(Louis Buchalter)

Born: 1897
Died: March 4, 1944

One of several Jewish gangsters in the New York underworld, Louis Lepke rose to the highest level of the newly formed national crime syndicate (association). A multi-millionaire by the end of his career, he was eventually betrayed by fellow mobsters.

Little Louis

Like many other gangsters who eventually rose to the top of the New York underworld, Lepke started out as a teenager robbing packaged goods from delivery carts in Manhattan. At the age of sixteen he was arrested for the first time. Lepke was so poor that, according to the police report, he wore stolen shoes. He got his nickname from his mother. “Lepke” is an affectionate Yiddish name meaning “Little Louis.” But the gangsters who referred to him by his nickname did not do so with affection.

In the 1920s, during the early years of...