworld cartel – was the real “Murder, Inc.,” and the Brooklyn-based group of killers was merely a branch of the criminal conglomerate.
The book’s original subtitle was one indicator of this view: “The Story of the Syndicate.”18
Note that this subtitle was changed to “The Inside Story of the Syndicate Killing Machine,” when Tenacity Media Books released a “new updated edition” in 2012.19 That new subtitle put the definition of Murder, Inc., more in line with the traditional use of the term as a name for the group of killers but put it at odds with the content of the Turkus and Feder book, much of which focused on a broader underworld conspiracy. I have not seen a copy of this edition, and I do not know if it is true to the original work. The alteration to the subtitle raises concern.
But Turkus and Feder made the point clear in other places. Here are just a couple of examples:
...Make no mistake about this: the organization of Murder, Inc., the national Syndicate that was founded in 1934; the “bomb-proof” technique it developed and by which it protected itself from law enforcement - these are the same cut and pattern as the crime ring that has caused countrywide furore through 1950 and ‘51. The organization we broke open in 1940 is the same one that required a Kefauver investigation in 1950.20
...It is from [Giuseppe] Masseria’s demise and the purge of Mafia, and Lucky’s [Salvatore Lucania’s] resultant coronation, that modern gangdom - Murder, Inc., the national crime organization - may be traced.21
Another telling statement was made when the book weighed in on the issue of the “creator” of the “Murder, Inc.” term:
On the very first day of the investigation, [Harry Feeney] pointed up the nation-wide connections. On the second day, he came up with the inspiration for the name that has stayed with the cartel to this day - Murder, Inc. I remember his animated conversation with his assistant City Editor (now City Editor) Bert MacDonald, as he and the other reporters phone in their stories from the D.A.’s office.
“It’s just like Bethlehem Steel,” he emphasized excitedly. “It has a board of directors, a treasurer - that’s the bagman - and runs like a big syndicate.”22
This, of course, did not settle the issue of who first applied the term “Murder, Inc.” to the mob. The book said only that Feeney “came up with the inspiration for the name.” If Turkus and Feder had intended to convey that Feeney personally attached that name to the criminal organization, they could have found a more direct way of doing so.
Interestingly, the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, mentioned by Feeney to his editor, was one of the major U.S. corporate players, the merchants of death, during World War I. It was mentioned first in the list of war-profiting companies noted by the New Republic article about “Murder, Incorporated” in 1934.
From this recollection about Feeney and from the various other references in the Turkus and Feder book, it appears that the earliest uses of the term, “Murder, Inc.” were not intended as a name for the Brooklyn assassins. It was applied by its reputed inspirer/creator Feeney and by Turkus and Feder to the broad, coldly corporate, crime syndicate.
For specific references to the Brooklyn-based gang of killers, Turkus and Feder used other, less memorable terms, such as “Brooklyn combination,” “Brooklyn branch,” “Brooklyn troop.”23 That organization was presented as a unit of Murder, Inc., not as Murder, Inc., itself.
Cipollini, Christian, Murder Inc.: Mysteries of the Mob’s Most Deadly Hit Squad (Gangland Mysteries), Rock Hill SC: Strategic Media, 2015, Chapter 3.
O’Neill, William L., ed., Echoes of Revolt: The Masses 1911-1917, Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1966. The Echoes of Revolt book is cited a convenient collection of information published in The Masses periodical. The John Reed articles and other related publications are freely available online through a number of sources, including the digital library of NYU.
Several of the many available sources on the history of this period: Simon, Jeffrey D., America’s Forgotten Terrorists: The Rise and Fall of the Galleanists, Lincoln NE: Potomac Books, 2022; Hunt, Thomas, Wrongly Executed? The Long-forgotten Context of Charles Sberna’s 1939 Electrocution, Seven-Seven-Eight, 2016; Hunt, Thomas, “Leftist radicals clash in Barre, Vermont” and “The Galleanists’ war of terror,” Informer: The History of American Crime and Law Enforcement, October 2016.
“Murder, Incorporated,” The New Republic, April 25, 1934, p. 298.
“Merchants of death,” United States Senate, senate.gov, Aug. 7, 2023; Report of the Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry, U.S. Senate, 74th Congress, 2nd Session, Feb. 24, 1936, resources.saylor.org; “Nye, Gerald Prentice, 1892-1971,” Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, no. N000176, bioguide.congress.gov.
“’Murder, Inc.,’ topic of U.R. student talk,” Richmond VA News Leader, May 17, 1934, p. 2.
“The Shadow,” Radio Hall of Fame, radiohalloffame.com; Mulcahy, Russell, director, “The Shadow,” Universal Pictures, Internet Movie Database, imdb.com.
“Radio: ‘The Shadow’s’ 10th birthday scarcely noted,” New York PM’s Weekly, January 26, 1941; Aldous On The Farm, “The Shadow Radio Show: Episode 92 Murder Incorporated,” YouTube. Click to listen to the original program through Youtube.
Turkus, Burton, and Sid Feder, Murder, Inc.: The Story of the Syndicate, New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1951; Cipollini, Murder Inc.; “Brooklyn mob slayings put up to Sullivan County grand jurors,” Binghamton Press, March 19, 1940, p. 21.
“Harry Feeney, police reporter, coined Murder, Inc., label,” Brooklyn Eagle, Sept. 20, 1950, p. 15. This obituary states that Feeney was working with Turkus and Feder on their book at the time of his death.
“Harry Feeney, police reporter, coined Murder, Inc., label,”
Turkus and Feder, Murder, Inc., 1951.
Heimer, Mel, “Mere rumors of new Murder, Inc. frightful,” Beckley WV Post-Herald, March 30, 1967, p. 4; Heimer, Mel, “Murder Inc. reported in comeback,” Shenandoah PA Evening Herald, March 25, 1967, p. 12.
Winchell, Walter, “On Broadway,” Buffalo News, April 12, 1940, p. 25; Winchell, Walter, “On Broadway,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, April 13, 1940, p. 18.
“‘Brooklyn U.S.A.’ opening Sunday,” Brooklyn Eagle, Dec. 16, 1941, p. 6; “Murder, Inc., on stage,” photograph, Brooklyn Eagle, Dec. 16, 1941, p. 6. The Brooklyn Eagle obituary of Harry Feeney reported that he “supplied considerable material for the play, ‘Brooklyn, U.S.A.,’ produced at the Forrest Theater on Broadway in 1941.”
O’Brian, Jack, “The Voice of Broadway,” Staten Island Advance, July 6, 1975, p. 29; O’Brian, Jack, “The Voice of Broadway,” Newark Star-Ledger, July 8, 1975, p. 33.
“Obituaries: Asa Bordages,” New York Daily News, Dec. 11, 1986, p. 54.
Turkus and Feder, Murder, Inc., 1951.
Turkus, Burton B., and Sid Feder, Murder, Inc.: The Inside Story of the Syndicate Killing Machine, Tenacity Media Books, 2012.
Turkus and Feder, Murder, Inc., 1951, p. 22.
Turkus and Feder, Murder, Inc., 1951, p. 89.
Turkus and Feder, Murder, Inc., 1951, p. 20-21.
Turkus and Feder, Murder, Inc., 1951, p. 3, 7, 13, 15, 463.