Harry "Big Greenie" Greenberg (1909November 22, 1939) was an associate and childhood friend of
Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, and an employee of both
Charlie "Lucky" Luciano
Charles "Lucky" Luciano ( , ; born Salvatore Lucania ; November 24, 1897 – January 26, 1962) was an Italian-born gangster who operated mainly in the United States. Luciano started his criminal career in the Five Points gang and was instrument ...
and
Meyer Lansky
Meyer Lansky (born Maier Suchowljansky; July 4, 1902 – January 15, 1983), known as the "Mob's Accountant", was an American organized crime figure who, along with his associate Charles "Lucky" Luciano, was instrumental in the development of the ...
.
Early years
He was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1909. Greenberg and his parents were Jewish. On the streets of New York is where he met Siegel and 1930s
Murder, Inc.
Murder, Inc. (Murder, Incorporated) was an organized crime group, active from 1929 to 1941, that acted as the enforcement arm of the National Crime Syndicatea closely connected criminal organization that included the Italian-American Mafia, the ...
leader
Louis Buchalter
Louis Buchalter, known as Louis Lepke or Lepke Buchalter, (February 6, 1897March 4, 1944) was an American mobster and head of the Mafia hit squad Murder, Inc., during the 1930s. Buchalter was one of the premier labor racketeers in New York City ...
.
Alleged tie to organized crime
His first known arrest was in September 1927 for drowning Benjamin Goldstein; he was arrested with two other low-level criminals named Joseph Lefkowitz and Irving Rubinzahl. Greenberg was acquitted, and only Lefkowitz was convicted for the crime and sentenced to the electric chair, although he was later acquitted. On 11 November, 1928, police raided a home and arrested Greenberg and Siegel,
Harry Teitelbaum,
Louis Kravitz,
Philip Kovolick Philip "The Stick" Kovolick 'Kovalick''(September 2, 1908 – April 1971?), also known as Joseph Farvel, was a New York mobster and a longtime associate of labor racketeer Louis Buchalter. He was one of the closest associates of Meyer Lansky, and ...
,
Hyman Holtz,
Joseph Stacher and
Jacob Shapiro
Jacob "Gurrah" Shapiro (May 5, 1899 – June 9, 1947) was a New York mobster who, with his partner Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, controlled industrial labor racketeering in New York for two decades and established the Murder, Inc. organization.
Early ...
. Most of these men were the assassins and backbone of Murder Inc. The men met together to discuss their rival
Waxey Gordon
Waxey Gordon (born Irving Wexler; January 19, 1888 – June 24, 1952) was an American gangster who specialized in bootlegging and illegal gambling. An associate of Arnold Rothstein during prohibition, he was caught up in a power struggle follo ...
. In 1934, dynamite was dropped through the chimney of an office owned by Siegel on
Grand Street, Manhattan as retribution for Siegel murdering rival bootleggers; luckily it had exploded too early before Siegel walked into the room although he and others were wounded. Three days later, Louis and Andy Fabrizzo, who were members of Gordon's crew, were murdered and found near a distillery owned by Gordon. Shapiro, Stacher, Greenberg himself and Siegel were involved but it is alleged that only Siegel pulled the trigger. In 1936, he was ordered by
Louis "Lepke" Buchalter to lead a raid into the office of Needle Trades Workers Industrial Union, who were having a meeting at the time.
Murder
On November 22, 1939, Greenberg was murdered by Bugsy Siegel,
Whitey Krakow, and
Lucchese crime family
The Lucchese crime family (pronounced ) is an Italian-American Mafia crime family and one of the "Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City, in the United States, within the nationwide criminal phenomenon known as ...
soldier
Frankie Carbo
Paul John "Frankie" Carbo (born Paolo Giovanni Carbo, ; August 10, 1904Bureau of Narcotics, Sam Giancana, The United States Treasury Department. ''Mafia: The Government’s Secret File on Organized Crime''. 2007(pg. 85)/ref> – November 9, 1976) w ...
. Prosecutors claimed that Siegel had brought them to his house and drove the getaway car, and that Carbo shot Greenberg in the head five times. His wife Ida Greenberg found him murdered at his driveway. Greenberg allegedly ordered $5,000 from Buchalter to keep his silence from law enforcement, however Buchalter subsequently ordered his murder. Siegel was sent to trial in 1940 but not convicted. The second trial began in 1942 and Carbo was the main defendant. Krakow was murdered in 1941.
Abe Reles, a notorious hitman for Murder Inc., agreed to testify but the case was dismissed when he died in 1941 in an apparent suicide that appeared staged. Reles' actual cause of death is highly debated. Another Murder Inc. hitman who also became an informant,
Albert Tannenbaum, said he brought the murder weapons to Los Angeles from New York and gave them to Carbo and Siegel.
Media
Greenberg was portrayed by Academy Award nominee
Elliott Gould in the 1991 film ''
Bugsy''.
References
Further reading
*Block, Alan A. ''East Side-West Side: Organizing Crime in New York, 1930-1950''. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 1983.
*Cohen, Rich. ''Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams''. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998.
*Turkus, Burton B. and Sid Feder. ''Murder, Inc: The Story of "the Syndicate"''. New York: Da Capo Press, 2003.
*Wallace, David. ''Hollywoodland''. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Greenberg, Harry
1939 deaths
1939 murders in the United States
Murdered Jewish American gangsters
People murdered by Murder, Inc.
People murdered in California
Year of birth missing
People murdered by Italian-American organized crime