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LEPKE (continued) violation of the narcotics law. By this time, Lepke had scattered possible Dewey witnesses far and wide across the country and was maintaining them-in their hide-outs. Lepke, Gurrah Jake and Max Silverman, their straw boss in the bakery racket, were also indicted for extortion. Lepke and Gurrah Jake fled, and from his hiding place Lepke ordered the destruction of key witnesses. Murder Inc. had seen a lot of men die, but not as fast as they did during this period. Supreme Court Justice Ferdinand Pecora, who had been designated to hear the cases, was horrified. The underworld stood by Lepke for 21 months. One of the Italian gang leaders in Brooklyn hid him for a while in the Oriental Dance Hall in Coney Island. This hideout was uncomfortable. Kid Twist found a Brooklyn waterfront flat, run by a red-haired virago, and Lepke boarded there a while. He grew a full mustache and wore dark glasses. He still collected from many of his labor victims and still drew heavy carnings from the Raleigh Manufacturing Corp., a cloth- ing firm with offices at 200 Fifth Avenue and a factory in Baltimore, which he controlled. When the waterfront flat grew tiresome, Lepke moved to an apart- ment in a large house on Foster Avenue in the Flatbush district in Brooklyn. Here he was the ‘paralyzed husband’ of a Mrs, Walker, who had a 19-year-old son. When anyone knocked at the door, _Lepke would let his arms go limp and would assume a paralytic pose io his armchair by the fire-escape window. Here he received Kid Twist and his other agents, directed his multicudinous affairs, or- dered the dispatch of men who might get to Mr. Dewey or to the federal authorities. The victims were stabbed with ice picks, shot and dropped into Catskill streams. One was throttled and burned in a Brooklyn lot. Lepke’s own men were terrified. They watched each other warily. Trigger fingers sometimes slipped Max Rubin, who had been a Lepke straw boss in the garment cen- ter, was shot in the neck one night on Gunhill Road in the Bronx after he had appeared before Mr. Dewey. The marksmanship was ‘bad, and Rubin survived to be the most damaging witness against Lepke at trials later. In their zeal to fulfil Judge Louie's orders, the Lepke gunmen accidentally murdered Irving Penn, an innocent music publisher. They mistook him for Phil Orlovsky, a potential witness against Lepke. This added to public indignation. The city of New York put a $25,000 reward on Lepke's head. The federal government previously had offered $5,000. Finally, word came to Brooklyn from J. Edgar Hoover's office that if Lepke was not turned over within 72 hours, a host of FBI men would be turned loose on the borough and a merciless campaign would be started against all the mobs, Lepke’s as well as others’. One of the big Italian gang bosses knew that this meant business. He passed the word to Lepke and a plan for surrender was worked out..A little after 10 o'clock the night of Aug. 24, 1939 Lepke got out of an automobile on Fifrh Avenne at 28th Srrees, still wear- ing the dark glasses and vue mustache. He was somewhat heavier than when he had gone into hiding. Waiting for him in a sedan was the columnist, Walter Winchell, chosen intermediary in the surren- der. Winchell spoke to a heavy-set man, wearing dark glasses like ke’s, sitting deep in the tonneau. #ie said, ‘‘Mr. Hoover, this is Lepke.”’ Lepke removed his own glasses, dashed them on the pavement. “How do you do?”’ he said politely. ‘Glad to meet you. Let’s go.”’ CONTINUED ON PAGE 95 . x a to ate ~ 2 Ar rae freee oem eee tnt,