The details sound like the plot of a mob movie: professional hitman turns against his employers, prepares to take the stand, and ends up dead. But it was real life, not a movie.
Abe Reles had an appointment to testify about the activities of a coast-to-coast mob network in the fall of 1941, an appointment he did not keep. Instead, his broken body was found on a rooftop near his hotel room.
Did he fall while running away? Was he pushed? Longtime journalist Michael Cannell takes up these and other questions in his book A Brotherhood Betrayed: The Man Behind the Rise and Fall of Murder, Inc.
The author shares details of his research into the long-ago events.