Louis Kravitz (also known as Lou Kay or Shadows) was a New York labor

racketeer Racketeering is a type of organized crime in which the perpetrators set up a coercive, fraudulent, extortionary, or otherwise illegal coordinated scheme or operation (a "racket") to repeatedly or consistently collect a profit. Originally and ...

during the early 1930s. On July 12, 1929, Kravitz, along with

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 ...

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 ...

and two other

gangster A gangster is a criminal who is a member of a gang. Most gangs are considered to be part of organized crime. Gangsters are also called mobsters, a term derived from '' mob'' and the suffix '' -ster''. Gangs provide a level of organization and ...

s, broke into the M. L. Rosenblatt clothing plant and wrecked $25,000 worth of machinery. ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' described them as "members of a gang which has been terrorizing nonunion clothing manufacturers". Kravitz was among the first 9 people to be arrested under New York state law, along with Louis Buchalter, Jacob Shapiro,

Bugsy Siegel Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel (February 28, 1906 – June 20, 1947) was an American mobster who was a driving force behind the development of the Las Vegas Strip. Siegel was not only influential within the Jewish Mob, but along with his childhood fri ...

, Harry Teitelbaum, Harry Greenberg and 3 others, which made "it a crime for men of evil repute to gather together". The arrest was seen as providing a

test case In software engineering, a test case is a specification of the inputs, execution conditions, testing procedure, and expected results that define a single test to be executed to achieve a particular software testing objective, such as to exercise ...

for the law. The 9 were arrested in a suite in the Hotel Franconia, where, police charged, they were plotting to terrorize the clothing industry. On December 24, 1931, Magistrate Maurice Gotlieb ruled that the police had failed to prove that the men were meeting with evil intent. Kravitz disappeared from public view in 1937 after the arrest of Buchalter and 28 others on suspicion of importing narcotics. By 1939, federal authorities were offering a $1000 reward for Kravitz's capture. He was finally apprehended in October 1941 and upon his plea of guilty was given a penitentiary sentence of one year and one day.

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