About Mobster Louis ‘Lepke’ Buchalter

According to historians, Louis was considered to be very bad right from the time of his birth. He had killed with great relish, was strong armed and swindled people in huge numbers. However, for his crimes, he was considered to be the only Mafia boss, who went to die at the electric chair of Sing Sing prison.

His early life

It was in Williamsburg, Brooklyn that Buchalter was born on 12th February 1897. His father was the owner of a hardware store and was a Russian Jew. As a child, Buchalter had an uneventful life. He was called affectionately by his mother as ‘Lepkeleh’, which means ‘Little Louis’ in Yiddish. But his friends shorted it to Lepke, something that struck for the rest of the life.

Life as a Mafia

But at 13, his life took a drastic turn, with his father dying unexpectedly and mother facing serious health conditions, compelling her to leave for Arizona. Lepke was under the guidance of his elder sister, who found him to be unmanageable. He left school and could be found hanging on Lower East Side streets seeking trouble. He started to mix with the older gangsters and learnt to steal and rob. He was apprehended when robbing a store in 1915, but still continued this life.  During one of his criminal endeavors, he met Jacob ‘Gurrah’ Shapiro and became fast friends for life. Teaming up, they became a real menace. He was sentenced to Sing Sing Prison, where he became a master in crime and now was a hardened thug. Along with Shapiro, went to New York City and asking protection money from bakeries. There they joined ‘The Gorilla Boys’ to make it big. With Lepke’s murdering of Orgen, his gang got into big time and was regarded instant stars of the underworld.

This is where Shapiro and Lepke enjoyed, since they were had about 250 thugs working under them and getting protection money from garment centers, poultry business, restaurants, dieing and cleaning business, earning over $10 million estimated amount a year. To be on the right side of the law, they had changed the original name of the Mafia family from ‘Gorilla Boys’ to ‘Gold Dust Twins’.

Later, he along with Schultz, Luciano, Costello, Siegel, Lansky, Lucchese and Anastasia had formed the national crime syndicate, thereby controlling all illegal activities within the northeast and mid west. It was Thomas E. Dewey, a Special Prosecutor who had created trouble for Lepke. It was on 4th March, 1944 that Lepke being stiffed by best friends got executed by the law enforcement officials.