Background
Born in New York City to hard-working immigrant parents, he was the only one of eleven children to embark on a life in crime.
Born in New York City to hard-working immigrant parents, he was the only one of eleven children to embark on a life in crime.
Buchaiter began his career in crime as part of a neighborhood juvenile gang that rolled drunks, picked pockets, and robbed from pushcarts. In the early 1920s, when most mobsters sought to make their fortune in bootlegging, he chose to go into labor racketeering. At his peak, he commanded an army of gangsters who, through terror and violence, controlled unions in the New York garment and food industries and extorted millions of dollars from legitimate businesses. The gang’s weapons were acid, bludgeons, blackjacks, knives, fire, ice picks, and pistols.
A close associate of Meyer Lansky, Frank Costello, and Joe Adonis, Buchaiter became part of the leadership that formed the national crime syndicate. The founders recognized the need for an enforcement arm within the organization and he was put in charge of what the press dubbed Murder, Inc. Under Buchaiter, this group carried out hundreds of killings.
As the money poured in, Buchaiter adopted the life style of a multimillionaire. He lived in a luxurious apartment in mid-Manhattan and maintained chauffeur-driven cars for trips to race tracks and night clubs.
All this ended in 1941, when he was indicted and convicted for the killing of a garment trucker, whom he had driven out of business.
Lepke was executed in the electric chair of Sing Sing Prison, the only national crime boss to die in that way.
His nickname, Lepke, derived from Lepkeleh, an affectionate Yiddish diminutive used by his mother, which meant Little Louis.
Buchalter’s small stature, conservative dress, and soft-spoken demeanor belied the fact that he was the greatest exponent of violence in the rackets. As one Buchaiter associate put it, “Lep loves to hurt people.”