>>35909 Reles later turned government witness and sent several members of Murder, Inc. to the electric chair. Reles' death from falling through a window while in police custody might have been a hit placed by the American Mafia, as he was set to testify against Mangano crime family underboss and future boss Albert Anastasia.
hroughout the 1930s, Reles and his cohorts were able to eliminate local competition through assassination. These included the murders of the Shapiro brothers, who until their demise ran most of the Brooklyn bootlegging, slot and vending machine rackets. One by one, each Shapiro brother was eliminated by execution. Meyer, the eldest was found dead under the sands of Canarsie beach, in a sack in which he had been buried alive. Others who met their demise were the Amberg brothers, who were hoodlums based in Williamsburg. Soon Reles and crew dominated the Brooklyn rackets.
On November 12, 1941, the night before he was to begin his testimony against Anastasia, Reles was found dead on a low lying roof outside the window of the Half Moon Hotel in Coney Island where he had been under 24 police protection since he had become an informant. Bed sheets tied together in a crude knot were found hanging from the window attached to a wire connected to a radiator.
There are many who believe Reles was thrown from the window especially in light of the sloppy workmanship of the knots considering Reles a professional murderer certainly had advanced knowledge of knots.
Reles's death quickly earned fame in popular culture after someone near his body was said to utter the words "the canary could sing, but he couldn't fly."
