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20 Significant Mafia Hits

Khalid Elhassan February 19, 2019 23 min

2. The Execution of the “Lord High Executioner”

Albert ‘Lord High Executioner’ Anastasia. Pintrest

Albert Anastasia (1902 – 1957) was Murder Incorporated’s second in command, second only to Lepke Buchalter. He rose to head the entire operation in 1936, when Buchalter had to go on the lam. Unlike Buchalter, who had kept a low profile, Anastasia enjoyed letting everybody know that he was a vicious murderer. He took such joy in his duties with Murder Inc. that he became the most feared mobster of his era, earning the nicknames “Lord High Executioner” and “The Mad Hatter”.

He survived Murder Incorporated’s unraveling when the chief witness against him, Abe Reles, “fell” to his death from a 6th floor window just before he was scheduled to testify against Anastasia. He went on to found the Gambino crime family, until karma belatedly caught up with him on October 25th, 1957, in the barber shop of NYC’s Park Sheraton Hotel. As the Mad Hatter relaxed in his chair, two assassins, their faces covered with scarves, burst in, shoved the barber out of the way, and riddled Anastasia with bullets.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.