Abe Reles

Abraham "Kid Twist" Reles (c. 1906 – November 12, 1941) was an American mobster who operated as a contract killer for Murder, Inc., the specialized enforcement group of the National Crime Syndicate responsible for carrying out assassinations on behalf of organized crime leaders. In 1940, facing imminent prosecution for multiple murders, Reles surrendered to authorities and turned state's evidence, confessing to direct involvement in at least 11 killings and providing graphic testimony that implicated dozens of accomplices, resulting in the conviction and execution of key figures such as Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, head of the syndicate's labor rackets. His cooperation dismantled much of Murder, Inc.'s operations, but Reles himself met a suspicious end while under heavy police guard at the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island; he fell to his death from a sixth-floor window using knotted bedsheets as a makeshift rope, an event ruled an attempted escape but long viewed with skepticism due to inadequate safeguards and the timing just prior to his scheduled testimony against Albert Anastasia.

Abraham Reles was born on May 10, 1906, in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York, to Sol Reles and his wife, Jewish immigrants from Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father worked intermittently in the garment industry, reflecting the precarious employment common among Eastern European Jewish arrivals in early 20th-century New York. The Reles family, like many in their community, contended with acute poverty in a neighborhood dominated by overcrowded tenements and immigrant laborers.

Reles's formal education ended after the eighth grade, as family hardships necessitated his withdrawal from school to contribute to household survival. Brownsville at the time was a hub for Jewish factory workers and pushcart vendors, with limited infrastructure such as unpaved streets and scant sewers exacerbating living conditions for thousands of Eastern European immigrants. This environment, devoid of modern social safety nets, fostered reliance on informal economic activities amid the cultural insularity of small synagogues and ethnic networks.

The socio-economic pressures of Brownsville's Jewish community—marked by sweatshops, market peddling, and high population density—profoundly influenced early childhoods like Reles's, embedding exposure to urban survival imperatives in a pre-welfare era.